Charles Snow - Homecomings

Meanwhile the guests, most of whom were colleagues and subordinates, stood up, went on drinking and exchanged greetings to each others’ wives. ‘Give my regards to Lucille.’ ‘How is Brenda?’ ‘Don’t forget to give my love to Jacqueline.’ It went on, just as it used when I attended those dinners, and men heartily inquired after Sheila and sent messages to her: not that they knew her, for, since she never went to a party, they could only have met her for a few minutes, and by accident. But, according to their etiquette, they docketed her name away and afterwards punctiliously inquired about her, as regularly as they said good evening. No doubt most of those husband-to-husband questions that night, so hearty, so insistent, were being asked about women the speakers scarcely knew.

It was nearly half past nine when Lufkin said: ‘Does anyone feel like eating? I think we might as well go in.’

At the crowded table Lufkin sat, not at the head, but in the middle of one side, not troubling to talk, apparently scornful of the noise, and yet feeling that, as was only right, the party was a success. There was more food and drink than at most wartime dinners: I thought among the noise, the hard male laughter, how little any of these men were giving themselves away. Orthodox opinions, collective gibes, a bit of ribbing — that was enough to keep them zestful, and I had hardly heard a personal remark all night. It made me restless, it made me anxious to slither away, not only to avoid conversation with Lufkin, but also just to be free.

The walls pressed in, the chorus roared round me: and, in that claustrophobia, I thought longingly of being alone with Margaret in her room. In a kind of rapturous day-dream, I was looking forward to marrying her. In the midst of this male hullabaloo my confidence came back. I was telling myself, almost as one confides, brazenly, confidently, and untruthfully to an acquaintance on board ship, that it was natural I should trust myself so little about another marriage after the horror of the first.

Listening to someone else’s history, I should not have been so trustful about the chances of life. Thinking of my own, I was as credulous as any man. Sitting at that table, responding mechanically and politely to a stranger’s monologue, I felt that my diffidence about Margaret was gone.

When one of Lufkin’s guests said the first good night, I tried to go out with him. But Lufkin said: ‘I’ve hardly had a minute with you, Eliot. You needn’t go just yet.’

That company was good at recognizing the royal command. Within a quarter of an hour, among thanks and more salutations to wives, the flat was empty, and we were left alone. Lufkin, who had not stirred from his chair as he received the goodbyes, said: ‘Help yourself to another drink and come and sit by me.’

I had drunk enough, I said. As for him, he always drank carefully, though his head was hard for so spare and unpadded a man. I sat in the chair on his right, and he turned towards me with a creaking smile. We had never been intimate, but there was a sort of liking between us. As usual, he had no small talk whatsoever; I made one or two remarks, about the war, about the firm, to which he said yes and no. He started off: ‘Quite frankly, I still don’t like the way Barford is being handled.’

He said it quietly and dryly, with a note of moral blame that was second nature to him.

‘I’m sorry about that,’ I said.

‘It’s no use being sorry,’ he replied. ‘The thing is, we’ve got to get it right.’

‘I’m at a bit of a disadvantage,’ I said, ‘not being able to say much about it.’

‘You can say quite enough for the purpose.’

I asked straight out: ‘How much do you know?’

‘I hear,’ Lufkin replied, in his bluntest and most off-hand tone, ‘that you people are wasting your own time and everyone else’s debating whether to shut the place up or not.’

‘I hope they’ll come down in favour,’ I said, feeling my way. ‘But I’m by no means sure.’

‘In that case you’re losing your grip,’ Lufkin gave a cold, jeering smile. ‘ Of course they’ll keep it going.’

‘Why do you say that?’

For a second I did not put it past him to have inside knowledge, but he answered: ‘No one ever closes a place down. Governments can’t do it; that’s one of the things that’s wrong with them.’ He went on: ‘No, you’d better assume that they’ll keep it ticking over. But not putting enough behind it, blowing hot and cold the whole wretched time. That’s what I call making the worst of both worlds.’

‘You may be right,’ I said.

‘I’ve been right before now,’ he said. ‘So it won’t be much satisfaction.’

In his negotiations Lufkin made much use of the charged silence, and we fell into one now. But it was not my tactic that night to break it; I was ready to sit mute as long as he cared. In time he said: ‘We can assume they’re going to hopelessly underestimate their commitment, and unless someone steps in they’ll make a mess of it. The thing is, we’ve got to save them from themselves.’

Suddenly his eyes, so sad and remote in his hard, neat, skull-like head, were staring into mine, and I felt his will, intense because it was canalized into this one object, because his nature was undivided, all of a piece.

‘I want you to help,’ he said.

Again I did not reply.

He went on: ‘I take it the decisions about how this job is done, and who makes the hardware, are going to be bandied about at several levels.’

Lufkin, with his usual precision and realism, had made it his business to understand how government worked; it was no use, he had learned years before, to have the entrée to cabinet ministers unless you were also trusted by the Hector Roses and their juniors.

‘I’m not prepared to let it go by default. It’s not my own interests I’m thinking of. It’s a fourth-class risk anyway, and, so far as the firm goes, there’s always money for a good business. As far as I go myself no one’s ever going to make a fortune again, so it’s pointless one way or the other. But I’ve got to be in on it, because this is the place where I can make a contribution. That’s why I want your help.’

It sounded hypocritical: but Lufkin behaved just as he had to Bevill the previous New Year’s Day, not altering by an inch as he talked to a different man, just as stable and certain of his own motives. It sounded hypocritical, but Lufkin believed each word of it, and that was one of his strengths.

For myself, I could feel a part of me, a spontaneous part left over from youth, which sympathized with him and wanted to say yes: Even now the temptation was there — one that Lufkin had never felt. But, since I was a young man, I had had to learn how, in situations such as this, to harden myself. Just because I had to watch my response, which was actually too anxious to please, which wanted to say yes instead of no, I had become practised at not giving a point away: in a fashion different from Lufkin’s, and for the opposite reasons, I was nearly as effective at it as he was himself.

That night, I still had not decided whether I ought to throw in my influence, such as it was, for him or against him.

‘I can’t do much just yet,’ I said. ‘And if I tried it would certainly not be wise.’

‘I’m not sure I understand you.’

‘I’ve been associated with you,’ I told him, ‘and some people will remember that at the most inconvenient time. You can guess the repercussions if I overplayed my hand—’

‘What would you say, if I told you that was cowardly?’

‘I don’t think it is,’ I said.

For his own purposes, he was a good judge of men, and a better one of situations. He accepted that he would not get further just then and, with no more ill grace than usual, began to talk at large.