Doctor Who_ Atom Bomb Blues - Andrew Cartmel [10]
Oppenheimer’s. So the Doctor hadn’t been lying about that either.
But then, Oppenheimer had been involved with some very dubious characters over the years.
Butcher shaved and changed into his dress uniform before taking the car to the Fuller Lodge and dropping off the trunks. From there he drove up Bathtub Row to the Oppenheimers’ party.
18
Chapter Two
At the Party
By the time the Doctor and Ace joined the party it was in full swing.
The Oppenheimers’ small wooden house was invitingly rough hewn and rustic, decorated with Indian artefacts and handicrafts. The doors and windows were all open and the warm breeze from the mesa blew through, thankfully dispersing the incredible toxic miasma of cigarette smoke that greeted Ace, causing her eyes to water. She repressed the urge to cough as she followed the Doctor inside.
The sitting room had whitewashed walls and dark wood spanning the high, beamed ceiling. It was jammed with people, most of them a good decade or two older than Ace and all of them, men and women, smoking like there was no tomorrow. A group of men stood around leaning on the stone mantelpiece of the big open fireplace (thankfully with no logs burning on this hot summer evening), arguing about something. They had glasses in their hands and looked fairly drunk, with flushed red faces.
All the people were drinking from martini glasses and the woman in the red-and-white print dress she’d glimpsed earlier was circulating with a brimming pitcher, making sure they all remained well topped-up.
They all looked like normal people. But from what the Doctor had said they were getting ready to build a bomb that would be used to incinerate thousands of Japanese men, women, children and babies. Ace had seen a documentary about Hiroshima once at school and she hadn’t been able to eat kebabs for nearly a year afterwards.
Everybody looked at her and the Doctor as they came into the room. The place didn’t exactly fall silent, because there was still the record player in the corner, a genuine old antique blasting out some kind of depressing classical garbage. But the volume of conversation definitely dropped. Everybody seemed to be looking at them. The Doctor smiled cheerily and swept off his Panama hat. ‘Good evening,’ he said brightly. There was a ragged chorus of response from the party guests, the sort of thing you got when people wanted to be polite but weren’t really certain who you were.
A man hurried across the room, grinning, to seize the Doctor’s hand and shake it. The man had a lopsided narrow face, a long nose, a wide sensual 19
mouth, dark brows and a dark uneven hank of hair. His face was flushed and his eyes bright with drink. He was standing so close to Ace as he pumped the Doctor’s hands that she could smell the cigarette smoke, sweat and cologne emanating from his tweed jacket. Who could wear a tweed jacket in weather this hot? Mind you, thought Ace, she couldn’t point a finger at anyone.
She still had her raincoat tightly belted shut. And with a bit of luck it would stay that way all evening. . .
Ace realised that the Doctor was talking to her. ‘This is the man you’ve heard so much about,’ he said. ‘Our host Robert Oppenheimer.’
‘Call me Oppy,’ said the man, taking Ace’s hand and shaking it. His grip was limp and sweaty and he dropped her hand almost immediately, turning back to the Doctor. ‘Let me introduce you to the boys,’ he said, leading the Doctor across the room with a hand over his shoulders. The Doctor glanced back at Ace, smiling and shrugging helplessly.
Ace was left standing alone in the middle of this smoky room full of drunken strangers. For a moment she felt like crying. The music was blaring and the voices of the packed room were a blur of strident joviality. Ace considered making a run for it. But then she saw the woman in the red-and-white dress making a beeline for her. Ace looked at the door, checking her escape route, but it was too late. The woman joined her.
‘Let me take your coat,’ she said. It was the moment that Ace had been dreading. She forced