The New Men (31 page)

‘That can be done,’ said Hector Rose, meaning that Drawbell would be slid into another job.

Next there was a proposal that Mounteney and another scientist did not like, but which would have gone straight through: it was that Francis Getliffe should go to Barford and also become what Bevill kept calling Top Man of atomic energy. It would have been a good appointment, but Francis did not want it; he hesitated; the more he dickered, the more desirable to the others the appointment seemed, but in the end he said No.

That left two possibilities: one, that Luke, who appeared to have partially recovered, though the doctors would not make a certain prognosis either way, should be given Barford, which he was known to want.

The other possibility had been privately ‘ventilated’ by Bevill and Rose ever since Rose mentioned it to me in the summer: assuming that there was a doubt about Luke, couldn’t one set up a supervisory committee and then put M F Eliot in as acting superintendent?

They were too capable to have brought up this scheme in the committee room, unless they had found support outside. But Rose mentioned it – ‘I’m just thinking aloud,’ he said – on a shining autumn morning.

For once Francis Getliffe spoke too soon.

‘I’m not happy about that idea,’ he said immediately.

‘This is just what we want to hear,’ said Bevill.

‘I know Luke has his faults.’ said Francis, ‘but he’s a splendid scientist.’

Mounteney put in: ‘Even if you’re right about Luke–’

‘You know I’m right,’ said Getliffe, forgetting to be judicious, a vein swelling angrily in his forehead.

‘He’s
pretty
good,’ said Mounteney, in the tone of one who is prepared to concede that Sir Isaac Newton had a modest talent, ‘but there’s no more real scientific thinking to be done at Barford now, it’s just a question of making it run smooth.’

‘That’s a dangerous argument. It’s always dangerous to be frightened of the first rate.’

I had seldom seen Francis so angry. He was putting the others off and he tried to collect himself. ‘I’m saying nothing against M F Eliot. He’s a very shrewd and able man, and if you want a competent administrator I expect he’s as good as they come.’

‘Administrators, of course, being a very lowly form of life,’ said Rose politely.

Francis flushed: somehow he, as a rule so effective in committee, could not put a foot right.

There was some technical argument among the scientists, taking up Mounteney’s point: weren’t the problems of Barford, from this time on, just engineering and administrative ones? Someone said that Martin, despite his calendar youth, was mentally the older of the two.

When we broke off for luncheon, Francis and I walked across the park together. For a time he strode on, in embarrassed silence, and then said: ‘Lewis, I’m very sorry I had to come out against Martin.’

‘Never mind,’ I said.

‘I couldn’t have done anything else,’ he said.

‘I know that,’ I said.

‘Do you agree with me?

By good luck, what I thought did not count. I said: ‘He’d do better than you’d give him credit for.’

‘But between him and Luke?’

‘Luke,’ I said.

Nevertheless, Francis had mishandled his case, and that afternoon and at the next meeting, it was Luke against whom opinion began to swell. Against Luke rather than for Martin, but in such a choice it was likely to be the antis who prevailed. They had, of course, a practical doubt, in Luke’s state of health. I was thinking, if you wanted a job, don’t be ill: for it had an almost superstitious effect, even on men as hard-headed as these; somehow, if you were ill, your
mana
was reduced.

‘Is it in Luke’s own best interests to ask him to take a strain like this?’ someone said.

It was not a close thing. Getliffe, who was a stubborn man, kept the committee arguing through several meetings, but in truth they had made up their minds long before. He twisted some concessions out of them: yes, Luke was to become a chief adviser, with a seat on the supervisory committee: yes, Luke would get ‘suitable recognition’ when his turn came round (Sir Walter Luke: Sir Francis Getliffe: Sir Arthur Mounteney: in five years’ time, those would be the styles). But the others would not give way any further. It was time a new arrangement was drawn up, and Bevill and Rose undertook, as a matter of form, to get Martin’s views.

On an afternoon in November, Martin came into Rose’s room. Bevill did not waste any words on flummery.

‘We’ve got a big job for you, young man,’ he burst out.

Martin sat still, his glance not deflecting for an instant towards me, as Bevill explained the scheme.

‘It’s an honour,’ said Martin. Neither his eyes nor mouth were smiling. He said: ‘May I have a few days to think it over?’

‘What do you want to think over?’ said Bevill. But he and Rose were both used to men pulling every string to get a job and then deliberating whether they could take it.

‘We should all be very, very delighted to see you installed there,’ said Rose.

Martin thanked him and said: ‘If I could give an answer next week?’

The day after Bevill offered Martin the appointment, Captain Smith came into my office and unravelled one of his Henry James-like invitations, which turned out to be, would I go with him to Wandsworth Gaol and have a chat to Sawbridge? I tried to get out of it, but Smith was persistent. He was sensitive enough to feel that I did not like it; but after all, I was an official, I had to live with official duty, just as he did himself.

In the taxi, he told me that he was clearing up a point about the Puchweins. It was worth ‘having another try’ at Sawbridge, who occasionally talked, not giving anything away, more for the sake of company than because he was softening. As we drove through the south London streets in the November sunshine, he told me more of Sawbridge. He had not recanted; others of the scientific spies gave up their communism in prison, but not Sawbridge. For a few days, sitting opposite to Martin, he had been ‘rattled’. During that time he made his confession. He had blamed himself ever since.

‘He’s quite a lad, is our young friend. He doesn’t make any bones about it,’ said Smith with proprietorial pride, stiff on his seat while we rocked over the tram-lines, through the down-at-heel streets scurfy in the sun.

At the prison, Smith took me to an assistant-governor’s room, which in his view gave a ‘better atmosphere’ for his talks with Sawbridge. For myself, I should have preferred the dark and the wire screen. This room was bright, like a housemaster’s study, with a fire in the grate, photographs of children on the desk, and on the walls Medici prints. The smell of tobacco rested in the bright air. Outside the grated window, the morning was brighter still.

When a warder brought Sawbridge in, he gave a smile as he saw Smith and me standing by the window, a smile not specially truculent but knowing, assertive, and at the same time candid. Above his prison suit his face looked no paler than in the past, and he seemed to have put on a little weight.

Smith had arranged for the warder to leave us alone. We heard him close the door, but there were no steps down the passage. Sawbridge, who was listening, cocked his thumb, as though at the warder waiting behind the door, and repeated his smile.

Smith smiled back. With me, with his colleagues, he was never quite at ease; but he was far less put off inside that room than I was.

‘Here we are again,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Sawbridge.

Smith made him take the easy chair by the fire, while Smith sat at the desk and I brought up a hard-backed chair.

‘Have a gasper?’ said Smith.

‘I still don’t smoke,’ Sawbridge replied, with his curious rude substitute for humour.

Smith began inquiring into his welfare. Was he getting enough reading material? Would he like Smith to inquire if he could be allowed more?

‘I don’t mind if you do,’ said Sawbridge.

Was he getting any scientific books?

‘I could do with more. Thanks,’ said Sawbridge.

Smith made a note; for once, Sawbridge was allowing himself to let slip a request.

Then Smith remarked that we had come down for a ‘spot of talk’.

‘What are you after?’

‘We should like to have a spot of talk about Puchwein,’ said Smith, surprisingly direct.

‘I’ve not got anything to say about him.’

‘You knew him and his wife, didn’t you?’

‘I knew them at Barford, like everybody else. I’ve not got anything to say.’

‘Never mind about that, old man,’ said Smith. ‘Let’s just talk round things a bit.’

As Smith foretold, Sawbridge was willing, and even mildly pleased, to chat. He had no objection to going over his story for yet another time. It occurred to me that he was simply lonely. He missed the company of his intellectual equals, and even talking to us was better than nothing. Methodically he went over the dates of his spying. As in each statement he had made, he would mention no name but his own: he had inculpated no one, and maintained all along that he was alone.

‘People remember seeing you at Mrs Puchwein’s,’ said Smith.

‘I shouldn’t be surprised,’ said Sawbridge.

‘Don’t you think you ought to be surprised?’

‘I don’t see why.’

‘I can’t think of anything obvious you’ve got in common.’

‘Why should we have anything obvious in common?’

‘Why were you there?’

‘Social reasons.’

‘Did you ever pay any other social calls of any kind?’ Smith asked.

‘Not that you’d know of.’

‘Why were you there?’

‘As far as that goes,’ said Sawbridge, turning on me with his kind of stolid insolence,’ why were you?’

Smith gave a hearty, creaking laugh. He went on questioning Sawbridge about Puchwein – where had he met him first?

‘You soon found out that he was left wing?’ said Smith.

‘I tell you, I haven’t anything to say about him.’

Smith persisted.

‘When did you first hear that he was left wing?’

All of a sudden, Sawbridge broke into sullen anger.

‘I shouldn’t call him left wing?

‘What would you call him?’ I said.

‘He’s no better,’ said Sawbridge, ‘than you are.’

His voice was louder, at the same time impersonal and rancorous, as he let fly at Francis Getliffe, Luke, me, all liberal–minded men. People who had sold out to the enemy: people who would topple over at the first whistle of danger, that was what he thought of liberal men.

‘That chap Puchwein isn’t any better than your brother,’ said Sawbridge. Impersonally, he lumped Martin in with the rest of us, only different in that he was more effective, ‘I’m not sure he isn’t worse. All Puchwein knows is when it’s time to sit on the fence.’

‘I thought you’d nothing to tell us about him,’ said Smith.

‘Well, I’ve told you something, haven’t I?’ said Sawbridge. ‘We’ve got no use for chaps like that.’

Back in a café in Westminster, Smith, sipping China tea with his masquerade of preciousness, went over Sawbridge’s replies.

‘We didn’t get over much change out of our young friend,’ he said.

‘Very little,’ I replied.

‘No, I wouldn’t say that, old son,’ said Smith. But, as he argued. I was thinking of Sawbridge – and it was a proof of his spirit that, neither in his presence nor out of it, did I think of him with pity. Faith, hope, and hate: that was the troika which rushed him on: it was uncomfortable to remember that, for the point of action, hate was a virtue – but so also, which many of us were forgetting in those years, was hope.

Could one confront the Sawbridges without the same three forces? He was a man of almost flawless courage, moral and physical. Not many men would have bent as little. Then, against my will, for I was suppressing any comparison with Martin, I was teased by a thought in my brother’s favour, the first for long enough. It was difficult to imagine him taking Sawbridge’s risk; but, if he had had to pay Sawbridge’s penalty, his courage would have been as stoical and his will as hard to crack.

Two nights later (it was Sunday) I was walking up Wigmore Street towards Portman Square, hurrying because of the extreme cold. The weather had hardened, the lights twinkled frigidly across the square. I was paying attention to nothing except the minutes before I could get back to a warm room. There were few people in the square, and I did not notice the faces as I hurried past.

I did not notice the couple standing near the corner, in the half-shadow. Without knowing why, I looked over my shoulder. They were standing oblivious of the cold, the man’s overcoat drooping open, flapping round his knees. They were Irene and Hankins.

At once I turned my head and started down the side street, out of sight. A voice followed me, Irene’s – ‘What are you running away for?’

I had to go back. As they came towards me under the lamp, they both looked pinched, tired, smiling.

‘Why haven’t I seen you all these months?’ said Hankins. We went into a hotel close by and sat drinking in the lounge, among the palms and the sucking noise from the revolving door.

Hankins was quieter than usual, and when he spoke the words seemed dredged up through other thoughts. We asked about each other’s careers. He had just got a good job; he had made a reputation before, but now, for the first time in his life, he was free from worry about his next year’s rent, I congratulated him, but his thoughts absented themselves again.

Soon he looked at Irene with an odd expression. His face, like that of many with a quickly changing inner life, was emotional but hard to read, ‘I think I must be going now,’ he said. Her eyes sharpened.

‘Goodbye,’ said Hankins, and the revolving door sucked round behind him, sucking empty air.

He had gone so quickly that they might have arranged to meet again, when I was disposed of.

Irene stared at me with full eyes.

‘I had to see him,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t sit down under things any longer.’

‘What are you going to do?’

She did not reply, but continued to stare at me as though I knew. Just for a second, on her mouth there appeared a tart smile. She settled herself against the arm of her chair, and I noticed that her shoulders were getting rounder. In the last year she had thickened both in the throat and the upper arm. It was easy to imagine her in middle age, lolling in her dressing-gown.