Charles Snow: Last Things

It sometimes occurred to me – not specially at that dinner table – how differently he behaved from the Marches, who had been the first rich family to befriend me when I was young. They too were Jewish: they were not, and never had been, anything like so plutocratic as Azik had become. And yet, though they were slightly more sceptical about politics than their Gentile counterparts, their instincts were the same. After generations in England, they thought and spoke like members of the English haute bourgeoisie , like distinctly grander and better-connected Forsytes. If, when I first knew them, anyone had made contributions such as Azik’s to the wrong party, some of the older members might have been capable of saying (though I didn’t remember hearing the phrase in the March houses) that he was a traitor to his class.

Nevertheless, after dinner, Azik did recall to me one of those patriarchs, my favourite one. We were sitting in the drawing-room, brandy going round. It was quite early, not long after ten, but Pat had begun to fuss ostentatiously over his wife. Twice he asked her, wasn’t it time for him to take her home? Coolly, demurely, she said that she was perfectly well.

‘Of course she is,’ said Margaret. ‘This isn’t an illness, don’t you realise that?’

‘If it is,’ said Rosalind, ‘it’s a very pleasant one.’

There was an unexpected freemasonry. Margaret and Rosalind agreed that, when they were carrying their children, they had never felt better in their lives. They also agreed that they wished they could have had some more. Azik gave them a condescending hyper-masculine smile, as though women were women, as though (he must have known when he listened to his wife’s confidences, that she and Margaret had less in common even than he and I, and liked each other a great deal less) he wasn’t above remarking that they were sisters under the skin.

‘That’s all very well,’ he projected himself again. ‘But I say young Pat’s right. He’s got to be careful.’ He gave his wife a beaming glance. ‘You don’t have your first grandchild every day. He’s got to be careful. As far as that goes, I must say, I’m not happy that they’re being careful enough. I don’t like the sound of that doctor of theirs. They ought to have the best man in London–’

Azik had been studying the Medical Directory , in search of their doctor’s qualifications, and was deeply suspicious as a result. It was then that I had a memory of old Mr March, Charles March’s father, the patriarch whom we used to know as Mr L, going through the same drill. When his daughter was expecting a baby, or his relatives were ill, or even their friends, Mr March would carry out sombre researches into doctors’ careers, and emerge, with indignation, prophecies of disaster and fugues of total recall, expressing his disapprobation and contempt for what he called practitioners , and above all for the particular practitioner in charge of the case.

Even Azik couldn’t let himself go in his freedom so totally as Mr L. Yet for an instant the images got superposed, the two of them, abundant, paternal, unrestrained, acting as they felt disposed to act.

With a good grace, Muriel got ready to go. Her step was still elegant and upright: as she said goodbye, she gave Margaret a smile which was secretive, lively, amused. Gallantly, like someone who would be glad to execute an imitation of Sir Walter Raleigh but hadn’t the excuse, Pat draped a cape over her shoulders.

When they had left and we heard Pat drive the car off down below, Azik had a word to say about their living arrangements, the Chelsea flat, paid for out of Muriel’s money, for she kept them both. For once Azik had no immediate suggestions for improvement. Then, having disposed of the topic of his stepdaughter, he introduced another one, like a child saving the jam to the last, that of his own son. This was the only child Azik and Rosalind had between them, born when she was over forty. One never met Azik without, in the end, the conversation coming round to David, who had already been the subterranean cause of Azik’s sympathy about Charles. And, in fact, the conversation, at least with Margaret and me, tended to repeat itself, as it did that night. David was high-spirited and very clever. He was at a private day school in London: Azik wanted him to go later to a smart boarding school. If so, we kept telling him, he ought to be at a boarding school now. It would be harder for him, much harder, to leave home at thirteen or fourteen. ‘No,’ said Azik, as he had done before, ‘that I could not do. I could not lose him now.’

It was the old argument, but Azik enjoyed any argument about his son. It even kept him up later than he intended. David. The possibilities with David. David’s education. Azik went over it all again, before his gaze at his wife began to become more intense, more uxorious, and he felt impelled towards his power base, his home.

THE chamber of the House of Lords glowed and shone under the chandeliers, the throne-screens picked out in gold, the benches gleaming red, nothing bare nor economical wherever one turned the eye, as though the Victorian Gothic decorators had been told not to be inhibited or as though someone with the temperament of Azik Schiff had been given a free hand to renovate the high altar of St Mark’s.

It was a Wednesday afternoon, about half past five, the benches not half-full, but, as peers drifted in from tea, not so startlingly empty now as they had been an hour before. I had come to hear Francis Getliffe make a speech, and he had found me a seat just behind the Bar, at ground level. I had heard him speak there several times, but that afternoon there was a difference. This time, as he got up from the back benches, he was on the right hand of the throne, not the left. The election, as we had guessed at the dinner party with the Schiffs, a month before, had been as tight as an election could be: but it had been decided, and a Labour government had come to power. So, for the first time, Francis was speaking from the government side.

He had never been a good speaker, and he was using what looked like a written text. He wasn’t a good reader. But he was being listened to. The debate was on defence policy, and it was well known that he was a grey eminence: no, not so grey, for his views had been published, in his time he had gained negative popularity because of them. Ever since he was a young man, in fact, he had been an adviser to Labour politicians. As he grew older, no one had more private influence with them on scientific-military affairs. That was when they were in opposition, but now he was being attended to as though this were an official statement.

As a matter of fact, it was as guarded as though it might have been. Francis was both loyal and punctilious, and, though he had to speak that afternoon, he wasn’t going to embarrass his old colleagues. One had to know the language, the technical detail, and much back history, to interpret what he was, under the courtesies, pressing on them. Under the courtesies – for Francis, whose politeness had always been stylised, had taken with gusto to the singular stylisation of that chamber. In his speech he was passing stately compliments across the floor to ‘the noble Lord, Lord Ampleforth’. One needed a little inside information to realise that Lord Ampleforth, who was something like Francis’ opposite number on the Tory side, was a man with whom Francis had not agreed on a single issue since the beginning of the war; or that Francis was now telling his own government that, in three separate fields, the exact opposite of Lord Ampleforth’s policies ought to be their first priority.

Polite hear-hears from both sides as Francis sat down. Lord Lufkin, sprawling on the cross-benches, looked indifferent, as though certain he could have done better himself. In the back tier of the opposition benches, I saw the face of Sammikins, hot-eyed, excited, but (since I last met him, twelve months before) startlingly thin.