‘I’ll do the breakfast things,’ she offered as Jocelyn piled the plates up by the sink. ‘You get down to the lab. I’ll join you there later if I’m not in the way.’
‘You’re not,’ Jocelyn assured her. ‘You can help me feed the pets. That’s if you’re not too squeamish.’
‘I don’t know how you can call jellyfish “pets”! Anything but!’
Conscience didn’t come into it, she decided as she squirted washing-up liquid into the green plastic bowl. Not as far as Tim was concerned, at any rate. Whatever she wrote in her article, journalists were just as much part of the showbiz scene as Tim was himself. Magazines, television, the popular newspapers — they were so much entertainment eagerly lapped up by an insatiable public. She could write what she liked, or whatever she could sell, providing it was based on some sort of partial truth and wasn’t actionable.
Gossip and glamour — that’s what paid, and she could forget waking up in the middle of the night to face her empty, aching loneliness. Personal feelings were irrelevant.
She put the last of the dishes away, hung up the tea-towel and went into the living-room to phone. At first she tried the Totnes theatre where Tim’s wife worked, but there was no answer. Naturally, she thought as she glanced at her watch; it was not yet eight o’clock. Only farmers, factories and mad biologists started the day this early.
On another page of her notebook she’d scribbled a number for Sue’s lodgings. She’d coaxed it out of the boy who’d answered the phone backstage the previous day after he’d explained that Sue was tied up ‘in rehearsal’. Jane had probed, and they’d had quite a chat. He was helping with the set, he told her; his first job.
Jane found the number and dialled, letting it ring for some time. Eventually a sleepy male voice answered, slightly gruff.
‘Yeah?’
Was Sue in, she enquired — adding sweetly that she was sorry to disturb him so early.
‘Sue! Phone, love!’
Faintly in the background she could hear Sue’s voice calling back: ‘Can’t you take it, Mark? I’m all wet. Who is it, anyway?’
‘Some girl journalist. Want to interview you. Rang the theatre yesterday, she says.’
‘What about?’
Jane made up a story about interviewing leading actresses at several of the regional theatres, and waited patiently while the man at the other end repeated it all. She wondered who he was. An actor in the same company, merely sharing lodgings? Or had she stumbled on something more interesting? Worth investigation anyhow, she decided. Just in case.
‘She’ll see you tomorrow afternoon at two,’ the man said. He’d a cold coming on, Jane now realised; that explained the gruffness. ‘At the stage door. It’s at the back of the theatre, opening on to the car park.’
She thanked him and rang off. For a time she sat there staring speculatively at the phone, wondering how best to set about discovering who he was. Get there early in any case, she thought. Then she picked up the phone again to call Tim and check if all was in order for the magazine’s photographer who was expected down there that morning. It was.
So when could she see him again? She was missing him. Couldn’t he manage a couple of days in Somerset? Surely he’d need to familiarise himself with her sister’s laboratory before they started work on the follow-up documentary Alan Brewer was planning?
Jellyfish Mark Two, she called it. Son of Jellyfish.
But his answer was non-committal. Not even a laugh. Then he said he had to rush.
Of her proposed visit to Totnes and her appointment with his wife Sue, Jane said nothing. He could read about it when she sent him a copy of the magazine.
She put the phone down. Time to help Jocelyn, she decided — not unwillingly, so long as the jellyfish were secure inside their glass tanks. Each time she looked at them she experienced that little frisson of fear, although she’d assured herself often enough there was now no way they could reach her. Collecting them in that cave had been an experience she never wished to go through again, but all that was behind her.
‘Oh, here already?’ Jocelyn looked up from her microscope. ‘I suppose it is about time we fed the little dears. I’ve a treat for some of them today.’
The large glass-sided tanks were arranged in a single row down the centre of the Nissen hut, and spaced well apart. Each tank had its own heater and thermostat; over each was a dark plastic cover concealing soft lighting. The jellyfish avoided the sides. They favoured the centre of the tank. Almost as if — Jane always felt this, every time she saw them — they were aware they were being kept prisoner, and were moping over their fate. For the most part they were one to a ‘cell’, but across the end of the Nissen hut was a considerably larger tank, partly set into the floor, in which Jocelyn kept three jellyfish together.
‘Something special,’ she repeated briskly, leading the way there. ‘It’s an experiment, of course. Let me see if I can explain it to you.’
Any other captive animal would become animated at feeding time, Jane thought as her sister went into the nutritional details. She had a picture in her mind of kennels: dogs barking and jumping up against the netting. Monkeys chattering excitedly. Even goldfish would peer inanely through the glass as if instinctively aware that something was about to happen. But the three jellyfish betrayed no sign of interest whatsoever.
‘As you know, the mouth of a jellyfish is a tube-like opening underneath the bell in the centre. They can eat practically anything living — plankton, tiny creatures, whatever comes their way. If it’s something bigger — a fish, say…’ Jocelyn paused to draw Jane’s attention to some photographs she’d pinned up on the wall ‘… the tentacles release a poison which paralyses it, and the fish is propelled towards the mouth and swallowed whole. As you can see here.’
‘Horrible!’ Jane shuddered. ‘Where did you get these pictures?’
‘This morning’s post.’
‘It’ll choke to death, that one.’ In the photograph, two thirds of the fish still protruded from the jellyfish’s mouth.
‘I think it probably did, which is how they got the picture,’ said Jocelyn soberly. ‘But your jellyfish are quite different.’
‘Don’t keep calling them mine!’ Jane burst out. As they reached the tank, one of them spread itself out to its complete disc. She found herself thinking of Tim again; he’d not even known he had a jellyfish draped over his hand, feeding on him. ‘They’re not mine. If you really want to know, I hate them.’
‘Sorry! The point is, if we’re to control them, we need to discover a bit more about them.’
‘I’m all on edge,’ Jane said apologetically with a rueful smile at her sister. ‘How are they different?’
Jocelyn returned the smile. ‘Let’s give them something and find out.’ With Jane’s help she removed the cover from the tank.
On a bench at the side of the hut was a square white plastic container. It looked exactly like the one Bill had always used for his sandwiches and which she’d hated because she could never forget it was his wife who’d cut them for him. Her fingers had packed them day after day. Jocelyn eased off the lid.
‘Rabbit,’ she said. ‘We’ll see how they react.’
It was a skinned rabbit, the complete animal minus the head and paws. She scooped it up in her two hands, carried it across and dropped it in. Immediately Jane sensed a quickening of interest in the three jellyfish. Nothing obvious. They still gave the impression of drifting aimlessly in the water, and yet within a few seconds their tentacles had reached the dead meat.