Charles Snow - Corridors of Power

For an instant, none of us spoke. Roger looked down the table at his wife and said: ‘You hear what he says?’

‘You have heard too, haven’t you?’ said Caro.

All the social clangour had left her voice. It held nothing but devotion. She was speaking as they did when they were alone. They had said very little, but enough. Roger knew what she thought, and what answer she wanted him to give. Their marriage might be breaking on his side, but it still had its shorthand. The message was simple. She was, though Rubin did not know it, his supporter.

Right through Roger’s struggle, she had been utterly loyal. One expected nothing else: and yet, one knew what she was concealing. In her heart she couldn’t give up her chauvinistic pride. Just as she had flared out against David Rubin, when she reminded them that the English power had sunk, so she couldn’t accept that the great days were over. Her instincts were as simple as my mother’s would have been.

But that wasn’t the main force which drove her to Rubin’s side, made her cheeks glow and eyes shine as she answered Roger. For Rubin had just offered Roger a prospect of the future: and that was her prospect too. It would have seemed to her absurd, finicky, hypocritical and above all genteel, not to want the top place for Roger. If he didn’t want that, she would have said, then he ought not to be in politics at all. If she didn’t want that for him, she ought not to be his wife.

‘I agree with almost everything you’ve said.’ Roger spoke directly to Rubin. ‘You’ve made it very clear. I’m extremely grateful to you.’ His tone was subdued, reasonable, a little submissive. At that moment he sounded like one willing to be converted, or perhaps already converted, arguing for the sake of self-respect. ‘You know,’ he said, with an abstracted smile, ‘I’ve thought out some of these things for myself. You’ll give me credit for that?’

Rubin smiled.

‘Of course,’ Roger went on, ‘if you want to get anywhere in politics, you’ve got to be good at pushing on open doors. If you can’t resist pushing on closed ones, then you ought to have chosen another job. That’s what you’re telling me, isn’t it? Of course you’re right. I shouldn’t be surprised if you hadn’t wasted some energy on closed doors in your time. Much more than I ever have. But then, of course, you’re not a politician.’

It might have been a jibe, I couldn’t tell. If so, it was a gentle one. Roger was speaking without strain or edge. He said: ‘My one trouble is, I can’t help thinking the present situation is slightly different. I think, if we don’t bring this one off now, we never shall. Or we shan’t until it’s too late. Isn’t that the only difference between us? Perhaps you can tell me that it isn’t so.’

‘The honest answer is,’ said Rubin slowly, ‘that I don’t know.’

‘You believe everything will drift along, with no one able to stop anywhere?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Most of us understand the situation. Can none of us affect it?’

‘Does any one person matter very much? Can any one person do very much?’

‘You’re a wise man,’ said Roger.

There was a long pause. Roger spoke with complete relaxation, so that it was surprising to hear how strong his voice sounded. He said: ‘You’re saying, we’re all caught. All the world. The position has crystallized on both sides. There’s nothing for any of us to do. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? All we can do is stick to our position, and be humble enough to accept that there’s practically nothing we can do.’

‘In detail there may be a little,’ said Rubin.

‘That’s not much, is it?’ Roger gave a friendly smile. ‘You’re a very wise man,’ He paused again. ‘And yet, you know, it’s pretty hard to take. In that case, one might as well not be here at all. Anyone could just wait until it’s easy. I don’t think I should have lived this life if that were all.’

For a moment his tone had been passionate. Then it became curiously formal and courteous as he added: ‘I’m most grateful for your advice. I very much wish I could accept it. It would make things easier for me.’

He looked up the table and said to Caro, as though they were alone: ‘I wish I could do what you want.’

It seemed to me that had Caro known she was fighting for her marriage, she would not so openly have implied her opposition to Roger that night. He was guilt-ridden enough to welcome the smallest loophole of escape, just to feel to himself that it could not have gone on, anyway. Yet was that really so? He had known her mind, he had always known it. To her, loyalty to Roger would have seemed less if she had gone in for pretences. She had said nothing new that night. But I believed that her repetition, before Rubin, of what had already been said in private, might have given Roger some vestigial sense of relief, of which he was nevertheless ashamed.

He said, ‘I wish I could.’

I wondered when Rubin had realized that Roger was going through with it? At what point, at what word? In intellect Rubin was by far the subtler; in emotion, he was playing with a master.

There was another oddity. In private, Rubin was as high-principled, as morally-fastidious, as Francis Getliffe. And yet — it was a disconcerting truth — there were times, and most important times, when the high-principled were not to be trusted — and perhaps Roger was. For to Roger there were occasions, not common, but not so rare as we all suspected, when morality grew out of action. In private, Rubin lived a better life than most men; and yet he would have been incapable of contemplating walking into obloquy, risking his reputation, gambling his future, as in clear sight Roger was doing now.

I wondered when I myself had realized that Roger was going through with it. In a sense, I had believed it soon after we became intimate, and I had backed my judgement. Yet simultaneously, I had not trusted my judgement very far. In the midst of his obfuscation, I had been no surer than anyone else that he would not desert us. And so, in that sense, I had not realized, or at least had not been certain, that he was going through with it until — until that night.

When did Roger realize it? He would not have known, or been interested to know. Morality sprang out of action, so did choices, certainly a choice as complex as this. Even now, he might not know in what terms he would have to make it nor from what motives it would come.

How much part, it occurred to me again, had his relation with Ellen played?

‘I can’t accept your advice, David,’ said Roger, ‘but I do accept your estimate of my chances. You don’t think I’m going to survive, do you? Nor do I. I’d like you to understand that I agree.’

He added, with a hard and radiant smile: ‘But it isn’t absolutely cut and dried even now. They haven’t quite finished with me yet.’

Until that moment he had been speaking with total realism. Suddenly his mood had switched. He was suffused with hope, the hope of crises, that hope which just before a struggle, warms one with the assurance that it is already won. With the anxious pouches darker under his eyes, Rubin gazed at him in astonishment, and something like dismay.

He felt, we could all feel, that Roger was happy. He was not only happy and hopeful, he was also serene.

The light on Big Ben was shining like a golden bead in the January evening; the House had reassembled. It was a season of parties. Three times that week my wife and I went out before dinner, to Diana’s house on South Street, to a private Member’s flat, to a Government reception. The faces revolved about one like a stage army. Confident faces, responding to other confident faces, as though this parade was preserved forever, like a moment in time. Ministers and their wives linked themselves with other Ministers and their wives, drawn by the magnetism of office: groups of four, groups of six, sturdy, confident, confidential backs presented themselves not impolitely, but because it was a treat to be together, to the room. Roger and Caro were there, looking as impregnable as the rest.