I soon had this new Club going like a bomb and I made the heart of it our meetings. I sensed right away that with this lot it was the meeting that counted. For the same reason I insisted all members were on the telephone; we had to be in contact. It was the contact of our minds that counted. All told I don’t suppose we had more than a dozen members. There was a tight little inner bunch and then a number on the periphery. It wasn’t the size of membership that made this my biggest operation so far, but our potential. For what we were after was the universe. Leave us alone and we might have our members strung out in the galaxies. And some of us thought we already had.
But don’t misunderstand me. We were scientific in our approach. Nothing we regarded as proved. We just didn’t have closed minds, that’s all. Any report of an unidentified flying object being sighted and we took it seriously. We didn’t laugh things off. Some were checked and got through our tests. Others, however much we might want to accept them, might fail on some little point of detail in our test and would have to be dismissed. I had it beautifully worked out. A report of a UFO appeared in the press and was given to one of our members; they telephoned it to me. I got in touch with Plowman, and Plowman and I appointed two agents to go out into the field and check. Sometimes he’d go himself, although he was better on the theory than on the practical. I hardly ever went, just sometimes, to see if the machine was running smoothly. I’m entirely an organization man. What John Plowman tried to do was to place his mind completely at the disposal of anyone or anything trying to get in touch with him; he wanted to be a focus.
He was too. He gave all his spare time to being a focus. Once a week on a Tuesday we all met in his house and his wife gave us cake and tea and we waited for John to give his report. Sometimes there wasn’t much. Sometimes nothing at all, but sometimes he’d say he had a strong feeling that if we went to the coast just outside Dover, or stood on the road leading towards Bath (his feelings always came clothed in precise detail) then we should see something. I didn’t usually go on these expeditions, but sometimes I’d take my girl friend along and we’d go together. I can’t say I ever saw anything but on the other occasions, when I wasn’t with them, the others frequently did. Once they saw four UFOs flying in formation and they dipped in salute over John’s head.
I’d have given a good deal to have seen that, but no. Three of our most dedicated members were present that night: Esther Glasgow, a sweet girl but a little too inward-turning for my taste, Cyrus Calways Read (known as Cy) and old Miss Jones.
If anyone deserved a viewing Miss Jones did. She was going into hospital within the next few days for a serious operation and we all knew she might not come out. She was being very brave about it, though, and had promised to see what soundings the unconscious mind could pick up while under the anaesthetic. If the worst came to the worst and she became disembodied she was going to try to observe and pass on what information she could. She didn’t promise anything. She was a very honest woman, old Miss Jones.
I thought Cy didn’t seem too contented after this last viewing. I would never call Cy a really satisfied person; there was usually a worm or two eating at him.
‘Touches of unfairness here and there,’ he grumbled. We often walked home together. He lived just near my home. He had introduced me to John Plowman. ‘Touch of favouritism, I’d say.’
‘I don’t see that.’
‘I’m not as close to John as I ought to be. I don’t feel the flow between us. Perhaps it’s his wife. I feel she is rather dark.’
‘She dyes it, I think. Touches it up, anyway.’
‘I mean spiritually. You don’t believe really, do you?’ He gave a sharp look at me.
‘I’m an organization man,’ I said, not committing myself. ‘Anyway, what did you mean by favouritism?’
‘Oh, you’ll find out. Goodbye. This is where I turn off.’
Our part of London isn’t the best part of London to live but it has a certain cosiness. It’s near the river and the docks, and the sea-gulls come racing in when there’s bad weather out at sea. I wouldn’t say I’m fond of it and a boy of my ambitions plans to get out of it, but I reckon even when I’ve left I’ll come sometimes to say hello. Of course, it’s changing fast and I dare say if I do come back I won’t recognize it.
I live in Harper Road, Cy lives across the little square – we call it the Banjo – in Peel Terrace. There’s a subtle class distinction, which naturally I despise, between Peel Terrace and Harper Road. Harper Road is one step lower down in the social scale than Peel Terrace. You wouldn’t know it walking past, but the people who live there, we know it. Mind you, you can rise in the world, you can put out window boxes and paint the front gate white and count yourself as good as Peel Terrace. My family haven’t risen in the world. My father preferring birds to flowers in boxes and watching television to painting his gate white. You might even say we’d sunk because we did once have a sundial in the middle of our front garden, but my sister took it away and made it a tombstone for her old dog. He didn’t die at the time, in fact he isn’t dead yet, but his name is painted on it in blue paint and also the date when he didn’t die. Against this, you could say that I, single-handed, have given us a kick upwards. I’m known as that clever red-haired boy that lives in Harper Road, or as “that mad one”. Of course, I know what they call me. I heard plenty during the short period when I took a job as night-watchman in a local factory so as to have more time during the day. I work days now. I chose not to go to university. My sort of life doesn’t need learning.
Around the corner from Peel Terrace and Harper Road a great new complex of building is going up. They’ve knocked down the old jam factory and in its place is a new jam factory, a quadrangle of shops that they call a shopping precinct and two new office blocks, including a police station which in my opinion is a luxury. The jam factory is finished but nothing else yet. The building has been going on for nearly two years, and one way and another it touches all our lives. We often smell of strawberries round here in the season.
‘Good job they don’t make kipper jam,’ I said to Cy. He started. ‘Kipper jam,’ I repeated. ‘Or we’d smell of that.’ He didn’t laugh. He has no sense of humour. A good-looking wife, four daughters, the only man to have seen four UFOs dip in salute and no sense of humour. It frightens you. ‘You couldn’t make kipper jam,’ he said. ‘There’s no pectin in it.’
Although he’d said goodbye and hadn’t laughed at my joke, he didn’t seem to want to let me go. We stood at the corner, looking at each other.
‘See you next week,’ he said, without moving.
‘Same time. I’ll have it all written up by then. We might get this one in the press.’
‘John doesn’t want publicity.’
‘He hasn’t said so.’ I was thinking how a bit of publicity would buck Miss Jones up. Publicly she would deplore it, inside it might be her last big thrill. Why shouldn’t she have it, if I could give it to her?
‘John’s always against publicity,’ Cy said firmly.
‘Maybe.’ No one knew what John thought, we only knew what he said he thought.
‘What do you get out of this?’ Cy said suddenly.
I was right, then, he did want to talk.
‘Work. Interest. Information.’ I shrugged.
‘It’s not enough.’
‘I think it is.’
‘I mean to explain you. You’re young.’
‘Oh, you’re hard. If not on me, then on yourself. Relax. You want drums and parades and heads off all the time.’
‘I’m serious about it all, I admit that. If that’s a fault. I’ve got a scientific mind. You can’t do work like mine without having a scientific mind.’ I’d forgotten the work he did. Drove a van. I suppose it did need a scientific mind. ‘It worries me how unscientific some of the others are.’