Chapter 41: A well elaborated delusion

In the hall there was a fairly tense stand-off in progress. Wendy, hearing the whistle and grateful for any interruption, pulled the phone from her pocket. "Excuse me a moment, please, Dr Stone," she said, but the courtesy of these words was belied by the determined way she stood her ground and the fierce glare that wordlessly said, "Don't even think about using this diversion to get past me."

Laura paused. Even she was not immune from the strange but universal rule that someone engaged in a telephone conversation may on no account be disturbed or interrupted.

"Hello," said Wendy into the phone.

"Wendy, darling," I said, "you've done everything you can. Let her have her way. Take her upstairs to see Elspeth. She's in Vicky's room. I'm in the garden. Oh, and put the phone on loudspeaker so I can join in the conversation, it's not fair to leave you alone to deal with this termagant."

It was all very well for me to call Laura names, because she was seriously getting on my nerves by now, but I was also conscious that she was a beautiful woman, even more so, by what little I had seen from the window, than the pictures of her suggested; moreover, she had obvious qualities of intelligence and determination that I should normally (were they not being so ruthlessly employed against me) find highly attractive. In short, I had little doubt that FUCK would work its magic if I met her face to face. This, I thought, gave me an insurance policy, but meanwhile I wanted to stay well away from her because I still had hopes, admittedly not high ones, that if she were permitted to see Elspeth she would go away.

Laura, Wendy and Fran entered Vicky's bedroom just as Connie finished rearranging Elspeth in the bed. "Here she is," I heard Wendy announce.

Laura gave an audible gasp of shock and dismay. "Elspeth? Elspeth?" she said quietly. "It's me, Laura Stone." There was, of course, no response, and Laura's next words were angry ones, addressed to Wendy. "What have you done to her?" she demanded.

"She's fine. Really," said Wendy in a vain attempt at reassurance.

"She's drugged out of her mind on something," said Laura (not a bad guess actually). "I'm going the police if you don't tell me what you've pumped into her, and I'll — yes, young lady, what's so funny?"

Connie had failed to suppress a snigger at Laura's unwittingly apt choice of words. "Nothing, nothing. Sorry," she said hastily.

Laura leant over Elspeth to examine her more closely. "I've never seen anything like this," she muttered. Then she stood up and spoke in peremptory tones: "Mrs Walker, there are laws in this country. Tell me what you've done to her or I'm calling the authorities right now."

It was time for me to intervene. "Ask her yourself," I said. "She'll be right as rain in an hour or two."

There was a pause as Laura looked round for the origin of this new voice. Then she saw the phone, which Wendy had placed prominently on the dressing-table. "Who's this?" she demanded.

"I'm Wendy's husband, James. Hello, Dr Stone. You're welcome to wait till Elspeth recovers, then you can talk to her as much as you like."

"I don't just want to talk to her. I don't know what you've got going on here, but I'm taking her away. I'm not letting you keep her here like this."

"Who's keeping her?" I asked. "She's here by her own choice. She's free to leave any time she likes."

"Are you telling me, Mr Walker," asked Laura angrily, "that I can take her away with me? It's as simple as that?"

"Yes, of course, if she wants to go. What do you think is going on here, Dr Stone? It isn't a prison."

"I don't know what it is," said Laura, "but it stinks. As soon as I get Elspeth safely away from here I'm going to have the authorities down on you like a ton of bricks."

"Would you like to wait here, Dr Stone," asked Wendy courteously, "or down in the hall?"

"I'll wait here," said Laura firmly. "Elspeth, Elspeth," she said more gently. "You poor kid. What have they done to you?"

I cut in again. I had come to a decision. What little hope I had entertained of getting rid of this woman had now vanished. There was nothing for it but to capture her. But before I did, I was curious to see what she would make of my little set-up, while her mind was still unaffected by FUCK.

"You'd love to know, wouldn't you?" I asked.

"I'm going to find out," she replied with decision. "I'm going to get to the bottom of it and then I'm putting a stop to it."

"All right," I said. "If you're that keen to know, I'll tell you."

And I did. I told her about the serum, the power it had given me, the deliberate and accidental capture of dozens of women. Her reaction surprised me. I had expected the same scepticism that I had got from Fran that day in the office, but instead she seemed to accept the whole thing. Then I realised she was humouring me.

"Well, James," she said when I had finished (and I noted that she was calling me uninvited by my first name and in a distinctly patronising manner), "I certainly must congratulate you. That's one of the best elaborated delusions I've heard for a long time."

"So that's all it is, is it?"

"Please," she said; "I've written papers on this sort of thing."

"Then how do you account for Wendy, and Fran and the others?"

"Well," she said, "I agree it's a little surprising you've got these women to go along with you, but there are plenty of cases on record where an attractive, charismatic man has managed to draw apparently quite sensible and level-headed women into his fantasy world. But it doesn't alter the fact that it's a delusion. It would be quite amusing if not for its effect on women's lives."

I decided that two could play the humouring game, and the first-name game. "You certainly seem to have it all worked out, Laura," I told her.

"I have," she said complacently.

"All right," I said. "Wendy, I think perhaps Laura would like to see the rest of my delusion. Let's show her what's going on here. Take the phone off loudspeaker a moment, please, darling, and pass me to Fran, if she's there."

I told Fran that she and Connie should go downstairs and tell the rest of the girls to relax, the emergency was over, they should go back to whatever they had been doing before the interruption. If a woman with clothes happened to pass by they were to pay her no attention even if they recognised her (as many presumably would) but if she spoke to them they were to answer frankly.

So Laura, led by Wendy and with Fran and Connie tagging along, undertook her tour. I listened in to begin with, but after a few initial comments Laura lapsed into almost complete silence, so I turned to other matters. Wendy took the tour slowly, so that Laura stayed a considerable time in each room and had ample time to take in whatever was happening before she moved on.

First they attended the library, where activities were relatively decorous. Until Laura's arrival at the house Wendy, with Alicia's assistance, had been running an impromptu deportment class for a few girls, and now Alicia was carrying on alone. Although remarkable in that teacher and pupils were wearing nothing except high-heeled sandals, this was a quiet, orderly scene punctuated only by the occasional thump as some valuable volume borrowed from George's shelves fell from a girl's head. Laura, who took pride in her appearance, felt she was actually picking up some useful points for bearing herself as she watched the girls practise. But she was surprised there were so many girls here (six, including Alicia) and that they were all so young and pretty; moreover some of them were vaguely familiar from Cambridge. This James man is clearly mad, she thought, but he must be dangerously charismatic.

"Is that it?" she asked eventually.

"Oh, no," Wendy assured her. "That's only the start."

They passed into the drawing room, which housed George's immense (of course) plasma-screen (of course) television. Laura suppressed a shudder of distaste as she saw the hardcore pornography on the screen. It was Connie, inevitably, that had decided that the weekend would be enlivened by a stock of triple-X multiple-penetration DVDs and these had found a ready audience; there must have been ten or a dozen naked girls dotted around the room, all utterly fascinated, several feeling themselves suggestively. Laura recognised among them more faces she had seen around Cambridge, and was shocked that young women would watch this material. It did not need an expert psychologist like her to know that the normal female reaction to this sort of thing was indifference at best, and much more often disgust. How could these girls lap it up? She spent some time vainly scrutinising them for any possible clue until her eye was caught by one particular activity on the screen that repelled her so much she had to move on.