Ladies From Hell (18 page)

Above me, high above and jutting at the intense sky, was what looked like nothing so much as a gigantic silver funnel. I made out the circular track on which it would rotate, swivelling to face the wind; and round it, like trumpets pointed at the four quarters of the sky, the secondary assemblies that would power the main structure from their own independent generators. On the face of the hill, mazes of darker lines showed where power cables had been laid; below, set into the turf, were the plain white rectangles of the bunkers that housed the control gear and that would in time house the on-watch engineers.

I knew a great deal about that structure; the press coverage had after all been comprehensive enough. I knew that what I was looking at, basically, was a simple Convergent Duct. I knew that if placed mouth downward besides the tower of Coombe Church it would all but triple its height; I knew that on the stillest day below, the flow speed from the venturis
seldom dropped below fifty knots; I knew the power from the turbines in that vast dural throat would light a score of villages like the one that nestled beneath it. But none of it, it seemed, had prepared me for the actuality of Coombe Hasset One and its mighty sisters. All I could do was stand there like a fool, my hands on the car’s hot paintwork, and stare up at the giant while a line from Shakespeare went senselessly through my head; a line about the winds, the sightless couriers of the air.

I suppose I should have remembered the words that come after it. But I didn’t.

I pulled myself away finally, got in the car and drove on. I’d all but forgotten the existence of Farnham’s Folly. It hadn’t been visible from the road; I supposed, in a vague way, it lay on the side of the hill that faced the village. I remembered at least some complaint about its being in sight from the church nave during services. But for the moment I couldn’t work up much enthusiasm; the new Presence on the hill had all but eclipsed Sammy’s jaunty discovery. I remembered, with a little upwelling of pleasure, my long-overdue meeting with Boulter. I slowed as I entered the village street, wondering how best to find his place.

The address he had given was brief; merely ‘Ley House, Coombe Hasset.’ That didn’t convey much to me; it didn’t convey much to the elderly woman in the sweetshop and tobacconist’s at which I stopped, either. An anxious conversation with an unseen party in the back room finally elicited the information that it must be ‘that gurt place up atop’, and I was given more or less detailed directions.

Coombe itself was much as I remembered it; the church, three or four solid, comfortable-looking pubs, a village pump long-disused, an ‘Olde Englysshe Tea Shoppe’ with coaches drawn up outside. I turned left by the church and left again, passed a little row of superb timbered cottages—pre-Elizabethan if the frame spacing was anything to go by—and nosed the car into a climbing, stony track. I had been warned by my informant I wouldn’t be able to take ‘that sporty little thing’ all the way; I drove carefully, mindful of the advice, and was soon rewarded by bumps and clunks from beneath. A grassy, tyremarked patch to one side of the lane seemed the best
solution; I eased the Midget on to the soft standing, and got out.

It was then I experienced the second of those curious shocks; a thrill of excitement, almost of pleasure, for which I was wholly unable to account. Concentrating on keeping my sump intact, I had been unable to pay much attention to what lay ahead. I saw now that the lane sloped up to a field gate. On the right stood a copse of tallish trees, summer-green and rustling; beyond the gate, on the swell of land crowned by the great silver funnel, sprawled Sammy’s massive Folly. Markers showed where the excavation was still not wholly complete. Closer at hand the lane became a bridge over a chuckling brook; and I saw what was evidently the disused race of an old mill. The mill house remained, though partly roofless; and an outbuilding was being used to store bright blue sacks of fertilizer.

The race was protected on the lane side by a handrail of white-painted wood. I walked forward, leaned my elbows on it. To my right the stream, swinging beneath the path, had scooped out a wide, shallow scour. In it brooklime grew in masses, its leaves like glossy dark green pennies. Beyond, in the marshy ground, stood great drifts of an elegant lilac-flowered plant I couldn’t identify. The sun flashed and sparkled from the fast-moving water; at my feet the great stone slot of the race, some ten or twelve feet deep, was clothed with moss, hung with the luminous, wobbling leaves of hart’s tongue ferns. The stream rumbled, pouring from the lip in a steady brown-green curve; from it breathed the first cool air I had felt all day.

I must have stood the best part of an hour, drinking in not the calm of the place but a strange, almost vibrant excitement; a feeling wholly inexplicable, born it seemed of the sun sparkle through the shifting leaves, the sailing of the white cloud masses above the little glade. Once I remember I took out a packet of cigarettes, put it away unopened. It seemed a rare, almost a magic time, something to savour; the sort of thing, in fact, I thought I had long since put behind me.

I came round eventually feeling every sort of fool. I realized I hadn’t as yet found Boulter’s apparently-mysterious domicile. Beyond the bridge a rutted track wound up to the left, curved from sight beneath overhanging trees. I followed it; twenty paces, and I was looking at the house.

Part of the mystery at least was explained; for the
place had evidently recently been remodelled and renamed. In part it was old, old as the mill itself; a square-built stone cottage, roses climbing beside a trellised porch. Beyond, a bungalow wing had been added, in a sensible, non-assertive style. A verandah fronted it; from it, a twenty foot opening seemed to lead directly into the house itself. I guessed at a glass wall, power-operated, and remember feeling faintly surprised. I knew Boulter, tired of the electronics ratrace, had taken up a lectureship at a reasonably influential University; but somewhere along the line he’d evidently done much better than I had realized.

I opened the gate, walked up across a sloping lawn toward the house. As I did so some flicker of movement caught my eye and I saw the verandah was not in fact empty. A woman sat there, in the comparative shadow, seeming to watch me intently. I saw a pale, oval face, a dark sweep of hair that she brushed back with a peculiarly deliberate gesture; and though it was doubtless unworthy I remember feeling a little pang of disappointment. I hadn’t heard that Boulter had got himself involved in that particular direction, though I don’t suppose there was any real reason why I should; but in my experience women can get curiously possessive about their menfolk when friends of long standing turn up suddenly out of the blue. I’d been expecting, if not a riotous weekend, at least a jar or so of ale and a good chewing-over of old times; now it seemed that was not to be. I glanced up again as I reached the house, and received a third faint but definite shock; for the chair in which she had sat was empty.

What seemed to be the front door was in the older cottage. I jangled at the bell and was rewarded, after the briefest of intervals, with Boulter.

I suppose I looked my surprise. I hadn’t expected his hair to have greyed. Grey it was though, and streaked with silver at the temples. But as of old, it was faintly overlong; and the grin was very much the Boulter I had known. He said, “You’ve put a bit of weight on yourself, Glyn. Come on in, glad to see you.”

I walked through behind him into the big room I had seen, the room that opened on to the verandah. It was wide
and low, touched now with patches of levelling sunlight. It ran, I saw, the full width of the older house; on the far side picture windows gave on to the down, the looming presence of the turbine. A big TV stood in one corner, its screen swivelled to the wall; there were shelves of books, a purposeful-looking hifi, massive, overstuffed easy chairs. Boulter waved a hand at the nearest. He said, “Make yourself at home.”

I sat. Beyond the verandah, rearing over the intervening trees, was the tower of the village church. At my back Coombe Hasset One, waiting on its hill. Church, house and machine all exactly in line; and again that peculiar buzz, that near-thrill.

Boulter was watching me keenly. When I looked up, he grinned again. He said, “Beer, or something stronger? There’s some lager in the fridge.”

I said, “You’re a thoughtreader.”

He left to fetch the first aid, looking very countrified and relaxed in open-necked shirt, sandals and slacks. I looked round again. No sign of another occupant in the big, exquisite room. I was wondering where the woman had gone. Or if—such was my curious state of mind—I’d really seen her at all.

Boulter came back with a tray on which stood glasses and two bottles, frosted as ordered. He uncapped one, passed it across. He said, “There’s a table by your elbow. Have any trouble finding the place?”

I was struggling with something, some question, that seemed almost on the tip of my tongue. I said, “Not really. I asked in the village. They weren’t too sure at first.”

He said, “If you’d said Mill Farm Cottage, they’d have been all right. They’re nothing if not conservative down here.” He caught my eye wandering, and shook his head. He said, “It isn’t my place. You don’t do this sort of thing on a lecturer’s pay. Belongs to a pal of mine, lucky blighter, works for the U.N. He’s just off on a three month tour, family included. I kindly
agreed to look after it while he was away.”

I decided whatever the question was, it would have to wait. As I’ve said before, Boulter never does anything without a reason. There was a purpose behind the seemingly-urgent invitation; he would get round to it, but in his own good time. I took out the cigarettes, lit up. I said, “Who’s the girl?”

He looked vaguely amused. He said, “Oh, that’s Sarah. I’ll tell you about her later.”

I said, “Is there much to tell?”

He raised his eyebrows. He said, “Not much, no.” Then again he seemed to read my thoughts. He said, “You needn’t worry about her, Glyn. She’s all right.”

I had my own ideas about that. I decided to keep them to myself. The lager was good; I drank, and refilled the glass. Boulter said, “Where’d you leave your car?”

I said, “By the bridge.” And instantly, at the memory of the place came that little thrill of … what? Excitement, is the only word I can find. Formless, but powerful. Again, Boulter saw; and seemingly understood. Something nearly like satisfaction showed for a moment in his eyes. I said, “They warned me in the tobacconist’s I wouldn’t drive all the way up.”

He said absently, “There’s a knack to it, you have to know the marks to aim at. We’ll fetch it up later.” He drained his lager, set the glass down. He said, “Sarah, meet Glyn Thomas. Very old friend of mine. Glyn, Sarah Trevelyan.”

She had entered silently, barefooted. I rose, and experienced yet another of those faint shocks in which the place seemed to specialize. The face I had seen, in the shadows of the verandah, had seemed mature; a woman in her early thirties, at very least. But this girl was young, no more than nineteen or twenty. She was small too, neat and vividly pretty; straight dark hair, a lot of it, and those wide-spaced, deep blue eyes you see so seldom, that speak of the true Celt. She was dressed casually enough, in jeans and a sleeveless, round-necked jumper; but there was about her a stillness, a quality of calm assurance, that somehow just didn’t sit with her years. I felt instinctively this was a girl who, sitting silent in a crowded room, could
yet command the attention, the awareness, of all. The hand she offered was cool, and firm; she smiled slowly, but didn’t speak. Instead she crossed to where I had first seen her, sat head back to watch out once more at the village; the church tower, the still, golden trees that clothed the slope below the house. Boulter watched her for a moment, gravely. Then he said, “Eaten, Glyn?”

I indicated that I was fine; but he shook his head. He said, “We’re kind of knee-deep in local produce right now. Dick—that’s the guy who owns the house—laid out a small fortune on a kitchen garden earlier on. Now he’s mad because he’s missing the season. Can you fix us something, Sarah?’

She nodded and said, “Will do.” She uncoiled herself, and left as silently as she had arrived.

What she fixed were dishes of strawberries, plentifully heaped with cream, and a platter of crispy wholewheat bread. While we ate, Boulter nodded at the high slope of down. He said, “What do you think of the Silver Monster?”

I said, “Is that what they’re calling it?”

He nodded. He said, “Among other things.”

I hesitated. Difficult to explain what I had felt about Coombe Hasset One. In one way, it would have needed a book. I certainly wasn’t going to admit that an outsize tin funnel had damned near got me piping my eye. I said, “I think the alternatives are a hell of a sight worse.”

Boulter put his plate down. He said, “You can say that again. Do you realize, Glyn, the plutonium derivative they’re using on the new reactors is so toxic a lump the size of a tennis ball would release enough cell-seeking material to give leukaemia to the entire population of the world? And they’re moving it in ten ton truckloads.”

I hadn’t realized. And there didn’t seem much to add. Instead I said, “You’ve been down here a time, Alec. Do you think there’s going to be trouble?”

He said, “About the jennies? Our masters do, and that’s a fact.”

I said, “I did hear talk about bringing the army in.”

He said, “I’ll let you into a trade secret. The army’s here already.”

I looked my surprise; and he nodded. He said,
“It’s strictly a low-profile operation so far. But they mean business. They took over a couple of old quarries on the other side of the village, most of the hardware’s in there. Command post’s in Coombe Hasset itself, there’s a truck in back of the Post Office. ’Nother lot up on the down there, in Giant Copse.”

I said, “Hardware?”

He nodded. “APC’s for the most part, couple of Saladins. Some lighter stuff.”

I whistled; and he said, “Yes. Makes you think on a bit, doesn’t it?”

He stood up. He said, “We’d better fetch your things up. I’ll come down with you. Sarah’s made a bed up for you. Where are we putting him, love?”