Charles Snow - The New Men

As we were standing about after dinner, Martin touched my arm. He took me to the edge of the crowd and whispered: ‘There’s no need to worry about tomorrow.’

Looking at him, I saw his mouth correct, his eyes secretive and merry. I did not need any explanation. In estrangement, it was still possible to read each other’s feelings; he had just considered mine with a kind of formal courtesy, as he would not have needed to consider a friend’s.

I was not staying with him that night, but he asked me to escape from the party for a quarter of an hour. ‘We went inside the establishment wire, and walked quickly along the sludgy paths.

In an empty room of the hot laboratory, he found me a set of rubber clothes, cloak, cowl, gloves, and goloshes, and put on his own. He took me down a passage marked DANGER. ‘Never mind that,’ said Martin. He unlocked a steel door which gave into a slit of a room, empty except for what looked like a meat-safe. Martin twiddled the combination, opened the panel, and took out a floppy bag made of some yellowish substance, rather smaller than a woman’s shopping basket. As he held the bag, one corner was weighed down, as though by a small heavy object, it might have been a lead pellet.

‘That’s plutonium,’ said Martin.

‘How much?’

‘Not much. I suppose it’s worth a few hundred thousand pounds.’

He looked at the bag with a possessive, and almost sensual glance.

I had seen collectors look like that.

‘Touch it,’ he said.

I put two fingers on the bag and astonishingly was taken into an irrelevant bliss.

Under the bag’s surface, the metal was hot to the touch — and, yes, pushing under memories, I had it, I knew why I was happy. It brought back the moment, the grass and earth hot under my hand, when Martin and Irene told me she was going to have a child; so, like Irene in the Park under the fog-wrapped lights, I had been made a present of a Proustian moment, and the touch of the metal, whose heat might otherwise have seemed sinister, levitated me to the forgotten happiness of a joyous summer night.

For once, Martin was taken unawares. He was disconcerted to see me, with my fingers on the bag, lost in an absent-minded content.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘Quite,’ I said.

Next day, the demonstration was conducted as though Martin and his staff did not know whether it would work.

At the end, however, Martin would not accept the congratulations, insisting that they were due to Luke, and he took Bevill and the others to Luke’s bedside.

Hector Rose and I followed behind.

‘Are you going with them, Eliot?’ said Rose.

I was surprised by the constraint in his voice.

‘I think we’d better,’ I said.

‘As a matter of fact, I think I’ll just take a stroll round the place,’ he said.

It was so impolite, so unlike him that I did not begin to understand. Although I accompanied him, I could get no hint of the reason. Later I picked it up, and it turned out to be simple, though to me unexpected. Hector Rose happened to feel a morbid horror of cancer; he tried to avoid so much as hearing the name of the disease.

By ourselves, in Drawbell’s office, he was for him relaxed, having extricated himself from an ordeal; he let fall what Bevill would have called one or two straws in the wind, about the future management at Barford. He and Bevill wanted to get it on a business footing: Drawbell was dead out of favour. If they made a change of superintendent, and if Luke were well, it would be difficult to sidetrack him — but none of the officials, and few of the elderly scientists, relished the idea. He had made mistakes: he talked too loud and too much: he was not their man.

Already they trusted Martin more. He was younger, he was not in the Royal Society, to give him the full job was not practical politics; but, if Luke’s health stayed uncertain, was there any device by which they could give Martin an acting command of Barford?

The luck was playing into Martin’s hand. I knew that he was ready, just as he had been ready since that night in the Stratford pub, to make the most of it. Even when he paid his tribute to Luke he had a double motive, he had one eye on his own future.

It was true that he was fair-minded, more so than most men, He would not receive more credit than he had earned. Better than anyone, he could estimate Luke’s share in the project, and he wanted it made clear.

But although what he said of Luke was truthful, he also knew that men required it. Men liked fairness: it was part of the amenities, if in Bevill’s and Rose’s world you wanted your own way.

Now Martin was coming to his last move but one.

To Drawbell’s room, Bevill and he and Drawbell himself returned from the sickbed. Mounteney and Getliffe accompanied them. Martin wanted those two on his side as well as the officials. If the opportunity did not arrive without forcing it, he was ready to wait. In fact, it came when Bevill asked about Luke’s health.

‘Is that poor chap,’ said Bevill, ‘going to get back into harness?’

‘I hope so,’ said Martin. ‘The doctors seem to think so.’

‘We just don’t know,’ said Drawbell

‘He may never come back, you mean?’ said Bevill.

‘I believe he will,’ said Martin, once more speaking out deliberately on Luke’s behalf.

‘Well,’ said Bevill to Drawbell, ‘I suppose Eliot will carry on?’

‘He’s been doing it for months,’ said Drawbell. ‘I always tell my team no one is indispensable. If any of you go there’s always a better man behind you!’

‘I suppose you can carry on, Eliot, my lad?’ said Bevill to Martin in a jollying tone.

At last Martin saw his opening.

Instead of giving a junior’s yes, he stared down at his hand, and then, after a pause, suddenly looked straight at Bevill with sharp, frowning eyes.

‘There is a difficulty,’ he said. ‘I don’t know whether this is the time to raise it.’

Drawbell bobbed and smiled. Now that the young man had grown up, he was having to struggle for his say.

‘I don’t see the difficulty,’ said Bevill. ‘You’ve been doing splendidly, why, you’ve been delivering the goods.’

‘It would ease my mind,’ said Martin, ‘if I could explain a little what I mean.’

Bevill said, ‘That’s what we’re here for.’

Martin said: ‘Well, sir, anyone who is asked to take responsibility for this project is taking responsibility for a good deal more. I think it may be unreasonable to ask him, if he can’t persuade his colleagues that we’re shutting our eyes to trouble.’

Bevill said: ‘The water is getting a bit deep for me.’

Martin asked a question: ‘Does anyone believe we can leave the Sawbridge question where it is?’

‘I see,’ said Bevill.

In fact, the old man had seen minutes before. He was playing stupid to help Martin on.

‘I am sorry to press this,’ said Martin, ‘but I couldn’t let myself be responsible for another Sawbridge.’

‘God forbid,’ said Bevill.

‘Is there any evidence of another?’ said Getliffe.

‘None that I know of,’ said Martin. He was speaking as though determined not to overstate his case. ‘But if we can’t touch this man, it seems to me not impossible that we should have someone follow suit before we’re through.’

‘It’s not impossible.’ Francis Getliffe had to give him the point.

‘It’s not exactly our fault that we haven’t touched your present colleague,’ said Rose.

‘I have a view on that,’ said Martin quietly.

‘We want to hear,’ said Bevill, still keeping the court for Martin.

‘Everything I say here is privileged?’

‘Within these four walls,’ the old man replied.