Charles Snow - Last Things

I looked at Charles, so that his glance met mine. The whites of his eyes were as milk-clear as a child’s, the irises almost black. For an instant, blinking not winking, the lids came down and opened again.

Lord F had spent his life in liberal faiths and never lost them, but Walter Luke could have done without him that afternoon.

Lord Luke of Salcombe: We all know, at any rate, how genuine my noble friend’s spontaneous indignation is .

The voice under the gallery was raised again, but there were grumbles of order, the leader of the house was half-getting up to intervene, until among a hubbub the supplementaries ceased. One of his colleagues was patting Walter on the knee, and – because another was speaking near to a microphone – we heard a bass and presumably confidential ‘well done’.

Walter’s cheeks were ruddy and shining. Probably not knowing that he had done an old friend a good turn (for Monteith and his apparatus didn’t pass on much to ministers, perhaps in this case the bare results, not names which they regarded as peripheral as Charles’) he had enough reason to be modestly pleased with himself. His permanent secretary was likely to have warned him that ‘this might be an awkward one’: students by themselves were a delicate subject by now, students plus security were as delicate as you could reasonably get short of espionage. I should have been prepared to bet that the officials had done some conferring with Walter’s political boss (the Secretary of State, Walter’s ‘honourable friend’, who sat in the Commons and for whom Walter, as his number two, answered in the Lords). Any official would have wished that an experienced politician had to cope with that subject, not an amateur such as Walter.

Still, Walter had done well. I hadn’t had attention to spare, but now I was thinking, he might have sunk the Government into trouble. He had got away with it. If this had been the Commons, he would have had a rougher time.

Just then I noticed Azik Schiff entering the chamber and jerking his head in the direction of the throne. I hoped that he wouldn’t look up towards the gallery. He had been made a peer that summer and for a few weeks had revelled in it. He had still been at his most exuberant, when in Muriel’s garden, I thought of him and two different kinds of love, thought of him as a happy man with emotions spilling over.

Now I didn’t dare to meet him. Certainly not with Charles by my side. Perhaps, if I believed that I could have been any use to Azik, I might have found the courage, or shamed myself into it. As it was, all I wanted was to avoid his eyes.

It was easier (and more selfish and self-protecting) to return to thinking of Walter. Just as when, not so long before, I was planning a Christmas party and George Passant told me that he was in horrifying trouble: then as now, one’s first impulse was to escape, one needed to get him out of the house.

Yes, Walter might have got the Government into trouble. Strange how tactful he had been. Transformed from the brash scientific roughneck of his Barford years. As though he were acting. Sweet reasonable public face. Once upon a time he used to make brisk observations about men with public faces. Stuffed shirts. Then, as though no happier phrase had ever been invented, he would repeat it.

But I recalled that as a very young man, when he was first elected a fellow of the college, he had been as tactful as he was this afternoon. Also self-effacing. Perhaps he had overdone the brashness. It was a part that suited him. Now he seemed to be returning to his youth. I wondered whether he was bland to his officials. Or whether they were treated to the middle-period Walter: unregenerate, behaving like a tycoon in a film, cracking insults out of the corner of his mouth. Strange how a man so rigid in character should act parts in his life. No, not so strange. Just because he was so rigid, the transformations had to be hard-edged. With others they happened in the flux of life, merging into one another, like the colours of an iridescent film, merging continuously and still preserving the same and unique film.

It hadn’t been only Walter’s tact, though: there had been some operating in private, through ‘the usual channels’ perhaps, or with Walter and his colleagues conducting some informal little talks themselves. Lord Catforth would have been exposed to blandishments. It was clear that the official opposition had been squared. That was easy to do in a security matter: besides, the official opposition was at least as gently disposed to young rebels as the government, probably more so. Almost certainly, Walter Luke would have had a drink with his opposite number on the Tory side. The opposite number would know, without being told, that Walter proposed to obscure the issue and tell a ministerial fraction of the truth. The opposite number also would know that the students’ disclosures were factually true. Walter would wrap up his answer so as to avoid a direct lie. In effect, though not in legalistic words, he might be telling one.

Both front benches, and many experienced persons in the House, would know all those things. It would be a mistake to imagine that they felt qualms of conscience. This was how you had to behave, if you were going to govern at all. Walter had taken it as all in the day’s work.

I must have been letting loose a smile, for Charles, sitting at my side in the gallery, returned it, though he could not have guessed anything near the reason. I was thinking about him and one of fate’s practical jokes. For it was because of him, who had with strong approval seen me shut the last door on politics and so dismiss the most minor of the three themes of what Margaret’s forebears would have called my moral life – it was because of him that I was here, returning to the old subject, interested in the machinery as I used to be. No, as I had confirmed to myself in hospital, it wouldn’t capture me again, but there it was.

Just as it was because of Charles that I had been reminded of the other themes, stronger than the first. I had been reminded that they could revive, and had – face to face with Muriel I knew it – already done so.

Walter had instructed me that, when we were tired of sitting in the gallery, we were to make our way to the tearoom. If questions had been followed by the Rhodesia debate, it would have taken more force than mine to tear Charles away: but in fact the next item on the order paper was the second reading of a bill to legalise the use by other denominations of certain redundant Anglican churches. Charles’ spirit was not so deeply stirred by that, and so soon we sat close to the tearoom tapestry, waiting for Walter Luke.

When he arrived, I had to introduce Charles to him. He was asking us both, before he sat down, had we heard the bit of fun and games? By which he meant his performance. It was an unnecessary question, since he knew we had come for nothing else. We nodded.

‘Was it all right?’ said Walter.

‘Fine,’ I said.

‘Did you think it was all right?’ Walter had turned to Charles.

‘Yes, it was excellent, sir.’

‘I thought it was all right myself,’ said Walter Luke.

He wasn’t being jocular at his own expense, comparing his present incarnation with the not-so-distant past, or recalling his one-time animadversions on persons fulfilling public functions such as he now fulfilled. There was no irony about Walter Luke. There never had been. He was enjoying his existence, and he proceeded to make a hearty tea, eating several cakes and pressing them on Charles, very much as my father had done at their only effective meeting.

Walter was asking Charles about Cambridge, and said – and this surprised me, much more than similar apostrophes from Lester Ince – that he had never liked the place. Why not? Well, as soon as he got really going on his research, the Cavendish was proceeding to break up. As for the college, it got on his nerves. Sometimes men like old Winslow made him feel there ought to be a servants’ entrance constructed specially for him, Walter. (Loud, crackling laugh which caused heads to turn from nearby tables.) Then there was Roy Calvert. It got you down, living within touching distance of melancholia.