Charles Snow - Corridors of Power

‘Do you really think he’s been so cautious?’ Caro interrupted, from the end of the table. Her eyes were gleaming, her colour was high. She looked angry and splendid.

‘I wasn’t suggesting it was easy,’ said Monty.

‘But you were suggesting that he was getting cold feet. Doesn’t anyone realize that for months he’s been playing his hand to the limit? It’s possible that he may have been overplaying his hand. The only question is, where does he go from here?’

‘Where does he?’ said Monty.

There was a flash of hostility between them. He was attracted to her, afraid of her. On her part, he was too subtle, not virile enough. Her anger was genuine. She was fighting for Roger, she was ready to let fly; but she knew — as though by instinct — how to let fly in the way that did most good. She was leaving nothing to chance. She had seen plenty of disloyalties round dinner-tables such as this. She wanted to make sure of Leverett-Smith and Tom Wyndham: she was trying to prove to them that Roger was being pushed on by wilder men.

She was high-hearted, and her anger was genuine. How much so was this attack of Cave’s? I didn’t know whether he and Roger had an understanding. It had been convenient for Roger, it had suited his tactics, for the attack to be made.

‘In my judgement—’ Leverett-Smith began, with extreme pomposity.

‘Yes, Horace?’ Caro leaned towards him with two kinds of charm, the aristocratic embrace, the embrace of a pretty woman.

‘In my judgement, we ought to remember that sometimes the more haste, the less speed.’ He produced this thought as though it contained the wisdom of the ages. Caro continued to smile admiringly.

‘Have we been forgetting that?’ she said.

‘Do enlighten us,’ said Monty.

‘I’m inclined to think that we’ve been moving perceptibly faster than opinion round us. It’s right that we should move faster, otherwise we shouldn’t be giving proper leadership. The problem as I see it,’ Leverett-Smith went on, ‘is to judge how much faster it is safe to go.’

‘Quite,’ Monty commented.

His contempt was palpable. I thought he was wrong to dismiss Leverett-Smith as a negligible man. He was as sententious as a man could reasonably be: but he wasn’t budgeable. Thinking of the future, I wished he were more negligible, more budgeable. It might be a misfortune for Roger not to have someone malleable in that job.

Caro went on devoting herself to him and Tom Wyndham. She was good with them. She could sympathize with their doubts, the hesitations deep in their conservative flesh — partly because, though she would not have admitted it to anyone but Roger, and not to him, once he had committed himself, those hesitations were her own.

Tom Wyndham was still wistfully wishing that the battleship were the decisive weapon.

‘I know it isn’t, of course,’ he said.

‘I’m so glad of that,’ said Monty Cave.

Tom persisted, red-faced and puzzled. Since the last war, everyone had gone on changing their minds on what you could fight with. He expected it was all right. But still, he said, ‘It takes the chaps’ (he meant the serving officers, and also his friends in the House) ‘time to get used to things changing like this.’

Francis Getliffe broke in, apologizing to Wyndham and to Leverett-Smith with the aloof formality that was growing on him. But, just as he had become more formal, he had also become more impatient.

‘There isn’t much time,’ he said. ‘The time-scale of politics you know about, it’s your business to. But the time-scale of applied science is something like ten times faster. If you’re going to wait too long before everyone agrees, then the overwhelming probability is that there won’t be anything left to wait for.’

Roger stared at him. Hector Rose gave a grim smile. Then I put in my piece. If we got really stuck (I was deliberately identifying myself with Roger’s policy) we still had one recourse. We had been trying to struggle through by the channels of ‘closed’ politics — the corridors, the committees. If they got blocked, we could take it into the open. The only even quarter-way open statement had been the speech in Fishmongers’ Hall. We all knew why this was so: the problems were, or at least we made them, technical: most of the facts were fogged by security: these were the decisions which in our country, in all countries, we had got used to settling by a handful of men, in secret. For many reasons, this was forced on us. But there might come a time when someone would have to break it. This mightn’t be the time. But even the threat that it was, I said without emphasis, might have an interesting effect.

I didn’t expect these remarks to be popular. They weren’t. To Douglas, who loved me, they were shocking and best forgotten. To Rose, who didn’t, they were the token of why I had never quite fitted in. Even Francis didn’t like them much. As for the politicians, Cave was reflecting: he was the only man there who might have considered whether in fact there did exist — in a rich and comfortable country — the social forces to call upon.

Leverett-Smith said, ‘I can’t associate myself with that suggestion.’

Caro was frowning. There was no debate. Someone changed the subject, and it was a few minutes later that Roger said: ‘None of this is easy, you know.’

Since his exchange with Cave he had not spoken. He had sat at the end of the table, sipping his port, pre-potent, brooding. Now he took charge. He showed his worry, he did not pretend. He knew, and he knew that we knew, that he had to carry everyone round that table with him. Listening, I thought I had never heard him put on a better performance. Performance? That was true and not true. This might not be all he intended, but it was a good deal. There were ambiguities which might be deliberate: there were also some that he didn’t know himself.

As we said goodnight, his influence was still pervasive. He seemed to have gained all he wanted.

On the way home, and in cooler blood next morning, I wondered what each man thought Roger had actually said. What you wanted to hear, you heard, even with people as experienced as these. Ask them to write down their accounts and the answers would have a certain ironic interest. And yet, Roger had said nothing untruthful or even disingenuous.

As for myself, I was further from predicting his actions than I had been since Rose gave his first warning. Of course, Roger was leaving a channel of retreat: he would be crazy not to do so. Of course, he must have faced the thought — and Caro must have brought it into the open — that there was still time to back down, throw the stress of his policy just where solid men would be comfortable, then take another Ministry, and gain considerable credit into the bargain. So much was clear. I was sure of nothing else.

One morning in December, I received a report. It was brought by one of my acquaintances in Security. I was not allowed to see it, but I was used to their abracadabra. He gave me the name I wanted, and took the report away with him.

The name I wanted was that of Ellen’s persecutor. When I heard it, I said: ‘Oh, yes?’ It sounded matter-of-fact, like the name of a new housekeeper. It sounded — as facts tend to sound, whenever you are mixed up in a secret investigation — as probable or improbable as anything else. Yet, when I was left alone, it seemed very odd. Nothing like what I should have expected. Odd, but not melodramatically odd. I hadn’t been told, as in an old-fashioned thriller, the name of Hector Rose or the Prime Minister, or Roger himself. Dully odd. Within five minutes, I rang up Ellen telling her I wanted to see her before one o’clock.