As I was closing the door I let my eyes traverse the cottage’s interior. The neat living room in which I had just seen the woman and child was, in reality, a sickening clutter of shabby furniture, old newspapers, cast-off clothing and smeared dishes. It was damp, stinking and utterly deserted. The only object I recognized from my view through the window was the little wheelbarrow, paintless and broken.
I latched the door firmly and ordered myself to forget what I had seen. Some men who live alone are good housekeepers; others just don’t know how.
Selina’s face was white. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand it.”
“Slow glass works both ways,” I said gently. “Light passes out of a house, as well as in.”
“You mean…?”
“I don’t know. It isn’t our business. Now steady up—Hagan’s coming back with our glass.” The churning in my stomach was beginning to subside.
Hagan came into the yard carrying an oblong, plastic-covered frame. I held the cheque out to him, but he was staring at Selina’s face. He seemed to know immediately that our uncomprehending fingers had rummaged through his soul. Selina avoided his gaze. She was old and ill-looking, and her eyes stared determinedly towards the nearing horizon.
“I’ll take the rug from you, Mr. Garland,” Hagan finally said. “You shouldn’t have troubled yourself over it.”
“No trouble. Here’s the cheque.”
“Thank you.” He was still looking at Selina with a strange kind of supplication. “It’s been a pleasure to do business with you.”
“The pleasure was mine,” I said with equal, senseless formality. I picked up the heavy frame and guided Selina towards the path which led to the road. Just as we reached the head of the now slippery steps Hagan spoke again.
“Mr. Garland!”
I turned unwillingly.
“It wasn’t my fault,” he said steadily. “A hit-and-run driver got them both, down on the Oban road six years ago. My boy was only seven when it happened. I’m entitled to keep something.”
I nodded wordlessly and moved down the path, holding my wife close to me, treasuring the feel of her arms locked around me. At the bend I looked back through the rain and saw Hagan sitting with squared shoulders on the wall where we had first seen him.
He was looking at the house, but I was unable to tell if there was anyone at the window.
Chapter Three
On the morning of his eleventh wedding anniversary Garrod had an important appointment scheduled at the Pentagon. He wanted to be at his fittest for it, and so decided to fly to Washington on the previous evening. Esther made some perfunctory objections about his appearing to snub people she had invited for dinner, but he was ready for her and dealt with them easily. His private transport took off from Portston at 19.00 hours, went supersonic a few minutes later and levelled out at a height of ten miles for the ninety minute flight east.
The missile-like climb to cruising altitude never failed to exhilarate Garrod—he had once calculated that if someone flying over the airfield at 50,000 feet dropped a rock, Garrod’s own jet could take off at the same instant and be up with the intruder before the rock hit the ground. He undid the seat belt, looked out through the windows of certified zero-delay Thermgard at the sunlit cloud-kingdoms far below, and wondered what he should do about Esther.
Nine years had passed since he turned the tables on her with his abrupt metamorphosis from the unsuccessful engineer/chemist whose business would have failed without a transfusion of Livingstone money to the independent billionaire who could buy and sell her entire family. Those years had been immensely satisfying for Garrod on almost every level he could think of, yet—incredibly—he remembered the previous two years of marriage with a certain nostalgia.
The relationship with Esther had been seriously flawed by her need to treat him as property, but it had been a reality of existence. There had been a tight hard bond which, with its very constriction, had in an odd way compensated for his own inability to experience real love or possessiveness or jealousy—the things Esther had demanded from him. Now, of course, she demanded nothing. It appeared that some deep sense of insecurity prevented her from entering a relationship unless she had all the big battalions on her side, ready to deal with unforeseen developments. Since he had achieved financial independence his wife and he had been like components of a binary sun—linked together, influencing each other’s movements, but never making contact. Garrod had considered a divorce, but neither the disadvantages of his present existence nor the appeal of another had been powerful enough to prompt him to act.
As usual, the effort of trying to think constructively about his emotional life or lack of it brought a weary impatience. He opened his briefcase to do some preparatory work for the morning meeting and hesitated when he saw the confidential files, each carrying a. red sticker which said:
SECRET! THIS FILE MAY BE OPENED ONLY IN APPROVED ENVIRONMENTS, ZERO LIGHT CONDITIONS OR UNDER COVER OF A CERTIFIED SECURITY CLOAK TYPE U.S. 183
Garrod hesitated for a moment. His security cloak was neatly rolled up in its proper compartment of the case, but the thought of unfurling its beehive shape and putting on the supporting headband with its tiny light was suddenly irksome. He looked around the interior of the aircraft wondering if it would be safe to work in the open, then realized he was deceiving himself by even trying to detect a glass eye. Slow glass—now officially named Retardite—had replaced cameras for all spying activities, agents having been known to operate successfully with little rods of it inserted into their pores like blackheads. On returning to his base the agent had only to squeeze out the fleck of glass which under magnification would subsequently re-display everything it had “seen” during its delay period. Anybody, even Garrod’s personal pilot, could have pushed a needle of slow glass into the fabric trimming the ceiling of the cabin and he wouldhave no hope of finding it. Closing the briefcase, he decided to get some rest.
“I’m going to have some sleep, Lou,” he said into the intercom. “Call me fifteen minutes before touchdown. All right?”
“Right, Mr. Garrod.”
Garrod fully reclined his seat and closed his eyes, not really expecting to sleep, but the next thing of which he was aware was the pilot’s announcement that they were arriving. He went into the washroom and freshened up quickly. In the mirror his square, almost fleshless face had a rueful look, acknowledging that his compulsion to wash his hands and face before meeting people was a legacy from a^childhood spent with—to put it kindly—a highly individual aunt and uncle. Uncle Luke’s incredible fear of spending even the smallest sums of money had left certain marks on Garrod, but Aunt Marge had been the one who created the most lasting impressions. She had been a school teacher and her phobias about dirt and germs were so morbid that when she dropped a pencil she never touched it again—one of the pupils had to pick it up, snap it in two and throw the pieces into a wastebin. Also, she never touched a door knob with her bare hands, and when the handle was of a type which could not be worked by her elbow she would wait for quite long periods for someone to arrive by chance and open it. From her Garrod had acquired a certain fastidiousness, and even in adult life still felt compelled to wash his hands before urinating to prevent the transference of germs on to his person.
He was strapped into his seat again before the little jet dropped solidly on to the runway at Washington. The night felt cool and fresh as he was walking down the airstair. He had an unusual urge to go for a plain old-fashioned walk, but a limousine was waiting at the steps as arranged by his secretarial staff and he decided against upsetting the schedule. In a further thirty minutes he was at his hotel and had checked into his suite. He had planned to go to bed early but the rest on the aeroplane, coupled with the fact that he had gained time on the supersonic east-bound flight, made the idea of retiring seem faintly ludicrous.