The Meddlers (16 page)

He stopped, as suddenly as he had started, and stared at his father with his jaw moving spasmodically, looking as though he were on the edge of tears. And then he shrugged and turned away and muttered, “Ah, what’s the use? I’ve said it all before, and it’s like throwing arrows at a bulldozer. You’ve never had any time for me. It’s all for Hilary, always has been.”

“You see, George?” Marjorie’s voice was high and thin. “You see what you’ve done? It’s true, every word of it, and it always has been. Hilary’s had the best school, the best of everything, just because she’s like you and interested in your things, but Ian—me and Ian—we…”

And she too stopped and shook her head and then turned away from George’s bleak silence to stand beside Ian.

Hilary was crying, sniffing and gulping unappetizingly on the sofa, and Ian moved closer to his mother to stand with as arm across her shoulders, looking at George with an anxious mixture of sulky antagonism and pleading on his face. And George stood almost swaying with weariness and tried to think clearly.

“That’s not true and you know it. I gave both of them the same, as much as I could afford at the time. However little it was, it was the best I could do. But for God’s sake, leave it till tomorrow. I’ve had enough for one day, and I can’t stand any more. Leave it till tomorrow—”

“No! We’ll settle it here and now. Right here and now,” Marjorie cried, and then the telephone shrilled sharply and she stopped and stood blinking stupidly in surprise.

It was Ian who moved first to pick up the telephone and still its insistent nagging.

“Yes, he’s here. Who?” He covered the mouthpiece with one hand. “It’s the TV studio. Do they work all night, for Christ’s sake? They want you.” And he looked across at George with a defiant sneer on his face. “Nice somebody does, I suppose.”

George turned his back and sat down on the sofa again and shook his head. “Tell them I won’t talk to them. Not at this hour. They’ve had their circus, and they can leave me alone.”

“He’s, er, not available,” Ian said into the telephone, sounding ridiculously pompous. “Can I help you? I’m Ian Briant if it matters. Yes. What? Oh. Just a minute. I’ll see if I can speak to him. Hold on.”

He turned to George with his face suddenly bright with excitement, his anger apparently evaporating instantly. “Dad! There’s a call from America! For you. Someone from New York wants to talk to you urgently. They’re holding on to another line to the studios, and this bloke says should he pass on your phone number? Shall I say
yes
?”

“No.” George started to speak, but Marjorie swept across the room and pulled the phone from Ian’s hand.

“This is Mrs. Briant speaking. I hope you will forgive my husband. As you can imagine, he is extremely tired. Now, what do these American people want? Yes, I’ll hold.”

“Marjorie, I told you I won’t speak to anyone, no one at all. I don’t care who it is! Not now or—”

“Sssh! I’m trying to hear what he’s saying on the other line.” Marjorie put her other hand over her ear and turned her back on him, her face tense with the effort to hear.

“Yes? Oh. Oh, I see. Yes. Yes. I see! Well, look, tell them they can call here right away. Yes, we’ll speak to them, yes.” And she hung up and turned to look at George with her face suddenly gleaming with suppressed excitement.

“George! Don’t be a fool, you hear me? This call, it’s important, terribly important. I know you’re tired, but you’ve got to take it.”

“No,” George said again, mechanically, and Hilary put her hand out protectively and covered his and looked at her mother with clear dislike in her eyes.

“Leave him alone, Mummy.”

“You mind your own damned business, Hilary! And get out of here and go to bed! You’ve caused enough upset for one night, running off from school in that stupid fashion. This is nothing to do with you.”

“Let her be,” George said, and his voice was blurred with exhaustion. “Let her be. Bad enough she heard the start of this argument. She’ll have to see the end of it. What’s so vital about this call?”

“It’s an American science foundation!” Marjorie seemed to push Hilary out of her mind completely. “That was the producer’s assistant, and he said these people phoned because they want to offer you a research fellowship, and they want to get at you before anyone else does, because they know there’ll be people all over the world who’ll try to grab you. And they told him you can have anything you want, anything at all! Laboratories, money, name your own price, he said they said! Do you hear me, George? Name your own price.”

Again the telephone shrilled, and she grabbed at it and said breathlessly, “Yes? Yes, this is Mrs. George Briant. No Dr. Briant can’t speak now, I don’t think he can.” She looked over her shoulder at George, who was sitting stretched out on the sofa with his head thrown back against the cushions, his eyes closed. “No, he can’t, but I can take any essential messages. Yes, all right, I’ll hold.”

She held the phone against her chest and looked at George with anguish on her face. “George! George, for God’s sake! Don’t be so stubborn! I know you’re tired, but—”

“Marjorie, I’m going to bed. I’ve had more than enough, and I’m going to bed.” George dragged himself to his feet. “I don’t care what you do or what you say to these people, I’m past caring. I’ll deal with it in the morning, if they want to call again. But it won’t do them any good, and you might as well know it now. If you think I’m going to walk out on this project now, for the best laboratory in the world or all the dollars ever printed, you’re out of your mind. Come on, Hilary. It’s late. You need your sleep too.”

They went up the stairs together, Hilary pressing close behind her father, leaving Marjorie and Ian staring after them.

  Kenneth Gurney left the studios as soon as he decently could after the program came off the air, this time prepared to forfeit the hour of drinking that was rich with opportunities to talk himself
into another appearance soon. Quite apart from anything else, he hadn’t made much of a showing on the program, and although there had been good reasons for his uncharacteristic willingness to say so little, there was no need to remind them, by his continued presence, that his contribution had been so small.

He smiled slightly as he thought of those good reasons. As he had listened to Briant, it had hit him so suddenly that he could think of little else. The man was sitting there, putting an opportunity in a million on a plate for him. Thinking about that was more important than making a good personal showing on the program. If things worked out well, there would be plenty more television opportunities where this one had come from. And now there were important things to do.

But he paused as he came out into the street through the heavy double glass doors, partly from interest and partly because the milling crowd on the pavement forced him to do so.

There was a good deal of noise, voices shouting and shrilling, and it was centered on the figure of a big woman standing at the edge of the curb. She was clutching a handbag close to her chest and peering over it at the crowd that was clustering close to her, but her posture, defensive though it appeared at first glance, had no real fear in it, despite the pushing and shoving that threatened to topple her into the roadway.

Her face looks odd, Gurney thought, as though the flesh were melting and falling off the bones; and then he saw it was because of the mixture of light on her, the bright fluorescence pouring from the studio entrance, and the yellow sodium glare from the lamp under which she stood.

“It is true! It is true! The Lord shall not be mocked!” she cried, and her voice had a thick grating quality. “We are standing at the edge of the Pit! The wicked scientists are leading us all to perdition! We have turned away from Him who is our redeemer and worship the golden calf that is science, and woe, woe unto the nations that we are fallen into the hands of Herod and the Antichrist! We must step back while there is time, come back to God in repentance, and no more listen to the evil whispers of the Satan worshipers, the scientists who seek to destroy us all.”

And then suddenly she blinked and spoke in a perfectly ordinary voice. “We can’t let them do it. That poor little baby, all locked up in a laboratory. It’s a sin and a crime, that’s what it is, poor little thing.” And then she raised her head again and with her eyes closed wailed shrilly, “The nations shall save the little ones, the nations shall seize the Antichrist and destroy him that we may be saved again from our sinfulness! God is speaking to us, He is come again into our midst—”

“He’s not comin’. He’s just breathin’ heavy!” a man shouted suddenly and grinned proudly at the burst of laughter that greeted his cry. Another man called raucously, “Here come de Lawd, here come de Lawd. Never mind de judge, folks, here come de Lawd.”

“Shut up! Shut up, you horrible creatures!” a woman shouted and pushed against the man next to her, the one who had made the first jeer. “You’re wicked, wicked! She’s upset, but she shouldn’t be tormented, poor soul. And she’s talking sense too, more than you know.” And a murmur of agreement rose, and another woman pushed through the crowd to the figure beneath the lamppost and put a protective hand on her arm.

“Never mind, dearie, never you mind them. You say what you want to say. You’ve got the right like anyone else.”

And the big woman raised her head again and intoned, “We are on the edge of the Pit! The fires shall engulf us all unless we return to God in penitence and true humility and beg His forgiveness. And He shall visit his vengeance and His wrath upon the Herod who destroys the little children, who mocks the power that is God’s and God’s alone, and brings destruction to God’s children.”

And then a man pushed through the crowd, a tall man in a heavy overcoat, and he took the woman’s arm gently and leaned over and spoke softly but with such authority that the crowd hushed and his words could be clearly heard.

“Come, my dear. You must not upset yourself so. I do understand your distress, indeed I do. But let me take you home. You can trust me. I am a minister of the Church, you see?” And he pulled his scarf aside so that his clerical collar showed. “Let me take you home and you can talk to me of your distress and feel better.”

“What sort of minister?” The woman again spoke in an ordinary voice, but now it was heavy with suspicion.

He smiled. “Oh, don’t be afraid. I’m a Free Church man. You’re safe with me.”

She blinked at him and then nodded. “I’m tired,” she said, suddenly sounding pitiful. “I’m so tired. But God spoke to me. I had to tell them, didn’t I? I had to tell them?”

“Is she talking sense, Padre?” a man dressed in a neat but shabby blue suit called from the back of the crowd. “Is she? I mean, about this scientist being against God and all? Women, they get excited, but they talk sense sometimes all the same. Is
she
talking any sense?”

The tall man looked up, hesitated, and then spoke with a careful deliberation. “I cannot say. It would be a braver man than I who would dare to say that God could not work through any channel He chose. As this unhappy lady said, God shall not be mocked. He has infinite patience, infinite love, but man has turned away from God before, and God has needed to bring him back from his sinfulness, and it may be, it may be such a time has come again. I cannot say. You must ask your own souls such questions. And”-he smiled suddenly—“ask your ministers, if you are believers. The mockers tell us that religion is dead in the world, but yet you all stand here to listen to the cries of a religious soul in distress. I have always the hope that religion and love of God are with us still. And God works in a mysterious way—as much through people like this lady as through me and men of the Church like me. So ask your ministers and seek in your own hearts. But let me take this lady home now, she needs my care. Has anyone here transport? She is not really fit to walk very far.”

Acting on one of his rare impulses, Kenneth Gurney called loudly from his place on the steps, “Er, Padre!”

Heads turned, and someone said, “It’s that MP, the one who was on the program.”

“Let me pay for her taxi fare to her home. I’d be happy to.” Gurney pulled his wallet from his pocket, took out a note, and pushed through the crowd toward the lamppost.

“Thank you, sir, thank you,” the tall man said and took it, and
then with his arm around the shoulder of the big woman, gently urged her off the pavement and across the road toward the cab rank on the other side. She sagged against him, suddenly seeming bewildered yet apathetic, and dragging her feet a little on the asphalt, let him take her away.

“Here, mister,” the man in the blue suit called, waving his arm to attract Gurney’s attention. “What do you think? Was she talkin’ any sense?”

Gurney smiled and automatically straightened his tie.

“Really, sir, I am hardly in a position to say. I’m just a simple member of Parliament! Questions of religion are too abstruse— complicated—for me.”

“The government ought to do somethin’ about it, I tell you that!” This came from the woman who had earlier shouted down the men who had jeered. “Religion or not, the government ought to put a stop to such things. Muckin’ about with nature like they do, it ought to be put a stop to. It’s not right, a poor baby, and that woman what had him, she’s not in her right mind, if you ask me, lettin’ scientists mess about with her in that fashion!”

“And it’s right what J. J. Gerrard said,” a woman who hadn’t yet spoken called out. “If we don’t watch out, the government’ll start saying who can have babies and who can’t, and then the next thing, they’ll take the babies right away from us.”

“Actually, it was I who—well, never mind,” Gurney said. “And now, if you don’t mind, I really must go.” And he tried to move away. But one of the women in the crowd pulled at his shoulder and turned him back to face her.

“Here, we got a right to know what you lot are goin’ to do about it! Are you goin’ to let this scientist go on experimenting on babies, and then take our kids away from us? It’s all wrong! He ought to be put a stop to, like that lady said. The government ought to do something about it. What are you going to do? You’re in the government!” And she moved closer to him, edging other people away with a thrusting shoulder.