Nothing So Strange by James Hilton
“It also shows he doesn’t think any less of you for it.”
“I hope so … but I also hope he doesn’t think I really mind other people. What I mean is, I wouldn’t like him to put himself out for me.”
There wasn’t much I could say. It didn’t seem at all likely that my father would put himself out for such an unimportant person; on the other hand, it was rather rarely that we were ever at home without a crowd. Afterwards I found that it was my mother who had arranged it.
That Thursday evening began rather well, despite the fact that our landlord dropped in to dinner uninvited. Or perhaps partly because of it, for the talk got on the subject of painting, and that led to music and then my mother went to the piano and played Chopin. She was a fairly good amateur pianist and liked to play if there were no notable musicians present; she also sang, the diseuse style—you called her an English Yvette Guilbert if nobody else said it first. That evening I thought she sang rather better than usual and I told her so.
“And what does Mr. Bradley think?” she asked from the piano stool.
It was a silly question because it invited flattery and she might have known he wasn’t the type to have it ready. He just looked uncomfortable and walked over to the piano. “I can sing too,” he said.
My mother jumped up laughing. “Why, of course—that’s wonderful. Take over.”
“No, no—I don’t play the piano. Can you accompany for me?”
“Depends what the song is.”
“I expect you know ‘John Brown’s Body’ or ‘Annie Laurie’….”
I then felt a bit uncomfortable myself, chiefly because of the painter, who was ultrasophisticated about art and might consider songs like that very naďve; also I thought he’d think Brad had bad manners in putting a stop to my mother’s singing. I don’t really mind if people have bad manners, but I don’t like an American to have them in front of an Englishman, or vice versa for that matter. My mother, of course, carried it off gaily, starting at once into “Annie Laurie,” and somewhat to everyone’s surprise Brad turned out to have a rather good baritone. Halfway through my mother joined with him and made it a duet. They went on after that, singing other songs together, after which Brad asked her to sing some more on her own, so everything was all right. He said good-night about eleven, leaving the rest of us to conduct the post- mortem.
“Well, well,” said my father. “We haven’t had so much music since Cortot came here.” Maybe he meant that to be ironic.
“He wasn’t so shy this time,” said my mother.
The painter asked who Brad was and what he did. My father answered: “A young scientist from one of our prairie states; he’s working at University College where he got a Ph.D. last year.”
I hadn’t known that before.
“Nice voice,” said the painter.
My father smiled. “It’s remarkable for one thing at least, it sings more readily than it talks.”
“On the other hand, Waring, when it does talk it talks sense. While we were visiting your gent’s room after dinner I asked him what he thought of the landscape in the hall—of course he didn’t know it was mine. He said he didn’t understand why a modern painter would ignore the rules of perspective without any of the excuses that Botticelli had, and I thoroughly agreed with him. I’m fed up with that pseudoprimitive stuff I went in for years ago.”
My father said: “I wouldn’t have thought he knew anything about Botticelli.”
“He knows how to sing too,” said my mother. “I mean how to sing— though I don’t suppose he’s ever been taught. His breathing’s exceptionally good.”
“He takes long walks,” I said. “Maybe that helps.”
Anyhow, the whole evening was a success, after all my fears that it wouldn’t be.
* * * * *
From then on I’d see him fairly often, but not to say more than a few words to. I sometimes went to the A.B.C. shop where he had his regular lunch of a roll and butter and a glass of milk, we smiled across the crowded room, or he’d stop to say hello if my table was on his way to the cash desk. Twice, I think, I joined him because there was no place elsewhere, but he was just about to leave, so there wasn’t much conversation. And another time the waitress said when she came to take my order: “Dr. Bradley isn’t here yet. It’s only seven past twelve and he never comes in till ten past. We tell the time by him.” She must have thought I was looking for him.
One lunchtime he threaded his way deliberately amongst the tables towards mine. “I’ve been wanting to ask you something,” he began, sitting down. “I’ve been thinking I ought to return your parents’ hospitality. Of course I don’t have a house where I could very well ask them to dinner….”
“Oh, they know that—they wouldn’t expect it—”
“But perhaps a hotel—I wondered if you could tell me any particular place they like.”
My father liked Claridge’s and my mother the Berkeley, either of which would have cost him at least a week’s pay. So I said: “They really don’t care much for dining at hotels at all…. Why don’t you ask them to tea? I know they’d love that.”
“Tea?… That’s an idea. Just afternoon tea—like the English?”
“My mother is English.”
“Tea and crumpets, then.”
“Not crumpets in the middle of June. Just tea.”
“And what hotel?”
“Does it have to be any hotel? Why don’t you make tea in your lab? Mathews does.”
“Mathews? You know him? We might invite him too.” I didn’t know what he meant by “we” till he added: “Would you help?”
“With the tea? Why yes, of course.”
It was fun making preparations. I had never been inside his laboratory before, or even seen what “Dr. Mark Bradley” looked like on his letter box. It was an ugly room on the top story of the Physics Building, with less scientific equipment in it than I had expected and a rather pervasive smell that I didn’t comment on because there was nothing to be said in its favor and doubtless nothing that could be done about it. I tidied the place up a bit, dusted the chairs, and soon had the kettle boiling on a tripod over a Bunsen burner. Mathews came, talked, drank tea, and had to leave for a lecture. My parents had promised to be there by four, and I was a little peeved by their lateness, not because it really mattered but because I could see it was making Brad nervous. He kept pacing up and down and looking out of the window. Suddenly he cried “They’re here!” and rushed out and down the stairs. But when he came back there was only my mother with him. She was full of apologies; she had been shopping and hadn’t noticed the time; and also my father couldn’t come owing to a meeting in the City that had lasted longer than usual. “Of course you shouldn’t have waited for me.” Then she looked appraisingly round the room, sniffing just as I had. “What a jolly little place! How secluded you must be here—almost on the roof! And all those wonderful-looking instruments—you simply must tell me about them.”
There were only a couple of microscopes, a chemical balance, and a Liebig condenser, but he went round with her, exhibiting and explaining, answering in patient detail even the most trivial of her questions, and all without the slightest trace of nervousness or reticence. It looked to me like a miracle, till I remembered that Mathews had said he was a good lecturer.
Then we had tea, and I knew that it was a miracle, because all at once he was actually chatting. She asked him most of the questions I had wanted to ask him, and he answered them all. About his early life in North Dakota, the farm near the Canadian border, droughts, blizzards, hard times, bankruptcy, the death of both his parents before he was out of grade school, and his own career since. She asked him such personal things—had he left a girl in America, did he have enough money? He said there was no girl and he had enough money to live on.
“But not enough to marry on?”
“I don’t want to marry.”
“You might—someday.”
“No.”
“How can you
“Because of my work. It takes up so much of my time that it wouldn’t be fair to any woman to marry her.”
“She mightn’t let it take up so much of your time.”
“Then it wouldn’t be fair to my work.”
“Isn’t that rather … inhuman?”
“Not when you feel about your work as I do.”
“You mean as a sort of priesthood—with a vow of celibacy attached?”
He thought a moment. “I don’t know. I hadn’t figured it out quite like that.”
But the oddest thing was yet to come. About six o’clock a boy put his head in at the doorway, grinned cheerfully, and asked if he could go home. “I’ve fed the cats and mice and fixed all the cages, sir.”
Brad said: “You’d better let me take a look first.” He excused himself to us and was gone a few minutes; when he came back my mother was all ready for him. “What’s this about cats and mice and cages? Is that what the smell is?”
He smiled. “I hope it doesn’t bother you. I’m so used to it myself I hardly notice it.”
“But what do you have them for?”
“I don’t have them at all—they belong to the man next door. I keep an eye on them when he’s out. He uses them for his experimental work.”
“You mean—” She flushed a little. “But of course, that’s very interesting. I’d like to see your menagerie. Could I?”
I hoped he would have more sense and I tried to signal danger to both of them, but without effect. I didn’t know him well enough, anyway, to convey signals, and somehow at that moment I didn’t even feel I knew my mother well enough. She had a spellbound look, as if she were eager for disaster. Brad just said: “Sure, if you like, but I warn you, the smell’s worse when you get close.”
We walked down a stone corridor and into another room. It was full of cages, numbered and tagged and placed methodically on platforms round the walls. The cats had had their milk and were sleepily washing themselves; they purred in anticipation and rubbed their heads against the wire when he went near them. My mother looked hypnotizes as she followed him from cage to cage. She asked him how the cats were obtained. “I suppose the University buys them from somebody,” he answered. “Most of them are strays—they’re often half- starved when they first come here. We feed them well, of course—they have to be healthy before they’re any use.”
Without reply see suddenly opened the door of one of the cages. A black and white cat squirmed eagerly into her arms and tried to reach up to her chin. See fondled it for a moment, then put it back in the cage. “What a pity I have to,” she whispered.
“You like cats?” he asked.
“I adore them. Do you?”
“Yes. Dogs too.”
It wasn’t a very intelligent end to the conversation but I could see it was the end. My mother was already putting on that glassy look she has when see is saying charming things and thinking of something else at the same time. I’ve often seen it at the tail end of a party. “I think perhaps I ought to be going…. So nice of you to ask me here and tell me everything. We must have you to the house again soon.”
He saw us down to the street, where Henry was waiting. In the car my mother was silent for a while, then she said: “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have poked my nose in.”
When I didn’t answer she added: “I suppose they have to do it.”
“He doesn’t. They weren’t his.”
She was silent again for some time, then asked suddenly: “Do you think you understand him?”
“Not after the way he talked to you today.”
“Why, what was wrong about that?”
“Nothing, only I’d always thought he was reserved and shy.”
“He is.”
“Not with you. He told you more in five minutes than he’d tell me in five years.”
“Wait till you’ve known him five years. You’ll be a better age.”
“So you think that’s why he doesn’t talk to me as he does to you? Because I’m too young?”
“Perhaps. Darling, don’t be annoyed. And I might be wrong too. I’ve never met scientists before. They must be queer people. The way they can do such things … and yet have ideals. The distant goal—he’s got his eyes fixed on it and he can’t see anything nearer…. And all his hard life and early struggles haven’t taught him anything. He doesn’t realize that even in the scientific world you’ve got to get about and make friends if you want to be a success. He lives like a hermit—anyone can see that. It would do him good to fall in love.”
I laughed. “Mathews says he’s scared of women altogether.”
“Mathews?”
“The man next door to him.”
“Oh yes … the one who … yes, I remember….”
“All the same, though, he wasn’t scared of you.”
She cuddled my arm and answered: “No, darling, it was I who was scared. He’s a peculiar man.”
* * * * *
Ever since schooldays I have kept a diary of sorts, mostly the jotting down of engagements, never anything literary or confessional. Brad makes his appearance the first day I saw him; there’s the record: “Dinner Chelsea Professor Byfleet. Gave a lift home to American boy researching at Coll. Shy.” The entry for the day on which my mother came to tea is similarly brief. Just: “Tea in Brad’s lab. Mother. Cat.” And about a week later comes this: “End of College Term. Cat.”
What happened was that I got home from an afternoon walk to find my mother and Brad in the drawing room. They were talking together and my mother was nursing a black and white cat which immediately she thrust into my arms. “Look, Jane! It’s the same one! Brad just brought it—he’s given it to me!”
“It’s lovely,” I said, and I noticed she had called him Brad. So I said: “Hello, Brad.”
“Hello,” he answered.
She went on breathlessly: “And it wasn’t what we thought at all…. Tell her, Brad, unless….” She began to smile. “Unless you think she’s too young to know.”
My mother and I adored each other, but ever since I was about fourteen she had talked to me as if I were her own age, but of me as if I were still about twelve; and when this happened before my face I often got confused and said just what a twelve-year-old would say.
I did then. I said: “I’m not too young to know anything.” Brad took it seriously. “I should say not. There’s nothing indecent about it.”
“Oh, don’t be silly—I was only joking,” my mother interrupted. “Tell her.”
“It’s nothing much. Apparently you both thought those animals in the room next to my lab were kept for vivisection. Anything but. All they have to do is to reproduce, reproduce, and keep on reproducing. Probably quite pleasant for them. Mathews is doing some new research in Genetics—he breeds a succession of generations to find out how certain characteristics crop up.”
Now that I had the explanation the fact that even jokingly I had been considered too young to know it made me almost feel I was. I said, in a rather asinine way: “Wouldn’t Mathews mind you taking away his cat?”
“He hadn’t begun any records of this animal, so any other would do just as well. He said so. Technically, of course, I’ve stolen the property of the University of London. How about calling the police?”
We all laughed and I handed the cat back to my mother.
“Mind you,” he went on, “don’t think I’m a sentimentalist. There’s a lot of nonsense talked about cruel scientists—I’ve never met any myself. Certainly at the College the men who have to do vivisections occasionally—”
My mother broke in: “You mean that it does go on there? I thought you said—just for breeding—”
“You must have misunderstood me—all I said was that the animals yousaw, the ones Mathews keeps—”
“All right, all right, let’s not talk about it any more.”
“But you do believe me when I say that scientists aren’t cruel?”
Brad was like that, as I
My mother said: “Many people are cruel. Wouldn’t you expect some of them to be scientists?”
“Statistically, yes….”
“Then I’ve won my argument. Have some tea.”
I said good-by to him long before he went because I had to go upstairs and pack; I was leaving for a holiday in Ireland the next morning. I think he stayed till my father came home just before dinner.
* * * * *
My mother wrote while I was away, just her usual gossipy letters; one of them mentioned Brad and said he had been up to the house for dinner. “We had more music and sat up talking till late. He’s really beginning to be quite human….”
I was in Ireland over a month and returned to London for the beginning of the autumn term. It was September, and in a few weeks, if they followed their usual plan, my parents would return to America. I wondered what it would feel like to be on my own in London; I was halfway thrilled at the prospect.
I didn’t see Brad for a few days; then suddenly he met me as I was leaving a lecture. We shook hands and he asked about Ireland. “Did you climb any mountains?”
“Not exactly mountains. We hiked about, though. There were plenty of hills.”
“Did you visit Donegal?”
“No. Should I?”
“Someone told me that in the mountains there you get quartzite with a capping of sandstone—obviously the result of denudation….” He went on, when I didn’t answer: “Geology’s one of the things I wish I knew more about. Do you enjoy walking?”
“Yes, very much.”
“Would you care to take a walk with me next Sunday?”
I said I would and he looked me up and down as if for the first time he were reckoning me physically. “Good legs and good boots are all you need.”
“Shoes,” I corrected. “And I don’t know anything about geology, but I’d like to.”
I thought he might be relieved to feel there was always a topic in reserve.
* * * * *