When I did run into Martin again it wasn’t in the Hall or common room of his distinctly imposing college. It was in a pub: one of those small and inconspicuous pubs, presumably on the site of mere drinking shops in a former age, which tuck themselves away in Oxford even amid important shops and offices in high-rental areas. This one, I believe, was frequented in the main by college scouts and messengers, rather than by even the humblest academics. From across the street, I had suddenly become aware of Martin dodging into it, and for a moment I had the uncomfortable feeling that he had done so to avoid an encounter with me. But at once I saw that this was impossible, since I had turned out of a side street only in time to glimpse his disappearing profile and back. So I crossed over, and went in after him. There was a small and, at the time, empty bar, in which Martin was in the act of ordering a pint of bitter. I told myself that he wasn’t looking well, and then saw that I was judging only by the irrelevancies of his being unshaven and rather carelessly dressed.
‘Hullo, Martin,’ I said cheerfully. ‘I’ll have the same – and on you.’
At this, and with a mere nod of recognition, Martin silently held up two fingers to the barman. I believe this was meant merely as a facetious suggestion of ungraciousness and resignation, and I record it only because of a curious and fugitive aberration it occasioned in me. I really did, that is to say, for a fraction of a second believe that what had stricken a large number of people in Oxford was not word blindness but mutism. Then – equally oddly and as if from a remote past – I seemed to hear Martin saying, ‘a large number of people can be quite a small percentage of everybody’. This, in turn, put into my head something I wanted to know. But – in turn again – I went about attempting to satisfy this curiosity with a cautious obliqueness. It was a time, of course, at which we were all a good deal on edge.
‘Did you ever,’ I asked, ‘read that thing about triffids?’
‘The day of them? Yes, rather a good yarn.’ Martin glanced at me suspiciously. ‘So what?’
‘The earth passes through the debris of a broken-up comet, or perhaps some nuclear missiles collide in orbit. As a result, a high proportion of the human race is instantly struck blind. But we’re not told just how high. And I’m wondering about this little epidemic here in Oxford. Just what percentage of the population has it hit?’
‘I don’t know. I know nothing about it.’
‘My dear Martin!’ I was shocked that he should adopt so absurd an attitude.
‘Well, then – I know as much as the next man.’ Professor Brand had the grace to look slightly ashamed of himself. ‘But just consider, Leonard. If you’re blind, you can’t move a dozen paces without manifesting the fact. But if it’s just that you are suddenly unable to read, the conclusion need be apparent to nobody as long as you keep clear of print. And people are ashamed of being unable to read. Remember Howe. And they’re ashamed of it even when it’s a sudden physiological thing. Many keep quiet for as long as they can. I suppose the majority here in Oxford divulged the thing at once, and tried to have something done about it. The surgeries of the wretched G.Ps were crammed straight away, and there were queues at the hospitals. Up at the John Radcliffe the car-parks were full. Just think of that.’ Martin was now speaking fluently and forcibly. ‘But respectable statistics remain hard to collect. Moreover, there’s nothing to say to people when they clamour. If you have no clear view of the damned aetiology of the thing, you’re not likely to be too hot on prognosis. That’s what I mean when I say I know nothing about it. And it’s bloody awkward, believe you me. Why am I in this rotten little pot-house? Because here I’m unlikely to run into the inquisitive and pestering professional classes.’
‘Meaning me. I apologise.’
‘Oh, you! You’re useful, Leonard. A harmless old crony, to whom I can blow off steam.’
‘Then go on doing it. What’s so awkward? Is it just that you are the top authority, at least in these provincial parts’—I scarcely know why I pitched this stupid barb at Martin—’who finds himself baffled and unable to come up with anything?’
‘Well, not exactly.’ Martin plainly felt that I had put this too steeply. ‘I can talk, you know. I can even do a bit of literary talk – triffids and whatever. Do you remember The Doctor’s Dilemma?’
‘Bernard Shaw’s play? Certainly I do.’
‘The phagocytes, and all that. There’s a doctor who knows how to boost their action, but it’s fifty-fifty whether or not it’s at an advantageous moment. The Duke of York comes into it.’
‘I don’t remember Shaw’s saying anything about the Duke of York.’
‘It’s my own façon de parler. The noble Duke was sometimes going up the hill, and sometimes down. According as to whether the little buggers in the patient’s body were going down or up – and to that there wasn’t a clue – the doctor was going to cure him or kill him. At least that’s my recollection of the nonsense in what’s an uncommonly amusing play. My present position isn’t exactly an analogous one. But it’s not far off.’
‘Another pint, Martin? It’ll be on me.’
‘Another pint then. I haven’t been exactly idle, you know. In fact I’ve been working on this monstrously atypical outbreak of acquired dyslexia like mad. Probably exactly that. Like mad.’
‘Well?’
‘I’m pretty sure I could now induce the thing, even if I’m short on the wherefore and why. But I’m damned if I know how to stop it.’
We were both silent for a moment. If I didn’t positively gape at this extraordinary assertion, I certainly ought to have. The barman, who may or may not have been attending to our conversation, produced those second pints.
‘So I have to mind my Ps and Qs,’ Martin presently went on. ‘Otherwise, I might find myself locked up. But I don’t mind telling you that some uncommonly odd ideas come into my head. For example, that a malign and supernal intelligence is at work. A Spirit Sinister or Spirit Ironic, as one of your poet-johnnies has it. Just consider where the pest has been directed to operate. In Oxford, I ask you! Where more noses are stuck into books per square mile than anywhere else on earth.’
‘The irony is apparent,’ I said. ‘It has even come into my own dull head.’ I don’t think I said this in any very good temper. I had, of course, brought this conversation on myself by following Martin into the pub. So I was being ungenerous if I was now feeling him to be a bit of a bore.
‘But where else would be more ironic still? Or rather – to be perfectly frank – more devastating? It’s an intriguing speculation, wouldn’t you say?’
I may well have gaped again at this. Certainly I wasn’t yawning. In fact, the notion of Martin Brand as a bore abruptly faded. And this was less because of what he had said than because of how he had looked. It was as if the boy rather than the professor was suddenly before me, and the pint pot of beer ought to have been a bottle of ginger pop. The boy, it will be recalled, had long ago struck me as nursing a fondness – as I may now put it, having Bernard Shaw in mind – for upsetting apple-carts if they came his way.
At this point we parted, and I went about my proper business. I hadn’t ventured to say to Martin that if Oxford is full of libraries and books, so is it full of laboratories and establishments for medical research, and that there were those rumours going round of a broken test-tube or the like for which he himself might eventually have to carry the can. He had probably thought up this one for himself. Anything of the kind was, surely, next to nonsense. Nevertheless, it was possible that some thought of it had prompted his odd remark that, failing due care, he might find himself locked up.