‘He wouldn’t talk about them,’ Irene flared out. ‘But I didn’t need him to. I hadn’t forgotten the letter he didn’t send.’
One foggy afternoon, he suddenly said: ‘The head of Barford is just as much part of the machine as any of the others.’
He went on: ‘If I take the job, I shan’t have the trouble of thinking for myself again.’
Irene said to me, simply and quietly: ‘Then I knew that he would never take it.’
That had happened the previous Saturday, three days before the offer came. I asked how he had behaved when he actually had the offer in his hand.
‘He was shaken,’ said Irene. ‘He was terribly shaken.’
With the fog outside the windows, he had sat by the fire so absent that he let it go out. Then she made it up, and I imagined the firelight reflected into the room from the fog-backed window. Martin only roused himself from that paralysis of the nerves to play again with the little boy — the two of them under the window, young Lewis shouting, Martin patiently rolling a ball, and still silent.
Both Irene and I, through our different kinds of knowledge of him, took it for granted that he would not alter his resolve.
‘I don’t pretend to understand it,’ she said to me. ‘Do you?’
I shook my head, and, as lost and open as she was, I asked: ‘What do you think he intends to do?’
‘I don’t think, I know,’ she replied.
During the past weeks, so as to be ready, he had been making inquiries, unknown to me, of our college. If he decided to give up his work at Barford and return to pure science, could they find a niche for him?
‘It’ll be funny for him, not having any power,’ she said.
She added: ‘He’s going into dimness, isn’t he? He won’t make much of a go of it?’
She went on asking, what were his chances in pure science? Would he do enough to console himself?
‘They all say he hasn’t got quite the talent,’ I replied. He would publish a few respectable papers, he would not get into the Royal Society. For a man as realistic as Martin, it would be failure.
‘He’s got a real talent for his present job,’ I said.
‘It’ll be difficult for him to lead a dim life,’ she said, ‘having had a taste of something different.’
She said it in a matter-of — fact tone, without any sign of tenderness.
I broke out: ‘And I suppose you’re glad about it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You wanted him to make his protest. I suppose this is the next best thing?’
Irene was flushing down the neckline of her dress. With difficult honesty she turned her eyes away, and said: ‘No. I’m not cut out for this.’
‘Why aren’t you?’
‘I’m a sprinter. I could have stood a major row, it would have been something to live through. I should have been more use to him than any of you.’
I said: ‘I believe you would.’
She flashed out: ‘It isn’t often you pay me a compliment.’
‘It was meant,’ I said.
‘But you mustn’t give me too much credit. I’m not high-minded. I shouldn’t have worried if Martin had become the boss at Barford. I should have enjoyed the flah-flah.’
Then she asked: ‘Why ever is he doing it? I wish you’d tell me that.’
I was confused.
‘Do you think,’ she said, ‘he’s just trying to be a good man?’
‘I should like to believe it,’ I said.
‘You think he’s got another motive, do you?’
‘We usually have.’
To my astonishment, she burst out laughing, with her high-pitched yelps of glee.
‘I believe you think,’ she cried, ‘that he’s doing it to take it out of me. Just to show me that things have changed since he married me, and that he holds the whip hand now.’
It had not even crossed my mind.
‘You’re wrong!’ she shouted. ‘If he’s reacting against anyone, it isn’t me!’
Her eyes glinted triumphant, good-natured, malicious at my expense. She said: ‘You won’t be able to influence him now, will you?’
42: A Place to Stand?
Martin did not give his answer to Bevill until the last day of his period of grace. He called in my office first, just as he used to — but we were both constrained, On the window the frost, coming early that winter, masked the buses in Whitehall. Martin swept a pane with his sleeve, saying that after he had had the interview with Bevill and Rose, he would like to talk to me.
He assumed that I knew what his answer was going to be. When he actually delivered it, he spent (so I learned later) much skill in saving his supporters’ credit. He did not once suggest a moral choice; he just used the pretext that, unless he did some real science soon, he never would; in which case his usefulness would be finished in ten years.
The scientists took the explanation at its face value. It was only Bevill who smelt that there was something wrong. In his experience men did not turn down good jobs unless by doing so they got a better. So he fell back on what was always his last resource, and put the blame on to Martin’s wife.
Bevill and Rose had been too long at their craft not to recognize the inevitable; that morning, while Martin was on his way back to my office, they had already decided that now, well or ill, wild man or not, it had to be Luke. Rose’s sense of justice made him insist that they could not even attempt to put Luke in leading strings, as they had Martin. Thus it was to be Luke in full power.
Meanwhile Martin had returned to my room. His gestures were relaxed, as though to light a cigarette were a pleasure to be taken slowly; yet we could not speak to each other with ease. With anyone else, I felt, he would be smiling with jubilation, with a trace of sadness too.
With me, he could not be so natural.
‘That’s settled,’ he said.
He asked if he could waste the rest of the afternoon for me and I said: ‘Of course.’ I added, meaninglessly ‘Can you spare the time?’
‘Very soon,’ said Martin, with a sarcastic grin, ‘I shall have plenty of time.’
For many minutes we sat there, looking down over Whitehall, saying nothing to the point, often falling into silence. It was not until we took a walk in the icy park that Martin made his first effort.
‘I’m happy about this,’ he said, as we trod along the path where, on the verges, each blade of grass stood out separated by the frost.
He added: ‘It’s a change from the last time.’
He meant the last time we had walked there, the day after the bomb had dropped. It had been sixteen mouths before. The leaves had been thick then; now we looked past the bare trees, into the mist fuming above the leaden water.
‘Since then,’ said Martin, ‘I haven’t found a place to stand.’
He spoke slowly, as though with the phrase he recalled that afternoon when, in the Dolphin Square bathroom, he saw the scientific way ahead.
He went on: ‘Up till now.’
In return I made my effort.
‘I hope,’ I said, ‘that I haven’t made it harder for you to find it.’
There seemed a long interval before Martin replied. Our steps rang in the frost. We were both evasive, reticent men, who used irony to cheat out of its importance the moment in which we breathed: each of us that afternoon had set ourselves to speak without easing the moment away. That was why we stumbled so.