Breakthrough, p.5
Breakthrough, page 5
When I got inside I sat down on the divan and read the note through again. ‘Nine o’clock’ meant I’d have to forgo my Saturday lie-in. I began to wish I had left it till the morning. What in heaven’s name could she want to see me about which was very important’? The whole thing was totally beyond me. I unlaced my shoes, thrust them under the bed, then stood up and took off my tie. Next, being in some respects a creature of habit, I began emptying my pockets and stacking their contents on the top of die chest of drawers. The last thing to emerge was the envelope on which, a couple of hours earlier, I’d scribbled down my calculations. I glanced at it casually and then dropped it beside Miss Bernstein’s note.
I’d washed, brushed my teeth and was undressed and knotting the cord on my pyjamas before it occurred to me to wonder if there could possibly be any connection between the two. I say ’occurred’, but the thought actually rocked me like an explosion at the base of my skull. I stood stock still for half a minute until the tremors subsided, and then I climbed resolutely into bed and switched out the light.
I doubt if I’ve ever spent a more restless night. No sooner had I closed my eyes than I seemed to be gazing up into that crazy waltzing light on the gambling machine, only this time there was no attendant conveniently on hand to break the spell. On and on it went until I seemed to be swirling round in a gigantic kaleidoscope of jostling, darting lights. One moment they would diminish to jewelled pinheads, and the next expand into vast balloons, rush upon me and explode into a rain of glittering drops. These in their turn coalesced into bubbles, and the whole mad whirligig started up again. When at last I did succeed in dropping off it was to find myself embroiled in some fantastic nightmare of 46 struggle and pursuit from which eventually I awoke, gasping and sweating with fright, to see the thin ash-grey light of dawn being pasted up against the window. After that I dozed fitfully until about half past seven, when my landlady’s young niece knocked on the door and brought me a cup of tea. I asked her if she knew anything about my visitor of the previous evening.
’Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘A young lady. She left you a note.’
‘Do you remember what time she came?’
‘Nine,’ she said promptly. ’The Dug Cleaver Show had just started. I showed her up here.’
‘Did she wait long?’
‘About half an hour, I think. Yes it must have been half an hour ’cos “X-Planes” had just come on.’
’Three cheers for the telly,’ I said, picking up the cup she’d put down and sipping at it reflectively.
She grinned at me and went out.
‘All right’, I said to myself, ‘so Miss Bernstein was here waiting for you when you were on the pier. What’s that meant to prove?’ I was forced to agree with myself that it proved nothing at all. ‘What you want, my friend, is an injection of double distilled scepticism,’ I muttered.
‘But that gambling machine?’ whispered my alter-ego. ‘Luck, plain luck. Red once came up at Monte Carlo thirteen times running.’
‘But nobody backed it thirteen times running, and you did—sixty times!’
‘Sixty? Forty at the most. Probably less. Yes, you’re forgetting that jackpot. Say thirty.’
‘All right, then, say thirty. You still picked the right one out of five, thirty times running. Imagine what Doctor Dumpkenhoffer would say about that one!’
‘All right, all right, so that was extraordinary, but Miss Bernstein calling round to see you and finding you out— nothing, repeat nothing, can make that extraordinary.’
’At the same time though!’
‘You want to believe she had something to do with it, don’t you?’
*No I don’t. But why did she have to come last night? I haven’t set eyes on her for a month.’
‘So what?’
‘Well, why in heaven’s name did she come at all?’
‘Maybe she has decided to change over to Nineteenth-century English Literature.’
‘Would that have made her underline “very important” and “please come”?’
‘It might. Probably it’s a very important decision for her—an emotional decision.’
7 don’t believe it. She didn’t strike me as that kind of girl at all.’
And so it went on like some interminable badminton rally being played on an elastic court—only the court happened to have been laid out inside my own head.
By the time I’d washed and shaved, the harder-hitting sceptic seemed to have gained the upper hand over his more gullible opponent. I switched on my transistor and listened to the news while I was dressing. The familiar litany of human disaster was surprisingly comforting. This was my world, and I was of it: it was quite unbelievable enough already without my adding to its improbabilities. I strapped on my watch, pulled a wry face at my reflection in the mirror and went downstairs to breakfast and to such further reassurances as might be offered by The Guardian.
SEVEN
The Library Annexe into which I strode at half past nine was commonly referred to among the junior staff as ‘Sponse’s Folly’. It was one of the temporary erections that had been rushed up when it was discovered that Sir Boden Sponse’s plans for the new university—though admittedly ‘brave’, ’forward looking’ and ‘architecturally revolutionary’ —had somehow failed to take sufficient account of the fact that students required a number of places in which to sit and get on quietly with their work. It was, in short, a group of four large Nissen huts, set out in the form of a square and connected corner to corner by small concrete passages. Distinguished visitors were never shown round the Annexe, which was screened from the main buildings by a convenient shrubbery, but it was popular with the less-gifted students, and had probably seen the spawning of more Beta minus essays than the whole of the rest of the University buildings combined. The interior of each hut had been subdivided into cells by beaverboard partitions, and these, though they were totally ineffective as soundproofing, at least gave an illusion of privacy. Each cell was identically furnished with a wooden table, two wooden chairs and a strip of jungle-green coconut matting. Since I had no means of telling in which cell Miss Bernstein had concealed herself —I didn’t even know if she was there at all—I had no option but to walk the square round and look for her. So, having adjusted my stride to what I considered accorded with my academic status, I set off.
The first hut was completely deserted—a fact I could account for only by recalling that it was a Saturday morning —and I had passed through the passage into the next one before I saw, a long way off, a girl in a dark-red dress advancing to meet me. The light in the central corridors was not very good and I couldn’t at first be sure if it was her, but
I cleared my throat and called her name experimentally.
‘It’s all right,’ she replied cheerfully, ’there’s no one here except us.’
‘I got your message,’ I said, moving towards her. ‘What is it you wish to see me about?’
She smiled and glanced swiftly into my eyes with an expression in her own that is almost impossible to describe without using the word ‘compassion’. ‘You really don’t know?’
‘Why, no,’ I asserted.
She led the way into an adjacent cell, spread out the skirt of her dress with a delightfully feminine gesture and sat down at the table. ‘You didn’t think I might want to consult you about the possibility of changing my Allied Subject to, say, Nineteenth-century English Literature?’
I drew a breath and took the chair opposite. ‘Well, actually, yes that had occurred to—’ And then I saw she was laughing at me and I broke off in perplexity.
‘It didn’t occur to you that it might be a very important decision for me?’ she enquired. ‘A very emotional decision?’
‘Hey!’ I said. ‘What is this?’
‘Last night,’ she said calmly, ‘starting at seven minutes past nine, you forecast a correct sequence of thirty-seven numbers. The chance odds against doing that must run into trillions.’
‘You were there} You saw it? Who told you?’
She looked at me and then away. ‘Yes, I was there,’ she said softly. ‘I saw it.’ Her voice dropped to an almost inaudible whisper, 7 did it/ she said.
I just gaped at her: I don’t think I could have been more astonished if she’d suddenly upped and levitated herself out of the window. The tide of my scepticism withdrew itself to the edges of the horizon, paused for a moment and then gathered into a flood and surged forward. ‘But that’s—’
’Impossible?’ she concluded, looking up at me with a smile.
‘You know it is.’
’Even though it happened?’
‘I know I had a run of luck,’ I muttered sullenly. ‘You were at my digs when it happened. Someone must have told you about it/
She sighed and spread out her hands on the table, palms down, fingers splayed. Her hands were wholly beautiful, long and slender, the nails just tinged with coral-pink lacquer. I had a sudden impulse to stretch out my own hand and touch them, but I resisted it and, even as I did so, I saw a smile dusk over her lips like a breath of wind over still water. She lifted her hands from the table and laid them demurely in her lap out of my sight.
I leaned forward and tapped the table. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘just assuming for the sake of argument that what you’re saying is true: then why} What does it mean} And, above all, in heaven’s name, why me}’
‘It is true,’ she said. ‘And I think you know it is.’
‘I don’t know anything,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t know why I’m here. And what I do know I don’t like one little bit.’
‘Are you frightened?’
It was a leading question all right. ‘If I thought it was true I’d be scared stiff,’ I muttered. ‘Who wouldn’t?’
‘So was I at first,’ she said, ‘but there’s no need to be. Really there isn’t.’
I permitted myself a wry grin. ‘Well, that’s most reassuring. Now will you kindly explain just what’s going on? And please make it simple; I’m a bit opaque this morning/
Miss Bernstein nodded. ‘I’ll try,’ she said, and bit her bottom lip. ‘You remember when we took that test together?’
‘Dumpkenhoffer? Is he in on this?’
‘It depends what you mean by “in on it”,’ she countered carefully.
‘Well, does he know about you—about this—us}’
‘A little,’ she admitted. ‘He doesn’t understand/
’That makes two of us. You do, I suppose?’
She looked squarely into my eyes, and I could see her struggling to find some way in which to frame an explanation which I might comprehend. * “Understand” isn’t the right word/ she said at last. ‘It’s—it’s a bit like learning to swim. Knowing the strokes isn’t enough in itself—you have to be able to let yourself go—to, well, to make an act of faith in yourself.’
She looked at me hopefully as she said this, but I could only shake my head. It was all far too metaphysical for me. ‘All right, we’ll let that slide for the moment/ I said. ‘Let’s go back to that test you were talking about.’
She nodded and sighed faintly. ‘When you heard your result,’ she said, ‘were you surprised?’
’That,’ I said, ’is the understatement of the year. I was flabbergasted.’
‘You didn’t think it might have been a mistake?’
I made an effort to cast my mind back to the event. ‘No/ I said at last, ‘I believed it had happened all right. What I didn’t believe was that I was responsible. I felt like the victim of some elaborate confidence trick.’
‘And that made you angry?’
‘Bewildered more. Maybe I was angry too though. I felt I’d been used.’
‘Did you feel that way last night?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘but that was different. I didn’t expect to win, but it was possible I might. After all, people do win occasionally, otherwise no one would gamble.’
She seemed satisfied with this explanation. ’At Doctor Dumpkenhoffer’s suggestion you took a second test,’ she said. ‘After I’d left. Were you surprised by the result of that one?’
‘Not by my result,’ I said.
‘You didn’t feel as if you’d been—well, used that time?’ ’Oh, so he told you about that, did he?’
‘No.’ she said, ‘not exactly. But it doesn’t matter.’
’On the contrary, it does matter—to me I How did you get that result? How did you get any of them for that matter?’ She smiled then, and her smile was lovely to behold. ‘Maybe the same way that you got your “run of luck” last night/ she said. ‘After all, people do win occasionally, don’t they?’
I’d dug my own little pitfall and then tripped neatly into it. I pulled a face. ‘We’re just going round in circles, Miss Bernstein. I’m not one penny the wiser than I was when we started. Are you trying to tell me that you’ve got the power —to—well, among other things, to enter my mind?’
For a moment she appeared to hesitate, then she nodded. I stared at her. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Go ahead and prove it. Tell me what I’m thinking now.’
She w’ent suddenly pale and shook her head. ‘Not now,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t. You won’t let me.’
I blew a mental raspberry. ’O.K.,’ I said. ‘Let’s try something else? Take a peek into your crystal ball and tell me what’s going to win the St. Leger.’
She’d lowered her head while I was speaking; now she raised it and I saw that her eyes were big and bright with unshed tears. It caught me completely off guard. I saw her lips tremble and I became suddenly, painfully conscious of her youth and her beauty. At that moment she seemed to me like a trapped bird which, having fluttered its energy away in vain attempts to escape the net, now lay spent and panting waiting for it knew not what. Nothing I could recall having said seemed to me capable of producing such an effect on her, nevertheless my feeling of guilt was, at that moment, quite terrifyingly acute. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve distressed you in some way,’ I muttered lamely. ‘But I really don’t see—’
‘It’s not your fault,’ she gulped, and she really was crying properly this time. ‘It’s m-me. I’ve d-done it all wrong.’
A large tear trundled down her cheek and touched her lip. The tip of her tongue flicked out and lapped it away.
‘Here,’ I said, taking out my handkerchief and pushing it across to her. ‘Clean this morning.’
She scooped it up and buried her face in it. Her dark hair tumbled forward till it was hanging like a screen between us. ‘Go away,’ she begged. ‘Please go away.’
I pretended I hadn’t heard and sat there looking gormless and praying silently that no one would come along.
After a minute or so she slowed up, drew a couple of shaky breaths and, still not looking at me, asked, ‘Do you mind if I blow?’
‘Go right ahead,’ I said.
She promptly produced a noise which was surprisingly loud for such a delicate frame and then started mopping up.
‘Better?’ I enquired.
She nodded. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to. It was just…’
For a moment I thought she was going to set herself off again, but instead she drew in a simply enormous breath by means of a series of rachet-like gasps, dabbed at the corners of her eyes and then pushed my handkerchief back to me.
I smiled reassuringly. ’O.K. now?’
‘Do I look terrible?’ she murmured.
I took this as an excuse to examine her in some detail. What I saw set my pulse off at a brisk canter. I swallowed. ‘You’ll do,’ I said. ‘A bit blotchy round the edges maybe, but the general effect’s fine. Now can we take things up where we left off, or have you had enough?’
She sniffed damply. ’There doesn’t seem much point, does there?’
I ignored this. ‘What did you mean when you said I wouldn’t let you read my mind? How could I stop you?’
‘By not wanting me to.’
‘But I did want you to,’ I protested. ’That’s why I asked.’
She shook her head. ‘Maybe you thought you did,’ she said. ‘But you didn’t really. I don’t think it was your fault though. I should have tried to get you to trust me first, but I just couldn’t see how to do it. After all, thoughts are such terribly private things.’
It struck me that what she was saying might well have been true. My challenge had been more in the nature of calling her bluff than anything else, but even so, I hadn’t consciously willed her not to succeed. I felt oddly ashamed of myself without quite knowing why. ‘Look here,’ I said awkwardly, ’this whole business is so foreign to my experience that I still don’t know whether I’m coming or going or simply standing on my head. I’m prepared to give it another go if you are.’
She shook her head. ‘It won’t be any good.’
‘Not even if I want it to happen?’
‘It’s not really a conscious thing at all,’ she said, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand. ’At least I don’t think it is. I believe you have to sort of want it to happen with all of you. Like letting go of the side of the swimming bath.’
I looked across at her frowning, troubled, beautiful face and felt as though a knot was being untied in the pit of my stomach. ‘Let’s give it another try,’ I said. ‘No questions asked.’
‘All right,’ she agreed doubtfully. ‘But don’t blame me if it doesn’t work.’
‘Promise,’ I said solemnly. ‘Now what do I have to do?’
