THE INVISIBLE VICTORY

the single end of the glorification of Adolf Hitler.'

'The Germans are perhaps a _krankes Volk,_ a sick people,' Archie reflected. 'But I'm perfectly certain that Hitler is simply whipping up excitement for excitement's sake, like a speedway rider or circus performer. To keep his people's minds off the economic situation.'

'You mean, Hitler's just the Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze?'

'Roughly, yes.'

'Oh, God. You blind fool.' I pushed away the chicken. I wasn't hungry any more, anyway. I had come back from Germany full of the dangers of Hitler and the blessings of sulphonamide. Nobody would believe me about either. I began to suspect I was in the wrong.

The following week, Archie found me my job. His father was the creator of Fry's Carbolic Soap, and a thousand other items by which the British masses removed their natural odours and substituted others. He was also a governor of the Arundel College which employs me to this day, which is akin to the Imperial College of Science in Kensington. In his secretively generous way, Archie got his father to grant a few hundred pounds for research into the disinfectant properties of various medicated soaps, and there was no difficulty in my being appointed its beneficiary.

Research in those days carried no glamorous suggestion of white-coated armies steadily advancing the frontiers of knowledge. It did not exist outside the few universities and exceptional departments like Sir Almroth Wright's. A busy Harley Street specialist might cut up a cat as spare-time relaxation, comparable with salmon fishing or hospital politics. If you needed research apparatus more elaborate than a Bunsen burner or a retort you constructed it yourself. There was nobody to manufacture it. There was anyway no money to buy it. I started that summer to examine the potency of antiseptics like carbolic, chlorine, formaldehyde or iodine against common household germs. In the end, I found plain soap to be more effective than any of them, I hope to the gratification of my sponsor.

But first I had to supply myself with germs, for which I turned to an acquaintance of my days in St Mary's, Dr Leonard Colebrook.

'Coli'-everyone called Colebrook by his bacteriological nickname from _Bacillus coli,_ even himself-was reared a strict Nonconformist, frugal, teetotal, his interests only gardening and euthanasia. Like me, he was a grammar school boy. He was due to leave the Inoculation Department the year after I quit it for Cambridge, and again like me found himself without hope of a job. Coli was grateful for a salary of Ј100 a year to work in the research laboratory of Queen Charlotte's Maternity Hospital, which midwives know the world over. He was still there, and the hospital was just down the way from Arundel College in the Marylebone Road.

Coli often bustled into Arundel from his little open Morris Oxford, with a bag which seemed more suited for the necessities of a leisured weekend than a day's work, which he would drop while simultaneously whipping off his Homburg hat and struggling from an enormous, enveloping raincoat, in another moment deep in discussion with some member of the staff more elevated than myself. I had started at Arundel promptly at the beginning of August, and during my second week intercepted him in the marble-lined hall.

'Why, it's Elgar. What have you been doing with yourself?' he asked amiably. He was slightly built and barely five feet tall, just turned fifty. 'The last I heard, you'd got a First at Cambridge and were doing some work on staining techniques with Hopkins. Well done.'

I told him about Wuppertal. He remarked, 'How's your German?'

'It's improved, _das versteht sich.'_

'German is essential for keeping up to date in any of the sciences.' Coli matched a deep voice with a deliberate, solemn way of saying things. 'You'll remember, I took myself off to Breslau while you were working under The Lion.' He used the more flattering soubriquet for Sir Almroth Wright. The pair were so close they were often compared in the department with father and son.

He mentioned Fleming and his mould juice. 'It was your fault, wasn't it, that the penicillium ever contaminated his Petri dish? Did you know that Professor Raistrick tried to purify the stuff, down the road from here at the London School of Tropical Medicine?' I had never heard of anyone interested in penicillin outside St Mary's. 'That must have been in 1929, or thereabouts. Flem sent him a sample from that original spore-Raistrick knows absolutely everything about moulds, of course. He tried growing it on a special glucose solution. It produced a sort of mat on the surface, but the potency's all in the juice underneath.'

My chemist's curiosity aroused, I asked, 'I suppose Raistrick never isolated the active principle?'

'He hadn't much luck. He ended up with a yellow pigment which he called 'chrysogenin', and he tried extracting penicillin from it with ether. But unfortunately the penicillin simply disappeared into thin air. And you can't identify a chemical if it's too unstable to stay under your nose for more than half a minute.'

'No, of course not.'

'After that, I fancy Raistrick rather lost interest. They had other bad luck. One of his staff working on the mould juice was killed in a road accident, another died. They wrote an inconclusive paper about it in the _Biochemical Journal _towards the end of 1932, if you're interested.'

Coli agreed to supply me with a mixed bag of germs from his own laboratory. The month of August passed. A peace came to me which I had not enjoyed since Cambridge. I was doing useful work, I was my own master, reasonably well paid, well housed among friends. I was out of that damned basement. I had put off calling upon my parents because Sir Edward was still abroad and I did not wish to encounter Lady Tip. Above all, I wanted to shed Rosie.

The first of September was a Saturday. About five in the afternoon I was sitting with David in Archie's flat when the doorbell rang. The surly Watson being off, David answered it. He returned after some time. 'It's your girl friend, Rosie.'

'I don't want to see her. Say I'm not in.'

'I know you don't. I tried putting her off, but it wouldn't wash.'

'Oh, God. Must I really talk to her? It's like entertaining a ghost. All that's behind me now.'

'I think you ought to have a word with her, boy,' advised David, with an unaccustomed solemnity which alarmed me.

17

I did not ask Rosie into the flat. I took her to a nearby Lyons teashop by St George's Hospital at Hyde Park Corner. She was crying most of the way. I did not want to talk about it until we were sitting down. It would give me time to collect my thoughts. I bought her a cup of tea and a shiny bun with lumps of sugar like broken glass on top. She never touched either, but went on crying.

'Why didn't you tell me before?' I demanded.

'I couldn't…I couldn't be sure.'

'But you are sure? Are you?'

She nodded dumbly, the cheap pink handkerchief at her eyes thoroughly wet through.

'How long has it been going on?'

'I haven't had my monthlies since last June.'

'But how can you be sure. There might be other reasons.'

'I can see it.'

'I can't.'

'When I has my wash. I can see it, plain as anything. Soon everyone will be able to.'

'You're sure it's me?'

For a moment she did not comprehend, then she exclaimed, 'How can you say that?' starting to cry again, making me feel doubly guilty, ashamed, frightened, desperate and confused.

'You must pull yourself together,' I commanded. She went on crying. People at other tables were staring at us. I felt all of them were in the secret. 'We've got to look at this coolly.' I waited until her sobs had quietened. 'Listen, Rosie-if either of us loses our heads we shall get nowhere.'

'Ow, Jim! You do still love me, don't you?'