‘Now that you’re leaving,’ said the Fairy, ‘there’s one thing I’ve got to say; I’ve laid all the cards on the table. If it should ever enter your head that it would be fun to repeat any of this conversation in the outer world, take my advice and don’t. It wouldn’t be at all healthy for your future career.’
‘Oh but of course,’ began Mark.
‘You’d better run along now,’ said Miss Hardcastle. ‘Have a nice talk with the DD. Be careful not to annoy the old man. He does so hate resignations.’
Mark made an attempt to prolong the interview but the Fairy did not permit this and in a few seconds he was outside the door.
The rest of that day he passed miserably enough, keeping out of people’s way as much as possible lest his lack of occupation should be noticed. He went out before lunch for one of those short, unsatisfactory walks which a man takes in a strange neighbourhood when he has brought with him neither old clothes nor a walking stick. After lunch he explored the grounds. But they were not the sort of grounds that anyone could walk in for pleasure. The Edwardian millionaire who had built Belbury had enclosed about twenty acres with a low brick wall surmounted by an iron railing, and laid it all out in what his contractor called Ornamental Pleasure Grounds. There were trees dotted about and winding paths covered so thickly with round white pebbles that you could hardly walk on them. There were immense flower beds, some oblong, some lozenge-shaped, and some crescents. There were plantations –slabs would be almost a better word–of that kind of laurel which looks as if it were made of cleverly painted and varnished metal. Massive summer seats of bright green stood at regular intervals along the paths. The whole effect was like that of a municipal cemetery. Yet, unattractive as it was, he sought it again after tea, smoking though the wind blew the lit part down the side of his cigarette and his tongue was already burning. This time he wandered round to the back parts of the house where the newer and lower buildings joined it. Here he was surprised by a stable-like smell and a medley of growls, grunts and whimpers–all the signs, in fact, of a considerable zoo. At first he did not understand, but presently he remembered that an immense programme of vivisection, freed at last from Red Tape and from niggling economy, was one of the plans of the NICE. He had not been particularly interested and had thought vaguely of rats, rabbits, and an occasional dog. The confused noises from within suggested something very different. As he stood there a loud melancholy howl arose and then, as if it had set the key, all manner of trumpetings, bayings, screams, laughter even, which shuddered and protested for a moment and then died away into mutterings and whines. Mark had no scruples about vivisection. What the noise meant to him was the greatness and grandiosity of this whole undertaking from which, apparently, he was likely to be excluded. There were all sorts of things in there: thousands of pounds’ worth of living animality, which the Institute could afford to cut up like paper on the mere chance of some interesting discovery. He must get the job: he must somehow solve the problem of Steele. But the noise was disagreeable and he moved away.
Mark woke next morning with the feeling that there would certainly be one fence and perhaps two fences for him to get over during the day. The first was his interview with the Deputy Director. Unless he could get a very definite assurance about a post and a salary, he would cut his connection with the Institute. And then, when he reached home, the second fence would be his explanation to Jane of how the whole dream had faded away.
The first real fog of the autumn had descended on Belbury that morning. Mark ate his breakfast by artificial light, and neither post nor newspaper had arrived. It was a Friday and a servant handed him his bill for the portion of a week, which he had already spent in the Institute. He put it in his pocket after a hasty glance with a resolution that this, at any rate, should never be mentioned to Jane. Neither the total nor the items were of the sort that wives easily understand. He himself doubted whether there were not some mistake, but he was still at that age when a man would rather be fleeced to his last penny than dispute a bill. Then he finished his second cup of tea, felt for cigarettes, found none, and ordered a new packet.
The odd half hour which he had waited before keeping his appointment with the Deputy Director passed slowly. No one spoke to him. Everyone else seemed to be hasting away on some important and well-defined purpose. For part of the time he was alone in the lounge and felt that the servants looked at him as if he ought not to be there. He was glad when he was able to go upstairs and knock on Wither’s door.
He was admitted at once, but the conversation was not easy to begin because Wither said nothing, and though he looked up as soon as Mark entered, with an expression of dreamy courtesy, he did not look exactly at Mark, nor did he ask him to sit down. The room, as usual, was extremely hot, and Mark, divided between his desire to make it clear that he had fully resolved to be left hanging about no longer and his equally keen desire not to lose the job if there were any real job going, did not perhaps speak very well. At all events, the Deputy Director left him to run down–to pass into disjointed repetitions and thence into complete silence. That silence lasted for some time. Wither sat with his lips pouted and slightly open as though he were humming a tune.
‘So I think, Sir, I’d better go,’ said Mark at last with vague reference to what he had been saying.
‘You are Mr Studdock, I think?’ said Wither tentatively after another prolonged silence.
‘Yes,’ said Mark impatiently. ‘I called on you with Lord Feverstone a few days ago. You gave me to understand that you were offering me a position on the sociological side of the NICE. But as I was saying–’
‘One moment, Mr Studdock,’ interrupted the Deputy Director. ‘It is so important to be perfectly clear what we are doing. You are no doubt aware that in certain senses of the words it would be most unfortunate to speak of my offering anyone a post in the Institute. You must not imagine for a moment that I hold any kind of autocratic position, nor, on the other hand, that the relation between my own sphere of influence and the powers–I am speaking of their temporary powers, you understand– of the Permanent Committee or those of the Director himself are defined by any hard and fast system of what–er–one might call a constitutional, or even a constitutive, character. For example–’
‘Then, Sir, can you tell me whether anyone has offered me a post, and, if so, who?’
‘Oh,’ said Wither suddenly, changing both his position and his tone, as if a new idea had struck him. ‘There has never been the least question of that sort. It was always understood that your co-operation with the Institute would be entirely acceptable –would be of the greatest value.’
‘Well, can I–I mean, oughtn’t we to discuss the details? I mean the salary for example and–who should I be working under?’
‘My dear friend,’ said Wither with a smile, ‘I do not anticipate that there will be any difficulty about the–er–the financial side of the matter. As for–’
‘What would the salary be, Sir?’ said Mark.
‘Well, there you touch on a point which it is hardly for me to decide. I believe that members in the position which we had envisaged you as occupying usually draw some sum like fifteen hundred a year, allowing for fluctuations calculated on a very liberal basis. You will find that all questions of that sort will adjust themselves with the greatest of ease.’
‘But when should I know, Sir? Who ought I go to about it?’
‘You mustn’t suppose, Mr Studdock, that when I mention fifteen hundred I am at all excluding the possibility of some higher figure. I don’t think any of us here would allow a disagreement on that point–’
‘I should be perfectly satisfied with fifteen hundred,’ said Mark. ‘I wasn’t thinking of that at all. But–but–’ The Deputy Director’s expression became more and more courtly and confidential as Mark stammered, so that when he finally blurted out, ‘I suppose there’d be a contract or something of the kind,’ he felt he had committed an unutterable vulgarity.
‘Well,’
said the Deputy Director fixing his eyes on the ceiling and sinking his voice to a whisper as though he too were profoundly embarrassed, ‘that is not exactly the sort of procedure…it would, no doubt, be possible…’
‘And that isn’t the main point, Sir,’ said Mark reddening. ‘There’s the question of my status. Am I to work under Mr Steele?’
‘I have here a form,’ said Wither opening a drawer, ‘which has not, I believe, been ever actually used but which was designed for such agreements. You might care to study it at your leisure and if you are satisfied we could sign it at any time.’
‘But about Mr Steele?’
At that moment a secretary entered and placed some letters on the Deputy Director’s table.
‘Ah! The post at last!’ said Wither. ‘Perhaps, Mr Studdock, er–you will have letters of your own to attend to. You are, I believe, married?’ A smile of fatherly indulgence overspread his face as he said these words.
‘I’m sorry to delay you, Sir,’ said Mark, ‘but about Mr Steele? There is no good my looking at the form of agreement until that question is settled. I should feel compelled to refuse any position which involved working under Mr Steele.’
‘That opens up a very interesting question about which I should like to have a quite informal and confidential chat with you on some future occasion,’ said Wither. ‘For the moment, Mr Studdock, I shall not regard anything you have said as final. If you cared to call on me tomorrow…’ He became absorbed in the letter he had opened, and Mark, feeling that he had achieved enough for one interview, left the room. Apparently, they did really want him at the NICE and were prepared to pay a high price for him. He would fight it out about Steele later; meanwhile, he would study the form of agreement.
He came downstairs again and found the following letter waiting for him.
Bracton College,
Edgestow,
Oct. 20th, 19–
My dear Mark,
We were all sorry to hear from Dick that you are resigning your fellowship, but feel quite certain you’ve made the right decision as far as your own career is concerned. Once the NICE is settled in here I shall expect to see almost as much of you as before. If you have not yet sent a formal resignation to NO, I shouldn’t be in any hurry to do so. If you wrote early next term, the vacancy would come up at the February meeting, and we should have time to get ready a suitable candidate as your successor. Have you any ideas on the subject yourself? I was talking to James and Dick the other night about David Laird (James hadn’t heard of him before). No doubt, you know his work: could you let me have a line about it, and about his more general qualifications? I may see him next week when I’m running over to Cambridge to dine with the Prime Minister and one or two others, and I think Dick might be induced to ask Laird as well. You’ll have heard that we had rather a shindy here the other night. There was apparently some sort of fracas between the new workmen and the local inhabitants. The NICE police, who seem to be a nervy lot, made the mistake of firing a few rounds over the head of the crowd. We had the Henrietta Maria window smashed and several stones came into Common Room. Glossop lost his head and wanted to go out and harangue the mob, but I managed to quiet him down. This is in strict confidence. There are lots of people ready to make capital out of it here and to get up a hue and cry against us for selling the wood. In haste–I must run off and make arrangements about Hingest’s funeral.
Yours,
G. C. CURRY.
At the first words of this letter a stab of fear ran through Mark. He tried to reassure himself. An explanation of the misunderstanding –which he would write and post immediately–would be bound to put everything right. They couldn’t shove a man out of his fellowship simply on a chance word spoken by Lord Feverstone in Common Room. It came back to him with miserable insight that what he was now calling ‘a chance word’ was exactly what he had learned, in the Progressive Element, to describe as ‘settling real business in private’, or ‘cutting out the Red Tape’, but he tried to thrust this out of his mind. It came back to him that poor Conington had actually lost his job in a way very similar to this, but he explained to himself that the circumstances had been quite different. Conington had been an outsider; he was inside, even more inside than Curry himself. But was he? If he were not ‘inside’ at Belbury (and it began to look as if he were not), was he still in Feverstone’s confidence? If he had to go back to Bracton, would he find that he retained even his old status there? Could he go to Bracton? Yes, of course. He must write a letter at once explaining that he had not resigned, and would not resign, his fellowship. He sat down at a table in the writing room and took out his pen. Then another thought struck him. A letter to Curry, saying plainly that he meant to stay at Bracton, would be shown to Feverstone. Feverstone would tell Wither. Such a letter could be regarded as a refusal of any post at Belbury. Well–let it be! He would give up this shortlived dream and fall back on his fellowship. But how if that were impossible? The whole thing might have been arranged simply to let him fall between the two stools–kicked out of Belbury because he was retaining the Bracton fellowship and kicked out of Bracton because he was supposed to be taking a job at Belbury–then he and Jane left to sink or swim with not a sou between them–perhaps, with Feverstone’s influence against him when he tried to get another job. And where was Feverstone?
Obviously, he must play his cards very carefully. He rang the bell and ordered a large whisky. At home he would not have drunk till twelve and even then would have drunk only beer. But now–and anyway, he felt curiously chilly. There was no point in catching a cold on top of all his other troubles.
He decided that he must write a very careful and rather elusive letter. His first draught was, he thought, not vague enough: it could be used as a proof that he had abandoned all idea of a job at Belbury. He must make it vaguer. But then, if it were too vague, it would do no good. Oh damn, damn, damn the whole thing. The two hundred pounds entrance fee, the bill for his first week, and snatches of imagined attempts to make Jane see the whole episode in the proper light, kept coming between him and his task. In the end, with the aid of the whisky and of a great many cigarettes, he produced the following letter:
The National Institute for Co-ordinated
Experiments, Belbury.
Oct. 21st, 19–
My dear Curry,
Feverstone must have got me wrong. I never made the slightest suggestion of resigning my fellowship and don’t in the least wish to do so. As a matter of fact, I have almost made up my mind not to take a full time job with the NICE and hope to be back in college in a day or two. For one thing, I am rather worried about my wife’s health and don’t like to commit myself to being much away at present. In the second place, though everyone here has been extremely flattering and all press me to stay, the kind of job they want me for is more on the administrative and publicity side and less scientific than I had expected. So be sure and contradict it if you hear anyone saying I am thinking of leaving Edgestow. I hope you’ll enjoy your jaunt to Cambridge: what circles you do move in!
Yours,
Mark G. Studdock
PS Laird wouldn’t have done in any case. He got a third, and the only published work he’s ventured on has been treated as a joke by serious reviewers. In particular, he has no critical faculty at all. You can always depend on him for admiring anything that is thoroughly bogus.
The relief of having finished the letter was only momentary, for almost as soon as he had sealed it the problem of how to pass the rest of this day returned to him. He decided to go and sit in his own room; but when he went up there he found the bed stripped and a vacuum cleaner in the middle of the floor. Apparently, members were not expected to be in their bedrooms at this time of day. He came down and tried the lounge; the servants were tidying it. He looked into the library. It was empty but for two men who were talking with their heads close together. They stopped and looked up as soon as he entered, obviously waiting for him to go. He pretended that he had come to get a
book and retired. In the hall he saw Steele himself standing by the notice board and talking to a man with a pointed beard. Neither looked at Mark but as he passed them they became silent. He dawdled across the hall and pretended to examine the barometer. Wherever he went he heard doors opening and shutting, the tread of rapid feet, occasional ringing of telephones; all the signs of a busy institution carrying on a vigorous life from which he was excluded. He opened the front door and looked out; the fog was thick, wet and cold.
There is one sense in which every narrative is false; it dare not attempt, even if it could, to express the actual movement of time. This day was so long to Mark that a faithful account of it would be unreadable. Sometimes he sat upstairs–for at last they finished ‘doing’ his bedroom–sometimes he went out into the fog, sometimes he hung about the public rooms. Every now and then these would be unaccountably filled up by crowds of talking people and for a few minutes the strain of trying not to look unoccupied, not to seem miserable and embarrassed, would be imposed on him; then suddenly, as if summoned by their next engagement, all these people would hurry away.
Some time after lunch he met Stone in one of the passages. Mark had not thought of him since yesterday morning, but now, looking at the expression on his face and something furtive in his whole manner, he realised that here, at any rate, was someone who felt as uncomfortable as himself. Stone had the look which Mark had often seen before in unpopular boys or new boys at school, in ‘outsiders’ at Bracton–the look which was for Mark the symbol of all his worst fears, for to be one who must wear that look was, in his scale of values, the greatest evil. His instinct was not to speak to this man Stone. He knew by experience how dangerous it is to be friends with a sinking man or even to be seen with him: you cannot keep him afloat and he may pull you under. But his own craving for companionship was now acute, so that against his better judgment he smiled a sickly smile and said, ‘Hullo!’
Stone gave a start as if to be spoken to were almost a frightening experience. ‘Good afternoon,’ he said nervously and made to pass on.
‘Let’s come and talk somewhere, if you’re not busy,’ said Mark.
‘I am–that is to say–I’m not quite sure how long I shall be free,’ said Stone.
‘Tell me about this place,’ said Mark. ‘It seems to me perfectly bloody, but I haven’t yet made up my mind. Come to my room.’
‘I don’t think that at all. Not at all. Who said I thought that?’ answered Stone very quickly. And Mark did not answer because at that moment he saw the Deputy Director approaching them. He was to discover during the next few weeks that no passage and no public room at Belbury was ever safe from the prolonged indoor walks of the Deputy Director. They could not be regarded as a form of espionage for the creak of Wither’s boots and the dreary little tune which he was nearly always humming would have defeated any such purpose. One heard him quite a long way off. Often one saw him a long way off as well, for he was a tall man (without his stoop he would have been very tall indeed) and often, even in a crowd, one saw that face at a distance staring vaguely towards one. But this was Mark’s first experience of that ubiquity and he felt that the DD could not have appeared at a more unfortunate moment. Very slowly he came towards them, looked in their direction though it was not plain from his face whether he recognised them or not, and passed on. Neither of the young men attempted to resume their conversation.
At tea Mark saw Feverstone and went at once to sit beside him. He knew that the worst thing a man in his position could do was to try to force himself on anyone, but he was now feeling desperate.
‘I say, Feverstone,’ he began gaily, ‘I’m in search of information’–and was relieved to see Feverstone smile in reply.
‘Yes,’ said Mark. ‘I haven’t had exactly what you’d call a glowing reception from Steele. But the DD won’t hear of my leaving. And the Fairy seems to want me to write newspaper articles. What the hell am I supposed to be doing?’
Feverstone laughed long and loud.
‘Because,’ concluded Mark, ‘I’m damned if I can find out. I’ve tried to tackle the old boy direct–’
‘God!’ said Feverstone laughing even louder.
‘Can one never get anything out of him?’
‘Not what you want,’ said Feverstone with a chuckle.
‘Well, how the devil is one to find out what’s wanted if nobody