Squelch Read online

  She watched as he drove off, then went back into the house to tidy things up a little ready for Lesley.

  Bernie was right in saying that they had to think of the life cycle of these insects, she decided as she steered the vacuum cleaner around the lounge carpet. As caterpillars the dangers were only too obvious. They spent day and night gorging themselves until they literally burst out of their skins. But then came the metamorphosis. After a couple of weeks as chrysalids they emerged in all their beauty as butterflies or moths, and it was in this final stage that they were really most dangerous, for it was now that they sought out a suitable food plant on which to lay their eggs. It needed only a couple of generations – a single summer in fact if the weather was warm – to increase the population of these creatures many times over.

  No one believed it would happen, that was the problem. Not even Bernie who took the caterpillars seriously enough in every other way, but refused to accept that the attacks were more than isolated incidents. ‘It’s been a freak spring,’ he always insisted when she brought the subject up. ‘Wait till the weather changes. They’re forecasting a cold summer, so you won’t be seeing many caterpillars then.’

  But he was wrong, she could swear to it.

  Lesley’s homecoming was a success. Her loud, joyful laugh rang through the house from the moment she set foot inside the front door. The children plied her with their eager questions and demands, competing with each other to be heard, until at last she collapsed laughing into a chair and kissed each of them in turn. Bernie looked on, beaming with a quiet, self-confident air of happiness that his family was complete again.

  Ginny felt she was very much the outsider. With Phuong’s help she finished setting the large kitchen table and served the meal. It wasn’t much – cold ham and pickles with mashed potatoes and a bit of salad – but she’d bought a variety of scones and cakes from the village baker to follow.

  ‘I’ve found a caterpillar on my lettuce!’ Caroline announced in a highly satisfied tone of voice. ‘Ooh, it’s wiggling about on the leaf. Bet you haven’t got one, Frankie.’

  The reaction was electric. Lesley’s chair crashed down behind her as she stood up despite her bandaged foot, but Bernie was quicker. He grabbed the plate away from her while Ginny lifted her off her seat and retreated to the far side of the room.

  ‘It’s a tiny one,’ Bernie said with an unmistakable note of relief in his voice. ‘And it’s brown, not green.’

  ‘Not one of ours then.’ To reassure the children, Ginny tried to speak lightly, but the shock still showed on their faces. Caroline was crying quietly to herself. ‘Come on, let’s all sit down again! I’ve got some jelly over here. Anybody want jelly?’

  Lesley let out one of her laughs and said she was sure they would all prefer jelly after that, but it was obvious she was shaken. Bernie put an arm around her and kissed her cheek. Ten minutes later the incident might never have happened.

  The longer she stayed, the harder Ginny found it to make her excuses and slip away. It was eight o’clock before she stood up and said she had quite a bit to do in preparation for her trip to London the next day. Bernie made no further attempt to persuade her to stay. Lesley even smiled gratefully, obviously wanting to be alone with her family on her first night back from hospital.

  They had been deceiving themselves, she and Bernie – that much was obvious, she realised bitterly as she drove back to her dark, lonely cottage. Conned themselves into imagining he was free, when clearly he was not. She should have seen that from the beginning: she had seen it, but ignored it. And where did that leave her?

  She parked the car on its usual spot and went inside. Instinctively she checked the room for caterpillars, even lifting her potted plants’ leaves with a Chinese chopstick just to make sure. In the middle of her round table to her surprise was a large vase of the most exquisite tulips she had ever seen. Two dozen of them at least, with elegantly striped petals in mauve, black and ochre.

  With them was a fold of paper bearing a message tapped out, she suspected, on her own typewriter. It read simply, Tried to get red roses but the shop hadn’t any.

  It would have to stop, she told herself firmly.

  Now – before it went too far.

  The last thing she wanted was to destroy Lesley’s happiness. She would rather suffer herself than risk doing that. Somehow she’d have to make Bernie understand that the flirtation was over. That’s all it had been really: a mild flirtation. Under any other circumstances she would not even have let it get that far.

  She allowed herself to read his note once more before crumpling it up and throwing it away. Then she moved the tulips to the sideboard, rearranging them a little, and sat down to do some sensible work. Two newspapers had so far reported the caterpillar attacks, the local weekly which carried an item headed DOCTOR’S WIFE BITTEN and The Times which mentioned the deaths at the Bull in a single column inch. There would be more, she was convinced. She cut them out and pasted them on to separate sheets of A4.

  Her TV proposal kept her up late into the night. She had already talked over her doubts with Bernie who had said it would be a pity to abandon it after all that effort. Yet it seemed wrong to be devising an entertainment about giant moths after all that had happened. Of course she couldn’t be sure there was any connection between her moths and these caterpillars. Not yet.

  ‘Why worry?’ Bernie had commented cheerfully. ‘Most television is about other people’s misfortunes, isn’t it? That’s why it’s so popular.’

  In the end she decided to follow his advice and at least let the agent see the material. She secured the loose sheets into a neat little folder and dropped it into her briefcase. Before going to bed, she raised her bedroom window and looked out. The countryside was never silent. There was always that faint sighing among the trees, the indistinct movements and muffled calls. No moths, though from this window she had watched them assemble on her first evening.

  But they would return in their own time. She was beginning to understand – and she must explain this to the agent – that it was the insects who held the winning cards, not humankind after all.

  She drove into Lingford and parked at the station in time for the ten o’clock train, the first after the daily commuter rush. Her compartment was full of Lingford University lecturers – so she gathered from their conversation – on their way to lobby their MPs at the House of Commons about the latest round of Government cuts. At first she ignored them and stared out at the passing fields, but soon she grew tired of hearing their soap-box arguments and went into the corridor for a bit of quiet.

  ‘Hello!’

  ‘Oh!’ She was startled, not having noticed the man approach. ‘Oh, it’s you!’

  ‘Lads an’ lasses, remember? You were with Dr Rendell, weren’t you?’

  Now she looked at him closely, she realised this lean-jawed man she’d first encountered at the hotel was not unattractive. He did not have Bernie’s height, nor any of his charm, but that rugged set of his face bespoke the man of action rather than an academic. Fairly muscular too, she judged from the cut of his tropical business suit. That must have cost several hundred pounds.

  ‘Is this your usual train?’

  ‘Heaven forbid!’ he laughed deprecatingly. ‘No, I have to go up to London for a meeting today. And you?’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘My name’s Jeff Pringle, by the way,’ he introduced himself. ‘And you must be Ginny Andrewes. Oh, after that evening at the hotel I made a few enquiries about you.’

  ‘So it seems.’

  ‘Nothing sinister!’ Another laugh: easy and confident. ‘We have a mutual friend in the lovely Dr Jameela Roy. Look, what about a coffee? I think we’ve one or two things to talk about, you and I.’

  ‘Such as?’ she asked coolly. She’d always disliked men who tried to sweep her off her feet at their first meeting.

  ‘Caterpillars.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘I’ll tell you over c
offee. It is important.’

  Ginny retrieved her briefcase from the compartment in which a lively political debate now appeared to be in progress, and followed Jeff Pringle along the swaying corridor towards the buffet car. She tried to remember where she had heard his name before. Not from Bernie, she was sure of that. Nor from Jameela whom she’d only met that once.

  The coffee came in paper cups which they had to fetch themselves from the bar. There was nowhere to sit down, so he suggested going back to his compartment. She agreed, and led the way.

  ‘D’you always travel First Class?’ she asked, choosing a place by the window and dropping her briefcase on to the empty seat beside her.

  ‘When I can.’ He sipped his coffee, pulled a face, and then leaned back comfortably. ‘It was a lucky accident meeting on the train like this. I wanted to get in touch with you, and with anyone else who has experienced these caterpillars. You remember the evening we first met?’

  ‘How can I forget it? She gulped her coffee to avoid his quick glance.

  ‘Well, later that evening I was driving home when I came across an overturned van on the road. The two people inside were dead. Caterpillars all over them.’

  ‘That must be why I know your name,’ she said, nodding. ‘I heard about it, though I didn’t associate it with you. It gets nastier every time.’

  ‘You probably don’t know the full story. I kept most of it to myself because I wanted to check a few things out first.’ Briefly he outlined the sequence of events, describing how the caterpillars had been swarming across that road like a column of driver ants. ‘Then, when I got back into the car I discovered a moth inside with me.’

  ‘A moth?’ She tried to make the question sound casual, but failed. ‘You mean just an ordinary…?’

  ‘A massive thing as big as my two hands put together. You’d expect that sort of moth in the tropics, not here.’

  Ginny questioned him eagerly about the markings on its wings. It had been dark of course, but he’d switched on the interior light so he must have been able to pick out the main features. From what he said it was identical with those she had seen.

  ‘A pity you didn’t catch it. Then we’d really know.’

  ‘Didn’t think. Not then.’ Ruefully, he took another mouthful of coffee. ‘God, this stuff’s awful, isn’t it? Sorry there’s nothing better. Now one other thing may interest you. By the time the police had arrived, those caterpillars had gone. Disappeared without trace, and taken some of their dead with them.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Oh, I watched it happen! A couple of live ones pushed and dragged this dead caterpillar over to the ditch at the side of the road. Just the way ants might behave. You may not believe that, but it’s true.’

  ‘I think I’m ready to believe anything.’ Ginny was shaken by what he’d told her which fitted in so completely with everything else she had learned about these caterpillars. ‘So what can we do about them?’

  He ignored the question.

  ‘I’m a pilot by profession. These days I run a charter flying business – moving freight, providing executive jets, you name it. If it’s to do with flying, I can fix it. That’s the slogan. In practice, work is… well, intermittent.’

  ‘Hard to get,’ she said.

  ‘You’ve put your finger on the right spot. So to boost turnover I run a tidy little sideline in crop spraying. Do the flying myself. Low overheads. Healthy profit margin. See that?’

  With a wave towards the compartment window he indicated an extensive apple orchard stretching over several acres. The trees were still in blossom, like a rich lace veil draped over the branches.

  ‘I’ve been spraying quite a few orchards from the air. Farmers are worried about caterpillars feeding on the young leaves. The same kind: big hairy green ones with a yellow stripe down their bellies. They eat other crops too, but they’ve a special liking for fruit trees, pears as well as apples. The geographical spread is patchy, but increasing. To judge from the bookings, that is.’

  ‘So it’s not only people they attack?’

  ‘Mostly vegetation. People are an exception.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘That’s the question,’ he agreed seriously. ‘Up till now I suspect only very few have become maneaters. That doesn’t mean there won’t be more. The species is obviously new to this country and in the process of adapting to ensure its own survival. I reckon there are already enough in existence to wipe out the population of Lingford if they set their minds to it. One more generation – another six to eight weeks, perhaps – and they could decimate the whole of Greater London.’

  The ticket collector pulled back the sliding door and Ginny welcomed his appearance with relief. Jeff had been doing no more than putting her own fears into words, but it was a shattering experience listening to them confirmed by him.

  ‘I’m sorry it’s my fault this lady’s in here!’ he explained when she proffered her second class ticket. ‘I’ll pay the difference.’

  ‘You will not!’ she snapped at him, annoyed. She fished in her purse for some money. ‘From what you were saying about the state of business, you need it more than I do!’

  ‘Touché!’ he laughed, his eyes never leaving her face. His gaze was so tactile, it felt almost as if his fingertips were wandering over her skin.

  ‘So what do we do about it?’ she asked when the ticket collector had left.

  Bernie had already been in touch with the University of Lingford Department of Agriculture, she explained, though with no positive result yet. In collaboration with the police warning posters were to be issued that weekend. More, too, was known of the bacterial infection which was passed on through contact with the caterpillars, at least insofar as it had been successfully treated.

  ‘Yes, and I have my own contacts in other departments of the University,’ Jeff told her, ‘so between us all we should be getting a fuller picture. What I suggest is that we two meet in a couple of days’ time to draft a preliminary report which we can then take along together to the Chief Constable.’

  ‘Very well. That sounds better than doing nothing.’

  ‘What alternative do you suggest?’

  ‘Television.’

  ‘And risk causing a panic? Let’s try the Chief Constable as a first step, anyway. He will have a direct line to the Home Office.’

  The track had widened to include several different lines running parallel into London and it was now bordered by a patchwork of playing fields and housing estates. Once again in a silent moment she wondered about the morality of suggesting moths as a subject for television entertainment. But then Bernie was right, wasn’t he? There had already been drama series on nuclear war, and the holocaust. No subject was taboo, so why not moths?

  ‘I wish you’d managed to trap that moth,’ she said as the train swung across the network of points approaching the station. ‘We could really do with some living specimens.’

  There should have been a DANGER warning on the office door. Joan, the chain-smoking literary agent whom she’d met only once before in her soap opera days, was a fat bullet-headed woman characterised by folds of excess flesh which she attempted neither to conceal nor reduce. When Ginny went in she was telephoning, gripping the receiver with a bunched-up left shoulder which made her look like the hunchback of Notre-Dame, Charles Laughton version.

  With one hand she riffled through the pages of a contract; with the other she tapped out figures on her electronic calculator. Waving Ginny to a seat, she announced to the poor devil on the far end of the line that she couldn’t agree anything without consulting her client and she’d call him back. She slammed the phone down.

  ‘Sods,’ she announced, fumbling in her handbag for a cigarette. ‘But they’ll not get away with it. Let the buggers sweat for a bit.’

  Ginny nodded, impressed. With this agent she could go right to the top. The big league. Confidently she launched into her spiel about the moths proposal, how the technical problems might be handled
and which star names might be the most suitable to approach.

  After a few minutes the agent interrupted to send her secretary for more cigarettes. What about this tea-time soap opera Ginny used to work on, she wanted to know. For starters, she might be able to land a couple of scripts on that. Had she met the new producer?

  Yes, Ginny had met the new producer, a notorious pillar of the Gay Mafia whose tentacles reached into the farthest corners of the TV industry. On those rare occasions when he bothered to greet the cast he offered friendly nods to the women and kisses all round for the men.

  But she fell in with the suggestion that it might be useful to talk script with him.

  ‘I’ll fix the appointment for you,’ the agent said breezily, scribbling a note. Standing up, she led Ginny to the door. ‘If you leave your folder with the other idea I’ll mull it over. Not that I can promise anything. From what you say, you have rather stacked the cards against yourself.’

  Depressed, Ginny made a beeline for their old pub, hoping for company, but none of the television crowd were in that day. She rang Jack, but he was out. She tried three or four other numbers: people had moved or were tied up. In the end she sat alone over a ham sandwich and a lager, brooding about the irony of having to return cap-in-hand to the very programme she’d been so happy to escape from only a few months earlier.

  Because of the heat, most customers had taken their drinks outside where they stood in huddled groups on the narrow pavement. Christ, there were times she hated London! Best catch an earlier train back, she decided. No point in hanging around.

  She finished her sandwich though it tasted like stale cotton wool, left half the warm lager undrunk and was about to leave when Jack appeared framed in the doorway – the same old sandy-haired Jack in a T-shirt and tatty jeans with his key-ring hooked on to his belt. He spotted her right away.

  ‘Ginny! Oh, that’s great!’ He whirled around to the others following him in – Bill and Margie and Dan. ‘Hey, guess who’s here! It’s Ginny!’