Corridors of Power (11 page)

It was the only step-up the Gilbeys had had since they were ennobled in the eighteenth century, when one of them, a Lancashire squire, had married the daughter of a wealthy slave-trader. ‘Rascals. Awful rascals,’ said Lord Gilbey, with the obscure satisfaction that came over him as he meditated on his origins. When anyone else meditated so, he did not feel the same satisfaction. I had heard him comment on a scholarly work which traced the connection of some English aristocratic families with the African slave trade – ‘I should have thought,’ he had said in pain, ‘that that kind of thing is rather
unnecessary.’

Gilbey was dwelling on the consequences of the step-up. Place in ceremonies, change in the coronet. ‘I don’t suppose I shall see another coronation, but you never know. I’m a great believer in being prepared.’

Gilbey was lonely, and we stayed for another half-hour.

When at last we left, he said that he proposed to attend the Lords more regularly, not less. ‘They can do with an eye on them, you know.’ His tone was simple and embittered.

Out in the open, crossing the path beside the Park, Douglas, black hat pulled down, gave a grin of surreptitious kindness. Then he said: ‘That’s that.’

Ministers came, Ministers went. On his side, Douglas wouldn’t have expected his Minister to mourn for him if he were moved to a dim job, or rejoice if he clambered back to the Treasury.

‘Now perhaps,’ he said, ‘we can get down to serious business.’

He did not speculate on who would get Gilbey’s job. He might have been holding off, in case I knew more than I actually did. Whereas in fact, the moment I regained my own office, I rang up Roger and was asked to go round at once. He was in his Whitehall room, not across the way. When I got there, I looked at the clock. It was just after half-past four.

‘Yes,’ said Roger, sitting loose and heavy behind his desk, ‘I know all about it.’

‘Have you heard anything?’

‘Not yet,’ He added evenly: ‘Unless I hear tonight, of course, it’s all gone wrong.’

I did not know whether that was true, or whether he was placating fate by getting ready for the worst.

‘I didn’t go to the House this afternoon. I thought that was asking a bit much.’

He gave a sarcastic grin, but I thought he was playing the same trick.

He would not mention his plans, or the future, or any shape or aspect of politics at all. We talked on, neither of us interested, finding it hard to spin out the time, with the clock ticking. A man from his private office came in with a file. ‘Tomorrow,’ said Roger roughly. As a rule he was polite with his subordinates.

Through the open window came the chimes of Big Ben. Half-past five.

‘This is getting pretty near the bone,’ said Roger.

I asked if he wouldn’t have a drink. He shook his head without speaking.

At nineteen minutes to six – I could not help but watch the clock – the telephone buzzed. ‘You answer it,’ said Roger. For an instant his nerve had frayed.

I heard an excited voice from his own office. The call was from Number 10. Soon I was speaking to the Prime Minister’s principal private secretary, and passed the telephone to Roger.

‘Yes,’ said Roger, ‘I can come along. I’ll be with you at six.’

He looked at me without expression.

‘This looks like it,’ he remarked. ‘I don’t know, there may be a catch in it yet.’

I took a taxi home, with the whole afternoon’s story, except for the dénouement, ready to tell Margaret. But she was dressed ready to go out, and laughing at me because my news was stale. Diana Skidmore had been tracking the day’s events and had rung Margaret up, asking us round for drinks at her house in South Street.

Park Lane was full of party frocks, morning suits, grey top hats, those who had stuck out the royal garden party to an end and were now humbly walking to buses and tubes. One or two top hats and frocks turned, a little less humbly, into South Street, and into Diana’s house.

It was, by the standards of Basset, small, the rooms high but narrow; yet, because it was more crowded with valuable objects, gave an even greater sense of opulence, opulence compressed, each of its elements within arm’s reach. At Basset, one could walk by a bank of flowers between one precious acquisition and the next: space itself gave some effect of simplicity, of
plein air
. But here in South Street, despite Diana’s efforts, the effect was not unlike that of an auctioneer’s saleroom or a display of wedding-presents.

When Margaret and I arrived, Diana, with an air of concentrated sincerity, was explaining to a guest what an extremely
small
house it was. She was giving her explanation with a depth of architectural expertness which I didn’t know she possessed: which she hadn’t possessed until a month or two before. It sounded as though she had passed from the influence of her musician under the influence of an architect, and got delight out of showing it off – just as a young girl, first in love, gets delight out of mentioning the man’s name.

It was very foolish, I felt sometimes in the presence of Diana, to imagine that worldly people were cynical. Born worldlings, like herself, were not in the least cynical. They were worldlings just because they weren’t, just because they loved the world.

Seeing Margaret and me, Diana slid her guest on to another group, and became her managing self, all nonsense swept away. Yes, she had found out that Roger was with the Prime Minister. He and Caro had been invited to come when they could, and if they felt like it.

‘No one in politics here,’ said Diana briskly. ‘Is that right?’ She wasn’t going to expose them, if the prize had been snatched away at the end.

We mingled among the party, most of them rich and leisured. Probably the majority had not so much as heard of Roger Quaife. Margaret and I were sharing the same thought, as we caught each other’s eye: he ought to be here by now. I noticed that Diana, who did not easily get worried, had taken an extra drink.

Then they came, Caro on one side of Roger, and on the other her brother Sammikins, all of them tall, Roger inches taller than the other man, and stones heavier. We had only to look at Caro to know the answer. She was glowing with pleasure, with disrespectful pleasure, that she wanted to cast over us all. They each took a glass of champagne on their way towards us.

‘That’s all right,’ Roger said. It sounded unconcerned, in the midst of kisses and handshakes. It sounded ludicrously tight-lipped. A stranger might have thought he looked the same as he had looked a couple of hours before. Yet, beneath a social smile, reserved, almost timid, his eyes were lit up, the lines round his mouth had settled – as though triumph were suffusing him and it was a luxury not to let it out. Beneath the timid smile, he gave an impression both savage and youthful. He was a man, I was thinking, who was not too opaque to suffer his sorrows or relish his victories.

‘The old boy hasn’t done too badly, has he?’ said Caro to Margaret. Sammikins was trumpeting with laughter.

At close quarters he looked like an athlete, light on his feet with animal spirits. He had eyes like Caro’s, large, innocent and daring. He had her air, even more highly developed, of not giving a damn. He showed more open delight at Roger’s appointment than anyone there. Talking to me, he was enumerating in a resounding voice all the persons whom it would most displease.

Joining our group, Diana was avid for action. ‘Look,’ she said to Roger, ‘I want to give you a real party. We can clear the decks here and lay it on for later tonight. Or have it tomorrow. Which would you like?’

Sammikins would have liked either. So would Caro, but she was looking at Roger.

Slowly he shook his head. He smiled diffidently at Diana, thanked her, and then said: ‘I don’t think it’s the right time.’

She returned his smile, as though she had a soft spot for him, not just a political hostess’. With a rasp, she asked: ‘Why isn’t it the right time?’

‘There have been thousands of Cabinet Ministers before me. Most of them didn’t deserve a party.’

‘Oh, rubbish. You’re you. And I want to give a party for
you
.’

He said: ‘Wait till I’ve done something.’

‘Do you mean that?’ cried Diana.

‘I’d much rather you waited.’

She did not press him any further. Somehow she, and the rest of us, partly understood, or thought we did. What he said might have been priggish. It was not that, so much as superstitious. Just as he had been placating fate in his own office, so, in a different fashion, the job in his hands, he was doing now. It was the superstitiousness of a man in spiritual training, who had set himself a task, who could not afford to let himself be softened, who was going to feel he had wasted his life unless he brought it off.

‘In The Palm Of My Hand’

Once or twice during the next few months, I found myself wondering whether Roger and his associates would qualify for a footnote in history. If so, what would the professionals make of them? I did not envy the historians the job. Of course there would be documents. There would be only too many documents. A good many of them I wrote myself. There were memoranda, minutes of meetings, official files, ‘appreciations’, notes of verbal discussions. None of these was faked.

And yet they gave no idea, in many respects were actually misleading, of what had really been done, and, even more, of what had really been intended. That was true of any documentary record of events that I had seen. I supposed that a few historians might make a strong guess as to what Roger was like. But how was a historian going to reach the motives of people who were just names on the file, Douglas Osbaldiston, Hector Rose, the scientists, the back-bench MPs? There would be no evidence left. But those were the men who were taking part in the decisions and we had to be aware of their motives every day of our lives.

There was, however, another insight which we didn’t possess, and which might come easily to people looking back on us. In personal terms we knew, at least partially, what we were up to. Did we know in social terms? What kind of social forces were pushing together men as different as Roger, Francis Getliffe, Walter Luke, and the rest of us? What kind of social forces could a politician like Roger draw upon? In our particular society, were there any? Those were questions we might ask, and occasionally did: but it was in the nature of things that we shouldn’t have any way of judging the answers, while to a future observer they would stand out, plain as platitudes.

One peaceful summer afternoon, soon after he had taken office, Roger had called some of the scientists into his room. Once, when he was off guard, I had heard him say at Pratt’s that he had only to open his door to find
four knights
wanting something from him. There they all were, but there were more than four, and this time he wanted something from them. He was setting up a committee for his own guidance, he said. He was just asking them for a forecast about nuclear armaments to cover the next ten years. He wanted conclusions as brutal as they could manage to make them. They could work as invisibly as they liked. If they wanted Lewis Eliot as
rapporteur
at any time, they could have him. But above all, they had got to take the gloves off. He was asking them for naked opinions, and he was asking for them by October.

Deliberately – it was part of his touch with men like these – he had let the blarney dissolve away. He had spoken as harshly as any of them. He looked round the table, where the faces stood out, moulded in the diffused sunlight. On his right, Walter Luke, who had just become the chief scientist of Roger’s department, tough, cube-headed, prematurely grey. Then Francis Getliffe: then Sir Laurence Astill, smooth-faced, contented with himself: then Eric Pearson, scientific adviser to my own department, youthful and cocky, like a bright American undergraduate: three more, drawn in from universities, like Getliffe and Astill, and so back to me.

Walter Luke grinned. He said: ‘Well, as HMG pays me my keep, I’ve got to play, haven’t I? There’s no need to ask me. It’s what these chaps say that counts.’ He pointed a stiff, strong arm at Astill and the others. As his reputation for scientific judgement grew, his manners had become more off-hand.

‘Sir Francis,’ said Roger, ‘you’ll come in?’

Francis hesitated. He said: ‘Minister, of course it’s an honour to be asked–’

‘It’s not an honour,’ said Roger, ‘it’s an intolerable job. But you can bring more to it than most men.’

‘I should really rather like to be excused–’

‘I don’t think I can let you. You’ve had more experience than any of us.’

‘Minister, believe me, everyone here knows all that I know–’

‘I can’t accept that,’ said Roger.

Francis hesitated again; courteously, but with a frown, he said: ‘There doesn’t seem any way out, Minister. I’ll try to do what I can.’

It sounded like the familiar minuet, as though no one would have been more disappointed than Francis if he had been taken at his word. But that was the opposite of the truth. Other men, wanting flattery or a job, talked about their consciences. Francis was one of the few whom conscience drove. He was a radical through conscience, not through rebellion. He had always had to force himself into personal struggles. He would have liked to think that for him they were all over.

Just over a year before, he had puzzled his friends at our old college. They assumed that he would be a candidate for the Mastership, and they believed that they could get him elected. At the last moment, he had refused to stand. The reason he gave was that he wanted all his time for his research, that he was having the best ideas of his life. I believed that was part of the truth, but not all. His skin was wearing even thinner as he grew older. I fancied that he could not face being talked about, the gossip and the malice.

Incidentally, instead of electing my old friend Arthur Brown, the college had managed to choose a man called G S Clark, and was becoming more factious than anyone could remember.