Red Joan (17 page)

‘May I see it?' Nick reaches out to take the file from Ms. Hart. He glances at the signature on the bottom of the form, his expression registering a flicker of uncertainty before resetting itself into his usual expression of outrage that any of this is happening at all. He places the file on the coffee table. ‘Well, I don't see that as particularly significant.' He takes a sip of water. ‘I'd have thought it was pretty standard practice to require everyone working on anything remotely connected with the war to sign this.'

Joan feels tears rising at the back of her throat. Her arms twitch slightly, betraying her desire to reach out to her son, to tell him that she doesn't deserve such kindness.

Nick doesn't see Joan's gesture but Ms. Hart does, and for a brief second Joan wonders if this is as far as she can go. She has spent a lifetime running away from this moment—never explaining, never excusing—and now she worries she might not have the strength to carry on. She is too old, too tired.

‘And did you intend to adhere to it when you signed it?'

In spite of her exhaustion, there is something in Ms. Hart's tone of voice that causes Joan to bristle slightly; an ember of fire catching inside her. She glances at Nick and knows that she must keep going. She must protect her son, as she has always done, even if he might not know it. She raises her eyebrows as if affronted. ‘Of course I did.'

‘But you understand why I ask.'

 

*

 

Her title is stated on her security pass: Personal Assistant to the Director of the Metals Research Facility in Cambridge. How dull that sounds. How disappointing to be using her science only in order to spell the elements in the periodic table. And no hat to be worn at a jaunty angle, no uniform with a tight waist and a bright collar to be flaunted around town while practising her American-style chewing-gum walk. But still, at least she is out there doing something at last, making an effort and earning her own money.

Apart from Max, there are ten others in the department. Of these, nine are men, leaving one other woman, Karen, whose domain covers both switchboard and reception, and over which she is demonstrably territorial. At first glance, she has the air of an old-fashioned schoolmarm, neat and buttoned-up with reading glasses perpetually perched on the end of her nose, but this appearance is misleading as she turns out to be an untapped source of information about everyone in the laboratory. She is forty and a widow, with two sons both away in the RAF, and while not exactly unfriendly, she gives the impression of being bored and a little lonely. Gradually, Joan finds that various tasks which were once Karen's—the morning tea run, stocking the biscuit tin—have been permanently delegated to her, but the upside of this is that Karen shares her nuggets of gossip more freely with Joan than with any of the others, and in this way Joan comes to know more about the people working in the laboratory than she does about most of her friends and relations.

The men are all scientists or technicians. The two most senior scientists on the project are Donald, Max's official deputy, who is never to be seen without his maroon beret and white laboratory coat, and Arthur, a tall, straight-nosed Oxford don who shared a dormitory with Max when they were schoolboys together at Marlborough. The rest of the team are keen scientific types, mostly foreign, and they are set to work on specifically delineated aspects of the project, as it is deemed sensible to restrict the number of people with access to the overall, high-level plans. ‘Especially,' she is told in a whisper by Karen, ‘the foreign element.'

The mood at the laboratory is one of urgency. From what Joan can gather, they are making some form of weapon. She does not imagine that it is a large weapon, given the size of the operations warehouse where construction is said to take place. There is not enough space, nor are there enough people, for anything very large to be built. Max gives her just enough information to do the work required of her, but he is not particularly expansive. Most of the time, he works on theoretical research in his office with the door closed, but he will occasionally meet with researchers from Birmingham where the other main laboratory is located. This is all Joan knows. She would not go so far as to say that she is disappointed in her lack of involvement, but she will admit that she had hoped for something a little more exciting.

A security guard checks her bag on the way in and the way out; Henry, an old, whiskery man with whom Joan has a brief chat every morning, and who gropes around apologetically in her bag every afternoon, feeling the cloth of the zipped compartment and checking her lipstick and powder compact and glasses case. What is he looking for? she wonders, as he relaxes, smiles, and nods her on her way. Stolen typewriter tape? Stamps? Envelopes?

After a month of making tea and performing general tasks, Max calls her into his office and announces that her probation period has officially ended, and so it is time they had a serious talk. Joan perches on the edge of the wooden chair opposite his desk, wondering if his stern expression is anything to do with her typing speed—she has never been very fast but, she argues in her head, she is accurate—or her occasional lateness. She braces herself, waiting.

At first she thinks she has not heard him correctly. ‘The Prime Minister is coming here?' she repeats, her notebook half open on her knee.

Max nods.

‘Here?'

‘Yes.' Max grins at her, and for a brief moment Joan wonders if there is something else in the smile, a sort of curiosity, and it flashes through her mind that the one person Karen has not told her much about is Max. She must ask her later. She imagines suddenly, oddly, how he might look when he is asleep, and thinks that there is something endearingly boyish about him. She shakes the thought from her mind, hoping it is not evident in her face.

‘Tomorrow?'

‘Yes.'

‘Is it a secret or are the others allowed to know?'

‘Nobody outside the laboratory can be told. Everyone here is allowed to know, but only Donald, Arthur and I will be at the meeting. We can't have everyone coming, although the Prime Minister wants to meet them all, shake their hands, that sort of thing. I've put Karen on sentry duty to arrange everything. But only the four of us will be at the meeting, along with the PM and anyone he decides to bring.'

‘Four? I thought you said it was just you, Donald and Arthur?'

Max grins. ‘I want you to be there too.'

‘Me? What can I do? I know less than anyone here.' Joan is surprised at how excited she feels about the prospect of this official visit, even if the thought of actually speaking to the Prime Minister fills her with a slight dread. She feels—what?—starstruck.

Max smiles. ‘That's why I thought it would be useful to include you. It's time you started being more involved. There was a reason why I wanted a science graduate to fill your position. And . . . ' he looks embarrassed, ‘ . . . we need someone to make the tea and generally smooth things over by looking pretty.'

Joan tries not to blush at this obtuse and unexpected burst of flattery. It is not what she expects from Max, who is normally unwaveringly correct. She attempts a wry smile. ‘All the essentials then, I see.'

‘But I also think it'll help you to learn more about what we're doing here. I assume you learnt a thing or two about atoms during your time at Cambridge?'

‘Of course.'

‘Good,' Max prompts, gesturing with his arm that he wants her to expand on this answer.

And so she does, haltingly at first, describing in scientific terms the internal structure of an atom, the nucleus of protons and neutrons orbited by a whirl of electrons. It surprises her to find that she has missed thinking in this way. She has noted the wooden plaque in the entrance of the laboratories, declaring that it was in this very building in Cambridge, in 1932, that the atom was first split, and so she describes this process too; how it is possible to bombard the nucleus of an atom with neutrons so that the energy in the nucleus is redistributed, causing another particle to be emitted and leaving behind a slightly different substance from the original one.

Max nods. ‘Exactly.' He presses his fingertips together, which Joan recognises as the gesture of an academic, a theorist. ‘And are there any exceptions to this rule?'

‘Uranium, I think.'

‘And what happens with uranium?'

‘It splits in two, releasing energy. But it releases two or three neutrons, not just one.' Joan has read about this in an academic paper for her third-year exams, published just before the war but only introduced to the syllabus as she was about to leave.

‘And?'

Joan frowns. ‘What do you mean?'

‘You're a physicist. So tell me, what are the implications of this? What could you do with that information?'

‘I don't remember anything else being mentioned in the paper.' She frowns. ‘But I suppose, if you had enough uranium atoms in isolation and you split one of them, then splitting just one would release enough neutrons to split more, and then those in turn could be used to bombard other particles.'

Max nods. ‘A self-sustaining chain reaction. And then?'

‘It would produce increasing amounts of energy.'

‘Yes. Enormous amounts. A new source of power entirely.' Max pauses, as if waiting for Joan to answer a question he has not yet asked. ‘So what else could it be used for?'

There is a silence as the implications of Max's question creep up on her. ‘An explosion?' she ventures.

‘Not just an explosion.' He pauses. ‘A super-bomb. A war-ending bomb.'

Joan stares at him. ‘Can it be done?'

‘Why not? It's possible in theory, although there are still unresolved problems, principally regarding uranium supply.' He pauses. ‘But the crucial thing is that it does seem to be possible, and if it is we can't let the Germans get there first.'

‘How do you know they're trying?'

Max smiles. ‘The first uranium discoveries were made four years ago. Do you know how many papers the Germans have published on this subject since then?'

Joan shakes her head slowly.

‘None. Not a single one. Complete radio silence. So I'd say there's a ninety-nine per cent chance they're working on this too.' Max pauses. He picks up a file and hands it to Joan. ‘I'd like you to read over these summaries. I need a basic diagram drawn up for tomorrow, not necessarily to scale but large enough to put up on the wall and get the idea across. There are some sketches in here you can use as a template.' He grins. ‘How are you at drawing?'

 

Joan starts with the basics. Initially her drawing takes the shape of a badly proportioned fish. A large fish, perhaps a shark or a tuna. She draws a circle in the middle of the fish's body and splits it in two with a line, the divided core hiding beneath the place where the fins would be, and then she shades this circle with her pencil. The shading represents the critical mass of uranium, the unstable element, not yet unified. If Joan were given to metaphor, she might describe the uranium particles as elbowing one another, jostling for position on the starting line. But Joan is not given to metaphor. It is a simple, scientific process.

But there will be no explosion yet.

The explosion starts with the addition of TNT, which Joan adds into the diagram by enclosing the circle of uranium inside an outer square of yellow explosive, still contained within the fish's stomach. She colours this carefully, not allowing any of it to spill into the core as there can be no easy mingling of substances. When the TNT is activated, it will fire the two halves of the core together to create a critical mass. This explosion will be big in itself, but not huge. At this stage it is not astronomical so much as economical. It will work as a highly efficient multiplier of energy.

The astronomy will occur a millisecond later, when the detonation activates the neutron source, which Joan colours in blue, firing neutrons at the critical mass of uranium. This is where the real explosion happens. This is what Max describes in his papers as the genius of the invention: that having found a substance so unstable that it is ready to burst at the smallest nudge, the trillions of nuclei are pressed together into a critical mass and from then on the reaction is uncontrolled and self-sustaining, catastrophic; an enormous, white-hot burst of energy. It is a process of numbers, of chain reactions. It will be so quick that it will appear instantaneous, a sudden explosion of heat and neutrons and light, as if God himself has pulled his knees into his chest, curled up into a ball and flung himself at the earth.

Joan labels the diagram, sketches in the main design features of the tail, and shades the outer casing in grey. She will not think about the possibilities of what she has drawn. She understands the science, or most of it. Her limitations are merely a question of scale.

 

The Prime Minister arrives promptly at 2
P.M.
, seated in the passenger seat of a dark green car that sits incongruously on the narrow street outside the laboratory. At first he looks so like the photographs and yet so different that Joan wonders if it is not perhaps an impersonator trying a bit too hard. Surely he doesn't always have that cigar in his mouth? She observes him shaking hands with Max and Donald and Arthur and still she is not sure. It is only when he takes her hand in his, smiling plumply out of the side of his mouth so that his face seems to flatten and he booms in that particular clipped voice she knows so well from the wireless: ‘Ah, my dear young lady. Who's a man got to ask to get a decent cup of tea around here?'

Now that, thinks Joan, is either a bloody good impression or it's really him.

She feels her face grow hot. ‘Milk and sugar?'

He nods slowly, evidently amused by something. ‘I've heard that's how it's done.'

She leaves the line-up to make tea in the kitchen and finds that her hands are shaking a little. The visiting party progresses through the laboratory and into Max's office. Joan places the large brown teapot on a tray with some biscuits, sugar and a jug of milk. It is heavy in her arms as she walks slowly along the corridor, pushing the door open with her back and trying to place it on a side table without producing too much of a rattle. She pours the tea and hands it around while Max begins his explanation.