the lane keeps hens. Five minutes.’
Before he could protest, Jennifer was gone. But as soon as she was out of the house, Kit was searching the marital bedroom. He checked all the drawers for documents, diaries or address books. Not a thing. He went to the wardrobe and searched the pockets of Brian’s suits and jackets, but there was nothing other than old ticket stubs and petrol receipts. He then began to check the chest of drawers where Jennifer kept her things. He opened the top drawer: it was where his cousin kept her stockings and underwear . He gently extracted articles of the most intimate lingerie and buried his face in the fine silk. He wanted to breathe the most private and secret essences of Jennifer into his lungs, but there was so little time.
As he returned Jennifer’s underwear to the drawer, Kit noticed some other things lurking at the back – half hidden. They were not ‘normal’ or even conventionally ‘sexy’ articles of underclothing. The strange apparel and other objects belonged to a completely different order of things. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘my God. Who would have thought this?’ At first, Kit was shocked to his core. Then he was oddly excited by the discovery – and then ashamed that it did excite him. He closed the drawer: it was like closing the first half of his life.
Chapter Four
When Kit got back to London, he found it difficult to get Jennifer out of his mind. Her face kept materialising like an apparition on official documents and memos. It was a long day that had ended with a late-night clandestine meeting with the cabinet minister he had compromised in a honey trap. The woman in question was stunningly beautiful, but needed elocution lessons. She had also begun ‘dating’ someone on the other side – bad news.
Once again, it was past midnight when Kit got back to his flat. He’d had to stay late for a top secret briefing about the results of the most recent hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific. The briefing had been given by Sterling Cole, Chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy. Cole’s message was chilling. The H-bomb test on Bikini had been three times more powerful than the scientists had predicted. The crew of a Japanese fishing boat – ‘eighty-five miles outside the declared danger zone’ – had been afflicted with serious radiation sickness. After Cole finished, the press attaché gave a talk about how important it was to stop ‘H-bomb panic’ from spreading through the British press and to the public at large.
Kit lit the gas fire that had been installed in the old Victorian hearth. It hissed and spat under the mantlepiece before it settled down. There were still London homes with coal fires – and the fumes still killed. The Great Smog of 1952 killed over four thousand Londoners in ten days; there were even cattle asphyxiated at Smithfield Market. But the Clean Air Act was on its way – those coal fires were going to be history. Pity in a way, thought Kit. He liked to think of Falstaff fondling a wench at the Boar’s Head warmed by a ‘sea coal’ fire. Four thousand Londoners killed by coal smoke. How many would an air burst over St Paul’s finish off?
An H-bomb over St Paul’s wouldn’t just melt Wren’s great bronze dome: it would vaporise it. In one second the temperature of the blast would reach a hundred million degrees Celsius. A fireball, a mile in diameter, would unleash a wall of wind sweeping all before it at seven hundred and fifty miles per hour. Cars, trucks and buses would be tossed into the air like autumn leaves – tyres alight and petrol tanks exploding. Gulls in flight over the Thames estuary would drop from the sky in flames. Ten seconds later, the suction from the blast would reverse the wind direction and create a vast mushroom cloud. A super-heated three-hundred-mile per hour hurricane would boil the Thames into a cauldron of steam. At three miles distance clothing would burst into flames or
Before he could protest, Jennifer was gone. But as soon as she was out of the house, Kit was searching the marital bedroom. He checked all the drawers for documents, diaries or address books. Not a thing. He went to the wardrobe and searched the pockets of Brian’s suits and jackets, but there was nothing other than old ticket stubs and petrol receipts. He then began to check the chest of drawers where Jennifer kept her things. He opened the top drawer: it was where his cousin kept her stockings and underwear . He gently extracted articles of the most intimate lingerie and buried his face in the fine silk. He wanted to breathe the most private and secret essences of Jennifer into his lungs, but there was so little time.
As he returned Jennifer’s underwear to the drawer, Kit noticed some other things lurking at the back – half hidden. They were not ‘normal’ or even conventionally ‘sexy’ articles of underclothing. The strange apparel and other objects belonged to a completely different order of things. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘my God. Who would have thought this?’ At first, Kit was shocked to his core. Then he was oddly excited by the discovery – and then ashamed that it did excite him. He closed the drawer: it was like closing the first half of his life.
Chapter Four
When Kit got back to London, he found it difficult to get Jennifer out of his mind. Her face kept materialising like an apparition on official documents and memos. It was a long day that had ended with a late-night clandestine meeting with the cabinet minister he had compromised in a honey trap. The woman in question was stunningly beautiful, but needed elocution lessons. She had also begun ‘dating’ someone on the other side – bad news.
Once again, it was past midnight when Kit got back to his flat. He’d had to stay late for a top secret briefing about the results of the most recent hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific. The briefing had been given by Sterling Cole, Chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy. Cole’s message was chilling. The H-bomb test on Bikini had been three times more powerful than the scientists had predicted. The crew of a Japanese fishing boat – ‘eighty-five miles outside the declared danger zone’ – had been afflicted with serious radiation sickness. After Cole finished, the press attaché gave a talk about how important it was to stop ‘H-bomb panic’ from spreading through the British press and to the public at large.
Kit lit the gas fire that had been installed in the old Victorian hearth. It hissed and spat under the mantlepiece before it settled down. There were still London homes with coal fires – and the fumes still killed. The Great Smog of 1952 killed over four thousand Londoners in ten days; there were even cattle asphyxiated at Smithfield Market. But the Clean Air Act was on its way – those coal fires were going to be history. Pity in a way, thought Kit. He liked to think of Falstaff fondling a wench at the Boar’s Head warmed by a ‘sea coal’ fire. Four thousand Londoners killed by coal smoke. How many would an air burst over St Paul’s finish off?
An H-bomb over St Paul’s wouldn’t just melt Wren’s great bronze dome: it would vaporise it. In one second the temperature of the blast would reach a hundred million degrees Celsius. A fireball, a mile in diameter, would unleash a wall of wind sweeping all before it at seven hundred and fifty miles per hour. Cars, trucks and buses would be tossed into the air like autumn leaves – tyres alight and petrol tanks exploding. Gulls in flight over the Thames estuary would drop from the sky in flames. Ten seconds later, the suction from the blast would reverse the wind direction and create a vast mushroom cloud. A super-heated three-hundred-mile per hour hurricane would boil the Thames into a cauldron of steam. At three miles distance clothing would burst into flames or
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