Omega

Breaded chicken and chips. It was garnished with token salad items, a few lettuce leaves, a sliver of cucumber, a tomato segment. Tanya had a vegetable lasagne. We were sitting at a table in a pub, next to a window overlooking a deserted flagstone patio with trestle tables.

Try as I might, I had no control over my translations to and from Owain’s world. It was vital Tanya suspected nothing of this seesawing; she’d have me back in hospital before I knew it.

“Want to eat outside?” she asked.

It was smoky and hot in the pub, and the place was bustling. I thought I recognised it but my memory wouldn’t cooperate. What were we doing here?

“O?”

“No,” I said. “It’s fine.”

I contemplated my plate of food. I contemplated Australia. The notion of Lyneth having a sister who lived there was persistent. Had we had a row before Christmas so that she had taken the girls away? Perhaps she had deliberately isolated herself from contact. Had I done something so awful she wouldn’t have anything further to do with me, hospitalised or not? Was that why Tanya had looked anxious when I mentioned her name?

I wasn’t going to ask her. I was still under scrutiny.

“Do you know where my mobile is?” I asked.

Tanya swabbed her lips with a serviette. “I assume it was lost in the accident.”

Very convenient. All my phone numbers were listed on it. My old address book was long gone. I couldn’t remember Lyneth’s mobile number, or even that of our home. I had no idea of our address either, only that it was in south London. Couldn’t picture the house. My efforts to do so only filled me with a suffocating panic. How much longer was this going to go on?

“O?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t worry. We can get you a new one.”

I couldn’t allow my agitation to show. I still wasn’t sure whether these speculations of mine were in fact true. But they would explain Lyneth’s absence. What had I done? Something so hurtful that she could never forgive me? Something physically hurtful, even?

No, I was certain I could never have harmed her. So what had we rowed about? Something to do with Tanya? Was this why she was here and not Lyneth? Why couldn’t I remember with any certainty? Surely it couldn’t just be my medication?

The urge to ask was more than counterbalanced by the feeling that some rickety mental edifice would come crashing down. I couldn’t risk it yet. But if Lyneth had taken the girls away, my memory of the four of us together in Regent Street immediately before the accident had to be false. As false as the fleeting belief that I had later stood at their gravesides.

The pub’s hubbub washed over me. I speared a chip, heard the throosbing of a domestic hot water geyser. It was mounted on the wall above the sink. I n so bare windowless room, ranks of white china cups and saucers washed and upended on the stainless steel draining board.

I heaved myself back.

“Catch up?” Tanya said.

I looked at her with incomprehension, at last nodded. She used her teeth to tear open the sachet, passed it carefully to me. I squirted the sauce over my chips. It effortlessly suggested blood. I reached for my drink and gulped a big mouthful, the ice cubes clacking against my teeth. Lime and soda. I’d always disliked lime. A mosquito whine filled my ears. Owain carried a tray of cakes and biscuits into the conference hall. The long room was windowless and stuffy, thick with an acrid haze of cigarette and pipe smoke. Low-slung overhead lights made glazed pools on the polished mahogany surface of a big table. Around it were seated two dozen figures, most of them men, most in uniform. Sheets of paper, empty cups and wineglasses sat on blotters, ignored in the angry exchange that was taking place.

“It’s intolerable,” a man in a dark blue uniform was saying in Italianate French. “You cannot expect us to police the entire Mediterranean when we do not have enough fuel for our ships. It is asking the impossible!”

“That’s no fault of mine!” responded another man, equally irately. He was burly and olive-complexioned, possibly Egyptian. “Until the contamination issues are settled my hands are tied.”

Both men were on their feet, glaring at one another across the table. The burly man wore desert khaki and the insignia of the quartermaster general’s office.

“Gentlemen,” said a third man, rising from his seat, “must we shout at one another? Urgent priority has already been given to remedying the situation. I understand that supplies of shielding equipment and new turbine housings for all major frontline vessels are already being undertaken, is that not so?”

This, Owain knew, was Marshal Coquelin, the French C-in-C of Strategic Operations. He directed this question at an anonymous-looking woman in a herringbone trouser suit. She gave a brisk nod.

“Deliveries are expected?” he prompted.

“Some have already been made. The Clemenceau, Moltke and Ark Royal battle groups are being refitted even as we speak.”

“And the time scale?”