‘Why?’ he asks again. His expression is pleading, vulnerable, as if he is willing his mother to tell him something other than what he believes, to proclaim that of course she has never seen any of the documents in the file before and it’s all a huge misunderstanding, and that she has a committee meeting to get to. Behind his shoulder is a row of old school photographs, brought over from Australia by Joan and now a source of amusement to his sons whenever they come to visit. The frames are dusty and tired-looking, but the boy grinning out from the pictures is young and optimistic and full of energy, growing older picture by picture, smarter and more confident each year. There is one of Nick leaving school, one at his graduation, his nose burnt from having spent the previous day at a students’ march in Sydney, one of him being called to the Bar in London, dressed in a wig and gown and looking mildly embarrassed. Tell me, Joan thinks, tell me you wouldn’t have done the same in my position.
But she will not say this. Because the only way you can tell the absolute truth is to tell it fast and tell it straight. Never excuse, never explain. Leo was right.
Joan looks up at her son, wishing with every cell of her body that there was something else she could say right now. But there isn’t, and so, very softly, she whispers a single word. ‘Hiroshima.’
The first test of the atomic bomb takes place in America during the height of summer in 1945, not long after the conclusion of hostilities in Europe. It explodes just before dawn into a cloudless sky, and even from twenty miles away the light it produces is astounding, a ball of energy hovering above the plain, dwarfing the distant mountains and mushrooming smoke into the night sky.
‘They’ve done it,’ Max announces that afternoon after the news has been cabled to him and he has called everyone into his room for a meeting. ‘The Yanks have done it.’
It is no surprise that the Americans have got there first, but the response to the news in the laboratory is a collective gasp. Not surprise exactly, but astonishment, or perhaps pride, to discover that it works—it actually works!—and that it is possible, after all, to create power from nothing, or from very little. It is not an exaggeration to say that something new has arrived on the planet, rewriting all the basic precepts of science in the process, and it is an incredible thing to know that they and their American counterparts have brought it into being. It is the Creation story rewritten for modern times. Let there be light! And it is so, at the press of a button. No other process has such efficiency, or such potential. But potential for what?
Joan turns to look outside and sees a thin sheet of cloud wafting across the deep, dark blue of the sky. The light emitted by the explosion is said to be brighter than the sun, but here, in Cambridge, house martins flit from branch to branch in the tree below the window. It seems so peaceful that it is almost incredible to believe that an explosion of such magnitude has taken place just across the ocean. How can something so big leave so little trace? It is not a thought she has had before, not at any time during the war when there were countless air raids and explosions that might have prompted it, and this was just a test bomb. Nobody was actually hurt. No homes were destroyed, no livelihoods erased. So why does this one above all others cause her heart to slow as if it is pulsing treacle?
Donald is the first to address Max. ‘What now then?’
Max’s expression is still incredulous. ‘They’ll use it on Japan, I suppose.’
Joan looks up with a start. ‘But they won’t just drop it on them, will they? I mean, they’d have to be warned. It’s supposed to be a deterrent, isn’t it?’
He shrugs. ‘But we’re at war. There’s not much opportunity for a chat.’
The curtness of his response surprises Joan. It is not what she expected from him. Gentle, thoughtful Max, who she often catches quietly watching her while she works, who tells her he loves her and then refuses to kiss her because she deserves more than that, who can make her giggle like a child. ‘Of course there is,’ she says, and her voice is louder than normal. ‘They could stage another demonstration and invite Japan, and that would give them the chance to surrender.’
Donald snorts. ‘They wouldn’t surrender. Not Japan.’
‘But they should be given the chance.’
Max looks at her. ‘Can you imagine Hitler offering the same to us if Germany had got there first?’
Joan is silent for a moment. ‘I suppose not. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t offer it. Hitler was hardly a paragon of fairness.’
‘Ha!’ The noise comes from Arthur this time.
‘But it’s all hypothetical anyway,’ Max says. ‘You can’t expect America not to use it now that they have a chance to end the war.’
Joan opens her mouth and then closes it again. She doesn’t understand how they can all be so calm about it. Do they not feel the same sense of responsibility as she does? She understands now why this explosion is having such an effect on her. She has not felt responsible for any of those previous raids—or no more responsible than any other citizen of an implicated nation—but she does feel responsible for this. Yes, it would still have happened without her (she has some perspective on the limits of her contribution) but she can’t understand how the others can be so detached.
‘She’s got a point though,’ Arthur interjects. ‘Now that it’s not a secret in America, it’s bound to come out that we’re making one here.’ He pauses. ‘Stalin will know. Russia will want one too.’
Donald nods, and then laughs. ‘Stalin will be furious.’
‘Exactly. They’ll have to bring Russia in on it now.’
Max shakes his head. ‘I don’t think so. We may be allies at the moment, but we won’t be once the war is over.’
‘But we won’t be enemies.’
‘That’s not the point. The point is that we don’t want Stalin having a weapon like this.’
‘Why? In case he uses it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then what’s the difference? We’re going to use it against Japan. Why does it matter who’s underneath it?’ Joan pauses, suddenly aware that she has heard this argument before, only this time she seems to have changed sides. Although what are the sides now? It no longer seems clear.
Arthur sighs. ‘But we’d be using it to end a war. To save lives.’
‘Not us,’ Max corrects him. ‘America.’
Joan looks at him, and she feels a spinning sensation inside her, as if a taut spring has suddenly snapped. Karen is smiling, her expression resigned and sad, as if to say that it’s useless to argue such things where men are concerned.
‘Oh, don’t get upset,’ Donald says eventually. ‘Inviting the Japs to a demonstration wouldn’t make any difference. They’re not the surrendering type. The point is that it works. The science is correct.’ He grins. ‘Come on, let’s have a drink and celebrate. Pub lunch, everyone?’
‘I don’t see why not,’ Max says.
Joan looks away. She cannot seem to quell this rising sense of hysteria. ‘But that wasn’t the original idea, was it? It was supposed to be a deterrent against Germany. And now it’s going to be used against Japan. Then who next?’ She opens out her arms. ‘You’ve all done the sums. If twenty kilotons could kill, say a hundred thousand people in Japan, then what next? They retaliate, but they don’t stick to kilotons. They go for one megaton . . . ’
Arthur snorts at this.
‘ . . . and that would kill . . . ’ she pauses, waiting, multiplying in her head, ‘ . . . five million. And then what?’
Max shakes his head, as if this is a ridiculous proposition. It is, but then so was this super-bomb ten years ago, and it exists now. ‘That’s not going to happen.’
Joan stares at him. She can’t believe he is disagreeing with her, that they are all disagreeing with her, that they are going to sit in the pub and eat fish and chips to celebrate this terrible destructive force. Where is their perspective? Until now,
she would have said that they all shared the same sense of ambiguity towards this aspect of the project, even Max. Especially Max. But now she is not so sure. She turns to him. ‘But how do you know?’
Three weeks and a day later, a uranium 235 bomb is dropped on the city of Hiroshima. This is how it is reported in the press, as simple, incontrovertible fact. Perhaps it is the case that these words are sufficient, from a purely narrative point of view, to explain the day’s events to the rest of the world who were not there and did not see it. But it will never be enough to describe the truth of that day.
Of course, people will try to describe it, but it will be impossible for them to do so. There will be pictures in the newspapers of a brilliant blast of light and a great mushroom cloud hanging over the city as the dust swells and regurgitates, clawing at the earth as it rises. The reports will tell how it was so hot that some people simply vanished, swept off in a swirl of dust and ashes and debris. But there is no language that can really convey the truth of such destruction. The words do not exist. Or if they do, they are incomprehensible because human sympathy cannot absorb that amount of suffering. It is limited by necessity to the extent of its imagination. Beyond that, it’s all just numbers.
But the people of Nagasaki are doomed to understand. Three days later, a plutonium bomb hits the city, and Japan surrenders. Joan hears the news at the laboratory with everyone else and feels the stab of responsibility once more in her stomach. She remembers her mother’s stories of how the last war ended, a sudden weary silence cutting into the deadlock, the toll of church bells echoing across the battlefield. A terrible war, momentarily redeemed by the civil nature of its ending. Not this indiscriminate rain of ruin. Where is the birdsong this time? Where are the poppies? Where are the people who once lived their small lives in those ill-fated cities? And where next?
Wherever America decides.
All around her, people are talking loudly and laughing. Bottles of champagne and beer are brought up from the cellar where they have been sitting out the war. A conga line forms with Karen at the front, leading the jiggling procession along the main corridor to Max’s office and back again. Arthur produces a bin lid and a guitar which suffice to create enough noise to make this terrible occasion feel like a celebration. Which it is, in a sense. The war is over. She should at least try to be pleased. She forces a smile, taking a glass of champagne from Karen and drinking it all in one go. It is sickly sweet.
She feels a hand on her shoulder and she turns sharply. It is Max.
‘Dance with me?’ he asks, shouting to be heard above the racket and attempting to spin her towards him. His eyes are sparkling.
Joan shakes her head.
‘Please. Just one dance.’
She cannot do it. If she really tries, she can just about move along with the others, slipping her hands around Karen’s waist and kicking her legs out to the side in time to the music, drinking more champagne when it is forced upon her and talking about how wonderful it is that the war has ended. She can force her mouth to smile and she can push down the giddy, sickening sensation that comes from knowing that they have just been party to a terrible, evil act. But she cannot dance with Max.
He must have known from the start, she thinks. He must have known what they were going to do.
When the drinks run out, they go outside to continue the celebrations. The streets are already teeming with people, everybody singing and whistling. Why does nobody else seem to feel the way she does? Is it that they are not thinking about it? Or just that they don’t care?
She realises that nobody will notice if she drops back now, fades away into the crowd and slips off to her lodgings where she will be able to sit upstairs in her room, alone with the knowledge of her own contribution, and nobody will even think to wonder where she is; they will assume that she has found some friends and gone off with them to celebrate. Nobody will miss her, except Max. She knows he will look for her when she has gone, but right now she wants to be alone.
But when she gets home, she finds a telegram waiting for her instructing her to go to her parents’ house immediately.
Her father is asleep when she arrives, his pyjama jacket unbuttoned to reveal a creamy white chest, starkly delineated below the ruddy collar line on his neck. The heart attack was not without warning, but the frailty of her father’s body, the greyness of his flesh, comes to her as a shock. He looks deflated, as if he has been holding his breath for years and has finally decided to let it all out.
She tiptoes out of the bedroom and goes downstairs to find her mother in the kitchen where she is cooking a casserole. The house smells of soft-fried onions and boiled chicken bones. It is the only solution her mother can see to this problem, that her husband must be comforted from the inside out. She whispers to Joan that she blames herself for not seeing it coming. She should have paid more attention to the clues. She should have made him more cups of tea, more casseroles.
‘Of course it wasn’t your fault,’ Joan tries to reassure her, prising the chopping knife from her mother’s hands to prevent her from wielding it in despair. ‘He’s old. He’s not been well for a while but he’s on the mend now.’
These are the doctor’s words, and Joan is repeating them back to her mother, but she also knows that if anyone should be taking responsibility for not looking after her father enough, it should be her, Joan. She has not visited as often as she should, and although she can almost convince herself that she has an excuse because of the long working hours at the laboratory, she also knows that it is exactly that. It is an excuse. She knows that she does not run for the early morning train she would have to catch to get home on Sundays because she chooses not to, preferring to spend her days off with Sonya in Cambridge, going to dances and drinking cocoa and taking long walks to the pubs in Grantchester.
She looks at her mother now, observing the grey hair falling around her eyes. ‘He was just upstairs, clattering about,’ she is saying again, although Joan has already heard this twice. ‘Said he needed to sort out his old stuff in the attic. Clear it out. He had the wireless on, and then suddenly there was this almighty crash. I went up there but I couldn’t get him down . . . ’ She starts to cry, her hands gripping Joan’s. ‘I had to leave him in the attic and go to call for the doctor and he had this terrible pain . . . ’ She indicates her chest. ‘I’ve never seen him in such pain, not even when we took off his leg.’
This is the only time Joan can remember that her mother has referred to the removal of her husband’s leg without simply including it as an incidental part of the story of how they met. When she was younger, Joan had sometimes wondered if her parents had known each other at all before they married, but now she realises that the amputation of her father’s leg was an act too intimate for them to share with other people, even with her and Lally; it was something they kept as a secret between themselves, the terrible moment of immolation, emasculation, which had stuck them together, and which now threatened to come undone with this sudden faltering of her father’s heart.
‘Where’s Lally?’ she asks suddenly.
‘She’s on her way.’ Her mother pauses. She wipes her tears with the back of her sleeve and sniffs, straightening her neck, armouring herself. ‘You go upstairs and see if he’s awake. I’d better get on with these parsnips.’
‘Joanie,’ her father says as she enters the room, holding out his hand for her to take. It is rough and sausagey, an old man’s hand. She does not remember when she last held it. It must have been when she was a child. Crossing roads. Learning to swim in the river behind the school. She has a vague memory of being swung around by those hands, her shoulders popping in and out and her legs flying faster than the rest of her so that her body seemed to become tangled in mid-air.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Been better.’ His voice is quiet and cracked, but typically he attempts a smile. He has done up the buttons of his pyjama top now
, but it is an imperfect attempt. ‘Did I hear right?’ he asks, lifting his head from the pillow in a conspiratorial manner. ‘Have they dropped another bomb on Japan?’
Joan looks at him. She knows that her mother would not want her to indulge her father with this sort of conversation while he is unwell, but she cannot lie to him. He must have heard it on the wireless before his attack and the thought flashes across her mind that perhaps it was brought on by the shock of hearing it. She nods slowly.
He shakes his head. ‘And they told us that ours were the unprecedented times,’ he says, echoing his wife.
Joan feels the pressure of his hand increase. How she wishes she could tell him, ask his advice, seek his—is this the word?—forgiveness. He has always been so proud of her, his delight in her scientific progress standing in stark contrast to her mother’s disapproval and embarrassment. Would he still be proud if he knew what she had been doing? What would he say if he knew what had been keeping her away for such long stretches of time when really she should have been here, helping out, looking after them, getting married and having babies to make her mother happy?
There was a war on, she thinks defensively. She had no choice.
But her father has not finished. He is looking at her with his grey eyes, and he is squeezing her hand now. ‘Your times were supposed to be better than ours.’
‘Oh, Dad,’ she says, placing her free hand on top of their clasped hands. ‘Don’t be silly. These are your times too.’
He smiles and shakes his head, and she realises as she says it that the words have cost him enough to say, and he has not intended that she will dispute the tense of them. He does not want anything to do with these times. He has done his part, given all he could, and it was not enough. It is for someone else to do that now. To succeed where he has failed.
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