Angela went straight up to Gerald’s office after she’d talked to Joanna; she took the car to the station, the train up to London, a taxi to the Department, and Gerald came straight out of a meeting to see her. She hadn’t been to his office for eight years, he reminded her, not since the time their eldest son had made a passing girlfriend pregnant and she’d been upset.
It was Joanna May, she told him. Joanna had phoned her from a callbox on Reading station to tell her the most extraordinary story. Gerald said perhaps he’d better get back to his meeting, since it wasn’t family, and the less he knew about the Mays the better and the same went for Angela, and the news from Chernobyl was not good, it was still belching peculiar things into the atmosphere, and there was more trouble with the monitoring equipment. He might have to go back to Britnuc for help. But he didn’t return to the meeting, of course. They went to the canteen instead, for tea. Not liking the look of the pastries, he had the steak and kidney pie: she took the braised beef and mushrooms. Both had roast potatoes, boiled potatoes and buttered parsnips as well. It would keep them going until supper-time.
‘It probably isn’t the equipment’s fault; it’s just the technicians don’t know how to use it,’ said Angela, which hadn’t occurred to Gerald. He admitted they were barely trained. The truth was, the nation was totally unprepared for such an emergency. If emergency it was – radiation was still pretty much an unknown quantity. The danger was not critical or immediate – damage would show up in the morbidity statistics of the future when a different government altogether would be in power.
‘I hope you were careful,’ said Gerald. ‘I wouldn’t put it past Carl May to have our phone tapped.’
‘Neither would I,’ said Angela. ‘Is cloning someone without their knowledge illegal?’
‘I have no idea,’ said Gerald. ‘I hope so.’
‘The other thing that bothers me,’ said Angela, ‘is will Carl try and get rid of the gardener?’
‘You mean fire him?’
‘I mean kill him, like he did the professor. What Joanna calls “that thing with Isaac”.’
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Gerald. ‘There was more to that than met the eye. I nipped over to the Home Office and had a look at the files.’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘Always useful to have a hold over a fellow like Carl May,’ said Gerald, and there was a gleam in his eye she seldom saw but liked to see. Not for nothing had he risen through the ranks of public service; she used to know the reason well: these days, as his face grew softer and pudgier, she tended to forget. All round them people drank herbal tisanes and ate muesli bars. No one took tea seriously any more. She cleared their plates, and went to fetch spotted dick. Custard was off.
‘I hope you like foam cream,’ she said when she came back. ‘There’s no custard and it’s kind of stiff without any lubrication at all. What did the files say?’
‘Just that prosecution was against the public interest,’ said Gerald. ‘That fellow King had a pretty dicey record, anyway. He was collecting brain tissue from Egyptian mummies and taking it to some lab somewhere and trying to grow an ancient Egyptian. Garden Enterprises was funding the lab.’
‘What a peculiar thing to want to do,’ said Angela, ‘considering how the population of Egypt grows of its own accord. By a million every nine months, I believe.’
‘I don’t know about peculiar,’ said Gerald. ‘It might have been rather interesting, if it had worked. Anyway the Home Office didn’t seem too upset the professor was out of the way. So I don’t reckon he was got rid of just because Carl was jealous. Something else was going on.’
‘Poor Joanna,’ said Angela, ‘she won’t like that at all. But at least it means the gardener is safe. Well, safe-ish.’
‘So long as he keeps out of the rain,’ said Gerald. ‘That seems to be the main danger, these days. Personally, I hope he stays out in it, and his balls fall off. Are you sure there’s no custard?’
‘One wonders a little,’ said Angela, ‘about the wisdom of having a man such as Carl May in charge of quite so many nuclear power stations.’
‘They’re very old ones,’ said Gerald.
‘I should have thought that made matters worse.’
‘Not really,’ said Gerald. ‘They’re like old cars. You can patch them and repair them and keep them on the road; and they give you due warning when something bad is going to happen. They knock and clank a bit: in time for you to do something about it. It’s the new ones that are the problem: all built-in, fail-safe factors, and non-labour-intensive, because human error is always the non-calculable hiccough, ergonomically speaking: nothing at all to go wrong in the new ones, but if it does, pow!’
‘All the same,’ said Angela.
‘We’d never have him in charge of the new ones,’ said Gerald, reassuringly. ‘Don’t you worry. As it is, he’s a popular fellow and a public hero and good for the image of the nuclear power industry.’
‘But he’s a murderer,’ said Angela.
‘Hush,’ said Gerald, ‘that’s a very strong way of putting it. All these fellows tend to dispose of their enemies one way or another: if governments can do it, they think, why can’t they, quite ignoring the electoral mandate. One can’t condone it but it does happen. At least Carl May confines his activities to the personal sphere.’
‘Think about it, Gerald,’ said Angela.
‘He isn’t mad,’ said Gerald. ‘One draws the line at people who’re mad, in charge of anything.’
‘I’m not so sure about that,’ said Angela. ‘I’m not so sure about him being sane.’
‘We’ll see what transpires,’ said Gerald. ‘We’ll keep a careful eye on things. Are you really sure there’s no proper custard?’
‘Quite sure,’ said Angela, brushing away a flake of suet pudding which stuck to her hairy chin.
‘Pity,’ said Gerald. ‘This cream is rather much.’