‘It would have been more honest if you had all come here in uniform,’ he said to me.
He meant that the government was favouring the forces at the expense of science, in particular at the expense of Barford. It seemed to him obvious — and obvious to anyone whose intelligence was higher than an ape’s — that government policy was wrong. He was holding me responsible for it. All other facts were irrelevant, including the fact that he knew me moderately well. It was shining clear to him that government policy was moronic, and probably ill-disposed. Here was I: the first thing was to tell me so.
I gathered that the Minister had talked to them both privately and in a group. Luke had been eloquent: his opponents had attacked him: Martin had spoken his mind. The discussion had been rambling, outspoken and inconclusive. Mounteney, although in theory above the battle, was not pleased.
‘Luke is quite bright,’ he said in a tone of surprise and injury, as though it was unreasonable to force him to give praise.
He then returned to denouncing me by proxy. Bevill had said what wonderful work they had done at Barford. Actually, said Mounteney, they had done nothing: the old man knew it; they knew it; they knew he knew it.
‘Why will you people say these things?’ asked Mounteney.
Irene was sitting in a deckchair in what had once been the garden behind their house, though by this time it was running wild. The bindweed was strangling the last of the phlox, the last ragged pansies; the paths were overgrown with weed. When Mounteney went in to his children, Martin and I sat beside her, on the parched grass, which was hot against the hand. At last Martin was free to give a grim smile.
‘Well,’ he said to me, ‘you’d better see that Luke’s scheme goes through.’
‘What have you been doing?’ she asked.
Martin was still smiling. ‘Not only for patriotic reasons,’ he went on.
‘What have you been doing?’ She sounded, for the moment, as she might have done if accusing him of some amatory adventure, her voice touched with mock reprobation and a secret pride.
‘Something that may not do us any good,’ he said, and let us hear the story. He had told Bevill, in front of Drawbell and Rudd, that he and the other young scientists were agreed: either they ought to concentrate on Luke’s scheme, or else shut Barford down.
‘If I had to do it, it was no use doing it half-heartedly,’ he said.
‘I’m glad you did it,’ she said, excited by the risk. The teasing air had faded; there was a high flush under her eyes.
‘Wait until we see whether it was worthwhile,’ said Martin.
‘Never mind that,’ she said, and turned to me. ‘Aren’t you glad he did it?’
Before I answered Martin looked at her and said: ‘We may not get our way, you know,’
‘I don’t care.’
‘It would be an odd time to move.’
They were glancing at each other with eyes half challenging, half salacious.
‘Why would it be so odd?’ I asked, but did not need an answer.
‘You can tell Lewis,’ said Martin.
‘I am going to have a child, dear,’ she said.
For the first time since their marriage, I felt nothing but warmth towards her, as I went to her chair and kissed her. Martin’s face was softened with delight. If he had not been my brother I should have envied him, for my marriage had been childless, and there were times, increasing as the years passed, when the deprivation nagged at me. And, buried deep within both Martin and me, there was a strong family sense, so that it was natural for him to say: ‘I’m glad there’ll be another generation.’
As he went indoors to fetch something to drink in celebration, Irene said to me: ‘If it’s a boy we’ll call it after you, Lewis dear. Even though you don’t approve of its mother.’
She added: ‘He is pleased, isn’t he? I did want to do something for him.’
‘It’s very good news,’ I said, as she got up from her chair in the low sunlight, and began to walk about the patch of derelict garden. The evening scents were growing stronger, mint and wormwood mingled in the scorched aromatic tang of the August night. Irene came to a clearing in the long grass, where a group of autumn crocuses shone out, amethyst and solitary, flowers that in my childhood I had heard called ‘naked ladies’. Irene bent and picked one, and then stood erect, as though she were no longer concealing the curve of her breast.
‘When I was a little girl,’ she said, ‘I always thought I should have a brood of children.’
‘Should you like them?’ I asked.
‘Time is going on,’ she said: but, in the smoothing amber light, she looked younger than I had seen her.
After Martin returned, and we sat there in the dipping sun, the three of us were at peace together as we had not been before. Our content was so strong that Martin did not disturb it when he began speculating again about transferring to Luke, and speaking out that afternoon; he did not disturb it in us, least of all in himself.
‘I don’t see what else I could have done,’ he said.
Martin went on with his thoughts. It was going to be a near thing whether Luke got his head: wasn’t that true? So if one could do anything to bring it about, one had to.
‘I should have been more sorry if I hadn’t spoken.’
If the luck went wrong, it meant a dim job for the rest of the war and probably after. If the luck went right, no one could tell — Martin smiled, his eyes glinted, and he said: ‘I’m not sorry that I’ve gone in with Luke.’
We all took it for granted that he was the most prudent of men, always reckoning out the future, not willing to allow himself a rash word, let alone a rash action. Even I assumed that as part of his flesh and bone. In a sense it was true. And yet none of us had made a wilder marriage, and now, over Barford and his career, he was gambling again.
9: View of a True Marriage
From Martin’s I went off to an evening party at Drawbell’s. Mrs Drawbell had set herself to catch old Bevill for a social engagement; he had refused tea or dinner, and insisted on returning to London that night, but he had not been able to elude this last invitation, a ‘little party’ before we caught the train.
Most of the senior Barford staff were already there, and I found my way to a corner next to Walter Luke. From near the window we looked into the centre of the room, where upon the hearthrug Mrs Drawbell, a heavy woman, massive as a monument upon the rug, waited for the Minister.
‘Where is this uncle?’ said Luke.
‘He’ll come,’ I said. The Minister has not been known to break a social engagement.
Luke’s thoughts became canalized once more.
‘Does he believe in Jojo?’ (Luke’s proposal already had a name.)
He corrected himself.
‘I don’t care whether he believes in it or not. The point is, will he do anything useful about it?’
I said that I thought he was well disposed, but would not find it easy to put through.
‘There are times,’ said Luke, ‘when I get sick and tired of you wise old men.’
Wholehearted and surgent, he said: ‘Well, I suppose I’d better mobilize some of the chaps who really know against all you stuffed shirts.’
I was warning him to go carefully (he would still listen to me, even when he was regarding me as a ‘wise old man’) when the Minister entered. With his unobtrusive trip Bevill went towards Mrs Drawbell.