The Bat that Flits (7 page)

“ . . . it must not happen. It must
not
happen,” he said slowly and with increasing emphasis. “There must surely be some way of stopping it, no?”

“Only by taking the milk jug right away from her,” I told him.

Dr. Mann did not seem to have heard me, however. Or, if he had heard, he had not understood.

“It is not even sufficient to think that the Russians possess it also,” he said. “They do not know the extent of our knowledge. Therefore, they may be tempted to think of us as ignorant. And, if they do think so, they may be tempted to make use of this weapon believing us to be unprepared, no?”

“That would seem to be about the general picture,” I agreed with him.

“But that is what must not happen,” he said again. “And there is only one way of stopping it. Only one.”

“Which way's that?” I asked.

The strain of telling me was almost too much for him. He was trembling as he stood there, and he was shaking his little egg-shaped head so violently from side to side that I knew that the chick was due to be delivered almost any moment now. But when it came it had a rather old-world appearance. It was Easter-all-the-year-round for that kind of chick.

“By publishing our results internationally,” he said.

“Then there would be no more danger from it. International results would neutralise themselves. There would be no more spying, no more counter-spying, no more fear in the minds of men. It would be the end of war if results were published.

“But suppose the other fellow was a bit absent-minded and forgot?” I asked.

“The choice,” said Dr. Mann solemnly, “is between possible failure and inevitable disaster. I would sacrifice my life to see it happen.”

“I get your point,” I told him. “But I still don't think that it would be a good risk on Lloyd's.”

“Lloyd's, plees?” he asked.

I did not enlighten him. I must have taken part in precisely that conversation at least a couple of hundred times before. And when I had been younger I had, God forgive me, started about half of them. In fact, it is the basic attitude of every serious scientist, this sharing of results. There is also a higher mystique to it. Pure knowledge knowing boundaries of neither race nor creed, and that sort of thing. And Dr. Mann was just getting ready for that part.

But by now we had been joined by the two King Street emigrés. And the level of the conversation took a sharp slant downwards.

“ . . . there is only one country in the world in which such knowledge would be really safe,” Kimbell was saying. “And that's the . . . ”

“U.S.S.R.,” Swanton put in almost automatically.

These two boys had done their double act for so long that I had begun to doubt whether they ever knew exactly which had said what in their particular line of cross-talk.

“Imagine a weapon like this in Truman's hands,” Kimbell
went on, without even noticing that he had been interrupted. “Can you see a free Europe if he possessed it? It all fits so perfectly into the old peace-through-fear formula.”

Rogers, meanwhile, had gone one better. He had Bansted with him, and the pair of them were extraordinarily reminiscent of my old employer.

“And in time of peace just think of the commercial possibilities,” he pointed out. “There'd be tremendous possibilities in all sorts of fields for the first firm that gets working on it.”

There was a lot more from him in the same vein, and you could watch the mind of the ex-lab. boy working. I think that he was already seeing himself as the head of a retail chemists' chain with branches in all seaside towns, complete with tearooms and lending libraries in every one of them.

But it was left to the great Dr. Smith to score the absolute top-high somewhere down at the wrong end of the scale.

“Always assuming that there is something in it, and, personally, I am expressing no opinions either way”—he could really hardly have said less after the way in which Gillett had snubbed him—“let us only pray that we keep it to ourselves. I have reason, good reason, to believe that the Americans are only passing on a fraction of the atomic knowledge that they possess. If we can offer a threat every bit as terrible as theirs, we may be able to sit down at Lake Success as equal partners, and not as poor relations.”

This was Hilda's turn.

“Hear, hear,” she said, looking more pre-Raphaelite than ever. “Only we should use it as a bargaining instrument rather than as a threat. We must always remember that the alliance of the English-speaking peoples is the most important thing in the long run. It's simply that we mustn't let the Americans trample on us.”
When she had finished, I made a vow that as soon as we were married—and I made my mind up on that point—I would get her interested in bee-keeping or babies or something, and off international politics altogether. That is, if I was in time.

The way she was heading, she was due for the British Information Services to fix her up for a trans-Atlantic coast-to-coast goodwill mission tour almost any moment now.

It was the Old Man's idea that we should all take a short breather. And from my point of view, I knew at once that it would be fatal. With a nature like mine that has a spot of mildew somewhere near the centre there is only one thing that has ever really suited it—and that is a job of work that doesn't allow of any let-up.

A sudden compulsory half-hol. in the middle of term was easily the worst of all. I could feel my defences going down like cardboard as I read the Old Man's release note. In a queer way that rather worries me on these occasions, while one half of me was thinking hard of madder music and stronger wine, the other half kept saying: “Achtung! Achtung! Hier ist alles verboten.” What's more, there was the complete me, the real me, asking myself in a dopey, helpless sort of fashion which me was going to come out on top. And from long and intimate acquaintance with such situations I would confidently have said that it was evens.

If you have finally decided to paint the town red there are better places than Bodmin to choose for doing it. The whole
of Cornwall for that matter is pretty much of a write-off. You need somewhere with plenty of pubs, and a bit of life going on before you get there.

I consulted my A.A. map, and the nearest that I could get to the prescription was Plymouth. Sailors on leave appear to have quite a lot in common with me when I'm in one of my problem-child moods, and we rub along rather nicely together. Plymouth, then, was the answer. And, as soon as I had decided, I changed into my check sports shirt as more in keeping with what lay before me. I'd bought a rather nice check cap in Jermyn Street to go with the sports shirt, and out came that, too. It was all rather childish and silly. But one part of me has always insisted on the dressing-up process.

It was a nice little run in the car, and I did it in twelve minutes under schedule, which meant some pretty mean driving on the way. This did not surprise me. It was the mean me who was at the wheel that afternoon. And I was able to get everything worked out in my mind while the West Country kept up a fairly steady sixty past the side panels. The plan that I evolved was simple and self-explanatory. It was to start high and work downwards. The object was to get full value for money and avoid all unpleasantnesses. If I were to start trying to get back into the Grand or the Royal or the Palace in the state in which I intended to be later on that evening I should probably be chucked out. And I'm bad at being chucked out of anywhere.

It was six o'clock when I arrived in Plymouth, and I went straight to what appeared to be the best hotel that the Luftwaffe had left standing. The saloon, marked ‘Residents Only,' was a comfortable spot with a good fire, and I knocked back three doubles at a speed that made the barman first of
all look respectful, and then anxious. But he need not have worried. All that I had got out of it was a new sense of inner power and well-being. And euphoria always suits me.

Then I remembered my car. There were two reasons against leaving it in the street outside the hotel. The first was that I still didn't know exactly how the evening was going to plan out, and I didn't want to run the risk of having to leave it there with the lights on all night. And the second was that I had just noticed that the licence was a shade off-colour and on the overdue side. So I tipped the porter and arranged with him for me to leave it round the back where I could get it if I wanted it. That is, if I could still drive.

By now, completely free and without even a car to tie us down, we strolled off down the High Street together, me and my little black devil. For a man with my background three drinks is nothing, repeat nothing. It merely helps me to look the future in the face a bit straighter. It would be the next two or three that would decide things. I knew that. And I knew that even then it would be entirely in the laps of the distillers. Because, when I'm drinking alone, I never know for certain whether I'm going to end up morose or frisky. There isn't ever anything for it, therefore, but to go on with the series and find out the empiric way.

So far, I was still the sort of customer that all decent-class hotels pray to see coming up their front steps. This time I chose the best of the second best and continued with the treatment. I was rather dainty about it, I remember. And, in between the sips, I ate a few peanuts and potato crisps from a dish on the bar counter. Up to that moment, indeed, I even considered changing my plans rather and dining in the hotel with a bottle of Burgundy all to myself and a glass of brandy and a cigar afterwards, possibly finishing up with a seat in the two-and-fours at the local flick-house.

But the memory of other provincial hotel dining-rooms, out of season and with only one or two old ladies ranged round the walls like treasures out of Pompeii, was a bit too much for me. They are a separate race, these hotel old ladies, with their lace chokers and their artificial pearls and the little saucer of scraps for the dog, and they have a way of looking at a man that makes him feel hairy and dissolute even when he's only thinking about his income tax.

But already something was happening inside me. There had been a distinct click as that last drink had gone down. And I now wanted something a bit more exciting than a hotel dining-room.

At moments like this, instinct is a wonderful guide and counsellor. Put me down in any foreign capital, blindfold me and turn me round three times, and I could still make off in a bee-line for the dive quarter. For example, even though I had never been in Plymouth before, I knew that on leaving the hotel I had to turn left and then left again to get to the Barbican. And I was feeling marvellous. I was humming cheerfully to myself as I walked along. And when I saw a match-box lying on the pavement I took a running kick at it. Nothing very sozzled in that. If I had been put in front of a police surgeon I could have graduated with honours in all subjects.

I was now spreading my drinking very carefully. Only two singles in any one pub was the rule—and no doubling backwards and forwards between the Public and the Saloon pretending that they were really two different pubs.

The last two pubs that I had been into were no better than cold, rather coffiny little compartments with barmaids who were evidently cousins of the original bearded lady of Bodmin. But what was important was that compared with the first few drinks that I had taken, every extra single now
counted about four. And the signs of it were coming thick and fast by now. It wasn't simply that I was feeling sorry for myself. I can manage that often enough when I'm stone sober. What was much more to the point was that I was becoming fumbly. I had to chase one wet sixpence up and down the bar before I could get my fingers under it.

It was my fourth pub, rather a large noisy one, this time. And I wasn't quite so steady on my feet by now. When I had finally pocketed my change, I went and sat down in one of the little alcoves at the side. There was a sailor from H.M.S. Something-or-other and a girl already sitting in the opposite corner. The sailor was a hot-looking young man with a complexion like sausage-meat, and the girl was quite slim and rather pale. She had a lock of fair, soft-looking hair that kept falling across her forehead every time she bent forward, and her hands were the long delicate sort with the veins showing.

When the sailor got up and excused himself, the girl smiled across at me. She was rather a pretty girl and I smiled back. That decided her, and she moved up nearer.

“I wouldn't say ‘no' to another drink,” she told me.

It was only the West Country in her voice that saved it: otherwise, it would have been just the kind of wheedling, cheap stuff that sets my teeth on edge. But, as it was, I smiled back all right.

“If you hadn't asked, I was just going to suggest it,” I told her. “That's what I was going to do—suggest it.”

I had now reached the careful and repetitive stage. With me, that's one of the surest signs of all.

“Well, make it a gin and lime, will you?” she asked.

“Gin and lime it shall be,” I said. “If you hadn't told me I'd have ordered a gin and lime just the same. That's what I'd have ordered—a gin and lime.”

It was a bit difficult getting out of the alcove. I'm a large
man and the table jutted out over the seat rather awkwardly. But it was getting back again that was the really tricky part. I remember that I was all tangled up with her legs by the time I was settled in again. But the drinks were all right— I can't remember when I've ever spilt a drink that I've been carrying.

We were getting on quite nicely together by now. The girl had just told me that her name was Pat, and I had said that I could have guessed it if she had only given me the first letter. Then the sailor came back. At first, everything was all right. He even asked if he could borrow my matches.

It was the drink that I'd bought his girl that caused the trouble. If she'd wanted another one, he said, she should have asked him. His face had reddened up a bit by now. And it occurred to me that perhaps he wasn't a very nice sailor. But I still knew enough not to interfere and just sat tight, looking at my finger-nails.