Charles Snow - Homecomings

This was even true of John Jones. Jones was over fifty, had just become a Deputy Secretary, and would not go farther. The wonder to me was that he had gone so far. He had a pleasant rosy-skinned face, an air of one about to throw away all constraint and pretence and speak from the bottom of his heart. But when he did speak, it was usually in praise of some superior.

Yet even he kept at least a tone of independence and like many in the Department called Rose, the least hearty of men, by his Christian name, which would have been not so much improper as unthinkable from Lufkin’s subordinates towards the boss.

Sitting by me, sprawled back in his chair but with his chins thrust into his chest, Gilbert Cooke had been making a noise as though half sniffing, half grunting to himself. As the discussion went on, he sniffed more impatiently, ceased to sprawl back as though in the bar at White’s, and hunched himself over the committee table, a great stretch of back filling out the vicuna coat.

‘I don’t understand something you said,’ he suddenly shot out across the table to Lufkin.

‘Don’t you?’ Lufkin twitched his eyebrows.

‘You said you can do it with your existing resources.’

‘I did.’

‘You can’t, you know, if by resources you include men, which you’ve got to.’

‘Nonsense.’ Lufkin shrugged it off and was speaking to Rose, but Gilbert interrupted.

‘Oh no. For the serious part of this job you’ve only got three groups of men you can possibly use, the—’s and—.’ Rapidly, inquisitively, Gilbert was mentioning names, meaningless to most people there. He said: ‘You’ve got no option, if you’re not going to make a hash of this job, you’ve got to transfer eighty per cent of them. That means taking them off your highest priority jobs, which other Departments won’t bless any of us for, and you’ll come rushing to us demanding replacements which we shall have to extract from other firms. It is bound to make too much havoc whatever we do, and I don’t see rhyme or reason in it.’

Lufkin looked at the younger man with a sarcastic, contemptuous rictus. They knew each other well: often in the past it had surprised me that they were so intimate. Within a few moments both had become very angry, Lufkin in cold temper, Gilbert in hot.

‘You are talking of things you know nothing about,’ said Lufkin.

Furiously Gilbert said: ‘I know as much as you do.’

Then, his temper boiling over, he made a tactical mistake; and to prove that he remembered what he had known about the business four years before, he insisted on producing more strings of names.

Recovering himself, sounding irritated but self-contained, Lufkin said to Rose: ‘I don’t see that these details are likely to help us much.’

‘Perhaps we can leave it there, can we, Cooke?’ Rose said, polite, vexed, final.

Lufkin remarked, as though brushing the incident aside: ‘I take it, all you want from me about personnel is an assurance that I’ve got enough to do the job. I can give you that assurance.’

Rose smoothly asked: ‘Without making any demands on us for men, either now or later?’

Lufkin’s face showed no expression. He replied: ‘Within reason, no.’

‘What is reason?’ Rose’s voice was for an instant as sharp as the others.

‘I can’t commit myself indefinitely,’ said Lufkin calmly and heavily, ‘and nor can any other man in my position.’

‘That is completely understood, and I am very very grateful to you for the statement,’ said Rose, returning to his courtesy. With the same courtesy, Rose led the discussion away. The morning went on, the room became colder, several times men stamped their numbing feet. Rose would not leave an argument unheard, even if his mind was made up at the start. It was well after one o’clock when he turned to Lufkin.

‘I don’t know how you feel, but it seems to me just possible that this is about as far as we can go today.’

‘I must say, I think we’ve covered some ground,’ said John Jones.

‘When do we meet again?’ said Lufkin.

‘I shall, of course, report this morning’s proceedings to my master.’ Rose said the word with his customary ironic flick; but he was not the man to scurry to shelter. Unlike the Minister, he did not mind breaking bad news. Indeed, under the ritual minuet, he did it with a certain edge. ‘I’m sure he will want to go into it further with you. Perhaps you and he, and I think I might as well be there, could meet before the end of the week? I can’t anticipate what we shall arrive at as the best course for all of us, but it seems to me just possible — of course I am only thinking aloud — that we might conceivably feel that we are making such demands on you already that we should not consider it was fair to you to stretch you in a rather difficult and unprofitable direction, just for the present at least. We might just conceivably suggest that your remarkable services ought to be kept in reserve, so that we could invoke them at a slightly later stage.’

I wondered if Lufkin recognized that this was the end. At times his realism was absolute: but, like other men of action, he seemed to have the gift of switching it off and on at will. Thus he could go on, hoping and struggling, long after an issue was settled; and then stupefy one by remarking that he had written the business off days before. At that moment he was speaking to Rose with the confidence and authority of one who, at a break in a negotiation, assumed that he will with good management get his way.

The same evening Gilbert came into my office. It was about the time I was leafing through my in-tray, packing up for the night; it was about the time that, the year before, when he and I and Margaret used to go out together, he habitually called in and sat waiting for me.

For months past he had not done so. Often, when I lunched with him or when we walked in the park afterwards, he jabbed in a question about me and Margaret, led up to traps where I had to lie or confide; he knew her, he knew her family and acquaintances, it could not be a secret that she and I spent many evenings together, but, taking that for granted, I responded to him as though there were nothing else of interest to tell.

Seeing him loom there, outside the cone of light from the desk lamp, I felt very warm to him.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘we shouldn’t have won without you.’

‘I don’t believe anyone was listening to my piece,’ Gilbert replied. It rang mock-shy, like someone wanting praise for a drawing-room turn. In fact, it was genuine. Gilbert found it hard to credit that men paid attention to him.

Then he gave the hoarse high laugh one often hears from very strong, fleshy, active men.

‘Damn it, I enjoyed it,’ he cried.

‘What exactly?’

‘I enjoyed throwing a spanner into the works!’

‘You did it all,’ I told him.

‘No, I just supplied the comic act.’

He had no idea that his courage was a support to more cautious people. I wanted to reassure him, to tell him how much I admired it. So I said that I happened to be going out that night with Margaret: would he care to come too?

‘I’d love it,’ said Gilbert.

Without concealment, he did love it, sitting between us at the restaurant. Although he was so large a man he seemed to be burrowing between us, his sharp small eyes sensitive for any glance we exchanged. He enjoyed his food so much that he automatically raised his standard of living, for men obscurely felt that they owed him luxury they would never aspire to themselves; even that night, right in the middle of the war, I managed to stand him a good bottle of wine. It was freezing outside, but the nights had been raidless for a long time; in London it was a lull in the war, the restaurant was crowded and hot, we sat in a corner seat and Gilbert was happy. He infected me, he infected Margaret, and we basked in his well-being.