Free The New Men by C. P. Snow

strolled in the lane outside and he said: ‘Funny what people see in each other.’
    ‘Is it?’
    ‘It’s lucky those two think each other wonderful, because I’m damned if anyone else would.’
    He added, with a thoughtful, truculent grin: ‘Of course, they might say the same of me and Nora.’
    As he walked beside me his whole bearing was jaunty, and many women, at a glance, would have judged him virile. Yet he was sexually a genuinely humble man. He did not believe that women noticed him, it would not have occurred to him to believe it.
    ‘I envy you, you know!’ he broke out.
    ‘Whatever for?’
    ‘You know that I am an innocent sort of chap. Why are you making me talk?’
    For once, he had forgotten about the project. Like me, he had been stirred by the Pearsons’ smile. With his usual immoderation, he was bursting to confide. Confide he did, insisting often that I was pumping him.
    ‘I’ve kept myself out of things when I ought to have rushed in. I thought I couldn’t spare the time from science. It wasn’t ambition, I just felt I had to get on. And I didn’t know what I was missing. So now I’m batting about trying to make up my mind on problems which you must have coped with when you were twenty. I’m frightened of them, and I don’t like being frightened.’
    I said that he had not done badly: he had made a happier marriage than most, while mine had been miserable.
    ‘But you know your way about. So does your brother Martin. Neither of you feel like some little brat with his nose up against the shop window and wondering what he has got to do to get inside.’
    Totally immersed, he went on: ‘I can’t bear being left out of things. There are times when I want to see all the places and read all the books and fornicate with all the women. Now you’re certain where you stand about all that, you’ve had your share. What I want to know is, how do I get mine without hurting anyone else?’
    I thought, in a way he was right about himself: how young he was. But it was more than calendar youth (at that time he was thirty-one), it was more than a life blinkered and concentrated by his vocation. Perhaps he would never lose his sense of being deprived, of being left out of the party – of being outside in the road, of seeing the lights of houses, homes of voluptuous delight denied to him.
    ‘I suppose I shall get my share in the long run,’ said Luke. ‘Somehow I must manage it. I’m damned well not going to die feeling I was too frightened to discover what it was all about.’ He was looking towards the establishment, and the energy seemed to be pulsing within him, so that in the softening light his sanguine colour became deeper, even his hair seemed to have more sheen.
    ‘Wait till I’ve got this scheme to go. There’s a time for everything,’ he said, ‘when we’ve tied this up!’

 
     
10:  A Night at Pratt’s
     
    Back in Whitehall, the Minister plumped in on Luke’s side. It was gallant for a man whose job was tottering, for it meant opposing those in power. It meant acting against Bevill’s own maxims – if those above had it in for you, never make a nuisance of yourself and never go away. For once in his life he disregarded them.
    No one could understand why. With Bevill, everyone looked for some cunning political motive. I believed that, just this once, there was none. Underneath the politics, the old man had a vein of narrow, rigid, aristocratic patriotism. He had been convinced that Luke’s scheme might be good for the country; that may have been a reason why Bevill made enemies in order to give Luke his head.
    A minister likely to be out of office next month had, however, not many cards to play. Probably his single effort in self-sacrifice did not count much either way; what was more decisive was Francis Getliffe’s conversation with Hector Rose. I was not present, but within a short time of that conversation, Rose, against his preconceived opinion, against most of his