Time and Time Again

41

‘I WOULD CHANGE nothing, Sir Isaac,’ Master Bentley said firmly, while refilling the wine glasses. ‘I would leave both well and ill alone.’

‘Yes, Mr Bentley,’ Newton replied, nodding sadly and looking, if it were possible, even older than his eighty-four years. ‘So would I.’

They had been debating Newton’s question, considering the mistakes of history and the current condition of humanity, asking themselves whether some change to the former might improve the latter, and they had been forced to conclude that, deeply unsatisfactory though Britain in 1727 was, pox-ridden, semibankrupt, riven with religious and dynastic strife and in constant danger of a Jacobite revolution from the Scots, nonetheless it was developing along sufficiently satisfactory lines to make any idea of tinkering with its history too big a risk to contemplate.

‘Any hypothetical change,’ Bentley observed, ‘no matter how minor, would immediately open up the possibility of an infinite number of unknowable variables. We might make matters worse.’

‘Exactly. We might very well make matters worse,’ Newton agreed, staring out of the window, against which a heavy rain was rattling, ‘and I have wrestled with the horror of that possibility these thirty years past. It has tormented my days and haunted my nights. It has made my life a misery.’

‘But why, Sir Isaac?’ Bentley replied with an indulgent smile. ‘After all, it’s just a game. We cannot actually alter the past.’

‘No, sir, we cannot.’

‘Well, then. Put away these angry thoughts and enjoy the wine.’

‘But three hundred years from now an opportunity will arise whereby others can.’

‘Alter the past? Surely you’re not serious?’

‘Deadly so, Master Bentley. It may be that those people of the future discover this possibility themselves, in which case my conscience is clear. But if they don’t? Should I guide them to it? That is the question which makes my every waking moment a torture and every dream a nightmare.’

Master Bentley tried not to laugh. It was clear to him that Newton’s great age had enfeebled his mind.

‘Well,’ he replied, in the tone that people are apt to use towards the very old when asking if they enjoyed their supper or if they want their cushions plumped, ‘perhaps best not to worry about it, eh? Three hundred years is, after all, a long time away.’

Newton frowned angrily and shifted impatiently in his seat. The nostrils of his famous long nose flared.

‘A long time, Master Bentley? You think so?’ he asked. ‘By what measure is it a long time?’

‘By any reasonable measure, sir, I should say a very long time.’

‘So by reasonable measure, we are in fact talking about your measure.’

‘Because I am, I hope, a reasonable man.’

Newton’s anger flashed. ‘You may hope it, sir, but on present evidence I would dispute it. What seems a long time to you would be but an instant if you were a planet and even less so if you were a star.’

Bentley gave a gentle laugh, maintaining his patronizing manner, making it clear that the Master of Trinity College was not to be goaded even by Trinity’s greatest son.

‘It might seem different, Sir Isaac, but it would still be the same amount of time. Just as a day seems long to a bored schoolboy and short to a busy adult but it remains the same length of day.’

The Master took a delicate sip at his claret, clearly pleased to have delivered such an elegant and telling argument and confident that Newton must concede his point.

His confidence was misplaced.

‘Remains the same?’ Newton demanded angrily. ‘Does it? How so?’

‘Well, of course it does!’

Newton banged the table with his fist, upsetting his wine for the second time that afternoon. ‘What do you mean, “of course it does”?’ he shouted. ‘What sort of argument is that? You’re a teacher! Or so you claim to be! You must know that it is not enough simply to assert a point. You must make some demonstration, offer up some reasoning, some proof.’

Finally Bentley’s smug reserve deserted him.

‘Proof? What proof can I give beyond the fact that logic requires it?’ he said, his voice rising. ‘Time is time. It ticks away from the beginning until the end.’

‘But it doesn’t, you damned fool!’ Newton exclaimed. ‘Am I really the only person on earth to have grasped this fact? Time is not linear. It does not go along on a steady course like a road from London to York. It does not have a beginning and it does not have an end, nor is it the same to one person as it is to another, nor to two planets or a million stars. It is different in all circumstances. Because it is relative.’

‘Sir Isaac, I beg you calm yourself!’ Bentley implored, alarmed at Newton’s passion and regretting having allowed himself to be drawn into it. He did not want the most famous scientist in the world dying in his sitting room. ‘No man on earth is more sensible of your genius than I, but what is relative about it? Time is time. Listen to the clock, you hear it ticking? Each second recorded, the same to all men. Seconds that were once in the future and now lie in the past. Seconds which progress, one after another, be they noted or ignored, here, there and everywhere. Tick tock – another gone! In this room. On the sun. Amongst the stars. In heaven and in hell. Tick then tock. And so God’s Universe moves on second by second from Creation until Judgement Day.’

‘Tick tock tick tock! What are you talking about, you imbecile!’ Newton shouted, actually staggering to his feet and shaking his fist. ‘The thing your clock records, Mr Bentley, and which announces itself with its tick and its tock, is quite obviously an invention of man. An essential convenience to give order to his day. It lends an imagined shape to the experience of time within the vicinity of the clock. Surely that must be blindingly obvious, even to you! Your solid and unchanging second is in fact nothing of the sort. It is a mysterious and flexible thing. It is different everywhere it exists. Because it is relative.’

‘So you keep saying, Sir Isaac!’ Bentley snapped, rising to his feet also, once more giving way to his own irritation. ‘But relative to what?’

‘To the conditions in which the person who is experiencing it finds himself. Where he is. Whether he is in motion. How fast he is going. If he is travelling towards something or away from it. Whether that thing is also in motion. And beyond all that you must factor in the position and parameters of every other atom in the universe because every single one of them is relative to absolutely every other one.’

The two men were face to face now, Newton’s spilled wine on the rug between them, his great nose almost touching Bentley’s chin.

‘Please, Sir Isaac,’ the Master said finally. ‘Can we not debate this in a civilized manner?’

‘There is nothing to debate,’ Newton replied, collapsing back into his chair, old and tired once more. ‘I understand what I am talking about and you do not. You are to be forgiven. None understand it but I, and I curse a cruel fate which has given me the insight to do so. I have discovered how to change the future. Only God should be able to do that. And yet God has given me the key. I cannot ignore what I know, what God has revealed to me. Even if it drives me mad. And so, Master Bentley, I bequeath to you and your successors these letters and this sealed box.’