Nothing So Strange

by James Hilton

  We went to Cambridge by an early train because he had to call at the Cavendish Laboratory there to leave some papers. It was the first time I had been to the university town and I wouldn’t have minded sight-seeing, but apparently this was not part of his program; we ignored the colleges and began a brisk walk along the riverbank. After what Mathews had said, I was quite prepared to cover the miles without comment or complaint, but as a great concession, doubtless, we picked up a bus at some outlying village and the bus happened to be going to Ely. The way I’m telling this sounds as if I were having fun at his expense all the time; and so, in a quiet way, I was, because people who are too serious always make me feel ribald inside. Not that he was as serious as I had expected. We didn’t discuss geology once—perhaps because there isn’t much geology between Cambridge and Ely. There were just large expanses of mud everywhere, and especially by the river, for heavy rain had fallen and the sky was full of clouds threatening more. Ely was like a steel engraving, but inside the Cathedral the octagon window had the look of stored- up sunshine from a summer day. I said it would be strange if some of the medieval stained-glass experts had actually discovered how to do this, and he assured me gravely that they couldn’t have, it was scientifically impossible. I then gave him a short lecture on English Perpendicular, to which he listened as if he thought me clever though what I was saying relatively unimportant. “But of course you’re only interested in scientific things,” I ended up.

  “No, that’s not true. Your mother played some Mozart to me the other evening—it was the first time I really liked classical music.”

  “She loves Mozart.”

  “Of course when she was younger she had time and opportunity to cultivate a sense of beauty—that’s hard for the average American.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I think it’s Americans who do cultivate things, as a rule.”

  “Then she just has them—was born with them, perhaps. Generations of aristocratic background.”

  “My mother’s people wouldn’t like you to call them aristocrats. They’re a fairly well-known Yorkshire family—commoners, but we can trace ourselves back for a few centuries without much trouble.”

  “She happened to mention a sister—Lady Somebody, I forget the name.”

  “That’s nothing. Tides don’t mean aristocracy. All my aunt did was to marry a man who got knighted—that can happen to anyone.”

  “You sound rather cynical about it.”

  “I’m not. But it’s amusing, sometimes, the way Americans make mistakes. My aunt and uncle were once visiting us in Florida and the local paper called them English blue bloods. They’re no more blue-blooded than you are.”

  “Speaking scientifically?”

  “No, speaking snobbishly. If you want the snob angle, at least get it right. Of course I don’t mean you, I mean the Florida paper. Personally I don’t think much of titles.”

  “Because you come of a family that’s proud of its age rather than rank?”

  “I guess you’re right. It’s probably an inverted snobbery. We certainly think we’re superior to a lot of these businessmen baronets.”

  “You say ‘we.’ Does that mean you feel yourself more English than American?”

  “When I’m talking to you I do. When I’m talking to an Englishman I feel I want to chew gum. It’s the perverse streak in me.”

  “Does that mean you feel American when you’re with your mother?”

  “Sometimes…. Though she’s not so terribly English. I’ve met Russians and Irish that are more like her. She’s more true to herself than to any nationality. Not that I mean she doesn’t act, sometimes. But when she does, she doesn’t really mind if you see through it. And you can act back. She doesn’t mind that either.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not much good at acting.”

  “I wasn’t meaning you personally.”

  “I’m sorry. I thought—perhaps—well—”

  “I was just talking generally. I’m sorry if you—”

  “How did we get onto this argument, anyway?”

  “I forget.”

  He thought for a moment, then said: “We were discussing beauty—the sense of beauty—”

  “Were we?”

  “Mozart, it started with….”

  “Oh yes, you said you were beginning to like classical music.”

  “I think I could like it, if I heard more. It’s strange how—if you’re in a certain mood—the awareness of beauty comes over you—”

  “It comes over me in any mood. I mean, it can put me in the mood. When we were in the Cathedral just now, for instance….”

  “Yes—but it didn’t get me as much as Mozart.”

  “Maybe we should have asked the organist to play some Mozart.”

  “I’ll ask your mother when I’m next up at the house.”

  “Yes, do…. You come up quite often now, don’t you? While I’ve been away…. I’m so glad.”

  We returned to Cambridge by bus and he called at the Cavendish again to pick up something—“results,” he said, that he had left there in the morning for a check. When he glanced over them later in the train I tried to tell from his face whether everything had been satisfactory, but he looked neither pleased nor displeased—only preoccupied. Presently, as he put the papers away, he said: “Well, that’s that.”

  “What is?”

  “A month’s work and it turns out to be wrong.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about. It’s not an emotional matter.”

  “But a whole month! Couldn’t you have found out you were wrong sooner?”

  “Perhaps not—though the Cavendish does have better facilities. Might save time in the future if I had access to them more often.”

  “Couldn’t you work there?”

  He smiled. “You don’t know how lucky I am to be able to work anywhere. You should have known me the last time I went inside a cathedral.”

  “Where was that?”

  “St. Patrick’s, New York.”

  “Are you a Catholic?”

  “No. I used to go in for warmth and rest when I was looking for a job. That was in 1931.”

  “You’ve come a long way in five years.”

  “It’s not how far you come that counts—it’s the direction you take and whether you ever find the right track.”

  “Do you think you’ve found it?”

  “I think I know where to look for it. And a few wrong answers won’t put me off.”

  There was a sort of grittiness in his voice that made me think he was fighting down disappointment over his wasted month. He added almost ferociously: “The trouble is, I don’t know enough. I’m trying to build too high without scaffolding….”

  * * * * *

  After that day at Cambridge I thought I was bound to have crossed some sort of barrier, and that henceforth I could count on seeing him fairly regularly, either at the College or at the house; but in fact a rather long interval elapsed, so that I stopped Mathews once and asked how Brad was. He said he was wearing himself out as usual, or rather more than usual—indeed, he’d given up one of his teaching classes in order to devote more time to his own work.

  “Can he afford that?”

  “Evidently. Or else he’s making himself afford it.”

  “Do you know what work it is?”

  “Vaguely. Some sort of mathematics. But you can’t know much about other people’s work nowadays, not when they get past the elementary stage. Even genetics has its mysteries. Why don’t you come and see my mice? I don’t have cats any more—they’re not quick enough on the job. And besides, they’re apt to attract visitors.” He always joked about my mother’s acquisition.

  I went up with him. “I wouldn’t disturb him while he’s busy,” he said, as we passed Brad’s door. I hadn’t had any such intention, but the warning made me ask what special reason there was for all the high pressure.

  He said he thought something had “happened” at Cambridge.
“He goes to the Cavendish there fairly often. He told me after one trip that a physicist was no damned good unless he was also a mathematician, so that’s what he’s doing now, I suppose—in what he calls his spare time…. Come and see these creatures again when you feel like it. Perhaps he won’t be so busy.”

  He was, and I didn’t bother him. But one afternoon, inside the College near the Physics Building, I met my mother walking along as if she had far more right to look surprised than I had. She asked if I were going up to see Brad. I replied: “Certainly not. Have you just been to see him?”

  “Darling, why ‘certainly not’?”

  “Because he hates to be interrupted when he’s at work. It’s a thing I’d never dream of doing…. But I suppose you have seen him?”

  “Yes, but not in the way you think. I’ve been to one of his lectures.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t see any reason against it. He has a beginners’ class—anybody can join who enrolls. I’ve enrolled. It’s interesting. And he explains things so wonderfully. One ought to have something serious in life, oughtn’t one?”

  “What does Brad say about it?”

  “Brad?… yes … it suits him, doesn’t it?… Or perhaps it’s just that I never did like Mark and I couldn’t go on calling him Mr. Bradley—Dr. Bradley, I mean…. Anyhow, I think the less formal we all are the better. That’s what the trouble is with him—he’s too formal—he doesn’t seem to believe in any pleasure, amusement, relaxation…. But I have an idea I’m beginning to convert him—gradually.”

  She looked so adorable as she said it that I laughed. “And he’s managing to convert you a little at the same time, eh?”

  No, she answered, he was not converting her—not really. He was only showing her something she had already been aware of in life, or had guessed existed. Physics was a symbol rather than the thing itself. “I’ve often thought I have a rather empty existence—just dinner parties and social engagements and treading the same old beaten path—London, New York, Florida. I’ve never been completely satisfied with it. Even when I was a girl I wanted to be a nurse.” (This was news to me, and it may have been true, but my mother was always capable of reinforcing an argument with some happy improvisation.) “Darling, you at least ought to understand, because you’ve chosen to do something worth while instead of wasting your time as so many girls in your position would. Surely it’s the happy medium we must all strive for. For instance, he ought to waste a little bit of his time, and I’ve quite an ambition to make him do it—I’d love to make him break a rule—just one little rule….”

  “Did he break any at the lecture when he saw you?”

  “Not him. He’s so different when he’s lecturing. Not a bit nervous—and yet still shy.”

  “Did he know you were going to be there?”

  “Of course. I enrolled—didn’t I say that? I asked him if he thought it would all be above my head and he said no, it was as elementary as he could make it—he’s not exactly the flatterer, is he?… But never a smile or a look during the lecture—I was just one of his students. And when he finished he picked up his papers and dashed away as if he was afraid of someone chasing him.”

  “Perhaps he was.”

  “Now darling, are you trying to make fun of me?”

  I wondered if I were; it wouldn’t have been surprising, for my mother and I got a good deal of amusement out of each other. But I had a curious feeling that we were both more serious than we sounded, and that the badinage was a familiar dress to cover something rather new in our relationship.

  She said, as if it finally clinched the matter: “Well, he’s coming to dinner on October tenth. I did chase him to ask him that. He said he couldn’t make it earlier because he’s working for some examination that finishes on the ninth.”

  “But will you still be here? I thought the end of September was when you and Father—”

  “We’re staying a few extra weeks this year. We thought it would be nice not to leave you too soon.”

  I said I was glad, which was true enough, though of course I knew I’d be perfectly all right on my own.

  * * * * *

  It wasn’t a party on the tenth, but that rare “just ourselves,” with not even a chance visitor after dinner except Julian Spee. Julian was a rising English lawyer; still in his middle forties, he had already taken silk and found a seat in Parliament; there seemed nothing to stop him from whatever he aimed at, which was probably high. He was handsome in a saturnine way, a brilliant talker, unmarried, and an accomplished flirt. He lived in a house not far from ours, facing the Heath, and had formed a habit of dropping by whenever he felt like it, whether we had a party or not. He was sure of his welcome and one knew he was sure. I think he liked my mother more than most women, and she in turn was flattered by his attentions and always willing to give advice about his love affairs. A pleasantly romantic relationship can develop in this way, and it had done, over a period of years. I wasn’t at ease with Julian myself, because I never felt he was quite real, but on the few occasions when he hadn’t treated me as a precocious child I had been aware of his attractiveness. My father, who collected him as he collected all celebrities, once said that in any other country but England you would have taken him for a homosexual, to which my mother replied mischievously: “And in any other country he would have been.” As often it wasn’t very clear what she meant.

  My father had got back from Germany that day, tired from the trip and gloomy about affairs over there. He didn’t any longer attend to ordinary business matters, but if something cropped up of a kind in which his personal acquaintance with politicians and diplomats might help, the job was usually passed on to him. I think the Nazis were interfering with some of his “interests”; the State Department hadn’t been able to do much, and because he had once met Hitler during the twenties he’d been called in like a rainmaker after a prolonged drought. But big shots were always apt to disappoint him after a while—Lenin had, and Lloyd George, and Mussolini, and Ramsay MacDonald, and now it was Hitler’s turn. Roosevelt hadn’t yet, but one felt sure he would. My father was too rich to care for money for its own sake (despite the Marazon disclosures that did him so much harm); he knew, as moderately rich men didn’t, how little you could bribe those whose real currency was power, and this in turn made him flatter poor men who became powerful. But of course, because they were powerful, sooner or later they let him know that he had only money. I think now (though I knew nothing much about it then) he must have been having this kind of experience in Germany, and it hadn’t been pleasant.

  Fortunately Brad’s mood that night was at the other extreme. With his examination over even he couldn’t help relaxing, the more so under the influence of good food and my mother’s gaiety. Then, somehow or other, when we were in the drawing room afterwards and Julian had joined us, the conversation grew personal and the atmosphere changed. Julian had met Brad before, and they had seemed to like each other well enough, in spite or perhaps because of their obvious oppositeness. But now I sensed a hostility between them which my father was quietly fanning; it was as if he were holding his own unhappy thoughts at bay by encouraging both my mother and Julian to put Brad on the spot. Soon they were in the thick of a discussion of Brad’s ambitions, what he wanted to do in life, his ideal of science as something to be lived for, and so on. All ideals sound naďve when brought out under cross-examination, but my mother had a special knack of creating naďvete in others—something in the way she used wits rather than brains for an argument, certainly not knowledge, which she didn’t have much of about most things. But she was always fluent, and couldn’t endure to wait while others hesitated or pondered, so she would tell them what she thought they were going to reply, and it was often so deceptively simple that the other person would agree in a bemused way and presently find himself defending some vast proposition more suitable for a school debating society than anything between adults. I think this must have happened to Brad that night, for he got to tell
ing us eventually that scientists were actuated by a desire to “save” humanity, and that science, in due course, would do this in spite of other people whose chief concern was worldly success. (Which was probably a dig at Julian.)

  “Meaning,” said Julian, “that scientists don’t go for that sort of thing?”

  Brad answered that no true scientist could, or if he did, it proved he wasn’t a true scientist. As neat as that!

  “But my dear boy—” (Julian always called people “dear,” which sounded more affected than affectionate till you got used to it, and then you realized it was neither, but just a habit)—“my dear boy, if you ignore all worldly success, how do you suppose you’re going to get a chance to prove anything? You can’t sit in a corner all on your own and just be a scientist—it’s not like writing an epic poem or contemplating your navel—you need money for food, equipment that you couldn’t afford, a room to work in that your house doesn’t have, and a job to make it worth somebody’s while to pay you a regular salary!”

  “Well, a job’s all right. There’s nothing worldly in that.”

  “But unless it’s a good job you’ll wear yourself out marking papers and teaching teen-agers to blow glass! I know, because I remember my own schooldays.”

  “There are good jobs.”

  “And how do you suppose they are got? College heads aren’t supermen, they don’t know much about science themselves, and because they can only judge a reputation by the look of it, they’re human enough to favor a man who knows how to draw attention to himself. So if he’s smart, that’s exactly what he does. Politics is one way—though dangerous. Social success is safer. And doing stuff on the side that attracts publicity—you Americans know the kind of thing— pseudoscientific articles in your Sunday supplements that aren’t too phony, just phony enough.” (Julian liked to use American slang, which he said was enriching the English language at a period when otherwise a natural impoverishment would have set in. We had another big argument about that once.)

  “So you don’t think real distinction counts, Mr. Spee?”