The Sleeping Partner

  of sacks.

  I said to her: ‘Stop or go on?’

  ‘Go on.’

  We followed the track again. The stream was quite out of hearing

  now, but of course we could always find that again.

  We went on another couple of hundred yards until we came to

  a broken truck on its side. Here the track branched, but neither

  branch looked less overgrown than the other.

  ‘We’re lost,’ she said.

  Being just then of that heart and body and mind, I could have

  said, Well done.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Go back, I suppose.’

  As we came to the hut I said: ‘ We’d better stay here for a bit

  until it clears.’

  ‘How long will that be?’

  ‘It may lift soon. You can never tell one minute from the next.’

  It was too dark now to see her face clearly, but her eyes glimmered

  with what seemed to be their own light.

  Her hand seemed to want to get away from mine but I held it

  firmly. She still hesitated on the threshold of the hut. At this point at least I would do no more.

  She said in a normal voice: ‘I wish this fog would lift. It’s worse than ever now.’

  ‘Perhaps we can get a fire going. There’s the chair we can burn.’

  ‘I was never good at camping out. Were you?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  She went slowly in. After a few seconds I followed her. I closed the door behind us and it nearly fell off its remaining hinge. Then I began to make love to her in there, in the warmer darkness of the hut.

  Chapter Ten

  I GOT to the works the next day about two.

  They weren’t expecting me at that hour and Read came in full of curiosity to know how we’d got on. When he heard Dawson had stayed behind he said:

  ‘I expect they couldn’t resist his fatal charm. And Mrs Curtis?’

  ‘I brought her home. We should have been back last night but we got befogged and had to spend the night at Brecon. I suppose Thurston hasn’t rung?’

  ‘No. By the way, those two chaps I took on last month have asked me what chance there is of them becoming inspectors. I said it would have to wait till you came home.’

  ‘Have they any qualifications?’

  ‘Not certificates. But I thought you’d perhaps best see them yourself sometime, if you don’t mind.’

  When he had gone I tried to take myself in hand. I’d thought, when I got into the office, yesterday would have to take second place. But it wouldn’t.

  I was quite wide awake to the fact that to play up a rather phoney-looking mishap in the Welsh mountains in order to seduce one’s secretary isn’t everybody’s idea of nice behaviour. Especially when the girl had a sick husband and was herself fit up with the wine she had drunk.

  Well, there it was. Conduct for Cads, Chapter Two, paragraph one. But the corollary appeared to be that the cad felt too excited about it to be ashamed of himself. I didn’t know if that was in character too. All sorts of things had changed for me since yesterday.

  All right. I said to myself, you’re in love. Why make a thing about it? It’s not the first time. What about Lynn?

  And there I struck the rocks. Because it was the first time, this way. Yes, I’d been in love with Lynn. I remembered those early feelings, even though they were as if they had happened to another man. Perhaps it was another man because they were different from these. Or was this only the second or the third of the fifty-seven varieties of love?

  No, precisely no, because the physical thing of last night, important though it was, was not the whole of it, perhaps not even the half of it. I still didn’t know what I felt about Lynn. She was my wife and I was tied to her by twenty ties. But they didn’t affect or even touch what had come from yesterday.

  For the rest of the day I tried to pick up some of the loose ends that had been dropped. In the evening I knew I ought to drive over to Hockbridge to see if there was any letter yet from Lynn, but I funked it and instead went to the pictures and spent the night at the hotel in Letherton. The next morning Stella was not at the factory.

  Perhaps it wasn’t altogether surprising, and yet I had expected her to keep to the routine for the time being, for form’s sake. I stuck it until twelve and then decided to go round and see her. I didn’t like the thought of meeting John Curtis again, but I liked still less the idea of not knowing what she intended to do.

  Just as I was thinking up an excuse for going, Thurston arrived. He smiled with his tight secret lips.

  ‘I left early this morning.’

  ‘Why have you come this far?’ I said. ‘Trouble?’

  ‘Not exactly. Though in a way, yes. Certain criticisms of the instrument have been put forward, chiefly by Steel. Does he owe you a grudge, by any chance?’

  ‘What? I’ve no idea. He may.’

  ‘What happened in February exactly?’

  ‘Well, you know we let Steel’s department down badly on two delivery dates. The firm deserved every sort of raspberry for it – and they got it. But part of the blame was Steel’s for the absolutely ridiculous flow of modifications sent in to the original contracts. Of course one expects a few, but this was unreasonable. It confused my people and sent them astray. I felt pretty sore about it at the time, that the whole fault was laid on us. At our last meeting I told Steel what I thought about it. We had rather a set-to.’

  Thurston plucked at his bottom lip. ‘One doesn’t like to think of this in terms of personalities – and of course it may not be – but it does seem to me that he’s putting forward more objections in this case than are reasonably justifiable.’

  ‘What does he complain about?’

  ‘Chiefly the lack of a terrain clearance instrument. You know the sort of thing: a radioaltimeter that feeds its information electronically to the rate-meter so you get an automatic compensation for undulations in the ground.’

  I said: ‘It means extra weight and a hell of an elaboration. Just what we’ve tried to avoid.’

  ‘I know. But the Whitehall boys love something that sounds ingenious and can be expressed in words of five syllables. And of course in this particular field Steel’s influence is fairly powerful.’

  We talked for about twenty minutes. As he got up to go I said: ‘You want Dawson to stay down there at present?’

  ‘If you can spare him. It might save you or Mrs Curtis another journey.’

  Mrs Curtis. Mike, Mike, Mike, she’d said my name over and over again on Sunday night, in different tones and shades of meaning. Protest, affection, passion, detachment.

  ‘I called in to see them on the way here,’ Thurston said, making for the door. ‘It seemed a suitable thing to do.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, talking with him and walking with him to the dilapidated car he drove.

  ‘I’ll ring,’ he said. ‘ Steel may have been only making routine noises. If not we’ll have to fight it out at a full conference.’

  He got into his car. I said: ‘Who did you say you’d been to see?’

  ‘The Curtises. I’d only met him twice before, but one likes to pay one’s respects.’

  ‘What, to Mr Curtis?’

  ‘To Dr Curtis, yes.’

  ‘I don’t quite get you.’

  Thurston looked at me. ‘Well, it’s a pretty big loss, that, while he’s still at the height of his powers.’

  ‘I don’t follow you, David. What are you talking about?’

  He put in the ignition key. ‘You must know who he is. Curtis of the Cavendish Laboratories. As you’ve worked so closely—’

  I said. ‘I don’t know anything about him. You mean he’s a scientist?’

  ‘Was. One of our ablest. I suppose you won’t remember the paper he read, two, no, three years ago to the Royal Society on “The Unity of Radiation and Matter”? It’s still the definitive pronouncement.’

  I said: ‘ Why the
blazes didn’t somebody tell me?’

  Thurston shrugged. ‘I naturally thought his wife would have done.’

  ‘She didn’t.’

  ‘Not when you engaged her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There seems no reason to have made a secret of it. Perhaps—’

  ‘Did she tell you?’

  ‘No, but when you said you were bringing an assistant to Harwell, of course we had to have her screened, so naturally we knew.’

  ‘Was that why you made such a fuss of her?’

  He looked at me rather queerly. ‘ I don’t know that I made “ a fuss” of her. Obviously one tries to offer some courtesy to the wife of a distinguished man who has been struck down as he has.’

  ‘Wait,’ I said, as he reached for the starter button. ‘What’s the matter with him?’

  Thurston stopped with his hand half-way. ‘ We’re usually much too cunning nowadays to risk our lives monkeying about with these things without adequate protection. There aren’t gamma-ray martyrs dotted about the country the way there used to be with X-rays. At least, not yet! But now and then someone slips up. John Curtis slipped up – or that’s the general opinion.’ He started the engine. ‘I was surprised to see him still out of bed.’

  I held on to the door of the car like a talkative leave-taker. But I wasn’t feeling talkative. I was trying to sift the operative word out of Thurston’s last sentence.

  ‘Still?’ I said. ‘D’you mean already out of bed?’

  ‘No, still. He’s been ill six or seven months now. I understand he is not likely to last beyond the end of the year.’

  After lunch I got in my car and drove to Raglan Cottage. I thought if I didn’t go right away I shouldn’t go at all.

  When I got there a strange woman opened the door.

  She said: ‘I’m Miss Willis. No, I’m sorry, Mrs Curtis is out. Dr Curtis is in, but I don’t think he’s seeing visitors.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘When will Mrs Curtis—?’

  ‘That you, Granville?’ came Curtis’s voice from the sitting-room. ‘Come in, will you?’

  There was no escape then. He was sitting in front of the usual fire, but the day was so warm that he had a window open. He was in a dressing-gown and looked like a ghost.

  ‘Sit down,’ waving the end of an unlighted pipe. ‘Stella’s out shopping. It was good of you to give her an extra day. I think she needs it.’

  I said: ‘Are you better than when I came before?’

  ‘Oh, better than then.’

  I thought, J. N. Curtis, of course. If I didn’t mistake, he’d been on the War Research Council. Younger then. Younger than I was now.

  ‘Smoke?’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘Do you want to see Stella specially? She’s gone to Chelmsford.’

  ‘No. It’s not important.’

  ‘As a matter of fact we’ve had one visitor today – David Thurston, whom you know.’

  ‘He told me he’d called. I didn’t know you knew each other.’

  ‘Very little.’

  He began to light his pipe. I got up and passed him the matches.

  He nodded his thanks. ‘ I used to play a lot of tennis,’ he said. ‘This is the weather for it. D’you play?’

  ‘I haven’t for some years.’

  ‘Stella’s pretty good. This time last year we used to play two or three evenings a week.’

  ‘Where was that?’ I asked, groping for words.

  ‘In Cambridge. Perhaps you’d give her a game sometime. She tells me there are courts at the other end of the town.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I couldn’t stay here any longer.

  ‘Before you go,’ he said, seeing my movement, ‘I rather wanted to say sorry for shoving my views down your throat that evening.’

  ‘I didn’t notice it,’ I said, flushing. ‘Anyway if there was any shoving done … you were at liberty to do it.’

  He smiled slightly. ‘One has too many hours to brood, that’s the trouble.’

  I said: ‘I’ve got to tell you that Stella never told me who you were. I hadn’t the ghost of an idea until Thurston told me this afternoon. I’m still buried under the debris.’

  ‘It’s my fault Stella doesn’t tell people. The fewer who know …’

  ‘But I mean merely your identity—’ I stopped.

  ‘And not my illness? Well, one goes with the other doesn’t it? I don’t want to feel like Charles the Second.’

  I got up to knock my ash off, and stayed up. ‘ These last few minutes I’ve tried to see myself in your place …’

  ‘It’s always a useful exercise.’

  ‘This thing you’ve got. What does it amount to?’

  ‘My anaemia? An excess of white blood corpuscles. Very undramatic.’

  ‘And what can be done about it?’

  ‘One makes one’s will. One loses one’s fear of growing old.’

  ‘Because of doing things with radioactive materials?’

  He shook his head. ‘I took a few chances. But that’s no proof at all. It’s only a theory.’

  ‘Whose theory?’

  ‘A medical theory.’

  ‘Which happens to be true?’

  He shrugged. ‘We don’t know enough about it. All we know is that we get a higher incidence of leukaemia among people who’ve been exposed to small over-tolerance doses of radiation. It’s called a late proliferative response. The whole subject’s tremendously interesting, but I certainly didn’t intend to use myself as a guinea-pig.’

  I walked up and down once. ‘You remind me of Stella,’ he said.

  ‘What astonishes me—’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It’ll lead to argument again.’

  ‘I’ve still time for that.’

  ‘What I can’t understand is your being the way you are and holding the views you do.’

  ‘I don’t see the connection. Surely nobody cuts his coat as obviously as that.’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps nobody knows until it comes to the point. But you make me feel very small …’

  He had been watching me. I tried to imagine what he had looked like before he was ill.

  He said: ‘What I was trying to say the other night is this. D’you mind? …’

  ‘No.’

  ‘In fifteen years we shan’t need coal. How old will you be then? Still under fifty? Men like you will be the new kings. That’s one reason why I’m anxious about the future.’

  ‘You don’t trust us,’ I said. It was a pretty queer thing to say to him.

  ‘I don’t trust you only because you yourselves have nothing to trust – or will allow yourselves nothing to trust.’

  ‘You mean because we’re atheists or agnostics?’

  ‘I don’t like the terms,’ he said. ‘ They mean nothing. Selfishness is the only true atheism.’

  ‘Well, then?’

  He stopped. ‘ Sorry. When I talk too much I lose my breath. Hold hard.’

  I waited.

  He said: ‘Science, I suppose you’d say, begins with observed facts systematically classified. Right? Well, there is one fact about man that has distinguished him from his first appearance on the earth. It marks him as different from all other creatures. That is, he’s a worshipping animal. Wherever he’s existed there are the remains in some form of his worship. That’s not a pious conclusion; it’s an observed fact. And all through pre-history and recorded history, when he’s deprived himself of that he’s gone to pieces. Many people nowadays are going to pieces, or they find the first convenient prop to tie their instincts on to. It’s behind the extraordinary adulation of royalty. It’s behind the mobbing of TV stars. If you don’t give expression to an instinct, you’ve got to sublimate it or go out of your mind.’

  ‘And as for us …’

  ‘Well, the ordinary man has to work his own way through. I’ve no cure-all to suggest. What I’m concerned about is you people whose hands are going to hold so much power.’

 
‘I’m concerned with that too.’

  ‘I know. It’s where we came in. But I thought I’d try to explain my rudeness.’

  ‘There wasn’t any rudeness. I told you.’

  He hesitated, his brows together and contradicting the upturn of his thin clever mouth. ‘As I see it, Mike – may I call you Mike?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘As I see it, Mike, science can’t emancipate man from his own nature; it can only help him – if he has a certain amount of intellectual modesty – to understand it better. In times of crisis, if a man has no reference outside himself, even his best moral judgments straggle off into enervation and expediency. If you lose your sense of wonder you lose your sense of balance. Who was it said: “Here is a great man, here is my master – to betray him is to betray myself”? I don’t think he was stating a religious fact but simply a principle of life.’

  I glanced up and saw that Stella had come into the hall.

  Chapter Eleven

  MEETING HER again was deadly with him there. And his being there was now so much worse than I’d ever reckoned on. Somehow we got through it. She was pale but quite in hand.

  We talked about general things. I told her of Thurston’s visit. She said she would be in at the usual time tomorrow. John Curtis wanted me to stay on to tea but I made an excuse and left. She seemed not to want to walk with me to the gate but I took her arm in my hand.

  ‘Stella,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘Who John was.’

  ‘He likes to be close about these things.’

  I struggled with thoughts. ‘It doesn’t, can’t change what I feel about you. But it very much shakes up the way I feel about myself.’

  ‘I’m not very prideful either,’ she said.

  I stopped, fingering a branch of a cherry tree. ‘What happened, Stella, isn’t pared down for me by any second thoughts I may have now. But hearing what I’ve heard today makes me feel – rather like an assassin.’

  She stared across the garden rather blindly. ‘ You haven’t killed him. Life’s killed him.’

  ‘Your feeling queer after your visit to Harwell – was that something to do with John?’

  ‘Yes, that night he’d gone further than ever downhill … I’d never been to Harwell before. Of course he didn’t work there; but seeing it suddenly like a great factory of the future and knowing what it had come to mean in the lives of just two people … I was nearly a casualty in the car.’