The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year

26

It was six thirty in the morning. Hoar frost had decorated the trees and shrubs overnight, giving an ethereal glow to the Space Centre car park as Mrs Hordern approached. It was obvious to her by the positions of the randomly parked cars that something big had happened. Normally, each member of staff parked strictly in their designated places. In the past, there had been fist fights over trivial infringements of the Conditions of Use (which were displayed behind glass in a slender cabinet on top of a wooden stake in a far corner of the car park).

Mrs Hordern met Wayne Tonkin coming out of the Research Block as she was going in.

What’s up?’ she asked, nodding towards the car park.

Wayne said, ‘I hope you’ve not booked yer ‘olidays, Mrs Hordern, cos we’re all being burned to a crisp next week.’

What time?’

‘High noon,’ he said, making an effort to pronounce the aitch.

‘So, I needn’t bother buying a Christmas tree then?’ She gave a little laugh, expecting Wayne to join in.

‘No,’ said Wayne.

When Mrs Hordern went inside, she saw that the staff had come straight from their beds.

Leather Trousers was in a pair of pale-blue silk pyjamas. For once, he did not give her his Hollywood smile.

What’s goin’ on?’ she asked.

‘Nothing, nothing at all,’ he replied. ‘The earth is still turning.’

Mrs Hordern went into the staff cloakroom to hang her coat and change out of her boots into the Crocs she wore at work. She heard sobbing coming from a lavatory cubicle. She knew it was Titania because Dr Clever Clogs often went to the cloakroom to cry. Mrs Hordern knocked on the lavatory door and asked Titania if she could help in any way.

She was rebuffed when the door opened and Titania shouted, ‘I think not! Do you understand the Standard Model of particle physics and its place in the space-time continuum, Mrs Hordern?’

The cleaner admitted that she did not.

Well, butt out then! My problem is entirely related to my research, which I will now never complete. I’ve given my life to those particles!’

As Mrs Hordern walked the corridor, pushing the floor-washing machine in front of her, she thought, ‘Things are not right.’

When she passed the door labelled ‘Near-Earth Objects’, Brian Beaver burst out and shouted, ‘For Christ’s sake, turn that fucking machine off! We’re trying to think in here!’

Mrs Hordern said, ‘That may be so, but this floor’s not going to clean itself, is it? No need to swear. I won’t have it at home, and I’m not having it here!’

Brian retreated to his desk, where banks of computers were displaying rapidly scrolling numbers and a flashing red trajectory that intersected with a large spherical object. The room was crowded with people silently watching the screens. Several of his colleagues jostled closer and peered nervously over his shoulder as his fingers flew across the keyboard.

Leather Trousers said, ‘It might be good if you checked your Australian data again, Dr Beaver, before the eyes of the world are upon us. It’s kinda important that we get this right.’

Brian said, ‘I’m almost certain. But the computer models don’t all agree.’

‘Almost!’ bellowed Leather Trousers. ‘Do we wake the Prime Minister, the Secretary General of the United Nations and the President of the United States and tell them that we’re almost certain that the earth is fucked?’

Brian explained pedantically, ‘You don’t wake the President. The call will go to the NASA Political Liaison officer in Washington.’ Then he continued weakly, ‘It could be that the metadata from the star maps is corrupted. We’ve always known that our database integration was potentially suspect. And I trusted Dr Abbot’s interpolation techniques -’

Leather Trousers shouted, ‘And where is she when we need her? On fucking maternity leave up her precious Welsh mountain, suckling that moon-faced dribbler, with no landline, no mobile signal, and the most high-tech thing she’s got in that mould-filled hovel she calls a cottage is a fucking Dualit toaster! Get hold of the leek-muncher!’

Several hours later, when Mrs Hordern passed the office again with the electric polishing machine, she looked in warily through the half-open door and saw a small crowd of people laughing and shaking hands. The scene reminded her of Skippy, the television kangaroo, when he and his human friends had overcome their difficulties at the end of each episode.

Brian was sitting apart, with his hands linked together, staring down at the floor.

As Mrs Hordern left work, she passed Wayne Tonkin. He was polishing his new sit-on lawnmower.

He stopped and said, ‘So, the world ain’t finishin’ next week. Dickhead Beaver got his sums wrong. That asteroid’s gonna miss us by twenty-seven million miles.’

‘I was sort of looking forward to there being no Christmas,’ said Mrs Hordern. ‘It’s such hard work. No bugger lifts a finger in my house, ‘part from me.’

Wayne rolled his eyes and turned the lawnmower engine on. He was longing to use it, but the bastard weather wouldn’t let him for a few months yet.