DANIEL COME TO JUDGEMENT

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘There is something I think I ought to tell you.’

  “Ought” was not a word which normally figured in Giles’s vocabulary where his own affairs were concerned. Erica looked at him, her private nightmares careering through her mind: he had been involved in a drug raid at the school, he had got a girl with child, he had knocked someone over while driving his car under the influence of drink, he had been involved in an obscene publication, he had joined the Communist party.

  ‘I’m thinking of changing my course,’ he said. ‘That means I shall leave Mansfield at the end of this term. Perhaps you could advise me?’ He turned politely to Harry.

  ‘Your course?’ Erica repeated, as mystified as if Giles had announced that he had had a vision on the Southampton road.

  ‘I’m going to switch to a science course.’

  ‘But you talked of becoming a journalist at one time.’ She had thought that was bad enough, but she clung to it now.

  ‘A journalist is going to need more and more scientific know-how as time goes by,’ Giles said.

  ‘Oh, come now!’ Harry expostulated. ‘How much space in a newspaper is devoted to scientific reportage? About one column twice a week in the quality dailies, if that.’

  ‘Much more than that. Science is a part of life now, a lot of it gets absorbed into the ordinary news items.’ Giles picked up a copy of The Guardian which was lying on the sofa and studied it, while Erica watched as though she expected him to produce a rabbit from it. ‘Page two: Tighter drug net sought. Page three: Challenge to the static state theory of the universe. Page four: Details of Health Reforms in Pakistan; Mercury battery menace; Page 6: Lead poisoning; Liquid fertilisers may contaminate water supplies . . .’

  ‘Yes, all right!’ Harry laughed. ‘But what do you imagine you have proved? There is nothing there I wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘You would know all the relevant questions to ask about lead poisoning, for example, and about the menace of mercury batteries, so that you couldn’t be fobbed off with statements that failed to come to grips with the problems? You could decide between one theory of the universe and another?’

  ‘I should know where to go for the answer!’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To a scientist. You don’t need to become a scientist to get the answers. You simply need a good contact. That’s how journalists work.’

  ‘That’s not enough,’ Giles said magisterially. Erica watched him fascinated, alarmed, and yet rather proud of the way in which he was able to dismiss Harry’s protests. ‘This is a scientific age and one must know one’s way around in it. One must be as familiar with concepts relating to the senses and the mind, with the functional organisation of the brain, with the clock paradox and Einstein’s theory of relativity . . .’ Erica could hardly believe this was her son talking so authoritatively. Unfortunately, he spoilt her innocent pleasure by concluding, ‘. . . with Planck’s quantum theory, as with the geography of the British Isles and the history of the English¬speaking peoples.’

  ‘I know which I would choose,’ Erica cried emphatically.

  ‘Do you, for example,’ Giles ignored his mother and addressed himself to Harry, ‘completely understand the discovery of the omega-minus meson and its implications?’

  Harry, who knew nothing about the omega-minus meson, but could recognise a bit of one-up-manship when he saw it, replied coolly, ‘Are its implications of major significance?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ It wasn’t the reaction Giles had hoped for, but he accepted it magnanimously. ‘That’s what I’m saying. I don’t know enough about these things. Once the scientists really get talking, they leave me far behind. I begin to see that if I don’t make a really big effort there will be a completely unbridgeable gap and I shall have to accept what they tell me because I have no way of testing it for myself.’

  ‘Does that matter?’ Erica asked. ‘I’m all for labour-saving whenever possible.’

  ‘And when they have disagreements?’ He turned on her fiercely. ‘How do we make our judgements then? Do we back the chap who went to the right school and has the right accent?’

  ‘You rely on your judgement of character,’ Erica said firmly.

  ‘In other words, we assess the man, because there isn’t any way we can assess what he is saying. And if he happens to have a good character and is a bad scientist, so much the worse for us.’

  ‘I think you can trust the scientists to sort their disputes out among themselves,’ Harry said easily.

  ‘But the things they are sorting out are of vital importance to us all! The scientist is in control now. He is Zeus, the foremost of the gods. The issues of the future are going to be connected with the application of science and it will have a dominating effect on the kind of society we live in . . .’

  ‘This is your father’s work!’ Erica said angrily.

  ‘In part. Being tutored by him is a sobering experience. When it comes to scientific matters, he can walk circles round me simply because he has more facts at his disposal and he knows the language. He could be as wrong as hell, and I simply wouldn’t be able to fault him. I’m not going to let that sort of situation continue.’

  ‘This is true of a specialist in any subject.’ Harry was at his most urbane; he was finding Giles rather tedious. ‘It never pays to argue with them. You’d get into exactly the same trouble with an accountant.’

  ‘But science isn’t a subject, it’s our future life!’ Urbanity was particularly hard to take and Giles began to shout. ‘It’s going to be as bad to know nothing about it as it was once bad if you hadn’t read the Bible and Shakespeare. This is going to be the hallmark of the cultured man in the future!’

  ‘How can you say such things!’ Erica was very upset now. ‘Shakespeare and the Bible give you an inspiration you can carry through life with you . . .’

  ‘And you take your body through life with you, and your mind! Aren’t you curious about either of them? Over the next fifty years, during my lifetime, the greatest single change that will come about is that we will know much more about ourselves, about the way our brains work . . .’

  ‘I’ve yet to meet anyone who has been helped by psychoanalysis,’ Harry said. Erica went red.

  ‘I’m not talking about psychoanalysis, I’m talking about what we actually have up here,’ Giles thumped his forehead, ‘the different compartments of the brain . . .’

  ‘I think this is all very silly,’ Erica told him in great agitation. ‘As Harry says, if you want to pick up a bit of knowledge, all you have to do is consult a scientist . . .’

  ‘Science . . . is . . . a . . . way . . . of . . . life!’ Giles’s usually pale face was flushed and exasperation widened his eyes. ‘Our life is science-based. Can’t you understand that? It is going to be as essential to understand it as it is to be able to use one’s mother tongue.’

  Erica said, ‘I don’t think we can talk about this any longer.’

  ‘As long as you agree to my transferring to the tech.’

  ‘I’m not even going to consider it. They all take drugs. And I’d have to pay a term’s fees at Mansfield.’

  ‘This is the most important decision I’ve ever made in my life, and all you care about is money!’

  Giles went out of the room and slammed the door behind him. Erica clasped her hands together and moaned, ‘What will become of us? What will become of us all?’

  ‘Giles is making discoveries about life and about himself,’ Harry said comfortingly. ‘It’s a stage all young men go through. He doesn’t mean to hurt you.’

  ‘How extraordinary young people are!’ she marvelled. ‘They think they can throw all that we value aside and expect us to agree with them, even applaud. He talked as though everything . . . everything that has ever mattered to people like you and me is irrelevant. The things on which we’ve staked our lives.’ She felt at this moment that she had indeed staked her life on the Bible and Shakespeare.

  Harry put a hand on her shoulder and said, ‘D
on’t be upset. They all talk like that.’

  ‘But you don’t agree with him, do you, Harry? That it’s all irrelevant, art, music, poetry, religion, all irrelevant?’

  ‘No, of course not. And neither does he, really.’

  ‘And us?’ She was very shaken still. ‘I suppose we shall be reduced to a scientific formula. Harry, doesn’t it frighten you?’

  He said gently, ‘Yes, sometimes it does. But I think it has always been like this. New ideas developing and people being frightened of them. Look at Galileo. Who is any the worse off for his ideas now? No one has suffered as a result of them – except Galileo himself, perhaps.’

  She nodded her head, soothed by the thought of all those frightened people stretching away into the distant past.

  ‘You are a great comfort to me, Harry,’ she said. ‘You do think I am right to refuse to allow him to transfer to the technical college?’

  ‘Why not wait a little while before you make a final decision? Something may happen to decide you one way or the other.’

  In the event, it did.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The summer term began. Daniel went to Mansfield. All was quiet. At first, the quiet seemed ominous and Erica looked for storm signals. There were none. She approached the possibility of success cautiously; for a time she went about as though walking on egg-shells, but gradually the feeling grew on her that hope might be admitted without causing too much damage, little chinks of it at first, no sweeping back of the blinds. Relief trickled in through nooks and crannies. In three weeks, life had returned to somewhere as near normal as it would ever be in the post-Daniel years of her life. She felt her world settling around her, the tremors of controversy dying down. Daniel existed only on the periphery of her life. He was very conscientious about his work and often stayed late at the school. Giles was taciturn, but Erica knew her son well enough to realise that this would be his reaction to his father’s success. ‘Things are going well, are they?’ she ventured to ask him once. ‘He doesn’t do anything,’ Giles said. ‘Just lets us talk. About more or less anything – drugs, smog, the nuclear deterrent, heart transplants, genetics, we’ve even talked about the by-pass. Of course, it goes down well. Who doesn’t like a chance to air his views!’

  Daniel did not, however, content himself with encouraging his pupils to air their views. He was concerned at their negative way of thinking. When he asked them what in their view was wrong with society, they said, ‘The system is wrong, it has to be destroyed.’

  ‘And what do you propose to put in its place?’

  They proposed chaos in place of institutions, confusion in exchange for belief, anarchy in place of law.

  ‘But afterwards,’ he persisted. ‘After the revolution, what kind of system will replace the present system?’

  ‘We don’t believe in systems.’

  ‘What kind of people will we be, then?’

  They thought about this, and eventually formulated, ‘A society of free, fully-conscious human beings, living as equals.’

  ‘And you don’t think we can achieve this by adapting the present system?’

  Definitely not. They were adamant about this. It was more than the system that had failed. Western civilisation had failed. Even the least extreme among them wanted revolution. Revolution was quicker. Once the revolution was over, a new order would be established. They saw no difficulty in this; they had been brought up in an ordered society and took order for granted. When Daniel said it might take longer to produce order from chaos than to modify the present system, they laughed; they knew all about the weaknesses of the present system, but chaos was something they could not envisage.

  ‘Has any other system achieved your aim?’ he asked. ‘Is there a place where people are free, fully conscious human beings living as equals?’

  They said possibly Cuba and Red China were working in that direction.

  ‘Have any of you visited either of these countries?’

  ‘No. But that isn’t necessary.’

  They were emphatic about this. The revolutionary, it seemed, must also make his act of faith.

  Daniel tried to persuade them to think more positively about issues on which they might hope to exert some influence. He mentioned one or two national issues and asked whether they had ever attended a debate in the House of Commons? They looked bored and said ‘no’. Did they attend meetings of the borough council? They had been to one or two and thought it a great waste of time. He pointed out that for many of them their only chance of making their views on the future structure of society effective would be to become a member of the borough council. They said that was why there had to be a revolution.

  Daniel himself attended a meeting of the borough council’s highways committee. He chose the highways committee because it seemed to him that the traffic problem was the most important issue at present affecting the lives of the people in the town. Others thought the same. It was reported that over one hundred letters had been received on this subject. The chairman said, ‘Noted. Item six . . .’ Daniel rose from his seat in the gallery and asked politely, ‘May we know what action has been taken regarding these letters?’

  There was an astonished silence. Interruptions from the gallery were not unknown, but they usually consisted of scraps of abuse, seldom a coherent sentence. Members craned their necks upwards. Daniel put his hands on the balustrade and gazed down in the manner of a latter-day Abraham Lincoln. The chairman rapped on the table and said, ‘Silence!’

  Daniel said, ‘I live in Yeominster and this is a matter which affects me.’

  The chairman said, ‘If there are any more interruptions, I shall have the gallery cleared.’

  Already the hall porter, hastily summoned, was making his way towards Daniel, his progress hampered by other occupants of the gallery who declined to give him easy passage. Daniel said, ‘I am not attempting to cause a disturbance. I am most interested in the proceedings, and I simply wish a point to be made clear to me.’

  The chairman said, ‘You can write . . .’

  ‘But you have over one hundred letters which have been written to you and there has been no discussion about the points of view expressed.’

  The hall porter was by now plucking Daniel’s sleeve. ‘I have a perfect right to speak,’ Daniel said to the man. ‘These are my representatives . . .’ This point of view, although much appreciated by the press and other members of the gallery, was not accepted on an official level. ‘I’ll have to call the police,’ the porter hissed at Daniel. He was a small man and not brave. Daniel, who felt that a clash with the police would not add anything to his knowledge of the workings of the highways committee, consented to accompany him. For the second time, he found himself on the front page of The Sussex Observer.

  It was all very exhilarating.

  ‘But not a demonstration,’ he assured the boys in his group at Mansfield. ‘An attempt to participate peacefully in the machinery of government.’

  Yes, they said, that was why there had to be a revolution.

  Giles had to admit that it should have been a foregone conclusion that his father would be a success. Daniel was so different from anyone the boys normally encountered; it would take time to stale his considerable, if not infinite, variety. And he was so interested in them, that was the crafty thing. Here, they discovered, was someone who cared about their opinions, who examined even their more outrageous statements with every appearance of pleasure.

  ‘He couldn’t lose, the way he plays it,’ Giles said glumly.

  Erica was delighted. She saw the summer stretching before her, drowsy with peace. She had begun to see the psychiatrist. He had a very sympathetic personality and she expected a great deal from her talks with him (she also found it pleasant to have someone who was so interested in her conversation). Emma was now too immersed in revision to be a trouble to anyone. Mrs. Prentice was tiresome from time to time, according to whether it was one of her bad days or not, but this was part of the normality of lif
e. Only Dorothy was persistently abnormal.

  ‘I intend to leave Yeominster,’ she told Erica one day.

  ‘What a way to say it!’ Erica gasped.

  ‘How did you expect me to say it?’

  ‘I expected some warning.’

  ‘This is a warning.’

  ‘Have you got another job?’

  ‘No, I . . .’ Momentarily, she lost her forcefulness. ‘I want to travel . . . I’ve never travelled.’

  ‘Dorothy, your job. You’ve got such an interesting job . . .’

  ‘I’ve given in my notice.’

  ‘You’ve done what!’

  ‘I’ve given in my notice.’

  Erica put her hands to her cheeks. ‘You’re really going . . . Dorothy, have you thought about this? You haven’t been well lately. One should never take a decision when one isn’t well.’

  ‘On the contrary, I have never felt better in the whole of my life.’

  They regarded each other warily.

  Dorothy, in spite of her apparent determination, had considerable qualms about leaving Erica. She saw Erica’s faults. Boisterously, Erica worried and fussed and shared each of her small problems with her relatives; ruefully, gaily, lovably, she made a drama of the slightest misadventure which befell her so that seldom a day passed without some heightening of the emotional atmosphere in the house. But although Erica was hopelessly muddled and misguided, there was something rather splendid about the way in which she battled with her problems, using weapons which were pathetically inappropriate and would never ensure her a victory; in spite of the fact that things seldom turned out as she hoped, she went on giving life the benefit of the doubt and resolving to try harder in future. But what did the future hold for her?

  Erica was genuinely worried about Dorothy. Dorothy was single. Erica considered that a single woman is some kind of disaster area, prone to evils which do not afflict the more stable sections of society and constantly needing support and reinforcement.