Charles Snow - The New Men

They drove into Stratford that evening, and we met at the play. In the intervals, there were people round us; even outside on the terrace in the cool night, we could not begin to talk. Afterwards, with the wind blowing like winter, we went to the hotel sitting-room, but there for a long time, while Luke breathed hard with impatience, a couple of families were eating sandwiches after the theatre. The wind moaned outside, we drank beer, the beams of the low room pressed down on us as we waited; it was a night on which one was oppressed by a sense of the past.

At last we had the room to ourselves. Luke gave an irritable sigh, but when he spoke his voice, usually brazen, was as quiet as Martin’s.

‘This is Martin’s show,’ he said.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Martin.

‘Damn it,’ said Luke, and it was curious to hear him angry in an undertone, as we sat with heads bent forward over the gate-legged table, ‘we can’t pass the buck as though we were blooming well persuading each other to sing.’

‘No,’ said Martin, ‘I’d speak first if I had the responsibility.’

Luke glowered at him. Martin looked blank-faced.

‘The problem,’ said Luke brusquely, ‘is security. Or at least you’ — he thrust his lip towards Martin — ‘are making it a problem.’

‘I’m not making it,’ said Martin. ‘The world’s doing that.’

‘Blast the world,’ said Luke. Luke was frowning: he uttered ‘security’ like a swearword, but he could not shrug it off: in the fortnight since the dropping of the bombs, it had fallen upon them more pervasively than ever in the war. Now they knew, as I did, that the rumour of the leakages was more than a rumour. So far as one could trust the intelligence sources, it was true.

Already that day, Luke had been forced to concede one of Martin’s points. Kurt Puchwein, who had been working at Berkeley, had recently arrived back in England, and wanted to return to Barford as Luke’s chief chemist. Luke had admitted that it was too dangerous to take him. None of us believed that Puchwein had been spying, but he was a platform figure of the Left; if the leakages became public, Martin had made Luke agree, they could not stand the criticism of having re-engaged him at Barford. So Puchwein had arrived home, found that Hanna was finally leaving him and that he had no job. As for the latter, Luke said that he was ‘taking care’ of that; there were a couple of universities who would be glad to find a research readership for Puchwein; it would happen without commotion, one of those English tricks that Puchwein, for all his intellect and father-in-Israel shrewdness, could never completely understand.

That point was settled, but there was another.

‘Martin is suggesting,’ said Luke, ‘that I ought to victimize someone.’ Our heads were close together, over the table; but Martin looked at neither of us, he seemed to be set within his carapace, guarded, official, decided.

‘I think that’s fair comment,’ he said.

‘You want to dismiss someone?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ said Martin.

‘On suspicion,’ said Luke.

‘It may save trouble,’ said Martin.

They were speaking of Sawbridge. I had heard nothing of Captain Smith’s investigations for over a year. I had no idea whether Sawbridge was still suspected.

‘Do you know anything I don’t?’ I said to Martin.

For once he replied directly to me, his eyes hard and with no give in them at all.

‘Nothing,’ he said.

All they knew was that, in the last few months, since his recovery, Sawbridge had spoken like a milk-and-water member of the Labour Party.

‘What does that prove?’ said Martin.

‘All right, what does it prove?’ said Luke. ‘He might have gone underground. How do you know that I haven’t, as far as that goes? How do I know that you haven’t been for years — both of you? I expect we were all tempted, ten years ago.’

‘This isn’t getting us very far,’ said Martin.

‘Do you think you’re getting us very far? You want me to get rid of my best radio-chemist—’ Luke said it with anger (his professional feeling had risen up, he was thinking of the project, of the delay that losing Sawbridge might mean), and then lowered his voice again. ‘I don’t pretend that as a chap he’s much my cup of tea, but he’s been in this thing with us, he’s entitled to his rights.’

Luke was not a sentimental man. He did not mention that Sawbridge had taken his share of the risks, and had suffered for it.

‘We’ve got to balance his rights against the danger,’ said Martin without expression.

‘You’ve not given one single piece of evidence that he’s got anything to do with the leakage,’ said Luke.

‘I don’t intend to. That’s not the point.’

‘What is the point?’

‘I’ve made it clear enough before. I’m not prepared to say whether he is or is not connected with the leakage, or whether there’s any danger that he ever will be. I’m saying something quite different and much simpler. For the purpose of anyone running Barford, the world has divided itself into two halves. Sawbridge belongs to the other. If we keep him at Barford, it is likely to do the place finite harm. And it may not be nice for you and me.’

‘I’ve told you before, and I will tell you again,’ said Luke, ‘you’re asking me to throw Sawbridge out because a lot of old women may see bogies. Well, I’m not prepared to do it, unless someone can give me a better reason than that. There’s only one reason that I should be ready to listen to. That is, is he going to give anything away?’

We all knew that Martin was right in his analysis. The world had split in two, and men like us, who kept any loyalty to their past or their hopes, did not like it. Years before, people such as Luke or Francis Getliffe or I had sometimes faced the alternative — if you had to choose between a Hitler world or a communist world, which was it to be? We had had no doubt of the answer. It had seemed to us that the communists had done ill that good might come. We could not change all the shadows of those thoughts in an afternoon.

It had been different, of course, with men like Thomas Bevill and his friends, or many of my old colleagues at Cambridge and the Bar. Most of them, in their hearts, would have given the opposite answer: communism was the enemy absolute: incidentally, it said something for the patriotism of their class that, full of doubts about the German war, knowing what it meant for them, win or lose, they nevertheless fought it.

Now it was men like Luke and Francis Getliffe and me who felt the doubts, the scientists most of all. Often they were sick at heart, although despair was unnatural to them and they believed that the split in the world — the split which seemed to them the anti-hope — would not last for ever.

Martin said: ‘I’ve explained to you, that doesn’t begin to be the point.’

‘For me,’ Luke’s voice became loud, ‘it’s the beginning and the end. Here’s someone who, as far as you know, will never be any closer to a leakage than you or me. And you’re saying we ought to find a bogus reason for putting him in the street — just because some old women might natter. I’m simply not playing that game. Nor would Lewis. If we have to start insuring ourselves like that, we might as well pack up.’

As he knew, my sympathies were on his side. It was he, not Martin, who had insisted on seeing me that night — because he wanted my support. But also he had asked for my advice as an official, and I had to give it. No prudent man could ignore Martin’s case. True, the responsibility for security rested with Captain Smith and his service: true, also, that Martin’s proposal to get rid of the man out of hand was indefensible. But the risks were as great as Martin said.