Unusually, and to the frowning disapproval of the concierge, the staid lobby of the Berkeley echoed to a loud and piercing cry from Celia. “Yippee!"
A few days before Celia's Sunday tour of Cambridge, Sam and Lilian Hawthorne had left Britain for a brief visit to Paris and from there had flown directly to New York on Saturday. Therefore it was not until Monday, at 3:30 P.m. London time, that Celia reached Sam by telephone in his office at Felding-Roth, New Jersey. When she informed him of the news about Martin Peat-Smith, he reacted enthusiastically, telling her, "I'm delighted, though astounded. Celia, you're incredible! How the devil did you do it?" She had been expecting the question and said cautiously, "I'm not sure you'll like this.”
Then she reported her conversation with Martin about money, and how that, as much as anything else, had influenced his change of mind. At the other end of the line, Sam moaned audibly.”Oh, shit!-if you'll pardon me.”
Then he said, "I was the one who warned you not to mention money, and how could I have been so wrong?" "You couldn't have known," she assured him.”I just probed, and uncovered some of Martin's problems. By the way, he called me ruthless for doing that.”
"Never mind! What you did produced the result we wanted. I should have done the same, but didn't have your insight and persistence.” Celia thought, You also didn't have Andrew to advise you. Aloud, she said, "Sam, for goodness' sake stop blaming yourself! It isn't necessary.”
"All right, I will. But I'll make you a little pledge.”
She asked, "What's that?" "If ever, someplace down the road, you and I differ on a matter of judgment that's important, you have my permission to remind me of this incident, and that your judgment was right and mine wrong.”
"I hope it never happens," Celia said. Sam changed the subject.”You're coming home this week, aren't you?" "The day after tomorrow. I love London, but I love Andrew and the children more.”
"Good! As soon as you're home, you'd better take some days off to be with their. But then, in a few weeks, I'll want you back in Britain again. There'll be more things to do. in setting up the institute; also we'll need to hire an administrator. Martin's research skills are too important to waste on organization and office work.”
"I agree," Ceila said, "and all of that sounds fine.”
"Something else that's fine," Sam said, "is that during the few days I had in Paris last week I acquired the American rights to a new French drug for Felding-Roth. It's still experimental and won't be ready for at least two years. But it looks extremely promising.”
"Congratulations! Does it have a name?" "Yes," Sam said.”It's called Montayne. You'll hear much mere about it later.”
The remainder of 1972 and into '73 was, for Celia, an exciting, stimulating time. She made five more trips to Britain, each of several weeks' duration. On two of them, Andrew joined her for part of the time; ori another, Lisa and Bruce flew over. While Andrew was in Britain he and Martin met; the two men liked each other and later Andrew told Celia, "The only thing Martin needs is a woman like you to share his life. I hope he finds one.”
While the children were visiting her, and during times when she was not working, Celia, Lisa and Bruce inspected the sights of London to---in Celia's words-"exhaustion point.”
Bruce, now twelve, revealed himself as a history addict. As he explained it one Sunday morning while the three of them walked around the Tower of London, "It's all there, Mom, for anybody to find out-what went right, and all the mistakes. You can learn so much from what's already happened.”
"Yes, you can," Celia said.”Unfortunately, most of us don't.”
Bruce's fascination with history continued during a second tour of Cambridge. conducted, this time for the children, by Martin Peat-Smith. Celia met regularly with Martin during her working trips to Britain, though their total time together was not great because each was busy in differing ways. Martin, now that his decision to join Felding-Roth was made, showed himself very much in charge, and aware of his requirements of equipment and staff. He recruited another nucleic acid chemist, a young Pakistani, Dr. Rao.Sastri, who would be second-in-command on the scientific side. There were specialist technicians, including a cell culture expert and another skilled in electrophoretic separation of proteins and nucleic acids. A woman animal care supervisor would safeguard the hundreds of rats and rabbits to be used in experiments. During visits to Harlow, Martin discussed the location of laboratories, staff, and equipment in the building where conversion work was already under way. However, such visits were brief, and until the institute was ready Martin would continue research in his Cambridge lab. Apart from the necessary excursions to Harlow, Martin insisted that his time not be taken up by administrative matters which others could handle-a strategy already endorsed by Sam Hawthorne and implemented by Celia. Celia hired an administrator whose name was Nigel Bentley. A smallish, confident, sparrowlike man in his mid-fifties, Bentley had recently retired from the Royal Air Force where, with the rank of squadron leader, he was in charge of the administrative side of a large RAF hospital. The ex-officer's qualifications for the new post were excellent; he also understood what was expected of him. In Celia's presence, Bentley told Martin, "The less I bother you, sir-in fact, the less you see of me-the better I'll be doing my job.”
Celia liked the statement, also the "sir," which was a gracious way of making clear that Bentley understood what the relationship between himself and the much younger scientist was expected to be. In between trips to Britain, and while Celia was back in the United States, a personal milestone-at least, as she saw it--occurred in her life. That was in September 1972 when Lisa, at age fourteen, excitedly left home to enter boarding school. The school was Emma Willard in upstate New York, and the whole family accompanied Lisa on her odyssey. At home during dinner the night before, Celia asked Andrew nostalgically, "Where did all those years go?" But it was Lisa--ever practical-who answered, "They happened while you were getting all those promotions at work, Mommy. And I've figured out that I'll just be graduating from college when you get to sit in Mr. Hawthorne's chair.”
They all laughed at that, and the good time extended through the next day when they, with other parents, families and new girls, were initiated into the beauty, enlivening spirit, and traditions of Emma Willard School. Two weeks later Celia returned once more to Britain. Sam Hawthorne, deeply involved with other requirements of the company presidency, was now leaving almost all details of the British scene to her. Eventually. in February 1973, the Felding-Roth Research Institute (U.K.) Limited was officially opened. At the same time, Dr. Martin Peat-Smith's research project into Alzheimer's disease and the mental aging process was transferred from Cambridge to Harlow. It had been decided, as a matter of company policy, that no other research wouid be embarked on in Britain for the time being. The reasoning, as Sam confided it to the board of directors at a meeting in New Jersey, was that "the project we now have is timely, damned exciting, and with big commercial possibilities; therefore we should concentrate on it.”
No public fanfare was made about the Harlow opening.”The time for fanfare," declared Sam, who had flown over for the occasion, "is when we have something positive to show, and that isn't yet.”
When would there be something positive? "Allow me two years," Mar-tin told Sam and Celia during a relaxed private moment.”There ought to be some progress to report by then.”
After the institute's opening, Celia's visits to Britain became fewer and shorter. For a while she went, as Sam's representative, to help smooth cut initial working problems. But, mostly, Nigel Bentley seemed to be justifying the confidence placed in him by his appointment as administrator. From Martin, as months went by, there was no specific news except, via Bentley, that research was continuing. At Felding-Roth's New Jersey headquarters, Celia continued as special assistant to the president, working on other projects Sam gave her. It was during this period that, on the national scene, the putrescent boil of Watergate burst. Celia and Andrew, like millions of others worldwide, watched the parade of events nightly on television and were caught up in the unfolding drama's fascination. Celia reminisced about how, a year earlier when driving to Harlow with Sam, she had dismissed the first published report of a Watergate burglary as insignificant. Near the end of April, while tension mounted, two haughty presidential aides--Haldeman and Ehrlichman-were thrown to the wolves by President Nixon in an attempt to save himself Then, in October, adding to Nixon's and the nation's misery, Vice President Agnew was ejected from office for other corruption, unconnected with Watergate. Finally, ten months later, Nixon himself reluctantly became the first American President to resign. As Andrew remarked, "Whatever else history may say, at least he'll be in The Guinness Book of Records.” Nixon's successor promptly granted his predecessor a pardon-inadvance against criminal prosecution and, when asked if it was all tit-for-tat pol&cs, proclaimed, "There was no deal.”