Charles Snow - Corridors of Power

‘Never mind,’ said Cave gently, with a touch of gratitude, speaking quite genuinely, as Sammikins had spoken. Soon he was saying goodbye, on his way to Great George Street. I thought he was genuine again when, in sympathy and reassurance, he said to me: ‘Don’t worry about this afternoon. It’s all going according to plan.’

But he could not resist one last twist, dig, or mystification: ‘The only question is, whose plan?’

On Sunday afternoon, a couple of days after the Memorial Service, Margaret and I were sitting at home. The children had gone out to Christmas parties and we were peaceful. Then the telephone rang. As she answered it, I saw her look surprised. Yes, he is in, she was saying. Apparently the other person was trying to make a date with me: Margaret, protective, suggested that we should be alone, so wouldn’t it be better to come in for a drink? There was a long explanation. At last, she left the receiver off and came to me with a commiserating curse. ‘Hector Rose,’ she said.

Over the telephone, his voice sounded more than ever glacial. ‘I am most extremely sorry to disturb you, my dear Lewis, I wouldn’t have done so if I hadn’t a rather urgent reason. Do make my apologies to your wife. I really am very, very sorry.’

When the polite wind-up had finished, it came out that he needed to see me that same afternoon. He would give me tea at the Athenaeum at half-past four. I didn’t want to go, but he pressed me, all flah-flah dropped, clear and firm. Then, arrangements made, the apologies and thanks started over again.

Seeing our afternoon broken, Margaret and I were cross. I told her that I could not remember him doing this on a Sunday, not even in the busiest time of the war: he must be coming in specially himself, from right beyond Highgate: it occurred to me that I had never been inside his house. Margaret, not placated, was scolding me for not saying no.

She took it for granted, as I did, that the summons had something to do with Roger’s White Paper. Yet we had heard, on the Friday night, that Cave’s prediction had been correct, and that the Cabinet Committee had agreed. Margaret said: ‘Whatever it is, it could wait till tomorrow morning.’

Leaving the comfortable room, leaving my wife, going out into the drizzling cold, I felt she was right.

It was not perceptibly more encouraging when my taxi drew up in front of the club. The building was in darkness: there, on the pavement, in the slush and the half-light, stood Hector Rose. He began apologizing before I had paid my driver. ‘My dear Lewis, this is more than usually incompetent of me. I am most terribly sorry. I’d got it into my head that this was one of the weekends we are open. I must say, I’m capable of most kinds of mistakes, but I shouldn’t have thought I was capable of this.’ The courtesies grew more elaborate, at the same time more sarcastic, as though beneath them all he was really blaming me.

He went on explaining, with the same elaboration, that perhaps the consequences of his ‘fatuity’ were not irretrievably grave: since ‘the club’ was closed, the Senior would by agreement be open, and we could perhaps, without too much inconvenience, have our tea there. I was as familiar with these facts as he was. Fifty yards from us, just across the Place, the lights of what he called the ‘Senior’ (the United Services Club) streamed through the first flutter of sleet. All I wanted to do was cut the formalities short and get into the warm.

We got into the warm. We sat in a corner of the club drawing-room and ordered tea and muffins. Rose was dressed in his weekend costume, sports jacket, grey flannel trousers. Still the formalities were not cut short. This was so unlike him that I was at a loss. As a rule, after the ceremonies had in his view been properly performed, he got down to business like a man turning on a switch. His manner was so artificial, so sharply split from the personality beneath, that it was always difficult to pick up his mood. And yet, as he went on describing great labyrinthine curves of politeness, I had a sense, a distressing sense, that he was under strain.

We drank the tea, we ate the muffins. Rose was expressing a mannerly interest in the book reviews in the Sunday papers. He had noticed something on a subject that was bound to interest my wife, to whom again, his regrets for intruding that day –

Usually I was patient: but I could wait no longer. I said: ‘What’s all this about?’

He gazed at me with an expression I could not read.

‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘that something has happened about Roger Quaife. Is that it?’

‘Not directly,’ said Rose, in his brisk, businesslike tone. So at last he was engaged. He went on:‘No, so far as I know, that’s all right. Our masters appear to be about to sanction what I must say is an unusually sensible White Paper. It’s going to the Cabinet next week. It’s a compromise, of course, but it has got some good points. Whether our masters stick to those when they get under shot and shell — that’s quite another matter. Will our friend Quaife stick to it when they really get at him? I confess I find it an interesting speculation.’ He was speaking from his active, working self: but he was still watching me.

‘Well, then?’ I said.

‘I do think that’s reasonably all right,’ he said, glad to be talking at a distance, like an Olympian god who hadn’t yet decided on his favourite. ‘I don’t believe you need have that on your mind.’

‘Then what do I need to have on my mind?’ Again I could not read his expression. His face was set, authoritative, and when he wasn’t forcing smiles, without pretence.

‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I’ve been having to spend some time with the Security people.’ He added sharply: ‘Far too much time, I may say.’

Suddenly, comfortably, I thought I had it. Tuesday was New Year’s Day. Each year, Rose sat in the group which gave out Honours. Was it conceivable that something had leaked, from our office? I asked: ‘Have some of the names slipped out?’

Rose looked at me, irritated. ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite understand you.’

‘I meant, have some of the names in next week’s list got out?’

‘No, my dear chap, nothing like that. Nothing like that at all.’ It was rare for him to let his impatience show through. He had to make an effort to control it, before he spoke calmly, precisely, choosing his words: ‘I didn’t want to worry you unnecessarily. But I think I remember telling you, some months ago, about representations from various quarters, which I said then that I was doing my best to resist. When would that be?’

We both had good memories, trained memories. He knew, without my telling him, that it had been back in September, when he warned me that ‘the knives were sharpening’. We could both have written a précis of that conversation.

‘Well, I’m sorry to have to tell you, but I haven’t been able to resist indefinitely. These people — what do they call them, in their abominable jargon? “pressure groups”? — have been prepared to go over our heads. There’s no remedy for it. Some of our scientists, I mean our most eminent scientists advising on defence policy — and that, I need hardly tell you, is our friend Quaife’s policy — are going to be put through a new security investigation. I fancy the name for this procedure, though it is not specially elegant, is “double checking”.’

Rose was speaking with bitter distaste, distaste apparently as much for me as for the pressure groups, as he went on with his exposition, magisterial, orderly, and lucid. Some of this influence had been set in motion by Brodzinski, working on the members whom he knew. Some might have got going independently. Some had been wafted over via Washington — prompted, perhaps, by Brodzinski’s speeches, or his friends there, or possibly by a re-echo of the Question in the House.