High table life continued, as it had when Charles I was conducting another war from Oxford. Sitting on either side of Florey in his long-sleeved MA gown, we inevitably fell into the argument whether Chamberlain would go and Churchill come in.
'I am sure the change is very necessary,' Lamartine gave his opinion. 'Just as it was very necessary for France to get rid of Deladier as prime minister six weeks ago. Paul Reynaud has brought a much more invigorating atmosphere, you can feel it in Paris already.'
'He seems a sprightly sixty-two,' agreed Florey guardedly. 'Indeed, Professor. He bicycles, and does the gymnastic daily.'
'I think barnacle Chamberlain will survive tonight's vote,' I said gloomily. 'The Conservatives will flock into the lobby behind him, because it's part of the public school spirit. If Labour has the guts to force a division at all, with the prospect of exactly that happening.'
'In what research are you engaged, Professor?' asked
Lamartine, politely directing the conversation to his host.
'Have you heard of a substance called penicillin?'
'Never.'
Howard Florey was then aged forty-one. He had thick dark hair parted carefully just left of centre, and an impassive deliberative look. He often smiled, but never widely. He wore soft collars with plain ties and dark suits, and rimless glasses. His quiet voice still showed its salting in the air of Adelaide. He could be aloof. He distrusted England and the English since arriving in Oxford as a Rhodes scholar in 1922, but he had mellowed like the Oxford stone and was tipped to emerge from donnish intrigues as the next Provost of Queen's. I thought during the war that he bore a resemblance to the bandleader Glen Miller. But perhaps it was only the glasses.
'It's the juice of the mould _Penicillium notatum,_ which has been found to kill staphylococci in the lab,' Florey explained.
'Staphylococci, which are resistant to sulphonamides,' reflected Lamartine. 'Might it be used on patients?'
'It's wretchedly difficult stuff to extract. All we've got is a few grains of brownish powder. But we've found it's completely non-toxic to animals, which is encouraging.'
'Might I be allowed a specimen of this mould?' Lamartine asked. 'It sounds quite interesting.'
'If you wish,' Florey said amicably. 'Drop into my labs before you go, and I'll let you have some reprints of the published papers and a note on our work in progress. The mould travels excellently.'
That night in the House of Commons, Labour found the courage to force a vote. According to the Oxford History a quarter of a century later, Labour's mind was made up by the female MPs of all parties, who decided in their room to divide the House if nobody else would. I hope the story is true. I have long believed women more practical in misfortune than men. I bade farewell to Lamartine on the Thursday. On the morning of Friday, May 20, the elderly maid in my north Oxford lodgings brought early tea with the news that the wireless said Germany had invaded Belgium. 'Just like last time,' she added. 'They'll never learn.'
Holland was invaded, too. That Holland was conquered in five days was bemusing to Britain. We all thought the Dutch needed simply to open the dykes for the Germans to be bogged down or drowned. Prime Minister Churchill offered us blood, toil, tears and sweat. But the fighting was still, as Chamberlain had said of the Czechs, comfortably in a far away country between people of which we knew nothing. About eleven in the morning of Wednesday, May 22, Professor Ainsley appeared at the Fungus Institute unannounced.
'It's this bloody man Lamartine,' he began as I poured him a cup of tea. We sat on laboratory stools, alone amid sufficient germs to depopulate Oxfordshire overnight. 'Elgar, you've got to go to France.'
This was hardly cheering news. The fighting was then round the names graved on British war memorials-Arras, Cambrai, Bapaume. That very morning the Wehrmacht panzers had reached the Channel near Etaples, our base in the Great War, its geometrical grey forest of British headstones washed with the salty winds across the estuary of the River Canche. 'Sugar?' I asked.
'No, thanks. Given it up for the duration. My kids have my ration. You seem to have dropped something of a danger, Elgar. I passed on to Sir Edward Mellanby at the Medical Research Council what you told me about giving Lamartine a specimen of penicillin mould. Obviously, Mellanby's interested in Florey's work across the road-though I must say he doesn't seem to give it much urgency. But he doesn't want a bit of the mould, plus full instructions for growing it and extracting the penicillin, floating round France at this particular moment.'
'Isn't Mellanby being overdramatic?' I felt resentful, because it was Florey's fault Lamartine had left with the specimen, not mine. But it seemed no moment to argue. 'Penicillin is hardly another sulphonamide.'
'Yes, but unlike sulphonamide, it's active in the lab against the staphylococcus and the causative organism of gas gangrene,' replied Ainsley forthrightly. 'So who knows its potential in war wounds? Anyway, some high-up politico has been informed-most foolishly, in my view-and ordered us to get it back.'
'But can't you simply telephone Lamartine? Or somebody at our Paris Embassy?'
'That's exactly what we can't do. He seems to have disappeared.'
'How extraordinary.'
'Things seem somewhat disorganized at the Institut Duhamel,' he continued drily. 'I suppose we can't blame them, if they're at panic stations. But you know about penicillin, Elgar. And you know Lamartine by sight. You've got to cross the Channel and stop the mould falling into the wrong hands.'
'German hands?' I looked even more surprised.
Ainsley gulped down his unsugared tea, his expression wry from more than its bitterness. 'Your friend Lamartine is a bit of an odd fish. We've just found out that he was once mixed up with the Croix de Feu-Colonel de la Rocque's outfit, French-style fascism. Lamartine should never have been allowed to reach the position he did. He may have gone to earth, waiting to hand over his little present when the Nazis arrive.'
'They won't penetrate to Paris, surely?' I objected. 'They didn't last time.'
'They did in 1870. And the parallel with the Franco-Prussian War may be closer than with the last one.' Ainsley glanced at me sideways. 'A couple of days ago, the Cabinet decided we might have to pull Gort's army out.'
'Bring them home?' I was shocked. 'The French didn't care for that, surely?'
'The French don't know. I was let into the secret because we may have to open our bag of tricks.' He nodded round the lab.
'But what about the Maginot Line?'
'The Maginot Line is as irrelevant to the progress of this war as Napoleon's tomb,' Ainsley replied shortly.
When Ainsley had left in his official car, I crossed the road to the Sir William Dunn Laboratories (there was an Oxford variety as well as a Cambridge one). I had never before intruded on Florey there. I gathered that he was a good professor, captaining his team as well as initiating its research, understanding his staff's problems inside the laboratory, and out-which were often the most important ones for successful work. He shunned publicity, but enjoyed that sublimest of professorial gifts, of being able to raise money easily and in large quantities. I found him sitting in his room in his white coat.
'Doesn't look much like a weapon of war, does it?' he said quietly when I had explained Ainsley's visit. He picked from his desk a conical flask stoppered with cotton wool, the fluffy, greenish-white mould inside lying like felt on the dark fluid of its broth.
'You haven't even tried it as a cure for infected mice yet, have you?'
'I'm going to this weekend. Fortunately, I didn't let on to Lamartine. I've a difficult job, judging the right dose. Did you know, the Americans gave sulphonamide with quinine for pneumonia at New Rochelle University back in 1919? It didn't work, so they abandoned it. They fixed the dose too low, I suspect. We haven't much penicillin here to play with, but if I inject too little I won't get a decisive result. Then no one outside these four walls will have any further interest in penicillin, and won't be prepared to give us hard cash to keep up the work on it.'