Hopeful Monsters

three Old Testament angels: he had been like a shadow against networks of light. He looked at me now, as he had looked at me then, with his sad yellow eyes. I thought — Perhaps he will not want to recognise me: perhaps he is once more waiting for that bald Russian man with whom he was in the picture gallery in Moscow, in the pub outside Cambridge. Here he was with a group of people I did not know.

I said'Hullo.'

Mullen said 'Hullo.' Then — 'I heard you'd been in Spain.'

Caroline said Tve spent much more time than him in Spain!'

Mullen said to me 'And now I hear that you're working at some university in the north.'

I said'Yes.'

Mullen said 'I wonder if you would like to have lunch with me sometime.'

I said 'I would.'

Caroline said 'What about me?'

I said to Mullen 'How's Kapitsa?'

Mullen looked at me with his almost expressionless eyes.

I said 'But, in fact, I've got to get back to the north tomorrow.'

Caroline said 'You're going back tomorrow?'

I thought — Why did I say that? Then — Yes, I see.

Caroline said 'Well, I'm not going with you to Auntie's if you're going back to Spooks tomorrow!'

I thought I might say — All right, God, thank you.

Mullen said 'You won't stay and have a drink?'

Caroline said 'I will!'

Mullen said 'I was talking to him.'

Caroline said 'Oh you two, have a nice bugger!' She went back to the bar and seemed to be ordering herself a drink.

I said 'Goodbye.' I seemed to be talking both to Mullen and to Caroline. I went out of the pub. I thought — Mullen is my guardian devil?

I was lying on the bed in the room we had borrowed from Melvyn when you got back from your evening with Bruno. I was still feeling very sad. You looked tired. I said 'How was Bruno!' You said 'He was all right.' I said 'I met Mullen.' You said 'Who is Mullen?' I said 'He's the one, you know, who really is a Russian spy.' You said 'Bruno thinks that my father may be alive.'

I said 'Why does he think that?'

You said 'Because he says they're not killing people other than Jews.'

I said 'So what will you do?'

You said 'Bruno will find out what he can. Then I'll see.'

I said 'Let's go home tomorrow.'

You said 'Yes, let's go home tomorrow.' Then — 'Oh God, let's very nearly blow up the world, but not quite.'

When we got back to our home in the north I found Donald Hodge's laboratory equipped with new and more elaborate devices. There were Geiger-counters encased in lead to guard against stray radiation; amplifiers connected to recording machines which had numbers showing on dials. We embarked on yet another series of experiments to check the results of the experiments of others. I sat and made notes of the numbers that appeared on the dials. I thought, as I had thought before — But we are trying to achieve two things here: one is to understand what might be going on in the nucleus of an atom; the other is to understand what is meant by understanding; and in this, of course, we are doing an experiment with mind. That which experiments is in a sense the same as that which is experimented on; but to understand understanding — would there not have to be developed some further level of mind? Perhaps it is just this for which I am waiting in front of these switches and dials — for some stray seed to be encouraged by this I that is watching and to be nurtured in this strange world of mind.

I said to you 'But those old alchemists of yours — did they feel they had to change what it was to be human?'

You said 'I suppose they wanted to know what it might be to be gods.'

I said 'So humans couldn't blame any more what they called "gods".'

You said, 'If you succeed in what you are doing in your work, I suppose we won't have anyone to blame except ourselves.'

I found it increasingly difficult to talk to Donald Hodge about our work. He took up rugby football and cricket: he played these passionately: I thought — He finds it easier to knock around these simple bumps and clicks and balls.

I said to you 'Gods made such terrible things occur.'

You said 'You think we can't make terrible things occur?'

I said 'Chip away at the stone — '

You said 'We can still call "gods" the knowing that there is shape inside.'

I had a letter from Peter Reece, the clergyman I had stayed with years ago in the derelict town in the north. He gave me news of Nellie — the deaf-and-dumb girl whom my mother and I had befriended, whom I had first come across when she had gone bounding down the hill in her tyre. Nellie had been at the school for handicapped children run by nuns. Peter Reece wrote to say that Nellie was about to be inducted as a novice into the order of nuns; she had asked especially if I might be present at the ceremony. Peter Reece had sent his leter to my parents' house: he had not known where I was; nor, of course, that I was married.

I said to you That time when we missed each other in the north of England — '

You said* Yes/

I said 'And then I turned up in Berlin two years later at the time of the Reichstag fire — '

You said 'Yes?'

I said 'I suppose if I had not missed you that time in the north, then I might not have turned up just when it was necessary for you to get out of Berlin; and we might never have had our three days together — or this, or anything.'

You said 'You think you can't say that?'

I thought — Or you can say it about anything.

During the last six or seven years I had often thought I should visit Nellie: I had put it off, I did not quite know why. I had sometimes written to her: I had got letters back in a meticulous, childlike hand. She told me news of her schooclass="underline" the work and the gossip: she had said -1 do not suppose this will interest you. In later years she had ended her letters with 'With love from yours in Christ.' I thought now — Well, yes, but what does this mean: some shaping within the stone?

I said to you 'But if we ever have to go apart from each other again, do you think that this time we will have to leave so much to chance, or can we not make our own arrangements to come together?'

You said 'You think we will have to go apart?'

I said'No.'

You said 'We have been together, yes, for nearly two years.'

I wrote to Peter Reece to say that you and I would both come to Nellie's induction. I wrote to Nellie to say that you and I were married. I said to you 'I wonder if she will remember you.' You said 'Of course she will remember me!' I said 'You only met her

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once.' You said 'So how often did you meet her?' I said 'Oh yes, I see.'

We went by train to Nellie's ceremony. It was a grey cold day. We travelled to the landscape of mudflats and the estuary of the river — to where seeds, in the shape of humans, had once blown across the sea in small boats.

I said 'I don't see why there shouldn't be a world of coincidences as well as a world of cause and effect; why "gods" shouldn't be a word for our knowing this and trusting it.'

You said 'Put ourselves in the way of it? Of knowing what to do?'

I said 'Two years is not such a long time!'

You said 'We've been so lucky!'

We got out at the station to which I had come years ago; from which I had walked with my haversack down towards the river; where had been the derelict railway lines like the trails of dying animals dragging their way towards the sea. Here Nellie, the child Nellie, had gone rolling and bouncing like a seed; there had been a barrier like the edge of the known world; she had got through.

You said 'Don't be sad.'

I said 'Things are so frightening!'

You said 'I suppose you loved her.'

We got a bus from the bridge over the river to Nellie's convent which was some way out of the town. There were the mudflats; there were the ruins of the monastery built by men who had arrived in boats like acorn-cups; there the children had played with their burning-glass in the sun. I thought — The monks brought their own light, which was like fire.