The Hopkins Manuscript

CHAPTER SEVEN

Today, when all attempt at organised Government has long since passed, I look back in admiration at the skill and foresight with which the authorities handled matters in those critical weeks of the New Year.

I do not know to this day whether the December moon caught them by surprise. I rather think that it did. I believe that they had hoped for it to wane without exciting undue curiosity, but the clear sky of Boxing Night, aided by the exceptionally dry air and a snow-covered land, all but wrecked their carefully arranged plans.

A Committee under the Chairmanship of the Prime Minister had for months been preparing the steps by which the public were to be made conscious of the approaching calamity. It consisted of certain Members of the Government and Opposition, the heads of the great newspapers, the Church, and a few others selected by reason of their special knowledge of mass psychology. One false step might have set loose an avalanche of panic from which no rescue could have been possible. After the moon of Boxing Night the Committee decided that delay would be fatal, and acted at once.

The morning press was silent, but the news ‘broke’ in the evening papers of the 27th December. The selection of the evening papers was perfect, and the news was deliberately ‘stunted’.

‘Unusual Lunar Phenomenon’ announced my paper. Owing, it stated, to an exceptionally clear sky and a rarely experienced refraction of light from the snow, the public had been given the opportunity of seeing the features of the moon more clearly and brilliantly than in many years past.

‘The Moon in Festive Mood’ announced another paper, giving the same explanation and remarking that our chief satellite had apparently decided to compete against the seasonable illuminations beneath it. It was further stated that, given clear skies and a continuance of the snow upon the ground, the phenomenon should be visible for at least a week, until the moon waned.

This deliberately jocular means of dealing with the matter did far more to allay suspicion than any amount of carefully sugared scientific explanation.

The phenomenon caught the public imagination. The two following nights were brilliantly clear and the whole of London turned out, as it always will turn out, to enjoy a free show.

On both nights I walked with my aunt in Hyde Park. My uncle had severely bruised his head upon a bookcase while playing ‘Blind Man’s Buff’ on Christmas night and preferred to rest at home.

The Park was an astonishing sight. Thousands paraded to and fro as if it were a Sunday morning in June – soldiers with their girls – children with their mothers – old gentlemen muffled in greatcoats. Here and there an amateur ‘expert’ stood with a group around him as he described the craters and mountain ranges usually invisible to the human eye, and an old man with a telescope on a tripod was coining money at a penny a look.

Upon all sides one heard exclamations of delight. ‘Isn’t it beautiful!’ – ‘If only it always looked like that!’ I nearly laughed out loud. Never before had I enjoyed my secret so hugely. I longed to jump onto a seat and tell the truth to these open-mouthed star-gazers, but never by word or inference did I arouse suspicion in Aunt Rose’s breast. When we got home we sat up till past midnight describing the scenes to Uncle Henry.

Upon the third day the weather broke. A thaw set in, and for a week the sky was filled with heavy cloud. By the time it had cleared the moon had gone, and the newspapers dropped the matter. They concentrated upon the trial of Lord Heskerpool, who had shot his gardener and put the body into the back of a guest’s car. The unsuspecting guest had driven the body about for a week, and when he discovered it he was so terrified that he tried to throw it into the river. The police caught him and arrested him, but Lord Heskerpool’s guilt was discovered in time. It was revealed that the gardener had been blackmailing his master, and altogether the whole case was so sensational that the moon was forgotten and England saved for another month to go upon its normal way. The governments all over the world, apparently, only explained away that December moon by the skin of their teeth.

A week after Christmas I returned to my home on Beadle Hill. In some absurd way the passing of that moon and the disappearance of the phenomenon from the newspapers and from the public mind lulled me into a feeling of security. I suppose it was due to my return to the humdrum village life after the excitement of Christmas. I cannot tell. I only know that for a few days I practically forgot the whole thing: the scare had come and gone and all was well. My extraordinary calmness of mind is proved by the fact that on the 2nd January, according to my diary, I actually bought six little Bantam hens and proceeded to bring them into condition for showing!

But it was a very short-lived armistice with the truth. On the 9th January I attended my last meeting of the British Lunar Society, and from that night onwards events were to move with ever-increasing rapidity towards their climax.

The meetings of the Society following the two that I have already described were dull in comparison, and something of an anticlimax. The President had merely endorsed his previous statements and provided us with lengthy and rather tedious résumés of current scientific opinion. The meeting on the 23rd December had, in fact, been quite sparsely attended, no more than half the Members appearing. Whether this was due to the diversion of Christmas shopping or an inability to face these macabre gatherings I do not know, but there was no doubt about the 9th January. Members were obviously curious to hear about the ‘phenomenon’ of Boxing Night and every seat was taken.

The President hardly mentioned the ‘scare’ of those three clear-skied nights at Christmas: he dismissed them as unimportant – as something past and done with – and from my seat in the third row I listened to the last announcement I was ever to hear from Professor Hartley.

In eleven days’ time – upon the 20th January – the new moon was due. The Government realised that further deception would be impossible. Even if given cloudy sky and poor visibility the moon, at some period of its phases, was certain to be seen, and nothing could explain away its increased size and brilliancy. On the 27th December it had been 183,000 miles distant from the earth: upon the 25th January it would have drawn nearer by 32,000 miles and would have decreased its distance from the earth by almost one-half: it would appear at the end of January twice its normal size…

The dead silence of our first fantastic meeting was upon us once again. There was something akin to physical pain in the tension that surrounded me. I felt a bead of perspiration trickle down my forehead as I sat there with my eyes upon the calm, grey-haired man at the speaker’s desk.

Grey-haired! – only now did I realise how much our President had changed. Two months ago his red hair had been flecked by a touch of grey around the temples: tonight it was almost pure white. In October he had been a sturdy, youthful man of forty-five – tonight he was an aged man of seventy. For the first time I realised what men of science – men who knew far more than us amateurs – must have suffered. I had believed that I, and these amateurs around me, had shared all his secrets – and now I knew that this prematurely whitened head bore secrets more terrible than any that we, his listeners, had been keeping with such self-importance from an ignorant public.

The calm, measured voice announced the dreadful programme as if it were a list of events at a sports meeting…

‘Sunday next will be the 14th. The new moon will be visible six days later – upon Saturday the 20th.

‘It has been decided that the Church shall break the news from the pulpit on Sunday morning. By this means six days will elapse before the public will have visible evidence in the appearance of the moon: six days that may be invaluable in establishing calmness. From the morning after the announcement in the churches, the burden of guiding public thought will be upon the shoulders of the press, whose course will naturally be governed by circumstances as they arise.

‘The Government will, from time to time, make official statements, but these will be limited to bare necessity…’

There was something verging upon the comic in this extraordinary programme. Only today do I realise the consummate wisdom of it… how heroically the world responded, how pitifully it culminated.

On the evening before that epic Sunday I walked down to the Vicarage to see Mr Edwards. I knew that the old man had received his instructions and that he would now be struggling with the terrible task of preparing his message to the people of Beadle at tomorrow’s service.

I felt that the knowledge of my having been acquainted with all the facts for the past three months would help him, and that my courage in carrying on so calmly in the face of death would give inspiration and courage to the villagers if the Vicar were to mention my behaviour in his announcement.

The housemaid took my name and returned to say that Mr Edwards was very busy upon tomorrow’s sermon and would I excuse him. I sent back word that my mission was one of the gravest importance, and presently I was shown into the Vicar’s study.

The old man rose to receive me in his courteous, kindly way. He invited me to be seated, offered me a glass of sherry and pushed forward the biscuit jar. I admired him beyond words in that moment. No doubt he believed that I had called upon some trivial village matter and yet he was prepared to listen with courteous patience. He betrayed no sign of the awful burden that lay upon his shoulders: his fingers were quite steady as he broke a biscuit – there was no tremor in his hand as he raised the sherry to his lips, and although my admiration for him was soon to disappear, I silently saluted him at that moment as a man whose courage and self-control were equal to my own.

He asked me what he could do for me, and gently I broke my secret.

‘I know what you are striving to write at your desk tonight, Mr Edwards: I know what you are called upon to do tomorrow. I have known for three months.’

His face filled with alarm, and I hastened to explain. I told him that I had been numbered amongst the select few to share the secret from its birth.

To my surprise he showed little interest in this. He asked none of the eager questions I had expected. There was a dreamlike, faraway look in his eyes, and a wave of pity swept over me. The poor, gentle old man was pitifully unequal to his task and I was glad that I had come so opportunely to support him.

‘I think that I can help you,’ I went on. ‘I am, as it were, a “veteran” of this secret: I have already suffered the worst that the terrible truth can inflict and I have survived. If you tell this to the people of Beadle tomorrow it will help them to master their own terrible fears…’

The old man raised his hand to interrupt me.

‘It is not terrible,’ he said. ‘Nor will my people think it so. If God has ordained that our work upon this earth is finished, then it is not for us to question Him. In His mercy He will relieve us from suffering; in the place of suffering he will grant happiness. The sadness of death lies with the lonely ones that are left to grieve – the children that are left without guidance. If God has ordained that we shall depart together – there will be none to grieve… we shall all be happy…’

I was moved by the simplicity and sincerity of the old man, but his old-fashioned, stereotyped ideas irritated me. He would not be quite so smug and philosophical if he could visualise the full horror of it all, the horror that had turned white the hair of that brave man Professor Hartley… I felt it my duty to bring him down to earth…

‘But the world isn’t going to end tomorrow, Mr Edwards. It isn’t going to end with your sermon… there’s three months ahead… three months of torment…

Once again he interrupted me with a futile wave of his podgy little white hand…

‘You needn’t fear, Mr Hopkins. The people of Beadle are honest and brave, and they trust in God.’

I was getting angry, but I concealed it as best I could – fortunately the villagers of Beadle whom this futile man was to face next morning possessed imagination even more limited than his own!

And then quite suddenly he changed the subject. He asked me whether any of my early bulbs had taken advantage of the mild weather to peep above the surface of my meadow. He said that a cluster of snowdrops were in bloom in his rockery – an early cluster that never failed him in the first weeks of January, and that I must take a look at them as I went out.

I was really angry this time. I finished my sherry and curtly put down the glass. I would go – but I certainly wasn’t going to potter about looking at his anaemic snowdrops. He was treating me like an ignorant villager, and I had ten times more snowdrops than he had, anyway.

He had not troubled to ask me a single question. He had ignored my offer of assistance and seemed quite incapable of realising how much he could have strengthened his message to the people of Beadle by inviting me to describe the whole course of my feelings and reactions during the past three months.

I realise now that he was jealous of me. He had quickly foreseen the importance and prestige that I should have gained at his expense if he were to announce that I knew all about it three months before he did. I do not blame him now – perhaps he was right to keep the importance to himself – goodness knows he needed all the importance he could collect… but I could not resist one dig at him as I turned to go.

‘Now you understand why they told you to build that dugout! – clever idea to tell you it was against enemy bombs!’

‘It was,’ he replied. ‘Quite a clever idea’ – and he held out his hand with a gentle smile.

Only as I left the room did my pity return. At the study door his wife met me, took my hand and bade me goodnight. In her calm eyes I could read that she too knew the secret now. I glanced at the old desk beneath the gaunt, poorly curtained window; at the twisted fragments of paper upon the threadbare carpet. Twisted paper: proof of the poor old man’s pathetic inability to master his awful task in words. I saw, too, a fragment of blotting-paper thrown hastily over his feeble notes as I had entered the room.

I took one last glance at that peaceful, book-lined study: at the biscuit jar with an engraved message from some little Welfare Club of which the Vicar had once been Secretary – at a faded old football cap upon the wall and his rack of blackened old pipes beside the mantelpiece.

After this rebuff I scarcely expected ever to enter this room again. I realised that I was saying ‘farewell’ to the first of many long familiar scenes; that for three months to come I would often gaze upon some corner of my life and say: ‘I shall never see that again.’

I walked straight past the Vicar’s rockery without so much as a glance at his snowdrops. He had invited me to look at them as a man might humour a frightened child. My anger was redoubled when I thought how Dr Hax had rebuffed my offer to help with the dugout and how the Vicar had snubbed my endeavour to assist in phrasing his sermon.

I had no appetite for supper: the little-minded jealousy of these ‘big men’ of the village gnawed at my brain. I had the worst night since the one upon which I had first heard the news of the approaching disaster – three months, I repeat, before the Vicar knew a word about it.