Meanwhile, Nora sat by, calculating for him how many (if his assumption were right) uranium slugs would have to be replaced, before the pile would run. It was a long calculation; she carried it out like the professional mathematician that she was; sometimes she glanced at Luke, distrusting herself, thinking that another woman might have given him rest. But she was wrong. His bad time was behind him, of us all he was the least broken.
As Luke talked more, Martin became more silent. He took in each new plan, he answered questions; but through the small hours lie sat volunteering no words of his own, giving his opinion when Luke asked for it, like a sensible second-in-command — and yet each time I heard that controlled voice I knew that he was eating himself up with hopes in retrospect, with that singular kind of might-have-been that twists one’s bowels because it still grips one like a hope.
As I looked at Martin, my disappointment for him, which had started anew, the instant I caught the glance between him and Luke over the graph, was growing so that it drained me of all other feelings, of patience, of sympathy, of affection. This might have been the night of his success. Now it came to the test, that was my only hunger. I had none to spare for the project; on the other hand, I did not give a thought for our forebodings with Mounteney by the river. I had none of the frustration that Luke felt and perhaps Martin also, because they were being kept at arm’s length from a piece of scientific truth. For me, this ought to have been the night of Martin’s success. I was bitter with him because it had gone wrong.
At last Luke said, his voice still resonant, that we had done enough for one night, and Martin and I walked together out of the hangar door. The sky was dark, without any stars, but in the east there was a pallor that seemed less comforting.
‘First light,’ said Martin.
I could not help myself. I broke out of controclass="underline" ‘Is this ever going to come off?’
‘Is what ever going to come off?’
It was one of his stoical tricks, to pretend not to understand.
‘You know what I mean.’
Martin paused.
‘I should think your guess is about as good as mine,’ he said.
I tried, but I could not keep quiet: ‘Perhaps it’s a pity that you burned your boats.’
‘That’s possible,’ said Martin.
‘Perhaps it wasn’t sensible to invest all your future in one man.’
‘I’ve thought of that,’ said Martin.
‘Luke’s enemies have always said that he’d make one big mistake,’ I said. I could hear in my own voice, and could not hold it down, the special cruelty that can break out of any ‘unselfish’ love, of a father’s or a brother’s, with anyone who is asking nothing for himself — except that the other person should fulfil one’s dreams, often one’s self-identificatory dreams. If you see yourself in another, you see all you would like to be: so you can be more self-sacrificing than in any other human relation, because it does not seem like sacrifice: for the same reason you can be more cruel.
‘I’ve thought of that also.’
‘Is this going to be his big mistake?’ I asked.
For the first time, Martin turned against me; his voice was quieter but as bitter as mine.
‘You’re not making it any easier,’ he said.
Ashamed, suddenly stricken by his misery, I said that I was sorry, and we walked in silence, making our way towards the Drawbells’ house. We had quarrelled only once before, when I interfered over his marriage, and that had been just skin deep. Finding I could not put the words together to comfort him or tell him my regret for the past minutes, I muttered that I would see him home.
‘Do,’ said Martin.
Neither of us said much, as we walked along the footpath in the cold, slow dawn. What we had said could not be taken back; yet it seemed to have passed. Once Martin made a formal attempt to console me. He said: ‘Don’t worry too much: it may turn out all right.’
A little later, he said: ‘If I had the choice about Luke to make all over again, I should do exactly the same as before.’
The hedges smelled wet, the blackthorn blossom was ectoplasmic on the morning dark. We came to the little road that led to Martin’s. In front of us, stretching from the path to a cottage roof, was the dim shape of a ladder. As I went under, I could feel Martin hesitate and then take three quick steps round. He said, with a sarcastic smile: ‘I need all the luck I can get.’
Making out his face in the twilight, I was wondering whether he, too, in that moment of superstition, had thought of our mother: who also had been superstitious: who, with her toes pointed out, would go round any ladder: who possessed just his kind of stoicism, invented to conceal an insatiable romantic hope: and who in his place, this morning after the fiasco, would be cherishing the first new pictures of wonderful triumphs to come.
It was strange to think that the same might be true of him.
Part Three
A Result in Public
18: Request for an Official Opinion
As soon as I woke, the night’s fiasco clinched itself out of the morning light. It was midday, not many hours since I left Martin outside his house.
Unable to keep myself away, hurrying to the laboratories to hear remarks that I did not want to hear, I found Luke and Martin already there. They might have been following old Bevill’s first rule for any kind of politics: if there is a crisis, if anyone can do you harm or good, he used to say, looking simple, never mind your dignity, never mind your nerves, but always be present in the flesh.
Even that morning, Martin might have had the self-control to act on such advice: but it was more likely, in Luke’s case certain, that they had come in order to argue a way through the criticisms and get to work the same day.
There were many criticisms. There was — to my ears, used to a different climate, less bracing and perhaps more hypocritical — astonishingly little sympathy. Most people had no thought to spare for Luke’s or Martin’s feelings; they were concerned with why the pile had not run last night, whether Luke’s diagnosis was correct, how long the ‘mods’ (modifications) would take.
There were scientists’ jokes. Was this, Mounteney asked, the most expensive negative result in scientific history? It was their own kind of jibing, abstract, not specially ill-natured. I would have preferred to go on listening, rather than return to London and make my report to Hector Rose.
Arriving in the office late that afternoon I found a message waiting for me: Sir Hector’s compliments, and, when I could spare the time, would I make an opportunity to call on him?
I went at once to get the interview over. Rose’s room, which was on the side of the building opposite to mine, looked over the trees of St James’s Park, stirring that evening in the wind, bright in the cold sunshine. Rose was standing up, bowing from the waist, greeting me with his elaborate courtesy.
‘It’s very, very good of you to spare me a minute, my dear Eliot.’ He put me in the armchair near his desk, from which I could smell the hyacinths on the little table by the window: even in wartime, he replaced his flowers each day. Then he offered me his cigarette case. It was like him to carry cigarettes for his visitors, though he did not smoke himself. Had my journey that afternoon been excessively uncomfortable, he asked, had I been able to get a reasonable luncheon?
Then he looked at me, his face still unnaturally youthful, expressionless, his eyes light.
‘I gather that everything did not go precisely according to expectation?’
I said that I was afraid not.
‘You will appreciate, my dear Eliot, that it is rather unfortunate. There has been slightly too much criticism of this project to be comfortable, all along.’