The Unhappy Medium, page 4
So after only a year in Oxfordshire, he headed back to King’s and persuaded the department head to let him revisit bubble fusion – providing he could raise some commercial sponsorship. Newton threw his soul into a presentation that would snare some of the more progressive venture capitalists, keen to hedge their bets on esoteric frontiers in green energies. But even he was surprised at just how quickly he managed to secure funding. Three days after presenting his plans at the smart London offices of alternative-energy investors Havotech, they called him to offer sponsorship for a full three years.
A few days later, still skipping on air, Newton ran into Dr Sixsmith in the street outside the university. However, his delight in seeing his old mentor was soon tempered somewhat by Sixsmith’s less-than-subtle scepticism.
‘Are you sure you want to do this Newton – isn’t it a bit flaky?’ Sixsmith asked, his normal joviality replaced with something more restrained. ‘It might not be the best thing for you to be seen doing, have you thought about that?’
Newton, who was growing a little weary of explaining his choice to his colleagues and contemporaries, stuck to his guns. ‘Of course, I’ve thought it all through. I just want to get stuck into something that’s really out there, something that’s got a real mystery to solve. What’s wrong with that?’
‘Trouble with being really out there , Newton,’ said Sixsmith sagely, ‘is that you can’t always come back .’
‘Science should be about risks, shouldn’t it?’ answered Newton, a little too cockily.
‘Tell me about your sponsors,’ Sixsmith asked, affecting not to have heard Newton’s mission statement.
‘Havotech?’ Newton was not sure if he appreciated the questioning. ‘Big outfit, lots of cash and they’re willing to back a long race.’ Sixsmith left a silence that Newton felt obliged to fill awkwardly. ‘It’s pretty unconditional, pure research stuff – I’m not going to promise anything in return, if that’s what you’re implying.’
‘Business is business Newton,’ said Sixsmith wearily. ‘No investor fires cash into a blue-sky project without some promise of a return. The problem with your funky little bubbles is that they offer a lot of promise to the greedy but ill-informed. Free, clean energy, we’ve been there before Newton – you don’t want to muddle up pure science and hard business, it’s not a good mix.’
‘I can keep my head,’ Newton replied, prickling. ‘The postdoc is not under their control, they have no influence.’
‘Just watch your step is all I’m saying,’ Sixsmith persisted, his face uncharacteristically serious. They looked at each other awkwardly for a second, neither enjoying the atmosphere. ‘Look, I hate to cut and run old chap, but I’m going to be late,’ said Sixsmith, relaxing back into his more usual grinning self. ‘Let’s catch up properly soon, have lunch or something.’
‘Absolutely,’ answered Newton uncomfortably, ‘of course.’ Sixsmith shook his hand, winked over his spectacles then scurried through the university’s entrance and was gone.
Newton stood quietly for a second, stewing. He had inherited much of his father’s bloody-mindedness and far from considering the advice he had just been given, he found himself dismissing it, his determination to cut a maverick dash in the scientific community more powerful than a sense of self-preservation or caution.
This same lack of caution may have been the reason that soon after, Newton met, and then very quickly married, Rowena Posset.
******
Steadily growing his circle of influential and fashionable acquaintances, Newton had studied by day and partied by night, brushing shoulders with the potpourri of London’s elite. One thing led to another, and after a few select parties and gallery openings, he began to ease into the cooler and rather flashier world of the media. Picked up as a handy science voice on a few panel shows, he’d found himself suddenly in a very different environment. For the somewhat scientifically challenged commissioning fraternity in publishing and television, the cool-scientist aura of Newton was an absolute gift. Consequently, though he was still relatively young and far from established, he began to start getting the gigs that normally passed to older steadier hands. Book deals, TV appearances and radio interviews came thick and fast, and Newton soon began to float closer and closer to the tent pegs of the celebrity circus. He’d be at a fringe conference on neutron detectors one day and then partying at a guest-list-only gig by Gorillaz the next.
Somewhere between the two, Dr Newton Barlow had been pinned to the wall by a vivacious blond biologist. A taxi ride later and Newton’s hormones had been activated so expertly that he had trouble working for several days, his normally steely concentration interrupted by frequent X-rated images of Rowena sipping red wine for breakfast, giggling as they lived only for the moment on nothing but Shiraz, dark chocolate and sex.
Ms Posset was clearly proud of her conquest. Newton had become a regular in magazines and TV shows, and although her own career was underway, she seemed oddly disinterested by it, a warning sign that Newton was only going to recognise when it was far too late.
Newton started leaving his brain in the laboratory and spending dizzy afternoons in bed with Rowena, listening without any reservations to her self-aggrandising tales of conquest amongst an unsuspecting scientific community. Rowena liked scientists; she told Newton that the wonderful Carl Sagan had been her first true crush and that she’d written his name, including all his qualifications, all over her pencil case after seeing him presenting Cosmos . Being too loved-up to think clearly, Newton was not really sure what he made of such revelations, especially the claim that she’d bedded five eminent physicists in the past three years, two at the same time. He felt both excited and alarmed by Rowena, and chastised himself for being conservative one minute and vaguely dirty the next. So, he answered this unease and concern over the young woman in the time-honoured fashion for a chap in his late twenties – he married her.
Initially, Rowena relished being on Newton’s arm as he flitted through the mix of academic and cultural occasions in the capital. Then suddenly, after two summers together in Newton’s small apartment in Crouch End, she announced that she wanted a baby. Her old school friends, who’d almost imperceptibly grown to be a strong third force in the relationship, had begun hitting the maternity ward in ever greater numbers and so, Rowena persistently reasoned, this was the best time to have a child of her own. Gabriella was born less than a year later and within two weeks of the nursery being painted and stencilled in sickly pink and yellow animals, Rowena was bitching incessantly about the pokiness of the flat. Three years later and the flat, Rowena and the rapidly growing child had built up into something a little more pressing.
Newton, distracted by his research, the TV appearances and book projects, had not seen the crisis approaching. But abruptly he could see that his academic life was no longer his own. Now there was a very real threat to a career path he had always taken for granted. The science was hardly top paying, even on the TV front, and time was limited. With Rowena opting out of paid employment to bring up little Gabby, Newton woke up one dark and cold November morning in something of a panic.
Rowena had been dropping large city-shaped hints for the whole of the last evening, citing seemingly hundreds of friends of friends who’d given up the sciences to work in finance.
‘You’ve got to look to the future Newton,’ Rowena lobbied relentlessly, as Newton struggled to catch up on some research reports. ‘It’s great that you love what you do, darling, but really, where’s the incentive financially?’ She let it hang for a while for maximum effect. ‘What about your daughter? Do you want her to grow up in ... this?’ She waved her spindly fingers at the walls of the flat.
‘What’s wrong with this?’ Newton waved his own thin fingers more affectionately back at the walls.
‘Newton!’ she snapped impatiently, turning to face him reproachfully. ‘It’s not all about you, you and your science . You can’t go on like this forever. Suzie’s husband opted out of science and went into big business. Have you any idea what he earns? Why you can’t see sense and do the same thing is beyond me.’ She huffed and turned back to the television, her cold shoulders broadcasting considerably more tension than the finale of Britain’s Got Talent , flickering aimlessly on the other side of the lounge.
Business? The city? That was the last thing Newton wanted. He’d rather work as a cartoon animal in a theme park or dance naked for sex tourists than don a pinstripe and sell his mortal soul in Canary Wharf. But the more he tried to explain this to his wife, the more she seemed to harden. Gone was the giggling sex kitten who’d lit up Newton’s lounge a few years earlier; now she was moody, manipulative and seemingly indifferent to her husband as an actual person. He looked at the small bundle of child around which their arguments had begun orbiting and knew he would be hard-pressed to win her over.
He was three years into his postdoctorate work and more engrossed in it than ever, despite the pressures building at home. Newton’s team was getting intriguing results from an experiment using sound waves to generate and collapse tiny bubbles in specially prepared acetone, the key ingredient in nail polish remover amongst other things. Their detectors were registering heavy isotopes of hydrogen in the liquid, hinting, just hinting , that fusion might actually have occurred. Newton was waiting to hear if his paper on the topic would be accepted by the journal Nature . He daydreamed of the stir the paper could cause, and knew that publication would likely guarantee increased funding from Havotech. But the editors at Nature were making sceptical noises about his paper’s claims – so it wasn’t a done deal. So it seemed fortuitous when a director of Havotech turned up to make Newton an offer, just when relations between him and his wife were hitting rock bottom.
On a cold wet Wednesday, one Peter Carnatt arrived at the King’s College research lab where Newton had spent the weekend with his lab assistant, rigging up a small demonstration. Carnatt’s slick manner took him by surprise. The late-thirties city boy exuded a sense of quiet dynamism that Newton found both energising and difficult to tune into. He persistently left awkward gaping silences and when Newton asked leading questions about Havotech or Carnatt himself, he fielded them obliquely, taking the conversation off at strange tangents. Though Carnatt smiled incessantly, Newton soon realised he was not even close to communicating with the man on a human level. They stuck to the bubbles and Carnatt followed the science intently. His detailed enquiries implied an impressive grasp of the physics – Carnatt had clearly done his homework.
‘This is great Newton,’ he said suddenly from behind his protective glasses. ‘You’ve done a lot with your ... limited resources.’
‘Limited? Well, every scientist would like better gear, sure.’
‘Still, it would be nice if you could take all this ...’ Carnatt gestured to the apparatus still humming away as it cooled, ‘... take it up a gear or two.’
Newton had a sudden sense of vertigo. Was he about to have his funding axed – had Carnatt rehearsed some disingenuous spiel about how Havotech would be doing him a favour by letting him move on to a bigger player? ‘I can achieve a lot with this little rig though, really I can,’ Newton said defensively.
Carnatt smiled. ‘I’m sure you can Newton. In fact we know you can, we’ve been following your work quite closely.’ He looked around the lab to ensure that the assistant was out of earshot. ‘Look, let’s not talk here. There’s a good bar round the corner, let me buy you lunch.’
So they crossed the road to the chic Beluga Bar. Carnatt led Newton to a tall table where he sat with his legs dangling foolishly, increasing his sense of poor relation as the businessman went to the bar to order food. He came back with drinks and a numbered wooden spoon then let Newton take a long sip of his bitter before continuing with his pitch.
‘I gather you and your wife have a baby now,’ said Carnatt, as he opened his laptop.
‘Baby? Oh yes, well not a baby anymore, a girl, Gabriella,’ Newton blurted awkwardly, the sudden familiarity a little unsettling. ‘Do you have children Peter?’ he replied. Peter looked at him, the smile staying identically both warm and cold.
‘No,’ he replied, and without missing a beat he turned the laptop towards Newton. ‘This is the website of Havotech Futures, your primary source of funding.’ He took a sip of beer. ‘You’ll notice that the majority of our projects are energy based, or at least pointing meaningfully in that direction. Green, clean and on the scene, that’s the idea Newton. Things are changing. Global warming, oil conflict, financial upheaval – it’s all a bit of a mess. Everybody is looking for something else to fire up the pretty lights. And that, Dr Barlow, is why we like your little bubbles.’
Newton rushed quickly to cut Carnatt off – he wasn’t close to anything concrete and was determined to keep things in perspective, even if there was cash in the air. ‘No. No, wait, you have to understand, this is a long way from that kind of breakthrough. It’s still at the early research stage, you know. You can’t bank on this kind of thing, it might be decades away from anything that can have a commercial application – it might be never.’
‘Newton, please, you do us a disservice. Havotech is very used to the realities of scientific work. We deal with many people in your ...’ he paused, ‘... shall I say, limiting circumstances.’ Carnatt took another sip, his eyes staying locked unnervingly on Newton’s. ‘We are well aware that your bubbles might go nowhere. On the other hand, they also might go somewhere very interesting, interesting enough for our investment to pay off, and pay off handsomely. That’s the business we’re in Newton, and we’re in it for the long haul. There’s a race to find new technologies. Politicians are finally waking up and they want something fast – a kind of Manhattan Project for power if you want, and sure, they’ll throw money at the problem, lots and lots of big juicy grants. Our job is to take their demand for a breakthrough and turn it into a viable frontline of research.’
‘But like I said,’ Newton insisted, ‘there’s no guarantee my work has any possible applications in terms of energy creation.’
‘It doesn’t have to, Newton,’ Carnatt continued. ‘The important thing is that our business finances a very wide portfolio of projects out there on the margins, because it will be out there somewhere on the margins that the really important stuff will be found. We aren’t interested in your common-or-garden hydrogen cells, solar power, wind power or any of that old stuff. We believe that the best stuff, the really mind-blowing stuff, is yet to come.’
Newton frowned. ‘So what are you saying then? That you’ll continue my funding for what, another year?’ Carnatt’s smile widened.
‘Oh, we can do better than that Newton.’
Carnatt was about to elaborate when their food arrived, leaving Newton balanced like a high diver on the edge of his bar stool. The barman seemed to endlessly fuss over the food, the cutlery and the napkins, and he delayed the financier’s next point by what felt to Newton like a geological time period. Finally they were left alone again. ‘Go on,’ said Newton, leaving his food well alone.
‘That’s actually not bad,’ said Carnatt to his tuna and olive wrap, ostentatiously chewing and enjoying the suspense he was manufacturing. ‘Let me ask you a question first. How far are you into your postdoc, Dr Barlow?’
‘It’s the last year,’ said Newton earnestly.
‘Well, how would you feel about stopping the postdoc right now, today even, and taking your research up to our state-of-the-art labs in Cambridge?’ Peter Carnatt let the words hang and took another bite. Newton looked stunned for a second, but characteristically countered with a question.
‘The same research? You mean I just stop here one day and start with you the next?’
‘Yup, no interruptions, no deviation and no interference,’ Carnatt continued, dabbing his mouth with a napkin, the smile changing imperceptibly towards the smug .
‘Really?’ Newton’s scepticism was fading way too fast and he knew it; he was forcing out more questions almost out of duty. ‘What about my research team? And I’d have to bring the family up to Cambridge too, that might cause problems.’
Carnatt waved the issues away in a tight shake of the head. ‘Not a problem, you can bring anyone you really need from your team. They’ll get the going rate – more if they need the incentive. And the house, well, we can rent you a big detached house in some nice leafy suburb while you’re looking for something of your own. And considering the rise in salary, I’d imagine it would be a tad bigger than the current place.’
Newton’s sense of relief and excitement was strong enough to make him overlook any sense of discomfort at having been researched a little too much. The carrot was now far chunkier than the stick, and given the state of things at home, Newton felt like he was witnessing something akin to divine intervention. He slipped with ease upon the hook.
‘Tell me a bit more about the money,’ he said, biting into his brie and cranberry baguette.
CHAPTER 4 – Landfil l
The history of England is a history of battles. Even a cursory look at the map will reveal a mass of little crossed swords, testament to the bloody tendency of one Englishman to have a crack at another with whatever weapons they have to hand. From the Roman conquest to the Second World War, these savage altercations have left their mark upon the land. Not every battle has been recorded, of course. Some skirmishes were too small or too remote to be noted by chroniclers, while some were just one in a sea of other troubles, historians far too busy saving their own skins to write down the details.
