The Meddlers (15 page)

He whirled in his chair and looked at the audience. “I said I wasn’t here to make moral judgments, that all we wanted was to understand what this project was all about and where it is leading. Well, I’m going to break my word. I am going to make moral judgments. I’m going to say what I believe, and what I’m convinced the vast majority of caring people believe. That science can be dangerous because people are imperfect and can’t be trusted with the weapons science creates. That there is a power beyond mankind itself-and I’m not ashamed to say I trust in the existence and loving-kindness of God-that should be accepted, just as our own imperfections should be accepted. That when someone—
one man like Dr. Briant—starts to meddle with the functions of the power that is God, disaster stares us in the face. That our instinctive loathing for the way Dr. Briant is manipulating human life, is using a human child as a lever to open the box that holds God’s secrets about life, our response, I say, is not reactionary, not the stupid fears of little men, but is born of our awareness of the dangers of knowing too much, is a God-given warning, if you like. There must come a point at which man must stop trying to decide his own destiny, and I believe that point has come now, in our time. But I am not saying that Dr. Briant should necessarily be stopped from making his scientific searches, for his ability to do so is as God-given as that warning. But I do say that we, the ordinary man, must either insist he takes responsibility for what he discovers, and
does
concern himself with the ethics of its methods and application, or accept the responsibility to ourselves, and make our own decisions about how science is used. We dare not shrug our shoulders and leave a great chasm into which cynical politicians might leap, and take us all to perdition with them.”

He stopped, quite sharply, staring at the audience, which stared back in dumfounded silence. Then he rubbed his sweating face and said huskily, “I’m sorry. I am here to act as a… a chairman, an impartial chairman, and I’ve let myself be carried away. I’m sorry.”

And then the applause leapt into existence like a great roaring animal as people jumped up, shouting, clapping, screaming their agreement and their opposition, moving in a heaving mass. And above their heads the monitors showed captions rolling, and the faint tinny music entwined itself into the noise, and the screens blacked.

Through the uproar Briant moved toward Gerrard and touched his shoulder, and Gerrard turned his fat gleaming face toward him.

“Gerrard,” George shouted above the din. “You’re wrong, you couldn’t be more wrong, but you said that with so much… with such intelligence that I must both apologize to you and compliment you. I thought you were a … a shallow man, incapable of producing a logical argument. But you
are
a thinker, even if a wrong-headed one, and I compliment you because…”

Gerrard had been looking at him with a gradually spreading grin on his face, and now he thumped George on the back with great bonhomie and beamed with immense satisfaction.

“That’s very big of you, old man, considering I made mincemeat of you. And it was bloody good television, wasn’t it? Christ, if that doesn’t keep ’em watching, nothing will.” And he turned and moved across the dais and out of the studio, followed by his cohort of technicians and production assistants, who thumped him on the back and shouted their own compliments into his receptive ears.

And George stepped back and stared after him, feeling as though he had been slapped, and behind him Mike murmured, “I told you, Dr. Briant. For a brilliant man, you can be very naïve. J. J. has just shown you his one real skill—the way he can judge the mood of an audience and play it like a violin. And if you, an intelligent man who can think, can be swept away by him, how do you think
they’ve
been affected? I tell you, Dr. Briant, you’ve unleashed a hell of a lot more than you realize with this project of yours. A hell of a lot more.”

“I’ve got to go home,” Hilary said again and set her mouth stubbornly. “I’ve got to. You can phone them first if you like, but I’ve got to go.”

“But what good will it do, my dear?” Miss Schofield said helplessly. “You’ll only be exposing yourself to more distress. I do understand how upset you are—”

“Miss Schofield.” Matron spoke from her place by the door of the headmistress’s study. “May I speak to you privately for a moment? If Hilary could wait outside just for a second or two, dear?”

Sulkily, Hilary went, moving with even more than her usual lumpishness, and as the door closed behind her, Matron said urgently, “It will be better if she goes, believes me. I told you there’d be trouble if you let the seniors see this wretched program, and there will be, and even more if Hilary stays. All this talk about religion, it’s not nice, you know. There’s enough unhealthy religious excitement as it is, with that girl Elliot and her Evangelistic
nonsense. You didn’t see what happened. I saw it with them, remember that, I saw the effect it had. Elliot got so excited, I thought she was going to pass out. I swear that girl’s a petit mal subject, and when she started shouting at Hilary Briant as she did—I really think you should send the girl home. And Margaret Elliot too, if you can. It’s not healthy.”

“Oh, really, Miss Buck! If we can’t cope with an adolescent upheaval of this sort without sending girls home, we have no right to be running a progressive school. And as for Margaret Elliot …”

By the time they had come to the end of their argument and Matron had opened the door again, fixing a bright smile on her face for Hilary’s benefit, the problem had been solved. Hilary had gone, leaving the back door of the Head’s house swinging wide. And by the time Miss Schofield had made her agitated call to her home, Hilary had picked up her first lift.

  “I had to come home, Daddy,” Hilary said again. “I just had to. If you’d have
seen
—they were hateful, they really were. One of the girls in the Sixth said you were no better than a Hitler, she did! And I wanted to die, I really did. I had to come home. It’s not long to end of term, and I could do my A levels somewhere else, couldn’t I? I can’t go back, I truly can’t. Daddy, you do see, don’t you?”

“Oh, for crying out loud, Hilary,” Ian said, “turn it off, will you? I never heard such a load of crap in my life. Oh, all right, Rusty. I’m sorry. Rubbish, then. Who do you think gives a damn about you? And even if your stupid girls do have a go at you because of the Prof’s work, what’s the odds? You’ll get something out of it if you’ve got any sense.”

He grinned across at his mother. “Like me, eh, Rusty? You’ve done a great job for me, Prof—Dad. A great job. You’ve turned out to be a great show-biz contact. Get you!” And he laughed loudly and swung his legs back over the arm of his chair so that he could reach the sherry decanter.

“What are you talking about?” George was quite incredibly tired; his whole body seemed to ache with fatigue, and his mind
seemed to operate dully, as though there were a film over it. “And leave that sherry alone. You’ve had more than enough, and that’s all there is. What are you talking about, a contact?”

“You’ve been too wrapped up in yourself to hear anything anyone says to you tonight,” Marjorie said sharply. “And let him have his sherry. He’s entitled to celebrate.”

“Celebrate what? For Christ’s sake, haven’t I had enough to put up with today without you all starting on me? I’m tired! It’s late, and I’m bloody
tired
—”

“My job, Prof, my job!” Ian said and laughed again. “I told you he wouldn’t take it in, Rusty, didn’t I?”

“Take in what?” George shouted, and Hilary winced and then moved closer to him on the sofa they were sharing beside the dying fire.

“The producer phoned him as soon as your program went off the air. He’s got the part after all. They start rehearsing next week. I told you as soon as you came in. Or weren’t you listening to a word I said?”

“And I’ve no illusions, Prof, none at all. In this business it isn’t talent that matters. It’s who you know. And I know you! They’ll make a great splash out of it, and I couldn’t care less. If they want to make publicity out of my being your son, it’s great by me. Great, great, great! As long as I get in, who cares how the door gets opened? Not this baby! Once I’ve had a couple of decent jobs, I’ll be a name in my own right. But till then I’ll gladly use yours. And if Hilary can’t get something out of it too, she’s a bloody sight more of a fool than she looks, if that’s possible.”

“Oh, leave her alone, Ian. She’s overwrought. She’ll go back to school in the morning when she feels better,” Marjorie said. But she didn’t look at Hilary.

“No she won’t!” George was on his feet, and his face was blazing with anger. “If you can’t recognize her integrity, I can! As for you—” He looked at Ian, sprawled in his armchair, with an expression of plain dislike on his face. “As for you, Ian, you can forget it. If you’ve been given a … a … job on the strength of my project, you can forget it. I will not on any account have any member of my family make such corrupt use of what I’m doing, do you
understand? If you don’t refuse this job yourself, then by God I’ll do it for you. And the way I’ll do it won’t be pleasant for you, and well you know it. Do you hear me?”

“Dad!” Ian almost wailed the word, and the expression of disbelief on his face was absurd in its intensity. “Dad, you can’t mean that! I’ve been trying for almost a year to get in, and now I’m in you can’t kill it for me! What harm can it do you? All I want from your name is a bit of a leg-up, that’s all! I told you, they’ll soon forget I’m your son, and I’ll get on on my own. But in show business you’ve got to make the best of every trick in the book. Please, Dad—”

“No!” George rubbed his face wearily and then went on in a more reasonable voice. “For God’s sake, Ian, you must surely see why you can’t use your connection with me in this way! To get a job in a—what is it?—a protest musical with everyone standing around nude? It’s obscene! I’m trying to do a piece of honest research and you want to use it for a purpose like this one? Have you no sense of dignity?”

“You didn’t look all that dignified tonight!” Marjorie was on her feet too, clutching her dressing gown to her chest with her knuckles showing white with anger. “Sitting there, being bawled at by every Tom, Dick and Harry! Very dignified, that was! You’ve no right to treat Ian this way! You’ve done little enough for him, God knows, all these years. The cheapest school you could find—a bloody sight cheaper than Hilary’s and don’t you forget it!—just because he had the guts to tell you right from the start he didn’t give a rotten damn for your stinking lousy science! Just because your precious daughter sucks round you and bleats her half-baked science at you, she’s the only one you care about! Well, Ian’s entitled to your interest too. He’s
entitled
to it, you hear me? We’ve had nothing out of our lives with you, nothing at all, and I’m not standing by and letting you ruin the only chance you’ve ever given him, and that without intending to. Don’t push me too far, George, don’t push me too far.”

“Don’t push
you
too far! Christ almighty! You say that to me? You say that Ian’s entitled to—listen, Marjorie, and you too.”

With a sudden new access of rage George turned on Ian, who
shrank back in his chair, fear making his face sag for a moment.

“Yes,
you
, you with your stupid little mind and your stupid little ambitions and your revolting talk! You make me sick, physically sick! I’ve tried with you, God knows I’ve tried! From the time you were old enough to be interesting, from the time you started to talk intelligibly, I’ve tried to make something out of you! I’ve tried to instill into you a little—just a very little of what thinking is all about. I’ve done my damnedest to give you the sort of background, the sort of training that would help you make something of yourself! And where have my efforts got me? Where? You never tried, never made the least shift to take what I had to give you. You went whining and mewing to your mother, grizzling your stupidities, rejecting everything that—”

“Just you wait a minute!” Ian was on his feet too, and his face was as white as his father’s. For a brief moment they looked quite remarkably alike as they stood facing each other with their heads poked forward and their shoulders rigid, for all the world like a pair of rutting stags. “Just let me say something while we’re at it!
You’ve
given me?
You’ve
tried?
You’ve
been rejected? Jesus wept, you don’t know which way is up! You made up some fancy picture in your head of what your son ought to be, and you set about making it real. You decided that I had to be a carbon copy of you, another little George Briant. Well, I’m not! I never was and I never will be! I’m Ian,
Ian
, do you hear me? I’m myself, and I’ll do my own thing because it’s what I want to do, and I’ve as much right as you or anyone else to live my life the way I want to! I don’t owe you a bloody thing not one bloody thing. It’s you that owe me, and never paid your whack! If you’d cared about me as a person, as Ian, and not just as your stinking lousy son, you’d have cared for me for what I am, and not for what I might turn into, not because I might bring a bit of glory onto your head! There’s not a thing about me that you don’t despise, and haven’t despised for as long as I can remember. You don’t like the way I talk? Bloody hard luck! I don’t like the way you talk, never have, not since I sat and tried to understand what the hell it was you were talking about. I’ll talk
my
way, I’ll dress my way, I’ll wear my hair the length I want it. I’ll do anything that’ll make me different from
you and everything you stand for! And if it annoys you, well, hard luck again, chum! What Rusty said is dead right. You’ve never given me one lousy thing that mattered to me—to me, and not to you—except now, by accident. And if you take that away from me, I’ll, I’ll…”