James Rouch - Plague Bomb

Only Professor Edwards remained in the vehicle. From a green plastic Harrods carrier bag he took a flask and carefully poured a cup of beef soup. A crinkled parcel of aluminium foil he unwrapped to remove a buttered water biscuit, carefully rewrapping and stowing the remaining four back in the bag.

‘How nice, oh how very nice.’ Gross stuck his head in through the rear window and his sweat dripped onto the seat. ‘Am I invited, or is this a private picnic?’

‘This is just to keep my strength up. Of course I would help you all if I could, but I have this condition…’

‘Such a pity.’

‘I do not feel you are offering genuine sympathy, but if I should have misinterpreted your tone, then thank you. It is nothing too serious you understand, but my specialist has told me I must take care, not indulge in undue exertion. And so you see, much as I would love to assist…’

‘You always shop there?’ With a moss-stained, stub-nailed finger Gross prodded the gold print on the carrier.

‘Do I…? Oh, I see. Well, yes, actually, I do pop in on occasion, when I’m in town, and of course I have a hamper at Christmas, just for a treat.’

‘Went there once myself. Took my kids to show them where the nobs did their shopping. We had afternoon tea there, only one of my girls dropped her yoghurt under the table, and went looking for it. Sort of upset some of the old ladies making their monthly pilgrimage.’

‘So I can imagine.’ Pretending total absorption with his scanty meal, Edwards kept his head down until the fat man lost interest in watching him alternately nibble and sip. He watched the retreating union leader’s back. Their mission had forced strange and distasteful company on him. Not one of them would have come within a thousand years of receiving an invitation to his college’s high table, and he could not see a place for them in the new order of things, when socialist revolution swept Britain, as surely it must one day soon. There could be no seat for them among the vanguard of the proletariat who would herald and guide in the start of the new age. Sipping the hot peppery soup he bathed in the visions that had sustained his spirit and nourished his intellect since his first days at university, since he’d become a member of the apostles…

Fuck. Sherry Kane glanced about to see that no one was looking, then wrenched at her right breast. One of the damned wires was shifting again, threatening to come jutting out through the thin material of her sweatshirt like a god-damned radio antenna. First chance she got she’d take it off. She’d just have to take care with camera angles when they reached the end of their journey, make sure none of those hick Russian photographers made her look like they sagged to her waist.

As she wielded the axe she could feel blisters raising on her palms, at the base of each finger. It was strange though, despite the obnoxious attentions of Gross, despite the unexpected exertion and the dishevelment it brought, she was kind of enjoying herself.

Just why was hard to figure. She just felt sort of, well elated, real happy. Maybe it was because at last she was going to grab all the headlines, maybe because using the axe it reminded her of when she was a kid, when her only worry was being left alone with Uncle Harry, when he used to pull up her nightdress and rub against her, but that apart all had been well with her world.

All was going to be well with her world again. When they reached the Russian lines the gamble she had taken, the risks of short term unpopularity with the audience and the studios back home, all that would be wiped away. Within a week she’d be bigger than Fonda, bigger than anybody. Swinging the work brightened blade high she brought it down hard and severed the branch she’d been working on.

In the unaccustomed physical exertion Sir Julian Webb found an outlet for his irritation at the delay, and also a release for some of the pent-up anger with life in general that seethed inside him. It was that incident the day before he’d left from Heathrow, when he’d returned to his rooms in Chelsea a little earlier than usual, and found Raymond with that pimply paper-boy.

Never a voyeur, only ever a participant of the homosexual act, he’d been struck by the vulgar ugliness of it all, on finding Raymond standing with a jar of Vaseline in one hand, and his stub of an; erection in the other, trying to fit the lubricated organ into the youth’s tightly rounded pink backside.

The scene stuck in his mind; the youth’s soiled pants tangled among the patched jeans around his ankles, the resigned look of boredom on his acne etched features, the crumpled five pound note clenched hard in his fist: and Raymond, his plump face red with excitement and anticipation, mouthing crude obscenities to encourage the boy and prepare himself.

It was not Raymond’s betrayal of their thirty year relationship that had hurt; it had not been active, had hardly been affectionate for a long time. No, it was. whom he chose to do it with. Had he known about him and the youth? Webb could hardly believe it, Raymond had been away the week he had… when the youth had come in for a drink of tea. The flushed thrill of that first accidental brushed contact was with him still. Every action of the youth’s had been so obvious, so blatant a come-on… It had been the youth’s greed for money that had frightened him into ending the tawdry affair before Raymond’s return, and in all truth he’d not been sorry. After that first time he’d not really enjoyed it. Perhaps he was getting old, perhaps he was just old fashioned, but the act had been so casual, so bereft of any… romance… that the mechanics of intimacy had not been sufficient alone to make him want to continue the relationship.

Any last lingering doubts he’d had as to whether or not to make this trip had been cast aside at that moment when he’d walked in and caught them…

‘I’m absolutely fucking knackered.’ Gross straightened and put a hand to his aching back. ‘That bloody bus must have the guts to shove aside what’s left. For Christ’s sake give it another go.’

‘Wait, wait. Before we go on…’ Father Venables experienced an all too familiar sensation, and trying hard not to look as if he was clutching himself, shuffled off the road and a little way into the straggling undergrowth that bordered it. ‘Ah…’ That was good. He had adjusted his clothing only just in time. Really, this condition was too unfortunate, too embarrassing. Possibly it would help if he reduced his fluid intake.

He coughed at the slight irritation caused by dust-like wisps that rose from a fungi covered rotting log his dark coloured urine hosed across. Fastening the last of his buttons before starting back, as he pushed through the pliant branches he felt a curious tingling sensation throughout his body, but particularly so about his lips and ear lobes and fingertips.

‘Would you be so kind as to assist me.’ Curious, he had to ask Professor Edwards for help to climb back into the Range Rover. How strange, really he felt very weak… no, not weak, it was rather a numbness that rapidly emerged into a will sapping, strength draining fatigue. Most peculiar, he couldn’t imagine what was wrong with him, he hadn’t had a cold in years, yet this was like the fast onset of the symptoms of virulent influenza. Ridiculous though, it couldn’t manifest itself so quickly, not from ordinary causes… ordinary causes… this was no ordinary place, this was no ordinary virus, perhaps it was no virus at all.

Now there was a, not a tightness, more a definite slackness in his chest. As the Rover robustly bulldozed the near branchless trunk of the tree aside, and they got Under way once more, he realized that breathing was becoming increasingly difficult.