We That Are Left (29 page)

‘Actually, one or two are asking whether he hasn't just discovered alpha particles with longer ranges.'

‘All right. So some of them are beyond hope.'

‘Besides, the Prof may be doing extraordinary work but when it comes to theory he's as bad as the rest of them. The other day someone asked him what he made of Einstein's General Theory and he said he considered it a magnificent work of art, irrespective of whether it is valid. It was as damning a piece of praise as I have ever heard. More tea?'

‘Please,' Oscar said. He watched as, with one hand on the table, the other on the arm of his chair, Kit levered himself to standing. His leg jutted at an awkward angle. As Kit righted it a spasm of pain crossed his face, pulling down the bad side of his face so that it looked like he was winking. He bit his lip, pressing his fingers hard into the top of his left thigh.

‘Are you all right?' Oscar asked.

‘Cramp. Stupid bloody thing. To get cramp in a leg that isn't even there. Happens to everyone, apparently. A doctor told me that Nelson was a martyr to the muscle paralysis in his right hand which dug his fingernails into the palm of his hand. Except, as every schoolboy knows, he didn't have a right hand, not after the battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.' Kit closed his eyes, kneading the flesh beneath his trouser leg. ‘I feel like Captain fucking Ahab.'

‘Who?'

‘You haven't read
Moby-Dick?
What are you, a bloody scientist or something? Jesus fuck fuck fuck.'

His face creased with pain, he leaned into his false leg, then
forced himself to straighten up. When he carried the teacups over to the table they chattered like teeth against their saucers. Oscar knew better than to try and help him. Kit never talked about the War. It was Girouard who told Oscar that he had been wounded at Messines. Oscar had remembered the tremor of excitement that had run through his school when they heard the news of the triumphant offensive at the Messines Ridge. The Allies had tunnelled under German lines and laid a line of more than twenty mines beneath the German trenches. When the mines were detonated, the explosion was so loud that Lloyd George had heard it in Downing Street.

‘So Rutherford doesn't like theoreticians,' Oscar said as Kit limped back with his tea. ‘That's hardly news. And I'm not sure he doesn't have a point.'

‘Et tu, Brute?'

‘What?'

‘Never mind. I just never thought you'd turn out to be one of them.'

‘Of course you did. You know quite well I don't understand at least half of what you do. But even if I did it's just . . . what Rutherford does in the lab is real. The mathematics only works when it relates to the facts, when it creates connections that make sense of what we know. Take Einstein's theory of light-quanta. All right, so light is emitted in quanta when electrons jump from one energy state to another. All the experiments support that. But if you accept Einstein's equations you also have to accept that the time of transition and the direction in which the light-quantum is emitted is entirely random. Beyond probability it's impossible to predict exactly what will happen. Doesn't that bother you?'

‘So the theory has weaknesses. It needs refinement.'

‘It's not a matter of refinement. His equations reject the basic laws of cause and effect. If Einstein is right, where and when an electron exposed to radiation will jump off is down to free will.'

‘Free will?'

‘Well, what else would you call it? Once you've eliminated causality, free will is all you have left.'

‘Or something else. Something we don't yet understand.'

‘So you're saying you accept Einstein's theory?'

‘I hardly understand it. But I want to accept it, yes.'

‘Even though it makes no sense?'

Kit shrugged. ‘When did the really important things ever make sense?'

Sir Aubrey continued to write to Oscar, care of Mrs Piggott. His letters were long, composed over several sittings. He had abandoned the idea of the new fortifications, there were complications Oscar did not quite grasp to do with engineering and Godmother Eleanor, but he was working again on his book and was actively seeking a publisher. He planned several new chapters on Henry, his brother, and the ways Ellinghurst had inspired his pioneering work with X-ray spectra. He said that it was Oscar's letters that had started him thinking about Henry's work. During his graduate studies in Manchester, Henry's supervisor had been Ernest Rutherford.

Sir Aubrey came to Cambridge to meet Rutherford at the end of May. He took Oscar to lunch at the University Arms Hotel. The dining room had a jaunty commercial air, its furniture glossy with the faux-solidity of the brand new. The two levels were divided by the barley-sugar spirals of a shiny mahogany balustrade. Behind Oscar, on a matching mahogany table, a huge fern burst from its brass pot like a great green fountain. Its fronds licked the back of Oscar's neck.

Sir Aubrey looked old. He was old, old enough to be Godmother Eleanor's father rather than her husband, but he had always been old in a bluff, impervious way like a house or a mountain, weathered on the outside. Now he was thin, his collar too large for his scrawny neck. His grey hair was thin too, showing the pinkness of his scalp, and the backs of his hands were purple-spotted and roped with veins. They shook a little as he drank his soup.

His conversation, by contrast, was as hectic as a child's. He asked Oscar about Cambridge and whether he had taken any photographs recently but his questions were perfunctory and it was plain from his eagerness that he only really wanted to talk about Ellinghurst. Oscar longed to ask after Phyllis but he could not see how to ask without interrupting. Instead, he listened as Sir Aubrey seethed to himself about the lack of agricultural innovation in England. When Oscar enquired after the family he talked not of Phyllis but of Henry. He told Oscar that Rutherford had offered Henry a fellowship at Manchester but that Henry had returned instead to his research at Oxford, despite the University's refusal to grant him financial support. ‘So you see,' he said drily, ‘I have been a patron of physics a long time.'

‘My tutor says that your brother was one of the truly great.'

Sir Aubrey smiled. He said that Henry had had little truck with his own reputation, believing himself to be no more than a part of a greater scientific whole. A skilled scientist might contribute his own brick to the collective construction, Henry had argued, but, if he did not, it hardly mattered. Before long someone else would do it in his place. ‘You, perhaps,' Sir Aubrey said.

‘If only, sir. But the mathematics—'

‘We Melvilles have always been Oxford men but I can't blame you. The Cavendish has a fine reputation. Cambridge, though.
Hail, ye horrors, hail! ye ever-gloomy bowers,/ Ye Gothic fanes and antiquated towers,/ Where rushy Camus' slowly winding flood/ Perpetual draws his humid train of mud
. Do you know the poem? Thomas Gray. Fewer than a thousand lines of poetry in his lifetime but still one of the most admired and influential poets of his age. He and Henry would have liked one another, I always think. Of course, Gray had mixed feelings about Cambridge, and not just because of the weather. You should be careful, you know. The Fenland damp is very bad for the chest.'

‘I am quite well, sir.'

‘I'm glad, I'm very glad. And the teaching is good?'

‘As I said, sir, I don't matriculate until October.'

‘Of course. I forget you're so young.' Sir Aubrey shook his head, staring out over the dining room. ‘I was already twenty when Henry was born. Older than you are now. He was more like a son to me than a brother. Another son.' He was silent. Then he looked at Oscar. ‘I wondered if you might like his books.'

Oscar stared at Sir Aubrey. ‘His books? But, sir—'

‘Violet, his widow, is moving abroad and offered them for the library at Ellinghurst. I would rather you had them. I should like to think of you following in his footsteps. Placing your brick on top of his.'

H. J. G. Melville's books. Oscar's eyes shone. ‘Sir, I don't know what to say.'

‘You scientists never do.'

They drank their coffee in the lounge. Sir Aubrey's feverish energy had evaporated and he slumped in his chair, his pouched eyes rimmed with red. When Oscar rose to leave he roused himself, pressing Oscar's hand between his own. He told Oscar that if he ever needed anything he only had to ask.

‘And come and see us, won't you? Come and bring your camera. I long to see what you find next. And Jessica is home every weekend.'

‘Thank you, sir. I should like that.'

‘We would not want you to forget us. We are all very fond of you.' He sighed, shaking his head. ‘It got my grandfather too, you know. Cancer.'

‘I didn't know.'

‘No, well, no one talks about it, do they? It embarrasses them. Filthy bloody disease. An unspeakable instinct for the finest people. Like the War. It's only the cowards and the charlatans who come home.'

Oscar walked back across Parker's Piece towards town. It was a breezy blue afternoon, high clouds scudding across the sky. He thought perhaps he might go to Ellinghurst. He could
hardly begrudge the time when Sir Aubrey had been so generous. Henry Melville's books! For that he would listen to any number of stories of Melvilles long dead. Besides, Ellinghurst was glorious in June. In Egypt, Sir Aubrey said, it was too hot for excavations by the end of May.

In two weeks Phyllis was coming home.

At the pillar box on Magdalene Street he saw Kit. He was talking to a girl in a spotted dress. She held a bicycle by the handlebars, its basket piled high with books. Oscar turned, hoping to slip by unobserved.

‘Greenwood, you snake, aren't you going to say hello?'

Reluctantly Oscar turned back. Kit grinned. ‘I don't suppose you know each other, do you?'

The girl shook her head. She had an upturned nose and a mass of pale brown hair swept up into a makeshift bun. Balancing her bicycle precariously against her hip she put out her hand.

‘How do you do?' she said.

‘Frances Kellaway, Oscar Greenwood,' Kit said. ‘Frances is a friend of Latham's.'

‘Peter was at school with my brother,' Frances explained.

Oscar looked blank. Kit rolled his eyes at Frances. ‘Please excuse him. He knows perfectly well who Peter Latham is and he is delighted to meet you. It's just that he likes to pretend that his mind is on higher things. That way he looks brilliant and ducks any obligation for good manners.'

Frances laughed.

‘Frances is at Newnham. English Literature,' Kit said to Oscar. ‘I have a hunch that her mind really is on higher things, only unlike you she is much too polite to show it. Look, I've got to go. If I'm late for another of Lopez's supervisions all hell will break loose.' He smiled at Frances and kissed her lightly on the cheek. ‘I'll see you tonight, then.'

Frances watched as he limped away, swift despite his stiff-legged gait. Her eyes were soft, her pale cheeks flushed with pink.

‘It was nice to meet you,' Oscar said.

‘Yes. You too.' She lingered as Kit disappeared through Magdalene gate. Then she smiled at Oscar. ‘Are you going my way?'

They walked together up Bridge Street, Frances pushing her bicycle.

‘So have you and Kit been friends long?' she asked.

‘We met at the beginning of term.'

‘He seems to know everyone. All the girls, at any rate.'

‘Well. He likes dancing.'

‘I know. It seems so unlikely, doesn't it?' She looked over her shoulder towards Magdalene as if she hoped to catch a glimpse of him. ‘He's so clever and brave. And funny too, of course. I think half of the girls I know are a little bit in love with him.'

Oscar did not know what to say to that.

‘Will you be there tonight?' Frances asked. ‘At the Quinquaginta?'

‘I don't dance. It's an act of kindness, I promise you. I've two left feet.'

‘Me too. Kit doesn't believe me. He says he has no left foot at all and if he can dance, anyone can. That it's simply a matter of not thinking too much.' She laughed the same uncertain laugh. ‘I've never been terribly good at that.'

‘“We're fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.”'

‘I'm sorry?'

‘It's a Japanese proverb. Or so Kit claims.'

‘Is it? How dispiriting. Or cheering. I'm not sure.'

‘I wouldn't worry. Knowing Kit he probably made it up.'

‘You make him sound like a rotter.'

‘Sheer jealousy. You wait until you've known him a bit longer, then you'll understand. Attack is our only line of defence.'

Frances laughed, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. She was not a particularly pretty girl but she had a pretty smile. Outside Trinity they said goodbye. Then she got on her bicycle,
tucking up her skirt so it did not catch in the chain. Oscar had started towards Great Gate when she called after him.

‘He's not . . . that is, I mean, I'm not being an idiot, am I?'

He turned. ‘What?'

‘It's only . . . never mind. Sorry. Sorry.'

Wobbling a little, she bicycled away down Trinity Street. Oscar watched her back wheel disappear around the bend, then turned back towards the college. Above him Henry VIII gazed out coldly from his niche in the stone gate. At some point the previous century an undergraduate had scaled the gate and replaced the royal sceptre in his hand with the leg of a wooden chair. The joke had stood for over fifty years.

‘Handy to know they keep a spare,' Kit had remarked once. ‘In case of emergencies.'

Oscar ducked through the oak door and crossed Great Court. The afternoon sun caught the windows of Kit's rooms, making him squint. He wondered if, instead of thermodynamics, Kit was thinking about Frances Kellaway with her pretty smile and her two left feet. He could not imagine it somehow. Girouard teased Kit about girls but Oscar had never known him serious about one. He was not sure that Kit knew how. It would require him to be serious about himself, at least for a moment, and Oscar was not sure he knew how to do that either.