Charles Snow - The Masters

This anxiety came to Nightingale each spring. It was the most painful of all. And it seemed sharper because, unlike his worry over the tutorship, there was nothing he could do to satisfy himself. He could only wait.

Crawford had just been put on the council of the Royal Society for the second time, owing to someone dying. Crawford told us this news himself, with his usual imperturbability. Nightingale heard him with his forehead corrugated, but he could not resist asking: ‘Do you know when the results will be out?’ Crawford looked at his pocket-book.

‘The council will make its recommendations on Thursday, March—’ He told Nightingale the date. ‘Of course, they’re not public for a couple of months after. Is there anyone you’re interested in?’

‘Yes.’

The intense answer got through even to Crawford.

‘You’re not up yourself, are you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m afraid I didn’t realize it,’ said Crawford, making an unconcerned apology. ‘Of course your subject is a long way from mine. I don’t think I’ve heard anything about the chemists’ list. If I did, I’m afraid I paid no attention. If I knew anything definite, I should be tempted to tell you. I’m not a believer in unnecessary secrecy.’

Francis Getliffe had been listening to the conversation, and we went out of the room together. As the door closed behind us, he said: ‘I wish someone would put Nightingale out of his misery.’

‘Do you know the result?’

‘I’ve heard the lists. He’s not in, of course. But the point is, he’s never even thought of. He never will get in,’ said Francis.

‘I doubt if anyone could tell him,’ I said.

‘No,’ said Francis.

‘When are you going to get in, by the way?’ I asked, forgetting our opposition, as though our ease had returned.

‘I shan’t let myself be put up until I stand a good chance. I mean, until I’m certain of getting in within three or four years. I’m not inclined to go up on the off chance.’

‘Does that mean the first shot next year?’

‘I’d hoped so. I’d hoped that, if I was put up next year, I was bound to be elected by 1940. But things haven’t gone as fast as they should,’ he said with painful honesty.

‘You’ve been unlucky, haven’t you?’

‘A bit,’ said Francis. ‘I might have got a shade more notice. But that isn’t the whole truth. I haven’t done as much as I ought.’

‘There’s plenty of time,’ I said.

‘There’s got to be time,’ said Francis.

None of us, I thought, was as just as he was, or made such demands on his will.

About three weeks later, as I went into the porter’s lodge one day after lunch, I heard Nightingale giving instructions. A special note in his tone caught my attention: it occurred to me that it must be the day of the Royal results. ‘If a telegram comes for me this afternoon,’ he repeated, ‘I want the boy sent to my rooms without a minute’s delay. I shall be in till hall. Have you got that? I don’t want a minute’s delay.’

The afternoon was harshly cold; the false spring of February had disappeared, and before teatime it was dark, the sky overhung with inky clouds. I stayed by my fire reading, and then sent for tea before a pupil arrived. As I waited for the kitchen porter, I stood looking out of the window into the court. A few flakes of snow were falling. Some undergraduates came clanking through in football boots, their knees a livid purple, their breath steaming in the bitter air. Then I saw Nightingale walking towards the porter’s lodge. The young men were shouting heartily: Nightingale went past them as though they did not exist.

In a moment, he was on his way back. He had found no telegram. He was walking quite slowly: the cold did not touch him.

In hall that night his face was dead white and so strained that the lines seemed rigid, part of the structure of his brow. Every few seconds he put a hand to the back of his head, and the tic began to fascinate Luke, who was sitting next to him. Several times Luke looked at the pale, grim, harassed face, started to speak, and then thought better of it. At last his curiosity was too strong, and he said: ‘Are you all right, Nightingale?’

‘What do you mean, all right?’ Nightingale replied. ‘Of course I’m all right. What do you think you’re talking about?’

Luke blushed, but would not be shouted down.

‘I thought you might have been overworking. You were looking pretty tired—’

‘Overworking,’ Nightingale said. ‘I suppose you think that’s the worst thing that can happen.’

Luke shrugged his shoulders, muttered a curse under his breath and caught my eye. He had a rueful, self-mocking sense of humour; his work was in a hopeful phase, and he lived at the laboratory from nine in the morning until it closed at night. It was hard to have his head bitten off for laziness.

We were already through the soup and fish when Crawford came into hall. He slipped into the seat next mine, but before he sat down called up the table to Winslow: ‘My apologies for being late. I’ve had to attend the council of the Royal. And this weather wasn’t very good for the train.’

He ate his way methodically through the first courses and had caught us up at the sweet. All the time Nightingale’s eyes were fixed on him with a last desperate question of anxiety. But Crawford was untroubled, and, having levelled up in eating, talked reflectively to me. It was like him that his conversation did not alter with the person he was addressing; if there was anything he wanted to deliver, I served to receive it as well as Francis Getliffe.

‘Selecting people for honorific purposes is a very interesting job. But it’s not as easy as you might suppose. As a matter of fact, I was thinking of the choice of Fellows of the Royal — which I happen just to have been concerned with. Speaking as a man of science, I should be happier if there were sharper criteria to help us make the choice. I’m not meaning the choice is made unfairly: no, I should say that on the conscious level they’re as fair as human choices can be. But the criteria are not sharp, and it’s no use pretending they can be. “Original work of distinction” — how can you compare one man with a new theory on the interior of the stars with someone else who has painstakingly measured the movements of a fish?’

The rest had finished the meal, Winslow was waiting to say grace, but Crawford finished saying what he had to say. On our way into the combination room, he suddenly noticed Nightingale, and called out: ‘Oh, Nightingale. Just a minute.’

We passed on, leaving the two of them together. But we heard Crawford’s audible, impersonally friendly voice saying clearly: ‘No luck for you this time.’

They followed us at once. Most of those dining went away without sitting down to wine, but Crawford said that he had had a busy day and needed a glass of port. So Winslow and I shared a bottle with him, and listened to his views on the organization of science, the place of the Royal Society, the revolution in scientific technology. Nightingale hung on to every word.

Crawford enjoyed talking; some were put off by his manner and could not bear to listen, but they lost something. He had not the acute penetrating intellect of Roy Calvert; in an intelligence test he would not have come out as high as, say, the Master or Winslow; and he had no human insight at all. But he had a broad, strong, powerful mind, not specially apt for entertaining but made to wear.

Nightingale sat outside the little circle of three round which the bottle passed. Since he learned the news, his expression was still taut with strain, but his eyes had become bright and fierce. There was nothing crushed about him; his whole manner was active, harsh, and determined as he listened to Crawford. He listened without speaking. He did not once give his envious smile. But, once as I watched him, his eyes left Crawford for an instant and stared inimically at mine. They were feverishly bright.