The New Men (19 page)

He got up from his chair and looked out at the sky, so dark and even that one could not see the rim of any cloud.

‘At any rate,’ he said, ‘our first job is to call the committee at once. Perhaps you will be good enough to look after that?’

I said that I would do it first thing in the afternoon.

‘Many, many thanks.’ He put on his neat raincoat, his black trilby hat.

‘I suppose I can’t have the pleasure of giving you luncheon at the Athenaeum?’

It was not just his formal cordiality; the news had been a shock, and he wanted a companion – while I, after the same shock, wanted first of all to be alone.

The news rippled out. More scientists followed Pearson across. By the end of June, not only the Whitehall Committee, but the top men at Barford all knew that completed bombs were in existence: that the trial was fixed for the end of July: that there was a proposal, if the trial went according to plan, to use a bomb on a Japanese town. Of my acquaintances, perhaps thirty were in possession of those facts.

Among those I was closest to, the first responses were variegated. Several men of good will felt above all excitement and wonder. In the committees there was a whiff almost of intoxication; the other conquests of nature were small beside this one; we were within listening distance of the biggest material thing that human beings had done. Among people who had been flying throughout the war between America and England, who had been giving a hand on both sides and who had, like so many scientists, little national feeling, there was a flash of – later I did not wish to over-state it, but I thought the emotion was – awe; a not unpleasurable, a self-congratulatory awe.

In the first days of the news reaching London, I did not catch much political prevision. But I did hear someone say: ‘This will crack Russia wide open.’

At Barford, the response was, from the moment the news arrived, more complex. For Luke and Martin, it was a time of desolating disappointment, so that they had hours of that dull weight of rancour, of mindless, frustrating loss, that Scott and his party felt as, only a few miles away, they saw the ski marks of Amundsen’s party and then the black dot of the tent at the South Pole.

To Luke it seemed that he had wasted years of his life, and perhaps his health for good, just to have all snatched away within sight of the end. On the other hand, Martin found considerable comfort for himself. There were great consolations, he remarked, in reverting to being as timid as he chose. Beside that relief, the disappointment had an agreeable look, and he began to count his blessings.

But Martin, like others at Barford, showed one radical difference from those I met round committee tables, waiting for the news from America. They all heard the bomb might ‘conceivably’ or ‘according to military requirements’ be used on Japan. It was mentioned only as a possibility, and most people reacted much like Hector Rose; they did not believe it, or alternatively felt there was nothing they could do. ‘
War is war
’, someone said.

The Barford scientists were nothing like so resigned. Rumour of the bomb coming into action reached them late in June, and there was some sort of confirmation on July 3rd. From that day they took it seriously; like their elders on the committees, some believed that it could not happen, that the report was misjudged: but none of them was for sitting still. Some of the engineers, such as Pearson and Rudd, held off, but the leading scientists were unanimous. Drawbell tried to cajole them – it was not their business, he cried, it would do Barford harm – but they threw him over.

On July 4th they held a meeting in Luke’s hospital ward. How long had they got? The trial would not take place before July 20th, and American scientists had sent messages about a joint deputation. Was there a better way to stop it? How could they make themselves heard?

No one in London knew what they intended – and only those they trusted, such as Francis Getliffe and I, knew that they intended anything. All through that July, my information lagged days behind the events.

On July 5th I received a telephone call from my office: it was Emma Mounteney, whom I had known at Cambridge, but had scarcely had a word with since: she wanted to see me urgently, and had a confidential note for me. I was surprised that they should use her as a messenger, but asked her to come round at once. She entered, wearing her youthful, worn, cheeky smile, dressed in a summer frock and a pre-war picture hat. She slid a letter on to my blotting pad, and said: ‘Billet-doux for you.’

I was cross with her. I was even more cross when I saw that the envelope was addressed in Irene’s handwriting. As soon as I opened it, I saw that it had no connection with the scientists’ plans – it just said (so I gathered at the first glance) that she could not worry Martin when he was worried enough, that Hankins was still at her to pick up where they left off, would I explain as much to him as I safely could?

Unless I had seen Irene, that evening of our celebration in the Albion Gate flat, I should have wondered why she was brandishing bad behaviour to prove that she could be temporarily decent. There was no need for it; she could have turned Hankins down by letter (even if her story were true); she could have avoided this rackety fuss. The answer was that, once she felt part of Martin’s love had slipped away, she was losing her confidence: once you lost your confidence in a love relation, you made by instinct, not the right move, but the one furthest from being right.

She was trying to prove to Martin, through me, that she was thinking of his well-being. She was trying, in case the day came when she was going to be judged, to accumulate a little evidence to speak for her.

A few days later, as a result of Irene’s letter, I was giving dinner to Edgar Hankins. It was years since we had met, and at once he was exuding his own brand of interest, his bubbling malicious fun. He was getting fat now (he was five years older than I was), his fair hair had gone pepper-and-salt; as in the past, so that night, as soon as he came to my table in the restaurant, we enjoyed each other’s company. It was only when we parted that neither of us felt like meeting again.

Hearing him flatter me, recognizing that more than most men he raised the temperature of life, I had to remind myself that his literary personality contained little but seedy, dispirited, homesick despair. He was a literary journalist of the kind not uncommon in those years, who earned a professional income not so much by writing as through broadcasting, giving official lectures, advising publishers, being, as it were, high up in the civil service of literature.

We had a good many friends in common, and, sitting in a corner at the White Tower, we began to exchange gossip. Very soon we were talking intimately; I realized, finally, that part of Irene’s stories was true. There was no doubt about it; he could not get her out of his imagination, he was, despite his hesitations and comings-and-goings, in love with her.

‘It was only after she married that I realized her husband was your brother,’ he said.

‘That doesn’t make it easier to say what I’ve got to say,’ I said.

‘I don’t think that should make it any harder,’ said Hankins. He was apprehensive, but stayed considerate

‘I’d rather you told me,’ he said. Then, with the defiance of a man who is keeping his courage up: ‘But don’t if it’s embarrassing. If you don’t, I shall have to make her see me.’

I looked at him.

‘That is the trouble,’ I said.

‘Isn’t she going to see me?’

‘I’ve got to tell you that she can’t see you: that she asks you not to write: that she wants to stop communication between you, but can’t tell you why.’

‘Can you tell me why?’

For a moment he had the excitement, the excitement that is almost pleasure, of someone in touch with the person he loves, even if he is going to hear bad news. I thought how the phenomena of love did not lose their edge as one got older. Here was this middle-aged, experienced man feeling as he had felt at twenty. Perhaps it got harder to bear, that was all.

‘I can tell you the reason she gave me,’ I said. ‘My brother is in the middle of a piece of scientific politics. She says she’s not prepared to do anything that might put him off his stroke.’

Hankins’ face went heavy.

‘That’s not the real reason,’ he said. After a moment, he said: ‘There aren’t many reasons for not seeing someone you want to. What does it sound like to you?’

I shook my head.

He was too subtle a man to bluff.

‘All I can say is that she is speaking the truth–’

‘What on?’

‘There is a scientific struggle going on, and my brother is mixed up in it. I can’t tell you anything about it, except to say that she isn’t exaggerating.’

‘How do you know?’ He was the most inquisitive of men; even at that moment he could not resist the smell of a secret. I put him off, and he asked: ‘Is it important?’

‘Yes.’

Hankins’ interest faded, his head sank down, the flesh bulged under his chin.

‘It was futile, asking you whether it was important. What is important? If you were lying ill, and expected to die, what use is it if one of your scientific friends comes bounding up and says, “Old chap, I’ve got wonderful news! I’ve found a way – which won’t come into effect for a few years as a matter of fact – of prolonging the life of the human race”.’

A smile, malicious, fanciful, twisted his lips.

‘What is important? Is your brother’s piece of politics important? Is it important to know whether Irene is shouting goodbye or whether she’s just expecting me to press her?’ He continued to smile at me. ‘Would you consider that an important question, Lewis, or is it the most trivial one you’ve ever heard?’

For a fortnight after my dinner with Hankins there was no firm news from America. One rumour was, that the decision about using the bomb had been postponed. Among the people that I met, no one knew the truth, not ministers nor Hector Rose nor any of the scientists.

Late in July – from a record I could later place it as the morning of July 27th – Francis Getliffe entered my office.

He was a thin-faced, fine-looking man, with whom I had been friendly since we were both young. He was a good scientist, who had come into his own during the war. As he entered he gave a creased smile, but his face, as a young man’s high-strung and quixotic, had grown more closed. Now we usually did not speak to each other out of our immediate experience. In recent years, he had carried much responsibility, and I some; in public and in private we had each had to hide a good deal; we were becoming middle-aged.

Before he said anything to the point, he walked with his plunging stride across my room, from door to window, back again, back to the window. He made some small talk, staring down Whitehall, so that I could see his knave of diamonds profile. Then he turned full on me.

‘Look, Lewis,’ he said, ‘it might be useful if you came down to Barford with me, Can you make it?’

‘When?’

‘At once.’

I looked at my in-tray, then shook myself out of the neurosis of routine; Francis was not the man to invite one for a jaunt.

I nodded. ‘Yes, that’s all right.’

‘Good work,’ said Francis.

I asked: ‘Is anything new happening?’

‘Slightly,’ said Francis. He added: ‘We’ve just had a signal from New Mexico.’ That meant the trial.

‘It went off?’

‘Oh yes, it went off.’

Neither of us spoke, then I said: ‘What happens now?’

‘I wish I knew.’

He had telephoned the Barford scientists (who heard this kind of official news later than we did in the London offices) and they asked him to go down. As we were driven out of London, in Francis’ departmental car, along the Bayswater Road, I asked: ‘Why do they want me too?’

‘I don’t know that they do,’ Francis said. ‘But I thought you might help.’

‘Why?’

‘In case they try to do something silly. I don’t mind them doing something silly if it achieves the object – but I’m afraid they might do it just because there’s nothing else to do.’

The shabby streets, the peeling house fronts, shrank under the steady sun. In that wet and windy summer it was one of the few halcyon days – out in the country the hedges were still as though they were painted, over the river meadows the air quivered like a water mark.

Suddenly, after neither of us had spoken for some miles, Francis said: ‘They
can’t
be such fools.’

For an instant, I imagined he was still thinking of the Barford scientists, but he went on: ‘You can’t expect decency from any collection of people with power in their hands, but surely you can expect a modicum of sense.’

‘Have we seen much of that?’ I asked.

‘They can’t drop the bomb.’

The car drove on, past the unshaded fields. Francis went on to say that, even if we left moral judgements out, even then it was unthinkable for a sensible man to drop the bomb. Non-scientists never understood, he said, for how short a time you could keep a technical lead. Within five years any major country could make these bombs for itself. If we dropped them first.

At the establishment, which lay well ordered in the sunlight, by this time as neat, as hard, as a factory in a garden suburb, Francis left me in the room where we were to meet. It was a room in a red-brick range, a single storey high; between the ranges were lawns, lush after the weeks of rain, with standard roses each few yards looking like presentation bouquets wired by an unimaginative florist. I remained alone in the room, which was trim, hygienic, as the rest of the establishment had become, with a blackboard on the wall in a pitch pine frame. From the windows one saw the roses, the lawns, the next red-brick range, the roof of the new hot laboratory, all domesticated, all resting in the sun.

Martin was the first to join me; but before we had done more than greet each other, Hanna Puchwein followed him in. She came so quickly after him that she might have been keeping watch – and almost at once there was another constraint in the room.