The producer said that next day he had a programme on the care of backward children. ‘One can’t help thinking,’ he said, ‘whether there’ll be any children left to care for.’
Hankins suddenly clapped a hand to his head.
‘I suppose this wasn’t the piece of scientific policy we were interested in, you and I, Lewis, last time we met?’
‘It was.’
‘You said it was important,’ he said, as though in reproof. I nodded. ‘Well, perhaps I could concede it a degree of importance. What is important, after all?’ He had a writer’s memory for the words we had each spoken. ‘Did Irene know about this?’ he flashed out.
‘No.’
‘Did your brother and the rest of them?’
‘None of them knew that this bomb was going to be dropped.’
‘But they’d been working heroically on it, I suppose,’ said Hankins. ‘And now they’re getting the reward for their labours. It must be strange to be in their shoes tonight.’
It was also strange to hear him speak with such kindness, with his own curious inquisitive imagination.
We went on drinking, as Hankins talked.
‘The party’s nearly over,’ he said. ‘The party for our kind of people, for dear old western man — it’s been a good party, but the host’s getting impatient and it’s nearly time to go. And there are lots of people waiting for our blood in the square outside. Particularly as we’ve kept up the maddening habit of making improving speeches from the window. It may be a long time before anyone has such a good party again.’
If I had stayed I should have got drunk, but I wanted to escape. I went out into the streets, on which the anonymous crowds were jostling in the summer evening. For a while I lost myself among them, without a name, among many who had no name, a unit among the numbers, listening but hearing no comment on the news. In the crowd I walked down Oxford Street, was carried by the stream along Charing Cross Road: lights shone in the theatre foyers, the plays had all begun, in the wind relics of newsprint scuffled among our feet.
Near Leicester Square I drifted out of the crowd, into another pub. There some had heard the news, and as they talked I could pick out the common denominator of fear, sheer simple fear, which, whatever else we thought, was present in us all, Hankins and his producer, the seedy travellers, agents, homosexuals in the Leicester Square bar. Hankins’ rhetoric that night: Francis Getliffe’s bare words on the way down to Barford: they were different men, but just for once their feelings coincided, they meant the same things.
But in the pub there were also some indifferent. They had heard, and thrown it off already.
One, an elderly man with a fine ascetic face, sat with strained eyes focused on the doors. From a passing remark, I gathered that he was waiting for a young man, who had been due at six.
I walked across Piccadilly Circus, up Vigo Street and then west of Bond Street, through the deserted fringes of Mayfair, towards my club. As soon as I entered, acquaintances spoke to me with interest, with resignation, with the same damped-down fear. Had I known? Was there a chance that we could make ourselves safe again? What would happen to this country in another war? To this town? There was one interruption, as I stood in a party of four or five, standing round the empty grate. A young member, elected that year, asked if he could have a word with me. He had been invalided out of the Navy, his face was sallow, he had a high-strung, delicate, humorous look. But he spoke with urgency:
‘Is this bomb all they say?’
I answered yes, so far as I knew.
‘Do you think it will finish the Japanese? Do you think the war’s going to stop?’
‘I should have thought so,’ I replied.
‘I don’t believe it. Bombs don’t end wars.’
I was puzzled, but the explanation was straightforward. He was arguing against his own hopes. He had an elder brother, who was booked to fight in the invasion of Malaya. He could not let himself believe that the war would end in time.
When I left the club, I began to walk across London, trying to tire myself. But soon the energy of distress left me, almost between one step and another: although it was not yet eleven I found myself tired out. I took a taxi back to Pimlico, where from the houses in the square the lights were shining, as serene as on any other night of peace, as enticing to a lonely man outside.
I went straight off to sleep, woke before four, and did not get to sleep again. It was not a bad test of how public and private worries compare in depth, I thought, when I remembered the nights I had lain awake because of private trouble. Public trouble — how many such nights of insomnia had that given me? The answer was, just one. On the night after Munich, I had lain sleepless — and perhaps, as I went through the early hours of August 7th, I could fairly count another half.
As I lay there, I wished that I were able to speak to someone I was close to. The thoughts, the calculations of the future, pressed on me out of the morning dusk; it might have taken the edge off them if I could have admitted them to Martin. Soon after breakfast, I rang him up.
‘So this is it,’ I said.
‘Yes, this is it,’ came his voice, without any stress.
For some instants neither of us spoke, and I went on: ‘I think I should like to come down. Can you put up with me?’
A pause.
‘It might be better if I came to London, he replied. ‘Will that do?’
‘I can come down straight away,’ I said.
‘The other might be better. Is it all right for you?’
I said it was, but I was restless all morning, wondering why he had put me off. It was just after one when he came into my room.
As soon as I saw him, I felt, as often when we met, the familiar momentary wiping away of fret. I had felt the same, over five years before, when he visited me in that office, and we talked of the bomb, and I induced him to work on it.
‘Well, it’s happened,’ I said.
‘I’m afraid so,’ said Martin.
It was a curious phrase, inadequate and polite.
‘I don’t find it easy to take,’ I said.
‘It’s not pretty,’ said Martin.
I looked at him. His eyes were hard, bright, and steady, the corners of his mouth tucked in. I felt a jolt of disappointment; I was repelled by his stoicism. I had turned to him for support, and we had nothing to say to each other.
Without pretending to be light-hearted, Martin kept up the same level, disciplined manner. He made some comments about his journey, then he asked where we should eat.
‘Where you like,’ I said.
His eyes searched mine.
‘Would you rather wait a bit?’
‘I don’t care,’ I said.
‘I mean,’ said Martin, his eyes harder, ‘would you rather wait and talk? Because if so it may take some time.’
‘It depends what we talk about—’
‘What do you think I’m going to talk about?’
His voice was not raised — but suddenly I realized it was unsteady with anger.
‘I thought you felt it wasn’t any use—’
‘It may be a great deal of use,’ said Martin. His voice was still quiet, his temper utterly let go.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You don’t expect me to sit by and hear about this performance, and not say that I should like my dissent recorded in the minutes?’
‘I’ve felt the same,’ I said.
‘I know you have,’ said Martin. ‘But the question is: what is a man to do?’
‘I doubt if you can do anything,’ I said.
Martin said: ‘I think I can.’
‘It’s happened now,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing to do.’
‘I disagree.’
At that moment, each of us, staring into the other’s eyes, shared the other’s feeling, and knew that our wills must cross.