Doctor Who_ Atom Bomb Blues - Andrew Cartmel [12]
Back in the living room she collected the pitcher she had been wielding earlier and used it to fill Ace’s glass. She picked up her own glass and held it up to Ace. ‘Bottoms up,’ she said, clinking glasses. Ace took a sip. She had never been big on gin, especially warm gin, but the honey and lime mixture made it quite palatable. Kitty winked at her and chinked glasses again.
Ace sipped again. With the third sip she felt her lips go numb and thereafter the music and voices of the party seemed to be buzzing away pleasantly like a fly beyond a sheet of glass. Kitty introduced her to a lot of people whose names Ace promptly forgot, or at least promptly forgot to whom they were attached, though a lot of them sounded strangely familiar. Names like Fermi and Feynman and Fuchs. At one point the fat oriental-looking man in the beret staggered past and lurched into her, almost spilling her drink. Kitty stared daggers at him as he retreated.
‘Who is he?’ said Ace.
‘Cosmic Ray.’
‘Cosmic who?’
‘Ray Morita. The big clown. Look at those ridiculous shirts he wears. Word is he has some of the local Indian craftswomen run them up for him. They must be knocked out on some kind of Indian bug juice to come up with those designs.’
‘I think they’re quite nice,’ said Ace. ‘Jazzy.’
‘Oh for Christ’s sake don’t mention the word jazz anywhere in his hearing.’
After a second and third round of martinis, and three bowls of the utterly delicious chilli (which did surprisingly little to ameliorate the effects of the booze), Ace found herself experiencing alternating drunken and lucid intervals. In one lucid interval she found herself in a corner decorated with wall hangings, having a heart-to-heart with Kitty about her relationship with the Doctor. Kitty Oppenheimer was prying in a salacious, gossipy, good-natured way. ‘I understand,’ she said, her eyes gleaming wickedly. ‘He’s like a father to you.’
‘No. More like a combination of best friend, teacher and comrade in arms,’
said Ace. She enunciated each syllable with great care and when she finished speaking reached up what seemed a terribly long way, to touch the side of 22
her own numb mouth and make sure there wasn’t a copious quantity of drool flowing out of it.
‘Well,’ said Kitty sighing, evidently disappointed by the lack of scandal, ‘I can’t point a finger. I was married three times before I got to Oppy.’
‘Three times?’ Ace’s sluggish mind got to grips with the arithmetic. ‘He’s your fourth husband?’
‘Yes,’ said Kitty, grinning sardonically. ‘I can see what they said about your mathematical gifts is true. Anyway, I saved him from that Tatlock bitch.’ A note of genuine venom, as opposed to mere conversational malice, surfaced in Kitty’s voice. ‘She nearly ruined Oppy, dragging him down with those types she used to cavort with.’ She looked at Ace, her eyes cold, then looked past her. ‘That Tatlock woman is one reason we’ve got all these cloak-and-dagger-types skulking around here.’ She nodded at a handsome-looking man in uniform who was standing nearby with his back towards them. He shifted to let a drunken party guest stumble past him and Ace was shocked to see that the man in uniform was Major Butcher.
‘You know what he did?’ said Ace, feeling drunken outrage well up in her.
Kitty smiled at her.
‘Who?’
‘Major Bulldog Butcher.’
‘Bulldog? I like it. What did he do, darling?’
‘He pretended to be our driver. When he picked us up. So he could eavesdrop on us. Eavesdrop. That is a word isn’t it?’
‘It certainly is. But I shouldn’t be too upset, dear. You might as well get used to it. I imagine the Major is eavesdropping on us right now.’
‘Is he?’ said Ace. ‘Then he’s a –’
But before Ace could vocalise the terse Anglo Saxon epithet that sprang to mind to characterise the Major, a shadow loomed over them. It was the shadow of the fat drunken oriental man Ace had noticed earlier. He was even more drunk now, swaying noticeably. ‘Hello ladies,