Jones did not. She fingered the battered gold Longine watch which had been her father’s most treasured possession. He had acquired it in Berlin during the last days of World War Two. It was about the only thing of any value Jack Jones ever owned, and when he died, far too early at fifty-three, the watch passed to his only child. Sandy Jones had been eight, a bright little girl who spent the rest of her childhood watching her mother struggle horribly to provide even the barest essentials of life.
The Longine was a big watch for a woman of slim build and slightly less than average height but Jones didn’t care. She wore it always.
Now she was going to become the Chancellor of Oxford, having been elected by the university’s Convocation from an imposing list of nominees.
Jones glanced out of the window of her office in the heart of the Exeter campus. It was a green and leafy academic oasis, the kind of environment which, in her early life, she could only have dreamed of.
She picked up the Oxford letter lying open in front of her on her desk and, with some reluctance, folded it in its envelope and popped it into a drawer.
It was at that moment that the phone rang. Jones reached out with one hand and almost absent-mindedly lifted the receiver to her ear.
‘Yes,’ she said, rather more curtly than she’d intended, her thoughts still far away.
‘Don’t you “yes” me, you arrogant English upstart,’ responded a voice she instantly recognized. It had been a long time. That made no difference. For a start nobody else in the world would speak to her like that.
‘Connie, how the devil are you?’
Jones felt her face split into a grin as she spoke.
Constance Pike, psychologist, philosopher, and innovator, a woman who, when Jones had met her at Princeton, had displayed an intent rather more extreme than Jones’s comparatively modest aim of seeking to better understand the universe. Connie had wanted to turn it upside down, inside out, and totally restructure it, and had never given up trying to do so.
She’d had a profound effect on the young Sandy Jones, and although the path Jones had chosen could not have taken her much further away from Connie, within the confines of science anyway, Jones probably still admired her more than anyone she’d ever met.
‘Better than I deserve, I expect. And how are you, Sandy? Still taking charge of the world?’
‘I thought that was what you always wanted to do.’
‘No damned fear. Just change it a bit, that’s all.’
Sandy Jones laughed. Connie always had made her laugh, even when she wasn’t trying to be funny.
‘And how’s the rest of the team? Paul OK?’
‘Right enough. He’s got a new puppy. Brings it to the lab, as usual. And does it ever stop pissing? Does it hell!’
Jones laughed again.
‘Nothing changes then.’
‘Nope. The lab stinks worse than ever before.’
‘Which is saying something.’
‘Sure is.’
‘Anyway, you still keeping on trucking out there?’
Jones fell easily into the American vernacular. It was something that she did. One of her communicating tricks was to almost automatically try to speak the same language as anyone she was trying to connect to. It wasn’t a trick with Connie though. Just the way things had always been between them.
‘Doing our best not to let the bastards get to us, anyway. Do you know they put sprinklers in here last week? Health and safety. Fire regulations, they say. Bullshit! More than forty years since Paul started it all, and suddenly the dorks can’t leave us alone.’
‘Did you think they’d forgotten you?’
‘Only when it suits ’em. There’s a sprinkler right above my computer, would you believe. Don’t dare even light up a cig. It goes off, I’m sunk.’
‘Literally.’
‘Yeah, literally.’
They both chuckled. Smoking had already been banned inside most of the university buildings even when Jones had been at Princeton, but Connie, Paul, and their team had been then, and obviously remained, a law unto themselves.
There was a silence. Jones waited for Connie to speak again. After all, it was she who had called her, and it had been a long time since the days when they’d made regular phone calls across the Atlantic to each other just for a chat. It must have been the best part of a year since they’d been in contact at all, and that had been just an email exchange. She suspected Connie must have a specific reason for calling her now.
She heard Connie cough, clear her throat.
‘You all right?’
‘Right as I’ll ever be.’
There was another silence. Jones surrendered.
‘Is the great pleasure of this phone call down to anything in particular?’ she asked, keeping her voice light.
‘Oh, I don’t know. The last time we were in touch you said you’d be coming to see us. I’m still waiting, you jerk.’
‘Yeah, I know. I was going to take the train over when I was in New York giving the Triple A last year.’
Jones paused, remembering. It had been a great honour to be asked to give the keynote address to the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, and she had to admit that she had made the most of every moment of it.
‘I just didn’t get time in the end,’ she finished lamely.
‘Any chance in the near future?’
‘Well, not for a bit. I’m kind of busy right now.’
That much was true enough. The BBC now liked her to produce a major series annually, and they’d rushed her current one, The Big Bang and You, onto the screen with such haste that there was still footage to be shot for the final episode. She was also soon to begin filming a major sequel, After the Big Bang.
In addition she always took pains not to neglect her duties at Exeter, which was why she frequently filmed at weekends.
And later that month she was to attend a dinner at Oxford, being given in her honour, prior to the ceremony inaugurating her as chancellor early the following year.
‘I’m going to be up to my eyes for the next few months,’ she continued.
‘Oh, I see.’
She had expected an instant tirade from Connie, whom she knew had remained every bit as idealistic as she’d been twenty years earlier, in spite of now being over sixty, Jones reckoned. While her contemporaries strove for glory, or at least for tangible reward for their efforts, Connie seemed to stay exactly the same. She was dedicated, evangelical about her work, and of course poor. She was also inclined to be brutally scathing of those who had chosen other more materially rewarding paths, and could be particularly cutting in her dealings with Jones, who didn’t mind because she was well aware that was how Connie treated those she was especially fond of. So when Connie didn’t react in the expected way, Jones was puzzled.
‘You sure you’re OK, Connie?’
Another pause, followed by an indirect response.
‘There was something I wanted to talk to you about, that’s all.’
Connie sounded flat. And there was an inflection in her voice that Jones couldn’t make out. But she didn’t have the time to worry about it.
‘Well, go on then, shoot.’
She checked her watch. Fond as she was of Connie Pike she really was going to have to end this conversation. She’d actually hoped to make a couple of important telephone calls before leaving her office to attend a crucial faculty meeting in the administration block. But time was running out. She had little more than ten minutes to get to the other side of the campus if she didn’t want to be late. And Sandy Jones was never late.
‘It’s not that easy...’ Connie’s voice tailed off.
‘What?’
‘...You’ll probably just think I’ve really gone mad,’ Connie continued. ‘I’m not even sure I should be talking on the phone.’