The New Men (25 page)

It was only Drawbell, sitting alone with me during the morning, who let out a spontaneous cry. This was the first day of 1946, which in Drawbell’s private calendar marked the last stage of the plutonium process, with luck the last year of plain Mr Drawbell. He had to complain to somebody, and he cried out: ‘This isn’t the kind of New Year’s gift I bargained for!’

And then again: ‘This isn’t the time to drop bricks. They couldn’t have picked a worse time to drop bricks!’

When I heard Smith talking to scientist after scientist, the monotony, the strain, seemed to resonate with each other, so that the light in the little room became dazzling on the eyes.

To the seniors, Smith had to tell more than he liked. In his creaking, faded, vicarage voice, he said that his ‘people’ knew that Sawbridge had passed information on.

‘How do you know?’ said one of them.

‘Steady on, old son,’ said Captain Smith. He would not explain, but said that beyond doubt they knew.

They also knew which information had ‘gone over’.

Another of the scientists speculated on how much time that data would save the Russians. Not long, he thought; a few months at the most.

Bevill could not contain himself. He burst out: ‘If our people are killed by their bomb, it will be this man’s doing.’ The scientist contradicted him, astonished that laymen should not realize how little scientific secrets were worth. He and Bevill could not understand each other.

Bevill did not have to put on his indignation; it was not just the kind of politician’s horror which sounded as though it had been learnt by heart. He was speaking as he had done yesterday, and as I was to hear others speak, not only among the old ruling classes, but among the humble and obscure for years to come. Bevill had not been shocked by the dropping of the bomb; but this was a blow to the viscera.

Whereas, as they heard the first news of the spies, the scientists were unhappy, but unhappy in a different tone from Bevill’s. They had been appalled by Hiroshima, still more by Nagasaki, and, sitting in that typist’s office, I thought that some at least had got beyond being appalled any more. They were shocked; confused; angry that this news would put them all back in the dark. They felt trapped.

To two of them, Smith, for reasons I did not know, said that one arrest, of the man who had been working in Canada, would happen within days. There had been at least three scientific spies, whom most of the men Smith interviewed that day had known as friendly acquaintances.

For once even Luke was at a loss. Smith seemed to be wasting his time. He had come for two purposes, first to satisfy himself about some of the scientists whom we knew least, and second, to get help in proving his case against Sawbridge. But all he discovered were men shocked, bewildered, sullen.

There was one man, however, who was not shocked nor bewildered nor sullen. It was Martin. His mind was cool, he heard the news as though he had foreseen it and made his calculations. I did not need to look at him, as Smith brought out his elaborate piece of partial explanation. I had expected Martin to see it as his time to act.

Smith asked to have a ‘confab’ with him and Luke together, since Sawbridge was working directly under them. As they sat on the secretary’s desk, he told them, speaking frankly but as though giving an impersonation of frankness, that Sawbridge’s was the most thorough piece of spying so far. The difficulty was, to bring it out against him. Smith’s conclusive evidence could not be produced. The only way was to break him down.

‘You’ve tried?’ said Luke.

‘We should be remiss if we haven’t, said Smith, with his false smile.

‘Without any result?’

‘He’s a tough one,’ said Smith.

‘What does he say?’

‘He just denies it flat and laughs at us, said Smith.

Bevill’s voice and Luke’s sounded soggy with exasperation, but not Martin’s, as he asked:

‘How long can he keep that up?’

His eyes met Smith’s, but Luke disturbed them.

‘Anyway,’ Luke was saying, ‘the first thing is to get this chap out of the laboratory before we shut up shop tonight.’

‘I don’t think that’s right,’ said Martin.

‘What are you getting at, Eliot?’ asked Bevill.

‘I suggest that the sensible thing, sir,’ said Martin, speaking both modestly and certainly, ‘is to leave him exactly where he is.’

‘With great respect,’ Smith said to Luke, after a pause, ‘I wonder if that isn’t the wisest course?’

‘I won’t have him in my lab a day longer,’ said Luke.

‘He might get away with your latest stuff,’ cried old Bevill.

Martin answered him quietly: ‘That can be taken care of, sir.’

‘If we move him,’ Smith appeared to be thinking aloud, ‘we’ve got to make some excuse, and if he isn’t rattled he might require a very good excuse.’

‘How in God’s name can you expect us to work,’ Luke shouted, ‘with a man we can’t talk in front of?’

‘If we leave him where he is,’ said Martin, without a sign of excitement, ‘he would be under my eyes.’

He added: ‘I should very much prefer it so.’

In the middle of the argument, the telephone rang on the far table. It was from Drawbell’s personal assistant, the only person who could get through to us; she was asking to speak to me urgently. In a whisper, only four feet from old Bevill, I took the call.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Eliot,’ she said, ‘but Hanna Puchwein is pressing me, she says that she must speak to you and your brother this afternoon. I said that I mightn’t be able to find you.’

‘That’s right,’ I said.

‘I suppose you can’t speak to her?’

‘No,’ I said with routine prudence.

‘She said, if I couldn’t get you, that I was to leave a message. She’s most anxious. She told me to say it was urgent for her – for you and Dr Eliot (Martin) to see her before dinner tonight.’

I went back to my place, wrote down the message, put it in an envelope (it was curious how the fug of secrecy caught hold of one, how easy it was to feel like a criminal) and had it passed across the room to Martin. I watched him staring at the note, with his pen raised. Without his face changing, he wrote: ‘No, not until we have discussed it with Smith M.’

Uncertain of himself as I had not seen him, Luke soon gave way. Sawbridge was to stay under observation, and we left Smith alone with Luke and Martin, making arrangements about how Sawbridge must be watched.

Although Martin and I had not once talked without reserve since the August afternoon, I was staying, as usual, in his house. So I waited for him in his laboratory, while he finished the interview with Captain Smith.

As I waited there alone, I could not help trying to catch a glimpse of Sawbridge. His state of jeopardy, of being in danger of hearing a captor’s summons (next week? next month?), drew me with a degrading fascination of which I was ashamed.

It was the same with others, even with Smith, who should have been used to it. The sullen, pale face had only to come within sight – and it was hard to force one’s glance away. It might have been a school through which there moved, catching eyes afraid, ashamed, desiring, a boy of superlative attraction. On the plane of reason, I detested our secret; yet I found myself scratching at it, coming back to it.

Waiting for Martin, I manufactured an excuse to pass through Sawbridge’s laboratory, so that I could study him.

He knew his danger. Just like us who were watching him, he was apprehending when the time – the precise instant of time – would come. It seemed that at moments he was holding his breath, and he found himself taking care of ordinary involuntary physical acts. Instead of walking about the laboratory with his heavy, confident clatter, he went lightly and jaggedly, sometimes on tiptoe, like a man in trepidation by a sickbed. He had grown a moustache, fair against the large-pored skin. He was working on, taking his measurements, writing results in his stationery office notebook. He knew that we were watching. He knew all we knew. He was a brave man, and his opaque, sky-blue eyes looked back with contempt.

Martin, sooner than I counted on, found me there. He called Sawbridge: ‘How is it coming out?’

‘Eighty per cent reliable.’

‘Pretty,’ said Martin.

They looked at each other, and as Martin took me out he called good night.

As soon as we reached Martin’s laboratory, he switched on the light behind an opalescent screen. He apologized for keeping me, said that he wanted to have a look at a spectroscopic plate; he stood there, fixing the negative on to the bright screen, peering down at the regiments of lines.

I believed his work was an excuse. He did not intend to talk about his action that day. I was out of proportion distressed.

Though nothing had been admitted, we both took it for granted that there was a break between us; but it was not that in itself which weighed on me. Reserve, separation, the withdrawal of intimacy – the relation of brothers, which is at the same time tough and not overblown, can stand them all. And yet that night, as we did not speak, as he stood over the luminous screen, I was heavy-hearted. The reason did not seem sufficient; I disliked what he planned to do about Sawbridge; but I could not have explained why I minded so much.

I had had no doubt what he intended, from that night at Stratford, when he put forward his case in front of Luke. He had foreseen the danger about Sawbridge: he had also foreseen how to turn it to his own use. It was clear to him, as in his place it might have been clear to me, that he could gain much from joining in the hunt.

It was cynical, but I could not lay that against him. It might be the cynicism of the rebound, for which I was at least in part responsible.

His suggestion at Stratford had been unscrupulous, but it would have saved trouble now. And I could not lay it against him that now he wanted to put Sawbridge away. We had never talked of it, but we both had the patriotism, slightly shamefaced, more inhibited than Bevill’s, of our kind and age.

We took it out in tart, tough-sounding sentiments, that as we had to live in this country, we might as well make it as safe as could be. In fact, when we heard of the spies, we were more shaken than we showed.

Concealing our sense of outrage, men like Martin and Francis Getliffe and I said to each other, in the dry, analytic language of the day – none of us liked the situation in which we found ourselves, but in that situation all societies had their secrets – any society which permitted its secrets to be stolen was obsolescent – we could not let it happen.

But accepting that necessity was one thing, making a career of it another.

Yet was that enough to make me, watching him, so wretched?

Was it even enough that he was throwing other scruples away, of the kind that my friends and I valued more? Among ourselves, we tried to be kind and loyal. Whereas I had no doubt that Martin was planning to climb at Luke’s expense, making the most out of the contrast between Luke’s mistake of judgement over Sawbridge and Martin’s own foresight. That day he had taken advantage of Luke’s confusion, in front of Bevill. And Martin had a card or two still to play.

Was that enough reason for my distress?

Carefully Martin packed the photographic plate in the box, made a note on the outside, and turned to me. He apologized again for keeping me waiting; he was expecting a result from another laboratory in ten minutes, and then he would be ready to go.

We made some conversation with our thoughts elsewhere. Then, without a preliminary and also without awkwardness, he said: ‘I’m sorry we had to brush Hanna off.’

I said yes.

‘I’m sure it was wise,’ said Martin.

‘Is there any end to this business?’

‘Not yet.’

He went on: ‘Hanna will understand. She’s a match for most of us.’ I glanced at him, his face lit from below by the shining screen. He was wearing a reflective, sarcastic smile. He said: ‘Why don’t you and I marry women like that?’

I caught his tone. My own marriage had been even more untranquil than his.

‘Because we wanted a quiet life,’ I said. It was the kind of irony that we could still share.

‘Exactly,’ said Martin.

We seemed close enough to speak. It was for me to take the first step if we were to be reconciled. I said: ‘We look like being in an unpleasant situation soon.’

Martin said: ‘Which one?’

I said: ‘About Sawbridge.’

‘Maybe,’ said Martin.

‘It would be a help to me if I knew what you were thinking.’

‘How, quite?’

‘These are times when one needs some help. So far as I’m concerned I need it very much.’

After a pause, Martin said: ‘The trouble is, we’re not likely to agree.’

Without roughness, he turned the appeal away. He began asking questions about the new flat into which I was just arranging to move.

The spring came, and Sawbridge remained at liberty. But the scientist about whom the warning came through on New Year’s Eve had been arrested, had come up at the Old Bailey, pleaded guilty and been given ten years. His name, which Bevill had forgotten that day, made headlines in the newspapers.

Later, I realized that most of us on the inside hid from ourselves how loud the public clamour was. We knew that people were talking nonsense, were exaggerating out of all meaning the practical results; and so, just like other officials in the inside of a scandal, we shut our ears off from any remark we heard about it, in the train, at the club bar, in the theatre-foyer, as though we were deaf men who had conveniently switched off our hearing aid.

Myself; I went into court for the trial. Little was said there; for many people it was enough, as it had been for Bevill, to add to the gritty taste of fear.

Always quick off the mark, Hankins, in his profession the most businesslike of men, got in with the first article, which he called The Final Treason. It was a moving and eloquent piece, the voice of those who felt left over from their liberal youth, to whom the sweetness of life had ceased with the twenties, and now seemed to themselves to be existing in no-man’s-land. For me, it had a feature of special interest. That was a single line in which he wrote, like many writers before him, a private message. He was signalling to Irene reminding her that she had not always lived among ‘the new foreigners’ – that is, the English scientists. For Hankins had come to think of them as a different race.