Devices and Desires by P. D. James

offering you the most senior job you could possibly aspire to.” But he knew there was no real temptation. He wouldn’t leave the administration of Larksoken in her hands. Sooner or later she was going to have to realize that there would be no marriage and no promotion. But now was the wrong moment, and he found himself wondering wryly when the right moment might be.
    Instead he said: “Look, we’re here to run a power station efficiently and safely. We’re doing a necessary and important job. Of course we’re committed to it, we wouldn’t be here otherwise. But we’re scientists and technicians, not evangelists. We’re not running a religious campaign.”
    “They are, the other side. He is. You see him as an insignificant twit. He isn’t. He’s dishonest and he’s dangerous. Look howhe scrubs around in the records to turn up individual cases of leukaemia which he thinks he can ascribe to nuclear energy. And now he’s got the latest Comare report to fuel his spurious concern. And what about last month’s newsletter, that emotive nonsense about the midnight trains of death trundling silently through the northern suburbs of London? Anyone would think they were carrying open trucks of radioactive waste. Doesn’t he care that nuclear energy has so far saved the world from burning five hundred million tons of coal? Hasn’t he heard about the greenhouse effect? I mean, is the fool totally ignorant? Hasn’t he any conception of the devastation caused to this planet by burning fossil fuels? Has no one told him about acid rain or the carcinogens in coal waste? And when it comes to danger, what about the fifty-seven miners buried alive in the Borken disaster only this year? Don’t their lives matter? Think of the outcry if that had been a nuclear accident.”
    He said: “He’s only one voice, and a pathetically uneducated and ignorant one.”
    “But he’s having his effect, and you know it. We’ve got to match passion with passion.”
    His mind fastened on the word. We’re not, he thought, talking about nuclear energy, we’re talking about passion. Would we be having this conversation if we were still lovers? She’s demanding from me a commitment to something more personal than atomic power. Turning to face her, he was visited suddenly, not by desire, but by a memory, inconveniently intense, of the desire he had once felt for her. And with memory came a sudden vivid picture of them together in her cottage, the heavy breasts bent over him, her hair falling across his face, her lips, her hands, her thighs.
    He said roughly: “If you want a religion, if you need a religion, then find one. There are plenty to choose from. All right,the abbey is in ruins and I doubt whether that impotent old priest up at the Old Rectory has much on offer. But find something or someone: give up fish on Friday, don’t eat meat, count beads, put ashes on your head, meditate four times a day, bow down towards your own personal Mecca. But don’t, for God’s sake, assuming He exists, ever make science into a religion.”
    The telephone on his desk rang. Caroline Amphlett had left, and it was switched through to an outside line. As he lifted the receiver he saw that Hilary was standing at the door. She gave him a last long look and went out, shutting it with unnecessary firmness behind her.
    The caller was his sister. She said: “I hoped I’d catch you. I forgot to remind you to call at Bollard’s farm for the ducks for Thursday. He’ll have them ready. We’ll be six, incidentally. I’ve invited Adam Dalgliesh. He’s back on the headland.”
    He was able to answer her as calmly as she had spoken.
    “Congratulations. He and his aunt have contrived with some skill to avoid their neighbours’ cutlets for the last five years. How did you manage it?”
    “By the expedient of asking. I imagine he may be thinking of keeping on the mill as a holiday home and feels it’s time to acknowledge that he does have neighbours. Or he may be