Twice Shy

To his colleague I said, 'I came down here to ask you to record something… anything… on these cassettes.' I produced them. 'Just so they have computer noise on them, and a readable program. They're for, er, demonstration.'

He didn't query it.

I said, 'Do you think Ted would mind me using his game?'

He shrugged. 'I shouldn't think so. Two or three of the boys have got tapes of it. It's not secret.'

He took the cassettes out of my hands and said, 'Once on each tape?'

'Er, no. Several times on each side.'

His eyes widened, 'What on earth for?'

'Um.' I thought in circles. To demonstrate searching through file names.'

'Oh. All right.' He looked at his watch. 'I'd leave you to do it, but Jenkins goes mad if one of the department doesn't check the computer's switched off and put the door key in the common-room. I can't stay long anyway, you know.'

He put the first of the tapes obligingly into the recorder, however, typed CSAVE, 'A', and pressed 'Enter'. When the screen announced READY, he typed CSAVE 'B', and after that CSAVE 'C, and so on until the first side of the tape was full of repeats of 'Starstrike'.

This is taking ages,' he muttered.

'Could you do one side of each tape, then?' I asked.

'OK.'

He filled one side of the second tape and approximately half of a side on the third before his growing restiveness overcame him.

'Look, Jonathan, that's enough. It's taken nearer an hour than ten minutes.'

'You're a pal.'

'Don't you worry, I'll hit you one of these days for my games duty.'

I picked up the cassettes and nodded agreement. Getting someone else to do games duty wasn't only the accepted way of wangling Wednesday afternoons off, it was also the coin in which favours were paid for.

'Thanks a lot,' I said.

'Any time.'

He began putting the computer to bed and I took the cassettes out to my car to pack them in a padded envelope and send them to Cambridge, with each filled side marked 'Play this side first.'

Since there was a Parents' Evening that day, I went for a pork pie with some beer in a pub, corrected books in the common-room, and from eight to ten, along with nearly the whole complement of staff (as these occasions involved a three-line whip) reassured the parents of all the fourth forms that their little horrors were doing splendidly. The parents of Paul apple-on-the-head Arcady asked if he would make a research scientist. 'His wit and style will take him far,' I said noncommittally, and they said 'He enjoys your lessons', which was a nice change from the next parent I talked to who announced belligerently, 'My lad's wasting his time in your class.'

Placate, agree, suggest, smile: above all, show concern. I supposed those evenings were a Good Thing, but after a long day's teaching they were exhausting. I drove home intending to flop straight into bed but when I opened the front door I found the telephone on the boil.

'Where have you been?' Sarah said, sounding cross.

'Parents' meeting.'

'I've been ringing and ringing. Yesterday too.'

'Sorry.'

With annoyance unmollified she said, 'Did you remember to water my house plants?'

Hell, I thought. 'No, I didn't.'

'It's so careless.'

'Yes. Well, I'm sorry.'

'Do them now. Don't leave it.'

I said dutifully, 'How's Donna.'

'Depressed.' The single word was curt and dismissive. 'Try not to forget,' she said acidly,'the croton in the spare bedroom.'

I put the receiver down thinking that I positively didn't want her back. It was an uncomfortable, miserable, thought. I'd loved her once so much. I'd have died for her, literally. I thought purposefully for the first time about divorce and in the thinking found neither regret not guilt, but relief.

At eight in the morning when I was juggling coffee and toast the telephone rang again, and this time it was the police. A London accent, very polite.

'You rang with a theory, sir, about Christopher Norwood.'

'It's not exactly a theory. It's… at the least… a coincidence.' I had had time to cut my words down to essentials. I said, 'Christopher Norwood commissioned a friend of mine, Peter Keithly, to write some computer programs. Peter Keithly did them, and recorded them on cassette tapes which he gave to me. Last Saturday, two men came to my house, pointed a gun at me, and demanded the tapes. They threatened to shoot my television set and my ankles if I didn't hand them over. Are you, er, interested?'

There was a silence, then the same voice said, 'Wait a moment, sir.' I drank some coffee and waited, and finally a different voice spoke in my ear, a bass voice, slower, less stilted, asking me to repeat what I'd said to the inspector.

'Mm,' he said, when I'd finished. 'I think I'd better see you. How are you placed?'

School, he agreed, was unavoidable. He would come to my house in Twickenham at four-thirty.