The New Men (7 page)

He told me as much, for that evening there was complete confidence between us. Suddenly, he began to laugh outright.

I asked what was the matter.

‘I just thought what an absurdly suitable place it was, to feel like this.’

I was at a loss.

‘What was?’

‘Your bath.’

Then I remembered the legend of Archimedes.

‘
He
must have had the feeling often enough,’ said Martin.

With a smile, sharp-edged, still elated, now eager for the point of action, he added: ‘The trouble is, the old man was a better scientist than I am.’

The Experiment

Soon after Martin’s visit, people in the secret began to become partisans about Luke’s scheme, either for or against. A decision could not be stalled off for long. Luke had managed to arouse passionate opposition; most of the senior scientists as well as Hector Rose, and his colleagues, wanted to kill the idea and despatch Luke and the others to America. But Francis Getliffe and a few other scientists were being passionate on the other side. And I also was totally committed, and, while they argued for Luke in the committee rooms, did what little I could elsewhere.

I made Hector Rose listen to the whole Luke case. Although we had come to dislike each other, he gave me a full hearing, but I did not shift him.

I did better with the Minister, who had in any case felt a sneaking sympathy with the scheme all the time. The difficulty was that he was losing his influence, and was above all concerned for his own job. While I was trying to persuade him to pay a visit to Barford, he was on edge for a telephone call from Downing Street, which, if it came, meant the end.

However, he agreed to pay the visit.

‘If I can see those prima donnas together, I might get some sense out of them,’ he said to Rose.

Rose politely agreed – but he was speculating on how many more weeks Bevill would stay in office. Rose had seen ministers come and go before, and he wanted all tidy in case there was a change.

Lesser functionaries than the Minister could have travelled down to Barford by government car; Hector Rose, who himself had no taste for show, would at least have reserved a compartment for the party so that he could talk and work. Bevill did neither. He sat in a crowded train, reading a set of papers of no importance, exactly like a conscientious clerk on the way to Birmingham.

The train trickled on in the sunshine; troops yobbed out on to the little platforms, and once or twice a station flower garden which had been left intact gave out the hot midsummer scents. There was no dining car on the train; after several hours of travelling the Minister pulled out a bag, and with his sly, gratified smile offered it first to Rose and then to me. It contained grey oatmeal cakes.

‘Bikkies,’ explained the Minister.

When Drawbell received us in his office, he did not spend any time on me, and not much (in which he was dead wrong) on Hector Rose. Drawbell had no illusions about the dangers to Barford. His single purpose was to get the Minister on his side; but his manner did not overdo it. It was firm, at times bantering and only obscurely deferential.

‘I’ve done one thing you could never do,’ he said to the Minister.

The Minister looked mild and surprised.

‘Just before the war,’ Drawbell went on, ‘I saw you on my television set.’

The Minister gave a happy innocent smile, He knew precisely what was going on, and what Drawbell wanted; he was used to flattery in its most bizarre forms, and, incidentally, always enjoyed it.

But Bevill knew exactly what he intended to do that afternoon. Drawbell’s plans for him he sidestepped; he did not want Rose or me; he had come down for a series of private talks with the scientists, and he was determined to have them.

It was not until half past five that Martin came out of the meeting, and then he had Mounteney with him, so that we could not exchange a private word. Old Bevill was still there talking to Rudd, and Mounteney was irritated.

‘This is sheer waste of time,’ he said to me as we began to walk towards their house, as though his disapproval of old Bevill included me. Although at Cambridge we had been somewhere between acquaintances and friends, he did at that moment disapprove of me.

He was tall and very thin, with a long face and cavernous eye sockets. It was a kind of face and body one often sees in those with a gift for conceptual thought; and Mounteney’s gift was a major one. He was a man of intense purity of feeling, a man quite unpadded either physically or mentally; and he had an almost total inability to say a softening word.

‘It would have been more honest if you had all come here in uniform,’ he said to me.

He meant that the government was favouring the forces at the expense of science, in particular at the expense of Barford. It seemed to him obvious – and obvious to anyone whose intelligence was higher than an ape’s – that government policy was wrong. He was holding me responsible for it. All other facts were irrelevant, including the fact that he knew me moderately well. It was shining clear to him that government policy was moronic, and probably ill-disposed. Here was I: the first thing was to tell me so.

I gathered that the Minister had talked to them both privately and in a group. Luke had been eloquent: his opponents had attacked him: Martin had spoken his mind. The discussion had been rambling, outspoken and inconclusive. Mounteney, although in theory above the battle, was not pleased.

‘Luke
is
quite bright,’ he said in a tone of surprise and injury, as though it was unreasonable to force him to give praise.

He then returned to denouncing me by proxy. Bevill had said what wonderful work they had done at Barford. Actually, said Mounteney, they had done nothing: the old man knew it; they knew it; they knew he knew it.

‘Why
will
you people say these things?’ asked Mounteney.

Irene was sitting in a deckchair in what had once been the garden behind their house, though by this time it was running wild. The bindweed was strangling the last of the phlox, the last ragged pansies; the paths were overgrown with weed. When Mounteney went in to his children, Martin and I sat beside her, on the parched grass, which was hot against the hand. At last Martin was free to give a grim smile.

‘Well,’ he said to me, ‘you’d better see that Luke’s scheme goes through.’

‘What have you been doing?’ she asked.

Martin was still smiling. ‘Not only for patriotic reasons,’ he went on.

‘What
have
you been doing?’ She sounded, for the moment, as she might have done if accusing him of some amatory adventure, her voice touched with mock reprobation and a secret pride.

‘Something that may not do us any good,’ he said, and let us hear the story. He had told Bevill, in front of Drawbell and Rudd, that he and the other young scientists were agreed: either they ought to concentrate on Luke’s scheme, or else shut Barford down.

‘If I had to do it, it was no use doing it half-heartedly,’ he said.

‘
I’m glad you did it
,’ she said, excited by the risk. The teasing air had faded; there was a high flush under her eyes.

‘Wait until we see whether it was worthwhile,’ said Martin.

‘Never mind that,’ she said, and turned to me. ‘Aren’t you glad he did it?’

Before I answered Martin looked at her and said: ‘We may not get our way, you know,’

‘I don’t care.’

‘It would be an odd time to move.’

They were glancing at each other with eyes half challenging, half salacious.

‘Why would it be so odd?’ I asked, but did not need an answer.

‘You can tell Lewis,’ said Martin.

‘I am going to have a child, dear,’ she said.

For the first time since their marriage, I felt nothing but warmth towards her, as I went to her chair and kissed her. Martin’s face was softened with delight. If he had not been my brother I should have envied him, for my marriage had been childless, and there were times, increasing as the years passed, when the deprivation nagged at me. And, buried deep within both Martin and me, there was a strong family sense, so that it was natural for him to say: ‘I’m glad there’ll be another generation.’

As he went indoors to fetch something to drink in celebration, Irene said to me: ‘If it’s a boy we’ll call it after you, Lewis dear. Even though you don’t approve of its mother.’

She added: ‘He is pleased, isn’t he? I did want to do something for him.’

‘It’s very good news,’ I said, as she got up from her chair in the low sunlight, and began to walk about the patch of derelict garden. The evening scents were growing stronger, mint and wormwood mingled in the scorched aromatic tang of the August night. Irene came to a clearing in the long grass, where a group of autumn crocuses shone out, amethyst and solitary, flowers that in my childhood I had heard called ‘naked ladies’. Irene bent and picked one, and then stood erect, as though she were no longer concealing the curve of her breast.

‘When I was a little girl,’ she said, ‘I always thought I should have a brood of children.’

‘Should you like them?’ I asked.

‘Time is going on,’ she said: but, in the smoothing amber light, she looked younger than I had seen her.

After Martin returned, and we sat there in the dipping sun, the three of us were at peace together as we had not been before. Our content was so strong that Martin did not disturb it when he began speculating again about transferring to Luke, and speaking out that afternoon; he did not disturb it in us, least of all in himself.

‘I don’t see what else I could have done,’ he said.

Martin went on with his thoughts. It was going to be a near thing whether Luke got his head: wasn’t that true? So if one could do anything to bring it about, one had to.

‘I should have been more sorry if I hadn’t spoken.’

If the luck went wrong, it meant a dim job for the rest of the war and probably after. If the luck went right, no one could tell – Martin smiled, his eyes glinted, and he said: ‘I’m not sorry that I’ve gone in with Luke.’

We all took it for granted that he was the most prudent of men, always reckoning out the future, not willing to allow himself a rash word, let alone a rash action. Even I assumed that as part of his flesh and bone. In a sense it was true. And yet none of us had made a wilder marriage, and now, over Barford and his career, he was gambling again.

From Martin’s I went off to an evening party at Drawbell’s. Mrs Drawbell had set herself to catch old Bevill for a social engagement; he had refused tea or dinner, and insisted on returning to London that night, but he had not been able to elude this last invitation, a ‘little party’ before we caught the train.

Most of the senior Barford staff were already there, and I found my way to a corner next to Walter Luke. From near the window we looked into the centre of the room, where upon the hearthrug Mrs Drawbell, a heavy woman, massive as a monument upon the rug, waited for the Minister.

‘Where is this uncle?’ said Luke.

‘He’ll come,’ I said. The Minister has not been known to break a social engagement.

Luke’s thoughts became canalized once more.

‘Does he believe in Jojo?’ (Luke’s proposal already had a name.)

He corrected himself.

‘I don’t care whether he believes in it or not. The point is, will he do anything useful about it?’

I said that I thought he was well disposed, but would not find it easy to put through.

‘There are times,’ said Luke, ‘when I get sick and tired of you wise old men.’

Wholehearted and surgent, he said: ‘Well, I suppose I’d better mobilize some of the chaps who really know against all you stuffed shirts.’

I was warning him to go carefully (he would still listen to me, even when he was regarding me as a ‘wise old man’) when the Minister entered. With his unobtrusive trip Bevill went towards Mrs Drawbell.

‘I am sorry I haven’t been able to get out of the clutches of these fellows,’ he said, smiling innocently.

‘I am glad you were able to come to my party, Mr Bevill,’ she replied. Her voice was deep, her expression dense, gratified, and confident. She had looked forward to having him there; he had come. And now – she had nothing to say.

The Minister said, what a nice room. She agreed. He said, how refreshing to have a drink after a hot, tiring day. She was glad he liked it. He said, it was hard work, walking round the laboratories, especially hard work if you weren’t a scientist and didn’t understand much. She smiled, heavily, without comment. She had nothing to say to him.

It did not seem to depress her. She had him in her house, the grandson of the last Lord Boscastle but one (his being in the Cabinet had its own virtue, but did not give her the same collector’s joy). To her this visit was a prize which she would hoard.

She kept him to herself, standing together on the rug. It was not until she was forced to greet a new arrival that her eyes were distracted, and the Minister could slip away towards the window. He beckoned to us, so that we could make a circle round him; Luke, me, a couple of young scientists whom I did not know by name, Mary Pearson. He caught sight of Mary Pearson’s husband, and beckoned also to him.

I had had business talks with Pearson before, for he was one of the top men at Barford and was said to be their best electrical engineer. In those talks I had found him too pleased with himself to give more than a minimum reply. He was a man in the early thirties with a cowlick over his forehead and a wide lazy-looking mouth.

As Bevill crooked his finger, Pearson gave a relaxed smile and came unconcernedly into the ring.

‘Now, my friends, we can talk seriously, can’t we?’ said the Minister.

He basked in the company of the young, and felt quite natural with them. But, as often when he was natural, he was also mildly eccentric; with the intellectual young, he felt most completely at ease, and satisfied with himself, in discussing what he called ‘philosophy’. He took it for granted that this was their conception of serious conversation, too; and so the old man, so shrewd and cunning in practice, dug out his relics of idealist speculation, garbled from the philosophers of his youth, F H Bradley and McTaggart, and talked proudly on, forcing the young men to attend – while all they wanted, that night of all nights, was to cut the cackle and hear his intentions about Barford and Luke’s scheme.