Fred Hoyle - Element 79

Like many promiscuous men, Hadley expected his wife to be one hundred percent “respectable.” Wasn’t that one of the reasons why he’d married her, for Christ’s sake? The daughter of a local manufacturer, Jennifer had been well-educated. She was well-spoken and she knew how to entertain his business associates in the best style. He hadn’t found her very sexy, but that really wasn’t important. There was plenty of sex to be had in other directions, at any rate, there was in the circles in which he moved. Like any woman, Jenny had wanted children, and he’d given her three, in rapid tempo. The arrangement now was that she brought up the kids—his legitimate kids—she made the home attractive and respectable, and in return he gave her anything she wanted—clothes, a car, that sort of thing. He thought it worked very well.

Blanche White was one of the other directions. She was a pretty little thing of nineteen. She worked in one of Hadley’s subsidiaries. Because she didn’t read complex balance sheets, and because nobody told her, Blanche didn’t realize that Hadley was her true boss. But she knew he was an important man, and she was flattered when he asked her to go out with him. She’d been out with him now quite a number of times, usually at intervals of two or three weeks. Hadley had taken her the second time, and he’d made her every time since. And now the silly little bitch had got herself in the family way. How was it possible to be so bloody stupid, he wondered. “Why were you so bloody stupid?” he asked her.

They were in the sitting room of a little place he’d had specially built, about five miles outside Nottingham. “I thought you,…” she began.

Hadley gave a snort and took a sharp snap of whiskey. “Don’t be bloody daft. It’s not up to men these days, not with all the new things they’ve got. Didn’t anybody ever tell you?”

“I didn’t like to go, to that clinic place.”

“Didn’t like to go! You’ll like it a lot less, what’s going to happen to you now!”

“What’s to be done?” the girl sobbed.

“What’s to be done! Stop being bloody daft, for one thing. See a doctor. Go on working as long as you can. Then I’ll see you over it.”

“See me over it!”

“What the hell else d’you expect? There’s a hundred million kids born into the world every year. Don’t think anybody’s going to fall over backwards just because you’re going to have one of ’em.”

“Don’t you care a bit?”

“I care a hell of a lot. D’you think it’s any pleasure to me, this sort of thing? I’m not going to get anything out of it.”

Hadley did get something out of it, much more than he could ever have imagined. He began with a small bonus. He took the little fool back to the bedroom. Tearfully, she let him do it again. He got far more out of it this second time than he expected in the circumstances. She again asked him, now in a whisper, to look after her. Once again, he told her he’d see she was all right. He left her there, thinking this was about as far as he could commit himself for the present. He took another sharp snap before starting back to Nottingham. He’d intended to stay here the night, told Jenny he’d be away the whole night. But he wasn’t staying now, not with this situation to prey on his mind.

There was a stretch of some two miles of twisting country road before the main highway into Nottingham. He thought about Blanche White as he drove his big yellow Jaguar. She wouldn’t give any trouble, too mouselike. He’d see her over it, like he said he would, until the kid was old enough to go to school. Then he’d find her a job. It might be worth his while to go on giving her a bit even after that. She’d only be twenty-three or twenty-four, useful in an emergency, perhaps.

The T-junction onto the highway came up. A vehicle was approaching from the left. It wasn’t too far away, but far enough. Hadley saw no point in letting it get ahead of him. He gunned the big car as fiercely as he could. This was the time when it paid to have a piece of real machinery. The car leaped forward, straight into the track of the oncoming vehicle. Hadley took the turn at a bad angle. There was a blaze of light in his eyes, followed instantly by a blaze inside his head.

The other vehicle was driven by Jonathan Adams, forty-five, professor of philosophy at Oxford. He was on his way to Nottingham to give a lecture at the university there. He was to stay overnight with his opposite number, Jerome Renfrew. He knew Renfrew, of course, but not very well. This worried Adams, because he’d been delayed in leaving Oxford, so he would be arriving at the Renfrew household long after it was really proper for him to do so.

It was characteristic of Adams that he didn’t know Renfrew very well, in fact, he didn’t know anybody very well. A reticent, shy man, living in College rooms, what he liked most was travel, and reading, of course. Adams had a good reputation in his own field. He was a remarkably incisive lecturer for one so retiring in all other human contacts.

Adams was also a skillful driver. He’d batted along at a good pace all the way from Oxford, because he was so late, of course. Almost in Nottingham, he noticed the lights of a car moving along a side road ahead. It never crossed his mind that anybody could be fool enough to pull out into the main road, so he kept going ahead. Then, to his horror, the car did pull out, immediately in front of him. If only the fool had kept to the center of the road and left him with enough room to get through on the near side.

Jonathan Adams came to his senses still in the driver’s seat. He sat there for a few moments. There was an instant when he was vaguely conscious of somebody peering into the car. He remembered leaving Oxford. He was driving to Nottingham, that was it. Then he remembered the side road and the other car, but he couldn’t remember the actual collision. Still there must have been a collision, an appalling crash, unless at the last moment he’d managed only to sideswipe the other car. Perhaps he’d done that and then gone off the road, in which case it might not be too bad. Slowly, very gingerly, he tried moving his hands and arms. They were all right so far as he could tell, no sharp pain. Next the legs. They moved, so his spine wasn’t dislocated. The head was now the critical thing. Gently he moved his hands upward over the face and skull. Not bad, so far as he could tell. It began to look as if he’d gone off the road with only a blow hard enough to put him out for a few moments. He decided to risk it, to try climbing out of the car. He knew he shouldn’t do this, really. Better to wait for an ambulance. Some passing driver would be sure to call the police. There might be internal injuries. The temptation was too strong, however, to be out of this coffin-like box in which he seemed to be entombed. It was a difficult business, for the car had been knocked onto its side. He saw now why he’d felt so queer, because he hadn’t been sitting upright. After a struggle he managed it. Miraculously he was standing there looking down at the wreckage. It looked pretty bad, not much worth salvaging.

A man came up to him and said, “What the bloody hell d’you mean by coming along at that speed?”

“Did you see the collision?”

“Did I see it, of course I saw it. I’m the driver of the other bloody car.”

“Then we’d better exchange insurance companies.”

“You’re damn right we’d better. That was a valuable car of mine. Not much but scrap there now.”

“You did come out of the side road, you know.”

Adams knew it was better not to argue. Leave things for the police to judge. The reply convinced him of this. “Don’t give me that story. There was plenty of time to get out into the road, if you hadn’t been driving like a flaming maniac. Right into the back of my car, bloody well into the bloody backside, right up its arse. You’ll see what they do to you for that.” Adams also knew he really should have slowed down a bit. After all, nobody was better aware than he of how full the world was with fools. Even so, it was hard luck to have picked such a prize specimen.