Charles Snow - Corridors of Power

‘They’ve been getting at him,’ said Collingwood.

‘It’s very easy, as I said before,’ Roger leaned back, ‘for them to overplay their hands.’

He looked confident, full of weight, springy with resource. Collingwood turned his handsome head and watched him in silence. So far as I could feel it in the air, there had been no argument.

‘Well, then, Quaife, I’m with you. I agree, the Committee’ (he meant the Cabinet committee on defence policy, about which Rose had given me the first news) ‘ought to meet tomorrow or Tuesday. That’s where we want you to help us—’ He spoke to me. He gave, as usual, the impression that he was ill at ease and that he didn’t care whether he was at ease or not. Everyone at Basset called him Reggie, but he still found it an effort not to speak to those two Cabinet colleagues of his as Mr Quaife and Mr Cave. He just managed to use their surnames. As for me, though I had met him a dozen times in the house, he could not become as familiar as that.

He assumed that I was at his disposal for a modest task.

They wanted the Committee convened over the weekend. As Douglas Osbaldiston was the Secretary, that was his job. Would I telephone him and get that in motion before dinner?

It was barely polite. It was certainly not adroit. Yet, within the next ten minutes, I saw, or thought I saw, how he kept his power. Before I arrived, they had been talking about three big firms: how much influence could they pull out? By this time, Roger and Cave spoke of ‘pressure groups’, or ‘lobbies’, as though they were Americans.

‘If they were solid together, they might be more of a menace,’ said Roger. ‘But they’re not, we haven’t given them a chance to be. There are always going to be some Government contracts. For some of our friends, that prospect carries its own simple logic.’

By the side of Roger, braced for the struggle, his voice taking on its taunting edge, Cave looked slack and gone to seed. But he was more at home than he had been all the weekend. He didn’t see, he said, any lobby being effective by itself. ‘But I should make two qualifications. First, Government must know its own mind. Second, and this isn’t quite a platitude, lobbies may be important if they happen to touch opinion deeper than their own. That is, if they touch opinion which hasn’t their own axe to grind.’

‘Fair comment,’ said Roger.

Collingwood stirred, and put one arm round the bedpost. ‘I see.’ He was speaking to neither of them in particular, making pauses like one reading from a script: but the authority was there. ‘If I understand you both right, there isn’t much between us. I take it Cave means that we’ve got to feel our way. I agree to that. We’ve got to watch whether any of these forces are having any effect on the Party. We can’t push the Party further than it’s prepared to go. I’m not presuming to give Quaife any advice. I never give anyone any advice.’ He said this as though it were the most exalted claim a man could make. ‘But, if I were Quaife, I should wrap up some of his intentions. I shouldn’t let them get down to particular consequences until we’ve carried most of them with us. Carried them further than they thought. But not further than some of us are ready to go. I shouldn’t let the White Paper give them much idea which weapons were being struck off straight away. I should wrap it up.’ He was still addressing the wall. ‘If I were Quaife, I should remember one other thing. I’ve got a feeling that the Party needs a lead. And by the Party, I mean the country as well. They need to feel that they’re doing something new. I’ve got a feeling that, if anyone gives them a lead, they’ll forgive him a lot. They may not like everything he’s doing, but they’ll be ready to forgive him.’

It was a curious speech, I thought, as I listened, and even more so later. A good deal of it was common form, not specially ominous, but carefully uncommitted. The last part was not such common form. He seemed to be inviting Roger to take a risk. As he did so, I had felt for the first time that he was, in his own right, a formidable man. Was he inducing Roger to take one risk too many? He had sounded, in a stony way, sincere. What did he wish for Roger? He had done him good turns. Did he like him? Men like Collingwood did not like or dislike freely. I was still uncertain about his feelings for Roger, or whether he had any feelings for him at all.

Next day, Margaret and I had to leave the house after tea. The weather had not changed. Just as when we arrived, it was an evening so tranquil that the chimney smoke seemed painted on the sky, and in the air there was a smell of burning leaves. Diana stood by herself in the courtyard, waving us off.

It had been a weekend in the country, with unhappiness in the house, and foreboding. As we settled down in the car, though, I felt, not relief to get away, but disquiet. For some of the disquiet I could find reason; but it was still there, swelling, nagging, changing, as though I were back in my childhood after a holiday, returning home, not knowing what I should find nor what I feared.

The committee room looked inwards to the Treasury yard: the rain sloshed down. Past Collingwood’s head, on the two sides of the window, quivered the turning plane-leaves. In the chair, Collingwood behaved as he had done before, sitting on the bed at Basset. He was formal with the Ministers: Douglas Osbaldiston he treated like a servant, which Douglas showed no sign of noticing, much less of minding. But Collingwood got what he wanted. Arguments did not continue, except on lines which he approved, and there were not many. He had come to inspect the skeleton of the White Paper. In his view, it ought to be what he called ‘a set of balances’.

This suited Roger. It was not the way in which, that summer, before the opposition began to crystallize, we had been making drafts. This way left him some tactical freedom. It sounded as though he and Collingwood, after the bedroom conference, had made a deal. Yet I knew for certain that, since half-past eight on the Saturday night, two and a half days before, they had not exchanged a word in private. Enough had been said. They each understood what would follow, and so did Monty Cave and I. This was the way business got done, very rarely with intrigue, not as a rule with cut and dried agreements; quite different from the imaginative picture of the cynical and unworldly.

Osbaldiston, who was neither cynical nor unworldly, would have understood it without even a comment, if he had been present on Saturday night. As it was, he was momentarily surprised. He had expected something more dramatic from his Minister, and had been uneasy. Douglas did not approve of anything dramatic, on paper. Now he realized that the White Paper was going to be filled with detail. He was more comfortable with it so.

While Hector Rose, sick with migraine when I reported to him that afternoon, smelled compromise in the air.

‘I think I remember, my dear Lewis, mentioning to you that the knives were sharpening. Has it ever crossed your mind that our masters are somewhat easily frightened off?’ He looked at me with sarcastic satisfaction in his own judgement. I told him more about the meeting, which he would have attended himself if he had been well. I said that the Air Minister had reserved his position at much too great length. Rose nodded. It would be a month or two before the White Paper could be finished, they had agreed. By that time, Roger had told them casually, just before the end of the meeting, he would have his ‘winding-up’ ready for them to see. ‘That went down?’ Rose raised his eyebrows. ‘It sounds like a very neat job of papering-over-the-cracks, shouldn’t you say?’