The Masters (12 page)

‘I think I’d better tell Arthur Brown,’ I said. Roy’s telephone stood by his bedside, and I went there and talked to Brown. ‘How do you know how many turned up?’ I heard Brown saying, cautious and inquisitive as ever. ‘How can you possibly have found out?’

I explained that we had been watching from Roy Calvert’s window. Brown was satisfied, and asked for the names again. ‘Our party seems to be hanging together,’ he said. ‘But I think, to be on the safe side, I’ll give a little luncheon soon. I say, Eliot, I’m sorry about old Gay. I should like to know who got at him. We’ve let them steal a march on us there.’

‘But it’s pretty good,’ I said.

‘I must say it looks perfectly splendid.’ For a second Brown had let himself go. Then the voice turned minatory again: ‘Of course, you’ll remember it’s much too early to throw your hats in the air. We haven’t even got a paper majority for Paul Jago yet. We must go carefully. You mustn’t let people feel that we think it’s safe. It would be a wise precaution if you and Calvert didn’t let on that you know who turned up this afternoon.’

I told Roy, who gave a malicious chuckle.

‘Good old Uncle Arthur,’ he said. ‘He must be the only person on this earth who regards you as an irresponsible schoolboy. It gives me great pleasure.’

He rang down to the kitchens for tea and crumpets, and we ate them by the fire. When we had finished and I was sitting back with my last cup of tea, Roy glanced at me with a secretive grin. From a drawer he produced, as though furtively, a child’s box of bricks. ‘I bought these yesterday,’ he said. ‘I thought they might come in useful. They won’t be necessary unless Winslow shows us a new trick or two. But I may as well set them out.’

He always had a love for the concrete, though his whole professional life was spent with words. Another man would have written down the fellows’ names, but Roy liked selecting fourteen identical bricks, and printing on them the names from Royce to Luke. The brick marked Royce he put by itself without a word. His expression lightened as he placed the two bricks Jago and Crawford together. Then he picked out Gay, Despard-Smith, Winslow, and Getliffe, and arranged them in a row. He left the other seven in a huddle – ‘until everyone’s in the open. It ought to be a clear majority.’

I had to give two supervisions from five to seven, and when the second was over went straight to the combination room. There Crawford was sitting by the fire alone, reading the local paper. He nodded, impersonally cordial, as I went over to the sherry table. When I came back, glass in hand, to the armchairs, Crawford looked at me over the top of his paper. ‘I don’t like the look of the war, Eliot,’ he said. ‘The war’ was the civil war in Spain.

‘Nor do I,’ I said.

‘Our people are getting us into a ridiculous mess. Every Thursday when I go up to the Royal I try to call on someone or other who is supposed to be running our affairs. I try to make a different call each week and persuade them to see a little military sense. It’s the least one can do, but I never come away feeling reassured. Speaking as one liberal to another, Eliot, and without prejudice to your subject, I should feel happier if we had a few men of science in the House and the Foreign Office.’

For a few minutes he talked about the winter campaign in Spain. He had made a hobby of military history, and his judgement was calm and steady. Everything he said was devastatingly sensible.

Then Jago entered. He started as he saw Crawford, then greeted him with effusiveness. He was more uncomfortable than I had ever seen him – more uncomfortable, I suddenly realized, because he had heard the good news of the afternoon. He felt guilty in the presence of the less lucky one.

Crawford was unperturbed.

‘I think we’d better abandon our military researches for tonight, Eliot,’ he said. ‘I believe the Senior Tutor isn’t specially interested in war. And certainly doesn’t share our sympathies about the present one. He’ll realize we were right in time.’

He got up from his chair, and stood facing Jago. He was several inches shorter, but he had the physical presence that comes through being able to keep still.

‘But I am glad of the chance of a word with you, Jago,’ he said. ‘I was thinking of sending you a note. That won’t be necessary if we can have three minutes. I understand that Eliot is committed to support you, and so I can speak in his presence.’

‘By all means,’ said Jago. ‘I am in your hands. Go ahead, my dear man, go ahead.’

‘This afternoon,’ said Crawford, ‘I was asked to let myself be a candidate for the Mastership. Those who asked me did not constitute a numerical majority of the college, but they represent a sound body of opinion. I saw no reason to hesitate. I don’t approve of people who have to be persuaded to play, like the young woman who just happens to have brought her music. I told them I was ready to let my name go forward.’

He was confident, impervious, conceited, self-assured. On the afternoon’s showing he was left without a chance, but he seemed in control of the situation.

‘I’m very grateful to you for telling me,’ said Jago.

‘It was the least I could do,’ said Crawford. ‘We are bound to be the only serious candidates.’

‘I wish both the candidates,’ said Jago, with a sudden smile, ‘reached the standard of distinction set by one of them.’

‘That’s as may be,’ Crawford replied. ‘There will be one question for us two to decide together. That is, what to do with our own personal votes. We ought to reach a working agreement on that. It is conceivable that the question may become important.’

Then he said that he was dining in another college, and left us with a cordial, impersonal goodnight.

Jago sighed and smiled.

‘I’d give a good deal for that assurance, Eliot!’

‘If you had it,’ I said, ‘you’d lose something else.’

‘I wonder,’ Jago cried, ‘if he’s ever imagined that he could possibly be wrong? Has he ever thought for a minute that he might possibly disgrace himself and fail?’

Not in this world of professional success, power, ambition, influence among men, I thought. Of his mastery in this world Crawford was absolutely and impenetrably confident. Nothing had ever shaken him, or could now.

But I guessed that in his nature there was one rift of diffidence. He had a quiet, comely wife and a couple of children – while Jago would go home after dinner to his tormented shrew. Yet I guessed that, in time past, Crawford had been envious of Jago’s charm for women. Jago had never been frightened that he might not win love: he had always known, with the unconscious certainty of an attractive man, that it would come his way. It was an irony that it came in such a form; but he stayed confident with women, he was confident of love; in fact, it was that confidence which helped him to devote such tenderness and such loving patience upon his wife. Whereas Crawford as a young man had wondered in anguish whether any woman would ever love him. For all his contented marriage – on the surface so much more enviable than Jago’s – he had never lost that diffidence, and there were still times when he envied such men as Jago from the bottom of his heart.

The evening after Winslow’s caucus, Brown asked me to join him and Chrystal, and when I went into Brown’s room, they were busy talking. Brown said to me: ‘I suggested we should meet here because it’s a bit more private than the combination room. And I happen to have a glass of manzanilla waiting for you. We think it’s rather helpful to a bit of business.’

Brown gave me my glass, settled himself, and went on: ‘I regard it as desirable to strike while the iron’s hot. I can’t forgive myself for letting them snatch old Gay from in front of our noses. We must have our little lunch before we lose anyone else.’

‘I’m with you,’ said Chrystal.

‘I think they’ve shown more enterprise than we have,’ said Brown, ‘and we’ve got out of it better than we deserved.’

‘If I were Crawford, I shouldn’t thank Winslow much,’ said Chrystal. ‘He’s just run amok. He’s done them more harm than good. If Crawford had us to look after him, there’d be no need to have an election.’

‘Well,’ said Brown, ‘I shall be happier when we’ve got our party round a lunch table.’

‘We must make them speak,’ said Chrystal.

‘You’ll preside,’ said Brown, ‘and you can make everyone say that he’s supporting Jago.’

‘Why should I preside?’

‘That’s your job. I regard you as the chairman of our party.’ Brown smiled. ‘And we ought to have this lunch on Sunday. The only remaining point is whom do we ask. I was telling the Dean’ – he said to me – ‘that I haven’t been entirely idle. I haven’t let the other side get away with everything. I think I’ve got Eustace Pilbrow. We certainly ought to ask him to the lunch. He’s never been specially interested in these things, and he’s not enormously enthusiastic, but I think I’ve got him. Put it another way: if Jago were a bit of a crank politically – saving your presence, Eliot – I believe Eustace would support him up to the hilt. As it is, I’m quite optimistic.’

‘That only leaves young Luke,’ said Chrystal. ‘Everyone else has got tabs on them. So I reckon at present.’

‘Obviously we invite the other three, Pilbrow, Nightingale, and Roy Calvert,’ said Brown. ‘The question is, Eliot, whether we invite young Luke. I must say that I’m rather against it.’

‘He only needs a bit of persuasion,’ Chrystal said sharply. ‘Either side could get him for the asking. He’s a child.’

In the months since Luke became a fellow, I had not got to know him, except as an observant, intelligent, discreet, and sanguine face at hall and college meetings. Once I had walked round the garden with him for half an hour.

‘I wonder whether you’re right,’ I said to Chrystal. ‘It may not be as easy as you think.’

‘Dead easy for us. Dead easy for Winslow,’ said Chrystal.

‘I agree,’ said Brown. ‘I believe the Dean’s right.

‘That’s why,’ he went on, ‘I’m against inviting him.’ His face was flushed, but stubborn and resolute. ‘I want to say where I stand on this. I won’t be a party to over-persuading Luke. He’s a young man, he’s not a permanency here yet, he’s got his way to make, and it would be a damned shame to hamper him. At the very best it won’t be easy for the college to keep him when his six years are up: we’ve got one physicist in Getliffe, and it will be hard to make a case for another as a fixture.’ (Roy Calvert and Luke were research fellows appointed for six years: when that period ended, the college could keep them or let them go. It was already taken for granted that a special place must be found for Roy Calvert.) ‘It stands to reason that Luke has got to look to Crawford and Getliffe. They’re the scientists, they’re the people who can help him, they’re the people who’ve got to make a case if the college is ever going to keep him. You can’t blame him if he doesn’t want to offend them. If I’d started as the son of a dockyard hand, as that boy did, though no one would ever think it, I shouldn’t feel like taking the slightest risk. I’m certainly not going to persuade him to take it. Whichever side he comes down on, I say that it isn’t for us to interfere.’

‘Look,’ I said, ‘Francis Getliffe is a very fair-minded man–’

‘I give you that,’ said Brown. ‘I’m not saying that voting for Jago would necessarily make a scrap of difference to Luke’s future. But he may feel that he’s making an enemy. If he does, I for one wouldn’t feel easy about talking him round.’

‘You’ve got a point there,’ said Chrystal.

‘The furthest I feel inclined to go,’ said Brown, ‘is to send him a note saying that some of us have now decided to support Jago. I’ll tell him we’re meeting on Sunday to discuss ways and means, but we’re not inviting people who still want time to make up their minds.’

‘I’m sorry to say,’ said Chrystal, ‘that I think you’re right.’

There we left it for the evening. It was easier to understand their hold on the college, I thought, when one saw their considerate good nature, right in the middle of their politics. No one could run such a society for long without a degree of trust. That trust most of the college had come to place in them. They were politicians, they loved power, at many points they played the game only just within the rules. But they set themselves limits and did not cross them. They kept their word. And in human things, particularly with the young, they were uneasy unless they behaved in a fashion that was scrupulous and just. People were ready to believe this of Brown, but found it harder to be convinced that it was also true of his friend. They saw clearly enough that Chrystal was the more ruthless: they did not see that he was the more tender-hearted.

In this particular instance, as it happened, they did not evoke the response that they deserved. Luke sat next to me in hall that night. For a couple of nights past he had been less sanguine and bright-eyed than usual: I asked about his work.

‘It seems to be describing a sine curve,’ he said. I had to recollect that a sine curve went up and down.

He went on: ‘Sometimes I think it’s all set. Sometimes I think it’s as useless as the Great Pyramid. I’m in the second phase just now. I’m beginning to wonder if I shall ever get the wretched thing out.’

He was depressed and irritable, and just then happened to hear Brown quietly inviting Roy Calvert to lunch in order ‘to give Jago’s campaign a proper start’.

‘What is all this?’ Luke asked me. ‘Is this the reply to Winslow’s meeting?’

‘Roughly,’ I said.

‘Am I being asked?’

‘I think,’ I said, ‘that Brown felt you hadn’t yet made up your mind.’

‘He hasn’t taken much trouble to find out,’ said Luke. ‘I’ll have it out with him afterwards.’

Passing round the wine in the combination room, he was quiet and deferential to the old men, as he always was. I was beginning to realize the check he imposed on his temper. An hour later, as Brown and I left the room and went into the court, Luke came rapidly behind us.

‘Brown, why haven’t I been invited to this bloody caucus?’

‘It isn’t quite a caucus, Luke. I was just going to write to explain–’

‘It’s a meeting of Jago’s supporters, isn’t it?’

‘One or two of us,’ said Brown, ‘have come to the conclusion that he’s the right man. And–’