That Hideous Strength Page 5

  ‘Look here, old thing,’ said Mark, suddenly sitting up and throwing his legs out of bed. ‘There’s no good beating about the bush. I don’t feel comfortable about going away while you’re in your present state–’

  ‘What state?’ said Jane, turning round and facing him for the first time.

  ‘Well–I mean–just a bit nervy–as anyone may be temporarily.’

  ‘Because I happened to be having a nightmare when you came home last night–or rather this morning–there’s no need to talk as if I was a neurasthenic.’ This was not in the least what Jane had intended or expected to say.

  ‘Now there’s no good going on like that…’ began Mark.

  ‘Like what?’ said Jane icily, and then, before he had time to reply, ‘If you’ve decided that I’m going mad you’d better get Brizeacre to come down and certify me. It would be convenient to do it while you’re away. They could get me packed off while you are at Mr Wither’s without any fuss. I’m going to see about the breakfast now. If you don’t shave and dress pretty quickly, you’ll not be ready when Lord Feverstone calls.’

  The upshot of it was that Mark gave himself a very bad cut while shaving (and saw, at once, a picture of himself talking to the all-important Wither with a great blob of cotton-wool on his upper lip) while Jane decided, from a mixture of motives, to cook Mark an unusually elaborate breakfast–of which she would rather die than eat any herself–and did so with the swift efficiency of an angry woman, only to upset it all over the new stove at the last moment. They were still at the table and both pretending to read newspapers when Lord Feverstone arrived. Most unfortunately Mrs Maggs arrived at the same moment. Mrs Maggs was that element in Jane’s economy represented by the phrase ‘I have a woman who comes in twice a week.’ Twenty years earlier Jane’s mother would have addressed such a functionary as ‘Maggs’ and been addressed by her as ‘Mum’. But Jane and her ‘woman who came in’ called one another Mrs Maggs and Mrs Studdock. They were about the same age and to a bachelor’s eye there was no very noticeable difference in the clothes they wore. It was therefore perhaps not inexcusable that when Mark attempted to introduce Feverstone to his wife Feverstone should have shaken Mrs Maggs by the hand; but it did not sweeten the last few minutes before the two men departed.

  Jane left the flat under pretence of shopping almost at once. ‘I really couldn’t stand Mrs Maggs today,’ she said to herself. ‘She’s a terrible talker.’ So that was Lord Feverstone–that man with the loud, unnatural laugh and the mouth like a shark, and no manners. Apparently a perfect fool too! What good could it do Mark to go about with a man like that? Jane had distrusted his face. She could always tell–there was something shifty about him. Probably he was making a fool of Mark. Mark was so easily taken in. If only he wasn’t at Bracton! It was a horrible college. What did Mark see in people like Mr Curry and the odious old clergyman with the beard? And meanwhile, what of the day that awaited her, and the night, and the next night, and beyond that–for when men say they may be away for two nights, it means that two nights is the minimum, and they hope to be away for a week. A telegram (never a trunk call) puts it all right, as far as they are concerned.

  She must do something. She even thought of following Mark’s advice and getting Myrtle to come and stay. But Myrtle was her sister-in-law, Mark’s twin sister, with much too much of the adoring sister’s attitude to the brilliant brother. She would talk about Mark’s health and his shirts and socks with a continual undercurrent of unexpressed yet unmistakable astonishment at Jane’s good luck in marrying him. No, certainly not Myrtle. Then she thought of going to see Dr Brizeacre as a patient. He was a Bracton man and would therefore probably charge her nothing. But when she came to think of answering, to Brizeacre of all people, the sort of questions which Brizeacre would certainly ask, this turned out to be impossible. She must do something. In the end, somewhat to her own surprise, she found that she had decided to go out to St Anne’s and see Miss Ironwood. She thought herself a fool for doing so.

  An observer placed at the right altitude above Edgestow that day might have seen far to the south a moving spot on a main road and later, to the east, much nearer the silver thread of the Wynd, and much more slowly moving, the smoke of a train.

  The spot would have been the car which was carrying Mark Studdock towards the Blood Transfusion Office at Belbury, where the nucleus of the NICE had taken up its temporary abode. The very size and style of the car had made a favourable impression on him the moment he saw it. The upholstery was of such quality that one felt it ought to be good to eat. And what fine, male energy (Mark felt sick of women at the moment) revealed itself in the very gestures with which Feverstone settled himself at the wheel and put his elbow on the horn, and clasped his pipe firmly between his teeth! The speed of the car, even in the narrow streets of Edgestow, was impressive, and so were the laconic criticisms of Feverstone on other drivers and pedestrians. Once over the level crossing and beyond Jane’s old college (St Elizabeth’s), he began to show what his car could do. Their speed became so great that even on a rather empty road the inexcusably bad drivers, the manifestly half-witted pedestrians and men with horses, the hen that they actually ran over and the dogs and hens that Feverstone pronounced ‘damned lucky’, seemed to follow one another almost without intermission. Telegraph posts raced by, bridges rushed overhead with a roar, villages streamed backward to join the country already devoured, and Mark, drunk with air and at once fascinated and repelled by the insolence of Feverstone’s driving sat saying, ‘Yes,’ and ‘Quite,’ and ‘It was their fault,’ and stealing side-long glances at his companion. Certainly, he was a change from the fussy importance of Curry and the Bursar! The long, straight nose and the clenched teeth, the hard bony outlines beneath the face, the very way he wore his clothes, all spoke of a big man driving a big car to somewhere where they would find big stuff going on. And he, Mark, was to be in it all. At one or two moments when his heart came into his mouth he wondered whether the quality of Lord Feverstone’s driving quite justified its speed. ‘You need never take a cross-road like that seriously,’ yelled Feverstone as they plunged on after the narrowest of these escapes. ‘Quite,’ bawled Mark. ‘No good making a fetish of them!’ ‘Drive much yourself?’ said Feverstone. ‘Used to a good deal,’ said Mark.

  The smoke which our imaginary observer might have seen to the east of Edgestow would have indicated the train in which Jane Studdock was progressing slowly towards the village of St Anne’s. Edgestow itself, for those who had reached it from London, had all the appearance of a terminus; but if you looked about you, you might see presently, in a bay, a little train of two or three coaches and a tank engine–a train that sizzled and exuded steam from beneath the foot-boards and in which most of the passengers seemed to know one another. On some days, instead of the third coach, there might be a horse-box, and on the platform there would be hampers containing dead rabbits or live poultry, and men in brown bowler hats and gaiters, and perhaps a terrier or a sheepdog that seemed to be used to travelling. In this train, which started at half-past one, Jane jerked and rattled along an embankment whence she looked down through some bare branches and some branches freckled with red and yellow leaves into Bragdon Wood itself and thence through the cutting and over the level crossing at Bragdon Camp and along the edge of Brawl Park (the great house was just visible at one point) and so to the first stop at Duke’s Eaton. Here, as at Woolham and Cure Hardy and Fourstones, the train settled back, when it stopped, with a little jerk and something like a sigh. And then there would be a noise of milk cans rolling and coarse boots treading on the platform and after that a pause which seemed to last long, during which the autumn sunlight grew warm on the window pane and smells of wood and field from beyond the tiny station floated in and seemed to claim the railway as part of the land. Passengers got in and out of her carriage at every stop; apple-faced men, and women with elastic-side boots and imitation fruit on their hats, and schoolboys. Jane hardly noticed them: for though she
was theoretically an extreme democrat, no social class save her own had yet become a reality to her in any place except the printed page. And in between the stations things flitted past, so isolated from their context that each seemed to promise some unearthly happiness if one could but have descended from the train at that very moment to seize it: a house backed with a group of haystacks and wide brown fields about it, two aged horses standing head to tail, a little orchard with washing hanging on a line, and a rabbit staring at the train, whose two eyes looked like the dots, and his ears like the uprights, of a double exclamation mark. At quarter-past two she came to St Anne’s, which was the real terminus of the branch, and the end of everything. The air struck her as cold and tonic when she left the station.

  Although the train had been chugging and wheezing up-hill for the latter half of her journey, there was still a climb to be done on foot, for St Anne’s is one of those villages perched on a hilltop which are commoner in Ireland than in England, and the station is some way from the village. A winding road between high banks led her up to it. As soon as she had passed the church she turned left, as she had been instructed, at the Saxon Cross. There were no houses on her left–only a row of beech trees and unfenced ploughland falling steeply away, and beyond that the timbered midland plain spreading as far as she could see and blue in the distance. She was on the highest ground in all that region. Presently, she came to a high wall on her right that seemed to run on for a great way: there was a door in it and beside the door an old iron bell-pull. A kind of flatness of spirit was on her. She felt sure she had come on a fool’s errand; nevertheless she rang. When the jangling noise had ceased there followed a silence so long, and in that upland place so chilly, that Jane began to wonder whether the house were inhabited. Then, just as she was debating whether to ring again or to turn away, she heard the noise of someone’s feet approaching briskly on the inside of the wall.

  Meanwhile Lord Feverstone’s car had long since arrived at Belbury–a florid Edwardian mansion which had been built for a millionaire who admired Versailles. At the sides, it seemed to have sprouted into a widespread outgrowth of newer cement buildings, which housed the Blood Transfusion Office.

  3

  Belbury and St Anne’s-­on-­the-­Hill

  On his way up the wide staircase Mark caught sight of himself and his companion in a mirror. Feverstone looked, as always, master of his clothes, his face, and of the whole situation. The blob of cotton wool on Mark’s upper lip had been blown awry during the journey so that it looked like one-half of a fiercely up-turned false moustache and revealed a patch of blackened blood beneath it. A moment later he found himself in a bigwindowed room with a blazing fire, being introduced to Mr John Wither, Deputy Director of the NICE.

  Wither was a white-haired old man with a courtly manner. His face was clean shaven and very large indeed, with watery blue eyes and something rather vague and chaotic about it. He did not appear to be giving them his whole attention and this impression must, I think, have been due to the eyes, for his actual words and gestures were polite to the point of effusiveness. He said it was a great, a very great pleasure, to welcome Mr Studdock among them. It added to the deep obligations under which Lord Feverstone had already laid him. He hoped they had had an agreeable journey. Mr Wither appeared to be under the impression that they had come by air and, when this was corrected, that they had come from London by train. Then he began enquiring whether Mr Studdock found his quarters perfectly comfortable and had to be reminded that they had only that moment arrived. ‘I suppose,’ thought Mark, ‘the old chap is trying to put me at my ease.’ In fact, Mr Wither’s conversation was having precisely the opposite effect. Mark wished he would offer him a cigarette. His growing conviction that this man really knew nothing about him and even that all the well-knit schemes and promises of Feverstone were at this moment dissolving into some sort of mist, was extremely uncomfortable. At last he took his courage in both hands and endeavoured to bring Mr Wither to the point by saying that he was still not quite clear in what capacity he would be able to assist the Institute.

  ‘I assure you, Mr Studdock,’ said the Deputy Director with an unusually far away look in his eye, ‘that you needn’t anticipate the slightest–er–the slightest difficulty on that point. There was never any idea of circumscribing your activities and your general influence on policy, much less your relations with your colleagues and what I might call in general the terms of reference under which you would be collaborating with us, without the fullest possible consideration of your own views and, indeed, your own advice. You will find us, Mr Studdock, if I might express myself in that way, a very happy family.’

  ‘Oh, don’t misunderstand me, Sir,’ said Mark. ‘I didn’t mean that at all. I only meant that I felt I should like some sort of idea of what exactly I should be doing if I came to you.’

  ‘Well now, when you speak of coming to us,’ said the Deputy Director, ‘that raises a point on which I hope there is no misunderstanding. I think we all agreed that no question of residence need be raised–I mean, at this stage. We thought, we all thought, that you should be left entirely free to carry on your work wherever you pleased. If you care to live in London or Cambridge–’

  ‘Edgestow,’ prompted Lord Feverstone.

  ‘Ah yes, Edgestow,’ here the Deputy Director turned round and addressed Feverstone. ‘I was just explaining to Mr–er–Studdock, and I feel sure you will fully agree with me, that nothing was further from the mind of the Committee than to dictate in any way, or even to advise, where Mr–where your friend should live. Of course, wherever he lives we should naturally place air transport and road transport at his disposal. I daresay, Lord Feverstone, you have already explained to him that he will find all questions of that sort will adjust themselves without the smallest difficulty.’

  ‘Really, Sir,’ said Mark, ‘I wasn’t thinking about that at all. I haven’t–I mean I shouldn’t have the smallest objection to living anywhere: I only–’

  The Deputy Director interrupted him, if anything so gentle as Wither’s voice can be called an interruption. ‘But I assure you, Mr–er–I assure you, Sir, that there is not the smallest objection to your residing wherever you may find it convenient. There was never, at any stage, the slightest suggestion–’ But here Mark, almost in desperation, ventured to interrupt himself.

  ‘It is the exact nature of the work,’ he said, ‘and of my qualifications for it that I wanted to get clear.’

  ‘My dear friend,’ said the Deputy Director, ‘you need not have the slightest uneasiness in that direction. As I said before, you will find us a very happy family, and may feel perfectly satisfied that no questions as to your entire suitability have been agitating anyone’s mind in the least. I should not be offering you a position among us if there were the slightest danger of your not being completely welcome to all, or the least suspicion that your very valuable qualities were not fully appreciated. You are–you are among friends here, Mr Studdock. I should be the last person to advise you to connect yourself with any organisation where you ran the risk of being exposed–er–to disagreeable personal contacts.’

  Mark did not ask again in so many words what the NICE wanted him to do; partly because he began to be afraid that he was supposed to know this already, and partly because a perfectly direct question would have sounded a crudity in that room–a crudity which might suddenly exclude him from the warm and almost drugged atmosphere of vague, yet heavily important, confidence in which he was gradually being enfolded.

  ‘You are very kind,’ he said. ‘The only thing I should like to get just a little clearer is the exact–well, the exact scope of the appointment.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Wither in a voice so low and rich that it was almost a sigh, ‘I am very glad you have raised this issue now in a quite informal way. Obviously neither you nor I would wish to commit ourselves, in this room, in any sense which was at all injurious to the powers of the Committee. I quite understand your motives and–er
–respect them. We are not, of course, speaking of an Appointment in the quasi-technical sense of the term; it would be improper for both of us (though, you may well remind me, in different ways) to do so–or at least it might lead to certain inconveniences. But I think I can most definitely assure you that nobody wants to force you into any kind of straight waistcoat or bed of Procrustes. We do not really think, among ourselves, in terms of strictly demarcated functions, of course. I take it that men like you and me are–well, to put it frankly, hardly in the habit of using concepts of that type. Everyone in the Institute feels that his own work is not so much a departmental contribution to an end already defined as a moment or grade in the progressive self-definition of an organic whole.’

  And Mark said–God forgive him, for he was young and shy and vain and timid, all in one–‘I do think that is so important. The elasticity of your organisation is one of the things that attracts me.’ After that, he had no further chance of bringing the Director to the point and whenever the slow, gentle voice ceased he found himself answering it in its own style, and apparently helpless to do otherwise despite the torturing recurrence of the question, ‘What are we both talking about?’ At the very end of the interview there came one moment of clarity. Mr Wither supposed that he, Mark, would find it convenient to join the NICE club: even for the next few days he would be freer as a member than as someone’s guest. Mark agreed and then flushed crimson like a small boy on learning that the easiest course was to become a life member at the cost of £200. He had not that amount in the bank. Of course if he had got the new job with its fifteen hundred a year, all would be well. But had he got it? Was there a job at all?

  ‘How silly,’ he said aloud, ‘I haven’t got my cheque book with me.’

  A moment later he found himself on the stairs with Feverstone.

  ‘Well?’ asked Mark eagerly. Feverstone did not seem to hear him.

  ‘Well?’ repeated Mark. ‘When shall I know my fate? I mean, have I got the job?’

  ‘Hullo Guy!’ bawled Feverstone suddenly to a man in the hall beneath. Next moment he had trotted down to the foot of the stairs, grasped his friend warmly by the hand, and disappeared. Mark, following him more slowly, found himself in the hall, silent, alone, and self-conscious, among the groups and pairs of chattering men, who were all crossing it towards the big folding doors on his left.

  It seemed to last long, this standing, this wondering what to do, this effort to look natural and not to catch the eyes of strangers. The noise and the agreeable smells which came from the folding doors made it obvious that people were going to lunch. Mark hesitated, uncertain of his own status. In the end, he decided that he couldn’t stand there looking like a fool any longer, and went in.

  He had hoped that there would be several small tables at one of which he could have sat alone. But there was only a single long table, already so nearly filled that, after looking in vain for Feverstone, he had to sit down beside a stranger. ‘I suppose one sits where one likes?’ he murmured as he did so; but the stranger apparently did not hear. He was a bustling sort of man who was eating very quickly and talking at the same time to his neighbour on the other side.

  ‘That’s just it,’ he was saying. ‘As I told him, it makes no difference to me which way they settle it. I’ve no objection to the IJP people taking over the whole thing if that’s what the DD wants but what I dislike is one man being responsible for it when half the work is being done by someone else. As I said to him, you’ve now got three HD’s all tumbling over one another about some job that could really be done by a clerk. It’s becoming ridiculous. Look at what happened this morning.’ Conversation on these lines continued throughout the meal.

  Although the food and the drinks were excellent, it was a relief to Mark when people began getting up from table. Following the general movement, he recrossed the hall and came into a large room furnished as a lounge where coffee was being served. Here at last he saw Feverstone. Indeed, it would have been difficult not to notice him for he was the centre of a group and laughing prodigiously. Mark wished to approach him, if only to find out whether he were expected to stay the night and, if so, whether a room had been assigned to him. But the knot of men round Feverstone was of that confidential kind which it is difficult to join. He moved towards one of the many tables and began turning over the glossy pages of an illustrated weekly. Every few seconds he looked up to see if there were any chance of getting a word with Feverstone alone. The fifth time he did so, he found himself looking into the face of one of his own colleagues, a Fellow of Bracton called William Hingest. The Progressive Element called him, though not to his face, Bill the Blizzard.

  Hingest had not, as Curry anticipated, been present at the College Meeting and was hardly on speaking terms with Lord Feverstone. Mark realised with a certain awe that here was a man directly in touch with the NICE–one who started, so to speak, at a point beyond Feverstone. Hingest, who was a physical chemist, was one of the two scientists at Bracton who had a reputation outside England. I hope the reader has not been misled into supposing that the Fellows of Bracton were a specially distinguished body. It was certainly not the intention of the Progressive Element to elect mediocrities to fellowships, but their determination to elect ‘sound men’ cruelly limited their field of choice and, as Busby had once said, ‘You can’t have everything.’ Bill the Blizzard had an old-fashioned curly moustache in which white had almost, but not completely, triumphed over yellow, a large beak-like nose, and a bald head.

  ‘This is an unexpected pleasure,’ said Mark with a hint of formality. He was always a little afraid of Hingest.

  ‘Huh?’ grunted Bill. ‘Eh? Oh, it’s you, Studdock? Didn’t know they’d secured your services here.’

  ‘I was sorry not to see you at the College Meeting yesterday,’ said