Making Enemies

by Francis Bennett

  She sees his familiar blue script, she recognizes the biology from her own youth, she reads what he has written and then the remarks scrawled at the bottom of the page. She knows then that her son was not afraid of the bullies who asked him questions, they did not make him cry. What has broken his heart is the judgement he has received in the classroom.

  Misguided and wrong, she reads. The dictates of Marxist-Leninism disprove your argument. Poor work.

  ‘The central theory of molecular biology,’ he tells her, ‘is that genetic information flows from nucleic acid towards protein. If we believe that acquired characteristics can be inherited, then genetic information must flow from protein to nucleic acid. That is not scientifically possible. Yet that is what I am told to believe. How can I?’

  How like his father he is, she thinks, in his defence of his own certainties. How dangerous this trait will be. The boy is a good scientist; at times she thinks he could be more than that. He understands instinctively ideas that she has had to learn. He is being asked to believe in a dogma that he knows cannot be true. What can she tell him?

  ‘Madness rages through our lives like a forest fire,’ she says. We all turn towards the heat, we warm our hands and our bodies, we see the flames reflected in the eyes of our neighbours. This is the answer, we say. This is how we will stay warm.

  ‘But soon the fire moves on, the ashes grow cold, we shiver, and because we have known great warmth we are now colder than ever. Then we will turn on each other and say, why did you betray us, why did you pretend this was the truth? Why did you not tell us that the fire would move on?

  ‘That is how it is with us now. This political theory we live with is a forest fire that rages and burns, consuming many in its path, but one day it will burn out, leaving a trail of damage and despair, ruin and decay, nothing on which we may build our lives. The question is: how do we survive between now and then? Some bend, some come out fighting. I cannot tell you what you must do. You are old enough to make your own decisions. But never despise those who did not choose your path. We each fight our own battles in our own way.’

  She sees the sadness in his eyes. The innocence of his childhood is gone. He realizes, she knows now, that this is how she has spent her life. He is wondering how many sacrifices she has made. What truths she has concealed from him, and why. He must now have an instinctive sense of what she has had to do for him and for his grandmother.

  She holds him in her arms, the last time she will ever embrace him as a child. When they leave this room, their relationship will be changed for ever.

  ‘Mother,’ he says to her softly, holding her tight. ‘Mother, mother.’

  To her those words sound like a farewell. She wants to cry again but still no tears come. They cling to each in desperation as he, for the last time in his life, draws his strength from her.

  7

  DANNY

  ‘Something’s wrong, isn’t it?’

  I cornered Celia in the kitchen the following day as soon as my father had left the house. I’d got the impression that even in the twenty-four hours since my arrival, she had been trying to avoid me because she was reluctant to answer the question she knew I was going to ask.

  ‘Wrong?’

  She took the steaming kettle off the stove and sat down at the kitchen table.

  ‘Something’s happened since I was last in Cambridge and you don’t want to tell me about it.’

  She poured water into the teapot and looked thoughtful.

  ‘Geoffrey begged me not to say anything,’ she said reluctantly. ‘I knew it wouldn’t work. You were bound to hear it sooner or later. I had hoped it wouldn’t be from me.’

  I said nothing. Celia poured tea for us both.

  ‘Promise you won’t say I told you?’

  ‘I won’t breathe a word.’

  ‘It’s Philip Ridout,’ she said. ‘He’s dying.’

  ‘What of?’

  ‘Cancer.’

  Ridout was my father’s assistant. He had come up in my second year, had got a double first in physics and had been working with my father ever since. ‘Best pupil I ever had,’ my father had told me once. ‘Brilliant mind. Quite outstanding.’

  ‘He’s in Addenbrooke’s.’ Celia’s eyes filled with tears. ‘It’s so awful, Danny. The doctors say there’s nothing they can do. That poor boy. Only twenty-four.’

  I had never liked Philip Ridout. He was a shy, unprepossessing man, but highly intelligent, whose one interest in life appeared to be theoretical physics. My father had taken to him at once and as soon as his degree was completed had made him his assistant, his relationship with Laurentzen having ended. A year later, my father had brought his assistant into the house and had set us up as rivals for his affections. I didn’t like it but I could accept it because I was used to my father’s ways and I had learned to live without his affection and approbation years before. (Ridout, I’m sure, was oblivious to my father’s manipulations.) It was when he intimated that Ridout was the son he had always hoped I would become that I drew the line. This, as much as anything, had underlined my quarrel with my father a year before. Ridout was the innocent victim of a situation he was unaware of, but even so I couldn’t bring myself to feel any affection for him, either then or now.

  ‘How’s Geoffrey taken it?’

  ‘All the time Philip gets thinner and thinner and more and more ill and Geoffrey refuses to accept what’s happening. He keeps talking about when Philip recovers and can get back to the laboratory.’

  That didn’t surprise me. My father had always ignored any obstacles in his path, an attitude that applied as much to people as it did to problems. While it had brought him distinction in science, it had led to poverty in human relationships.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. It seemed a feeble response to the awful news, particularly as I knew how fond Celia had become of Ridout over the many months he had lived in the house.

  There had been an accident in the lab, she said. Philip was burned, not badly, but they kept him in hospital for a couple of days. A few weeks later he began to complain of stomach pains and wouldn’t eat. That’s when they diagnosed cancer.

  ‘He’s young, so it’s galloping through him. The doctors are saying he’s only got a matter of weeks.’

  I asked her if the cancer and the accident were related. Celia wasn’t sure. ‘But how does a perfectly healthy young man develop such a raging cancer so quickly?’

  ‘Do you know anything about the accident?’

  ‘I heard that Philip was doing an experiment with plutonium and it went wrong. Geoffrey refuses to talk about it. I’m convinced Philip was irradiated, though Geoffrey’s adamant he wasn’t and Philip won’t take the accident seriously. I think they’re both concealing the truth from me.’

  Celia appeared more distressed than I expected. I could only imagine it was because there were other things she hadn’t told me.

  ‘This isn’t just about Philip, is it?’

  I could see the conflict between her loyalty to my father and the attraction of a sympathetic listener. She came down in my favour.

  ‘Philip’s illness has changed Geoffrey. He talks less, he’s restless, more prone to anxiety, as if some kind of conflict was going on inside him. Have you noticed it? I’ve tried to get him to talk about it but if I bring up the subject he pushes me away. I can’t let it go on like this, I’ve got to do something but I don’t know what. Will you help me, Danny?’

  I saw that for the first time, Celia did not know how to deal with my father. I wanted to help her but I had no more idea what to do than she did.

  *

  That evening, I walked with my father along Trinity Street to the Union. He had been invited to speak to one of the University’s political societies. We were expected at seven-thirty. I could hear Great St Mary’s chiming the half-hour as we entered the building. My father’s respect for punctuality had not diminished.

  ‘Good evening, sir. This way, please.’

  We were
led to a room behind the debating chamber. It was already full of undergraduates. A thin young man with lank, fair hair came forward to meet us.

  ‘Professor Stevens? How good of you to come.’

  My father was introduced to a tall, stooping man in his early forties. At first glance there was nothing memorable about him but a few moments in his presence brought an undeniable if grudging respect. If there was little that was obviously likeable about Watson-Jones, there was no doubting the sense of power that clung to him. Where it came from I never knew but it was part of the man, and whatever his political fortunes it never deserted him.

  ‘We’ve not met. My name’s Simon Watson-Jones. I see we’re in opposite camps tonight.’

  They shook hands. The fair-haired young man looked at his watch and asked if they would accompany him to the platform.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen. If I may call you to order.’ The room fell silent as people took their seats. ‘It’s my great pleasure to welcome our speakers tonight, Professor Stevens of this University, nuclear physicist and Nobel prizewinner, and Simon Watson-Jones, alumnus of Peterhouse, barrister-at-law and member of His Majesty’s loyal opposition.’

  The topic to be discussed was, he knew, close to the heart of the Society. Was a Future Without War a Dream or a Reality? The Society had invited a prominent physicist and politician to put their views. The politician had elected to speak first.

  Watson-Jones got to his feet, withdrew his papers from his pocket and faced his audience.

  Only in his dreams, he said, could he see a future without war or the threat of war. Society survives not on dreams but on the acceptance of the world as it really is. In 1939, when political activity had failed, war was inevitable. Were we wrong to fight Hitler? To defend our morality, our institutions, our way of life forged over centuries of our proud history? Of course not. Would we decline to fight if these selfsame institutions and values were threatened again? Of course we wouldn’t.

  He was not advocating war – he abhorred its horrors and its suffering as much as the next man – but he was a realist who accepted that the defence of right called for vigilance and, sometimes, for sacrifice. That call would never go away.

  Democracy had triumphed in 1945. Now we faced a threat that challenged the new society we were trying to build out of the ashes of the old. If we had freed ourselves once from the dictator, we must always be prepared to defend our freedom with our lives.

  Was it credible that in the Soviet Union human nature would be perfected by the dogmas of Marxist-Leninism, that social justice would reign for ever more, that all men would live in harmony? Or were such propositions lies and propaganda? Wasn’t it more likely that the socialist experiment in Russia was cover for an arrogant adventurism that wanted to impose its own anti-human society in as many countries of the world as it could?

  He would leave the audience to make up its own mind but he knew where he stood on the issue. Faced with this threat of communism, a system that must take advantage of any weakness in its opponents, could we truly allow ourselves to renounce war? Could we put at risk by such a quixotic gesture our hard-won freedoms? Did we honour those who had sacrificed their lives by saying that their experience was so terrible that it must never be repeated?

  ‘They died in defence of freedom. We must always be prepared to do the same. If that means developing our own nuclear weapons, and in my view it does, then so be it. Such is the price of peace, and I for my part am prepared to pay it.’

  He sat down to rapturous applause from a section of his audience. Others, I noticed, were more restrained in their appreciation of what he had said.

  I had not asked what my father was going to say, nor had he told me. I was struck by his caution, both in content and delivery, as if he was testing his audience, learning his new role of social commentator by a set of careful steps. He warned that we should not see the Soviet Union as inevitably hostile, despite its Marxist ideology and its political posturings.

  ‘We must not forget,’ he said, ‘that the Soviet Union too has been devastated by war. Their economy is shattered, their people exhausted. The production of nuclear weapons demands not simply a high level of scientific skills, which they possess, but also advanced industrial techniques and resources. There is no evidence to suggest that these exist in that country. For these reasons alone, and there are many others, we must not allow ourselves to see the Soviet Union as our inevitable enemy. We have fought one enemy for more than five years. We must have the courage now not to replace him with another, but to try to create a new era without enemies, a time when we can use the great scientific advances of the last few years to provide a better life for all of us. That is the greatest task that faces us. We must use our experience of the last five years to free our society from the stultifying shackles of war.’

  When he finished, there was a round of applause. My father and Watson-Jones agreed to take questions.

  Was it not the declared ambition of the Soviet Union to establish communism and eliminate capitalism?

  Yes, but one should not confuse the rhetoric of the ideologue with the practical necessities of running a modern state. In other words, we shouldn’t always believe everything the Soviets said. Soviet policy need not be driven by Soviet ideology.

  The question persisted in other forms and it was easy to see where the mind of the audience lay. Wasn’t the Soviet state’s basic philosophical position one of enmity to Western systems? Wasn’t it prudent to work on worst-case scenarios, Russia as the new enemy, rather than find ourselves surprised as we had been in the ’thirties?

  Yes, our experiences before the war had taught us always to be vigilant, but we must not fall prey to the enemy’s propaganda. That, after all, is what he wanted us to do. Scepticism was as necessary a quality in a democracy as preparedness.

  Wasn’t the present expansion of communism throughout Eastern Europe, possibly into Italy and France, even the spread of sympathizers, fellow-travellers, within the United Kingdom, a threat in itself? My father saw it more as a test of the West’s democratic institutions, which he believed were strong enough to resist such a threat.

  How secure was his forecast that it would be five years before the Russians exploded a nuclear device?

  Oh, very secure. The Soviets were miles behind the West. Five years was probably an optimistic assessment of when they might explode their bomb.

  ‘Time for one last question,’ the fair-haired man said.

  I saw a hand come up at the back of the room. A young woman stood up.

  ‘Professor Stevens, do you not feel guilty at the potential for destruction that you and your colleagues have unleashed upon the world? Have you not made the world a much more dangerous place, where nuclear war is inevitable?’

  The room went still. Up to now the questions had been impersonal. This was different. Watson-Jones looked at my father. For the first time my father’s fluency appeared to stumble. He hesitated before answering, then said slowly, ‘No, I see no reason to feel guilty. Nor do I believe that the discovery and manufacture of nuclear arms necessarily makes the world a more dangerous place. Nor do I believe in the inevitability of anything, nuclear conflict included. Science must progress, that is the scientist’s duty. We cannot look down one particular avenue, like that of nuclear physics, and say oh dear, that route might lead to unknown dangers so we had better ignore it and pass by. Such a course of action is irresponsible and cowardly. The scientist is an explorer. His task is to map ground never trodden before. Until he has been down a particular path, he will not know what he might find. No paths can be closed to him. I believe that the modern state must respond with appropriate political mechanisms for the control of these discoveries because in some cases, yes, there are dangers. The idea of a nuclear war is abhorrent. But we cannot banish the possibility of conflict by placing a moral block on scientific progress. What we need is growth in the philosophy and practice of contemporary political systems to allow us to control our lives in a
proper and responsible manner, giving more strength to the institutions we believe in.’

  There was a moment’s silence, followed by a riple of lukewarm applause.

  8

  RUTH

  She is walking in birchwoods with Yuri Miskin, one of the two assistant deputy directors at the Institute. Yuri has suggested they meet. There is nothing unusual in this. They have been colleagues, friends and occasional lovers for more than five years.

  Miskin is a shy man with a permanent look of surprised innocence behind his glasses. She fears for him because he appears ill-equipped to deal with the world of which he finds himself so important a part. But he has survived because he is a good scientist (his theoretical work is of a very high order) and he will survive, she tells herself, because his contribution is essential to the success of their research programme. If Ruth could bring herself to trust anyone, it would be Miskin. But however close they might be, they have never truly opened their hearts to each other. That is an intimacy more dangerous than any other.

  As they walk through the trees, the remains of twigs, stiff with frost, crack beneath their feet. In the distance, the pale sun struggles to burn through an icy mist. It is very quiet. They are quite alone here, which is why they come to this particular spot. Sometimes, in the summer, they have swum in the river and once made love on the river bank. It was not an experience she enjoyed.

  Miskin smiles and puts his arm around her as they emerge from the trees and walk towards the river. Ice is forming at the point where the water meets the land; crystalline slivers, thin and delicate. There is no wind; the surface of the water is undisturbed even by the slow movements of the current. Through the breaks in the mist the sky above them is an arch of the palest blue. Nothing moves. The air is cold.

  She has often wondered about her relationship with Miskin. He is neither a good nor a demanding lover, but she feels a sympathy towards him, and yields herself out of a need for companionship more than desire. Her own satisfaction when he makes love to her is small. He leaves her untouched, but sleeping with him is a small price to pay for his continued friendship.