Charles Snow - Corridors of Power

When the door closed, Monteith and I were left looking at each other.

‘I think we might sit down, don’t you?’ he said. Politely he showed me to an armchair, while he himself took Rose’s. There was a bowl of blue hyacinths in front of him, fresh that morning, witness to Rose’s passion for flowers. The smell of hyacinths was, for me, too sickly, too heavy, to stir up memories, as it might have done, of business-like talks with Rose going back nearly twenty years. All the smell did was to give me a discomfort of the senses, as I sat there, staring into Monteith’s face.

I did not know precisely what his function was. Was he the boss? Or a grey eminence, working behind another boss? Or just a deputy? I thought I knew: Rose certainly did. But, with a passion for mystification, including self-mystification, none of us discussed those agencies or their chains of command.

‘You have had a most distinguished career—’ Firmly, gracefully, Monteith addressed me in full style. ‘You will understand that I have to ask you some questions on certain parts of it.’

He had not laid out a single note on the desk, much less produce a file. Throughout the next three hours, he worked from nothing but memory. In his own office, there must have been a dossier a good many inches high. I already knew that he had interviewed, not only scientists and civil servants who had been colleagues of mine during the war and after, not only old acquaintances at Cambridge, such as the former Master and Arthur Brown, but also figures from my remote past, a retired solicitor whom I had not seen for twenty-five years, even the father of my first wife. All this material he had stored in his head, and deployed with precision. It was an administrator’s trick, which Rose or Douglas or I could have done ourselves. Still, it was impressive. It would have been so if I had watched him dealing with another’s life. Since it was my own life, I found it at times deranging. There were facts about myself, sometimes facts near to the bone, which he knew more accurately than I did.

My earliest youth, my father’s bankruptcy, poverty, my time as a clerk, reading for the Bar examinations — he had the dates at command, the names of people. It all sounded smooth and easy, not really like one’s past at all. Then he asked: ‘When you were a young man in—’ (the provincial town), ‘you were active politically?’ Speeches at local meetings, the ILP, schoolrooms, the nights in pubs: he ticked them off.

‘You were then far out on the left?’

I had set myself to tell the absolute truth. Yet it was difficult. We had a few terms in common. I wasn’t in complete control of my temper. Carefully, but in a sharpened tone, I said: ‘I believed in socialism. I had all the hopes of my time. But I wasn’t a politician as real politicians understand the word. At that age, I wasn’t dedicated enough for that. I was too ambitious in other ways.’

At this, Monteith’s fine eyes lit up. He gave me a smile, not humorous, but comradely. I was dissatisfied with my answer. I had not been interrogated before. Now I was beginning to understand, and detest, the pressures and the temptations. What I had said was quite true: and yet it was too conciliatory.

‘Of course,’ said Monteith, ‘it’s natural for young men to be interested in politics. I was myself, at the University.’

‘Were you?’

‘Like you, but on the other side. I was on the committee of the Conservative Club.’ He said this with an air of innocent gratification, as though that revelation would astonish me, as though he was confessing to having been chairman of a Nihilist cell.

Once more he was efficient, concentrated, ready to call me a liar.

The Thirties, my start at the bar, marriage, the first days of Hitler, the Spanish Civil War.

‘You were strongly on the anti-Nationalist side?’

‘In those days,’ I said, ‘we called it something different.’

‘That is, you were opposed to General Franco?’

‘Of course,’ I replied.

‘But you were very strongly and actively opposed?’

‘I did what little came easy. I’ve often wished I’d done more.’

He went over some Committees I had sat on. All correct, I said.

‘In the course of these activities, you mixed with persons of extreme political views?’

‘Yes.’

He addressed me formally again, and then — ‘You were very intimate with some of these persons?’

‘I think I must ask you to be more specific.’

‘It is not suggested that you were, or have been at any time, a member of the Communist Party—’

‘If it were suggested,’ I said, ‘it would not be true.’

‘Granted. But you have been intimate with some who have?’

‘I should like the names.’

He gave four — those of Arthur Mounteney, the physicist, two other scientists, R— and T—, Mrs Charles March.

I was never a close friend of Mounteney, I said. (It was irksome to find oneself going back on the defensive.)

‘In any case, he left the party in 1939,’ said Monteith, with brisk expertness.

‘Nor of T—.’ Then I said: ‘I was certainly a friend of R—. I saw a good deal of him during the war.’

‘You saw him last October?’

‘I was going to say that I don’t see him often nowadays. But I am very fond of him. He is one of the best men I have ever known.’

‘Mrs March?’

‘Her husband and I were intimate friends when we were young men, and we still are. I met Ann at his father’s house twenty odd years ago and I have known her ever since. I suppose they dine with us three or four times a year.’

‘You don’t deny that you have remained in close touch with Mrs March?’

‘Does it sound as though I were denying it?’ I cried, furious at seeming to be at a moral disadvantage.

He gave a courteous, non-committal smile.

I made myself calm, trying to capture the initiative.

I said: ‘Perhaps it’s time that I got one or two things clear.’

‘Please do.’

‘First of all, though this isn’t really the point, I am not inclined to give up my friends. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to do so — either because they were communists or anything else. Ann March and R — happen to be people of the highest character, but it wouldn’t matter if they weren’t. If you extend your researches, you’ll find that I have other friends, respectable politically, but otherwise disreputable by almost any standards.’

‘Yes, I was interested to find how remarkable your circle was,’ he said, not in the least outfaced.

‘But that isn’t the point, is it?’

He bowed his fine head.

‘You want to know my political views, don’t you? Why haven’t you asked me? — Though I can’t answer in one word. First of all, I haven’t altered much as I’ve got older. I’ve learned a bit more, that’s all. I’ll have another word about that a little later. As I told you, I’ve never been dedicated to politics as a real politician is. But I’ve always been interested. I think I know something about power. I’ve watched it in various manifestations, almost all my working life. And you can’t know something about power without being suspicious of it. That’s one of the reasons why I couldn’t go along with Ann March and R—. It seemed to me obvious in the Thirties, that the concentration of power which had developed under Stalin was too dangerous by half. I don’t think I was being emotional about it. I just distrusted it. As a matter of fact, I’m not emotional about the operations of politics. That is why I oughtn’t to give you any anxiety. I believe that, in the official life, we have to fall back on codes of honour and behaviour. We can’t trust ourselves to do anything else.’

He was gazing straight at me, but did not speak.