Nothing So Strange

by James Hilton

  “I didn’t say that. Of course it counts—but it counts a good deal more if you add salesmanship and what your Hollywood people call glamour.”

  “Glamour?”

  “Certainly…. An interesting new theory, developed by Professor So-and- So in Vienna … it’s like your sparkling new comedy, straight from its phenomenal success on Broadway … even if it only ran three nights…. Vienna is the Broadway of the scientific show business…. I’d strongly recommend a year or two there for you.”

  Brad had the same trouble that I had in deciding whether Julian was serious or not, and I could see him wondering about it now.

  My father said quietly: “Might not be a bad idea at that.”

  Brad was still puzzling over Julian’s epigram. “Show business, eh?” he echoed, in a rather shocked tone. “I hope it isn’t quite so bad.”

  “It’s not bad at all, my dear boy, it’s human. We live in an age of headlines, not of hermits.”

  “Someday,” said my mother, in her random way, “the hermits may make the headlines.”

  “Vienna’s a good place,” said my father. “A very good place indeed.”

  It seemed to me that everyone was talking at cross-purposes. “I can’t believe that the true scientist cares much about headlines,” Brad said.

  “No?” Julian gave his rather high-pitched feminine laugh. “I could mention the names of at least a dozen who care about them passionately. And they’re big men, not charlatans, don’t make any mistake. They’ll give you some competition if you go after the plums.”

  “But I don’t want the plums. I’m not a bit ambitious for things like that- -I wouldn’t enjoy the kind of thing some people call success. All I ask is the chance to work usefully at something that seems to me worth while.” He added, as if he had listened to his own words: “And if that sounds priggish I can’t help it—it’s the only way I can express what I mean.”

  “Oh, no—not priggish at all,” Julian assured him. “Just an honest mistake you’re making about yourself. Do you mean to tell me you really wouldn’t like to head a research department of your own somewhere, to have no more drudgery, to get yourself recognized as an equal by those whose names in the scientific world you know and respect?… Of course you would…. And as for scientists being worth-whilers and world-savers, let me prick that bubble for you too. I’ve known a good many of them, and in my experience, though some may fool themselves about it, they have one simple and over-riding motive above all others…. Curiosity.”

  “Brad’s motive isn’t that,” my mother interrupted.

  “Then by Christ, if you’ll pardon the expression, it had better be, unless he’s a mere moralist hiding behind a rampart of test tubes!” He turned to Brad with his easy confident smile. “Perhaps you are—perhaps you’d really be more at home in a pulpit than a laboratory.”

  “No, no, Julian,” my mother interrupted again. “That’s absurd—he’s not a moralist, and why should he hide anywhere? He’s a real scientist—he even defends vivisection!”

  It was part of my mother’s charm that her mind flew off at tangents usually capable of changing a subject. This time, however, both Brad and Julian ignored her and the argument went on. “Of course, my dear boy, I’m neither defending nor attacking—I’m just diagnosing what I’ve always felt to be the real germ of the scientific spirit. You probably know much more about it yourself, but my own opinion is, it’s Pandora’s box that lures, not the Holy Grail. And I haven’t yet met a scientist who wouldn’t take a chance of busting up the whole works rather than not find out something. Maybe civilizations have been destroyed like that before. History covers too small a fragment of life on earth for anyone to say it’s unthinkable. After all, we know the Greeks excelled us in several of the arts and perhaps in one of the sciences, that of human government—why not some earlier civilization in engineering or medicine? Anyhow, it’s a beguiling thought—that all the great discoveries have been made and remade over and over again throughout the ages. What do you say, Jane? You’re the historian.”

  I said it all sounded very pessimistic and somewhat Spenglerian.

  “Personally I find it more agreeable than what the last century called progress.”

  “It’s worse than pessimism,” Brad said. “It’s a sort of nihilism.”

  “Coo … listen to ‘im! Sech lengwidge!” Julian mimicked banteringly.

  My father, who had taken little part in the argument and had seemed to be listening in a detached way, now intervened almost irritably. “Nihilism … nihilism … just a word. At various times in my life I’ve been called an economic royalist, a communist, a fascist, and a merchant of death … so don’t let nihilist floor you, Julian.”

  “I won’t,” Julian retorted, though he looked as if my father’s sudden support had rather startled him.

  Brad was hanging on to the argument. “But at least, Mr. Spee, the peak of each civilization could be higher than the one before?”

  “Why should it? We don’t know. Perhaps there’ve been vast cycles of civilizations—some upward in trend, others downward—and these cycles, in turn, may have belonged to even vaster movements. All pure speculation, of course. You can argue about it endlessly, just as—” and he turned deferentially to my father—“just as your Dow-Jones theorists do when stocks drop and they try to figure out whether it’s a real bear market or just a dip in a boom. Wait and see’s the only solution, but if the waiting means a few million years, what can you do? Even Spengler won’t go that far.”

  Julian laughed, but as if he had become already uneasy about the argument. He was extremely sensitive to timing and atmosphere, and soon afterwards he made rather abrupt excuses and left us. Brad stayed, and my father rallied himself into an appearance of affability. But I was still at odds with his mood; I couldn’t quite understand it, and his totally unnecessary mention of having once been called a merchant of death was especially strange. It was true, he had been called that, but it wasn’t true that he had been unconcerned about it; on the contrary he had been much hurt at the time and would have prosecuted somebody for libel if his lawyers had let him.

  I also noticed that he was refilling his glass rather oftener than usual. “Well, Brad,” he said, switching over to his side. “We certainly had him on a soapbox, didn’t we? I hope you weren’t too impressed.”

  Brad laughed. “So long as I don’t have to agree, that’s the main thing. I’d like to think over what he said in terms of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Might be interesting.”

  “What beats me,” my father said, “is the way that fellow knows other people’s business…. Yours … and mine … the Dow-Jones theory … how does he get that way?”

  “Probably most of what he knows is on the surface,” Brad answered, entirely without malice.

  It was late and he looked at his watch. I think we were all a little tired. Just before he left my father called me to the library. “Henry can drive him back,” he said. “Why don’t you go with him for the ride?”

  I was surprised at the suggestion and wondered if he thought there was anything emotional between Brad and me—that would have been too ridiculous.

  “He’d probably rather take the tube,” I said.

  “No, let Henry bring the car round.”

  “He’d hate to think he’d been keeping Henry up. He’s fussy about those things.”

  “Then get a taxi and you can come back in it.”

  “He doesn’t have taxis—he can’t afford them and he wouldn’t like me to pay.”

  My father’s irritation showed through again. “Well, for once he can— because I want you to tell him something. Tell him I wasn’t joking, even if Julian was, about the idea of him going abroad. I’ve been thinking for some time it might not be a bad thing. Tell him that.”

  “Why don’t you tell him?”

  “I did, but I don’t think he heard me. I’m sorry Julian talked of it so flippantly—it’s really what Brad ought to do. He’s probably got all
he can out of this London job by now…. So tell him, will you? There’s a bunch of physicists in Vienna, if he could get fixed up with the right connections. I might be able to help him in that.”

  “You might?”

  “Yes. I have—er—contacts there.”

  “In Vienna?”

  “Yes.”

  “But what about the Cavendish at Cambridge? Isn’t that as good?”

  “Cambridge isn’t the only place where they’re doing interesting things in his line. The Continent would give him a different angle….”

  “You mean the glamour?”

  “No, no … or anyhow, that’s not the word for it. I wish Julian hadn’t butted in with his witticisms…. Well, you talk things over with Brad. Ask him how he’d like to spend some time working with Hugo Framm.”

  “Hugo Framm?”

  “He’ll know who Framm is. Ask him. Ask him.”

  The telephone then rang; I took it, as I often did; it was New York. Those business calls were generally very dull as well as private, so I handed him the receiver and edged away towards the hall doorway across the room.

  And then I saw Brad. His back was towards me, and in front of him, almost hidden, was my mother. The lights in the hall were subdued, and all I could see of her distinctly was the knuckle of her right hand as she held his sleeve. She had been talking to him earnestly and I caught what was evidently a final remark: “… and you mustn’t take any notice, Brad…. I’d hate you to be influenced at all….” Only that, whispered very eagerly.

  He said nothing in reply, then suddenly, glancing round his shoulder with a little side movement of her head, she saw me, I think, though she pretended not to. I stepped back into the room. Presently my father finished his call.

  “Well, as I was saying, Jane, see how he feels about it.”

  I answered: “Yes, but not tonight. I’ll talk to him at the College tomorrow. I know he’d rather go home by tube.”

  * * * * *

  I could have met him at lunch the next day and been sure of not interrupting his work, but I went straight to the lab about eleven-thirty, committing the unforgivable sin, if it were one, with a certain gusto. After all, he couldn’t already be working for another examination—or could he? Anyhow, I caught him (so far as I could judge) doing that rare thing, nothing. But he looked preoccupied and not really surprised enough; he asked me to sit down, but I said it wouldn’t take me long to deliver a message. Then I told him what my father had said about Vienna and Hugo Framm. His whole manner changed. He seemed bewildered at first, then slowly and increasingly pleased. He went to a shelf of books and showed me everything he could find that had anything to do with Framm, who was apparently a scientific star of magnitude. There was a paragraph about him in a recent issue of Discovery, and an article by him in a German magazine. Altogether I began to think it rather wonderful that Brad should have a chance to work with such a man. “But I don’t see why he should even consider me,” he kept saying. “There’s nothing I’ve done yet that could possibly impress him.”

  “But my father knows him, Brad.”

  “Of course I realize your father has influence, but in a question of pure science….”

  “Perhaps it isn’t a question of pure science. Perhaps Framm’s a bit human. Perhaps he takes notice of what his friends say about people. My father’s opinion of you might be high enough for someone to want to have you.”

  “But is he such a close friend of your father?”

  “I never heard his name mentioned before, but that doesn’t mean anything. My father knows so many people everywhere. He meets them once and then they’re on his list of—well, I suppose you could call them distant friends.”

  “Very remarkable.”

  “My father is remarkable.”

  “So’s your mother—in a different way.”

  “Oh, she’s a darling.”

  “I’d guess she’s a good bit younger.”

  “Than my father?… Twenty years.”

  “As much as that?”

  “Your surprise doesn’t flatter her. Or perhaps it flatters him.”

  He thought that out. I added: “I don’t think years matter much, anyway— especially as you grow older.”

  “That’s true. It’s when you’re younger that the difference counts.”

  I wondered if he was thinking of the difference between his age and mine. Then he went on: “Not that I feel she’s any older than I am.”

  “She is, though. Nearly twice as old.”

  “Oh no, that can’t be. I’m twenty-four.”

  “And she’s thirty-eight.”

  “Well, that’s not twice….”

  “I said nearly twice.”

  “You also said years don’t matter much.”

  “And you said they did, when people are younger.”

  “I think we’re getting tied up in this argument. Let’s have some lunch.”

  That was a novelty, and a further one when we didn’t go to an A.B.C., but to an Italian place near the Tottenham Court Road. We had minestrone and chicken cacciatora, meanwhile talking about Framm; or rather, he did most of the talking—I could see him building up a vision and I hoped he wouldn’t expect too much. After all, my father’s influence had its limits. But apparently it was only an already existing vision in a new form—a sort of frozen white-hot passion for whatever it was that couldn’t be satisfactorily explained to a first-year history student. I let him rhapsodize all the way back to the College.

  There was grand opera at Covent Garden that evening and someone had lent my parents a box. We went to dine at Boulestin’s first. I don’t care for opera and all afternoon as I thought of it I grew more and more out of humor. Then when I got home I found my mother still lingering over tea. “I asked Brad to come,” she greeted me, “but I don’t suppose he will.” She overdid the casualness and as soon as I looked at her she began to look at me in what I think, she thought was the same way.

  “I shouldn’t imagine so,” I answered. “He was here only last night and it’s quite a trip for a cup of tea.”

  “You like him, don’t you, Jane?”

  “Yes. He’d be rather hard to dislike.”

  “I shall miss the lectures when he goes to Vienna.”

  “If he goes. Or is it settled yet?”

  “I think your father’s written to somebody. I hope it works out all right…. I can’t help wondering if he really wants to go there. He always talked to me about the Cavendish.”

  “To me too, but at present I think he’s quite set on Vienna—on account of this man Framm.”

  “I wish I’d had a chance to help him more—not as Framm can, of course, but that’s not all the help he needs. I’d like to have made him—well, a bit more at home with life. More … sophisticated … easy- mannered….”

  “Worldly?”

  “Oh no, no, Jane, not that. He’s naive, but I love it and I hated the way Julian talked the other night. I don’t know what possessed him—he seemed to be trying to break down every ideal the boy had…. No, let him keep his ideals— he doesn’t even have to be a worldly success if he doesn’t want—but he ought to learn to get some fun out of life, that’s my point. Worldly success has nothing to do with having fun.”

  “It has just a bit, Mother.”

  “Oh, just a little bit, perhaps—one must have some money. But not too much. I could be perfectly happy on a thousand a year. Pounds, I mean.”

  “So could a great many English people who have to live on a fraction of that.”

  “Well, say five hundred … provided of course I had other things to make life worth living.”

  “What other things?”

  “Darling, don’t cross-examine me…. All I know is that Brad needs to learn what happiness there can be in life, and he ought to stop being such a hermit. But I’m all against him giving up his ideals, whatever Julian says.”

  “It seems to me I’m the only person who’s satisfied with him as he is.”


  “Are you, darling? Entirely satisfied?”

  She gazed at me measuredly, as if the question needed a careful answer. But there wasn’t time, for at that moment Brad arrived. He looked nervous, and almost as shy as when I had first seen him. He said he hadn’t thought he’d be able to come, but at the very last he’d managed it. He was sorry he was so late and hoped he hadn’t kept her waiting.

  “Did you come up by tube?” I asked.

  “No. I took a taxi.”

  “I’ll send for some fresh tea,” my mother said, and rang the bell, but nobody came; the servants were preparing for their evening out and hadn’t expected to serve any more. I said I’d go to the kitchen and see about it, which I did, and then went upstairs to change.

  * * * * *

  Looking back now, I can see so much more than then. Even when you are supposed to be adult for your age, it’s hard to think of grownups as in the same world; you only want to feel you can be in theirs, and you just hope any mistake won’t be noticed. And yet you are aware of things often more acutely than ever afterwards, your mind has antennae roaming into the unknown; you can even walk into it with eyes peering, but the step that isn’t there always brings you up with a shock and a jolt.

  I had that shock about Brad, though I couldn’t put any sufficient reason for it into words. When a man, after working three times harder than he should, slows down to twice as hard, there doesn’t seem much for any of his friends to worry about. Nor when the same man spends a wet Sunday afternoon listening to a charming woman play Chopin, instead of drenching himself to the skin on Box Hill.

  Brad gave notice to the College authorities and they were very reasonable about it. They waived the full term they could have held him for, and said he could leave whenever he wanted. And my parents postponed again their return to New York—still presumably on my account.

  Meanwhile my mother kept on attending his lectures, at which he never (she said) gave her a look or a smile; but he did break a few of his other rules, whether it was she who tempted him or not. He began going to piano recitals, theaters, movies, and private views—sometimes alone with her, sometimes with my father or me also. There was nothing to stir gossip, much less scandal, in our fairly sophisticated circle; Julian Spee had escorted her similarly when he was less busy. She had often been in the throes of some fad or other, and perhaps my father figured that Brad was just an unusually masculine successor to Dalcroze Eurhythmics, Japanese flower arrangement, or the English Speaking Union. And it was sometimes my father himself who would make the date; he would say—“Oh, by the way, Christine, I’ve got a card for Marincourt’s new exhibition—it’s next Tuesday at the Wigmore Galleries. I shan’t have time to go myself, but you might take Brad and show him what passes for art nowadays….” But when he had issued these invitations he had an odd look of only half pleasure whether they were accepted or not.