The New Men (21 page)

On the Friday, I had still had no word from America; when I telephoned Martin (it was becoming a routine), nor had he. ‘We’re bound to hear before long,’ he said.

Saturday was the same. On the Sunday I stayed in my flat all day, half-expecting that Martin was right, that a message was on the way.

Next morning I was restless; once more I went off (half-thinking as when one waits for a letter in a love affair, that if I were out of the way, a message was more likely to arrive) to St John’s Wood, and sat there watching the game.

The ground was shabby that summer. The pavilion was unpainted; like the high Victorian afternoon of which it might have been the symbol, it had sunk into decay. Yet the smell of the grass was a comfort; it helped me to tell myself that though I had cares on my mind, they were not the deepest. Like the scientists, more often than not I felt this trouble about the bomb could be resolved. And in myself I was lonely rather than unhappy; at forty I had not reshaped my life. Perhaps that was why I took to heart this trouble at one remove. So I sat, watching those hours of cricket in the flashing rain-sharp sunshine, taken over by well-being, thoughtless, and secure.

It must have been about a quarter to six when I left Lord’s. I walked in a meaningless reverie down to Baker Street and then along the Marylebone Road; the light was brilliant after rain, and in it the faces of passers-by stood out sharp-edged. At last I went at random into a pub in Portland Place. I heard my name. There, standing at the bar beside a man in a polo sweater, was Hankins.

I began by saying something banal, about not meeting for years and then twice in a month, but he cried loudly:

‘This is my producer. I’ve just been giving a talk on
Current Shakespeareana
.’

He said that he had had only one drink, but his bright, heavy face was glistening, he was talking as if he were half drunk.

‘And all the time I was thinking of my words going out to the villages and the country towns and clever young women saying “That was a good point!” or “I should like to take that up with him”.

And then I came out of the studio and met the man who had been reading the six o’clock news just before I went on.’

‘Is there any news?’ I asked.

‘There is,’ said Hankins.

I knew.

‘So they’ve dropped it, have they?’ I asked dully. I felt blank, tired out.

‘Were you expecting something then?’ said Hankins. But his inquisitiveness for once was swamped: yes, the six o’clock news had contained the announcement about the bomb and he, in innocence, had broadcast just after.

‘I wonder how many people listened to my immortal prose!’ cried Hankins. ‘
Current Shakespeareana
. I wish it had been something slightly more obscure.
The influence of the Duino Elegies on the later work of C P Cavafy
– that’s how I should like to have added the only comment literary culture was entitled to make on this promising new age.’

He was upset and hilarious, he wanted an audience, human bodies round him, drink.

‘The chief virtue of this promising new age, and perhaps the only one so far as I can tell, is that from here on we needn’t pretend to be any better than anyone else. For hundreds of years we’ve told ourselves in the west, with that particular brand of severity which ends up an paying yourself a handsome compliment, that of course we cannot live up to our moral pretensions, that of course we’ve established ethical standards which are too high for men. We’ve always assumed, all the people of whom you,’ he grinned at the producer and me, ‘and I are the ragtag and bobtail, all the camp followers of western civilization, we have taken it for granted that, even if we did not live up to those exalted ethical standards, we did a great deal better than anyone else. Well, anyone who says that today isn’t a fool, because no one could be so foolish. He isn’t a liar, because no one could tell such lies. He’s just a singer of comic songs.’

The producer said that next day he had a programme on the care of backward children. ‘One can’t help thinking,’ he said, ‘whether there’ll be any children left to care for.’

Hankins suddenly clapped a hand to his head.

‘I suppose this wasn’t the piece of scientific policy we were interested in, you and I, Lewis, last time we met?’

‘It was.’

‘You said it was important,’ he said, as though in reproof. I nodded. ‘Well, perhaps I could concede it a degree of importance. What is important, after all?’ He had a writer’s memory for the words we had each spoken. ‘Did Irene know about this?’ he flashed out.

‘No.’

‘Did your brother and the rest of them?’

‘None of them knew that this bomb was going to be dropped.’

‘But they’d been working heroically on it, I suppose,’ said Hankins. ‘And now they’re getting the reward for their labours. It must be strange to be in their shoes tonight.’

It was also strange to hear him speak with such kindness, with his own curious inquisitive imagination.

We went on drinking, as Hankins talked.

‘The party’s nearly over,’ he said. ‘The party for our kind of people, for dear old western man – it’s been a good party, but the host’s getting impatient and it’s nearly time to go. And there are lots of people waiting for our blood in the square outside. Particularly as we’ve kept up the maddening habit of making improving speeches from the window. It may be a long time before anyone has such a good party again.’

If I had stayed I should have got drunk, but I wanted to escape. I went out into the streets, on which the anonymous crowds were jostling in the summer evening. For a while I lost myself among them, without a name, among many who had no name, a unit among the numbers, listening but hearing no comment on the news. In the crowd I walked down Oxford Street, was carried by the stream along Charing Cross Road: lights shone in the theatre foyers, the plays had all begun, in the wind relics of newsprint scuffled among our feet.

Near Leicester Square I drifted out of the crowd, into another pub. There some had heard the news, and as they talked I could pick out the common denominator of fear, sheer simple fear, which, whatever else we thought, was present in us all, Hankins and his producer, the seedy travellers, agents, homosexuals in the Leicester Square bar. Hankins’ rhetoric that night: Francis Getliffe’s bare words on the way down to Barford: they were different men, but just for once their feelings coincided, they meant the same things.

But in the pub there were also some indifferent. They had heard, and thrown it off already.

One, an elderly man with a fine ascetic face, sat with strained eyes focused on the doors. From a passing remark, I gathered that he was waiting for a young man, who had been due at six.

I walked across Piccadilly Circus, up Vigo Street and then west of Bond Street, through the deserted fringes of Mayfair, towards my club. As soon as I entered, acquaintances spoke to me with interest, with resignation, with the same damped-down fear. Had I known? Was there a chance that we could make ourselves safe again? What would happen to this country in another war? To this town? There was one interruption, as I stood in a party of four or five, standing round the empty grate. A young member, elected that year, asked if he could have a word with me. He had been invalided out of the Navy, his face was sallow, he had a high-strung, delicate, humorous look. But he spoke with urgency:

‘Is this bomb all they say?’

I answered yes, so far as I knew.

‘Do you think it will finish the Japanese? Do you think the war’s going to stop?’

‘I should have thought so,’ I replied.

‘I don’t believe it. Bombs don’t end wars.’

I was puzzled, but the explanation was straightforward. He was arguing against his own hopes. He had an elder brother, who was booked to fight in the invasion of Malaya. He could not let himself believe that the war would end in time.

When I left the club, I began to walk across London, trying to tire myself. But soon the energy of distress left me, almost between one step and another: although it was not yet eleven I found myself tired out. I took a taxi back to Pimlico, where from the houses in the square the lights were shining, as serene as on any other night of peace, as enticing to a lonely man outside.

I went straight off to sleep, woke before four, and did not get to sleep again. It was not a bad test of how public and private worries compare in depth, I thought, when I remembered the nights I had lain awake because of private trouble. Public trouble – how many such nights of insomnia had that given me? The answer was, just one. On the night after Munich, I had lain sleepless – and perhaps, as I went through the early hours of August 7th, I could fairly count another half.

As I lay there, I wished that I were able to speak to someone I was close to. The thoughts, the calculations of the future, pressed on me out of the morning dusk; it might have taken the edge off them if I could have admitted them to Martin. Soon after breakfast, I rang him up.

‘So this is it,’ I said.

‘Yes, this is it,’ came his voice, without any stress.

For some instants neither of us spoke, and I went on: ‘I think I should like to come down. Can you put up with me?’

A pause.

‘It might be better if I came to London, he replied. ‘Will that do?’

‘I can come down straight away,’ I said.

‘The other might be better. Is it all right for you?’

I said it was, but I was restless all morning, wondering why he had put me off. It was just after one when he came into my room.

As soon as I saw him, I felt, as often when we met, the familiar momentary wiping away of fret. I had felt the same, over five years before, when he visited me in that office, and we talked of the bomb, and I induced him to work on it.

‘Well, it’s happened,’ I said.

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Martin.

It was a curious phrase, inadequate and polite.

‘I don’t find it easy to take,’ I said.

‘It’s not pretty,’ said Martin.

I looked at him. His eyes were hard, bright, and steady, the corners of his mouth tucked in. I felt a jolt of disappointment; I was repelled by his stoicism. I had turned to him for support, and we had nothing to say to each other.

Without pretending to be light-hearted, Martin kept up the same level, disciplined manner. He made some comments about his journey, then he asked where we should eat.

‘Where you like,’ I said.

His eyes searched mine.

‘Would you rather wait a bit?’

‘I don’t care,’ I said.

‘I mean,’ said Martin, his eyes harder, ‘would you rather wait and talk? Because if so it may take some time.’

‘It depends what we talk about–’

‘What do you think I’m going to talk about?’

His voice was not raised – but suddenly I realized it was unsteady with anger.

‘I thought you felt it wasn’t any use–’

‘It may be a
great deal
of use,’ said Martin. His voice was still quiet, his temper utterly let go.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You don’t expect me to sit by and hear about this performance, and not say that I should like my dissent recorded in the minutes?’

‘I’ve felt the same,’ I said.

‘I know you have,’ said Martin. ‘But the question is: what is a man to do?’

‘I doubt if you can do anything,’ I said.

Martin said: ‘I think I can.’

‘It’s happened now,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing to do.’

‘I disagree.’

At that moment, each of us, staring into the other’s eyes, shared the other’s feeling, and knew that our wills must cross.

A Result in Private

Big Ben had just struck, it must have been the half-hour, when Martin said: ‘I disagree.’

He continued to look at me.

‘I oughtn’t to have stopped Arthur Mounteney sending his letter,’ said Martin. Just then, that was the focus of his remorse.

‘It wouldn’t have done any good,’ I said.

‘It would have done the trick,’ said Martin.

I shook my head.

He said: ‘So now I shall have to send a letter myself.’

He added, in a tone that was casual, cold, almost hostile: ‘Perhaps you’d better have a look at it.’

He opened his wallet, and with his neat deliberate fingers unfolded a sheet of office paper. He leaned across and put it on my blotter. The words were written in his own handwriting. There were no corrections, and the letter looked like a fair copy. It read:

To the Editor of
The Times
(which failing,
Daily Telegraph
,
Manchester Guardian
). Sir, As a scientist who has been employed for four years on the fission bomb, I find it necessary to make two comments on the use of such a bomb on Hiroshima. First, it appears not to have been relevant to the war: informed persons are aware that, for some weeks past, the Japanese have been attempting to put forward proposals for surrender. Second, if this had not been so, or if the proposals came to nothing, a minimum respect for humanity required that a demonstration of the weapon should be given, e.g. by delivering a bomb on unpopulated territory, before one was used on an assembly of men, women, and children. The actual use of the bomb in cold blood on Hiroshima is the most horrible single act so far performed. States like Hitler’s Germany have done much wickedness over many years, but no State has ever before had both the power and the will to destroy so many lives in a few seconds. In this respect, our scientists and our government have been so closely interwoven with those of the USA that we have formed part of that power and that will…

‘You’ve not sent this?’ I said, before I had finished reading.

‘Not yet.’

‘How many people know you’ve written it?’

‘Only Irene.’

That was the reason, I thought, that he had not wished me to go to Barford.

If this letter were published, it meant the end of his career. I had to get him out of it. From the moment he said that he was proposing to act, I had known that I must prevent him.