The Invisible Victory

30

The following morning I had a telephone call from Ainsley inviting me to dinner at his London club (clubland, like high table, was undaunted by the war). He had never before issued a social invitation, nor even offered me a drink. I wondered what was up.

Ainsley's club in St James's had the lower floor sandbagged, the roof blown off, and the front windows replaced by boarding. He led me to a small smoking-room in the rear, where an oval table stood with glasses and bottles. 'Most of the club servants have been called up,' he grumbled. 'So we help ourselves and sign for it. We're allowed one whisky a day, but a lot of the members cheat, particularly the ecclesiastical ones.' I asked for a glass of chablis. 'Thank God the wine committee had more sense than Chamberlain in 1939, and anticipated a long war.' He sniffed. 'I could swear that's a cigar. Someone must have found a box in the cellar.'

We sat down, inevitably discussing Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union. 'Did you know that Hitler invaded Russia on exactly the same day as Napoleon?' Ainsley passed a hand over the bald patch of his grey head, a characteristic gesture. 'June 22, 1812 or 1941. Obviously, _plus зa change, plus c'est la mкme chose_ applies equally to megalomaniacs.'

'Do you suppose the Russians will hold out?' Everybody was asking this.

'If they can hold out till winter they can hold out for ever. But I'm afraid the Wehrmacht will go its usual devastating way. Still it gives us a useful breathing space. And it makes the tediously anti-war _Daily Worker_ look silly. Or it would have done, if Morrison hadn't banned it.'

'And what do we do when we've drawn our breath?'

'God knows.' Ainsley gloomily sipped his whisky of the day. 'We're not a great power any more. Churchill has to pretend that we are, and everyone in the country believes him, or has to pretend to believe him, because there's no alternative. We weren't a great power before the war broke out, but I don't think even Hitler saw that.'

'The Empire-'

'The Empire is a bolthole for the Fleet, that's all.'

'What about the Americans?' I was arguing to keep my spirits up, like whistling in the dark. 'Roosevelt's "Lend-lease" idea in March was surely a significant gesture, not just a business deal to eke out our stock of dollars?'

'Listen, Jim-this is very secret. Churchill's meeting Roosevelt some time this year. I don't know where, except it'll be somewhere in the States. Probably Boston. Some sort of grand, bland declaration will be named after the venue.' (The pronouncement came in August as the 'Atlantic Charter'. President and Prime Minister met afloat off Newfoundland, in Placentia Bay. To have so named their joint statement might have given it an obstetrical ring.)

Ainsley glanced sadly at his empty, unrefillable whisky glass. 'I'll tell you something else secret. Staff talks were held between us and the Americans during last February and March, and naturally there are unannounced contacts between various branches of both countries' Services. The upshot for you, Jim, is that Lindemann wants you to fly to America for a few weeks on Friday.'

The abrupt news of Churchill's adviser directing me to escape from our beleagured island left me without speech. I listened bemusedly while Ainsley prosaically explained that I was destined for the small town of Warsaw in Colorado, where there was a counterpart of the Fungus Institute. 'You must keep this expedition dark, even from your wife,' he added earnestly.

Jean knew I was working with lethal bacteria, not fungi. But she let patriotism stifle curiosity. It must have been the same for the wives of research workers on the atomic bomb.

'How?' I asked.

'Tell her you're going on a month's course, rock-climbing with the Royal Marines. The better to search for unusual variants of bacteria.' Ainsley stood up, looking at his watch. 'We'd better eat, or there'll be nothing left.'

As we made for the dining-room, I said, 'So Roosevelt doesn't intend to let the British Empire disappear off the face of the map?'

'On the contrary, I think that's precisely his object. America will come out of this war as the only country to be reckoned with in the world. Plus Russia, if only she can manage to stave off the Nazis till November. And without America firing a shot, if she's clever. It's much more sensible to step into the ring when all possible challengers have knocked themselves out.'

I could not bring myself to believe this. 'But supposing the Japs attack America?'

'That would be interesting. Hitler might well inflict himself on the United States as an ally. After all, the Japanese are hardly Aryans, are they?' After this horrifying prospect, he speculated, 'I wonder if there'll be any meat tonight? How remote seem the days when I used to cut all the fat off my roast beef.'

I went to America on the Friday. I let my wife into the secret. I instructed her to pass around that I was on a deep-sea diving course with the Navy, too many of my acquaintances knowing that I had no head for heights. An RAF car driven by a pretty WAAF took me through signpostless England to an airfield near Salisbury, where a small Anson was waiting to fly me to another.

Only when aloft it occurred to me that I had never flown before. I could not identify the RAF station I arrived at. I still cannot today. There were a lot of seagulls about, I noticed. At dusk, I climbed with a dozen other civilians into an aeroplane with black paint on the windows. Someone whispered that we were bound for Lisbon. If we evaded the cannons of the Luftwaffe, I thought. There was also the possibility of the device in my brief-case disrupting in the lowered atmospheric pressure and infecting us all with bubonic plague. Beside it lay a test-tube of penicillin mould, which I had cadged as an afterthought from Florey before leaving South Parks Road.

We arrived in the early hours. We saw a city street lit with lamps. We marvelled.

I had two days in which my stomach, enfeebled by British rations, collapsed under the weight of peacetime menus like an old lady in a crush. On the Monday morning I left in a Pan American flying boat for New York.

I found Jeff's name everywhere. _Beckerman Beer, Beautifully Brewed,_ said the hoardings and electric signs, the girl sipping her foaming glass with an ecstasy deserving more worthy stimulus. I was to spend two wonderful days in this Aladdin's Cave before travelling to Warsaw, Colorado. I telephoned Jeff's office.

I was greeted with an explosion of delight. That evening, Jeff appeared at my small hotel in a chauffeur-driven Cadillac with two girls, both of whom struck me as far prettier than the ecstatic one in the advertisement. The car was stuffed with presents-a case of bourbon, boxes of Spam and peanut butter, whole tinned hams, bars of chocolate, packets of chewing-gum. He seemed to think I needed feeding up. Jeff himself had grown much fatter in the eighteen months since I had seen him in the Savoy. He had also grown much richer.

'I'm turning out about a quarter the sulphonamides used in the United States. I got new plants opening every three-four months,' he declared proudly within a couple of minutes of our meeting. 'Chemicals, textiles, pharmaceuticals, I'm operating right across the country, even into California. That's apart from the old brewery at White Plains, here in New York State. I'm opening another brewery this fall in Wisconsin-you see, old man, everyone in America just forgot how to make real beer during Prohibition.' I asked about the Red Crown Brewery in Wuppertal. 'The Nazis grabbed it. But they paid for it!' he exclaimed triumphantly. 'I guess they didn't want to upset the neutrals.'

'I hope the RAF have now blown it to bits,' I suggested cordially.

'Well, it was still there last week despite the RAF. Wuppertal's a boom town, you know. German industry today is stronger than ever.'

'We're led to believe that German industry is on the point of collapse.'

'Then you can forget it.'

Jeff leant back in the corner of the limousine. We were driving along Fifth Avenue. He was dressed with commercial sobriety in a lightweight blue suit and white shirt. I reflected that he must have burst out of his Savile Row wardrobe, and noticed that he still wore handmade English shoes. He had given up Chesterfields, but lit a cigar. The two girls occupied the jump seats, dutifully providing him with an air of adoring incomprehension.

'The Nazi economy's in better shape than any time since Gцring offered Germany guns instead of butter,' Jeff reasserted, 'Hell, they're getting all the butter they want from France and Holland. A lot of Frenchmen and Dutchmen are going to starve to death before the first German feels hungry. But don't get me wrong, old man. Unlike almost all my countrymen, I've had the doubtful privilege of seeing the Nazis close to. I'm one hundred per cent for Britain. Any sane man last summer would have asked Hitler for the best terms he could get. Thank God that Churchill's insane, just like the Nazis say.'

'There'll always be an England,' said one of the girls.

'Even Joe Kennedy sang a different tune when he came home for the election last fall. That was after Roosevelt laid hands on him. I guess no one will hear of Kennedy again, once the war's over. Nor Lindbergh. I'm disappointed with Lindbergh.'

'Say, did you ever meet the Duchess?' asked the other girl eagerly. I looked blank. 'You know, Mrs Simpson.'

I apologized that our paths had not crossed.

'Have you got yourself married again?' Jeff asked. I nodded. 'So have I. But that didn't work out, either. Was it that pretty dark thing in uniform you brought along to the Savoy?'

'No. She married a friend of mine, who's been discharged from the Army with an ulcer and works for the Ministry of Information. He's one of the people who keep telling us that the German economy is finished.'

'Why aren't you in the British Army?' asked the first girl, I thought bluntly.

'Flat feet.'

'You must be hungry,' Jeff said to me. We arrived at a huge restaurant with a loud band, exuberant chorus girls and enormous steaks. Jeff began reminiscing about our night out in Cologne. Our two companions grew bored. Some time after midnight we shed them. I went back to Jeff's apartment-luxurious rooms, apparently unending, high above Park Avenue. 'Take anything you like from the closets,' he invited. 'Even your clothes are rationed now, I guess?'

I helped myself to a tie. A negro in a white jacket brought highballs. Through the big window I could look down on the feverish lights of New York. We talked about Wuppertal and the Schwebebahn. 'Hitler was crazy, shoving Domagk in jail,' Jeff commented. 'He should have let the Professor go ahead and receive his Nobel Prize, turn out the band when he got home, and have Goebbels proclaim the magnificent benefits to all mankind hatching from Nazi Germany. That's why nothing, nothing at all, will ever come out of Nazism,' he added in disgust. 'It's a nihilistic creed. When the Nazis have wiped out everything that's good and decent in the world, they'll have nothing to replace it, except more oppression. When there's no one left alive on earth for them to oppress, they'll start cutting one another's throats. For the simple reason that Nazism can't exist without aggression. Imagine Hitler snipping the tape to open a new hospital!'

His remark made me remember the test-tube in my jacket pocket. I had left Jeff mystified at the real reason for my mission to Colorado, and he had swallowed his inquisitiveness.

'What in hell's this?' He turned the test-tube in his fingers, sprawling in his chair, his heavy bar of eyebrow puckered.

'Ever heard of penicillin?'

'Never.'

'It's a drug produced by that mould.' Jeff did not find it an intriguing exhibit at that hour of the night. 'It hits staphylococci and gas gangrene and diphtheria, which aren't touched by your sulpha drugs. An extremely efficient Oxford professor called Florey started using penicillin on patients, only eighteen months after beginning his experiments to find exactly what it was. Imagine even Henry Ford achieving that with the automobile.'

Jeff grunted. He rolled the test-tube round, looking more interested. 'I guess Churchill knows all about this?'

'They've hardly enough to treat a couple of kids with blood-poisoning, let alone an Army. They have to grow the mould in bedpans, because they can't get anything else. They have to extract the penicillin juice with lemonade bottles and milk churns, fixed in a lovely bookcase from the Bodleian Library. Perhaps penicillin could be our secret weapon. But its production is strictly a cottage industry. I thought you'd be interested to look at it. The mould loves nothing better to grow on than brewer's yeast.'

'Brewer's yeast you can't get your hands on.' Jeff scratched his chin with his thumb. 'You could grow it on corn-steep liquor, I guess.' I had never heard of this. 'When you crack corn to get the starch,' Jeff explained, 'you steep the grain in sodium sulphate. You end up with thousands of gallons of stuff like molasses, which you can't even give away. Out West, they're trying it out for fermentation processes of various sorts. You could grow this mould on it, like any other mould.'

He fell silent, continuing to revolve the test-tube in his fingers. 'Supposing Mr Churchill came to me and said, "Jeff, old man, we want penicillin by the ton, and tomorrow". Do you know what I'd do? I'd buy a few loads of corn-steep liquor-I wouldn't need to buy it, they'd pay me for taking it away. Then I'd shut down a section of the brewery out at White Plains, and I'd grow penicillin in the vats. You know how these contaminating moulds _love _to grow in breweries.'

I laughed. 'A brewery's an advance on lemonade bottles, I suppose. It's imaginative, anyway.'

'Sure, it's imaginative,' he said seriously. I finished my highball, and sat tinkling the ice in my glass. 'It's only by being imaginative that I've made my money. So what's the problem? Growing a mould and extracting a chemical from its juice.'

'Florey used amyl acetate for the extraction process.'

'There you are. The principle's established, it's only a matter of nuts and bolts.' He got up to fetch a foolscap pad and pencil from his leather topped desk. 'Let's try sketching out the production line. See here, I've got the vat…"

The interest of us both warmed, glowed, and broke into a flame. The floor round Jeff became covered with sheets of pencilled plans. I watched over his shoulder, giving a chemist's advice and replenishing the highballs. The New York lights were fading in the summer dawn when we plummeted down the elevator. Jeff picked up his Cadillac from the sidewalk and we drove through the sharpening light to White Plains. Beyond the city, to one side of the highway stood Jeff's chemical plant, to the other the Beckerman Brewery. He turned the car towards the brewery, roused the watchman, strode with the drawings under his arm towards the vast building with the fermentation vats, and pacing distances with his feet began the plan which flooded a wartime world with penicillin.