Hopeful Monsters (27 page)

Then - But what if it is not bearable to live like this!

I walked through the streets holding the hand of the child.

There were bright white clouds as if gods were looking down.

The child walked beside me boldly.

When we came to the rectory Peter Reece seemed to be still standing where I had left him at the bottom of the scaffolding of the

half-finished Recreational Hall. I said to him 'She was here. My friend was here. What the devil are you up to?'

Peter Reece said 'What the devil do you mean what am I up to?*

I said 'She spoke to you. My friend. A German girl.'

Peter Reece said 'I forgot. I'm sorry.'

'You couldn't have forgotten.'

'I was worried, I thought you were in some sort of trouble with the child.'

'Why should you think I was in some sort of trouble with the child?'

'She was with a group of Communists. Your friend. The German girl.'

'Where are they now?'

'They've gone.'

'Where to?'

'They went in a bus.'

'You're mad.'

'You were on one of your walks on your own. How do I know where you go when you walk on your own! I thought you were in trouble with the child.'

'Did she leave a note?'

'I'll ask.'

I said 'You don't know what you're doing.'

I was still holding the hand of the child. Peter Reece was watching me, moving from foot to foot; he seemed about to cry. I thought -Oh well, why should he not be jealous of angels.

He said 'I thought you said the child couldn't talk.'

I said'Yes, I did.'

He said 'Well she talked to the German girl.'

I said 'She did?' Then - 'What did she say?'

'She told her where she thought you were.'

The child looked up at me brightly.

I said 'Can you find out if she left a note for me.'

Peter Reece began saying again 'I thought you might be in trouble -'

I said 'This girl is in trouble with her father.'

Peter Reece said 'Yes, I know.' Then - 'Why did your friend say you might be able to help her?'

I said 'Because I might be able to help her.'

Peter Reece said 'How?'

I said 'Will you get the note.'

While Peter Reece went off to the rectory I stood hand-in-hand with the child. I thought - Things do happen like this? If you don't expect them, but let them. Then - But you were here, this afternoon, my beautiful German girl, when I was down by the estuary, where small boats once blew like seeds on the wind, where in the mud there are bits of coloured glass. Could you not stay for me? Was there too much to be done? You said to the child 'I am sure we can do something for you' - ?

I said to the child, speaking slowly 'You do want me to help you?'

The child held my hand. She looked up at me brightly.

Peter Reece came back with the note that you had left for me.

Dearest Max,

Why are you not here? I told you I would come. The child is the only one who seems to know where I might find you. But I only have a few minutes. It was with much difficulty that I got people to call here in our bus.

Before I came here I did not know how much I wanted to see you. Now that I am here and you are not, I do! You will say 'Yes this is what happens!' Perhaps I would have stayed on if I had found you. Now I do not know what to do. I do not like your pastor.

Max, what is happening to us, do you know?

I hope you will be able to do something for the child. She said you had been good to her wherever it was you had met her: I imagined you meeting her in some forest! She wants to get away from her family. Whenever we meet, or nearly meet, you and I, there seems to be a child.

Will you telephone me before we leave London? I will tell you our address.

Max, what are we doing? I think we are mad. With very much love from your Nellie x x x x

I said to Peter Reece 'I will find out if legally I can do anything to help this girl. Can you see if there is a hostel run by nuns or something, where she can be looked after at least while I am away. I will go and talk to my mother about her.'

Peter Reece said 'You're going away?'

I said 'My mother will find her some school for the deaf and

dumb, or whatever is wrong with her. My mother will pay. But she mustn't be made to go back to her father if she doesn't want to. Isn't that right?'

I said this to the child. She looked up at me brightly.

Peter Reece said 'How do you know your mother will pay?'

I said 'I hope your Recreational Hall falls down.'

Peter Reece said 'All right.'

I said 'You will help me find somewhere she can stay tonight?'

Peter Reece said 'I hope the whole bloody church falls down.'

I said 'You promise?'

Peter Reece said 'I've said all right!'

I thought - I don't suppose there's anything, is there, about the Good Samaritan having a girlfriend whom he missed because he was looking at something else when a bus went by.

When I got back to Cambridge, which was towards the end of that summer, I found that there was being built there a machine which, it was hoped, would 'split the atom' (this was a phrase already in journalistic use). Such a process had been achieved in embryo in 1919 when Rutherford had 'bombarded' (this was a word in both journalistic and scientific use) the nucleus of a nitrogen atom with alpha particles that emanated naturally from a radioactive substance, and lo and behold - a rabbit from a hat - out of the nucleus had popped a proton (well, I suppose words describe our attitude to whatever occurs) and the nucleus of the nitrogen atom had been changed into that of an oxygen atom, although the release of energy had been very small. But there had been a glimpse of the enormous forces that might be hidden within the atom.

The machine that was being built in Cambridge in the autumn of 1931 was more elaborate than Rutherford's toy-like apparatus of 1919; but it still had a bizarre appearance like something constructed as a prop for a modern ballet. It was like an outsize village pump crowned with a tin top hat: whoever worked it had to sit in a tea-chest lined with lead; this was to protect him from possible effects of radiation. But such was the excitement of the time that physicists did not worry much about radiation. What were to be bombarded now were the nuclei of lithium atoms - it was known that these were potentially unstable. They were to be bombarded with protons accelerated artificially to enormous speeds, so that this time there would be a man-made release of energy which, it was hoped, would be of a different order of strength from that achieved naturally by

Rutherford. But of course some of the excitement was in not exactly knowing what the effects might be: any energy released could presumably be used for either creation or destruction.

As early as 1914 H. G. Wells had published a story called 'The World Set Free' in which there had been imagined a release of power with just such ambivalent potentiality: this story had become formative of my own imagination in my childhood. Wells had described how the tapping of nuclear energy might transform the world: one lump of coal might be sufficient to drive an ocean liner across the Atlantic; nuclear-powered aeroplanes might flit in the sky like moths. He had also described how such energy could be used for destruction - or indeed how there could be interaction between destruction and creation. Atomic bombs could be built and there would thus be the threat that the human race, even the whole earth, might be destroyed: but also might it not be that the threat of such destruction would provide just the impetus that humans required to take a step forwards in evolution? On the brink of self-annihilation, they might find themselves driven to come together to formulate a system, a state of mind rather, in which there might be no more war. In Wells's story, part of the human race was in fact destroyed; but the remainder came to its senses. I wondered in 1931 - How better might humans be pushed to come to their senses?

There was the Indian god Shiva, was there not, who was the god of both creation and destruction - or rather of the interaction between the two - who danced within his circle of fire. Humans have always known - How can you have creation without destruction? Energy is just energy: it is up to humans to choose between, or to handle, the two.

When I got back to Cambridge I went to see Donald to find out what was going on. Donald had stopped doing philosophy and was back in physics: he had been encouraged to do this, he said, by Wittgenstein. I said 'When did that happen?' Donald said 'After that party.' I thought - Oh yes, at that party, there were a lot of things happening all at once!

I said to Donald 'But with this attempt to split the atom, has anyone any idea what the effects might be?'

Donald said 'Of course they wouldn't carry on with the experiment unless they thought that they had it under control.'

I said 'But they wouldn't learn anything if they had it perfectly under control.'

Donald said 'The experiments are to observe changes within an atom, not changes within human beings.'

I said 'Mightn't they be interconnected?'

Donald said 'I am a physicist now: I think philosophy is senseless.'

I went to see Melvyn: it was as if he had never left his room. His white face seemed to be made of cloth. I thought - Perhaps the bodies of politicians assume the consistency of puppets: to be successful, they have to be things that cannot change.

I said 'Have you thought how odd it is that these things should be happening in physics just at a time when old orders of things in the political world are cracking up? When there seems to be some impetus on every level for change. I mean humans will either harness new energy as a result of these crack-ups or else they can blow themselves up. Does it not make one think that there may be some connections between these apparently different orders of things - the human and the scientific?'

Melvyn said 'Ducky, who have you been reading, St John the simply Divine?'

I said 'No one in the north seemed to care very much about the activities of National Shipbuilders Security Limited: they know that if no one wants more ships then more ships can't be built. They want to make some sort of protest about this order of things: but they don't want to change it.'

Melvyn said 'Ducky, stop being an organ-grinder, and on the concrete situation start sharpening a few knives.'

I said 'As a matter of fact, I think National Shipbuilders Security Limited are thinking of building some concrete ships, then they will sink, and there won't even have to be a war.'

Melvyn said 'Darling, has anyone told you that you're becoming a bore?'

I went to see my mother as soon as I had come down from the north: my father was away on a lecture tour in Russia. I bicycled to the village which I seemed to have been away from for years: there were the walls on which I had climbed as a child; the gate through to the lawn on which I had eventually been able to beat my father at croquet. I wondered - I feel I have left childhood behind, because I am trying to look after a child?

I found my mother sitting on the seat in the bow window where I had sat with her so many times in the past: where I had rested my head on her shoulder while she read to me stories of boys going out in search of wisdom and hidden treasure, or how they had been

helped by the answering of riddles. My mother had the light behind her: I thought - I usually imagine her with the light behind her: she is the Indian goddess Deva, or Kali, of creation and destruction. Then - Why is it that the goddess of creation and destruction has two names, while the god Shiva only has one? Is it because it is difficult for men to accept that with their mothers the two are one? I said 'Hullo.' My mother said 'Hullo.' I wondered - But do I mean that this makes women, mothers, more or less devious: or, of course, both?

My mother said 'Did you have a nice time?' I said 'Yes, thank you.' She said 'What did you do?' I said 'We were building this Recreational Hall, you know.' My mother said 'How sweet!'

I thought - she is angry with me because I have not visited her much this summer? She has been drinking? Or, of course, both.

I had begun to notice, as well of course as not to want to notice, that my mother had begun to drink quite heaviiy at this time.

She said 'And did people love you for that?'

I said 'Not particularly.'

'Did you think they would?'

I had gone up to kiss her on the cheek. When our faces were together I smelled the scent that might have been a cover-up for something different.

I thought - But of course, between mother and son, there is creation and destruction.

I said 'What I don't see is, why the working class don't start a revolution.'

I thought - But I have just been describing to Melvyn why they don't.

She said 'Well that's quite obvious, isn't it?'

'Why?'

'People don't want to die.'

'I thought Freud said they did.'

'Oh you've only been home two minutes, and you're going to get at me about Freud, are you!'

I thought - Oh yes, all conversations are for the purposes of defence or attack. I should just be making flicking movements with my hands.

I said 'As a matter of fact, I want to ask you something very important.'

She said 'Oh what is that?'

I said 'You know how Freud was struck by how many of his

patients said that they had had incestuous relationships with their parents, and then he thought that in fact they were having fantasies -'

My mother was gazing at me with a crumpled look as if there was too much weight on her from the light from the window behind her.

I said - 'Well what made Freud think that these were fantasies and not facts?'

My mother said 'The whole theory of psychoanalysis is built on the idea that they were fantasies.

I said 'But is it true?'

After a moment my mother said 'You do see what you are doing by asking me, don't you?'

I thought - She thinks I am talking about her and me?

At that moment, as so often happened at our family gatherings, the conversation had to be broken off because Watson the parlourmaid came in with tea. There were tomato sandwiches and cakes, which had been old favourites of mine since childhood; so I had to chat to Watson and thank her and tell her how glad I was to see her. I thought - How could anyone ever have thought that spoken words are to do with the imparting of information?