‘Don’t you?’ asked Roger, expressionless.
‘Two can play at that game. Who are you betraying?’
‘Will you tell me?’
‘I’ll give you credit that you don’t mean to. But how are you going to leave this blasted country? You’ve got your reasons, of course, everyone’s got their reasons. We can’t play with the big boys, I grant you that. But we’ve got to be able to blow up someone. Ourselves, if that’s the only way out. Otherwise the others will blackmail us whenever they feel inclined. We shall be sunk for good.’
Slowly Roger raised his head, but did not speak.
Sammikins went shouting on. ‘You’re wrong, I tell you! You’re wrong. It’s simple. War’s always been simple. You’re too clever by half. You’ve just got to think of one simple thing, just to see that we’re not sunk for good. It’s a pity you didn’t have a chap like me, I’m not too clever by half – somewhere on top – just to say “Oi, oi”. You’re being too clever, your job is to see we’re not getting sunk for good.’
‘I suppose you’re the only patriot we’ve got?’ Roger’s voice had turned thick and dangerous. At the end of that day, which he had endured without a lapse, he was suddenly moved, shaken, enraged. It was not that Sammikins’ defection, in practical terms, counted much. He was a ‘wild man’, he had been written off long before as irresponsible, a political playboy. If he went into the lobby against his brother-in-law, all that meant would be a paragraph in the gossip columns. It was not the defection which stabbed Roger – but the personal betrayal, for he had an affection, almost a paternal affection, for the younger man. The personal betrayal, and yes, the reason for it, the half-baked, drunken words. All through, Roger had been nagged at by the regrets, even the guilt, of someone living among choices where the simple certainties weren’t enough. For Roger in particular, with his nostalgia for past grandeur, it was tempting to think of a time when you could choose without folly, to make the country both powerful and safe. He had thought in terms as old-fashioned as that. He had often wished that he had been born in a different time, when reason did not take one into decisions which denied the nostalgic heart.
‘You’ve only got to keep your eye on the ball and remember the simple things,’ Sammikins shouted.
Roger had risen to his feet, a massive bulk in the room.
‘No one else tries to remember the simple things?’
‘They decide what will happen to us,’ said Sammikins.
‘Do you think no one else cares what will happen to us?’
‘I hope they do.’
Sammikins had not spoken in his loud, confident voice. This time it was Roger who shouted: ‘Get out!’
After all his disciplined performances, the fury boiling up and over was astonishing – no, less astonishing than unnerving, to hear. The thick, driven cry filled the room. Roger began to move, hunched, on to the other man.
I was standing up too, wondering how to stop the fight. Sammikins was athletic, but Roger was four or five stones heavier, and far stronger. With a bear-like heave, he threw Sammikins against the wall. Sammikins slid very slowly down it, like a coat collapsing from a peg, till he was on the floor. For a moment he sat there, head hanging, as if he had forgotten where he was, or who any of us were. Then, with an athlete’s lightness, he sprang up – from crossed ankles – and stood erect with hardly a stagger, eyes staring. Caro got between him and Roger. She clung to her brother’s hand.
‘For God’s sake, go,’ she said.
‘Do you want me to?’ he said, with a curious, injured dignity.
‘You must
go
.’
Head back, he moved to the door. From the far end of the room he said to Caro, ‘I expect I’ll want to see you–’
‘This is my house,’ shouted Roger, ‘get out of it!’
Caro did not reply to Sammikins. She went to Roger’s side, and, like a united front of husband and wife, they listened to the footsteps lurching down.
Next day, when I called in Roger’s office, he sat calm and stoical, like a man without passions, as though any story about an outbreak of his was one’s own invention and couldn’t be referred to. Yet once more his tic returned: in a distant, cold, almost inimical manner, he asked me to report what the papers were rumouring that morning. ‘There’s not much,’ I said.
‘Good.’ His face, his voice, became smooth. He was for the moment over-easily reassured, like a man jealous in love, snatching at the bits of news which comfort him.
There was a report in one paper about a meeting of a few back-benchers and some scientists, which seemed to have ended in the scientists quarrelling – that was about all, I said.
Immediately, again like a jealous man, he started on the detective work of anxiety: who could they be? Where? This was the ultra-Conservative paper, they were enemies, we knew which member slipped them the gossip. Yet this man, who was venal but abnormally amiable, had already written to Roger pledging his support. Was he reneging at the last minute? I shook my head. I was positive that he was all right. Not that he minded collecting his retainer from the paper.
‘One of these days,’ said Roger, relieved and savage, ‘we’ll get men like him expelled from the House.’
What about the scientists? I said. Who were they, anyway? He wasn’t interested. Nothing could interest him except the lobbies now. As I left him, he was working out, repetitiously, unable to shake off the obsession, who these members were, and whether he could count on their votes.
Back in my own room, I wasn’t much better. The debate was to begin on Monday afternoon. They would vote the night after that. Four days and a half before it would be over. I pulled down a file from my in-tray. There was a minute written in the most beautiful handwriting, in the most lucid prose. I did not feel like reading it.
I sat there day-dreaming, not pleasantly. Once I rang up Margaret, asking if there were any news, though what I expected I hadn’t an idea.
A knock sounded on my door, not the door leading to my assistants, through which visitors should come, but the corridor door, usually inviolable. Hector Rose came in, perhaps for the second time since we had been colleagues, paying me a visit unannounced.
‘Forgive me, my dear Lewis, I do apologize many, many times for interrupting you like this–’
‘There isn’t much to interrupt,’ I said.
‘You’re so much occupied that there’s always something to interrupt.’ He gazed at the empty desk, at the in-tray with its stack of files. He gave a faint, arctic smile. ‘In any case, my dear Lewis, forgive me for disturbing some of your valuable meditations.’
Even now, after all those years, even in stress, I didn’t know the response to his singular brand of courtesy. The bright young Treasury officials, certain by this time that he would soon be retiring, and that they would never, as they once imagined, have to answer to him, had invented a quip, the sort of quip which, like a premature obituary, gets circulated when a formidable man is passing out: ‘With old Hector Rose, you’ve got to take the smooth with the smooth.’
Little they knew.
After some more apologies he sat down. He looked at me with bleached eyes and said: ‘I thought you ought to know that I had the curious experience of meeting your friend Dr Brodzinski last night.’
‘Where?’
‘Oddly enough, with some of our political acquaintances.’ Suddenly, the item in the newspaper flashed back, and I guessed: ‘So you were there!’
‘How have you heard?’
I mentioned the paper.
Rose gave a polite smile and said: ‘I don’t find it necessary to read that particular journal.’
‘But you were there?’
‘I was trying to make that clear, my dear Lewis.’
‘How did you get invited?’
Again he smiled politely: ‘I made it my business to be.’
He cut out the flourishes, and with sarcastic relevance told me the story. Brodzinski, in a last attempt to whip up opposition to Roger’s policy, had made an appeal to some of his Tory contacts. Instead of again attacking Roger directly, he had done it through an attack on Walter Luke. He had told some of the extreme right, the pro-Suez relics, that it was Luke’s advice which had led Roger into bad judgement. So Brodzinski had been asked to dine with a small splinter group. So, by a piece of upright pig-headed good manners, had Walter Luke. So, through his own initiative, had Hector Rose.
‘I wasn’t prepared to have the excellent Luke thrown to the wolves,’ he said. ‘Also, I thought I might as well listen to what was going on. I have a certain influence with Lord A—’ (the leader of the splinter-group, and the man responsible for the pig-headed good manners. It sounded improbable that he should be a friend of Hector Rose’s, but in fact – in the minuteness of the English official world – they had been at school together.)
Between Brodzinski and Luke, there had been a violent row. Lord North Street was not the only place, the night before, where eminent persons came to physical violence. ‘How these scientists love one another,’ said Rose. He added: ‘Brodzinski could certainly be sued for defamation, if Luke cared to go to law.’ With crisp detachment he gave a few examples.
‘Is anyone going to believe
that
?’
‘My dear Lewis, don’t you agree that if anyone is accused of anything, literally anything, most of our friends believe it?’
He went on: ‘While I am about it, you might drop a word to our potentially supreme colleague. Douglas Osbaldiston. There appears to be no doubt that Brodzinski has been trying to spill this particular poison into his ear,’
Once before – just once, in that disciplined life where personal relations were left unstated – Rose had let fall his feelings about Douglas. He did not let himself be so direct again, not even when I said that Douglas, whatever Rose thought of him, was honest and fair.
‘I am perfectly certain,’ said Rose, half-bowing as he spoke, ‘that our colleague has been utterly correct. In fact, I gathered that he had refused to grant Brodzinski an interview at the present juncture. No one could be more correct, could he? Our colleague has every qualification for the perfect public servant. But still, I do suggest you drop a word. He is just a shade inclined to believe in reconciliation for its own sake. When all this is settled, he might find it was wiser and safer to have Brodzinski in rather than out. I should regard that as reconciliation carried to a somewhat excessive extent. Our colleague has a slightly greater veneration than I have for the general good sense of everybody in this part of London.’
Our eyes met. For this occasion, we were allies. He said: ‘By the way, one fact seems to be generally known.’
‘Yes?’
‘That he’s not a hundred per cent happy about his master’s policy, or shall I say his master’s ultimate intentions about policy?’ Rose was not given to underlining. That morning he was thinking of Tuesday’s voting, not with Roger’s concentration, for that was total, but with something as channelled as mine. Name by name, he gave his prognosis about last night’s party. There had been twelve members present. All but one were on the extreme right, and so possible enemies of Roger. Of these, three would vote for him, including Lord A—(Rose was, as he might have said himself, most correct. He did not give a vestigial hint that he, a functionary, could possibly have used any persuasion.) Of the others, a maximum of nine would certainly abstain. ‘It’s beginning to look uncomfortable,’ said Hector Rose. He broke off, and went on about the vote. There were bound to be more abstentions. I told him, not the full story of Sammikins, but that he would vote against.
Rose clicked his tongue. He looked at me as though he were going to give a verdict. Then he shook his head, and in a cool tone remarked: ‘I take it you will let your friend Quaife know at once. That is, about the information I was able to collect. I needn’t tell you, you’ll have to do it discreetly, and I’m afraid you mustn’t reveal your source. But he ought to know about these abstentions. You can tell him these people by name, I think.’
‘What good can that do him?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you believe that, if he saw them now, he could possibly persuade them back?’
‘No,’ said Rose.
‘Well, then, all he can do is make his speech. He’ll make a better speech the more hope he’s got left.’
‘My dear Lewis, with great diffidence, I think he ought to be able to reckon up his opponents–’
‘I repeat,’ I said with force, ‘what good can that do?’
‘You’re taking a responsibility on yourself.’ Rose stared at me, surprised, disapproving. ‘If I were he,’ he said, ‘I should want to be able to reckon up every scrap of news, however bad it was, until the end.’
I stared back. ‘I believe you would,’ I said.
It wasn’t necessarily the toughest and hardest-nerved who lived in public. Yet sometimes I wondered whether a man as tough and hard-nerved as Rose could imagine what the public life was like, or how much it would have tested him.
He got up. ‘Well, that’s all the bad news for the present.’ He made the grim, Greek messenger joke, said this seemed as far as we could go, and began his paraphernalia of thanks and apologies.
As soon as he had gone, I looked at the clock. It was nearly twenty to twelve. This time I didn’t brood or wait. I went out, through my private office, into the corridor, past the doors of my own department, round three sides of the Treasury quadrangle, on my way to Osbaldiston. I didn’t notice, as I had done times enough, the bizarre architecture, the nineteenth-century waste of space, the gigantic unfilled hole in the centre of the building, like a Henry Moore sculpture pretending to be functional. I didn’t even notice the high jaundiced walls, the dark stretch of corridor up to the next bend, the compartments where the messengers sat on stools reading the racing editions, the labels on the doors just visible in the half light, Sir W— H—, GBE, Sir W— D—, KCB. It was just dark, domesticated, familiar: a topological journey: the doors passing me by like the stations seen from an underground train.
Before I got into the last straight, which led to Douglas’ office, I saw him coming round the corner, head forward, a docket of papers in his hand. ‘I was looking for you,’ I said.