The Sleeping Partner (3 page)

‘You're a bit distant now. Twelve miles is twelve times as far as it was in the old days.'

When he'd gone I sat for a minute. I lit a cigarette. Then I put it out, angry that my fingers fumbled the job. I pressed the switch of the intercom thing and told them to get me the manager of the Pall Mall branch of the National Provincial Bank. While I was waiting I fiddled with the piece of damaged equipment.

‘The manager is on the line now, Mr Granville.'

I said: ‘Good morning. My name is Granville. My wife, Mrs Lindsey Granville, still banks with you, I think. Until early this year we lived at 5, Grosvenor Lane, off Clarges Street.'

‘Oh … Yes, of course. Mrs Granville called in to see me this week.'

‘Yes, well … She's staying in London at the moment in a flat lent her by a friend, and I don't happen to have the address by me. I wonder if you could tell me what it is.'

There was a pause at the other end, and then a dick. ‘Hullo,' I said.

‘Er – where are you speaking from, Mr Granville?'

‘My works in Letherton.'

‘Yes, I see. Er—'

‘You have her address?'

‘Yes, we have it. She gave it us this week when she called in. We were to forward any correspondence.'

I said: ‘Would you care to ring me back? That would establish who I am.'

‘Of course. Yes … Actually this puts us in rather a difficult position because Mrs Granville left us with instructions not to give her address to anyone asking for it. Naturally—'

‘I do happen to be her husband.'

‘Exactly. Nevertheless in the face of these explicit instructions … I wonder if you would allow us to write to Mrs Granville and get her formal permission?'

Someone tapped and half entered but I waved them angrily out.

‘Can't you ring her?'

‘Unfortunately she didn't leave a number.'

I thought quickly, wanting to slap down the receiver but knowing I wouldn't.

‘When would you hear?'

‘Let me see, today's Friday. Posted this morning we might get our answer tomorrow. But Monday would be safer. If you'd care to ring us again then … or we'll ring you.'

‘Thank you,' I said. ‘Perhaps you'll ring me.'

When I put down the phone Bill Read the works manager came in and we talked for a time on routine business; but I think I gave him even less attention than I'd given Dawson. What made me feel most sore and angry was that as early as last Monday Lynn had hinted to Ray French that she was going away; she had called, to see the bank manager and arranged things with him; she had warned Mrs Lloyd; only I had been kept in the dark. I was the enemy, the one she made plans to defeat.

I went with Read into the factory to inspect some monitors we were making for a South African diamond syndicate for fixing at the gates of the mine so that if anyone went through carrying a diamond – even if it was inside him – an alarm bell rang. While we messed about, and in spite of Lynn, things registered; chiefly that the shortage of inspectors was the biggest bottleneck. Completed parts were piling up for lack of people with the technical knowledge to check them.

Suddenly Read said: ‘ What about this girl who's made a pig's ear of the delay lines?' When I stared at him he said: ‘Dawson complained, didn't he?'

‘My dear Read,' I said, ‘ Frank's been with me from the start and he has a privileged position. He's head of the laboratory and pretty smart there but he doesn't understand a thing about factory organisation. On the assumption that you do I employ you to make what arrangements you think fit. Well, make them. I can't be a universal Aunt Nellie for the whole bloody workshop.'

The saving grace of Read was that you could talk to him like that. He grinned his fox-terrier grin. ‘Anyway, don't you want to know what I've done about it?'

‘Not particularly.'

‘Thanks … In fact I've taken steps. I don't think it'll happen again.'

I went down the passage to the laboratory. Only Frank Dawson was there, and Stella Curtis. Because there was a row outside they didn't hear me come in and I stared across at her for a bit. If my marriage had smashed up for the reasons Lynn implied and not because she was just fed up with me, then the job this girl was working on was as responsible as any other single thing for the break.

Or perhaps the cynics would have said it was because of Stella Curtis herself.

I'
D ENGAGED
her in March as Frank Dawson's assistant in the laboratory. She'd come in answer to a rather hopeful advertisement I put out after his last assistant had plugged in an experimental job on the wrong voltage and blown about eighty pounds worth of valves. She was, I suppose, about twenty-six, had got a good degree and had worked for a couple of years at the Nuffield Research Laboratories at Oxford. That was four years ago and apparently she'd left there to get married. She didn't explain why she wanted a job now.

She was an attractive, pale girl with dark curly hair, and those noticeable blue eyes which some dark girls have, in which even the whites seem slightly blue. What interested me was that she seemed to know quite a lot about the theoretical side of our work, and had even earned Frank's respect. Read said mischievously it was because Dawson had fallen for her legs; I knew it was because he recognised somebody with a more inventive brain than his own.

All the same, although I knew she was a find, I didn't have a lot to do with her personally for the first seven or eight weeks, and it wasn't until the thing with Thurston suddenly flared up that I decided that she was just the person to help me.

Thurston was a queer chap, half scientist, half civil servant, who divided his time between Harwell and St Giles's Court. After meeting on various back-room jobs during the war, we'd kept in touch because of a common interest in airborne prospecting. With his help I'd built an entirely new and simplified type of scintillometer and had tried it out in an old Land Rover with very promising results.

After my bust-up with Harwell in February he had remained my only contact; and one day in May he'd telephoned to say was I willing to take on a rush job of making an airborne scintillometer for an urgent government requirement – if so this was my big chance, not only to see my own particular scientific baby produced with unlimited backing, but to put the firm of Granville & Co. back where everyone wanted it to be.

I didn't take long to think that over, so he came and explained exactly what was in the wind, and I had Stella Curtis in to meet him. The upshot was that when I went to Harwell I took her with me.

Harwell is forty miles from Letherton and we had to be there by ten, so she got a train from Letherton where she was living and I picked her up at Hockbridge station.

When we got there I found it was a rather more imposing conference than I'd even been to before. Dr Bennett, who was in charge, I knew slightly and liked. Steel also was there – the geophysicist whom I'd had words with at our last meeting – but he greeted me today in a bluff friendly manner as if it was all forgotten, and I was rather relieved. In addition to these two there was a Wing Commander Parkinson from Farnborough, a man called Porter, from the Foreign Office, three or four minor people, and of course ourselves and Thurston.

Bennett began by explaining that certain territory situated between the Sudan and Uganda was due to be handed over to the Sudan; and although a date was not fixed by treaty for the actual transfer, it was expected to be about six months after formal Sudanese independence was granted – that was to say, six months from the coming August.

Not surprisingly, this territory, had never been fully prospected – it was in any case a very large tract to cover by normal means – and recently there had been reports of uranium mineralisation. It was the opinion of the Government that we couldn't afford to let radioactive sources still technically in our hands drift without safeguard into the possession of a country which, under the influence of Egypt, might lease them irresponsibly; but before diplomacy could move it had to make sure of its facts. That could only be done quickly enough by aerial survey.

He went on: ‘In the United States a lot of big and ingenious equipment has been used for prospecting ground from the air, normally mounted in a Dakota; but even if that much elaboration were desirable it isn't really practicable in the present case where we want to be as unobtrusive as possible and to use the smallest plane that will serve. As it happens, over the last year or so, Mr Granville, with Mr Thurston's co-operation, has been developing a new piece of equipment that he claims and we hope may be the answer.'

I didn't know I'd claimed anything yet, but Thurston said quickly: ‘This is really Granville's baby; I've simply provided the basic circuits; but what we've aimed at is a much lighter and at the same time more precise instrument which is suitable for use by non-technical people and which will need little or no servicing over long periods. I've no doubt from what I've seen of it so far that when it gets through a few teething troubles it will supersede much of the bigger stuff.'

They looked at me and I said: ‘ The design is reasonably orthodox; its chief newness is its simplicity. And of course we're using a very much larger crystal than has ever been used before. But up to now we've only been able to test it by car. If this—'

‘My department is very anxious to get quick results,' Porter said. ‘It's a matter of the highest diplomatic urgency. We'd like to see the plane in operation by early September.'

Dr Bennett said: ‘What plane?' and looked at Wing Commander Parkinson.

Parkinson gave his moustache a couple of quick wipes and said: ‘The stuff the US use in their Dakotas weighs three or four hundredweight. The Canadians have boiled it down a bit and use an Anson. But obviously our choice of plane depends on what it has to carry.'

They looked at me again. I said: ‘Our equipment in the Land Rover weighs about a hundred pounds.'

‘Yes, well, that's getting somewhere,' agreed Parkinson. ‘ The chief headache from our point of view is that none of these featherweight planes has much of a range, and in the special circumstances of this case it obviously won't be desirable to be always popping back to base to refuel. So that means extra petrol tanks and a careful watch on every pound we carry. There are disadvantages to the helicopter, so personally I'd suggest an Auster A.O.P.9. The engine develops more soup than the earlier marks, and at the same time it's smaller and easier to handle than a Prentice.'

Steel said: ‘What sort of terrain is this that has to be covered? Desert?'

‘Marsh and savannah and low scrub,' said Bennett.

‘Flat?'

‘There are some foothills in the west.'

‘Are you proposing to try to differentiate between uranium and thorium ores?'

‘It's a point which has to be considered.'

The meeting went into technicalities. When it broke up I walked back with Thurston and Mrs Curtis to another office and we went through the alterations which would be necessary in the experimental design. The pilot model would be a tremendous help, but with the modifications which would have to be incorporated I could see plenty of rocks ahead. One could almost just as well start again from scratch.

Stella Curtis had been quiet enough, but at the end she asked two acute questions, and Thurston, whom I'd always thought too rarefied to notice a pretty girl, suddenly asked her if she'd ever been to Harwell before, and when she said no, offered to show her over.

So we were taken round the ‘hot' laboratories where the doors open as you walk up to them to avoid the need for touching them with contaminated gloves and the air conditioning plant changes the air forty times a minute, and then we went along to the nuclear piles, with those odd nightmare—fairytale names of Gleep and Bepo and Dimple. They're never very impressive, surrounded as they are by seven feet of reinforced concrete and looking like giant square hat-boxes that have got caught up in a mass of dials and girders, but she seemed to find them interesting.

When we left I decided to call in at my home, which was only five miles off course, and get some drawings and plans I'd been making for a thing called IDA, a directional system which had been in my lap for twelve months. If I was going to be occupied with this new thing it was time Frank Dawson had a shot at them.

Stella Curtis had been quiet even for her on the way back, and I suppose I should have noticed she was looking off colour when I showed her into the drawing-room.

Lynn always went to London on a Wednesday, and Mrs Lloyd left about twelve, but we just caught her, and I asked her if she'd pour Mrs Curtis a drink while I collected the 250-odd drawings that were littered about one of our spare bedrooms.

Mrs Lloyd peered up at me through her lenses as if I was a botanical specimen and said: ‘You're not staying for lunch, Mr Granville? If you'd like me to I'll—'

‘No, no, we shall be off again in a few minutes. Don't bother to wait.'

I was upstairs about ten minutes altogether, and when I came down I found Stella sitting on the settee looking at a photograph she'd taken off the piano.

For a minute I spoke to her without noticing anything and then I suddenly saw that her usual nice paleness had taken on a look like a second carbon copy. I said sharply, was she all right? and she said: ‘I'm sorry, Mr Granville, I've been feeling a bit off since we left Harwell and I—'

‘
I'm
sorry … Is there anything I can do?'

‘I wonder if I could have a drink of water?'

‘Didn't that woman give you something? Wait—' I went to the cabinet at the end of the room and poured her a brandy and soda.

She was lying back sideways against the end of the settee now and I told her to put her feet up. When she didn't I put them up for her and gave her the brandy to drink. After she'd sipped for a minute or two the colour began to come back.