ONE night in December, not long before Christmas, the telephone rang in the drawing-room of our flat. My wife answered it. As she listened, she looked puzzled and obscurely amused.
“Won’t I do?” she asked. She went on: “Yes, I can get him if it’s really necessary. But he’s very tired. Are you certain it can’t wait?”
For some time the cross-talk went on. Then Margaret raised an eyebrow and held the receiver away from her. “It’s Mrs Howard,” she said. “I’m afraid you’d better.”
Down the telephone came a strong, pleasant-toned, determined voice.
“This is Laura Howard. Do you remember that we met one night in Tom Orbell’s club?”
I said yes.
“I’m really asking if you can spare me half an hour one day this week?”
I said that I was abnormally busy. It was true, but I should have said it anyway. Somewhere in her tone there was an insistent note.
“I shan’t keep you more than half an hour, I promise you.” I began reciting some of my engagements for the week, inventing others.
“I can manage any time that suits you,” her voice came back, agreeable, not at all put off.
I said that I might be freer after Christmas, but she replied that “we” were only in London for a short time. She went on: “You were in Cambridge a few weeks ago, weren’t you? Yes, I heard about that. I do wish I’d had a chance to see you there.”
She must, I thought, have revised her first impression of me. Presumably she had made enquiries and people had told her that I might be useful. I had a feeling that she didn’t in the least mind her judgment being wrong. She just wiped the slate clean, and resolved to chase me down.
Margaret was smiling. She found it funny to see me overborne, cut off from all escape routes.
Aside, I said to her: “What in God’s name ought I to do?”
“You’re under no obligation to spend five minutes on her, of course you’re not,” said Margaret. Then her face looked for a second less decorous. “But I don’t know how you’re going to avoid it, I’m damned if I do.”
“It’s intolerable,” I said, cross with her for not keeping her sense of humour down.
“Look here,” said Margaret, “you’d better ask her round here and get it over. Then you’ve done everything that she can possibly want you to.”
That was not quite so. Laura was also set on having me meet her husband. Since his dismissal, she told me over the telephone, he had been teaching in a school in Cambridge: that was the reason he could not often get to London. In the end, I had to invite them both to dinner later that same week.
When they arrived, and I looked at Howard for the first time – for now I realised that I had not once, visiting the college while he was still a Fellow, so much as caught sight of him – I thought how curiously unprepossessing he was. The skin of his face was coarse and pale; he had a long nose and not much chin. His eyes were a washed-out blue. He had a long neck and champagne-bottle shoulders; it was a kind of physique that often went with unusual muscular strength, and also with virility. Somehow at first sight he would have struck most people as bleak, independent, masculine, even though his voice was high-pitched and uninflected. As he spoke to me, he seemed awkward, but not shy.
“I believe you know that chap Luke, don’t you?” he said.
He meant Walter Luke, the head of the Barford atomic energy establishment, knighted that January at the age of forty, one of the most gifted scientists of the day. Yes, I said, Luke was an old friend of mine.
“He must be an extraordinary sort of chap?” said Howard.
“Just why?”
“Well, he’s got a finger in this bomb nonsense, hasn’t he? And I don’t know how a scientist can bring himself to do it.”
I was annoyed, more annoyed than I was used to showing. I was fond of Walter Luke: and also I had seen how he and his colleagues had tried to settle it with their consciences about the bomb, Luke choosing one way, my brother Martin the other.
“He happens to think it’s his duty,” I said.
“It’s a curious sort of duty, it seems to me,” replied Howard.
Meanwhile Margaret and Laura had been talking. Glancing at them, vexed at having this man inflicted on me, I noticed how young and slight Margaret looked beside the other woman. Against Laura’s, Margaret’s skin, still youthful over her fine bones, seemed as though it would be delicate to the touch. Actually it was Margaret who was ten years the elder, who had had children; but she seemed like a student beside the other, dark, handsome, earnest.
I could not hear what they were saying. As we sat round the table in the dining-room, Howard mentioned one or two more acquaintances he and Margaret and I had in common. Listening to him, I had already picked up something that no one had told me. He was farouche and a roughneck, and some of his manners might – to anyone without an English ear – have seemed working-class. Actually he was no more working-class than Margaret, who had been born among the academic aristocracy. His parents and hers could easily have gone to the same schools, though his probably came from Service families, not from those of clerics or dons. It was his wife who had gone up in the world, Howard not at all.
Margaret, who was watching Laura’s face, did not let the chit-chat dribble on.
“You’ve come to tell Lewis something, haven’t you?” she said before we had finished the soup. She was kind: and she did not like being oblique. “Wouldn’t you rather do it straight away?”
Laura smiled with relief. She looked across at her husband: “Who’s going to begin?”
“I don’t mind,” he said, without any grace.
“We’re not going to ask you very much,” said Laura to me, her brows furrowed. “They’re still shilly-shallying about opening the case again, and we want you to use your influence on them, that’s all.”
Suddenly she said, in a formal, dinner-party manner, addressing Margaret in full style: “I’m afraid this is boring for you. How much have you heard about this difficulty of ours?”
“I think about as much as Lewis has, by now,” said Margaret.
“Well, then, you can understand why we’re absolutely sickened by the whole crowd of them,” cried Laura. Her total force – and she was a passionate woman, one could not help but know – was concentrated on Margaret. But Margaret was the last person to be overwhelmed. She looked fine-nerved, but she was passionate herself, she was tough, and her will was at least as strong as Laura’s.
She was not going to be bulldozed into a conviction she did not feel, or even into more sympathy than she had started with.
“I think I can understand the kind of time you’ve had,” she said, gently but without yielding.
“Perhaps I ought to say,” I broke in, “that I know a good deal more about this business now–”
“How do you know?” Laura cried.
“I heard a certain amount in college.”
“I hope you were pleased with everything you heard,” she said.
There had been a time when I should have found this kind of emotion harder to resist than my wife found it. Though it was difficult for people to realise, though Laura exerted her first effort on Margaret because she seemed the softer option, I was more suggestible than she was. I had had to train and discipline myself out of it. But actually I had no temptation to acquiesce too much that night. Laura had not got me on her side; I felt antipathy for Howard; I was ready to speak plainly.
“That’s neither here nor there,” I said. I waited until the next course was in front of us, and then spoke to Laura again: “You talked about people in the college shilly-shallying about opening your case again. That’s nothing like the situation.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that, so far as I heard, and I think I should have heard if it was being talked about, no one there has the slightest intention of opening the case again.”
“Do you believe that?” said Laura to her husband.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said.
She stared at me steadily, with angry eyes. She came straight out: “If you were there, would you be content with that?”
For an instant I caught Margaret’s eye, and then looked at Howard on her right. His head was lowered, as it were sullenly, and he did not show any sign of recognition at all. I turned back to his wife and said: “I am afraid I haven’t yet heard anything which would make me take any steps.”
I felt, rather than heard, that Howard had given something like a grin or snigger. Laura flushed to the temples and cried: “What right have you got to say that?”
“Do you really want me to go on?”
“What else can you do?”
“Well, then,” I said, trying to sound impersonal, “I couldn’t take any other view, in the light of what the scientists report about the evidence. Remember, I’m totally unqualified to analyse the evidence myself, and so are most of the people in the college. That’s one of the difficulties of the whole proceedings. If I were there, I should just have to believe what Francis Getliffe and the other scientists told me.”
“Oh, we know all about them–”
I stopped her. “No, I can’t listen to that,” I said. “Francis Getliffe has been a friend of mine for twenty-five years.”
“Well–”
“I trust him completely. So would anyone who knew him.”
“Getliffe,” Howard put in, in a tone both sneering and knowing, “is a good example of a man who used to be a progressive and has thought better of it.”
“I shouldn’t have thought that was true,” I replied. “If it were true, it wouldn’t make the faintest difference to his judgment.”
“Then I should like to know what would,” Howard went on in the same sneering tone.
“You must know what would.” I had nearly lost my temper. “And that is what he thought, as a scientist, of the evidence under his eyes.”
“I suppose they weren’t prejudiced when I gave them the explanation?”
“I’ve heard exactly what they did about it–”
“Who from?”
“Skeffington.”
Laura laughed harshly.
“Did you think he wasn’t prejudiced?”
“I don’t know him as I know Getliffe, but he strikes me as an honest man.”
“He’s a religious maniac, he’s the worst snob in the college–”
“I also heard from my brother.”
“Do you really think he worried?” Laura burst out. “All he wants is to step into old Brown’s shoes–”
I saw Margaret flinch, then look at me with something like apprehension, as if she felt responsible for her guest.
“I suppose you think,” said Howard, “that the precious Court of Seniors weren’t prejudiced either? I suppose they weren’t anxious to believe what Skeffington and that crowd told them?”
I had got tired of this. I went on eating and, as I did so, organised a scheme of questions in my mind, just as I used to when, as a young man, I had practised at the bar.
Everyone was quiet.
“I’d like to clear up two or three points, simply for my own satisfaction,” I said to Howard. “May I?”
“I don’t mind,” he said.
“Thank you. According to my information, you actually appeared before the Court of Seniors several times. Is that true?”
He nodded his head.
“How many times?”
“I suppose it must have been three.”
“That agrees with what I’ve been told. The first time you appeared there you were told that the scientists had decided that one of your photographs in your paper was a fraud. Were you told that?”
“I suppose that is what it amounted to.”
“It must have been clear one way or another, mustn’t it? It’s important. Were you told in so many words that the photograph was a fraud?”
“Yes, I suppose I was.”
His eyes had not dropped but risen. They were fixed on the picture-rail in the top left-hand corner of the room. It was a long time since I had examined a witness, but I caught the feel of it again. I knew that he had gone on the defensive right away: he was hostile, slightly paranoiac, beating about to evade the questions. I asked: “Was it, in fact, a fraud?”
He hesitated: “I don’t quite get you.”
“I mean just what I say. Was that photograph a fraud? That is, was it faked to prove something in your paper?”
He hesitated again: “Yes, I suppose you could say that.”
“Is there any shade of doubt whatsoever?”
Just for a second, his upturned, averted eyes looked at me sidelong with enmity. He shook his head.
“Did you agree with the Court of Seniors, then, when they told you it was a fraud?”
“Yes, I told them so.”
“My information is that you denied it totally the first couple of times you appeared before them. Is that true?”
“I told them.”
“On your third appearance?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you deny it?”
“Because I didn’t believe it was true.”
“Yet every other competent scientist who saw the evidence didn’t take long to be certain it was true?”
He broke out: “They were glad of the chance to find something against me–”
“That won’t get us anywhere. Why did you take so long to be certain? Here was this photograph, you must have known it very well? But even when you’d been told about it, you still didn’t admit that it was a fraud? Why not?”
He just shook his head. He would not answer: or rather, it seemed that he could not. He sat there as though in a state of hebephrenia. I pressed him, but he said nothing at all.
I took it up again: “In the long run, you decided it really was a fraud?”
“I’ve told you so.”
“Then when you decided it was a fraud, you were able to produce an explanation?”
“Yes, I was.”
“What was it?”
“You must have picked up that,” he said offensively, “among the other information they’ve given you.”
“In fact you blamed the fraud on to your collaborator?”
He inclined his head.
“Who’d just died, at the age of, what was it, seventy-five? Your explanation was that he had faked one of your own photographs in your own thesis?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Did that seem to you likely?”
“Of course it didn’t,” Laura broke in, her expression fierce and protective. She spoke to her husband: “You had a great respect for him, of course you had.”
“Did you have a great respect for him?” I asked.
“Not specially,” he answered.
“What reason did you think he could have, at that age and in his position, for this kind of fraud?”
“Oh, he must have gone gaga,” he answered.
“Were there any signs of that?”
“I never noticed.”
“One last question. When you decided that he had faked this photograph of yours, you also said that you’d seen similar photographs before – did you say that?”
“Yes.”
“Who had taken those photographs?”
“The old man, of course,” he said.
“How many had you seen?”
He looked confused. His reactions seemed very slow.
“I can’t tell you,” he said at last.
“Many?”
“I shouldn’t think so.”
“Only one?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re sure you saw one? At least one more, besides yours?”
“I’ve told you I did.”
“Did you know there are no signs of any such photographs in the whole of his scientific notebooks?”
His face went vague and heavy. “I suppose they told me that,” he said. Then he asked: “What I want to know is, who looked?”
Then I stopped. “I don’t think it’s any use going further,” I said.
Margaret tried to make some conversation, I joined in. Howard fell into silence, with an expression that looked both injured and apathetic. Even Laura had lost her nerve. She did not refer to the case again. The evening creaked slowly on, with gaps of strained silence as Margaret or I invented something to say. I offered them whisky within half an hour of the end of dinner: Laura took a stiff one, he would not drink at all. At last, it was only a few minutes after ten, she said that they must go. Margaret, usually gentle-mannered and polite, was out of her chair with alacrity.
As we stood by the door, waiting for Howard to come out of the lavatory, Laura suddenly looked up at me.
“Well? Will you talk to Getliffe or your brother?”
I was startled. Even now, she did not know when she was beaten.
“What do you think I could say?”
“Can’t you just tell them that they’ve got to open this business all over again?”
Her eyes were wide open. She looked like a woman making love. She was so fervent that it was uncomfortable to be near her.
“I shall have to think whether there’s anything I can do,” I said.
By then Howard was on his way towards us, and she did not speak any more.
As the door closed behind them, Margaret remarked, “Of course there isn’t anything you can do.”
“Of course there isn’t,” I said.
“He hasn’t got a leg to stand on, has he?”
“Less than that, I should have thought.”
We sat down, neither of us in good spirits, and held hands. “No one,” I said, “could call that a particularly agreeable party.”
“Anyway,” said Margaret, “you’re not required to see them again.”
I said no.
Margaret was smiling.
“I must say, I thought you got pretty rough with him.”
“I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”
“That’s not quite all, is it?”
I smiled. We knew each other’s intuitive likes and dislikes too well.
“I can’t pretend,” I said, “that he’s exactly my cup of tea.”
“Whereas, if he hadn’t done what he unfortunately has done, you wouldn’t be surprised if I thought he’d got a sort of integrity, would you?”
We were laughing at each other. The fret of the evening was passing away. We were reminding each other in the shorthand of marriage that, when we made mistakes about people, they were liable to be a specific kind of mistake. As a young man, I had been fascinated by, and so had overvalued, the ambivalent, the tricky, the excessively fluid, and even now, though they no longer suggested to me the mystery of life as they once did, I had a weakness for them. I saw value in Tom Orbell, for instance, that others didn’t. Certainly not Margaret, whose own weakness was the exact opposite. The moral roughneck, the mauvais coucheur, often seemed to her to have a dignity and elevation not granted to the rest of us. She was not taken in by the fluid, but on the other hand, just because a character was not fluid, was craggy in its egotism, she was likely to think it specially deserving of respect. If, as she said, grinning at her own expense, Howard had come to us with different credentials, I could easily have imagined her regarding him as a man of fine quality.
“I grant you that he’s not two-faced,” I said. “But what’s the use of that, when the one face he has got is so peculiarly unpleasant?”