Nothing So Strange. James Hilton
our prairie states; he’s working at University College where he got a Ph.D. last year.”
I hadn’t known that before.
“Nice voice,” said the painter.
My father smiled. “It’s remarkable for one thing at least, it sings more readily than it talks.”
“On the other hand, Waring, when it does talk it talks sense. While we were visiting your gent’s room after dinner I asked him what he thought of the landscape in the hall—of course he didn’t know it was mine. He said he didn’t understand why a modern painter would ignore the rules of perspective without any of the excuses that Botticelli had, and I thoroughly agreed with him. I’m fed up with that pseudoprimitive stuff I went in for years ago.”
My father said: “I wouldn’t have thought he knew anything about Botticelli.”
“He knows how to sing too,” said my mother. “I mean how to sing—though I don’t suppose he’s ever been taught. His breathing’s exceptionally good.”
“He takes long walks,” I said. “Maybe that helps.”
Anyhow, the whole evening was a success, after all my fears that it wouldn’t be.
* * * *
From then on I’d see him fairly often, but not to say more than a few words to. I sometimes went to the A.B.C. shop where he had his regular lunch of a roll and butter and a glass of milk, we smiled across the crowded room, or he’d stop to say hello if my table was on his way to the cash desk. Twice, I think, I joined him because there was no place elsewhere, but he was just about to leave, so there wasn’t much conversation. And another time the waitress said when she came to take my order: “Dr. Bradley isn’t here yet. It’s only seven past twelve and he never comes in till ten past. We tell the time by him.” She must have thought I was looking for him.
One lunchtime he threaded his way deliberately amongst the tables towards mine. “I’ve been wanting to ask you something,” he began, sitting down. “I’ve been thinking I ought to return your parents’ hospitality. Of course I don’t have a house where I could very well ask them to dinner…”
“Oh, they know that—they wouldn’t expect it—”
“But perhaps a hotel—I wondered if you could tell me any particular place they like.”
My father liked Claridge’s and my mother the Berkeley, either of which would have cost him at least a week’s pay. So I said: “They really don’t care much for dining at hotels at all…. Why don’t you ask them to tea? I know they’d love that.”
“Tea?… That’s an idea. Just afternoon tea—like the English?”
“My mother is English.”
“Tea and crumpets, then.”
“Not crumpets in the middle of June. Just tea.”
“And what hotel?”
“Does it have to be any hotel? Why don’t you make tea in your lab? Mathews does.”
“Mathews? You know him? We might invite him too.” I didn’t know what he meant by “we” till he added: “Would you help?”
“With the tea? Why yes, of course.”
It was fun making preparations. I had never been inside his laboratory before, or even seen what “Dr. Mark Bradley” looked like on his letter box. It was an ugly room on the top story of the Physics Building, with less scientific equipment in it than I had expected and a rather pervasive smell that I didn’t comment on because there was nothing to be said in its favor and doubtless nothing that could be done about it. I tidied the place up a bit, dusted the chairs, and soon had the kettle boiling on a tripod over a Bunsen burner. Mathews came, talked, drank tea, and had to leave for a lecture. My parents had promised to be there by four, and I was a little peeved by their lateness, not because it really mattered but because I could see it was making Brad nervous. He kept pacing up and down and looking out of the window. Suddenly he cried “They’re here!” and rushed out and down the stairs. But when he came back there was only my mother with him. She was full of apologies; she had been shopping and hadn’t noticed the time; and also my father couldn’t come owing to a meeting in the City that had lasted longer than usual. “Of course you shouldn’t have waited for me.” Then she looked appraisingly round the room, sniffing just as I had. “What a jolly little place! How secluded you must be here—almost on the roof! And all those wonderful-looking instruments—you simply must tell me about them.”
There were only a couple of microscopes, a chemical balance, and a Liebig condenser, but he went round with her, exhibiting and explaining, answering in patient detail even the most trivial of her questions, and all without the slightest trace of nervousness or reticence. It looked to me like a miracle, till I remembered that Mathews had said he was a good lecturer.
Then we had tea, and I knew that it was a miracle, because all at once he was actually chatting. She asked him most of the questions I had wanted to ask him, and he answered them all. About his early life in North Dakota, the farm near the Canadian border, droughts, blizzards, hard times, bankruptcy, the death of both his parents before he was out of grade school, and his own career since. She asked him such personal things—had he left a girl in America, did he have enough money? He said there was no girl and he had enough money to live on.
“But not enough to marry on?”
“I don’t want to marry.”
“You might—someday.”
“No.”
“How can you be certain?”
“Because of my work. It takes up so much of my time that it wouldn’t be fair to any woman to marry her.”
“She mightn’t let it take up so much of your time.”
“Then it wouldn’t be fair to my work.”
“Isn’t that rather…inhuman?”
“Not when you feel about your work as I do.”
“You mean as a sort of priesthood—with a vow of celibacy attached?”
He thought a moment. “I don’t know. I hadn’t figured it out quite like that.”
But the oddest thing was yet to come. About six o’clock a boy put his head in at the doorway, grinned cheerfully, and asked if he could go home. “I’ve fed the cats and mice and fixed all the cages, sir.”
Brad said: “You’d better let me take a look first.” He excused himself to us and was gone a few minutes; when he came back my mother was all ready for him. “What’s this about cats and mice and cages? Is that what the smell is?”
He smiled. “I hope it doesn’t bother you. I’m so used to it myself I hardly notice it.”
“But what do you have them for?”
“I don’t have them at all—they belong to the man next door. I keep an eye on them when he’s out. He uses them for his experimental work.”
“You mean—” She flushed a little. “But of course, that’s very interesting. I’d like to see your menagerie. Could I?”
I hoped he would have more sense and I tried to signal danger to both of them, but without effect. I didn’t know him well enough, anyway, to convey signals, and somehow at that moment I didn’t even feel I knew my mother well enough. She had a spellbound look, as if she were eager for disaster. Brad just said: “Sure, if you like, but I warn you, the smell’s worse when you get close.”
We walked down a stone corridor and into another room. It was full of cages, numbered and tagged and placed methodically on platforms round the walls. The cats had had their milk and were sleepily washing themselves; they purred in anticipation and rubbed their heads against the wire when he went near them. My mother