In the library after the performance, where we had herded for sandwiches and wine, I noticed Diana, her diamonds flashing, talk for a moment to Caro alone. Just before we left, Caro spoke to me and passed a message on.
Diana had been talking to Reggie Collingwood. He had said they would all have to ‘feel their way’. It was conceivable that Roger would have to ‘draw in his horns’ a bit. If so, they could look after him.
It sounded, and was meant to sound, casual and confident. But it was also deliberate. Collingwood wasn’t given to indiscretion. Nor, when it came to confidences, was Diana. This remark was intended to reach Roger: and Caro was making sure that it reached me. As she told me, she took me by the arm, walking towards the door, and gazed at me with bold eyes. This was not a display of affection. She did not like me any better, she was no warmer to Roger’s advisers, as she walked on my arm, her shoulders, because she was a strapping woman, not far below my own. But she was making certain that I wasn’t left out.
The Bar concert had taken place on a Thursday night. On the Saturday morning I was alone in our drawing-room, the children back at school, Margaret off for a day with her father, now both ill and valetudinarian, when the telephone rang. It was David Rubin.
This was not, in itself, a surprise. I had heard the day before that he was over on one of his State Department visits. I expected that he and I would find ourselves at the same meeting on Saturday afternoon. That turned out to be true, and David expressed his courteous gratification. But it was a surprise to hear him insisting that I arrange an interview with Roger. Apparently he had tried Roger’s office the day before and had been rebuffed. It was odd enough for anyone to rebuff him: much odder for him to come back afterwards. ‘This isn’t just an idea of visiting with him. I want to say something to him.’
‘I rather gathered that,’ I said. Over the phone came a reluctant cachinnation.
He was flying out next morning. The interview would have to be fixed for some time that night. I did my best. First of all, Caro would not put me through to Roger. When at last I made her, he greeted me as though I had brought bad news. Did I know that Parliament met next week? Did I by any chance remember that he was preparing for a Debate? He wanted to see no one. I said (our voices were petty with strain) that he could be rude to me, though I didn’t pretend to like it. But it was unwise to be rude to David Rubin.
When I saw Rubin that afternoon, for the first time in a year, he did not look so formidable. He was sitting at a table, between Francis Getliffe and another scientist, in one of the Royal Society’s rooms in Burlington House. The room smelled musty, lined with bound volumes of periodicals, like an unused library. The light was dim. Rubin, lemur-like circles under his eyes, looked fastidious and depressed. When I passed a note along, saying that we were due at Lord North Street after dinner, he gave a nod, as from one who had to endure much before he slept.
He had to endure this meeting. He was by now too much of a Government figure to hope for a great deal. He was more pessimistic than anyone there. It was not an official meeting. Everyone in the room, at least in form, had attended as a private citizen. Nearly all were scientists who had been, or still were, concerned with the nuclear projects. They were trying to find a way of talking directly to their Soviet counterparts. Several men in the room had won world fame — there were the great academic physicists, Mounteney, who was chairman, Rubin himself, an old friend of mine called Constantine. There were also Government scientists, such as Walter Luke, who had demanded to take part.
All three Governments knew what was going on. Several officials, including me, had been invited. I remembered other meetings in these musty-smelling rooms, nearly twenty years before, when scientists told us that the nuclear bomb might work.
David Rubin sat like one who has listened often enough. Then, all of a sudden, he became interested. Scientific good will, legalisms, formulations — they vanished. For the door opened, and to everyone’s astonishment, there came into the room Brodzinski. Soft-footed, for all his bulk, he walked to the table, his barrel chest thrust out. His eyes were stretched wide, as he looked at Arthur Mounteney. In his strong voice, in his off-English, he said, ‘I’m sorry to be late, Mr Chairman.’
Each person round the table knew of his speeches in America and knew that Getliffe and Luke had been damaged. Men like Mounteney detested him and all he stood for. For him to enter, and then make this little apology — it irritated them all, it was a ridiculous anti-climax.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Arthur Mounteney, ‘why you’re here at all.’ His long and cavernous face was set. He couldn’t produce a soft word among his friends, let alone now.
‘I was invited, Mr Chairman. As I suppose my colleagues were, also.’
This I took to be true. Invitations had gone to the scientists on the defence committees as well as to the scientific elder statesmen. Presumably Brodzinski’s name had remained upon the list.
‘That doesn’t mean there was any sense in your coming.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Chairman. Am I to understand that only those of a certain kind of opinion are allowed here?’
Walter Luke broke in, rough-voiced: ‘That’s not the point, Brodzinski, and you know it. You’ve made yourself a blasted nuisance where we can’t get at you. And every bleeding scientist in this game is having the carpet pulled from under him because of you.’
‘I do not consider your attitude is correct, Sir Walter.’
‘Come off it, man, who do you take us for?’
This was unlike the stately protocol of a meeting chaired by Hector Rose.
Francis Getliffe coughed, and with his curious relic of diffidence said to Mounteney: ‘I think perhaps I ought to have a word.’
Mounteney nodded.
‘Dr Brodzinski,’ said Francis, looking down the table, ‘if you hadn’t come here today I was going to ask you to call on me.’
Francis was speaking quietly, without Mounteney’s bleakness or Walter Luke’s roughneck scorn. He had to make an effort, while they could quarrel by the light of nature. Nevertheless, it was Francis whom we all listened to, Brodzinski most of all.
Brodzinski, although nobody had thought, or perhaps wished, to invite him (since the normal courtesies had failed) to sit down, had found himself a chair. He sat in it, squarely, heavy as a mountain and as impervious.
‘It’s time you heard something about your behaviour. It’s got to be made clear to you. I was going to do that. I had better do it now. You must realize there are two things your scientific colleagues hold against you. The first is the way you have behaved to some of us. This is not important in the long run: but it is enough to make us prefer not to have any personal dealings with you. You have made charges about us in public and, as I believe, more charges in private, that we could only meet by legal action. You have taken advantage of the fact that we are not willing to take legal action against a fellow scientist. You have said that we are dishonest. You have said that we have perverted the truth. You have said that we are disloyal to our country.’
‘I have been misrepresented, of course,’ said Brodzinski.
‘Not in the least.’
‘I have always given you credit for good intentions, Sir Francis,’ said Brodzinski. ‘I do not expect the same from you.’
His expression was pure, persecuted, and brave. It was the courage of one who even now, believed in his locked-in self that they would see how right he was. He felt no conflict, no regret nor remorse, just the certainty that he was right. At the same time, he wanted pity because he was being persecuted. He was crying out for pity. The more they saw he was right, the more they would persecute him.