That afternoon the scientists responded to it.
‘Why is it going to lead you in clink?’ I cut across the argument.
‘Because if we don’t get the money to go ahead, I don’t mean next month, I don’t mean tomorrow, I mean now, I’m going to stump the country telling them just what they’re in for. Unless you old men’ — he was speaking to me — ‘get it into your heads that this is a new phase, and that if we don’t get in on the ground floor there are just two things that can happen to this country — the best is that we can fade out and become a slightly superior Spain, the worst is that we get wiped out like a mob of Zulus.’
Nora said: ‘When you see what the world is like, would that matter so much?’
‘It would matter to me,’ said Luke. Suddenly he gave up being a roughneck. ‘I know it seems as though any chance of a little decency in the world has been wiped out for good. All I can say is that, if we’re going to get any decency back, then first this country must have a bit of power.’
Someone asked how much time he needed.
‘It depends on the obstacles they put in our way,’ said Luke. He said to Martin: ‘What do you say, how long do we need?’
Since we entered the canteen Martin had been standing by the window, just outside the group, and as I turned my eyes with Luke’s question, I saw him, face half-averted, as though he were watching the western sky, the blocks of buildings beneath, rectangular, parallel, like the divisions in a battle map. It was many minutes since he had spoken.
He gazed at Luke with a blank face. Then, businesslike, as in a routine discussion, he replied: ‘Given the personnel we’ve got now?’
‘Double it,’ said Luke.
‘Two years, at the best,’ said Martin. (By this time, even Luke admitted that his early estimates had not been realistic.) ‘About three, allowing for an average instalment of bad luck.’
All he had promised me was to keep quiet. Now he was going further. He was taking the line I had most urged him to take. They began arguing about the programmes: and I left them to it.
As I walked along the path to Martin’s flat, where Irene had been told to expect me, the evening was serene; it should have been the end of a calm and nameless day. The sky was so clear that, as the first stars came out, I could distinguish one that did not twinkle, and was wondering which planet it was, as I made my way upstairs to Irene.
When I got inside their sitting-room, I found that she had just begun to wash her hair.
She asked, without leaving the bathroom, whether I would not go into the village and have a meal alone. No, I said, I was tired; any kind of snack, and I would rather stay. Still through the open door, she told me where to find bread and butter and tinned meat. Then she ignored me.
Sitting on the drawing-room sofa, I could see her across the passage, her hair, straight and fine, hanging down over the basin. Later, hooded in a towel, she was regarding herself in the looking-glass. Her face had thinned down and aged, the flesh had fallen away below the cheekbones, while on her body she had put on weight; some men would find excitement in the contrast, always latent in her, and now in her mid-thirties established, between the body, heavy, fleshly and strong, and the nervous, over-exhausted face.
In towel and dressing-gown she surveyed herself sternly, as though, after trying to improve her looks for years, she was still dissatisfied.
She had finished washing, there was no reason to prevent her chatting with me, but still she sat there, evaluating her features, not paying any attention that I had come. I had no doubt that it was deliberate; she must have decided on this toilet as soon as she heard that I was on the way. It was quite unlike her, whose first instinct was to be ready to get a smile out of me or any other man.
I could not resist calling out: ‘Aren’t you going to talk to me tonight?’
Her reply took me aback. Her profile still towards me, and gazing at her reflection, she said:
‘It could only make things worse.’
‘What is all this?’ I said roughly, as though she were sulky and needed shaking.
But she answered without the least glint of sex: ‘It will be better if we don’t talk until Martin comes back.’
It sounded like melodrama, of which she had her share: but also, like much melodrama, it was meant. I went into the bathroom and she turned to confront me, the towel making her face open and bald. She looked nervous, frowning, and contemptuous.
‘This isn’t going to clear up without speaking,’ I said.
She said: ‘You’ve done him harm, haven’t you?’
I was lost. For a second, I even thought she was speaking of Hankins, not Martin. She added: ‘He’s going to toe the line, isn’t he? And that can only be your doing.’
Then, in the scent of powder and bath salts, a remark swung back from the previous afternoon and I said: ‘You’d rather he ruined himself, would you?’
‘If that’s what you call it,’ said Irene.
Like the scientists in the canteen I was morally giddy that day.
‘He makes up his own mind,’ I said.
‘Except for you,’ she cried. She burst out, her eyes bright: with resentment, with an obscure triumph: ‘Oh, I haven’t fooled myself — and I should think you must have a glimmering by now — I’m perfectly well aware I haven’t any influence on him that’s worth a row of beans. Of course, he’s easy going, he’s always good-natured when it doesn’t cost him anything. If I want to go out for a drink, he never grumbles, he just puts down whatever he’s doing: but do you think on anything that he cares about, I could ever make him budge an inch?’
It was no use contradicting.
‘You can,’ she cried. ‘You’ve done it.’ She added: ‘I hope you’ll be satisfied with what happens to him.’
I said: ‘We’d better wait till we’ve got over this shock—’
‘Oh, never mind that,’ she said. ‘I wash my hands of that. It’s him I’m thinking of.’
She looked at me with eyes narrowed.
‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘I’m beginning to wonder whether you understand him at all?’
She broke off. ‘Don’t you like extravagant people?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Unless it comes too near home.’ She went on: ‘He’s one at heart, have you never seen that?’
She stared at her reflection again.
‘That’s why he gets on with me,’ she said, as though touching wood.
‘That might be true,’ I said.
‘He’s capable of being really extravagant,’ she broke out. ‘Why did you stop him this time? He’s capable of throwing the chains right off.’
She stared at me and said: ‘I suppose you were capable of it, once.’
It was said cruelly, and was intended to be cruel. For the first time in our relation she held the initiative. Through her envy of my intimacy with Martin, through her desire to be thought well of, through the attraction that smoulders often between in-laws, she could nevertheless feel that she was thinking only of him.
When I replied, I meant to tell her my real motive for influencing him, but I was inhibited.
Instead, I told her that he was not alone, he was not living in a vacuum, nor was I. What he did affected many others. Neither he nor I could live as though we were alone.