Devices & Desires

'But there's no work here, Amy. If I have huge damages to pay, I'll have to get a job. That means London.'

'What sort of a job?'

'Any sort. I've got my degree.'

'Well, I can't see the sense of leaving here, even if there isn't any work. You can go to the DHSS. Draw the dole.'

'That isn't going to pay damages.'

'Well, if you have to go, maybe I'll stay on. I can pay the rent here. After all, what's the difference to the owner? He'll get his two quid whoever pays it.'

'You couldn't live here alone.'

'Why not? I've lived in worse places.'

'On what? What would you do for money?'

'Well, with you gone I could go to the DHSS, couldn't I? They could send their snoopers round and it wouldn't matter. They wouldn't be able to say I was having sex with you then, not if you weren't here. Anyway, I've got a bit in my post office account.'

The casual cruelty of the suggestion struck at his heart. He heard with heavy disgust the note of self-pity which he was unable to suppress. He said: 'Is that what you really want, Amy, for me not to be here?'

'Don't be daft, I was only teasing. Honestly Neil, you should see yourself. Talk about misery. Anyway, it might not happen – the libel action, I mean.'

'It's bound to happen unless she withdraws it. They've set a date for the hearing.'

'She might withdraw it, or else she might die. She might drown on one of those night swims she takes after the headlines on the nine o'clock news, regular as clockwork, right up to December.'

'Who told you that? How do you know that she swims at night?'

'You did.'

'I can't remember telling you.'

'Then someone else did, one of the regulars in the Local Hero, maybe. I mean, it's no secret, is it?'

He said: 'She won't drown. She's a strong swimmer. She wouldn't take foolish risks. And I can't wish her dead. You can't preach love and practise hatred.'

'I can – wish her dead, I mean. Maybe the Whistler will get her. Or you might win the action and then she'll have to pay you. That'd be a laugh.'

'That's not very likely. I consulted a lawyer at the Citizens Advice Bureau when I was in Norwich last Friday. I could see he thought it was serious, that she did have a case. He said I ought to get myself a lawyer.'

'Well, get one.'

'How? Lawyers cost money.'

'Get legal aid. Put a note in the newsletter asking for contributions.'

'I can't do that. It's difficult enough keeping the newsletter going, what with the cost of paper and postage.'

Amy said, suddenly serious: 'I'll think of something. There's still four weeks to go. Anything can happen in four weeks. Stop worrying. It's going to be all right. Look, Neil, I promise you that libel action will never come to court.' And illogically, he was, for the moment, reassured and comforted.

It was six o'clock and at Larksoken Power Station, the weekly interdepartmental meeting was drawing to a close. It had lasted thirty minutes longer than usual; Dr Alex Mair took the view, which he could normally enforce by brisk chairmanship, that little original thought was contributed to a discussion after three hours of talking. But it had been a heavy agenda: the revised safety plan still in draft; the rationalization of the internal structure from the present seven departments to three under engineering, production and resources; the report of the district survey laboratory on their monitoring of the environment; the preliminary agenda for the local liaison committee. This annual jamboree was an unwieldy but useful public relations exercise which needed careful preparation, including as it did representatives from the interested government departments, local authorities, police, fire and water authorities, the National Farmers Union and the Country Landowners' Association. Mair sometimes grudged the work and time it involved but he knew its importance.

The weekly meeting was held in his office at the conference table set in front of the south window. Darkness was falling and the huge pane of glass was a black rectangle in which he could see their faces reflected, like the gaunt, disembodied heads of night travellers in a lighted railway carriage. He suspected that some of his departmental heads, particularly Bill Morgan, the Works Office Engineer, and Stephen Mansell, the Maintenance Superintendent, would have preferred a more relaxed setting in his private sitting room next door, the low, comfortable chairs, a few hours of chat with no set agenda, perhaps a drink together afterwards in a local pub. Well, that was one management style, but it wasn't his.

Now he closed the stiff cover of his folder in which his

PA had meticulously tagged all the papers and cross-references, and said dismissively: 'Any other business.'

But he was not allowed to get away so easily. On his right, as usual, sat Miles Lessingham, the Operations Superintendent, whose reflection, staring back into the room, looked like a hydrocephalic death's head. Glancing from the image to the face, Mair could see little difference. The stark overhead lights threw deep shadows under the deep-set eyes and the sweat glistened on the wide, rather knobbly forehead with its swathe of fair undisciplined hair. Now he stretched back in his chair and said: 'This proposed job – rumoured job, I should say – I suppose we're entitled to ask whether it has been formally offered to you yet? Or aren't we?'

Mair said calmly: 'The answer is that it hasn't; the publicity was premature. The press got hold of it somehow, as they usually do, but there's nothing official yet. One unfortunate result of our present habit of leaking any information of interest is that the people most concerned become the last to know. If and when it is official you seven will be the first to be told.'

Lessingham said: 'It will have serious implications here, Alex, if you do go. The contract already signed for the new PWR reactor, the internal reorganization which is bound to create disruption, electricity privatization. It's a bad time for a change at the top.'

Mair said: 'Is there ever a good time? But until it happens, if it does happen, there's little point in discussing it.'

John Standing, the station chemist, said: 'But the internal reorganization will go ahead presumably?'

'I hope so, considering the time and energy we've spent planning it. I should be surprised if a change at the top alters a necessary reorganization which is already under way.'

Lessingham asked: 'Who will they appoint, a director or a station manager?' The question was less innocent than it sounded.

'I imagine a station manager.'

'You mean that the research will go?'

Mair said: 'When I go, now or later, the research will go. You've always known that. I brought it with me and I wouldn't have taken the job if I couldn't have continued it here. I asked for certain research facilities and I got them. But research at Larksoken has always been somewhat of an anomaly. We've done good work, are still doing good work, but logically it should be done elsewhere, at Harwell or Winfrith. Is there any other business?'

But Lessingham was not to be discouraged. He said: 'Who will you be responsible to? The Secretary of State for Energy directly or the AEA?'

Mair knew the answer but had no intention of giving it. He said quietly: 'That is still under discussion.'

'Along, no doubt, with such minor matters as pay, rations, scope of your responsibilities and what you are going to be called. Controller of Nuclear Power has a certain cachet. I like it. But what precisely will you control?'

There was a silence. Mair said: 'If the answer to that question were known, no doubt the appointment would have been made by now. I don't want to stifle discussion, but hadn't we better confine it to matters within the competence of this committee? Right, is there any other business?' and this time there was no reply.

Hilary Robarts, the Acting Administrative Officer, had already closed her file. She hadn't taken part in the questioning but the others, Mair knew, would assume that that was because he had already told her the answers.

Even before they had left, his PA, Caroline Amphlett, had come in to take away the tea cups and clear the table. Lessingham made it a habit to leave his agenda behind, a small personal protest against the amount of paper which the formal weekly meeting generated. Dr Martin Goss,