The New Men
Page 4
I agreed.
‘He must have had something in his mind. His experiment, I suppose.’ And that was all he said.
Martin was doing what we have all done, refer to ourselves, half apologize, half confide, by pretending an interest in another. If I had been an intimate friend but not a brother, perhaps even if I had been a stranger. I thought that just at that moment he would have unburdened himself. Often it is the reserved who, when a pain, or even more, a humiliation, has lived inside them too long, suddenly break out into a confidence to someone they scarcely know. But I was the last person to whom he could let go.
As we both showed when we first talked of his engagement, there was a delicacy in our kind of brothers’ love; and the closer we came to our sexual lives, the more that delicacy made us speak in terms of generalization and sarcasm. We knew each other very well by instinct. We could guess which women would attract the other, and often it was an attraction that we shared. Yet I had never told him any detail either of my married life or of a love affair. I should have felt it, not so much embarrassing to speak, though that would also have been true, but worse than embarrassing to force him to listen. It was the same from him to me. He could not tell me whom he suspected she went to bed with; he could not tell me what she was like in his own bed; and so it was no relief to speak at all.
At the crossroads he asked if I minded walking a few yards to the bridge; it was as though he wanted an excuse for not returning home (or was it superstition, as though, if he did not hurry back, all would be well?’). It was a moonless night, and the stars were faint, but there was a glimmer on the river. All of a sudden a November meteorite scorched its way across the sky, and then another.
‘More energy there than we shall make,’ said Martin, nodding in the direction of the establishment.
Now that my eyes were accustomed to the light I could make out the expression on his face. It was set and sad – and yet he was controlling his voice, he was beginning to speak seriously, about the project.
‘By the way,’ he said, ‘I suppose the people here are putting some pressure on you?’
I said yes.
‘They want you to invest in this place in a big way?’
Again I said yes.
‘As long as you all realize that nothing here is within years of being tested–’ He broke off, and then said: ‘It would be very nice for me if Rudd’s show came off. I should get some reflected glory, which I could do with.’
For a moment his voice was chilled, as though his secret thoughts were too strong: but I understood.
‘You don’t think it will come off?’
He paused.
‘I haven’t got the grasp some of these people have, you know, and most of them believe in it.’ Then he added: ‘But I shouldn’t like you to plump for it too far.’
‘What’s the matter with it?’
‘I think your own reputation will look nicer,’ he said, ‘if you go fairly slow this time.’
It was not until we were walking towards his house that he said: ‘I can’t explain why I’m not convinced. I wish I were better at this game, then perhaps I could.’
When we had mounted to his landing above the Mounteneys, there was no light under the door. As soon as we were inside the room Martin said, and for an instant his voice had become unrecognizable: ‘I detest living in other people’s houses.’
In that instant his face was white with temper. Was he thinking that Emma Mounteney would know the exact time that Irene climbed up the stairs? Then he spoke, once more calmly: ‘I think I’d better wait up for her. I don’t think she’s taken a key.’
6: Morning Before the Office
NEXT morning I woke out of heavy sleep, and was dragged at by a memory of muttering (it might have been a dream, or else something heard in the distance) from the bedroom next door. When I got up and went into breakfast, Irene told me that Martin had already left for the laboratory. She was wearing a dressing-gown, her voice was quiet but tight; without her make-up, she looked both drabber and younger.
In silence I ate the toast and jam of a wartime breakfast. Looking down from the window into the sunny morning, I could see the river flash through the elm branches. I was aware that her gaze was fixed on me.
Suddenly she cried out: ‘Why do you dislike me so?’
‘I don’t,’ I said.
‘I can’t bear not to be liked.’
Very quickly, almost as though she had been rehearsing it, she told me a story of how, when she was twelve, she went to stay with a ‘glamorous’ school friend, and how the other girl had been asked by an aunt. ‘Who is your best friend? Is Irene your best friend?’ And the answer had come, polite and putting-off, ‘Oh, Irene has so many friends.’
‘I couldn’t face her again,’ said Irene, and then: ‘I wish you would like me.’
‘It doesn’t matter to either of us.’
‘I want you to.’ Her tone was at the same time penitent, shameless, provocative; it was easy to imagine how she spoke to her husband.
I had to rouse myself.
‘You want it both ways, you know,’ I said.
‘What have I done against you?’ she burst out defiantly.
‘Nothing.’
‘Then why can’t we get on?’
‘You know as well as I do. Do you expect me to approve of you as my brother’s wife?’
‘So that’s it,’ she said.
‘Don’t pretend that’s news,’ I said. ‘Why have you started this – this morning?’
She had crossed over to the window seat, and was watching me with sharp eyes, which were beginning to fill with tears.
‘You’ve taken against me, just because I couldn’t stand the very thought of those people last night.’
‘You know perfectly well that’s not all.’
‘Would you like me to tell you what I was really doing?
I shook my head. ‘You’re not a fool. You must realize that you’re damaging him–’
‘I suppose my dear friends were wondering who I’d taken to bed, weren’t they?’
‘Of course.’
‘Who did they think?’
I would not reply.
‘Whose name did you hear?’ she cried.
Impatiently I repeated Emma’s question about T—. She gave a yelp of laughter. She was for an instant in high spirits, nothing but amused.
‘They can’t think that!’
She stared at me: the tears had gone.
‘You won’t believe me, but they’re wrong. It wasn’t him, it wasn’t anyone. I just couldn’t stand their faces any more. I had to get out on my own. They’re hopelessly wrong. Please believe me!’
I said: ‘Whether they’re right or wrong – in a place like this you mustn’t given anyone an excuse to gossip, it doesn’t matter whether it’s justified or not.’
‘How often I’ve heard that,’ she said with a glint in her eyes.
‘When?’
‘All night long. Do you think you’re the first to scold me?’ She looked at me, and went on: ‘He was specially angry because you were here to see.’
After a moment, I said: ‘That’s neither here nor there.’
‘Isn’t it?’ said Irene.
‘The only thing I’ve got a right to talk about,’ I said, ‘are the practical consequences. Unless you want to damage his career, the least you can do for Martin is behave yourself on the outside.’
‘I promised him that this morning,’ she said in a thin voice.
‘Can you keep your promise?’
‘You needn’t worry.’ Her voice was thinner still.
Then she stood up, shook herself, went to the looking-glass and remained there, studying her reflection.
‘We ought to be moving soon,’ she said, her voice full again, brisk, and matter-of-fact. ‘These people aren’t altogether wrong about me. I may as well tell you that, though I expect you know.’
I was getting up, but she said no, and sat down opposite me.
Yes, she would have liked to be an adventuress: but somehow she hadn’t managed it. ‘Perhaps you’ve got to be cooler than I am to bring it off,’ she said, half-mystified.
It was she who had been used, not her lovers; and there was one who, when she thought of him, still had power over her.
‘Martin knew about him before we married,’ she said. ‘Have you heard of Edgar Hankins?’
I had not only heard of him, but ten years before had known him fairly well.
‘I loved him very much,’ she said. She went on: ‘I ought to have made him marry me.’
‘Was it a matter of will?’ I said, feeling more tender to her.
‘No,’ said Irene, ‘I’ve got the will, but I can’t trust my nerves.’
Then I asked why she had married Martin. She began not by answering the question, but by saying: ‘You shouldn’t worry too much about Martin.’
‘Why not?’
‘I fancy he’s a harder man than you are.’
She said it as though she were praising him. Reverting to her businesslike manner, she went on about her reasons for the marriage. She had found some of her friends competing for him, she said; and that provoked her. But most of all she wanted safety.
‘I was getting notorious,’ she said. ‘When people heard my name, they were beginning to say “Oh, her”.’
Curiously, by this time she and I were on easy terms. Nevertheless, I did not know how much to believe. She was anxious not to give herself the benefit of the doubt, she was putting herself in the coldest light. Nearly always, I thought, there was something men or women were protecting, when deliberately, and with pride, almost with conceit, they showed you their most callous side.
All of a sudden she looked at me with her eyes narrowed and frightened.
‘Why did you ask me – about marrying him?’
I tried to put her off.
‘Do you want him to leave me?’
‘That’s not my business,’ I said.
‘Are you trying to take him away?’ Her tone had been brittle, the tears had been near again, and she sighed.
Then she threw her head back, and put on her matey, hard-baked smile. ‘You can try anything you like,’ she said. ‘Nothing will have any effect on him, you ought to know that by now.’
Within ten minutes we were walking along the footpath to the laboratories, Irene’s face groomed as though nothing were more impossible than tears or anger, both of us talking as though there had been no scene between us. Just once, she referred back to it, when she commented out of the blue: ‘Mornings before the office.’
It was her phrase for any kind of morning drama: it was a phrase that only had meaning if your working life was disciplined, as all of ours had by this time become. Whatever was left behind at home, the files were waiting. As we walked along the country footpath, I was myself sorting out my official thoughts, collecting what I could safely say to Drawbell.
Before I called on Drawbell, I said goodbye to Martin. He was standing in his laboratory, looking at one of the counters: tiny neon lamps, the size of buttons, flickered in and out, the noise tapped on, on the indicator the figures moved like a taxi register.
‘Any progress?’ I asked.
‘Nothing new,’ said Martin patiently. He and others had already explained to me that what was true of pure scientific research was truer still of this: that the days of crisis were few: that it was only after long periods of preparation, measured in months, not days, that they came to a ‘result’ – one day of excitement, and afterwards another period of building, routine, long-drawn-out suspense.
In the office where Drawbell’s secretaries worked, I was kept waiting among the typing stools and dictaphones before I could see him. I suspected that he was doing it on purpose, as I went on chatting to Hanna Puchwein and her assistant, Mary Pearson, the wife of one of the chief engineers, a young woman who at that first impression seemed just spectacled and flushing. At last the bell trilled on Hanna’s desk, and she took me in.
Drawbell’s office had in the past been the main drawing-room of the Barford house. On the high walls, where the white paint was chipping from the panels, were pinned charts, tables of organization, graphs, diagrams. The room was so long that there was time to notice my footsteps on the parquet as I went towards Drawbell’s desk. He sat, steadily regarding me, watching me come towards him without changing his expression or making a sound.
All this was put on. I had met him several times, in that office as well as in London. He was not an academic, and Luke and the others said, with their usual boisterous lack of respect, that he was not a scientist at all. In peacetime he had been head of another government station. Though I knew that he was not unformidable, I knew also that he was a bit of a humbug and a bit of a clown.
He remained silent. I sat down in an armchair by his desk, He went on gazing at me, with an unwinking inflexible stare from his right eye: the other had little vision and turned blandly off at forty-five degrees. He was bald: square-jowled: podgy-nosed: wide-mouthed, with upturning melon-lips. I studied him, also without speaking.
‘Eliot,’ he said at last, ‘I’m not satisfied with the support that we’re receiving.’
I said that this was what I had come to talk about.
‘Now you’ve had an opportunity to see what we’re doing.’
I said yes.
‘I hope you’ve made the most of it. I hope you are beginning to realize that this place maybe – I don’t say that it is, I say may be – the most important institution in the entire world. And I’m going to ask you straight out: what help am I to expect from headquarters?’
I hesitated.
‘Naturally, I expect some positive results from you,’ said Drawbell.
I was the wrong man for this opening, but I had to be patient. I had two problems on my mind. What was going to happen? I had not much doubt of the answer – but how frankly should I tell it to Drawbell?
I knew in cold blood what was bound to happen. Even if Rudd’s scheme worked (perhaps Martin was underestimating its chances), it would take years. All the scientists they wanted were working elsewhere, most of them on RDF, on work that would pay dividends in one year or two, not in the remote future: no one in authority could take the risk of moving them; even if the Barford result was certain, instead of uncertain, no one at that stage of the war could do much more.
If I were to be any use as an administrator to Barford, I had to get them to trust me: so I decided to be open with Drawbell. I said that no one could spend any time with his scientists without becoming infected with their faith. He nodded his head. I should report that to Hector Rose and the Minister, for what it was worth: but Drawbell must not expect too much.
‘Why not?’
I told him what I had been thinking to myself. He was up against the facts of war. Whatever I reported to the Minister, or the Minister represented to his committees, or the committees recommended on their own, would make little difference. Barford would get buildings and equipment without any serious trouble, but could only hope for a few extra scientists. However much faith anyone had, the men just did not exist.
‘Strip the country,’ said Drawbell,
I told him any set of responsible persons would have to say no. We couldn’t weaken ourselves in 1943 or 1944 for the sake of a gigantic gamble.
‘I won’t tolerate the word gamble,’ said Drawbell, in a loud monotonous voice, speaking like a man trying to hold back his anger.
I had expected him to be reasonable; I had misjudged him.
He would not listen to my case. He shouted me down. He tried cajoling me, saying that I was the only man in the Minister’s entourage with any imagination. He tried threatening me, asking how I should feel when the Germans dropped the first uranium bomb on London.
I was used, like any official
who has had to carry bad news, to being blamed for it, but it was an effort to keep my temper.
‘Quite frankly,’ said Drawbell, meaning by that phrase that something unpleasant was coming, ‘I hoped that you were going to be less obstructive.’
He went on: ‘Of course, I shan’t be able to hide it from your superiors that we’ve been disappointed by your visit.’
I said that was up to him.
‘If your superiors take the same hopeless attitude as you do, Eliot, it will be a black day for this country.’
‘You must tell them so.’
Suddenly Drawbell gave a surprisingly sweet smile. ‘I’ve told them already, Eliot, and I shall go on telling them.’
He behaved as though it were no use abusing me further, and began to talk in a realistic manner,
‘Well,’ he said, ‘assuming that you’re right to be hopeless – how many scientists shall I get?’
I had not replied before Drawbell put on a grin, half coaxing, half jeering: ‘Come on. Just between you and me.’
So all that display of indignation had been an act; he was ready to use his own moods, my comfort, anything or anyone else, for the sake of Barford.
This time I was cautious. I said that another establishment, doing work of the highest war priority, had just been allowed to search for thirty scientists of reputation. If the Minister and the committees made out the strongest case for Barford, they might get ten to twenty.
‘Well, if it’s only ten,’ said Drawbell, surprisingly reasonable, ‘that’s better than a slap in the belly with a wet fish.’
He regarded me with good nature, as though I had, through no special fault of my own but for a higher purpose, been roughly handled. It was amiably that he inquired: ‘Would you like to know what I shall do with them?’ I expected him to say – they will go to Rudd. Drawbell made a theatrical pause, and said: ‘I shall put them where they are most needed.’