Charles Snow - Corridors of Power

She had been hearing about it after tea. At last I understood one of Cave’s obliquities the morning before. For Caro’s brother was called, not only by his family but by acquaintances, ‘Sammikins’. He was also Lord Houghton, a Tory MP, young and heterodox. Recently, Margaret and I recalled, he had published a short book on Anglo-Indian relations. Neither of us had read it, but the newspapers had splashed it about. From the reviews, it seemed to be anti-Churchill, pro-Nehru, and passionately proGandhi. It sounded a curious book for a Tory MP to write. That was part of his offence. ‘He’s not exactly their favourite character, should you say?’ said Margaret. She was frowning at herself, and her dress, in the glass. She was not quite so uncompetitive, these days, as she would have had me think.

I could guess what Diana had said to Caro. At dinner the topic was not mentioned, and I began to hope that we were, for the time being, safely through. The conversation had the half-intimacy, the fatigue, the diminuendo, of the close of a long weekend. Since there was no host, the men did not stay long round the dining-table, and in the drawing-room afterwards, we sat round in a semi-circle, Diana, impresario-like, placing herself between Collingwood and Roger, encouraging them to talk across her.

Suddenly Lord Bridgewater, open-faced, open-eyed, cleared his throat. We knew what was coming. He hadn’t been born in this society, but he had taken its colour. At home he was an amiable man, but he had a liking for unpleasant jobs. He spoke across the width of the room to Caro. ‘I hope we shan’t hear any more of Sammikins, you know what I mean.’ For once, almost for the first time, I saw Caro put out. She flushed. She had to control herself: she hated doing so. It was in her nature not only not to give a damn, but to say that she didn’t. After a pause, she replied, a little feebly: ‘Horace, I’m sorry, but I’m not my brother’s keeper.’ Sammikins was a couple of years younger than she was, and listening, I was sure that she loved him.

‘Some people,’ said Collingwood, ‘would say that he could do with one.’

‘They’d better say that to him,’ said Caro, ‘that’s all.’

‘He’s not doing any good to the Party,’ said Lord Bridgewater, ‘he’s not doing any good at all.’

Collingwood looked at Caro. His eyes brightened in women’s company, but his manner did not change and he said straight at her: ‘It’s got to be stopped.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, that if Sammikins won’t stop it himself, we shall have to stop him.’

In Collingwood’s difficult, senatorial tone, the nickname sounded more than ever ridiculous. Caro was still just keeping her temper.

‘I don’t think,’ she replied, ‘that any of you have the slightest idea what he’s like.’

‘That doesn’t enter,’ said Collingwood. ‘I mean, that if he writes anything like this again, or makes any more speeches on the same lines, we can’t have anything more to do with him.’

On the other side of Diana, I saw Roger’s frowning face. He was gazing at his wife. She, dark with shame, was shaking her head as though telling him to keep quiet. Up to now, she knew — better than anyone there — that he had not made a false move, or one not calculated, since he entered the Government. This wasn’t the time to let go.

Caro gave Collingwood a social smile.

‘You mean,’ she said, ‘you’re ready to take the whip away?’

‘Certainly.’

‘That wouldn’t matter much, for him.’

I believed that, for an instant, she was talking professional politics in the sense Collingwood would understand. Her brother, as heir to his father’s title, could not reckon on a serious political career.

‘That’s not all,’ said Collingwood. ‘No one likes — being right out of things.’

There was a pause. Caro thought successively of things to say, discarded them all.

‘I utterly disagree with nearly everything you’ve said.’ It was Roger’s voice, not quietened, addressed to the room as well as to Collingwood. He must have been enraged by the choice he had to make: now he had made it, he sounded spontaneous and free.

Like Caro, I had been afraid of this. Now that it had happened, I felt excited, upset, and at the same time relieved.

‘I don’t know how you can.’ Collingwood looked lofty and cold.

‘I assure you that I do. I have the advantage, of course, of knowing the man very well. I don’t think many of you have that advantage, have you?’ Roger asked the question with a flick, his glance moving towards his wife. ‘I can tell you, if a few of us had his spirit and his idealism, then we should be doing a lot better than we are.’

Caro had flushed right up to her hair-line. She was anxious for Roger, she knew he was being unwise: but she was proud of him, proud because he had put her first. She had not known what to expect, had tried to persuade herself that she hoped for his silence. But he had not been silent: and she was filled with joy. I saw Margaret flash her an exhilarated glance, then flash me a worried one.

‘Aren’t you forgetting judgement, Quaife?’ asked Lord Bridgewater.

Roger swept on. ‘No, I’m not forgetting judgement. But we’re too inclined to talk about judgement when we mean the ability to agree with everyone. That’s death. Let’s have a look at what this man has really done. He’s stated a case — pretty roughly, that I’ll grant you: he hasn’t taken the meaning out of everything he said, which is another gift we tend to over-value. In one or two places he’s overstated his case. That I accept, and it’s a fault you’re always going to find in sincere and passionate men. But still, the major points in his book are substantially true. What is more, everyone in this room, and almost everyone competent to express an opinion, knows they are substantially true.’

‘I can’t agree,’ said Collingwood.

‘You know it. You may disagree with the attitudes, but you know the points are true. That’s why you’re all so angry. These things are true. The sin this man has committed is to say them. It’s quite all right for people like us to know these things. But it’s quite wrong for anyone to say them — outside our charmed circle. Aren’t we all coming to take that for granted more and more? Isn’t it becoming much more desirable to observe the etiquette rather than tell the truth? I don’t know whether it frightens you, but it certainly frightens me. Politics is too serious a business to be played like a private game at a private party. In the next ten years, it’s going to be more serious than anything we’ve ever imagined. That’s why we need every man who’s got the spine enough to say what he really thinks. That’s why we need this man you’re all so bitter about. That’s why—’ he finished, in a conversational tone, speaking to Collingwood — ‘if there is any question of his being pushed out, I shouldn’t be able to sit quietly by.’

‘I’m sure you wouldn’t,’ Collingwood replied, in his own awkward kind of conversational tone. He was quite composed. There was no sign of what effect Roger had made on him, or whether he had made any effect at all. ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t.’

The next night, Monday, Margaret and I were due to dine at the Osbaldistons’. As our taxi drew up, we could not help reflecting that it was something of a change from Basset; for the Osbaldistons lived in a house, detached, but only just detached, on the west side of Clapham Common. It might have been one of the houses I had visited as a boy, feeling that I was going up in the world, in the provincial town where I was born, the houses of minor professional men, schoolmasters, accountants, solicitors’ clerks.