'Domagk was lucky never to have that problem.'
'It's a hard thing to say at this particular moment, but without Domagk's sulphonamide our mental sights would never have been adjusted to see the potentialities of penicillin. Fleming certainly didn't see a future for penicillin in 1928. Or he didn't think it worth practical steps, beyond using it in a local way once or twice for an infected sinus and an infected eye among his colleagues at St Mary's.'
'Are you working on it full time?'
'Oh, Lord no. Penicillin's only one of our research projects. We've hardly had time to come to grips with it at all these past couple of years. I've a depleted staff, like everybody else with a war on, and we've all the routine work, teaching medical students and all that.' He paused to give a smile. 'Unlike you, who can devote yourself to developing your edible fungi across the road. I hope you can get a mushroom to taste like a turkey. It'll be handy at Christmas.'
Florey understood perfectly well what I did in the Fungus Institute. That he never acknowledged as much was one of his jokes. He made few of them. Some people called him a cold fish. But perhaps Oxford professors lose the facility on appointment, like Trollope's bishops the ability to whistle.
I had two days before travelling to France during the Friday night. Late on Thursday I was summoned to the communal telephone in the hall of my north Oxford lodgings. It was an enormous house built for fecund Victorian dons, as the grey-spired church of St Philip and St James opposite had been raised for their family worship. The hall always smelt of sour milk and cabbage, and the telephone like everything else you touched was coated with a thin layer of grease.
It was Sir Edward Tiplady. He had heard from Ainsley of my expedition. I had discovered they were close friends, serving for some years on a committee planning scientific warfare, of which I had no inkling. 'Jim? You know already, don't you, that Elizabeth's been posted to France?'
'I didn't know she was still there.'
'Would you look her up? She's billeted with a French doctor. A Professor Piйry, at No 6 rue Lascut. That's near the Bois.' He gave the telephone number. 'Just to see if she's all right, don't you know. Things look a little sticky over there. Her mother's bolted back to London. Give her my love. I'm sure you can look after her, should she need it. Good luck, Jim.'
He was trying to be his usual casual, cheerful self, but it did not work, no more than when the old King lay under his care desperately ill. I wondered if the below stairs tales of Elizabeth's parentage were false, or inspired by Lady Tip from hatred of her husband.
24
I sailed from Newhaven to Dieppe in an ordinary cross-Channel steamer, painted grey, blacked out and escorted by a destroyer. There were crates lashed to the decks, the only passengers a hundred or so Servicemen of all ranks, even a red-tabbed general. The journey proved less disturbing than my storm-tossed crossing towards Wuppertal. There were no submarines, no aeroplanes. I found the French blackout lacked the puritanical gloom of our own, where the narrowest chink brought an air-raid warden banging on the front door with that already most tiresome enquiry, 'Don't you know there's a war on?' A comfortable express took me to the Gare St Lazare. I arrived in Paris shortly after eight o'clock on the morning of Saturday, May 25, about the same time as Major-General Spears arrived on Churchill's instructions to put some heart into the French Government-and to convince them that the British Army was not following its traditional tactics in trouble and making a dash for the nearest blue water.
I took a taxi past the Madeleine to the British Embassy in rue du Faubourg St Honorй. I never forgot my first impression of Paris, the smell of coffee and Gitane cigarettes, the advertisements everywhere for Dubo…Dubon…Dubonnet and the lugubrious Nicolas wine man with his fistfuls of half a dozen splayed bottles, the noisy traffic and shrill-whistling policemen, the green buses with people hanging over the taffrail, the pavement cafйs with everyone reading their morning papers. The more important statues and doorways were sandbagged, as in London. There were a good many Army lorries. I noticed at once the sauntering, lost-looking groups on the pavements with suitcases and bundles, refugees which had been pouring into Paris all the past week from Belgium and north-eastern France.
An Embassy official with a retired soldierly air expected me, but could offer little help. 'I suppose you could try the NAAFI in the boulevard Magenta,' he suggested gloomily when I asked about a bed. 'What did you say you'd come to Paris for?'
'To collect a bit of mould.'
He looked lost. The war was becoming too complicated for him.
I decided to make straight for Elizabeth's billet. Another taxi took me between the green billows of chestnuts in the Champs-Elysйes towards the Arc de Triomphe. The professor's was one of the tall, grey, brown-shuttered confluent houses overlooking the sunken railway line near the Porte Maillot. As I went to ring the bell of the highly-varnished front door, Elizabeth herself stepped into the sunshine in her uniform.
'Darling! My God.' I had never before seen her disconcerted. 'But what are you doing in Paris? Were you just leaving?'
'On the contrary, I've just arrived.'
'From England? But everybody here is getting ready to fly for their lives.'
'Surely it can't be as bad as that?' I asked, though feeling abruptly uneasy.
'Haven't you seen this morning's paper?'
'I can't speak a great deal of French.'
'The Belgians are on the point of giving up. The whole French Government has been to Notre Dame to pray for Divine inspiration. That's a terribly bad sign, isn't it? Some people say the panzers will be parked in the Place de la Concorde in a couple of days. But of course Paris has been buzzing with rumours for weeks, the French High Command tells people absolutely nothing. I suppose they're far too ashamed of themselves.'
Remembering Sir Edward's charge, I asked, 'How about yourself? Are you getting out?'
'I can't, until I'm ordered to. It's such a lovely relief, not having to make decisions, isn't it? Where are you staying?'
'Nowhere. My arrangements seem a little disorganized.'
'Then you'd better sleep here.' I protested against such intrusion. 'The professor and madame won't mind a bit,' she assured me airily, being always light-hearted in the disposal of other people's hospitality. 'But what _are _you doing here, instead of growing mushrooms at Oxford?'
'It's rather complicated, but it's to do with an experimental drug which mustn't fall into the hands of the Germans.'
'How thrilling. Jim darling, you are dressed rather peculiarly, aren't you?'
I was wearing my Harris tweed jacket with grey flannels, carrying my flapping umbrella and a small suitcase. 'This is my usual holiday outfit.'
'Jim, you're a darling. I forgot to say how utterly wonderful it is to see you.' She came nearer and kissed me. For the first time she did not make her ceremonial pouting face.
Professor Piйry had left for work at the Franзois-Xavier Hospital, madame was out. I left my bag, explaining to Elizabeth that I must be at the Institut Duhamel before that Saturday noon. 'I'm walking across to my hospital in Neuilly, I'll put you on the right bus at the Porte Maillot,' Elizabeth told me. 'It's so much cheaper than a taxi, and almost as quick. Get off at the Jardin du Luxembourg. Dinner's at eight. I'll explain everything to the professor in French. If the air raid warning goes, you follow the arrows marked "Abri".' She had the calmly practical approach to the war of so many Englishwomen. It must have been a sizable national asset. As we walked in the warm morning along the rue Lascut she talked about her father and mother in England with the simple eagerness of a schoolgirl. 'Archie's still in England,' she told me. 'And he's a sergeant. Isn't that grand?'