‘You’re through,’ said Miss Allen.
‘Mrs Carson?’
‘Speaking.’
‘Oh, this is Mike. Have you heard anything from Lynn since I phoned you on Thursday?’
‘Oh, Mike, I telephoned you twice yesterday but couldn’t get any answer. I thought—’
‘No, I was out – at the works. Have you seen Lynn?’
‘I’ve had a letter. I had a letter on Friday.’
‘What did it say?’
‘Well, it made me feel quite ill. She said she was – leaving you. I’d hardly an idea in the world that everything wasn’t going well between you. I was very upset indeed.’
‘No more than I was.’
‘Whatever has happened?’
‘I think maybe she’s tired of me …’ Lynn’s mother didn’t answer. ‘Does she give some other reason?’
‘She doesn’t give her reasons at all. You might know that. It’s years since she consulted me or asked my advice about anything.’
I said: ‘ Does she give her address in London?’
‘Yes, she does. I’ve written to her. I said to her I couldn’t understand it at all, and I didn’t think—’
‘What is her address?’
‘Oh, Mike, she told me not to tell you. That was the last thing in her letter. I’ll be writing to you, she finished, perhaps next week—’
‘Don’t you think I’m entitled to know?’
‘It isn’t what I think, dear. I certainly think she should never have left you … Mike?’
‘Yes?’
‘Is there another woman in it – or another man?’
‘There certainly isn’t another woman.’
‘Thank goodness. Then it may be patched up.’
‘It may be patched up. There’s more likelihood of that if I can go and see her instead of being kept at arm’s length by this damned silly secrecy.’
‘Are you telling me the absolute truth?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, it’s – 9a, Grosvenor Court Mews, W1. Mike, dear, if you do go, don’t tell her where you got the address. Whatever happens between you and her afterwards, if she knew she’d never speak to me again.’
‘I promise.’ Yet, I thought swiftly, Lynn might have known her mother wouldn’t keep information like that to herself – in any minor squabble she’d always favoured me. If Lynn had not wanted me to know …
‘If I might give you a word of advice, dear …’
‘Well?’
‘Be firm with her. I never could be firm enough.’
I said: ‘Nor I’
‘Perhaps that’s it. Ever since she was a girl. And I never was able to argue with her without her making me feel pompous and Victorian. It’s a way she has that puts you in the wrong.’
When I’d rung off I stared at the address scribbled on the memo pad. She’d gone to earth very much where one would expect. But now that I had the address I hesitated whether to use it. The episode of Friday night was heavy on my mind. Clearly she‘d not been willing to face me then. What earthly good would it do forcing myself on her if she were in that mood? Perhaps I too had to pick and choose the time of meeting.
Chapter Six
WHEN I drove back to Hockbridge the afternoon’s post lay ungathered on the floor and I picked it up, half hoping. But no luck. A driving licence reminder, the bill for a ton of winter anthracite we’d had in last week, a letter from someone in Southsea who described himself as a gentleman and offered to make my fortune with a pools syndicate.
I got a snack supper – corner of the kitchen table this time – drank rather a lot of whisky and went early to bed. I slept fitfully, dozing and waking, dozing and dreaming. Twice I thought I heard noises and went downstairs. But this time there was no one there.
The next day at the office I decided to write to her after all and keep the fact that I knew where she was as a last resort. But it was no use. My own feelings were so ravelled up I couldn’t take any line. One time I began like a pompous ass, standing on my dignity; the next I seemed to be crawling.
That evening I may have been driving a bit faster than usual but a small boy on a Fairey cycle suddenly came wobbling out of a side turning right in front of me. There was about two feet to swerve without hitting a lorry and I took twenty-three inches of it. All the same the boy lost his balance and hit me as I came to a stop, and collapsed in the road on top of his bike. There was rather a fuss then because a car behind nearly butted into me. Stella Curtis and I picked the boy up from among his bike. He was only about eight and scared, but we couldn’t find a bruise on him. His front wheel was bent like a trick cyclist’s and there was a lovely long scratch down my rear wing.
After a good bit of talk the lorry and the other car went off, and I straightened the kid’s wheel and asked him where he lived, and then took him along to see his mother and advised her that if she didn’t want to be bereaved she should keep a boy of that age off the main road. The queer thing was that she didn’t seem much upset and just kept saying in a wet voice: ‘Well I have warned ’im. He did oughter know better but he just won’t be told.’
We drove on. I said: ‘My mouth tastes of pennies. Release of adrenalin or something.’
She said: ‘ You were lovely with the small boy. Most men would have raved.’
‘Better if I had. Obviously she wasn’t going to.’
When we got to her house she said: ‘Do come in. You must need a drink.’
‘Well, I don’t know if …’
‘John would like to see you again. He hasn’t been well this week and you’d cheer him up.’
Cheer him up, I thought, that was comic. ‘Is he seriously ill?’
‘It’s a form of anaemia.’
‘Quite bad?’
‘Yes, quite bad.’
So I went in again, and eventually found myself staying to supper. I wasn’t particularly attracted to John Curtis. He was quite impressive but I suspected him of being very much the professional sick man; and it didn’t seem a happy arrangement that a girl like Stella Curtis who was young and a looker should be tied to someone twenty years older than herself and very much of an invalid, who lived in an over-warm house and was perpetually chilly, had to have his slippers put on, his pipe fetched, his chair fixed. That was the impression I got; but the talk and the company did me good. I found when she was away from the laboratory atmosphere that Stella was quite different, eager, amusing, easy to be with; also whether you liked John Curtis or not, you didn’t doubt his headpiece. More than once I found myself out of depth and glad to make for the shore.
I wondered what he’d been before he cracked up. Just before I left, the talk came round to the kid we’d nearly knocked down, and Curtis said: ‘Stella tells me you think it a mistake to have children these days.’
So she’d told him that, had she? ‘It’s a matter of opinion.’
‘Because of the risk of atomic warfare?’
‘That among other things.’
‘But life never has been without risk, has it? Every generation has its own hazards.’
‘None quite so much as this, I’d say.’
He narrowed his thin brows. ‘In most centuries until this one, if you had ten children and four grew up, you were doing pretty well. Then, having grown up, blood poisoning, typhus and cholera were probably as lethal as most of the risks of today.’
I said: ‘ Perhaps I take this too personally. But you see for today’s generation I’m concerned with lining up some of the potential cholera.’
After a minute he said: ‘I don’t think you take it too personally. I wonder if you take it personally enough.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Well, doesn’t it rather depend on the value you set on life? If life has any value at all, then it’s worth creating.’
‘Even if if’s burnt up in a single explosion that destroys the world?’
He took out his pipe and tapped the dead tobacco into his hand. ‘Well, even supposing
that does happen – and there’s no certainty that it will – the importance of being alive and what we do with our existence up to that moment hasn’t been lost – surely. We’re part of an evolutionary process. The end of the material experiment doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the spiritual one.’
‘Doesn’t it?’
‘Well, not unless you question the existence of the spirit at all.’
‘I think I doubt it as something that can be unhitched from the body.’
He stared at the flakes of half-smoked tobacco in his palm, then dropped them into the grate and reached for his pouch. Stella passed it to him with a swift rustling movement of her frock and then was quiet again, profile turned towards us, detached but listening.
He said: ‘I know there are an awful lot of people like you about. I’ve met them and wrangled mildly with them ever since undergraduate days, but I still don’t know how any of you work. I don’t know why the wheels continue to go round at all.’
I said: ‘Perhaps they go round all the better for not having half an eye on priority bookings in an afterlife.’
He smiled, the light glinting on his taut cheekbones. ‘ Isn’t that rather a Victorian outlook? I mean an Edwardian objection to the Victorian outlook. Oh, I understand the anti-religious attitude of people with some personal hate – too much of it thrust down their throats as children, etc. But even that’s terribly out-of-date. What person under forty had an overdose in childhood?’ He stopped, short-breathed.
I felt rubbed up the wrong way, partly because of what he’d said but chiefly because of the way he’d said it. ‘It isn’t a question of holding a grudge. It’s an attitude of mind, that’s all. Modern science accepts what can be proved, it’s pretty sceptical but always open to new discoveries; it’s never dogmatic and so it jibs at dogma in others; it doesn’t deny that some spiritual ideas are good but it has no use for out-of-date fairy tales … I think also it thinks that a man who does any good thing because he wants to improve the chances and the living conditions of his next-door neighbour is better than one who “ casts his bread upon the waters” in the expectation that it’s all going to give him a leg up with St Peter later on.’
Stella said: ‘Mike has a nice way of putting things.’ It was the first time she’d called me by my first name.
John Curtis lit his pipe. I think his hands always trembled when he did this. ‘It seems to me that the science that you practise lets its view be crowded up by the non-important things. Your science sees a religious structure and works from the top, breaking down what it doesn’t like until what’s important is buried in the ruins. My science would ignore any religious structure that exists and would work from the bottom building up. It then might find – I think it does find – that the thing it has built, entirely on scientific premises, has an extraordinary identity with nearly all the religious structures that man has been evolving ever since he crept out of the cave.’
I wondered what he meant by scientific premises – half-baked assumptions? – but I could hardly ask. I said: ‘What change would it make in me if I threw over my sceptical outlook and accepted all the myths?’
‘I don’t particularly want you to. But I do think it vitally important that men like you, the crowned heads of the future, shouldn’t restrict yourselves to a narrow technical view of life, where you can’t see the wood for the trees, or the idea for the wires, or the opportunities for the dangers.’ He stopped and looked at his pipe. ‘You think I’m riding some private hobby-horse of my own?’
I had to say no.
‘Perhaps it’s true. Certainly I think it’s important. I’m not talking quite so much about the pure scientist – he usually sees the mystery behind the technical tricks – it’s the applied scientist who’s the danger. Either he works blindly on, preoccupied with his mechanical devices, or he is sensitive enough, as you are, to lift his head from time to time and see the material world he’s creating. Then he thinks life is not so much a trust to be handed on as a sordid and nauseating mistake that can’t be explained.’
I left soon after. Stella walked with me to the gate. She said: ‘Sorry about that. We don’t often go in off the deep end.’
‘I hope I haven’t tired him.’
‘No, I’m sure not.’
‘This life must be pretty heavy on you.’
‘What, looking after him?’
‘And doubling with me at full stretch too.’
She said: ‘I haven’t said thanks for the testimonial the first time you came.’
‘What? Oh … It’s only the truth. I’d never have believed a woman could have stuck at it so well.’
‘I don’t think I like that as much.’
‘And now, seeing your home life …’
‘What’s wrong with my home life?’
‘From one point of view, nothing at all. But you can’t pretend it’s particularly restful.’
We had got to the gate. She said rather formally: ‘I hope your wife won’t be annoyed at our keeping you so long.’
‘She won’t because she isn’t there to get annoyed.’
‘Oh, I see. Well … good night.’
‘As a matter of fact, she’s left me.’ I don’t know why I said it then; but it came out.
Stella said lightly: ‘How long is she going to be away?’
‘So far as I know at the moment she isn’t coming back.’
There was a longish silence. When she didn’t speak I said: ‘One sometimes blurts out these embarrassing confidences.’
‘… Are you serious?’
‘Oh, quite serious, yes.’
‘I am sorry.’
‘Thanks.’
‘When was it?’
‘Thursday last.’
‘Did you – know it was coming?’
‘No. I’ve been more than usually dull. Maybe it’s this preoccupation with technicalities your husband spoke of.’
‘So sorry about that … But naturally we never guessed …’
‘Well you couldn’t be expected to.’ I opened the gate. ‘ Keep this to yourself, won’t you? I’m not looking for shoulders to weep on.’
‘I can only say again, I’m sorry.’
‘That’s all there is to say.’
In the middle of the night I thought, what a fool I am standing on my dignity, she’d be right to think me pompous and stuffy. Besides, how do I know what she’s feeling? On Friday night she’d have thought it humiliating to be caught. But perhaps really she’s wanting to make this thing up and only won’t make the first move.
I got up and put on a dressing-gown and fetched some notepaper and switched on the electric fire.
My dear Lynn,
Your letter floored me when it came. Believe it or not, and
in spite of our few recent squabbles, I hadn’t an idea that you
felt as badly about my neglect as you do. I suppose I’ve been
like a shortsighted bus driver blundering on in spite of the
warning signals; now I’m complaining that the bus has gone
over the edge.
Well, it has gone over the edge for me. I haven’t written
before because I hoped to be able to come and see you and
see what could be salvaged from the wreck. Don’t you think
we should meet? There won’t be a scene. I think we’ve always
been civilised about these things and I’ve certainly no ambition
to change.
Darling, I know all this year you’ve only had 25 per cent
of a husband. If that’s why you left me then I’m willing to
throw up whatever you say and have a shot at beginning again
on entirely different lines. But if you’ve left me for another
man then it’s going to be rather tough. But I still want to see
you and hear about it in so many words. It can’t be any worse
than not knowing for sure. I’m not going to try to see you
until you
give the signal. You’re right about that; it’s got to
be at your time and when you feel ready.
You left your key on Friday night, but I’ve put it under the
geranium pot in the porch. You know when I’m away, so you
can come back any time you like and fetch the things you
want. You also dropped one of your turquoise earrings, which
I’m sending with this.
With regret – as you say – but with very much affection.
Mike.
Chapter Seven
NEXT MORNING Thurston rang to know when the survey equipment would be ready.
I said: ‘The thing’s still rather in the fourth-day-of-Creation stage. Anything fresh?’
‘Could you get it ready for first experiments by Friday week?’
When quiet had been restored Thurston said apologetically: ‘Farnborough suggested bringing the Auster over to you on that open ground you’ve got; but nobody much cares for the idea. So the plane’s been flown down to the rocket site at Llanveryan, and we feel that if the thing could be fitted up there it would be much more convenient for first trials.’
I said: ‘That part’s all right.’
‘I know. Actually it’s the Ministry and not Harwell that’s turning on the steam this time. The whole affair has become suddenly much more vital and more urgent because of this unrest there is in the Sudan on the self-determination issue. Nobody seems to know quite what is going to happen to our area. Porter began talking of its “importance to England” when he was on the telephone just now.’
I said: ‘Well, I can understand that. But what do they expect me to do, lash the stuff together with string?’
‘Do you need any extra help – will it speed things up at all?’
I thought round this. ‘Honestly, David, you can swop drivers if there’s any lack of confidence in the man at the wheel, but you can’t go any faster for having two at the same time.’
‘No, I know that. I’m only anxious that you should put this over in a big way. If you do you’ll be a favourite child so far as Harwell is concerned.’
When he’d rung off I went into the lab and told Stella what Thurston had said. She pursed her lips in a soundless whistle.