Charles Snow - Last Things

The courtesies continued. Lord Ampleforth, who spoke next, paid compliments to the noble Lord, Lord Getliffe, ‘who brings to your Lordships’ house his great scientific authority and the many years of effort he has devoted to our thinking on defence’. Lord Ampleforth, who despite his grand title had started his career as a radio manufacturer called Jones, was a rougher customer than Francis and more of a natural politician: he drew some applause from his own side when he expressed ‘a measure of concern’ about Francis’ ‘well-known’ views upon the nuclear deterrent. Even so, one again needed a little inside information to grasp what he really felt about Francis. It helped perhaps to know that he had, during the time of the previous government, rigorously removed Francis from his last official committee. More courtesies. The noble Lord’s international reputation. The wisdom he brought to our counsels. Assurances of support in everything that contributed to the country’s security.

As soon as Lord Ampleforth finished, Francis got up from his place and nodded to me as he went out, so that I joined him in the lobby. He gave me a creased saturnine smile. As we walked over the red carpet down the warm corridor – so red, so warm that I felt rather like Jonah in one of his more claustrophobic experiences or alternatively as I had done after an optical operation, with pads over both eyes – Francis remarked: ‘That chap reminds me of a monkey. A very persistent monkey trying to climb a monkey-puzzle tree. That is, if they do.’

All I knew of monkey-puzzles was the sight of them in front of houses more prosperous than ours, in the streets where I was born. However, Francis was not occupied with scientific accuracy. Lord Ampleforth had climbed, he was saying, over all kinds of resistance: on the shoulders of and in spite of their efforts to throw him off, better men than himself. Including a number of the scientists we knew.

‘He’ll go on climbing,’ said Francis with cheerful acerbity. ‘Nothing will ever stop him. Not for long.’

Affable greetings along the corridors. Congratulations to Francis on his speech. Lord Ampleforth had an astonishing gift, Francis was saying, for ingratiating himself with his superiors, and an equally astonishing gift for doing the reverse with those below.

We entered the guest room. More mateyness, from men round the bar, more congratulations on the speech. I couldn’t help thinking that they might have found Francis’ present line of thought more stimulating. But he was popular there. As we sat in a window seat looking over the river, lights on the south bank aureoled in the November mist, people greeted him with the kind of euphoria that one met in other kinds of enclave, such as a college or a club.

One of the new ministers, from a table close by, was engaging Francis in earnest, low-voiced conversation. So, getting on with my first drink, I gazed from our corner into the room. It wasn’t altogether novel to me: when Francis was in London, I sometimes met him there: but my first visit had been much further back, in the thirties, when I had been invited by an acquaintance called Lord Boscastle. So far as I could trust my memory, it had been different then. Surely there had been less people, both in the chamber and round this room? Somewhat to his surprise, Lord Boscastle’s first speech for twenty years had not been much of a draw.

Had the place really been socially grander, or was that a young man’s impression? I remembered noticing, even in the thirties, that there were not many historic titles knocking about. Lord Boscastle, who bore one and was a superlative snob, had once remarked, with obscure and lugubrious satisfaction, that the House was quintessentially middle-class. Well, that night, there were still three or four historic titles on view. One of them was sitting at the bar, with a depressed stare, imbibing gin. There was another, at a table surrounded by his daughters: my maternal grandfather had been a gamekeeper on his grandfather’s estate. A number, though, had come up from the Commons, or their nineteenth-century ancestors had; some had been successes in politics, some had missed the high places, and some had never hoped for much. There were several life peers, as Francis was, and some women. Round the room one could hear a variety of accents: about as many as in the Athenaeum, which was a meritocratic club, and a good deal more than in the other club I sometimes used.

Most of these people might have seemed strange to their predecessors in the Lords a hundred years before. No doubt the professional politicians (and there had been plenty of professional politicians there in the nineteenth century, even if, like Palliser, they were landed magnates too) would have found plenty to talk about to the modern front-benchers: there was no tighter trade union in England, then or now. But still, it was like our college, Francis’ and mine. The fabric of the building hadn’t altered: the survival of politeness in which Francis had been indulging in the Chamber, that hadn’t altered either, not by a word. The forms remained the same, while the contents changed. It had perhaps been a strength sometimes, this national passion for clinging on to forms, nostalgic, pious, warthog obstinate. Alternatively, it could have released our energies if we had cut them away. And yet, for this country that had never been on, there had never been a realistic chance. Bend the forms, make them stretch, use them for purposes quite different from those in which they had grown up: that had been the way we found it natural (the pressures were so mild we didn’t feel them, as mild as the soft English weather) to work. Sometimes I wondered whether my son and his contemporaries would find it natural too.

I mentioned as much to Francis that night. I had recently heard from Charles, and so could think about him at ease. His was a generation that to Francis, whose children were older, seemed like strangers.

The loudspeaker boomed out – ‘Defence debate. Speaking, the Lord–’ Within two minutes of this news, the population flowing into the guest room had markedly increased. Among the deserters was Lord Ampleforth, pushing his way towards the bar, heavy shoulders hunched. Glancing across to our corner, he nodded to Francis, a flashing-eyed, recognitory nod, as from one power to another. Francis called out: ‘Interesting speech, Josh.’

We watched Josh acquire his whisky, and glance round the room.

‘Looking for someone useful,’ Francis quietly commented. Apparently, whatever Josh was in search of, he didn’t find it. He swallowed his drink at speed, gave another flashing-eyed nod to Francis, patted two men on their shoulders, and went out, presumably back to the Chamber, even though Lord – was still up.

Francis, settling back in his chair by the window, did not feel obliged to follow. He was comfortable, ready to sit out the next few speeches, until out of courtesy he returned for the end of the debate. If it hadn’t been for his own choice, he wouldn’t have been as free as that; he would have been on the front bench, waiting to wind up for the government. For, the weekend after the election, he had had an offer. Would he become a minister of state? To take charge of the nuclear negotiations? He had told me before he replied, but he wasn’t asking for advice. He had said no.

There was one objective reason. He knew, just as I knew, without the aid of Azik’s benevolent instruction, how little a minister could do. The limits of free action were cripplingly tight, tighter than seemed real to anyone who had not been inside this game. We had both watched, been associated with, and gone down alongside a Tory minister, Roger Quaife, who had tried to do what Francis would have had to try. And Quaife had been far more powerful than Francis could conceivably be. The limits of freedom for this government would be much less than for the last. Francis would fail, anyone would fail. He had done a good deal in the line of duty – but this, he said bleakly, was a hiding to nothing. If he had asked my opinion, I should have agreed.