Homecomings (18 page)

So at last I did not hedge, but wrote that we ought not to take risks; this job did not need the special executive flair that Lufkin would give it, but hundreds of competent chemical engineers, where the big chemical firms could outclass him; at this stage he should be ruled out.

I suspected that Rose had already come to the same opinion. All he committed himself to, however, were profuse thanks on the telephone and an invitation to come myself, and bring Cooke, to what he called ‘a parley with Lufkin and his merry men’.

The ‘parley’ took place on a bitter December morning in one of the large rooms at the back of our office, with windows looking out over the Horse Guards towards the Admiralty: but at this date most of the glass had been blown in, the windows were covered with plasterboard, so that little light entered but only the freezing air. The chandeliers shone on to the dusty chairs: through the one sound window the sky was glacial blue: the room was so cold that Gilbert Cooke, not over-awed enough to ignore his comfort, went back for his greatcoat.

Lufkin had brought a retinue of six, most of them his chief technicians; Rose had only five, of whom a Deputy Secretary, myself and Cooke came from the Department and two scientists from Barford. The Minister sat between the two parties, his legs twisted round each other, his toes not touching the ground; turning to his right where Lufkin was sitting, he began a speech of complicated cordiality. ‘It’s always a pleasure, indeed it’s sometimes the only pleasure of what they choose to call office,’ he said, ‘to be able to sit down round a table with our colleagues in industry. You’re the chaps who deliver the goods and we know a willing horse when we see one and we all know what to do with willing horses.’ The Minister continued happily, if a trifle obscurely; he had never been a speaker, his skill was the skill of private talks but he enjoyed his own speech and did not care whether he sounded as though his head were immersed in cotton-wool. He made a tangential reference to a ‘certain project about which the less said the better’, but he admitted that there was an engineering job to be done. He thought, and he hoped Mr Lufkin would agree, that nothing but good could accrue if they all got together round the table and threw their ideas into the pool.

Then he said blandly, with his innocent old man’s smile, ‘But now I’ve got to say something which upsets me, though I don’t expect it will worry anyone else.’

‘Minister?’ said Lufkin.

‘
I’m afraid I must slip away
,’ said Bevill. ‘We all have our masters, you know.’ He spoke at large to Lufkin’s staff. ‘You have my friend Lufkin, and I’m sure he is an inspiring one. I have mine and he wants me just on the one morning when I was looking forward to a really friendly useful talk.’ He was on his feet, shaking hands with Lufkin, saying that they would never miss him with his friend and colleague, Hector Rose to look after them, speaking with simple, sincere regret at having to go, but determined not to stay in that room five minutes longer. Spry and active, he shook hands all the way round and departed down the cold corridor, his voice echoing briskly back, ‘Goodbye all, goodbye all!’

Rose moved into the chair. ‘I think the ceremonies can be regarded as having been properly performed,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it would set us going if I try to clear the air.’ For once he was not at his most elaborately polite. I felt certain it was only just before the meeting that he had heard of the Minister’s intention to flit. But his statement was as lucid and fair as usual, and no one there could have guessed whether he was coming down for or against Lufkin. There was just one single job to be performed, he said; not much could be said, but, to make possible some kind of rational exchange, he took it on his own responsibility to tell Lufkin’s technicians a bare minimum. There was no money in it; the Government would pay as for a development contract. Further, the best expert opinion did not think this method economically viable in peacetime.

‘So that, whoever we ask to take this job on, we are not exactly conferring a benefit on them.’

‘It is a matter of duty,’ said Lufkin, sounding hypocritical and yet believing every word. ‘That’s why I’m prepared to undertake it.’

‘You could do it, with your existing resources?’

Lufkin replied: ‘I could do it.’

When he spoke like that, off-handedly but with confidence and weight, men could not help but feel his power, not just the power of position, but of his nature.

For some time the parties exchanged questions, most of them technical: how long to build a plant in Canada, how pure must the heavy water be, what was the maximum output. Listening, I thought there was an odd difference between the Civil Servants and the businessmen. Lufkin’s staff treated him with extreme, almost feudal deference, did not put questions on their own account, but made their comments to him. Whereas the Civil Servants, flat opposite to the others’ stereotype of them, spoke with the democratic air of everyone having his say, and as though each man’s opinion was as worth having as Sir Hector Rose’s.

This was even true of John Jones. Jones was over fifty, had just become a Deputy Secretary, and would not go farther. The wonder to me was that he had gone so far. He had a pleasant rosy-skinned face, an air of one about to throw away all constraint and pretence and speak from the bottom of his heart. But when he did speak, it was usually in praise of some superior.

Yet even he kept at least a tone of independence and like many in the Department called Rose, the least hearty of men, by his Christian name, which would have been not so much improper as unthinkable from Lufkin’s subordinates towards the boss.

Sitting by me, sprawled back in his chair but with his chins thrust into his chest, Gilbert Cooke had been making a noise as though half sniffing, half grunting to himself. As the discussion went on, he sniffed more impatiently, ceased to sprawl back as though in the bar at White’s, and hunched himself over the committee table, a great stretch of back filling out the vicuna coat.

‘I don’t understand something you said,’ he suddenly shot out across the table to Lufkin.

‘Don’t you?’ Lufkin twitched his eyebrows.

‘You said you can do it with your existing resources.’

‘I did.’

‘You can’t, you know, if by resources you include men, which you’ve got to.’

‘Nonsense.’ Lufkin shrugged it off and was speaking to Rose, but Gilbert interrupted.

‘Oh no. For the serious part of this job you’ve only got three groups of men you can possibly use, the—’s and—.’ Rapidly, inquisitively, Gilbert was mentioning names, meaningless to most people there. He said: ‘You’ve got no option, if you’re not going to make a hash of this job, you’ve got to transfer eighty per cent of them. That means taking them off your highest priority jobs, which other Departments won’t bless any of us for, and you’ll come rushing to us demanding replacements which we shall have to extract from other firms. It is bound to make too much havoc whatever we do, and I don’t see rhyme or reason in it.’

Lufkin looked at the younger man with a sarcastic, contemptuous rictus. They knew each other well: often in the past it had surprised me that they were so intimate. Within a few moments both had become very angry, Lufkin in cold temper, Gilbert in hot.

‘You are talking of things you know nothing about,’ said Lufkin.

Furiously Gilbert said: ‘I know as much as you do.’

Then, his temper boiling over, he made a tactical mistake; and to prove that he remembered what he had known about the business four years before, he insisted on producing more strings of names.

Recovering himself, sounding irritated but self-contained, Lufkin said to Rose: ‘I don’t see that these details are likely to help us much.’

‘Perhaps we can leave it there, can we, Cooke?’ Rose said, polite, vexed, final.

Lufkin remarked, as though brushing the incident aside: ‘I take it, all you want from me about personnel is an assurance that I’ve got enough to do the job. I can give you that assurance.’

Rose smoothly asked: ‘Without making any demands on us for men, either now or later?’

Lufkin’s face showed no expression. He replied: ‘Within reason, no.’

‘What is reason?’ Rose’s voice was for an instant as sharp as the others.

‘I can’t commit myself indefinitely,’ said Lufkin calmly and heavily, ‘and nor can any other man in my position.’

‘That is completely understood, and I am very very grateful to you for the statement,’ said Rose, returning to his courtesy. With the same courtesy, Rose led the discussion away. The morning went on, the room became colder, several times men stamped their numbing feet. Rose would not leave an argument unheard, even if his mind was made up at the start. It was well after one o’clock when he turned to Lufkin.

‘I don’t know how you feel, but it seems to me just possible that this is about as far as we can go today.’

‘I must say, I think we’ve covered some ground,’ said John Jones.

‘When do we meet again?’ said Lufkin.

‘I shall, of course, report this morning’s proceedings to my master.’ Rose said the word with his customary ironic flick; but he was not the man to scurry to shelter. Unlike the Minister, he did not mind breaking bad news. Indeed, under the ritual minuet, he did it with a certain edge. ‘I’m sure he will want to go into it further with you. Perhaps you and he, and I think I might as well be there, could meet before the end of the week? I can’t anticipate what we shall arrive at as the best course for all of us, but it seems to me just possible – of course I am only thinking aloud – that we might conceivably feel that we are making such demands on you already that we should not consider it was fair to you to stretch you in a rather difficult and unprofitable direction, just for the present at least. We might just conceivably suggest that your remarkable services ought to be kept in reserve, so that we could invoke them at a slightly later stage.’

I wondered if Lufkin recognized that this was the end. At times his realism was absolute: but, like other men of action, he seemed to have the gift of switching it off and on at will. Thus he could go on, hoping and struggling, long after an issue was settled; and then stupefy one by remarking that he had written the business off days before. At that moment he was speaking to Rose with the confidence and authority of one who, at a break in a negotiation, assumed that he will with good management get his way.

The same evening Gilbert came into my office. It was about the time I was leafing through my in-tray, packing up for the night; it was about the time that, the year before, when he and I and Margaret used to go out together, he habitually called in and sat waiting for me.

For months past he had not done so. Often, when I lunched with him or when we walked in the park afterwards, he jabbed in a question about me and Margaret, led up to traps where I had to lie or confide; he knew her, he knew her family and acquaintances, it could not be a secret that she and I spent many evenings together, but, taking that for granted, I responded to him as though there were nothing else of interest to tell.

Seeing him loom there, outside the cone of light from the desk lamp, I felt very warm to him.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘we shouldn’t have won without you.’

‘I don’t believe anyone was listening to my piece,’ Gilbert replied. It rang mock-shy, like someone wanting praise for a drawing-room turn. In fact, it was genuine. Gilbert found it hard to credit that men paid attention to him.

Then he gave the hoarse high laugh one often hears from very strong, fleshy, active men.

‘Damn it, I enjoyed it,’ he cried.

‘What exactly?’

‘I enjoyed throwing a spanner into the works!’

‘You did it all,’ I told him.

‘No, I just supplied the comic act.’

He had no idea that his courage was a support to more cautious people. I wanted to reassure him, to tell him how much I admired it. So I said that I happened to be going out that night with Margaret: would he care to come too?

‘I’d love it,’ said Gilbert.

Without concealment, he did love it, sitting between us at the restaurant. Although he was so large a man he seemed to be burrowing between us, his sharp small eyes sensitive for any glance we exchanged. He enjoyed his food so much that he automatically raised his standard of living, for men obscurely felt that they owed him luxury they would never aspire to themselves; even that night, right in the middle of the war, I managed to stand him a good bottle of wine. It was freezing outside, but the nights had been raidless for a long time; in London it was a lull in the war, the restaurant was crowded and hot, we sat in a corner seat and Gilbert was happy. He infected me, he infected Margaret, and we basked in his well-being.

Suddenly, towards the end of the meal, with eyes glistening he said to me: ‘I’ve stolen a march on you.’

‘What have you been up to?’

‘I’ve been inside a house you might be interested in.’

I shook my head.

‘The house of a family that means something to you,’ said Gilbert, knowing, hot-eyed, imperious. Then he said, gazing straight at Margaret: ‘Nothing to do with you.’

For an instant, I wondered whether he had met the Knights.

‘Who is it?’ I asked.

‘Put him out of his misery,’ said Margaret, also on edge.

‘He ought to be able to guess,’ said Gilbert, disappointed, as though his game were not quite a success.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Well, then,’ Gilbert spoke to Margaret. ‘He’s got a new secretary. I’ve found out about her young man and his family. I’ve had tea with them.’

It was such an anticlimax that I laughed out loud. Even so, the whole performance seemed gigantesque. It was true that I had a new secretary, a young widow called Vera Allen: I did not know anything about her life. Gilbert told us that she was in love with a young man in the office, whose family he had tracked down.

When Gilbert described the visit, which he had planned like a military operation, his curiosity – for that alone had driven him on made him appear more gigantesque, at times a little mad. Telling us with glee of how he had traced their address, made an excuse for an official visit to Kilburn, called at the house, found they were out, traced them to a pub and persuaded them to take him home for a pot of tea, he was not in the slightest gratifying a desire to go slumming. He would have gone off on the same chase if the young man’s father had been a papal count.