Unobtainium 1: Kate on a Hot Tin Roof Page 6

‘I have learned a little Mandarin Chinese and some French, which Mrs Morton says can be of use.’

  ‘It can indeed. Mandarin less so, but for trade. I myself speak Afrikaans and a little Zulu and Gikuyu. Enough to get by in the regions of the Dark Continent I visit.’

  ‘Oh, it must be exciting to travel to such remote locales. You said that you were knowledgeable of the jungles of the Congo. I should love to see a jungle one day.’

  Antonia laughed. ‘I believe you might, and I have no doubt you would brave the dangers there with the ease you have shown in braving the dangers of the English drawing room. Trust me when I say that the latter is a far more treacherous place, though less likely to result in physical injury.’

  ‘Believe me, Antonia, when I say that I can well understand your words to be true. I fear we must return. I must spend my afternoon in a different kind of light.’

  ‘Time for the reactor?’

  ‘Indeed, though I admit the solitude is not usually disagreeable. Today I have someone to converse with which makes it more so.’

  ~~~

  ‘The first occurrence was on the eighteenth of February,’ Charles said, ‘and the second began on April tenth. Mrs Morton noted them in her diary, for the first was unusual and the second cause for concern.’

  ‘And you’re sure of the dates?’ Antonia asked.

  ‘When I wish to remember something, I do, Mrs Wooster.’

  ‘Of course. And Kate said that each episode lasted six days…’

  ‘Which would give a forty-six-day gap between.’

  Antonia smiled. ‘A good memory and an ability with calculation second to none. Forty-six days… Were the pattern repeated, her next episode would begin…’

  ‘Tomorrow. Of course this phase could be transitional. We have insufficient data to say that this will definitely follow that pattern.’

  ‘No, but we should be watchful.’ She pursed her lips musingly. ‘Forty-six days… And the way she describes her mood. This reminds me of something and my lack of recollection taxes my patience. Did your grandfather have many books on animal biology?’

  ‘That was not an area with which he was particularly concerned, though there may be a few. He read voraciously.’

  The door of the little drawing room in which they sat opened and Lilian walked in. ‘If either of you stand,’ she said, ‘I shall be most cross.’ And then she made her way to one of the chairs which was still in the sun.

  Far from being in the flush of youth, Lilian Barstow-Hall was nevertheless a strong woman who still carried with her some of the beauty which had graced her features when she had married Hunter Hall. Her hair was white now where once it had been a rich gold and her blue eyes were greyer but still had a sharp intelligence about them. Her figure had gone a little over the years and her waist could no longer handle the waspish form it had accepted before, but she was still slim and quite fit. She had loved walking in the hills when she was younger, and still did though her walks had had to be shortened. She hated formality as much, if not more, than Antonia did and tolerated it only when it was absolutely required.

  ‘Lilian,’ Antonia said, bowing her head.

  ‘What brings you down from your roost, Lilian?’ Charles asked. Calling her ‘grandmother’ had been known to leave bruises.

  ‘I saw Kate going out to the reactor building an hour ago. She will return shortly and I wish to spend time with the people I like before I have to put up with the conversation at dinner.’

  Antonia suppressed a smirk with some difficulty. ‘Perhaps you could be of assistance. Do you know whether your husband had any books on zoology?’

  ‘Try the small library on the top floor. Not an area he studied extensively, more of a rocks man, but he had a few books on animals. They’d have been kept in with the other random purchases. The man never could resist a book.’

  The door opened once more and Kate came in. She saw Lilian sitting by the window, paused, and then bobbed a polite curtsey. Lilian’s eyes narrowed and Kate grinned brightly at her. ‘Good afternoon, Lilian. It is a pleasure to see you down from your rooms.’

  ‘Impertinent girl. Come here and give me a kiss before I think you’ve forgotten everything I taught you.’

  Kate almost skipped across to kiss Lilian’s cheek before sitting down nearby.

  ‘Have you been corrupting my ward, Lilian?’ Charles asked. Lilian was well known for her views on the role of women in society. Indeed, it had been her efforts which had finally allowed women into the Barstow Club and she had been very happy indeed when it had been concluded that the fairer sex were the best operators for the Mechman devices.

  ‘I have not. Kate is a naturally independent young lady and needs no encouragement from me. I have simply been teaching her that formality should be kept for those who deserve and require it, or for when it makes life less bothersome than familiarity. Neither of which applies here. And she delights in testing my patience by showing me deference, which is an adorable feature in and of itself.’ She turned to Kate and asked, ‘Are you well, child?’

  ‘I am, though if I was affected by the radiation it is unlikely to show for several hours.’

  ‘You’ve become something of an expert on that yourself, I see,’ Antonia commented.

  ‘Not an expert, far from it, but Sharles has taught me some small part of the handling of Unobtainium and its uses.’

  ‘I thought, given her circumstances, that it would be wise,’ Charles said.

  ‘And it is an interesting subject though I could work for decades and never scratch the surface of what Sharles knows.’

  ‘Yes, almost certainly,’ Lilian agreed, ‘but then “Sharles” always did have a brain too big for his head. What did Georgina have to say this time?’

  ‘Oh…’ Charles frowned. ‘Have you been swimming in the lake at night, Kate?’

  ‘I… Well, yes, but I wait until everyone else is asleep and only when it is warm.’

  ‘Georgina has apparently seen you, though I cannot imagine how. Her rooms don’t overlook the lake.’

  Lilian gave a throaty chuckle. ‘They don’t, but Gall’s do.’

  ‘The footman?’

  ‘Handsome young man, don’t you think? Georgina certainly does.’

  ‘Lilian!’ Antonia said and then shrugged. ‘Not that I’m entirely surprised, but still.’

  ‘I merely offer an explanation for her ability to see through walls. You keep swimming, Kate. If Georgina objects, I’ll have a word with her.’ She grinned a little maliciously. ‘It won’t be a polite word.’

  1st June.

  The fresh air of the morning filled Kate’s lungs as she marched out into the hills, calming her thoughts and stilling the heat within her. She turned, looking down on the hall, and felt none of the conflict which had filled her since she had awoken during the night.

  Then her petticoat rubbed against her leg and she winced. Lifting the heavy fabric of her skirt away from her thigh helped, but it would be days before the stupid burn healed properly. She had woken in the night with the smarting pain of the damaged skin against her sheets and after that sleeping had been almost impossible. She had decided to go out as soon as the sun showed itself, but now that was proving a problem and she really needed to be away from the hall.

  Lifting the front of her skirt high, she turned and walked off into the wilderness, where there were no people to disturb her calm.

  ~~~

  ‘Dalton, have you seen Miss Felix?’ Charles asked when there was no sign of the girl at breakfast.

  Dalton was an older man who fitted the role of butler well. Alexander had persuaded him away from some Edinburgh family and it had been one of the elder Barstow-Hall’s best decisions. Dalton ran a tight ship and he missed nothing that went on under the roof he was responsible for. That meant he almost certainly knew of Gall’s nocturnal activities which made Charles wonder why he had not called the man up on it.

  ‘Miss Kate,’ Dalton replied in a voice which had had every o
unce of Scottish accent eradicated from it, ‘left the hall not long after sunrise, sir, dressed in her walking attire.’ He always used her first name because she had insisted that she was not of sufficient rank to be treated as a lady, and Dalton was of sufficient breeding that he could not treat her any other way. So she was always ‘Miss Kate’ because if he slipped into using ‘Miss Felix’ he would never stop. ‘She appeared somewhat distracted. Disquieted, one might say.’

  Charles glanced at Antonia. This was the forty-seventh day and Kate was out in the hills again. ‘Did you see which way she went, Dalton?’ Antonia asked.

  ‘North and east, Mrs Wooster. I might add that I believe I detected a slight limp in her stride, favouring her left leg.’

  ‘I’ll get my medical bag before we go,’ Charles said, frowning.

  ‘I believe it would be best if I were to go alone, Doctor Barstow-Hall,’ Antonia said. ‘I believe I have some idea what has been troubling your young charge and your presence will merely exacerbate matters.’

  Charles’s frown deepened. ‘You’re sure, Mrs Wooster?’

  ‘I am quite sure, Doctor, though I need to speak with Kate to be certain.’

  ~~~

  Kate had stopped in the most secluded spot she knew, in the lee of a rock outcrop where the wind, not terribly cold at this time of year but still not pleasant, was abated. She knew people had looked for her before and never found her in the small depression. It was difficult to see into from any of the surrounding land and someone would have had to practically fall over it to discover her there.

  Antonia Wooster, however, was skilled at tracking wild animals through dense jungle or across open plains. Following a woman in skirts was not such a difficult task, so she found Kate, sitting in the sun with her skirt pulled up into her lap, without too much difficulty.

  ‘Oh!’ Kate squeaked, rushing to cover her legs.

  ‘You’ll keep that thigh where I can see it, young lady,’ Antonia ordered sharply. ‘When we heard you were favouring one of your legs, we assumed that you had received a burn from the reactor. I brought a balm to ease it.’

  Kate bit her lip but pulled her skirt back up to show the red, flaking skin on the inside of her left thigh. ‘We?’

  Antonia busied herself with squatting beside her patient and taking a jar from her satchel. ‘Charles and I. I am the better tracker and was more likely to discover your whereabouts so I came alone.’

  ‘That’s… good. I don’t wish Charles to see me like this.’

  ‘You don’t merely mean with your skirts around your waist, because we both know he’s seen you in less.’

  ‘That feeling is back. The restlessness.’

  ‘Yes, we assumed that was the case.’

  ‘You knew?!’

  ‘We suspected. Hold still, this may sting a little at first.’ Antonia began smoothing a thick, translucent gel onto Kate’s wound and the girl’s breath came as a sharp gasp. ‘It was forty-six days between your first two episodes, and this is the forty-seventh since your last one. Since it has now begun, we can assume a relatively constant pattern. Until it did we could not be certain.’

  ‘I’m going to be like this every forty-six days?’

  ‘It appears so, but now that you are, how do you feel? Describe the sensations to me?’

  Kate paused; the cooling effect of the gel was starting to ease the pain, numbing the skin, and she could focus more on her other senses. ‘I feel hot, flushed. And I want something, but I’m not sure what. Have you ever had an itch you can’t scratch and it drives you mad?’

  ‘I believe I am acquainted with the sensation. Tell me, does this itch tend to concentrate in your lower stomach?’

  Kate’s cheeks flushed. ‘It… is somewhere in that region that I feel it.’

  ‘A little lower, perhaps?’

  ‘Somewhat lower, yes.’

  Antonia nodded. ‘I know what is afflicting you, Kate, though how we are to explain it to your guardian I do not know.’

  ~~~

  ‘Are you familiar with the term “oestrus,” Charles?’ Antonia asked. She had decided to fall back on the language that her friend was most likely to comprehend, the scientific one.

  ‘Uh… from the Latin, a frenzy, or a gadfly. Originally from Greek, I believe.’

  ‘Are you familiar with the modern usage?’ She could tell from the way his cheeks were colouring that he was.

  ‘A phase in the menstrual cycle of many mammals, though none of the apes appear to exhibit it, nor do humans. The female of the species is receptive to mating at these times. It is vulgarly referred to as “in heat.”’

  ‘Indeed. Apparently, Kate is subject to these vagaries of biology. I took the liberty of consulting a colleague in the zoological gardens in London when I could not discover the information in your grandfather’s books. The leopard has a cycle which follows a forty-six-day pause and then six or seven days of oestrus.’

  Charles’s face darkened. ‘Part of her altered inheritance rearing its head. The cessation of her growth should have warned me that something like this was likely. I confess I had not considered something as divergent as this, but I should have realised that she had become a young woman rather than a girl.’

  ‘Your self-recrimination is as misdirected as it is expected, my dear Charles. Kate’s biology is entirely new, untrodden territory. There is no map to follow and we must chart our course by being watchful and adapting to circumstances as they present themselves.’

  ‘Practical as ever, Mrs Wooster. What of Kate? What can be done to ease her pain?’

  ‘She has confined herself to her room for now. I believe I may have a solution, but I believe you will require some persuasion to see the benefits.’

  Charles’s eyes narrowed. ‘Precisely what are you proposing, Mrs Wooster?’

  ~~~

  ‘Miss Felix excuses herself,’ Charles said as he sat down to dinner. ‘She is discommoded and will not be able to join us this evening.’

  ‘She’s acting funny again,’ Alicia sing-songed. Her father glowered at her from the end of the table while her mother gave a slight smile.

  ‘A lady,’ Lilian said, ‘does not find fault in others, and should she do so, she remains silent about it.’ Alicia shrank under the old woman’s icy glare.

  ‘If you must know,’ Charles said, ‘she received burns from the reactor yesterday. Her skin is sensitive and she does not wish to inconvenience us with her discomfort.’ Alicia shrank further.

  ‘This seems a time to make mention of my own news,’ Antonia said, before Alicia could dig a deeper hole for herself. ‘I am required to return to London early regarding a business matter. I am having to deal personally with so many matters Mister Wooster would have managed these days. It is my belief that Miss Felix would benefit from a change of scenery, and I propose to have her travel with me. We will leave early tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, we will be most sorry to see you leave,’ Georgina said, just a little too eagerly.

  ‘Yes we will,’ Lilian said. ‘Nothing serious, I hope?’

  ‘Entirely mundane, but urgent. I have but a few days to secure the matter and it will take most of two to make the return journey.’

  ‘What of Miss Felix’s radiation treatment?’ Alexander asked.

  Charles was actually impressed by the show of concern. ‘I have called to make arrangements. The Royal Society has a small, experimental reactor which, under the circumstances, they are allowing access to. It is both more convenient and less dangerous than the Greenwich reactor.’

  ‘And she will lodge with me,’ Antonia added. ‘Once my business is concluded, I will be free to show her more of London. She has had a most meagre experience of that great city in her past life there, and I believe she should see more.’

  Alicia gave a sigh. ‘I should like to see that myself.’

  ‘When you are eighteen and can comport yourself properly,’ her father stated, ‘and not before.’

  Great Northern Railway Line
, 2nd June.

  Kate lay on the top bunk of the sleeping compartment watching as Antonia finished undressing. She had made suggestions that she should assist her benefactor given their natural social positions and Antonia had told her not to be a silly hen. Aside from anything else, Antonia was going to be sure that the skin balm was applied to Kate’s thigh, which was markedly less inflamed now, before retiring.

  Antonia was, Kate thought, a fine figure of a woman, but more in the classic English mould than her own sleek form. While Kate’s hips had widened in the last few months, they were still quite narrow; Antonia’s were wider though by no means excessively so. Her narrow waist and full bust added to the hourglass shape. She lacked muscle, but what she had was firm and she was clearly very fit.

  ‘You sleep unclad?’ Kate asked as Antonia, having folded her dress carefully, slipped onto the bottom bunk without first putting on a nightgown.

  ‘A habit, a bad one I might add, which I picked up in Africa. The climate is intemperate and I found sleeping in anything uncomfortably warm. Now I find nightclothes keep me awake no matter where I am. A subtle warning on the inadvisability of allowing your standards to slip, Kate.’

  Kate gave a giggle and lay back, wondering whether doing the same might seem imprudent; the cotton gown she was wearing was already beginning to rub a little on her burn. But then she would need to sleep over the sheets as well and it was not that warm a night.

  ‘Do you really think you can cure me of this malady?’ she asked.

  ‘Cure you, no. There is nothing to cure. Society refuses to accept the fact, but all women have the problem you are exhibiting. You simply have it in an intensified form.’

  ‘You’ve felt like this?!’

  ‘On more than one occasion, but I had David who was always more than willing to ease my burden. We must find another outlet for your… passions lest, I fear, the pressure will push you into one of your atavistic episodes over time.’

  ‘I would be grateful if that could be avoided. It is a disconcerting feeling, as though the world is locked away from me. I must force myself to make understandable sentences, and I lose all function of manners and understanding of propriety. The episodes have become markedly less frequent since I have been studying with Master Sun, but I fear that you are correct in your assertion, for I feel myself on the edge of one almost all the time during these phases of… distraction.’