Chapter 5
The night passed quickly, but I was very tired when Matt came to relieve me. I drove back to the Sparrow Hawk where I lodged most of the time whilst on the site.
The lass at reception said, as she handed my key, "We wondered whether you'd done a runner, Mr Wisheart."
"Oh, of course, I haven't been here for two nights. Things happen."
I had a bath, and went to bed.
I surfaced at lunch time, and arrived at the site at two. The weather couldn't make up its mind and blew clouds into sharp showers and brilliant clear sunshine by turns. There was the feel of some heat in the sun.
Matt was clearing up at the end of his shift.
"You still look tired Graham," he said, "but I've found out why. That's your little story isn't it."
I read the headline 'DESPERATE DRIVE BY ENGINEER IN SUICIDE RESCUE.' The paper was the Harrogate Advertiser. Staring from a long telephoto shot taken at the hospital was Ruth in moody contemplation. The account of the run had been reconstructed from drivers who had phoned the police and been fobbed off with a 'The driver has been prosecuted and punished.' These presumably thought I should be punished in some form of public hanging ceremony and had resentfully talked to the reporter. Prominent amongst these was the driver of the Tarmac quarry truck.
The reporter had been fair in making clear that whilst driving to the upper limit I hadn't endangered anyone except ourselves. He also pointed out that Ms Howard could have otherwise died. I came out about even I thought.
"Did you really do that, wrong side round a traffic island and all? Where did you learn to drive like that?"
"I used to race a sports car. Leave it."
"You can't."
"Why?"
"You're not going to like this. This is from the client."
I looked at a fax. 'Wisheart from Carlton. What are you playing at associating with the wild women protesters. See Harrogate Advertiser Tuesday. Demand immediate explanation of action.'
I laughed,"That's simple. All he's asked for is an
explanation. He should have been specific. What he really wants is a report, but he's such a rank amateur he didn't ask the right question."
I tapped in the computer terminal. 'Carlton from Wisheart. Common humanity demanded my helping these folk. I have no wish to have death on my hands.' and sent it to their E mail address.
"Any other problems?"
"Only Steve's big one," said Matt, "but it's long term. It isn't to do directly with the contract."
"Sounds intriguing."
"He'll tell you later."
I inspected the works and updated the computers. We weren't doing the night shift that night. It was unfair on the men to hammer too hard, besides with just three of us able to hold the responsible safety slot we couldn't cover continuous 24 hour working. We finished at six and the site wound down.
The little mobile 'phone rang. "Wisheart."
"Hello Graham."
"Hi Mandy."
"It's brilliant something so small can work so well and be so clear. We wanted to know if you'll be visiting Ruth this evening."
"I'm just about to set off, have you seen her today?"
"Yes, she's better but strange."
"How strange?"
"I'm not sure - restless. Just be easy with her."
I arrived in the hospital car park. As I closed the car door and locked it, a flashgun went off. Dazzled I couldn't see the man who stepped in front of me.
"Graham Wisheart?"
"Yes"
"Lou Greenford, Harrogate Advertiser. I'd like to ask some questions."
"Look I don't have time at the moment. Can I talk to you on the phone tomorrow."
"No, that won't do."
"Then you get nothing. It's your choice. What I have to do this evening far exceeds the importance of a newspaper column. Which is it to be?"
"I'll take the phone. Give me the number." I gave him the number of the new portable. "That's a portable. Give me a land line."
"And have you follow me - no thanks."
"That's not acceptable."
"Just be very careful you don't irritate me so much I switch off the mobile. Now leave me alone or I'll summon the police."
He took another flash photo.
I strode to the hospital entrance and Ruth's ward.
Her bed was curtained off. I stopped outside. "Ruth," I called quietly, "are you alright?"
"Yes, my love, come in."
There was female doctor in a white coat with Ruth. Ruth said, "This, is Doctor Fenwick, she's a psychiatrist. She's checking up on me."
Doctor Fenwick wore her grey hair pulled back from her face into a pony tail held with a common brown elastic band, and her grey green eyes looked out kindly through bifocal lenses, from a round face that was somewhat world-weary. She put out a warm hand.
"I had just started to discuss her situation. Are you the man who brought her here, in this spectacular fashion?" She tapped the newspaper on the bed.
I nodded. "Yes, should I go out and wait?"
"That's entirely up to Ruth, and she can change her mind at any time."
Fenwick was on the side of the bed where the visitor's chair was. The other side was the locker. I felt excluded. I wanted to greet Ruth. I was tempted to make an excuse and say I'd come back later. But I'd forgotten Ruth's talent.
She just gave me a warm smile, got out of the bed onto the floor, stood and put her arms around me and her body in full contact with mine, and kissed me. I hugged her. It was so good. In my mind she said, 'never feel like that again with me. I won't shut you out like that, ever.'
Fenwick smiled, and it transformed her face, showing deep wells of humour and kindness, I immediately warmed to her. She said, "Why not sit on the bed next to her this side. I can talk to you both better that way."
"Now, Ruth do you know why you felt you had to do what you did? I know you have told me that your judgement was distorted by your lack of nourishment, but you can only lean so much on that as an explanation. There must be underlying conflict."
"Perhaps before you say anything shall we explore who this man is? Graham Wisheart from the paper. Is that right?"
"Yes, " I smiled, "They're right."
"How long have you known each other?"
I thought, with Ruth's access to my mind this question is irrelevant. She's known me all my life. I felt Ruth's chuckle in my mind.
I said, "Not quite two months."
"And do you have a sexual relationship?"
"Not at the moment."
"Is that a source of conflict between you?"
"No," I said, then smiled, "Some small regret perhaps, but I think we're not ready for it."
"These days it might be regarded as extravagantly continent of both of you; remember I have seen your greeting. You obviously have a great affection for each other, and at your ages I doubt whether you are ignorant or afraid. I find it strange."
"I have a residual problem of my wife of twenty two years, who I lost two and a half years ago. It was a severe shock and I haven't," I stopped, I wanted to be truthful for Ruth's sake, so she could derive whatever benefit from Fenwick's professional help she could get.
Ruth put her arm round my shoulder, "Go on Graham."
"Perhaps we feel I haven't made a sufficient transition from thinking I'm part of an 'us' with Claire, to being a 'me' on my own."
"Is that so Ruth?"
She nodded.
"Are you not being rather exclusive? It's a big hurdle you're making for anyone like him to jump. Aren't you asking him to be a an emotional virgin. He may never be free of feeling the surviving half of a couple with some part of his mind. He has twenty odd years of memories packed in his brain-cells. You can't replace all those, without twenty of your own years with him, and that assumes you obliterate them all, one by one."
"Don't attack her in that way," I said, "it's not a question of quantity or time, it's intensity."
Fenwick smiled again. "You do defend her don't you?
"Alright that's one - issue. I'm not entirely happy with the word but we're all using it these days. Anything else? Now Ruth, your man, for he's hopelessly yours whether you take him or not, has started us off well. What else divides you?"
Ruth turned to me, her golden eyes intense, she put her hands either side of my face, "We'll get it right one day dearest, whatever I say now. I promise, somehow.
"It's what we do, how we live. Graham works in the world of the late twentieth century. He builds in concrete and steel, for government and commerce. He controls computers and machines and manpower. I see it as essentially inimical to the earth and humanity. So I do my little bit. I live off handouts, now even from Graham, and with two not much more than children - female and they're not mine, we carry a banner or a placard and do the odd bit of sabotage and make a little stand for nature and peace, and against corporatism. It's not very effective, we are so puny. But it's an irritant and it brings attention to an alternative way of thinking."
"And Graham," said the good Doctor, "What do you say to your Ruth, for she is as surely yours as you are hers."
I didn't believe this. This beautiful older woman was an employee of a late twentieth century bureaucracy of health, and yet like some wizard she was exposing within her stage of polished plastic floor, metal framed bed, and pastel curtains the tortured conflict of two of her subjects.
I heard in my mind, 'Tell her my love, we need every fragment of help we can get, and this woman is an old soul who has seen much more than we.'
"I say if we had a population a quarter of what it is we could work Ruth's way. But if she and everyone else wants to maintain six billion people, and more, every year on this planet of ours, we need industry and commerce and buildings for them, and hospitals, roads, dams and power stations, and organisation and management. Good God, eighty percent of the population are in our terms on the breadline, and a fifth of those routinely die of starvation and disease before they reach thirty.
"Of course I see the attraction of living in a cottage in a garden of hollyhocks and growing food in my own allotment and having milk from my own cow. But you can only do that if you can have five acres a person. And you won't have culture because that sort of life means we all are peasants, no Shakespeare, no Beethoven, no Picasso, no Annie Lennox. We'd all be too busy looking after the corn patch. And personally I don't frantically enjoy gardening."
"There's too many of us to go back, and Ruth's damage to the things that I, and others like me, build is anarchic interference with something that is needed to support our population level. And then to get everybody on the planet up to something like a standard of living, we need more of it, not less. The resource management problem is frightening if you have any understanding of it, and professionally I do."
"If we had some dreadful plague or war and wiped out three quarters of the human race, I'd be with Ruth, preventing us going down that road again. But her thinking is too late."
I turned to Ruth, I was no longer talking to the Doctor. I gripped her shoulders, and looking into the golden depths of her eyes said, "As you are witness to my sincerity, my sweet love; it's too late. We can't go back to what you want. We have to dig ourselves out from where we are, not where you would wish we were. What's out there, concrete and cars, pollution and population, war and waste, it's real. To change things you have to be understood. The world won't understand your methods. It daren't. It will criminalise them."
Ruth was crying silently, suppressed it and said, "You can't be right. We must be able to change this, without saying there are too many people. Please, life cannot be like this. If it is, what is there for me? You're saying I'm an anachronism."
She shivered, "If so, you made that magnificent drive to no purpose. Better I had died."
I took her in my arms and tried to comfort her.
Angrily I said to Fenwick, "And where the hell do we go from here?"
She removed her glasses and wiped her eyes with a pristine clean handkerchief, "My dear tortured children would that I knew. You have in your two souls the conflict of some thousands of years of something we call civilisation. They probably had the same argument over the pyramids.
"Can I make a positive suggestion? It assumes that you are not just two intellects in a vacuum, but two human animals. It may sound silly and banal but if it doesn't work you haven't lost very much. Perhaps face, but I don't set great store by that."
"Anything," Ruth said.
"Ruth, discharge yourself, and you and Graham find a comfortable hotel, have some lovely food, get a little tipsy, if you like music find some, similarly dancing, and go to bed together. Not with the objective of having sex, on the other hand for God's sake don't fight it if it's there. At your ages that'd be just foolishness. But just to keep each other close company. I think it's your ages that are against you.
"If you were in your twenties your hormone levels would obliterate these problems in a maelstrom of desire and infatuation. Your apparently irreconcilable views are intellectual, and therefore arguable. Let your love, which is real and strong, otherwise why else would this be such a torture to you both, work on your problem. As things stand you are so far apart physically that all you really have is the intellectual argument in front of you."
"What about Claire?" asked Ruth.
"You're just being a coward about her, Ruth, she's a series of memories to be displaced by a reality. Of course you would like a new man with no past. You know you will have no problems with one such. But at thirty seven do you really want a sixteen year old mind? You've fallen for this one. Bloody tough, he's a fine fellow. Help him. He's helped you. You're still alive."
"It's an odd prescription", I said.
"Not really," said the Doctor with one of her all embracing smiles, "you two are victims of what I call twentieth century professionalism. You identify yourselves in your work role, you as an engineer, Ruth in her missionary role. As life gets more difficult and you get older, you hang on more strenuously to those roles. They define you as people.
"Your youth gets behind you and you forget an essential thing. You're a little furless animal that likes bright things to look at and pretty things to listen to, another furless animal to cuddle, something succulent to eat, something tasty to drink, and a nice clean warm place to curl up in. It's worse for those who have lost partners. To survive the loss you ascribe to the professional part even more importance. We haven't talked about Ruth's current lack of a partner but presumably you had one."
Ruth said flatly, "Yes."
"Look my dears," said Fenwick looking at her watch, "the Trust says I have given you what you are entitled to of my time, but in truth they aren't far wrong in your case. I have given you a next step and a rationalisation. If you don't try it you will have been very foolish, and I sense that you are not fools."
She gave Ruth a blank appointment card. "Ring my clinic if you need to talk. Goodbye to you both. I don't know why, but the phrase 'star crossed lovers' keeps repeating in my mind." She shook our hands in turn, and left us in the curtained enclosure.
"What do you think?" I asked," shall we try an interlude of conspicuous consumption?"
"No. I want something else. I'll take the being alone together and a nice warm place, and a drink, and some nice food, and some music, but not a hotel. I know what would happen, I'd see all the glitzy bits, and it would provoke all the arguments that underlie what separates us. Doctor Fenwick said allow our love to work on the problem.
"I suppose you have to work until Friday?"
"Yes I've been leaning too much on Steve and Matt, my colleagues, of late, and Steve needs his leisure time right now. He's found a girl friend - well they've had a couple of dates. Having said which we've not had much more. Each time was so very intense."
"I could send the girls on a site somewhere for the weekend. We could have the 'van to ourselves."
"No. I think we need neutral ground of some kind. To that extent the 'van's as bad as a hotel. You'd want to show me the reasons for being there. Look, we have our phones. Let's both think on it, and I'll call you tomorrow night."
"I'll discharge myself tomorrow morning, and go to the 'van. Could you ask the girls to pick me up at, say, eleven?"
Ruth was sitting on the high hospital bed with her legs hanging towards the floor. "'Bye my sweet", I said, and moved to kiss her. To allow me closer she moved her legs apart, and hugged me. We were receiving warmth from each other, I then kissed her mouth, and suddenly she gripped me very tightly both with arms and legs.
She drew away from my kiss and deep in her throat, said in a low voice, "Oh God I'd forgotten about all of this," and breathed tremblingly out with her eyes shut and a dreamy sensual smile on her lips. I stroked the back of her head and down her spine.
She opened her eyes. "We'll be all right. It's so good. So, good."
With the last two words she gave me a sharp pair of hugs.
"Go, Graham, go or there'll be another headline, engineer and attempted suicide patient caught in flagrante delicto in hospital ward."
"Ms Howard are you alright?"
In a twinkling she was in the the bed and had covered her legs.
"Yes, nurse."
The curtains were flung back by a brisk and beautiful black girl. "Oh, you shouldn't be here now," she said looking at me sternly.
"Sorry," I said, "We've, I've come a long way."
"Well you seem to have done her a power of good. Colour on her cheeks, sparkle in her eye, and a smile. Wish you could spare a bit for some of the others, whatever it is," she looked at both of us, sighed, and smiled, "as if I didn't know."
Ruth took my hand, and with a great big grin on her face said, "No. It's all going to be for me. 'Bye my love."
I swallowed, "'Bye, I'll come and see you tomorrow. Bye Nurse."
"'Bye. Take care now. She wants you to come back."
From the car I rang the girls. Pat answered the 'phone. "Ruth's coming out tomorrow at eleven. Asked if you could pick her up."
"How is she?"
"I think she is a new woman. Or a woman renewed."
At work the next day I asked Steve if he could think of a comfortable retreat for Ruth and I for the week end. I admitted to being baffled if it wasn't to be a hotel.
"I'm seeing Marjorie at lunch. Why not join us? She might know somewhere."
"Thanks. That would be nice. Matt mentioned something about a problem you had."
"Yes. Well it's really more of a puzzle than a problem. You know Marjorie and I went out on Tuesday. Well we went to Harrogate, and I happened to meet a friend of mine who is a civil engineer like me, and he said he'd been there when they put the foundations for all those aerials at the base. So I said 'Oh we're doing one of those. Bloody great five thousand tons in a single pour.' and he said 'Are you out of your mind?' and I said 'No.' It appears their aerials are only on an eighteen inch raft with three layers of mesh reinforcement. So what is going on our huge, monstrously strong, and heavily reinforced block?"
"Hm, I don't know how to answer you. Perhaps they want a long range narrow focus widget that has to have an absolutely stable base otherwise they don't know where it's pointing. Interesting though."
I started to go through the post. The portable phone trilled. I took it out of the charger. "Wisheart."
"Lou Greenford, Harrogate Advertiser. Where are you speaking from?"
"A workplace - somewhere in England."
"Look, I'll be frank with you. We could write a story about Ms Howard without your help, but what we find interesting is how it is you are mixed up with her."
"We met by accident when I visited her caravan by the US base out of curiosity. We have become closer since. Is that so mysterious?"
"In one sense no. We all like a bit of rough nookie."
"You will withdraw that or no more interview. And if any thought like that is published I will see you in court."
"OK. It's just that most of these protest groups are, shall we say in a continuous state of flux, as to who will be found in whose bed. I accept Ms Howard exceptionally seems to hold herself aloof from it, unless she's lezzy with those two youngsters. No chance you'd know about that? Hopefully?"
"Yes I do, and no she's not."
"Pity. Trouble is, I think you're right."
"Right. Having sorted that one, what else?"
"Yes. The mystery is, how can you and she reconcile what you do. We have your CV up to the time you finished working on Ferry Bridge power station. Now that's the sort of thing that our Ms Howard targets. Assuming you're in the same game still, you'd argue so much you wouldn't have time for nookie."
"Could you somehow elevate your vocabulary? I find the way you put things fills my ear with so much crap, I cease to hear you."
"Look matey, this is the dear old press you're talking to, not the Archbishop of Canterbury. What do you two do, to stop pulling each other apart?"
"We have yet to solve that fully."
"Was that why she tried to do herself in?"
"It was possibly a contributory factor, together with malnutrition. She ran out of money."
"Presumably that won't happen again."
"What makes you say that?"
"Well, you'll bank roll her for the nookie."
"Don't you guys ever think about love?"
"Don't believe in it old son. It's nookie - homo, lezzie, SM, hetero, paedo, beasts, self stim, all the same."
"What sewer do you inhabit?"
"The good old human race. It stinks, and it never lets me down. It always sinks firmly and gracefully and unerringly to the lowest common denominator."
I thought, 'I'm not going to let Ruth meet this man's deep pessimism about the human race. She'd make certain of her suicide.'
"Now, answer my question."
"Sorry I've forgotten what it was. You made me throw up."
"Will you bank roll her for - er -old times sake."
"I'll ensure she doesn't get into the same jam, yes."
"So this could have been a plot to ensnare a comparatively affluent sponsor."
"God, you are sordid. You print that and I will take you to court. There's too much evidence of the serendipity involved in arriving at where we have, for that to be a supportable theory."
"Just testing the water. Good word that serendipity. Educated man eh?"
"Widely read, would be more accurate."
"So where's your wife? It says here you're married, so Ms Howard is a bit on the side."
"She is in the Burnley crematorium gardens fertilising a Japanese maple, you bastard, and she's been there for two and a half years."
"Oops, really must sort out our research department sometime."
"Isn't the word sorry in your vocabulary?"
"You know you do ask some interesting questions. No, I really don't think it is. By the same token thank you isn't either. See you around."
I disconnected the link.
"Are you alright Graham, you look as white as a sheet?"
"Steve, I have never met a man with such an odious mind as that one. I was happy until I talked to him."
I shut my eyes, and when I opened them they were wet with tears. Perhaps I now saw how Ruth could feel about my own world view. But I had some optimism that science and engineering and intellect and manual dexterity might overcome the mess. What I had just heard, pictured a race that merited only extermination.
"Sorry to give you the mucky ones together, boss, but we have Carlton back again with an E message."
I read, 'Wisheart from Carlton. Explanation inadequate, provides no indication of security risk to project. e.g. who cut power line?'
My stomach pulled itself into a knot, and I bent over the desk in pain.
"Shi-it," I grunted.
"Take it easy, boss."
I took out my Zantac tablets, and Steve fetched a glass of water.
"I thought you were over that," said Steve.
"Well, recently I've not been adhering to my routines. These have been interesting times."
"Is it worth it for a pair of golden eyes?"
"Mop of unruly blonde hair to you."
"Graham, seriously. Ruth means trouble for you. However fine a person she is, you need someone less difficult to live with. Consider giving her up. Your worlds are too far apart. God man don't make me cry. You've been through hell and back for Claire, and she died. This one'll kill you, not because she hates you. She'll just tear you apart. Please my friend."
"I'm afraid it's too late for that advice."
"Damn. OK. I just want to one shot at pointing out a better alternative."
He held a paper out.
"What's that?"
"Fax from London."
I read a typed message, 'Meeting arranged next Wednesday Fosterley Lodge Hotel, Blaby, Dinner 7.30 for 8.00 pm. Rooms booked. Carrie for Liz Norton.' Then in Liz's handwriting 'P.S. Looking forward to it. Liz.
"She's attractive, unattached, intelligent, mature, stable, humorous. You both know and inhabit the same world. She's making money. You'd be very comfortable. She's also the boss. And she's giving you a green signal."
"Steve."
"Yes, Graham."
"Shut up. I love Ruth."
"OK. What do we do about Carlton?"
"Leave it with me."
I thought long and hard. But the recipe was the same. Say as little as possible.
I compiled an E message 'Carlton from Wisheart. Explanation complete in itself. Am unable to assess security risks. We do not have necessary expertise. We are building contractors. Suggest matter for you not us. Re powerline question: Don't know. Matter is with police.