Charles Snow - Corridors of Power

Roger asked, what could he do? Write to The Times ? Talk to the Opposition military spokesmen? There we were safeguarded. We had, through Francis Getliffe and others, our own contacts. Francis and I had, for years, been closer to them than to Roger’s colleagues. What could the man do? I had to agree. After the talk in the Athenaeum, I had come away apprehensive. Now the anxiety had lost its edge. As out of habit, I repeated that Roger ought to have a word with him.

On the Thursday which followed his dinner with the Prime Minister, Roger had been invited to a conversazione of the Royal Society. The day after, he mentioned that he had spent a quarter of an hour with Brodzinski alone.

It looked as though Roger had spread himself. The next letters from Brodzinski said, he had always known that the Minister understood. If they could continue the conversation undisturbed, he, Brodzinski, was certain that all the obstacles would be removed. In a few days Roger replied politely. Another letter arrived by return. Then telephone calls. Would the Minister’s Private Secretary arrange a meeting? Could the Minister be told that Brodzinski was on the line? Could he be put straight through?

Suddenly it all stopped. No more telephone calls. No more letters. It was bewildering. I took what precautions I could. We knew his points of influence in the Air Ministry, in the House. Was he pressing them, instead? But no: he seemed not to have been near them. There was no disquiet anywhere, there were not even any rumours hissing round.

The patient young men in Roger’s private office allowed themselves a shrug of relief. He had got tired of it at last, they said. Four months of commotion: then absolute silence. From their records, they could date when silence fell. It was the third week in May.

In that same week, I happened to have been inquiring whether certain invitations to accept Honours had been sent out. My question had nothing to do with Brodzinski, though I thought mechanically that his invitation must have gone out too. It did not occur to me, not remotely, to connect the two dates.

As the summer began, all of us round Roger were more confident than we had yet been. First drafts of the White Paper were being composed. Francis Getliffe came from Cambridge twice a week to confer with Douglas and Walter Luke. Papers passed between Douglas’ office and Rose’s. Roger had issued an instruction that the office draft must be ready for him by August. Then he would publish when he guessed the time was right. In private, he was preparing for the month after Christmas, the beginning of 1958.

While we were drafting, Diana Skidmore was going through her standard summer round. On the last day of Ascot Week, she invited some of us to a party in South Street. She had heard — as though she had a ticker-tape service about American visitors — that David Rubin was in England. She had not met him: ‘He’s brilliant, isn’t he?’ she asked. Yes, I assured her, he was certainly brilliant. ‘Bring him along,’ she ordered. There had been a time when the Basset circle was supposed to be anti-Semitic. That, at least, had changed.

When Margaret, David Rubin and I stood at the edge of Diana’s drawing-room, about seven o’clock on the wet June evening, not much else seemed to have changed. The voices were as hearty as ever: the champagne went around as fast: the women stood in their Ascot frocks, the men in their Ascot uniforms. There were a dozen Ministers there, several of the Opposition front bench, many Conservative members, and a few from the other side.

There was a crowd of Diana’s rich friends. She welcomed us with vigour. Yes, she knew that David Rubin was talking to the English nuclear scientists.

‘People over here being sensible?’ she said to him. ‘Come and tell me about them. I’ll arrange something next week.’ She was peremptory as usual, and yet, because she took it for granted that it was for her to behave like a prince, to open England up to him, he took it for granted too.

How was it, I had sometimes wondered, that, despite her use of her riches, she didn’t attract more resentment? Even when she put a hand, with complete confidence, into any kind of politics? She had been drawn back into the swirling, meaty, noisy gaggle: there she was, listening deferentially to a handsome architect. Even in her devoted marriage, she had had a hankering for one guru after another. Just as she took it for granted that she could talk to Ministers, so she loved being a pupil. If it seemed a contradiction to others, it seemed natural to her, and that was all she cared about.

Margaret had been taken away by Monty Cave. I noticed Rubin being shouted at hilariously by Sammikins. I walked round the party, and then, half an hour after we came in, found myself by Rubin’s side again. He was watching the crowd with his air of resignation, of sad intelligence.

‘They’re in better shape, aren’t they?’ He meant that these people, or some of them, had lost their collective confidence over Suez. Now they were behaving as though they had found it again. Rubin knew, as well as I did, that political sorrows did not last long. Political memory lasted about a fortnight. It did not count beside a new love-affair, a new job, even, for many of these men, the active glow after making a good speech.

‘No country’s got a ruling class like this.’ David Rubin opened his hands towards the room. ‘I don’t know what they hope for, and they don’t know either. But they still feel they’re the lords of this world.’

I was fond of Rubin and respected him, but his reflections on England were irking me. I said he mustn’t judge the country by this group. Being born in my provincial town wasn’t much different from being born in Brooklyn. He ought to know the boys I grew up among. Rubin interrupted, with a sharp smile: ‘No. You’re a far-sighted man, I know it, Lewis. But you’re just as confident in yourself as these characters are.’ Once more he shrugged at the room. ‘You don’t believe a single thing that they believe, but you’ve borrowed more from them than you know.’

People were going out to dinner, and the party thinned. Gradually those who were left came to the middle of the room. There stood Diana and her architect, Sammikins and two decorative women, Margaret and Lord Bridgewater, and a few more. I joined the group just as David Rubin came up from the other side with Cave’s wife, who was for once out with her husband. She was ash-blonde, with a hard, strained, beautiful face. Rubin had begun to enjoy himself. He might have a darker world view than anyone there, but he gained certain consolations.

No one could talk much, in that inner residue of the party, but Sammikins. He was trumpeting away with a euphoria startling even by his own standards. Just as Diana had lost money at Ascot, he had won. With the irrationality of the rich, Diana had been put out. With the irrationality of the harassed, which he would remain until his father died, Sammikins was elated. He wanted to entertain us all. He spoke with the luminosity of one who saw that his financial problems had been settled for ever. ‘All the time I was at school,’ he cried, ‘m’tutor gave me one piece of advice. He said, “Houghton, never go in for horse-racing. They suck you in.”’ Sammikins caught sight of David Rubin, and raised his voice once more. ‘What do you think of that, Professor? What do you think of that for a piece of advice? Not à point , eh?’

David Rubin did not much like being called Professor. Also, he found Sammikins’ allusions somewhat esoteric. But he grappled. He replied: ‘I’m afraid I have to agree with your friend.’

‘M’tutor.’

‘Anyway, he’s right. Statistically, he must be right.’

‘Horses are better than cards, any day of the week. Damn it all, Professor, I’ve proved it!’