The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year

23

It was the day before Guy Fawkes Night, but some premature fireworks were being let off as Brian and Titania joined a hastily convened staff meeting at the National Space Centre.

Titania’s husband, Guy Noble, known as ‘Gorilla’ to his friends, had written to Professor Brady complaining that his wife was having ‘a torrid sexual affair at work with that buffoon Dr Brian Beaver’. Titania had confessed to having sex in the Clean Room, which housed the next generation of moon probe. It was called Walkers on the Moon, after their main sponsor, a local crisp manufacturer.

All the staff were in the meeting, including the cleaners, the maintenance crew and the groundsman. It was part of Professor Brady’s (aka Leather Trousers) management philosophy that his team be ‘inclusive’. They were seated in the planetarium, which added an epic universal edge to their discussion.

Leather Trousers said, ‘I don’t care who you shag, Dr Beaver. The issue is that you chose to do it in the Clean Room. You could have polluted the atmosphere, corrupted the instrumentation and jeopardised the whole project. And ultimately defiled the surface of the moon.’

Brian asked defiantly, ‘Well, have we?’

Leather Trousers admitted, ‘No, the readings are clean. But it has taken thirty-six man and woman hours to verify – time we do not have. We are already behind schedule.’

Titania, who was hiding behind a long fringe of red hair, put her hand up and said, ‘Can I just say, in my own defence, that the sex was indeed “torrid”? But the danger was minimised – we were both wearing steriles, and it was all over in ninety seconds.’

Their colleagues laughed and looked at Brian.

Various veins throbbed in his head and neck.

He was quick to retaliate. ‘It was nothing but a quick leg-over.’ He looked around, hoping the company would find this amusing.

There was a sharp intake of breath, and one of the cleaners squeezed Titania’s hand.

Brian continued, not realising that he had volunteered to dig his own grave, “‘Turgid” would better describe our affair these days.’

One of the clerical staff rushed towards the door with a handkerchief pressed to her face.

Leather Trousers said, ‘C’mon, guys, let’s cool it, we’re all professionals, yeah? Even the cleaners, right?’ He smiled at the group of cleaners to show that he valued them and their work.

Titania sobbed. ‘Sex with the Gorilla went on a bit, but once he’d stumbled over my clitoris we both had good times.’

There was an appalled silence, and the cleaner withdrew her hand from Titania’s.

A technician whispered to his neighbour, ‘I like to experiment, but I draw the line at bestiality. That sounds bloody dangerous to me.’

Titania was surprised by Brian’s obvious and public contempt for her. She arranged her fringe so that it hid the lines on her forehead, and rummaged through her handbag for the lipstick she thought took ten years off her face.

She said, in a voice that threatened to crack, ‘Anyway, Brian, our lovemaking is quite often torrid.’ Turning to the assembled staff, she confessed, ‘Only last week he was tickling my nipples with his wife’s hairbrush, and shouting that I was a dirty whore, and he was going to punish me by tying me to the large telescope and have Professor Brady take me from the rear.’

Brian jumped up and shouted, ‘Not from the rear! I did not say the rear!’

Wayne Tonkin, the groundsman, laughed out loud.

Professor Brady said angrily, ‘Listen, Beaver, do not include me in your sicko fantasies!’

Titania looked around the meeting and said, ‘He’s used you all at some time.’

Some of Brian’s colleagues were repulsed by this revelation, but most were secretly pleased.

Professor Brady was in a dilemma. Could he suspend or otherwise discipline Dr Beaver for using his colleagues as sexual stimulants? Did sexual fantasies come under the heading of ‘sexual harassment in the workplace’? Was there anything in their contracts that implied they had been abused by Beaver’s thoughts?

Mrs Hordern straightened her overall and said, ‘It’s his poor wife I feel sorry for. I’ll bet she’s looking everywhere for that hairbrush.’

Titania said, ‘Don’t waste your time feeling sorry for Eva Beaver, Mrs Hordern, she’s a mere lump in the bed. She never gets up! Brian has to cook his own dinner every night.’

Leather Trousers intervened. ‘Look, guys, this is not helping us to move forward. Our minds should be focused on the upcoming launch of Walkers on the Moon.’

Wayne Tonkin said, ‘And ‘ow many billions of fuckin’ pounds are you spendin’ on another cack-’anded attempt to ‘it the fuckin’ moon, eh? Ain’t you ‘eard? The Yanks already done it in 1 969. And in the meantime I ‘ave to try and cut the bleedin’ grass with a lawnmower what don’t mow!’

Leather Trousers sometimes regretted his inclusive policy. This was one such time.

The flight operations engineers – a bolshie, troublesome group – took the opportunity to continue an earlier technical discussion about velocity. Phrases like ‘regressive elliptical orbit’ and ‘delta-v budget’ were hurled across the room.

Leather Trousers tried to shout over them, saying, ‘C’mon guys!’

But no voice was louder or more vociferous than that of Wayne Tonkin, who was a Barry White tribute singer in his local pub, the Dog and Compass. His voice rattled the artificial heavens above their heads.

“Ands up who wants a new, state-of-the-art, sit-on lawnmower?’

The resolution was carried almost unanimously.

Titania was the first to leave, together with an escort of sympathetic female staff. Brian was left on his own in the room.

He was afraid he would lose his job. It had been rumoured that there were to be involuntary redundancies, and he was fifty-five, a dangerous age in a young man’s game. Holes were beginning to show in Brian’s knowledge. He felt that the bandwagon was rolling away from him and that, however fast he ran now, he would never be able to catch up.