Their colleagues laughed and looked at Brian.
Various veins throbbed in his head and neck.
He was quick to retaliate. ‘It was nothing but a quick leg-over.’ He looked around, hoping the company would find this amusing.
There was a sharp intake of breath, and one of the cleaners squeezed Titania’s hand.
Brian continued, not realising that he had volunteered to dig his own grave, “‘Turgid” would better describe our affair these days.’
One of the clerical staff rushed towards the door with a handkerchief pressed to her face.
Leather Trousers said, ‘C’mon, guys, let’s cool it, we’re all professionals, yeah? Even the cleaners, right?’ He smiled at the group of cleaners to show that he valued them and their work.
Titania sobbed. ‘Sex with the Gorilla went on a bit, but once he’d stumbled over my clitoris we both had good times.’
There was an appalled silence, and the cleaner withdrew her hand from Titania’s.
A technician whispered to his neighbour, ‘I like to experiment, but I draw the line at bestiality. That sounds bloody dangerous to me.’
Titania was surprised by Brian’s obvious and public contempt for her. She arranged her fringe so that it hid the lines on her forehead, and rummaged through her handbag for the lipstick she thought took ten years off her face.
She said, in a voice that threatened to crack, ‘Anyway, Brian, our lovemaking is quite often torrid.’ Turning to the assembled staff, she confessed, ‘Only last week he was tickling my nipples with his wife’s hairbrush, and shouting that I was a dirty whore, and he was going to punish me by tying me to the large telescope and have Professor Brady take me from the rear.’
Brian jumped up and shouted, ‘Not from the rear! I did not say the rear!’
Wayne Tonkin, the groundsman, laughed out loud.
Professor Brady said angrily, ‘Listen, Beaver, do not include me in your sicko fantasies!’
Titania looked around the meeting and said, ‘He’s used you all at some time.’
Some of Brian’s colleagues were repulsed by this revelation, but most were secretly pleased.
Professor Brady was in a dilemma. Could he suspend or otherwise discipline Dr Beaver for using his colleagues as sexual stimulants? Did sexual fantasies come under the heading of ‘sexual harassment in the workplace’? Was there anything in their contracts that implied they had been abused by Beaver’s thoughts?
Mrs Hordern straightened her overall and said, ‘It’s his poor wife I feel sorry for. I’ll bet she’s looking everywhere for that hairbrush.’
Titania said, ‘Don’t waste your time feeling sorry for Eva Beaver, Mrs Hordern, she’s a mere lump in the bed. She never gets up! Brian has to cook his own dinner every night.’
Leather Trousers intervened. ‘Look, guys, this is not helping us to move forward. Our minds should be focused on the upcoming launch of Walkers on the Moon.’
Wayne Tonkin said, ‘And ‘ow many billions of fuckin’ pounds are you spendin’ on another cack-’anded attempt to ‘it the fuckin’ moon, eh? Ain’t you ‘eard? The Yanks already done it in 1 969. And in the meantime I ‘ave to try and cut the bleedin’ grass with a lawnmower what don’t mow!’
Leather Trousers sometimes regretted his inclusive policy. This was one such time.
The flight operations engineers – a bolshie, troublesome group – took the opportunity to continue an earlier technical discussion about velocity. Phrases like ‘regressive elliptical orbit’ and ‘delta-v budget’ were hurled across the room.
Leather Trousers tried to shout over them, saying, ‘C’mon guys!’
But no voice was louder or more vociferous than that of Wayne Tonkin, who was a Barry White tribute singer in his local pub, the Dog and Compass. His voice rattled the artificial heavens above their heads.
“Ands up who wants a new, state-of-the-art, sit-on lawnmower?’
The resolution was carried almost unanimously.
Titania was the first to leave, together with an escort of sympathetic female staff. Brian was left on his own in the room.
He was afraid he would lose his job. It had been rumoured that there were to be involuntary redundancies, and he was fifty-five, a dangerous age in a young man’s game. Holes were beginning to show in Brian’s knowledge. He felt that the bandwagon was rolling away from him and that, however fast he ran now, he would never be able to catch up.
24
Eva was lying in bed watching the night sky, which was filled with small explosions of glorious colours and shapes. She could hear a fire engine in the distance and smell the smoke of countless bonfires. She pitied all the women out there who were, at this very moment, catering for their families and guests at their bonfire parties. She thought back to bonfire night 2010, otherwise known as The Great Disaster. Brian had put up a poster at work which said:
CALLING ALL BRIGHT SPARKS!
Join Brian and Eva and celebrate Guy Fawkes’ death!
Catholics Beware!
Eva had shopped on the morning of the fifth. Brian had told her to prepare enough food for thirty people, so she had driven to Morrisons and bought:
60 pork sausages
2 kilos of onions
60 torpedo rolls
35 baking potatoes
a huge lump of Cheddar cheese
a slab of Heinz baked beans
30 novelty Guy Fawkes biscuits
a large bottle of Heinz tomato sauce
3 packs of butter
toffee-apple ingredients for 30
1 Guy Fawkes mask and hat
10 livestock-friendly Chinese lanterns
6 bottles of rosé wine
6 bottles of white wine
6 bottles of red wine
1 barrel of Kronenbourg
2 crates of John Smith’s.
She had hurt her back hefting the Kronenbourg from the trolley into the boot of the car.
On the way home she had spent almost £200 on two boxes of assorted fireworks, and sparklers for the children.
The afternoon was taken up dragging a damp mattress from the garage down the garden and manoeuvring it on to the small bonfire, constructing an effigy of Guy Fawkes, making toffee apples (including chopping kindling for toffee-apple sticks), cleaning the downstairs lavatory, vacuuming the sitting room, deep-cleaning the kitchen, selecting listener-friendly CDs and jet-washing the patio.
Brian had asked his guests to turn up at six, so Eva filled the oven with a first sitting of potatoes at five thirty, set out the cold food and the drinks, rinsed and dried the glassware, placed candles into windproof lanterns, and waited.
At seven ten the doorbell finally rang and Eva heard Brian’s voice saying, ‘Mrs Hordern, lovely to see you. Is this Mr Hordern?’ As he was taking their coats, he asked, ‘Have you come in a crowd? Are the others parking?’
She said, ‘No, we’ve come on us own.’
When they’d finally gone, Eva declared, ‘That was the most excruciating night of my life – and I include in that giving birth to the twins. What happened, Brian? Do your colleagues hate you that much?’
‘I can’t understand it,’ he replied. ‘Perhaps my notice fell off the board. I only used one drawing pin.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that’s what must have happened. It was the drawing pin.’
Later, as they were sharing a second bottle of burgundy, Brian asked, ‘Did you notice, when I let off my Beaver Special rockets? Neither of them gave so much as an “ohhh” or an “ahhh”. They just sat there, filling their stupid faces with carbohydrates and grease! I spent seven days building those. At great risk to myself. I mean, I was working with unstable materials. At any moment I could have blown myself and the sheds to smithereens.’
Eva said, ‘They were very beautiful rockets, Brian.’ She felt genuinely sorry for him.
She had watched his face each time he launched a rocket. He was as excited as a child, and had followed each projectile’s trajectory and height with the look of a proud father watching his baby walk for the first time.