“What about Miss Huntingtower’s help? Am I not to get that?”
“That’s a different matter entirely. She ought to give you the feminine point of view, which I couldn’t do. Let’s see. She can consult with you in the evenings. Will that do?”
I agreed; and it was arranged that thereafter I was to spend the evenings at Nordenholt’s house, where she and I could discuss things in peace. Nordenholt left us almost entirely to ourselves, though occasionally he would come into the room where we worked: but he refused to take any interest in our affairs.
“One thing at a time for me, nowadays,” he used to say, when she appealed to him. “My affair is to bring things up to the point where you two can take over. Your business is to be ready to pull the starting-lever when I give you the word. I won’t look beyond my limits.”
And, indeed, he had enough to do at that time. Things were not always smooth in the Nitrogen Area; and I could see signs that they might even become more difficult. Since I had left my own department, I had gained more information about the general state of affairs; and I could comprehend the possibilities of wreckage which menaced us as the months went by.
I have said before that it is almost impossible for me to retrace in detail the evolution of my reconstruction plans; and in the part where Elsa Huntingtower and I collaborated, my recollections are even more confused than they are with regard to the work I did alone. So much of it was developed by discussions between us that in the end it was hard to say who was really responsible for the final form of the schemes which we laid down in common. She brought a totally new atmosphere into the problem, details mostly, but details which meant the remodelling of much that I had planned.
One example will be sufficient to show what I mean. I had, as I have mentioned, planned a series of semi-isolated communities scattered over the cultivable area; and I had gone the length of getting my architects to design houses which I thought would be the best possible compromise: something that would please the average taste without offending people who happened to be particular in details. I showed some of these drawings to her, expecting approval. She examined them carefully for a long time, without saying anything.
“Well, Mr. Flint,” she said at last, “I know you will think I am very hard to please; but personally I wouldn’t live in one of these things if you paid me to do it.”
“What’s wrong with them? That one was drawn by Atkinson, and I believe he’s supposed to be a rather good architect.”
“Of course he is. That’s just what condemns him in my mind. Don’t you know that for generations the ‘best architects’ have been imposing on people, giving them something that no one wants; and carrying it off just because they are the ‘best architects’ and are supposed to know what is the right thing. And not one of them ever seems to have taken the trouble to find out what a woman wants, in a house. Not one.