Charles Snow - Corridors of Power

Next afternoon, I went to see Roger in the House. I sat in the civil servants’ Box, within touching distance of the government benches, while he answered a question. It was a question put down by one of the members whom Lufkin used for these purposes, to embarrass Gilbey. ‘Was the Minister aware that no decision had yet been announced on—’ There followed a list of aircraft projects. Roger would, in any case, have had to answer in the Commons, but with Gilbey ill, he was in acting charge of the department. The questioner pointedly, and I suspected, under instructions, demonstrated that he was not making difficulties for Roger himself. When Roger gave a dead-pan, stonewalling reply, neither the member nor any of the aircraft spokesmen followed with a subsidiary. There were one or two half-smiles of understanding. After questions, Roger took me along to his room. It struck me that, although I often called on him now, he almost never took me to the tea-room or the bar. I had heard it mentioned that he spent too little time in casual mateyness among crowds of members, that he was either too arrogant, or too shy. It seemed strange, when he was so easy with anyone in private.

The room was cramped, unlike his stately office in the Ministry across Whitehall. Beyond the window, mock gothic, the afternoon sky was sulphurous.

I asked him if he had visited Gilbey yet. Yes, of course, he said, twice.

‘What do you think?’ I said.

‘Don’t you think he’s probably lucky to be alive?’

I said yes. Then I told him what I had thought in the Clinic the day before, that it might be a psychosomatic illness. Or was I psychologizing too much?

‘You mean, if I hadn’t put on the pressure, and we’d all said he was wonderful, he might still be on his feet? You may very well be right.’

‘I meant a bit more than that,’ I said. ‘Presuming the old man gets better and comes back to the job: then what?’

I did not need to go further. I meant, a man in Gilbey’s condition oughtn’t to have to live among the in-fighting. If he did, there was a finite danger that he wouldn’t live at all.

Roger had missed nothing. His eyes met mine in recognition. He was smoking a cigarette, and he did not answer for a time.

‘No,’ he said at last, ‘I’m not going to take any more responsibility than I’m bound to. This isn’t very real.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘He’s out,’ said Roger, ‘whatever I do now. He’ll never come back.’

‘Is that settled?’

‘I’m sure it is,’ he said. He broke off.

‘Do you want an answer to the question you’re really asking?’

I said, ‘Leave it.’

‘I’m prepared to answer,’ he said. ‘I should go on regardless.’

He had been speaking without smoothness, as though he were dredging up the words. Then he said, in a brisk tone: ‘But this isn’t real. He’s out.’

He went on, with a sarcastic smile, ‘I’m sure he’s out. I’m not so sure I’m in.’

‘What are the chances?’

Roger answered, with matter-of-fact precision: ‘Slightly better than evens. Perhaps 6–4 on.’

‘Did you do yourself harm,’ I put in, ‘at Basset? That last night?’

‘I may have done.’ He went on, with a baffled frown, like a short-sighted child screwing up his eyes: ‘The trouble was, I couldn’t do anything else.’

A couple of days later, I arrived at the London Clinic immediately after lunch. Gilbey might not have moved a millimetre in seventy-two hours. Eyes staring at the ceiling, hair shining, face unblemished. He spoke of Roger, who had visited him that morning. Affably, with friendly condescension, Gilbey told me, what I knew myself, that Roger had had a distinguished record in the last war.

‘You wouldn’t think it to look at him,’ said Gilbey, harking back to our previous conversation. ‘But he’s all right . He’s quite all right .’

Gilbey proceeded to talk, enjoying himself, about his own campaigns. Within a few minutes however, he received a reminder of mortality. His secretary busily entered the quiet, the marmoreally-composed sickroom, Gilbey static except for his lips, me unmoving beside him, the trees motionless in the garden outside.

‘Sir,’ said the secretary. He was an elegant young man with a Brigade tie.

‘Green?’

‘I have a telegram for you, sir.’

‘Read it, my dear chap, read it.’

Since Gilbey’s eyes did not alter their upward gaze, he did not know that the telegram was still unopened. We heard the rip of paper.

‘Read it, my dear chap.’

Green coughed. ‘It comes from an address in SW10 — I think that’s Fulham, sir.’ He gave the signatory’s name. ‘Someone called Porson.’

‘Please read it.’

Momentarily, I caught a glance from Green’s eyes, pale, strained, hare-like. He read: ‘All the trumpets will sound for you on the other side.’

Just for a second, Gilbey’s mouth pursed, then tightened. Very soon, the modulated voice said to the ceiling: ‘How nice!’

In a voice even more careful, unemphatic, clipped and trim, he added: ‘How very nice!’

As soon as I could, after the telegram had been read, I said goodbye to Gilbey. I indicated to Green that I wanted a word with him outside. Nurses were passing by, the corridor was busy, it was not until we reached the waiting room that I could let my temper go.

In the panelled room, with its copies of the Tatler , the Field, Punch on the console table, I said: ‘Give me that telegram.’

As I glanced at it — the words shining out as though innocent of trouble — I said: ‘You bloody fool!’

‘What?’ said Green.

‘Why in God’s name don’t you read telegrams before you bring them in? Why hadn’t you got the wit to invent something, when you saw what you’d got in front of you?’

I looked at the telegram again. Porson. It might be. In this lunacy, anything was possible. An old acquaintance of mine. For the sake of action, for the sake of doing anything, I rushed out of the room, out of the Clinic, shouted for a taxi, gave the address, just off the Fulham Road.

The taxi chugged through the afternoon traffic, south-west across London. I was so angry that I did not know why I was going there. I had lost touch with my own feelings. Guilt, concern, personal fates, public ends — I hadn’t the patience to think of any of them. Nothing except pushing the taxi on.

At last, after the driver had made false shots, trying squares, places, mews, we drove up a street all of tall terraced houses, shabby, unpainted. In front of one, I looked at the slips of cardboard by the bells. The other names were handwritten, but against the top floor bell was a soiled visiting card: Mr R Porson, Barrister-at-Law.

Empty milk bottles stood on the steps. Inside the door, which was on the latch, letters and newspapers lay in the unlit hall. I climbed upstairs. On the second landing the door of a bathroom opened, the only one, it seemed, in the house. I went up to the top floor and knocked. A thick, strident voice answered, and I entered. Yes, it was the man I used to know — twenty years older, more than half drunk. He greeted me noisily, but I cut him short by giving him the telegram.

‘Did you send this?’

He nodded.

‘Why?’

‘I wanted to cheer him up.’

In the attic flat, which had a skylight and a high window, Porson peered at me, ‘What’s the matter, old boy? You look a bit white. I insist on prescribing for you. What you need is a good stiff drink.’

‘Why did you send this?’

‘The poor chap hasn’t got long to go. It’s been all over the papers,’ said Porson. ‘I’ve got a great respect for him. We don’t breed men like him nowadays. He’s a bit different from all these young pansies. So I wanted him to know that some of us were thinking about him. I wasn’t prepared to let him go out alone.’