Then what was? The hidden wound, people said: the wound from which he never took the bandages and which gave him his sullen temper, his rancour. None of us knew him well enough to reach it.
Did Martin see the wound clearer than I did? Did he feel any resemblance to himself?
If so, he shut it away. Behaviour matters, not motive — doing what he was doing, he could have no other thought.
The visits to Birmingham, the autumn transaction (giving the news that the pile was being built), the three visits in the spring, one just before Sawbridge had accompanied Luke into the hot laboratory: on each visit, what data had he given over?
Denial, denial again.
Martin increased the strain.
He knew, via Captain Smith, the information that had passed. He knew, which no one else but Luke could, that one piece of that information was false; while waiting for the rods to cool, they had decided on which solvent to use for the plutonium — and then, a good deal later, had changed their minds. It was the first method which had been told to the agent; only Luke, Sawbridge, and Martin could know the exact circumstances in which it had been decided on, and also given up.
Martin asked Sawbridge about those decisions. For the first and only time in the investigation, Martin gained an advantage through being on the inside. So far as I could judge, he used his technical familiarity with his usual deliberate nerve; but that was not the major weight with which he was wearing Sawbridge down.
The major weight came from his use of Sawbridge’s loneliness, and his sense of how it was growing as the days dripped by. Against it Martin brought down, not only his bits of technical knowledge, not only the facts of the meetings at the Corporation Street corner — but also all the opinions of Barford, every sign that men working there were willing to dismiss Sawbridge from their minds, so that he should feel separate even from those among whom he had been most at home.
No one knew better than Martin how even the hardest suffer the agoraphobia of being finally alone.
On the seventh day, the record ran:
E. I suppose you have got your notebooks about the work at Barford?
SA. Yes.
E. We shall want them.
SA. I shall want them if I go back.
E. Do you think you will go back?
SA. I hope you realize what it will mean to Barford if I do not.
E. You might have thought of that before.
SA. I thought of it more than you have given me credit for.
E. After you made the first contact with—’
SA. I have not admitted that.
E. After you made the first contact, or before?
SA. I thought of it all along.
For those seven nights running Captain Smith brought the record into my office. He made excuses to stay with me as I read; it looked like a refinement of security, but afterwards he liked to go out with me for a drink, taking his time about it. I discovered that he had a valetudinarian wife, for whom, without letting out a complaint, he had sacrificed his pleasure ever since he was a young man; but even he was not above stealing a pretext for half an hour away from her.
On the eighth night, which was Thursday, September 23rd, he came into my office hand on hip, and, as he gave me the typescript, said: ‘Now we shan’t be long.’
‘What?’
‘Our friend is beginning to crack.’
‘Is it definite?’
‘Once they begin to crack, they never take hold of themselves again.’
He said it in his parsonical tone, without any trace of elation.
I felt — visceral pity; a complex of satisfactions: anxiety that the time was near (I neither wanted to nor could have done it while the issue was not settled) when I must speak to Martin.
‘How long will he get?’ I asked.
‘About the same as the other one.’
He stared at me.
‘Ten years, there or thereabouts,’ he went on. ‘It’s a long time for a young man.’
I nodded.
‘We’ve got to do it,’ he said, in exactly the same neutral creaking tone. He had not spoken of Sawbridge’s sentence with sentimentality, but as a matter of fact; but also I had not heard him condemn Sawbridge. Smith had more moral taste than most persons connected with crime and punishment; the country had a right to guard itself, to make sure that men like Sawbridge were caught; but, in his view, it had no right to insult them.
The next night, the Friday, Smith was late arriving at my office. When he did so, fingering the rolled-up record as though it were a flute, he said: ‘Our friend is going to make a complete statement on Monday morning.’
38: Words in the Open
Smith decided that we ought to take the news at once to Bevill and Rose. I followed him down the corridor to Rose’s room, where, as Smith began a preamble about having a ‘confab’, I glanced out of the window into the dark and muggy twilight, with the lights already shining (although it was only half past six on a September evening) from windows in Birdcage Walk.
Bland behind his desk, Rose was bringing Smith to the point, but, as he did so, there was a familiar step outside, a step brisk and active, which did not sound like an old man pretending to be young — and Bevill came in, with a flushed happy look. He left the door open, and in a moment Martin entered.
‘This is good news for us all,’ said Bevill.
With one question, aside to me, Rose grasped what news they brought.
‘It’s jolly good work,’ said Bevill.
‘I suppose, in the circumstances, it is the best solution,’ said Rose, and added, with his customary coolness: ‘Of course, it will mean a good many awkward questions.’
‘I hope this will encourage the others,’ said Bevill.
‘There mustn’t be any more,’ said Martin, speaking for the first time since he came in.
Bevill, who had been congratulating Smith, turned to Martin. ‘You needn’t think we don’t know how much we’ve got to thank you for.’ The old man beamed at him.
Martin shook his head.
Rose said: ‘It’s been a real contribution, and we’re very grateful. Many, many congratulations.’
‘What I like,’ said Bevill, ‘is that you’ve done it without any fuss. Some of your chaps make such a fuss whatever they do, and that’s just what we wanted to avoid. I call you a public benefactor.’ Bevill was rosy with content.
The party broke up, Smith leaving first. As Martin and I walked away down the corridor, not speaking, I heard the brisk step behind us.
‘Just a word,’ said Bevill, but waited until we reached my room.
‘This is a clever brother you’ve got, Lewis,’ said the old man paternally. ‘Look, I want to stand you both a dinner. Let’s go to my little club. I didn’t ask friend Rose up the passage, because I knew he wouldn’t want to come.’
It was completely untrue, and Bevill knew it; Rose would have loved to be taken to Pratt’s. But Bevill still refused to introduce his Whitehall acquaintances there. In his heart, though he could get on with all men, he did not like them, especially Rose. It was a fluke that he happened to like me, and now Martin.
The evening was sultry, and it was like a greenhouse in the club kitchen, where the fire blazed in the open grate. The little parlour was empty, when we had dinner at the common table off the check tablecloth; but one or two men were drinking in the kitchen.
That night, as on other occasions when I had watched him there, Bevill was unbuttoned; he stopped being an unobtrusive democrat the instant he passed the porter in the hall. His well-being was so bubbling that I could not resist it, though I had resolved to speak to Martin before the end of the night. Nevertheless, that seemed far away; and I felt light-hearted.