Read Online The New Men by C. P. Snow - Free Book Online

say a softening word.
    ‘It would have been more honest if you had all come here in uniform,’ he said to me.
    He meant that the government was favouring the forces at the expense of science, in particular at the expense of Barford. It seemed to him obvious – and obvious to anyone whose intelligence was higher than an ape’s – that government policy was wrong. He was holding me responsible for it. All other facts were irrelevant, including the fact that he knew me moderately well. It was shining clear to him that government policy was moronic, and probably ill-disposed. Here was I: the first thing was to tell me so.
    I gathered that the Minister had talked to them both privately and in a group. Luke had been eloquent: his opponents had attacked him: Martin had spoken his mind. The discussion had been rambling, outspoken and inconclusive. Mounteney, although in theory above the battle, was not pleased.
    ‘Luke is quite bright,’ he said in a tone of surprise and injury, as though it was unreasonable to force him to give praise.
    He then returned to denouncing me by proxy. Bevill had said what wonderful work they had done at Barford. Actually, said Mounteney, they had done nothing: the old man knew it; they knew it; they knew he knew it.
    ‘Why will you people say these things?’ asked Mounteney.
    Irene was sitting in a deckchair in what had once been the garden behind their house, though by this time it was running wild. The bindweed was strangling the last of the phlox, the last ragged pansies; the paths were overgrown with weed. When Mounteney went in to his children, Martin and I sat beside her, on the parched grass, which was hot against the hand. At last Martin was free to give a grim smile.
    ‘Well,’ he said to me, ‘you’d better see that Luke’s scheme goes through.’
    ‘What have you been doing?’ she asked.
    Martin was still smiling. ‘Not only for patriotic reasons,’ he went on.
    ‘What have you been doing?’ She sounded, for the moment, as she might have done if accusing him of some amatory adventure, her voice touched with mock reprobation and a secret pride.
    ‘Something that may not do us any good,’ he said, and let us hear the story. He had told Bevill, in front of Drawbell and Rudd, that he and the other young scientists were agreed: either they ought to concentrate on Luke’s scheme, or else shut Barford down.
    ‘If I had to do it, it was no use doing it half-heartedly,’ he said.
    ‘ I’m glad you did it ,’ she said, excited by the risk. The teasing air had faded; there was a high flush under her eyes.
    ‘Wait until we see whether it was worthwhile,’ said Martin.
    ‘Never mind that,’ she said, and turned to me. ‘Aren’t you glad he did it?’
    Before I answered Martin looked at her and said: ‘We may not get our way, you know,’
    ‘I don’t care.’
    ‘It would be an odd time to move.’
    They were glancing at each other with eyes half challenging, half salacious.
    ‘Why would it be so odd?’ I asked, but did not need an answer.
    ‘You can tell Lewis,’ said Martin.
    ‘I am going to have a child, dear,’ she said.
    For the first time since their marriage, I felt nothing but warmth towards her, as I went to her chair and kissed her. Martin’s face was softened with delight. If he had not been my brother I should have envied him, for my marriage had been childless, and there were times, increasing as the years passed, when the deprivation nagged at me. And, buried deep within both Martin and me, there was a strong family sense, so that it was natural for him to say: ‘I’m glad there’ll be another generation.’
    As he went indoors to fetch something to drink in celebration, Irene said to me: ‘If it’s a boy we’ll call it after you, Lewis dear. Even though you don’t approve of its mother.’
    She added: ‘He is pleased, isn’t he? I did want to do something for him.’
    ‘It’s very good news,’ I said, as she got up from her chair in the