Charles Snow - Homecomings

‘What about?’

‘We ought to talk about us.’

She stood back, out of my arms, and looked at me. Her eyes were bright but she hesitated. She said: ‘You don’t want to yet.’

I went on: ‘We can’t leave it too long.’

For an instant her voice went high.

‘Are you sure you’re ready?’

‘We ought to talk about getting married.’

It was some instants before she spoke, though her eyes did not leave me. Then her expression, which had been grave, sharp with insight, suddenly changed: her face took on a look of daring, which in another woman might have meant the beginning of a risky love affair.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I want you. But I want you in your freedom.’

That phrase, which we had just picked up, she used to make all seem more casual to us both. But she was telling me how much she knew. She knew that, going about in high spirits, I still was not safe from remorse, or perhaps something which did not deserve that name and which was more like fear, about Sheila. That misery had made me morbidly afraid of another; Margaret had more than once turned her face away to conceal the tears squeezing beneath her eyelids, because she knew that at the sight of unhappiness I nowadays lost confidence altogether.

She accepted that, just as she accepted something else, though it was harder. It was that sometimes I did not have fear return to me with the thought of Sheila, but joy. Cheated by memory, I was transported to those times — which had in historical fact been negligible in the length of our marriage — when Sheila, less earthbound than I was, had lifted me off the earth. Cheated by memory, I had sometimes had that mirage-joy, the false-past, shine above a happy time with Margaret, so that the happiness turned heavy.

She knew all that; but what she did not know was whether I was getting free. Was I capable of a new start, of entering the life she wanted? Or was I a man who, in the recesses of his heart, manufactured his own defeat? Searching for that answer, she looked at me with love, with tenderness, and without mercy for either of us.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said, putting her arms round me, ‘there’s plenty of time.’

She muttered, her head against my chest: ‘I’m not very patient, you know that now, don’t you? But I will be.’

Below my eyes her hair was smooth; the window had darkened quickly in the past minutes; I was grateful to her.

THROUGH the spring and summer, the Minister had been able to go on stalling with Paul Lufkin. The Barford project had run into a blind alley, it looked likely that there would be no development in England, and nothing for the industrialists to do. All of which was true and reasonable, and Lufkin could only accept it; but he was alert when, in the autumn, a new rumour went round. It was that a fresh idea had sprung up at Barford, which some people, including Bevill himself, wanted to invest in.

As usual, Lufkin’s information was something near accurate. None of us was certain whether Barford would be saved or the scientists sent to America, but in October the struggle was going on; and while we were immersed in it, Lufkin did not visit the Minister again but out of the blue invited me to dinner.

When I received that note, which arrived a week before the decision over Barford was to be made, I thought it would be common prudence to have a word with Hector Rose, So, on an October morning, I sat in the chair by his desk. Outside the window, against a windy sky, the autumn leaves were turning. Even by his own standards Hector Rose looked spruce and young that day — perhaps because the war news was good, just as in the summer there had been days when, tough as he was, he had sat there with his lips pale and his nostrils pinched. The flower bowl was always full, whatever the news was like; that morning he had treated himself to a mass of chrysanthemums.

‘Well, my dear Eliot,’ he was saying, ‘it’s very agreeable to have you here. I don’t think I’ve got anything special, but perhaps you have? I’m very glad indeed to have the chance of a word.’ I mentioned Lufkin’s invitation. In a second the flah-flah dropped away — and he was listening with his machine-like concentration. I did not need to remind him that I had, not so long ago, been a consultant for Lufkin, nor that Gilbert Cooke had been a full-time employee. Those facts were part of the situation; he was considering them almost before I had started, just as he was considering Lufkin’s approaches to the Minister.

‘If our masters decide to persevere with Barford’ — Rose spoke as though some people, utterly unconnected with him, were choosing between blue or brown suits: while he was totally committed on Barford’s side, and if the project survived he would be more responsible, after the scientists, than any single man — ‘if they decide to persevere with it, we shall have to plan the first contact straightaway, that goes without saying.

‘We shall have to decide,’ added Rose coldly, ‘whether it is sensible to bring Lufkin in.’

He asked: ‘What’s your view, Eliot? Would it be sensible?’

‘So far as I can judge, it’s rather awkward,’ I said. ‘His isn’t obviously the right firm — but it’s not out of the question.’

‘Exactly,’ said Rose. ‘This isn’t going to be an easy one.’

‘I think most people would agree that his firm hasn’t got the technical resources of the other two—’ I named them.

‘What has Lufkin got?’

‘I’m afraid the answer to that is, Lufkin himself: He’s much the strongest figure in the whole game.’

‘He’s a good chap ,’ said Hector Rose incongruously. He was not speaking of Lufkin’s moral nature, nor his merits as a companion: Rose meant that Lufkin was a pantocrator not dissimilar from himself.

He stared at me.

‘My dear Eliot,’ he said, ‘I’m sure it’s unnecessary for me to advise you, but if you do decide that he is the right man for us, then of course you’re not to feel the least embarrassment or be too nice about it. The coincidence that you know something about him — the only significance of that is, that it makes your judgement more valuable to us. It’s very important for us not to fall over backwards and, for quite inadequate reasons, shirk giving the job to the right man, that is, if we finally decide that he does turn out to be the right man.’

I was a little surprised. No one could have doubted that Hector Rose’s integrity was absolute. It would have been high farce to try to bribe him; he assumed the same of me. Nevertheless, I expected him to be more finicky about the procedure, to talk about the necessity of justice not only being done, but being seen to be done. In fact, as the war went on and the state became more interleaved with business, Civil Servants like Rose had made themselves tougher-minded; nothing would get done if they thought first how to look immaculate.

In the same manner, when I asked whether I might as well let Lufkin entertain me, Rose replied: ‘The rule is very simple, my dear Eliot, and it remains for each of us to apply it to himself. That is, when some interested party suddenly becomes passionately desirous of one’s company. The rule is, do exactly as you would if the possibility of interest did not exist. If you wouldn’t normally accept an invitation from our excellent friend, don’t go. If you would normally accept, then do go, if you can bear it. I can’t say that I envy you the temptation,’ said Rose, whose concept of an evening out was a table for two and a bottle of claret at the Athenaeum.

When I came to spend the evening at Lufkin’s, I would have compounded for a table for two myself. As in the past when I was one of his entourage, I found his disregard of time, which in anyone else he would have bleakly dismissed as ‘Oriental’, fretting me. In his flat at St James’s Court, his guests were collected at eight o’clock, which was the time of the invitation, standing about in the sitting-room drinking, nine of us, all men. Lufkin himself was there, standing up, not saying much, not drinking much, standing up as though prepared to do so for hours, glad to be surrounded by men catching his eye. Then one of his staff entered with a piece of business to discuss: and Lufkin discussed it there on the spot, in front of his guests. That finished, he asked the man to stay, and beckoned the butler, standing by the dinner-table in the inner room, to lay another place. Next, with the absence of fuss and hurry of one in the middle of a marathon, which he showed in all his dealings, he decided to telephone: still standing up, he talked for fifteen minutes to one of his plants.