Charles Snow - The New Men

‘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.