Charles Snow - Corridors of Power

One peaceful summer afternoon, soon after he had taken office, Roger had called some of the scientists into his room. Once, when he was off guard, I had heard him say at Pratt’s that he had only to open his door to find four knights wanting something from him. There they all were, but there were more than four, and this time he wanted something from them. He was setting up a committee for his own guidance, he said. He was just asking them for a forecast about nuclear armaments to cover the next ten years. He wanted conclusions as brutal as they could manage to make them. They could work as invisibly as they liked. If they wanted Lewis Eliot as rapporteur at any time, they could have him. But above all, they had got to take the gloves off. He was asking them for naked opinions, and he was asking for them by October.

Deliberately — it was part of his touch with men like these — he had let the blarney dissolve away. He had spoken as harshly as any of them. He looked round the table, where the faces stood out, moulded in the diffused sunlight. On his right, Walter Luke, who had just become the chief scientist of Roger’s department, tough, cube-headed, prematurely grey. Then Francis Getliffe: then Sir Laurence Astill, smooth-faced, contented with himself: then Eric Pearson, scientific adviser to my own department, youthful and cocky, like a bright American undergraduate: three more, drawn in from universities, like Getliffe and Astill, and so back to me.

Walter Luke grinned. He said: ‘Well, as HMG pays me my keep, I’ve got to play, haven’t I? There’s no need to ask me. It’s what these chaps say that counts.’ He pointed a stiff, strong arm at Astill and the others. As his reputation for scientific judgement grew, his manners had become more off-hand.

‘Sir Francis,’ said Roger, ‘you’ll come in?’

Francis hesitated. He said: ‘Minister, of course it’s an honour to be asked—’

‘It’s not an honour,’ said Roger, ‘it’s an intolerable job. But you can bring more to it than most men.’

‘I should really rather like to be excused—’

‘I don’t think I can let you. You’ve had more experience than any of us.’

‘Minister, believe me, everyone here knows all that I know—’

‘I can’t accept that,’ said Roger.

Francis hesitated again; courteously, but with a frown, he said: ‘There doesn’t seem any way out, Minister. I’ll try to do what I can.’

It sounded like the familiar minuet, as though no one would have been more disappointed than Francis if he had been taken at his word. But that was the opposite of the truth. Other men, wanting flattery or a job, talked about their consciences. Francis was one of the few whom conscience drove. He was a radical through conscience, not through rebellion. He had always had to force himself into personal struggles. He would have liked to think that for him they were all over.

Just over a year before, he had puzzled his friends at our old college. They assumed that he would be a candidate for the Mastership, and they believed that they could get him elected. At the last moment, he had refused to stand. The reason he gave was that he wanted all his time for his research, that he was having the best ideas of his life. I believed that was part of the truth, but not all. His skin was wearing even thinner as he grew older. I fancied that he could not face being talked about, the gossip and the malice.

Incidentally, instead of electing my old friend Arthur Brown, the college had managed to choose a man called G S Clark, and was becoming more factious than anyone could remember.

All Francis wanted for himself was to live in Cambridge, to spend long days in his laboratory, to watch, with worried, disapproving love, how his second and favourite daughter was getting on with an American research student. He wanted no more struggles. That afternoon, as he said yes, he felt nothing but trapped.

Sir Laurence Astill was speaking firmly: ‘If in your judgement, Minister, you feel that I have a contribution to make, then I shall consider myself obliged to accept.’

‘That’s very good of you,’ said Roger.

‘Though how you expect us to fit in these various kinds of service and look after our departments at the same time—’ Sir Laurence had not finished. ‘Some time I’d like a word with you, on the position of the senior university scientist in general.’

‘Any time,’ said Roger.

Sir Laurence nodded his head with satisfaction. He liked being in the company of Ministers: talk with Ministers was big stuff. Just as Francis was sated with the high political world, Astill was insatiable.

The others, without fuss, agreed to serve. Then Roger came to what, in his mind and mine, was the point of the meeting. What he was going to suggest, we had agreed between ourselves. I was as much behind it as he was; later on, I had to remind myself of that. ‘Now that we’ve got a committee together, and a quite exceptionally strong one,’ said Roger, blandishment coming into his tone for the first time that afternoon, ‘I should like to know what you’d all feel if I added another member.’

‘Minister?’ said Astill acquiescently.

‘I’m bringing it up to you, because the man I’m thinking of does present some problems. That is, I know he doesn’t see eye to eye with most of us. He might easily make you waste a certain amount of time. But I have a strongish feeling that it might be worth it.’

He paused and went on: ‘I was thinking of Michael Brodzinski.’

Faces were impassive, the shut faces of committee men. After an interval, Astill took the lead. ‘I think I can probably speak for our colleagues, Minister. Certainly I should have no objection to working with Dr Brodzinski.’

Astill liked agreeing with a Minister. This wasn’t time-serving, it wasn’t even self-seeking: it was just that Astill believed that Ministers were likely to be right. ‘I dare say we shall have our points of difference. But no one has ever doubted that he is a man of great scientific quality. He will have his own contribution to make.’

Someone said, in a low voice — was it Pearson? — ‘If you can’t beat them, join them. But this is the other way round.’ The other academics said that they could get on with Brodzinski. Francis was looking at his watch, as though anxious to be back in Cambridge. He said: ‘Minister, I agree with the rest. I’m inclined to think that he’d be more dangerous outside than in.’

‘I’m afraid that doesn’t quite represent my attitude,’ said Astill.

‘Still,’ Roger said, ‘you’re quite happy about it, Astill?’

‘I’m not. I think you’re all wrong,’ Walter Luke burst out. ‘As bloody wrong as you can be. I thought so when I first heard this idea, and I think so now.’

Everyone looked at him. I said quietly, ‘I’ve told you, you can watch him—’

‘Look here,’ said Walter, ‘you’re all used to reasonable ways of doing business, aren’t you?’

No one replied.

‘You’re all used to taking people along with you, aren’t you?’

Again, silence.

‘So am I, God help me. Sometimes it works, I grant you that. But do you think it’s going to work in anything as critical as this?’

Someone said we had to try it.

‘You’re wiser old bastards than I am,’ said Walter, ‘but I can’t see any good coming out of it.’

The whole table was stirring with impatience. Walter’s outburst had evoked the group-sense of a meeting. Getliffe, Astill, everyone there, wanted him to stop. Technical insight they all gave him credit for; but not psychological insight. He gave himself no credit for it, either. Battered looking he might be, but he still often thought of himself as younger than he was. That strain of juvenility, of deliberate juvenility — for he was proud of this, and in his heart despised the ‘wise old bastards’ — took away the authority with which he might have spoken that afternoon.