The New Men Read online

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  The New Men

  First published in 1954

  © Philip Snow; House of Stratus 1954-2011

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of C.P. Snow to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2011 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  ISBN: 0755120167 EAN 9780755120161

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  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author's imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

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  About the Author

  Charles Percy Snow was born in Leicester, on 15 October 1905. He was educated from age eleven at Alderman Newton's School for boys where he excelled in most subjects, enjoying a reputation for an astounding memory and also developed a lifelong love of cricket. In 1923 he became an external student in science of London University, as the local college he attended in Leicester had no science department. At the same time he read widely and gained practical experience by working as a laboratory assistant at Newton's to gain the necessary practical experience needed.

  Having achieved a first class degree, followed by a Master of Science he won a studentship in 1928 which he used to research at the famous Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. There, he went on to become a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1930 where he also served as a tutor, but his position became increasingly titular as he branched into other areas of activity. In 1934, he began to publish scientific articles in Nature, and then The Spectator before becoming editor of the journal Discovery in 1937. However, he was also writing fiction during this period, with his first novel Death Under Sail published in 1932, and in 1940 'Strangers and Brothers' was published. This was the first of eleven novels in the series and was later renamed 'George Passant' when 'Strangers and Brothers' was used to denote the series itself.

  Discovery became a casualty of the war, closing in 1940. However, by this time Snow was already involved with the Royal Society, who had organised a group to specifically use British scientific talent operating under the auspices of the Ministry of Labour. He served as the Ministry's technical director from 1940 to 1944. After the war, he became a civil service commissioner responsible for recruiting scientists to work for the government. He also returned to writing, continuing the Strangers and Brothers series of novels. 'The Light and the Dark' was published in 1947, followed by 'Time of Hope' in 1949, and perhaps the most famous and popular of them all, ‘The Masters', in 1951. He planned to finish the cycle within five years, but the final novel 'Last Things' wasn't published until 1970.

  He married the novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson in 1950 and they had one son, Philip, in 1952. Snow was knighted in 1957 and became a life peer in 1964, taking the title Baron Snow of the City Leicester. He also joined Harold Wilson's first government as Parliamentary Secretary to the new Minister of Technology.When the department ceased to exist in 1966 he became a vociferous back-bencher in the House of Lords.

  After finishing the Strangers and Brothers series, Snow continued writing both fiction and non-fiction. His last work of fiction was ‘A Coat of Vanish', published in 1978. His non-fiction included a short life of Trollope published in 1974 and another, published posthumously in 1981, ‘The Physicists: a Generation that Changed the World'. He was also inundated with lecturing requests and offers of honorary doctorates. In 1961, he became Rector of St. Andrews University and for ten years also wrote influential weekly reviews for the Financial Times.

  In these later years, Snow suffered from poor health although he continued to travel and lecture. He also remained active as a writer and critic until hospitalized on 1 July 1980. He died later that day of a perforated ulcer.

  'Mr Snow has established himself, on his own chosen ground, in an eminent and conspicuous position among contemporary English novelists’ - New Statesman

  Part One

  A Question of Possibility

  1: Argument with a Brother

  I HEARD the first rumour in the middle of an argument with my brother, when I was trying to persuade him not to marry, but it did not seem much more than a distraction.

  He had brought Irene to lunch with me on a wet, windy morning in late February. The year was 1939, and I was still living in college. As we sat at table in my dining-room the rain slashed against the windows, and once or twice smoke from the open sixteenth-century grate blew across the room. It was so dark outside that I had turned all the sconce lights on, warm against the panelling; in that comfortable light, while the wind thudded against the window panes, Irene set to work to get me on her side.

  I had not met her before, but Martin had mentioned her name enough to make me guess about her. He had first picked her up in London, at one of his richer friends’, and I gathered that she had no money but plenty of invitations. This seemed to amuse Martin, but to me she sounded too much like a shabby-smart girl, who thought her best chance was to find an able husband.

  The more I heard of her, the more anxious I was for Martin – as a father might be for a son, for there were nine years between us. He was only twenty-five, and while other people saw him as stable and detached, the last man to commit a piece of foolishness, abnormally capable of looking after himself, I could not stop myself worrying.

  The day before this luncheon, Martin had asked, without seeming over-eager, whether I would like to meet Irene. Yet I knew, and she knew, that it was a visit of inspection.

  She called me by my Christian name in her first greeting: and, as I poured her out a glass of sherry, was saying: ‘I always imagined you as darker than Martin. You should be dark!’

  ‘You should drink sherry,’ I said. She had the kind of impudence which provoked me and which had its attraction.

  ‘Is it always sherry before meals?’

  ‘What else?’ I said.

  ‘Fixed tastes!’ she cried. ‘Now that I did expect.’

  As we began to eat, she went on teasing. It was the teasing, at once spontaneous and practised, of a young woman who has enjoyed playing for the attention of older men. She had the manner of a mischievous daughter, her laughter high-pitched, disrespectful, sharp with a kind of constrained glee – and underneath just enough ultimate deference to please.

  Yet, despite that manner, she looked older t
han her age, which was the same as Martin’s. She was a tall woman, full-breasted, with a stoop that made one feel that she was self-conscious about her figure; often when she laughed she made a bow which reduced her height still more, which made her seem to be acting like a little girl. The skin of her cheeks looked already worn and high-coloured underneath the make-up.

  Her features were not pretty, but one noticed her eyes, narrow, treacle-brown, glinting under the heavy upper lids. For me, in that first meeting, she had some physical charm.

  Apart from that, I thought that she was reckless and honest in her own fashion. I could not satisfy myself about what she felt for Martin. She was fond of him, but I did not believe that she loved him; yet she longed to marry him. That was the first thing I was looking for, and within a few minutes I had no doubt. I still wanted to know why she longed for it so much.

  She spoke like an adventuress, but this was a curious piece of adventuress-ship. That day she asked us, frankly, inquisitively, about our early life at home. She knew that we had come from the lower-middle-class back streets of a provincial town, that I had struggled through to a career at the Bar and had then changed to academic law and settled in the college. Following after me, Martin had won a scholarship in natural science there, and I had been able to help pay his way. For nearly three years he had been doing research at the Cavendish.

  As we talked, I realized that to Irene it seemed as strange, as exciting, as different, a slice of existence as Martin had found hers.

  She had drunk more than her share of the wine. She broke out: ‘Of course, you two had a better time than I had.’

  ‘It has its disadvantages,’ said Martin.

  ‘You hadn’t got everyone sitting on your head. Whenever I did anything I wanted to, my poor old father used to say: “Irene, remember you’re a Brunskill.” Well, that would have been pretty destroying even if the Brunskills had been specially grand. I thought it was too grim altogether when they sent me to school, and the only girl who’d heard the wonderful name thought we were Norwegians.’

  I told her of my acquaintance, Lord Boscastle, whose formula of social dismissal was ‘Who is he? I’m afraid I don’t know the fellow.’ She gave her yelp of laughter.

  ‘That’s what I should get,’ she said. ‘And it’s much more dismaying if you’ve been taught that you may be poverty-stricken but that you are slightly superior.’

  In fact, as I discovered later, she was overdoing it, partly because she had a vein of inverted snobbery and was exaggerating her misfortunes in front of us. Her father was living on his pension from the Indian Army, but some of the Brunskills could have been called county. In secret, Irene kept up her interest in the gradations of smartness among her smart friends.

  She went on drinking, but, as we sat round the fire for our coffee, she took hold of herself and began questioning me about my plans. Was I going abroad that Easter vacation? When could she and Martin see me again? Wouldn’t I meet them in London? Wouldn’t I join them for a May Week ball?

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t,’ I said.

  ‘Do come. Wouldn’t you like being seen with me?’

  ‘My wife isn’t fit to dance just now,’ I said.

  ‘Bring someone else.’

  It was obvious that Martin had not told her of my wife’s condition. She lived alone in London, and saw no one except me; increasingly those visits were hard to bear.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t want to dance with me. You’re quite right, I’m not much good.’

  ‘It must be seven or eight years since I went to a ball,’ I reflected. ‘Good Lord, time goes too fast.’

  I had said it casually, platitudinously, but a line came between Irene’s brows and her voice sharpened.

  ‘That’s near the bone,’ she said.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I hate the thought of time.’

  Quickly Martin smiled at her and was changing the subject, but she insisted.

  ‘Time’s winged chariot,’ she said and looked at me. ‘Do you like the thought of it?’

  Soon she cheered up, and decided it was time to leave Martin and me together. She made some excuse; she might as well have invited us to discuss her.

  I said goodbye to her in the little passage outside my gyp-cupboard, between the room door and the oak.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve been horribly boring and talked too much,’ she said, as she pressed my hand.

  I passed it off

  ‘I always talk too much when I’m nervous.’ She opened the outer door. Still she could not leave it alone; she glanced back over her shoulder, and called to me: ‘I’m very nervous today, Lewis. Believe me, I am.’

  She was begging me not to speak against her. As I turned back into the room a gust of wind crashed the door shut behind me. The smoke had cleared from the fireplace, the coal was cherry-red in the iron wicker of the grate. Across the hearth Martin’s face was swept smooth in the unfluctuating glow.

  He gave me a smile with his mouth tight and pulled down at one corner; it was a cagey, observant smile that he often wore, and which, together with his open expression and acute eyes, made his mood difficult to read.

  His face was a young man’s, but one that would not alter much until he was old; the skin would not take lines easily, except round the eyes; he was fair, and the hair curled, crisp and thick, close to his skull. He was shorter than I was, and not more than an inch or two taller than Irene, but his shoulders, neck and wrists were strong.

  Without speaking, I sat down opposite to him, then I said: ‘Well?’

  ‘Well?’ he replied.

  His smile had not changed. His tone was easy. It would have been hard to tell how painfully he cared that I should approve of her; but I knew it.

  Our sympathy had always been close, and was growing closer as we grew older. Between us there was a bond of trust. But much of our communication was unspoken, and it was rare for us to be direct with each other, especially about our deeper feelings.

  It was partly that, like many men who appear spontaneous at a first meeting, we each had a vein of reserve. I sometimes broke loose from mine, but Martin’s seemed to be part of his nature, as though he would never cease making elaborate plans to hide his secrets, to over-insure against the chances of life. I was watching him develop into a cautious, subtle and far-sighted man.

  It was partly that reserve which kept us from being direct with each other; but much more it was the special restraint and delicacy which is often found in brothers’ love.

  ‘I think she’s attractive,’ I said, ‘and distinctly good company.’

  ‘Yes, isn’t she?’ said Martin.

  Already we were fencing.

  ‘Does she have a job of some kind?’

  ‘I believe she’s been someone’s secretary.’

  ‘Does that give her enough to hive on, in London?’

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Martin, with an appearance of elaborate reflection, ‘that she shares a flat with another young woman.’

  ‘She must find it pretty hard to keep going,’ I said.

  Martin agreed. ‘I suppose it’s genuinely difficult for them to make a living, isn’t it?’

  He was capable of stonewalling indefinitely. Trying another line, I asked whether he had decided anything about his own future. His research grant ran out by the summer, and, if there were no war (our habitual phrase that year), he would have to find a job. He would get a decent one, but, we both knew by this time, there were three or four contemporaries ahead of him, who would take the plums. His research was sound, so Walter Luke said, who supervised him: but Luke added that, judged by high standards, he was turning out good but not quite good enough.

  I was more disappointed than I wanted Martin to see, for I had invested much hope in him, including hopes of my own that had been frustrated. His expectations, however, seemed to be humbler than mine. He was ready to come to terms with his talents, to be sorry they were not greater, but
to make the best of them. If he believed that he might surprise us all, he hid it. He accepted Luke’s opinion as just. That afternoon he thought the likelihood was that he would get a post in a provincial university.

  ‘If you thought of marrying,’ I said, ‘you couldn’t very well manage on that.’

  ‘I suppose it has been done,’ he replied.

  Then I asked: ‘As a matter of fact, are you intending to marry her?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘It’s not completely out of the question,’ he said.

  His tone stayed even, but just for an instant his open, attentive expression broke, and I saw his eyes flash. They were dark blue, hard, transparently bright, of a kind common in our family. As they met mine, I knew in my heart that his resolve was formed. Yet I could not help arguing against it. My temper was fraying; as I tried not to sound clucking and protective, I could hear with dislike the urge in my own voice.

  ‘I must say,’ I broke out, ‘that I think it would be very unwise.’

  ‘I wondered if you would feel that,’ said Martin.

  ‘She’d be a load on you.’

  ‘Why do you think that, particularly?’

  He had the interested air of a man discussing the love affairs of an acquaintance, well liked, but for whom he had no intimate concern. It was assumed partly to vex me a little; but in part it was a protection against me.

  ‘Do you think that she’d be much good as a professional man’s wife?’

  ‘I can see that she would have her disadvantages,’ he said reasonably.

  ‘You need someone who’ll let you work in peace and for that you couldn’t find anyone worse.’

  ‘I think I could get my own way there,’ said Martin.

  ‘No, you couldn’t. Not if you care for her at all, which I presume you do, otherwise you wouldn’t be contemplating this piece of suicide.’