Charles Snow - Last Things

It was like waiting for a negotiation to begin.

When we turned down by the church, along the side of the square towards the river, I jerked my finger towards one of the houses. ‘I lived there during the war,’ I said. ‘When I was working for you.’

‘How very remarkable! That really is most interesting!’ Hector, looking back, asked exactly where my flat had been, giving a display of excitement that might have been appropriate if I had shown him the birthplace of Einstein.

We arrived at the river wall. The water was oily smooth in the sun, the tide high. There was the sweet and rotting smell that I used to know, when Margaret and I stood there in the evenings, not long after we first met.

On one of the garden benches an elderly man in a straw hat was busy transcribing some figures from a book. Another bench was empty, and Hector Rose said: ‘I’m inclined to think it’s almost warm enough to sit down, or am I wrong, Lewis?’

Yes, it was just like one of his negotiations. You didn’t press for time and in due course the right time came. The official life was a marathon, not a sprint, and one stood it better if one took it at that tempo. People who were impatient, like me, either didn’t fit in or had to discipline themselves.

Now it was time, as Hector punctiliously brushed yellow leaves from off the seat, and turned towards me. I told him of the job – there was no need to mention secrecy again, or give any sort of explanation – and said, as usual curt because he wasn’t, what about it?

‘I should be obliged if you’d give me one or two details,’ said Hector. ‘Not that they are likely to affect the issue. But of course I am quite remarkably out of things. Which department would this “supernumerary minister” be attached to?’ The same as S––, I said. Attentively Hector inclined his head. ‘As you know, I always found the arrangements that the last lot (the previous government) made somewhat difficult to justify in terms of reason. And I can’t help thinking that, with great respect, your friends are even worse, if it is possible, in that respect.’

‘This minister’ would have a small private office, and otherwise would have to rely on the department? A floating, personal appointment? ‘Not that that is really relevant, of course.’

He was frowning with concentration, there was scarcely a hesitation. He looked at me, eyes unblinking, arms folded on his chest. He said: ‘It’s very simple. You’re not to touch it.’

When he came to the point, Hector, who used so many words, liked to use few. But he didn’t often use so few as this.

Jolted, disappointed (more than I had allowed for), I said, that was pretty definite, what was he thinking of?

‘You’re not immortal,’ said Hector, in the same bleak, ungiving tone. ‘You ought to remember that.’

We gazed at each other in silence.

He added: ‘Granted that no doubt unfortunate fact, you have better things to do.’

He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say anything more emollient. He would neither expand his case, nor withdraw. We had never been friendly, and yet perhaps that morning he would have liked to be. Instead, he broke off and remarked, with excessive pleasure, what a beautiful morning it was. Had I ever seen London look so peaceful? And what a kind thought it was for me to visit a broken-down civil servant! As usual with Hector’s flights of rhapsody and politeness, this was turning into a curious exercise of jeering at himself and me.

There was nothing for it. Very soon I rose from the bench – the old man in the straw hat was still engrossed in esoteric scholarship – and said that I would walk back with Hector to his flat. He continued with mellifluous thanks, apologies, compliments and hopes for our future meetings. The functional part of the conversation had occupied about five minutes, the preamble half an hour, the coda not quite so long.

When I returned home, Margaret, who was sitting by the open window, looking over the glimmering trees, said: ‘Well, you saw him, did you?’

Yes, I replied.

‘He wouldn’t commit himself, would he?’

No, I said, she hadn’t been quite right. He hadn’t been specially non-committal.

‘What did he think?’

‘He was against it.’

I didn’t tell her quite how inflexibly so, though I was trying to be honest. Then the next person I turned to for advice didn’t surprise her. This was what she had anticipated earlier in the morning. It was my brother Martin, and I knew, and she knew that I knew, on which side he was likely to come down. That proved to be true, as soon as I got on the line to Cambridge. Why not have a go? I needn’t do it for long. It would be a mildly picturesque end to my official career. Martin, the one of us who had made a clear-cut worldly sacrifice, kept – despite or because of that – a relish for the world. He also kept an eye on practical things. Had I reckoned out how much money I should lose if I went in? The drop in income would be dramatic: no doubt I could stand it for a finite time. Further – Martin’s voice sounded thoughtful, sympathetic – couldn’t I bargain for a slightly better job? They could upgrade this one, it was a joker appointment anyway, ministers of state were a fairly lowly form of life, that wasn’t quite good enough, he was surprised they hadn’t wanted Francis or me at a higher level. Still –

Margaret, who had been listening, asked, not innocently, whether those two, Hector Rose and Martin, cancelled each other out. I was as non-committal as she expected Rose to be, but to myself I thought that my mind was making itself up. Then, not long afterwards, we were disturbed again. A telephone call. A government backbencher called Whitman. Not precisely a friend, but someone we met at parties.

‘What’s all this I hear?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I replied.

‘Come on. You’re being played for, you know you are.’

‘I don’t understand–’

‘Now, now, of course you do.’

In fact, I didn’t. Or at least I didn’t understand where his information came from. Was it an intelligent bluff? The only people who should have known about this offer were the private office, Margaret, Hector Rose, Martin. They were all as discreet as security officers. I had the feeling, at the same time euphoric and mildly paranoid, of living at the centre of a plot, microphones in the sitting-room, telephones tapped.

More leading questions, more passive denials and stonewalling at my end.

‘You haven’t given your answer already, have you?’

‘What is there to give an answer to?’

‘Before you do, I wish you’d have dinner with me. Tonight, can you make it?’

He was badgering me like an intimate, and he had no claim to. I said that I had nothing to tell him. He persisted: ‘Anyway, do have dinner with me.’ Out of nothing better than curiosity, and a kind of excitement, I said that I would come.

I duly arrived at his club, a military club, at half past seven, and Whitman was waiting in the hall. He was a spectacularly handsome man, black-haired, lustrous-eyed, built like an American quarterback. He had won a Labour seat in 1955 and held it since, something of a sport on those backbenches. A Philippe Égalité radical, his enemies called him. He had inherited money and had never had a career outside politics, though in the war he had done well in a smart regiment.

‘The first thing’, he said, welcoming me with arms spread open, ‘is to give you a drink.’

He did give me a drink, a very large whisky, in the club bar. Loosening my tongue, perhaps – but he was convivial, expansive and not over-abstinent himself. Nevertheless, expansive as he was, he didn’t make any reference to his telephonic attack: this evening had been mapped out, and, like other evenings with a purpose, the temperature was a little above normal. More drinks for us both. He was calling me by my Christian name, but that was as common in Westminster as in the theatre. I had to use his own, which was, not very appropriately, Dolfie.