He has never seen a dead person. That part has only happened in fairy tales, not in a cold physics department in an English university thousands of miles from his home. Perhaps it’s all make-believe, it certainly doesn’t feel real to him. Nothing does, not anymore.
Robert has only been in Cambridge for a few months. He was an outstanding student in Harvard and he expects to be equally fêted in Cambridge. His tutor in America recommended that he should work with Rutherford, the genius who cracked the secret of atomic structure. But Robert has never done any lab work before, and Cambridge is suspicious of this boy who claims to be able to understand relativity but who doesn’t seem to know how to carry out simple measurements.
So in his first week there he is given some test tubes to wash. The sink is at the back of the students’ lab, which is in the basement of the physics department. He is not used to washing things. Other people have usually done this for him in the past.
He can’t figure out how to remove the chalky residue from the bottom of the test tubes. He tries scraping it out with a pencil. He tries dislodging it by spraying water into the test tubes – with disastrous results. He stacks the still dirty test tubes in an inexact pyramid on the draining board from which they roll onto the floor and smash, one by one. He watches them all smash without attempting to stop them, before he fetches a dustpan and brush.
All the walls in this lab are tiled, like in a hospital, or an asylum. After the fragments of glass have been swept away, he runs his fingers along the regimented gaps between the tiles and waits for some truth to be revealed to him. Something better than errors and dirt.
In the second week he is given an experiment to carry out. The instructions are typed on yellowed paper lying in a folder on the wooden lab bench and at first Robert is pleased by the idea of carrying out this task, showing them what he can do. But he has always lacked interest in the physicality of Bunsen burners, wooden benches, lead blocks and microscopes. And now he needs to master them all.
The instructions tell him that he must create oil drops by spraying oil between two horizontal electrically charged metal plates. Then choose one of the drops to view through the microscope. Adjust the voltage across the plates so that the oil drop is made to hover motionless in midair by the electric field between the plates counteracting the force of gravity. Calculate the corresponding electric charge on the drop caused by the field. Repeat for different oil drops and analyse the different charges obtained, to calculate the smallest common denominator. This is the charge of an electron, that indivisible kernel at the heart of matter.
Before this, the only electrons he has known have been symbols chalked on blackboards, components of equations represented by letters or numbers. Never real, hovering right in front of his eyes.
But he can’t make it work. The oil canister leaks onto his jacket (his fine wool jacket bought in Boston to impress the English scientists), and when he finally manages to create some oil drops, they either fall too quickly or rise straight up to be caught on the plates and burnt by the high voltage. The battery leaks acid and corrodes the bench, and the lab assistant – a taciturn fellow who doesn’t speak to anyone – shouts at him.
After about a week of fiddling with the battery, he stumbles on the right voltage needed to make the drops hover, but he can’t focus the microscope because his fingers are covered in oil, so that when he looks through it all he sees is a miasmic blur of yellow, like looking at the sun with your eyes shut.
The lab soon smells of frying oil, and the diagram detailing the layout of the equipment in the instructions bears no resemblance to the mess he has created. He lays his head on the bench, and hides his face in his arms to avoid looking at it all.
Back at his lodgings there is a letter from his mother. She has written that she and his father hope that everything is going well with his studies as they haven’t heard from him yet – ‘but maybe you are too busy to write. I picture you in a punt, wearing a straw hat, reading poetry with the other students. There must be so many picnics on the river and May Balls!’
He is assigned Blackett as his supervisor, but Blackett is not much older than him. And worse, he fought in the war, spending years in the trenches.
‘He had a good war,’ another student says – mystifyingly – to Robert who is asked to see Blackett in his office, to explain how he is getting on with the experiment.
A very tall man, with his back turned to Robert, is looking out of the window. It is bright outside, one of the few sunny days since he arrived here. He would like to be out there rather than having to explain himself, and account for his lack of progress.
Blackett does not turn round immediately so Robert has time to scrutinise the back of his jacket, its ordered pattern of checks with lines crossing under and over each other. What will he say? How can he explain?
‘Ah, Oppenheimer, my dear chap,’ now Blackett is facing him, smiling. Robert is confused. He holds out his hand, ready for this miniature battle of strength. But instead Blackett turns back to the window, as if the view outside is more interesting than his new student, ‘How are you finding things here?’
‘Very well, sir!’ Robert can’t resist the temptation to sound enthusiastic.
‘Good, good… And where have you come from, precisely?’
‘New York City.’ Or is Blackett referring to his university? ‘Harvard. I’m a Harvard man.’
‘Good, good. You did study physics there?’
‘Yes sir. Of course.’ What does Blackett think he’s doing here if he hasn’t studied physics before?
‘But you haven’t done much experimental work, I gather,’ and now Blackett turns round again and winks at him. He doesn’t know what to say to this. Is he a joke already? But before he can think of a reply, Blackett has moved on. ‘And your digs? Are they satisfactory?’
‘My –’ what did the man say?
‘Lodgings.’ His manner doesn’t change. He must be the same with all the students who think they are clever enough to come here, and who fail at the first hurdle.
‘Oh they’re excellent, sir!’ He tries not to think of the inadequate bed linen and the breakfasts of pale undercooked eggs.
‘Please, we don’t stand on ceremony here. Just call me Dr Blackett,’ and he smiles again to show that their talk is finished. He is surprised to be invited to the pub with the other students. So far they have been a homogeneous mass, and he has found it impossible to differentiate between them. There are about five post-graduates altogether, and two of them are apparently Rutherford’s students. They refer to him as ‘the old man.’
‘The old man wants you,’ one of them will holler across the lab, and the other one will sigh theatrically.
In the pub he sips his first pint of English beer, trying not to wince at its tepidness. Perhaps in a cold climate like this they find lukewarm beer a comfort. He wonders what they drink in summer, what he himself will drink then, but he can’t imagine being here in warm weather, wearing his shirtsleeves rolled up, having finished the wretched experiment and started on his real work.
One of the students is telling the others a story. This student, Robert thinks his name is Lubbock, is also one of Blackett’s and has nearly finished his PhD. It seems to be a funny story, because they’re all snorting and guffawing into their beer.
‘What do you think of that, Oppenheimer?’ Lubbock grins at him.
‘What?’ he hasn’t really been listening, he can’t follow their accents very well.
‘Oppenheimer,’ one of them jolts him out of his thoughts, ‘where are you from?’
‘New York City. And Harvard university,’ he says automatically.
‘But where is your family from – originally?’
‘Originally? Why – New York.’
‘Oppenheimer,’ the student says again, more to himself than Robert, drawing out the individual syllables as if testing them against some idea in his head.
‘We’re an established family, we’ve been settled a
long time in the USA,’ he tries to smile and jiggles his feet, uncomfortable in their stiff new brogues. It’s not particularly true, Robert and his younger brother Frank are the first generation to be born in America, but there’s no question about their patriotism. He’s managed to convince his landlady to call him ‘Robert’ mainly to avoid any discussion of his family name.
‘So, what’s the answer to the experiment?’ he asks, keen to change the subject. They must have been through the same ordeal as he is now facing. Surely they broke the test tubes, and smeared oil on their clothes. But now they look at him blankly.
‘That’s not the point,’ one of them says. ‘The point is the doing of it. We could tell you the answer but you’d still have to do the experiment.’
He knows the answer anyway, he went to the library to look up Millikan’s original paper. He just wants to know if they will help him, but it seems they won’t.
‘How long have you spent on it?’ Lubbock asks him.
He tells them, and one of them whistles in amazement, ‘That long?’ He nods.
They don’t ask him any more questions after that. They start to talk amongst themselves and after a bit he gives up even pretending to be part of them, and he fishes out a small book of modern poetry from his jacket pocket.
The next day Lubbock comes into the lab and walks over to where Robert is trying to adjust the microscope. ‘There’s a trick to it,’ he says without any preamble, ‘there always is with these things. You have to show it who’s in control. Just like with women.’
‘I don’t need any help,’ says Robert, feeling resentful.
‘There,’ Lubbock ignores what he has just said, ‘that should work for you now.’
And it does. It is a miracle. When Robert looks through the eyepiece (having first cleaned his glasses) he sees a single, perfect oil drop shining in the afternoon sun. He turns to thank Lubbock, but the lab is empty again.
‘I’ve never seen such large error bars,’ laughs Blackett in his office the next day. ‘They stretch the entire height of your graph!’
‘I still managed to get the right answer,’ Robert says, feeling his face flush.
‘Oh, you went to look up the original paper? Probably just as well. You could have derived any answer you like from this,’ and Blackett waves his hand at Robert’s lab book, dismissing it from further consideration.
Robert’s known as ‘the poet’ by the other students but he can’t tell if this is affectionate or not. He goes to the pub with them and once he’s figured out the custom of buying rounds, he makes sure he buys more rounds than is required, so they continue to invite him along. Even though most of the time he sits there reading while they talk around him.
Occasionally, he joins in when their talk strays into more theoretical subjects. He can’t resist showing them what he knows. He is desperate to be known for something. So one evening, when they start to talk about relativity, he has to interrupt.
‘No,’ he says, ‘you’ve got that wrong. Time actually does slow down as you approach the speed of light.’ And he jots down a few equations on the back cover of his poetry book.
One of them says, ‘Perhaps we should just stick to the maths and avoid any sort of description with words. Perhaps we don’t have the right words.’
Robert nods his head, ‘When I want words, I read poetry.’
They don’t know how to respond to that so he’s left alone again as they talk amongst themselves about sport, rugby perhaps. He’s a little unsure about all these English sports which seem so important to everyone here. Blackett rides, he knows that. That’s the only outdoor pastime which appeals to him, he spent last summer staying in a ranch in New Mexico and each morning he’d ride high into the mountains. Once, during an unexpected rain storm, he got off his horse and sat underneath it for shelter, watching the steam rise off its flanks. In the afternoons the women in charge of the ranch would welcome him back and fetch him platters of sweet fruit: grapes and oranges.
‘There was a girl, once –’ he starts, thinking of a friend at school, but she wasn’t pretty enough for this recollection, and was also too friendly and too keen, so he elides her with another face that he can only just remember. A woman at the ranch. Black hair, swift graceful movements. He never dared speak to her.
They glance at each other, ‘You’ve got a girl?’ they ask him.
He nods, ‘She’s beautiful. Smooth hair, eyes the colour of cornflowers…’ but he can’t think of anything else to say about this half-imaginary composite woman. He stops, and takes a gulp of beer.
‘Sounds better than the ones at Girton!’
He nods again, grateful for their assumption that he is telling the truth.
‘Have you seen them?’ Lubbock says, ‘all bespectacled and respectable,’ he laughs. ‘Covered in flannel from head to toe, and not allowed out without chaperones. In case they get impregnated by us in the lecture theatre or in the middle of the street!’
Robert coughs to hide his embarrassment. But they are science students, they should be able to talk about the facts of life. ‘Are there any women here?’ he dares to ask, hoping to sound like a man who is at ease around women. The beer is slipping down quite nicely now. He could get used to it, he supposes.
‘Only wives,’ someone sighs, ‘and wives are no good. Although they will talk to you. But generally they resemble middle-aged horses. Particularly Rutherford’s.’
The others nod, ‘You’ll see them at the departmental party next week. You’re coming to that?’
He is. The fat white envelope with the invitation to this annual party is almost the only correspondence he has received from anyone in England since he moved here.
‘Some of the wives are better than others.’
‘You’re talking about Mrs Blackett? She’s a peach!’
Robert has the chance to verify this for himself because when he arrives at the party Mrs Blackett is standing in the shade of a low, wide apple tree, wearing a dress of some soft fabric. Blackett’s next to her, so Robert is able to go over and be introduced before Blackett spots Rutherford and wanders off.
Robert panics about what to say. She shuts her eyes, in fact her whole face seems closed, she doesn’t seem interested in him so he allows himself to stare at her.
Dark hair, carefully curled and lying close and neat against her head. Long eyelashes. A small mouth. He settles on the mouth, realising now that he hasn’t looked at any women at all, apart from his landlady, since he arrived. Cambridge is a male city. Male students, male lecturers, male servants. His landlady is a great doughy loaf of a woman, with two small currants for eyes. She looks like she should be a capable housekeeper, but she’s not.
Finally Mrs Blackett opens her eyes and looks straight at him. Her eyes are, as he predicted in the pub, cornflower blue. He is not used to his predictions being accurate. He stares back at her. He’s aware, horribly aware, of his messy hair that resists all brushing and sticks straight off the top of his head as if he’s been electrocuted. Right now, he feels as if he has indeed been jolted by electricity, some sort of shock is leaping through his body, making him feel more alive.
‘What did you say your name was?’ She speaks so softly that he has to move closer to her than seems entirely respectable.
‘Oppenheimer. Robert Oppenheimer.’ He clears his throat and waits.
‘How exotic,’ and she smiles at him, ‘how exciting to have such a – different name. So much more interesting than Jones, or Smith or even Blackett…’ Her voice is low with a faint tremor to it, reminding him of the one and only experiment he has ever managed in the lab, making a dynamo spin round in an ever-changing electromagnetic field. The thrilling hum of this motor vibrated through the bench and seemed to kickstart something deep inside him. Is her tremor due to nerves? Robert is not used to imagining the thoughts or feelings of other people. Besides, she has just called him exotic. He knows he doesn’t fit in here, but until now he has felt that this is his own fault, that he la
cks something. He hasn’t realised until now that it is because he is simply different, and that this difference might even be interesting to someone.
She’s close enough to touch. Off to one side, about fifteen yards away, he can see Blackett and Rutherford, hear their loud, cheerful voices. The old man is talking to Blackett at the same time as trying to light his pipe and Robert can hear him cough and can smell the sweet, rich tobacco. The sun is caught by the leaves on the tree above them, and he watches as Blackett’s wife is covered in moving shadows. Perhaps everything will turn out alright in this place, after all.
‘Do you know whose tree this is?’ she smiles at him. Her teeth are as white as china cups.
‘No, whose? Please do tell me,’ he tries to smile back.
‘Newton’s. It’s where the apple fell on his head and he had his brainwave.’
‘Gosh.’ And he is genuinely impressed. This is where it all started, the great synthesis of ideas and observations that makes their subject. The realisation that what happens out there in the sky, what moves the planets around the Sun is due to the same force that makes the apples fall from the tree. He is standing on the very spot that Newton once stood on, and maybe he too will have an amazing idea and change the world.
‘Is it really that extraordinary? Patrick told me all about it, but I’m not sure I truly understood.’ She frowns a little, as if slightly cross, ‘I must confess I don’t usually understand what he says to me, when he talks about his work.’
And now Robert can picture their marriage, Blackett’s endless tiresome chatter about physics and departmental business colliding with her unspoken wish to be left in peace, to eat breakfast in silence, to be adored without words. Robert would adore her, if she would let him.
She runs a hand over the smooth mass of her hair, ‘Why don’t you try and explain it to me? Perhaps they have different ways of explaining things where you come from. I might understand it better.’
The apples on the tree are still small at this time of year, not much more than promises of fruit. He talks to her about Newton’s theory of gravitation, about how everything in the Universe is governed by this same mysterious law, and she smiles every so often, and once she lays a hand on his arm.
The Need for Better Regulation of Outer Space Page 11
