Authors: William Nicholson
Hugo retreated to the kitchen and made himself scrambled egg on toast. He ate alone, reading the sports pages of the newspaper, lingering attentively over the cricket.
Hugo Caulder thought of himself as a straightforward, uncomplicated, decent sort of person, not unduly clever, but well up to doing what was required of him. He knew he would never be a captain of industry like his father, but he was proud of the success of his wine business, and proud of his delicately pretty wife. It was her yielding softness he had fallen in love with, the way that she made him feel strong and protective. She had taught him that their marriage was made special by a shared sensitivity. ‘Hugo and I can read each other’s thoughts,’ she liked to say, ‘because we always think the same way.’
The chief virtue in their household was ‘quietness’. The chief vice was ‘noisiness’. How, Hugo wondered, would Pamela Avenell fit in?
So far he had not found the right opportunity to broach the plan to Harriet. It had been easy to say to Larry, his friend and partner, ‘Yes, of course we’ll have Pammy to stay. We’d love it.’ He was also aware that the prospect rather cheered him. He had known Pammy almost all her life, he was fond of her, and she was extremely pretty. Harriet, however, might see things differently.
When he had finished his solitary supper, he returned to the darkened front room.
‘I really am the most useless wife in the world,’ whispered Harriet from her low chair.
‘You know it’s not your fault,’ said Hugo loyally, ‘and so do I. What’s so rotten about it is the way it makes you feel guilty. I should think you hate that.’
‘I do, darling. How well you know me.’
‘You know what?’ He spoke as if the idea had just come to him. ‘What we need is some help in the house. Not full-time, just for those occasions when you’re having a quiet day and I’m tied up at work.’
‘I don’t see how,’ said Harriet. ‘Emily, sweetheart, don’t strain your eyes.’
Hugo then floated the Pamela plan. Harriet, who had thought they were talking in general terms, was caught off-guard by such a specific proposal.
‘But we’re so happy here,’ she said, ‘just being us. It’s all my fault for being so silly and feeble.’
‘There you go again, blaming yourself.’ Hugo spoke with loving firmness. ‘You’re not silly and feeble, you’re ill. You need rest, and you need help.’
‘Do you think so?’ Harriet found herself puzzled as to how to counter this argument.
‘And if we don’t like having her, she can be sent away again.’
In this way Hugo gained his point, and it was agreed that Pamela would come, and occupy the spare room beside the room called ‘John’s room’, after the baby who had not lived to use it.
*
From the moment Pamela entered the house it was as if a bright light had been switched on. She was excited, and lovely, and determined to please.
‘What a pretty house! Oh, aren’t you lucky to live in London! Is that your cat? I adore cats. Oh, isn’t it dark in here! That is
such a beautiful portrait, he’s really caught your delicate beauty, hasn’t he? And you must be Emily. I’m Pamela. I’ve brought you a little present, nothing really. It’s a doll who has all these different outfits she can wear. Oh, look at your garden! Do you sit out in it all summer long?’
Both Harriet and Emily reeled a little under the impact of Pamela’s enthusiasm, but on the whole she was a success.
‘You can’t imagine how happy I am to be here,’ she said to Hugo, sitting with him later. Emily and Harriet had both gone to bed. ‘Your wife is so lovely.’
‘I think so too,’ said Hugo, smiling.
‘Is it all right to smoke?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘If you don’t mind me asking,’ said Pamela, lighting up a cigarette, ‘what is it she suffers from?’
‘We don’t really know,’ said Hugo. ‘She gets tired very easily. In some ways perhaps she’s oversensitive. Also we had a loss in the family, a child. She’s never really got over it.’
‘That is so sad.’
‘He was stillborn, six years ago. You may hear her speak of him. We called him John.’
‘Six years ago!’
‘Harriet feels things very deeply.’
Pamela gazed at him, and he could see that she didn’t really understand. The odd thing was that under the impact of her sceptical smoke-blurred gaze he found he didn’t really understand either.
‘Well, anyway,’ said Pamela, settling down in Harriet’s reclining chair, curling her legs beneath her. ‘Now that I’m here you must tell me what I can do to help.’
Hugo thought how amazingly unlike Harriet she was. Where Harriet was muted and shadowed, Pamela was bright. Where Harriet was droopy, Pamela was coiled, full of energy, as if she
was ready to spring up at any moment. She looked so like her mother, but she was also entirely herself. The child he had watched grow up was now a self-possessed, almost frightening, young woman. And she was so beautiful.
‘It’s mostly things to do with Emily,’ he said. ‘For example, we need someone to take her to her dance class tomorrow evening.’
‘Oh, bother,’ said Pamela. ‘Tomorrow’s no good. I fixed to go out with my friend Susie.’
‘So are you going to say it?’ said Rupert Blundell.
‘Say what?’ said Mountbatten.
‘The thing you can’t say.’
‘Oh, that. Yes, I shall say that. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?’
A cluster of senior officials strode down Horse Guards Parade from the Cabinet Office to the Old Admiralty Building, on this cool and overcast spring afternoon. They were the members of the group set up at Mountbatten’s request, known after some juggling with word order as the Joint Inter-Services Group for the Study of All-Out War, or JIGSAW. The group included senior scientific adviser Sir Solly Zuckerman, representatives of all three services, the Department of Defence and the Home Office, and lesser advisers, of whom Rupert Blundell was one. Today they were convening in the Admiralty cinema to brief a much larger assembly of ministers and civil servants on current defence plans.
The cinema audience was addressed by the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Norman Brook; by the Minister of Defence, Harold Watkinson; and by the Chief of the Defence Staff. It fell to Mountbatten to paint a word picture of the threat the nation faced. He took as his example the city of Birmingham.
‘Let us suppose,’ he said, ‘a single bomb of one megaton strength is detonated at an altitude of 2,500 metres above the city. The impact would be as follows. First, an intense flash of light, accompanied by a pulse of X-rays that would kill everyone within two miles, and a pulse of heat that would set fire to everything combustible within ten miles. Then a fireball would form above Birmingham that would be so bright it would blind people up to fifty miles away. Then the blast wave would ripple outwards, flattening everything within one mile, and all non-reinforced buildings for five miles. Then hurricane-force winds would be generated out from the explosion, followed a few seconds later by an inward suction of tornado force, over a three-mile area, pulling people and objects into the heart of the inferno. The multiple fires ignited by the flash would burn up all available oxygen. One-third of the inhabitants would die instantly; another third would be seriously injured; the survivors would be contaminated by poisonous radiation. All the city’s hospitals would be destroyed. All rescue services that survived would be overwhelmed. There would be no water, no electricity, no phones. Birmingham would have ceased to exist. And all this with one relatively modest thermonuclear device.’
The audience in the Admiralty cinema listened in silence.
‘We are therefore obliged to conclude,’ said Mountbatten, ‘that if there is ever a full exchange of nuclear weapons this nation will cease to exist.’
Harold Watkinson took over the podium to explain the current government’s policy on defence.
‘Broadly speaking, the policy remains as laid down by Churchill in ’54. The conclusion reached then was that effective civil defence, bunkers and so forth, was not practical. A facility does exist, and has recently become operational, to house the government in the event of a nuclear attack. To do the same for the whole population is out of the question. HMG’s policy there-fore
rests on the threat of retaliation by our own nuclear forces. In short, our policy is to deter nuclear attack, not to survive it.’
In the space allocated for questions, a civil servant in the audience raised the issue of the American nuclear forces stationed in Britain.
‘What would happen,’ he asked, ‘if the Soviets had reason to believe the Americans were planning to attack them? Would they not move to destroy the American weapons in Britain first, since they represent the closest threat?’
‘Undoubtedly,’ said Mountbatten. ‘If nuclear war were ever to break out, Britain would be in the front line.’
‘In which case,’ pursued the questioner, ‘what powers do we have to restrain the United States from provoking a nuclear exchange?’
‘We have hope,’ said Mountbatten, ‘and we have prayer.’
Sir Norman Brook protested.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘Let’s show more respect to our allies. They are as aware as we are of the catastrophic consequences of a nuclear war. We have excellent relations with the Kennedy administration. As for our own vulnerability, we rely, as the Chief of Defence Staff has made clear, on the effectiveness of our deterrent force. As of the Defence Committee meeting of early March, later approved by Downing Street, and established as the basis of Bomber Command’s strategic policy, we have a guaranteed second-strike capability to destroy fifteen of Russia’s largest cities. We believe that constitutes an unacceptable level of risk to the Soviet Union.’
Mountbatten now returned to the podium.
‘You will understand, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘that we are in the land of faith. We must have faith that no commander, British, Russian, or American, would ever seek to be the first to launch a nuclear strike. As Chief of the Defence Staff I tell you plainly: Britain can never win a nuclear war. Our country is too small,
and the bombs are too big.’
After the briefing was over Harold Watkinson showed some irritation with Mountbatten.
‘I must say, Dickie, was it necessary to be so strong on the doom? I really don’t see how it helps.’
‘I’m not a politician, Harold,’ said Mountbatten. ‘I don’t have to tell lies.’
Later, in his office with Rupert Blundell and his personal secretary Ronnie Brockman, he said, ‘Well?’
‘Not bad,’ said Rupert.
‘What else should I have said?’
‘That our possession of nuclear weapons makes us less, not more, safe.’
‘Well, damn it! I came pretty bloody close! I said we were in the front line.’
‘But not that we should give up nuclear weapons altogether.’
Mountbatten sighed.
‘Oh, Rupert. You know the game as well as I do. There’s no going back now.’
‘You know what Oppenheimer called the first atom bomb test? Trinity. And you know what the Western church and the Eastern church fought over so badly, back in the eleventh century, that they split for ever? The Trinity. It’s a theological conflict.’
‘I don’t know that that follows, you know.’
‘That was the start of nine hundred years of schism. Nine hundred years of not understanding each other. Russia is steeped in Eastern Orthodoxy. They don’t think the way we think.’
‘Even so, Rupert, I don’t see what’s to be done about it.’
‘All we ever talk about,’ said Rupert, ‘is the hardware. It just frustrates me that no one ever asks the big questions.’
‘The big questions?’ Mountbatten turned to Ronnie Brockman.
‘Dig out my “Aim for the West” memo, Ronnie. Get Rupert a copy. How long ago did I write that?’
‘Must be three or four years, sir. When you were still at the Admiralty.’
‘Only a few thoughts that don’t get very far,’ said Mountbatten to Rupert. ‘Went down like a lead balloon, of course. But it might interest you.’
*
As Rupert left Whitehall at the end of that afternoon, his mind continued to tug away at the conundrum of deterrence. The committee members of JIGSAW argued over scenarios of war and survivability, but he was becoming increasingly convinced that the real question was philosophical, even religious. In Henry Kissinger’s book on nuclear weapons policy he had underlined a sentence that read:
Our feeling of guilt with respect to power has caused us to transform all wars into crusades
. Mountbatten had said it himself: ‘We are in the land of faith.’
These thoughts were playing in his mind as he walked across St James’s Park, briefcase in one hand and a rolled umbrella in the other. He rarely thought of the image he presented to idle onlookers, but had he done so he would have accepted that he was the very model of a mid-ranking civil servant. Balding, bespectacled, besuited and middle-aged; wrapped up in his work, even if unable to explain exactly what that work amounted to; shy, unremarkable and unremarked.
He followed the path alongside the lake, past a crowd of ducks round an old lady who was scattering bread, and so approached the bridge over the narrow waist of the lake. By the bridge, sitting on a park bench, was a young woman wearing a headscarf. Ordinarily Rupert would not have paid any attention to a stranger in a park, but as he came near she happened to look up and meet his eyes. He was struck by the simple perfection of her face, a face so pale and unadorned that it seemed to come
from an earlier age. But it was the look in those wide brown eyes that stopped him in his tracks. It was a look of pure unhappiness. Only a moment, but in that moment he saw, or believed he saw, her undefended and truthful self. This look penetrated the private world of his thoughts, and found an echo within him. It was no cry for help, he understood that: it was a glimpse of a resigned but despairing spirit.
She looked down again at once, frowning a little, perhaps annoyed with herself for having given so much away. She wore a long grey woollen coat buttoned to the chin, and sat with gloved hands clasped. Her face was now hidden from him again, blinkered by the headscarf. It was quite clear to him that he had caught her unawares, that she had had no intention of letting him see so deep into her. But for that fraction of a second she had met his eyes without the expectation of any human contact, like a lost soul.