Nothing So Strange. James Hilton
than usual—indeed, he’d given up one of his teaching classes in order to devote more time to his own work.
“Can he afford that?”
“Evidently. Or else he’s making himself afford it.”
“Do you know what work it is?”
“Vaguely. Some sort of mathematics. But you can’t know much about other people’s work nowadays, not when they get past the elementary stage. Even genetics has its mysteries. Why don’t you come and see my mice? I don’t have cats any more—they’re not quick enough on the job. And besides, they’re apt to attract visitors.” He always joked about my mother’s acquisition.
I went up with him. “I wouldn’t disturb him while he’s busy,” he said, as we passed Brad’s door. I hadn’t had any such intention, but the warning made me ask what special reason there was for all the high pressure.
He said he thought something had “happened” at Cambridge. “He goes to the Cavendish there fairly often. He told me after one trip that a physicist was no damned good unless he was also a mathematician, so that’s what he’s doing now, I suppose—in what he calls his spare time…. Come and see these creatures again when you feel like it. Perhaps he won’t be so busy.”
He was, and I didn’t bother him. But one afternoon, inside the College near the Physics Building, I met my mother walking along as if she had far more right to look surprised than I had. She asked if I were going up to see Brad. I replied: “Certainly not. Have you just been to see him?”
“Darling, why ‘certainly not’?”
“Because he hates to be interrupted when he’s at work. It’s a thing I’d never dream of doing…. But I suppose you have seen him?”
“Yes, but not in the way you think. I’ve been to one of his lectures.”
“What?”
“I don’t see any reason against it. He has a beginners’ class—anybody can join who enrolls. I’ve enrolled. It’s interesting. And he explains things so wonderfully. One ought to have something serious in life, oughtn’t one?”
“What does Brad say about it?”
“Brad?…yes…it suits him, doesn’t it?… Or perhaps it’s just that I never did like Mark and I couldn’t go on calling him Mr. Bradley—Dr. Bradley, I mean…. Anyhow, I think the less formal we all are the better. That’s what the trouble is with him—he’s too formal—he doesn’t seem to believe in any pleasure, amusement, relaxation…. But I have an idea I’m beginning to convert him—gradually.”
She looked so adorable as she said it that I laughed. “And he’s managing to convert you a little at the same time, eh?”
No, she answered, he was not converting her—not really. He was only showing her something she had already been aware of in life, or had guessed existed. Physics was a symbol rather than the thing itself. “I’ve often thought I have a rather empty existence—just dinner parties and social engagements and treading the same old beaten path—London, New York, Florida. I’ve never been completely satisfied with it. Even when I was a girl I wanted to be a nurse.” (This was news to me, and it may have been true, but my mother was always capable of reinforcing an argument with some happy improvisation.) “Darling, you at least ought to understand, because you’ve chosen to do something worth while instead of wasting your time as so many girls in your position would. Surely it’s the happy medium we must all strive for. For instance, he ought to waste a little bit of his time, and I’ve quite an ambition to make him do it—I’d love to make him break a rule—just one little rule….”
“Did he break any at the lecture when he saw you?”
“Not him. He’s so different when he’s lecturing. Not a bit nervous—and yet still shy.”
“Did he know you were going to be there?”
“Of course. I enrolled—didn’t I say that? I asked him if he thought it would all be above my head and he said no, it was as elementary as he could make it—he’s not exactly the flatterer, is he?… But never a smile or a look during the lecture—I was just one of his students. And when he finished he picked up his papers and dashed away as if he was afraid of someone chasing him.”
“Perhaps he was.”
“Now darling, are you trying to make fun of me?”
I wondered if I were; it wouldn’t have been surprising, for my mother and I got a good deal of amusement out of each other. But I had a curious feeling that we were both more serious than we sounded, and that the badinage was a familiar dress to cover something rather new in our relationship.
She said, as if it finally clinched the matter: “Well, he’s coming to dinner on October tenth. I did chase him to ask him that. He said he couldn’t make it earlier because he’s working for some examination that finishes on the ninth.”
“But will you still be here? I thought the end of September was when you and Father—”
“We’re staying a few extra weeks this year. We thought it would be nice not to leave you too soon.”
I said I was glad, which was true enough, though of course I knew I’d be perfectly all right on my own.
* * * *
It wasn’t a party on the tenth, but that rare “just ourselves,” with not even a chance visitor after dinner except Julian Spee. Julian was a rising English lawyer; still in his middle forties, he had already taken silk and found a seat in Parliament; there seemed nothing to stop him from whatever he aimed at, which was probably high. He was handsome in a saturnine way, a brilliant talker, unmarried, and an accomplished flirt. He lived in a house not far from ours, facing the Heath, and had formed a habit of dropping by whenever he felt like it, whether we had a party or not. He was sure of his welcome and one knew he was sure. I think he liked my mother more than most women, and she in turn was flattered by his attentions and always willing to give advice about his love affairs. A pleasantly romantic relationship can develop in this way, and it had done, over a period of years. I wasn’t at ease with Julian myself, because I never felt he was quite real, but on the few occasions when he hadn’t treated me as a precocious child I had been aware of his attractiveness. My father, who collected him as he collected all celebrities, once said that in any other country but England you would have taken him for a homosexual, to which my mother replied mischievously: “And in any other country he would have been.” As often it wasn’t very clear what she meant.
My father had got back from Germany that day, tired from the trip and gloomy about affairs over there. He didn’t any longer attend to ordinary business matters, but if something cropped up of a kind in which his personal acquaintance with politicians and diplomats might help, the job was usually passed on to him. I think the Nazis were interfering with some of his “interests”; the State Department hadn’t been able to do much, and because he had once met Hitler during the twenties he’d been called in like a rainmaker after a prolonged drought. But big shots were always apt to disappoint him after a while—Lenin had, and Lloyd George, and Mussolini, and Ramsay MacDonald, and now it was Hitler’s turn. Roosevelt hadn’t yet, but one felt sure he would. My father was too rich to care for money for its own sake (despite the Marazon disclosures that did him so much harm); he knew, as moderately rich men didn’t, how little you could bribe those whose real currency was power, and this in turn made him flatter poor men who became powerful. But of course, because they were powerful, sooner or later they let him know that he had only money. I think now (though I knew nothing much about it then) he must have been having this kind of experience in Germany, and it hadn’t been pleasant.
Fortunately Brad’s mood that night was at the other extreme. With his examination over even he couldn’t help relaxing, the more so under the influence of good food and my mother’s gaiety. Then, somehow or other, when we were in the drawing room afterwards and Julian had joined us, the conversation grew personal and the atmosphere