He paused, with a punctilious smile. ‘The only real question is exactly what decoration we should go for.’
This was what Martin had been prompting the old man about. I was not touched.
It might have appeared a piece of kindness. But he was being kind to himself, not to me. It was the sort of kindness which, when there is a gash in a close relationship, one performs to ease one’s conscience, to push any intimate responsibility away.
Meanwhile Martin’s own reward was coming near. The committee sat in Rose’s room, and on those autumn mornings of sun-through-mist, I went through the minutes that by this time I knew by heart. These men were fairer, and most of them a great deal abler, than the average: but you heard the same ripples below the words, as when any group of men chose anyone for any job. Put your ear to those meetings and you heard the intricate labyrinthine and unassuageable rapacity, even in the best of men, of the love of power. If you have heard it once — say, in electing the chairman of a tiny dramatic society, it does not matter where — you have heard it in colleges, in bishoprics, in ministries, in cabinets: men do not alter because the issues they decide are bigger scale.
The issues before Bevill and his committee were large enough, by the standards of this world. Barford: the production plant: a new whisper of what Bevill called the hydrogen bomb: many millions of pounds. ‘The people who run this place arc going to have plenty on their plate,’ said Bevill. ‘Sometimes I can’t help wondering — is one Top Man enough? I’m not sure we ought to put it all under one hat.’ Then they (Bevill, Rose, Getliffe, Mounteney, and three other scientists) got down to it. Drawbell must go.
‘That can be done,’ said Hector Rose, meaning that Drawbell would be slid into another job.
Next there was a proposal that Mounteney and another scientist did not like, but which would have gone straight through: it was that Francis Getliffe should go to Barford and also become what Bevill kept calling Top Man of atomic energy. It would have been a good appointment, but Francis did not want it; he hesitated; the more he dickered, the more desirable to the others the appointment seemed, but in the end he said No.
That left two possibilities: one, that Luke, who appeared to have partially recovered, though the doctors would not make a certain prognosis either way, should be given Barford, which he was known to want.
The other possibility had been privately ‘ventilated’ by Bevill and Rose ever since Rose mentioned it to me in the summer: assuming that there was a doubt about Luke, couldn’t one set up a supervisory committee and then put M F Eliot in as acting superintendent?
They were too capable to have brought up this scheme in the committee room, unless they had found support outside. But Rose mentioned it — ‘I’m just thinking aloud,’ he said — on a shining autumn morning.
For once Francis Getliffe spoke too soon.
‘I’m not happy about that idea,’ he said immediately.
‘This is just what we want to hear,’ said Bevill.
‘I know Luke has his faults.’ said Francis, ‘but he’s a splendid scientist.’
Mounteney put in: ‘Even if you’re right about Luke—’
‘You know I’m right,’ said Getliffe, forgetting to be judicious, a vein swelling angrily in his forehead.
‘He’s pretty good,’ said Mounteney, in the tone of one who is prepared to concede that Sir Isaac Newton had a modest talent, ‘but there’s no more real scientific thinking to be done at Barford now, it’s just a question of making it run smooth.’
‘That’s a dangerous argument. It’s always dangerous to be frightened of the first rate.’
I had seldom seen Francis so angry. He was putting the others off and he tried to collect himself. ‘I’m saying nothing against M F Eliot. He’s a very shrewd and able man, and if you want a competent administrator I expect he’s as good as they come.’
‘Administrators, of course, being a very lowly form of life,’ said Rose politely.
Francis flushed: somehow he, as a rule so effective in committee, could not put a foot right.
There was some technical argument among the scientists, taking up Mounteney’s point: weren’t the problems of Barford, from this time on, just engineering and administrative ones? Someone said that Martin, despite his calendar youth, was mentally the older of the two.
When we broke off for luncheon, Francis and I walked across the park together. For a time he strode on, in embarrassed silence, and then said: ‘Lewis, I’m very sorry I had to come out against Martin.’
‘Never mind,’ I said.
‘I couldn’t have done anything else,’ he said.
‘I know that,’ I said.
‘Do you agree with me?
By good luck, what I thought did not count. I said: ‘He’d do better than you’d give him credit for.’
‘But between him and Luke?’
‘Luke,’ I said.
Nevertheless, Francis had mishandled his case, and that afternoon and at the next meeting, it was Luke against whom opinion began to swell. Against Luke rather than for Martin, but in such a choice it was likely to be the antis who prevailed. They had, of course, a practical doubt, in Luke’s state of health. I was thinking, if you wanted a job, don’t be ilclass="underline" for it had an almost superstitious effect, even on men as hard-headed as these; somehow, if you were ill, your mana was reduced.
‘Is it in Luke’s own best interests to ask him to take a strain like this?’ someone said.
It was not a close thing. Getliffe, who was a stubborn man, kept the committee arguing through several meetings, but in truth they had made up their minds long before. He twisted some concessions out of them: yes, Luke was to become a chief adviser, with a seat on the supervisory committee: yes, Luke would get ‘suitable recognition’ when his turn came round (Sir Walter Luke: Sir Francis Getliffe: Sir Arthur Mounteney: in five years’ time, those would be the styles). But the others would not give way any further. It was time a new arrangement was drawn up, and Bevill and Rose undertook, as a matter of form, to get Martin’s views.
On an afternoon in November, Martin came into Rose’s room. Bevill did not waste any words on flummery.
‘We’ve got a big job for you, young man,’ he burst out.
Martin sat still, his glance not deflecting for an instant towards me, as Bevill explained the scheme.
‘It’s an honour,’ said Martin. Neither his eyes nor mouth were smiling. He said: ‘May I have a few days to think it over?’
‘What do you want to think over?’ said Bevill. But he and Rose were both used to men pulling every string to get a job and then deliberating whether they could take it.
‘We should all be very, very delighted to see you installed there,’ said Rose.
Martin thanked him and said: ‘If I could give an answer next week?’
40: Visit to a Prisoner
The day after Bevill offered Martin the appointment, Captain Smith came into my office and unravelled one of his Henry James-like invitations, which turned out to be, would I go with him to Wandsworth Gaol and have a chat to Sawbridge? I tried to get out of it, but Smith was persistent. He was sensitive enough to feel that I did not like it; but after all, I was an official, I had to live with official duty, just as he did himself.
In the taxi, he told me that he was clearing up a point about the Puchweins. It was worth ‘having another try’ at Sawbridge, who occasionally talked, not giving anything away, more for the sake of company than because he was softening. As we drove through the south London streets in the November sunshine, he told me more of Sawbridge. He had not recanted; others of the scientific spies gave up their communism in prison, but not Sawbridge. For a few days, sitting opposite to Martin, he had been ‘rattled’. During that time he made his confession. He had blamed himself ever since.