Corridors of Power (30 page)

‘Do you think Roger’s getting worried?’ I asked.

‘I shouldn’t have thought so. I can’t for the life of me imagine why, can you?’

At that, even Sammikins, not listening so intently as I was, looked baffled.

We all knew that Roger was in his private crisis of politics. Cave knew it as well as any man alive. Suddenly I wondered whether, with extravagant indirectness, he was hinting at something which was not political at all. Was he really suggesting that Roger had another concern, different in kind? He was an observant and suspicious man, and he might have had his suspicions sharpened by unhappiness. Had he guessed that another marriage was in danger?

‘No,’ I said to Cave, ‘I can’t imagine why. Unless things went worse this morning than you’ve told us. And you’re wondering if he’s got to back down. And of course you too.’

‘Oh, no, no, no,’ Cave said rapidly. His whole face was transformed by a smile which seemed to come from within, evanescent, amused, youthful. ‘I assure you, it’s all gone easier than I expected. Of course, the White Paper hasn’t really got all that many teeth, has it? Unless someone is going to read it in a way Reggie Collingwood wouldn’t approve.’

He added: ‘Roger was exceptionally good. It was one of the times when he does look the biggest man among us – you know what I mean. It’s true, he did just drop one hint, not very loudly and he threw it away – that, in certain circumstances, he conceivably might want to say a word or two in public. It was nothing like as vulgar as threatening to resign, you understand.’ Cave smiled again. ‘I may be wrong, of course, but I rather got the impression that some of our colleagues took the point.’

With a glint in his eye, Cave said to me, in a very quiet tone: ‘So far as I remember that last party of Caro’s, Roger might have learned that trick from you, mightn’t he?’

It was just on two. The meeting was to start again in half an hour, and soon he would have to be going. We walked upstairs to the drawing-room, also bright, also hung with paintings. But what struck the eye was a large photograph of his wife. It made her look handsomer than she really was: clear-featured, vivid, strong. Not right for him, not conceivably right for him, as anyone studying that face would have guessed. But there it stood. He must have seen it every night when he came in alone. One had a feeling, both of pity and discomfort, that he was living, not only with, but on his sorrow.

With a directness that I could not have matched, nor most of us, Sammikins marched up to the photograph and said: ‘Have you heard from her?’

‘Only through her solicitors.’

‘What about?’

‘What do you think?’ said Cave.

Sammikins turned on him and said, in a hard, astringent tone, ‘Look here, the sooner you say good-riddance, the better it’ll be for you. I don’t suppose you care about that. But the better it will be for her, too, and you do care about that, worse luck. And the better it’ll be for everyone around you.’

He might have been a regimental officer dealing with marital trouble in the ranks. Somehow it didn’t sound like a wild young roisterer talking to an eminent man. It was not embarrassing to listen to.

‘Never mind,’ said Cave gently, with a touch of gratitude, speaking quite genuinely, as Sammikins had spoken. Soon he was saying goodbye, on his way to Great George Street. I thought he was genuine again when, in sympathy and reassurance, he said to me: ‘Don’t worry about this afternoon. It’s all going according to plan.’

But he could not resist one last twist, dig, or mystification: ‘The only question is, whose plan?’

On Sunday afternoon, a couple of days after the Memorial Service, Margaret and I were sitting at home. The children had gone out to Christmas parties and we were peaceful. Then the telephone rang. As she answered it, I saw her look surprised. Yes, he is in, she was saying. Apparently the other person was trying to make a date with me: Margaret, protective, suggested that we should be alone, so wouldn’t it be better to come in for a drink? There was a long explanation. At last, she left the receiver off and came to me with a commiserating curse. ‘Hector Rose,’ she said.

Over the telephone, his voice sounded more than ever glacial. ‘I am most extremely sorry to disturb you, my dear Lewis, I wouldn’t have done so if I hadn’t a rather urgent reason. Do make my apologies to your wife. I really am very, very sorry.’

When the polite wind-up had finished, it came out that he needed to see me that same afternoon. He would give me tea at the Athenaeum at half-past four. I didn’t want to go, but he pressed me, all flah-flah dropped, clear and firm. Then, arrangements made, the apologies and thanks started over again.

Seeing our afternoon broken, Margaret and I were cross. I told her that I could not remember him doing this on a Sunday, not even in the busiest time of the war: he must be coming in specially himself, from right beyond Highgate: it occurred to me that I had never been inside his house. Margaret, not placated, was scolding me for not saying no.

She took it for granted, as I did, that the summons had something to do with Roger’s White Paper. Yet we had heard, on the Friday night, that Cave’s prediction had been correct, and that the Cabinet Committee had agreed. Margaret said: ‘Whatever it is, it could wait till tomorrow morning.’

Leaving the comfortable room, leaving my wife, going out into the drizzling cold, I felt she was right.

It was not perceptibly more encouraging when my taxi drew up in front of the club. The building was in darkness: there, on the pavement, in the slush and the half-light, stood Hector Rose. He began apologizing before I had paid my driver. ‘My dear Lewis, this is more than usually incompetent of me. I am most terribly sorry. I’d got it into my head that this was one of the weekends we are open. I must say, I’m capable of most kinds of mistakes, but I shouldn’t have thought I was capable of this.’ The courtesies grew more elaborate, at the same time more sarcastic, as though beneath them all he was really blaming me.

He went on explaining, with the same elaboration, that perhaps the consequences of his ‘fatuity’ were not irretrievably grave: since ‘the club’ was closed, the Senior would by agreement be open, and we could perhaps, without too much inconvenience, have our tea there. I was as familiar with these facts as he was. Fifty yards from us, just across the Place, the lights of what he called the ‘Senior’ (the United Services Club) streamed through the first flutter of sleet. All I wanted to do was cut the formalities short and get into the warm.

We got into the warm. We sat in a corner of the club drawing-room and ordered tea and muffins. Rose was dressed in his weekend costume, sports jacket, grey flannel trousers. Still the formalities were not cut short. This was so unlike him that I was at a loss. As a rule, after the ceremonies had in his view been properly performed, he got down to business like a man turning on a switch. His manner was so artificial, so sharply split from the personality beneath, that it was always difficult to pick up his mood. And yet, as he went on describing great labyrinthine curves of politeness, I had a sense, a distressing sense, that he was under strain.

We drank the tea, we ate the muffins. Rose was expressing a mannerly interest in the book reviews in the Sunday papers. He had noticed something on a subject that was bound to interest my wife, to whom again, his regrets for intruding that day –

Usually I was patient: but I could wait no longer. I said: ‘What’s all this about?’

He gazed at me with an expression I could not read.

‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘that something has happened about Roger Quaife. Is that it?’

‘Not directly,’ said Rose, in his brisk, businesslike tone. So at last he was engaged. He went on:‘No, so far as I know, that’s all right. Our masters appear to be about to sanction what I must say is an unusually sensible White Paper. It’s going to the Cabinet next week. It’s a compromise, of course, but it has got some good points. Whether our masters stick to those when they get under shot and shell – that’s quite another matter. Will our friend Quaife stick to it when they really get at him? I confess I find it an interesting speculation.’ He was speaking from his active, working self: but he was still watching me.

‘Well, then?’ I said.

‘I do think that’s reasonably all right,’ he said, glad to be talking at a distance, like an Olympian god who hadn’t yet decided on his favourite. ‘I don’t believe you need have that on your mind.’

‘Then what do I need to have on my mind?’ Again I could not read his expression. His face was set, authoritative, and when he wasn’t forcing smiles, without pretence.

‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I’ve been having to spend some time with the Security people.’ He added sharply: ‘Far too much time, I may say.’

Suddenly, comfortably, I thought I had it. Tuesday was New Year’s Day. Each year, Rose sat in the group which gave out Honours. Was it conceivable that something had leaked, from our office? I asked: ‘Have some of the names slipped out?’

Rose looked at me, irritated. ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite understand you.’

‘I meant, have some of the names in next week’s list got out?’

‘No, my dear chap, nothing like that. Nothing like that at all.’ It was rare for him to let his impatience show through. He had to make an effort to control it, before he spoke calmly, precisely, choosing his words: ‘I didn’t want to worry you unnecessarily. But I think I remember telling you, some months ago, about representations from various quarters, which I said then that I was doing my best to resist. When would that be?’

We both had good memories, trained memories. He knew, without my telling him, that it had been back in September, when he warned me that ‘the knives were sharpening’. We could both have written a précis of that conversation.

‘Well, I’m sorry to have to tell you, but I haven’t been able to resist indefinitely. These people – what do they call them, in their abominable jargon? “pressure groups”? – have been prepared to go over our heads. There’s no remedy for it. Some of our scientists, I mean our most eminent scientists advising on defence policy – and that, I need hardly tell you, is our friend Quaife’s policy – are going to be put through a new security investigation. I fancy the name for this procedure, though it is not specially elegant, is “double checking”.’

Rose was speaking with bitter distaste, distaste apparently as much for me as for the pressure groups, as he went on with his exposition, magisterial, orderly, and lucid. Some of this influence had been set in motion by Brodzinski, working on the members whom he knew. Some might have got going independently. Some had been wafted over via Washington – prompted, perhaps, by Brodzinski’s speeches, or his friends there, or possibly by a re-echo of the Question in the House.

‘We could have resisted any of these piecemeal,’ said Rose. ‘Though, as you may have noticed, our masters are not at – shall I say, their most Cromwellian – when faced with a “suggestion” from our major allies. But we could not resist them all combined. You must try to give us the benefit of the doubt.’

Our eyes met, each of us blank-faced. No one apologized more profusely than Rose, when apologies were not needed: no one hated apologizing more, when the occasion was real.

‘The upshot is,’ he went on, ‘that some of our more distinguished scientists, who have done good service to the State, are going to have to submit to a distinctly humiliating experience. Or alternatively, be cut off from any connection with the real stuff.’

‘Who are they?’

‘There are one or two who don’t matter much to us. Then there’s Sir Laurence Astill.’

I could not help smiling. Rose gave a wintry grin.

‘I must say,’ I said, ‘I think that’s rather funny. I wish I could be there when it happens.’

‘I have an idea,’ said Rose, ‘that he was thrown in to make things look more decent.’

‘The others?’

‘One is Walter Luke. Between ourselves, since he’s a chief Government scientist, I take that distinctly ill.’

I swore.

‘But still,’ I said, ‘Walter’s a very tough man. I don’t think he’ll mind.’

‘I hope not.’ He paused. ‘Another is a very old friend of yours. Francis Getliffe.’

I sat silent. At last I said: ‘This is a scandal.’

‘I’ve tried to indicate that I don’t regard it with enthusiasm myself.’

‘It’s not only a scandal, but it’s likely to be serious,’ I went on.

‘That was one of my reasons for dragging you here this afternoon.’

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I know Francis very well. I’ve known him since we were very young men. He’s as proud as a man can be. I doubt, I really do doubt, whether he’ll take this.’

‘You must tell him he’s got to.’

‘Why should he?’

‘Duty,’ said Rose.

‘He’s only been lending a hand at all because of duty. If he’s going to be insulted into the bargain–’

‘My dear Lewis,’ said Rose, with a flash of icy temper, ‘a number of us, no doubt less eminent than Getliffe, but still reasonably adequate in our profession, are insulted in one way or another towards the end of our careers. But that doesn’t permit us to abdicate.’

It was almost the only personal complaint I had heard him make, and then half-veiled. I said:‘All Francis wants is to get on with his research and live in peace.’

Rose replied: ‘If I may borrow your own debating technique, may I suggest that, if he does so, there is slightly less chance that either he or any of the rest of us will live in peace?’

He continued sharply: ‘Let’s drop the nonsense. We all know that Getliffe is the scientific mind behind Quaife’s policy. For military things, I think we’re all agreed that he’s the best scientific mind we’ve got. That being so, he’s just got to swallow his pride. You’ve got to tell him so. I repeat, that was one of my reasons for giving you this news today. We’ll probably hear of this unpleasantness tomorrow afternoon. You’ve got to soften the blow before he hears, and persuade him. If you believe in this policy so much – and I thought, forgive me, that there were certain indications that you did – you can’t do any less.’