Charles Snow - Corridors of Power

‘The Prime Minister hasn’t asked me to,’ said Cave.

This meant that he couldn’t speak, even if he wanted to. But there was a note in his voice, quiet, harmonious, that rasped the nerves.

Caro could not help asking him: ‘Isn’t there anything else you can do for Roger?’

‘I can’t think of anything. Can you?’

‘How should we handle it then?’ she cried.

Suddenly I was sure that this question had been asked before. At the morning’s Cabinet? It was easy to imagine the table, Lenton droning away with deliberate amiability, not letting the issue emerge, as though there weren’t an issue, as though no policy and no career depended upon it. It was easy to imagine Cave sitting silent. He knew as well as any man alive that Roger needed, not just his acquiescence, but his support. There was he, the bright hope of the party avant-garde , its best debater, maybe a leader. They were waiting for him. He knew what depended on it.

‘How should we handle it, Monty?’

‘I’m afraid it all depends on Roger. He’s got to settle it for himself,’ he said in a soft, modulated, considered tone, along the table to Caro.

It was out now. For years Cave’s attitude to Roger had been veiled. He had disagreed with some of Roger’s policy in detail: but yet, he should have been on the same side. He knew why he was making pretexts for minor disagreements. Much more than most politicians, Cave knew himself. He hadn’t forgiven Roger for holding back over Suez. Far more than that, Roger was a rival, a rival, in ten years’ time, for the first place. By keeping quiet, Cave might be able to see that rival done for.

For once, though, it was possible that the career did not come first. Cave might have concealed from others, but not from himself, that he profoundly envied Roger. In the midst of all else, he was letting the envy rip. Envy, most of all, of Roger’s careless masculine potence: envy, because Roger did not have women leave him: envy of what, with a certain irony, he thought of as Roger’s sturdy, happy marriage. From the sadness of his diffident, frustrated sexual life, he regarded Roger. The contrast made him cruel. As he gave his answer to Caro, his voice was soft with cruelty.

She did not think it worth while pressing further. Soon afterwards the party broke up, although it was only half-past twelve. Yet, even then, as they said goodbye, Roger kept hold of himself. He might suspect, he was capable of suspecting anything by now, that Cave had in secret stimulated the attack upon him. But reproach, anger, scorn — he could afford none of them. Cave would keep his hostility quiet. In public, he would behave like a colleague. Once more, Roger congratulated him on the evening’s feat. As Roger did so, Collingwood patted him on the shoulder.

Below, the cars were driving away. In the drawing-room, Margaret and I were getting up to go. Now that we were alone, Roger looked at his wife and said, with a curious harsh trustfulness: ‘Well, it couldn’t be much worse, could it?’

‘It might be better,’ said Caro, bitter and honest.

The moment after, up the stairs came a rapid, stumbling tread. Sammikins marched into the room and gave a brassy hail. He was wearing a dinner-jacket, unlike anyone at the supper-party: a carnation shone in his lapel. He had been drinking, hard enough for his eyes to stare with fierce, wild, arrogant happiness. ‘It’s too late,’ said Caro.

‘I shan’t stay long,’ he shouted. ‘I want a drink.’

‘You’ve had enough.’

‘You don’t know what I’ve had.’ He spoke with the glee of one who had come, not only from drinking, but from bed. He laughed at her, and went on in a confident cry: ‘I want to talk to your husband.’

‘I’m here.’ Roger sat forward on the sofa.

‘By God, so you are!’ Sammikins again asked for a drink. This time Caro poured him a whisky, and told him to sit down.

‘I’m not going to. Why should I?’ He gulped his drink and stared down at Roger.

He announced at the top of his voice: ‘It won’t do!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I can’t go along with you next week. It sticks in my throat.’

For an instant I had thought, so had Margaret, that he was denouncing Roger for breaking up the marriage. But he couldn’t have known yet about that. If he had known, his sister had protected him too much — his side of their relation was too defiant — for him to care.

Caro had stood up. She took his arm and said passionately: ‘No, no, you musn’t go back on him now.’

Sammikins shrugged her off. He shouted down at Roger: ‘I shan’t abstain. That’s a boring thing to do. I shall vote against you.’

Roger did not look up. He snapped his fingers against his thigh.

After a pause, he said in a steady, tired, reflective tone: ‘I shouldn’t have thought this was the best possible time to betray me.’

Sammikins’ face lost its fierce joy. More quietly and considerately than he had so far spoken, he replied: ‘I’m sorry about the timing.’ Then his eyes flared, and he broke out: ‘I don’t like the word “betray”.’

‘Don’t you?’ asked Roger, expressionless.

‘Two can play at that game. Who are you betraying?’

‘Will you tell me?’

‘I’ll give you credit that you don’t mean to. But how are you going to leave this blasted country? You’ve got your reasons, of course, everyone’s got their reasons. We can’t play with the big boys, I grant you that. But we’ve got to be able to blow up someone. Ourselves, if that’s the only way out. Otherwise the others will blackmail us whenever they feel inclined. We shall be sunk for good.’

Slowly Roger raised his head, but did not speak.

Sammikins went shouting on. ‘You’re wrong, I tell you! You’re wrong. It’s simple. War’s always been simple. You’re too clever by half. You’ve just got to think of one simple thing, just to see that we’re not sunk for good. It’s a pity you didn’t have a chap like me, I’m not too clever by half — somewhere on top — just to say “Oi, oi”. You’re being too clever, your job is to see we’re not getting sunk for good.’

‘I suppose you’re the only patriot we’ve got?’ Roger’s voice had turned thick and dangerous. At the end of that day, which he had endured without a lapse, he was suddenly moved, shaken, enraged. It was not that Sammikins’ defection, in practical terms, counted much. He was a ‘wild man’, he had been written off long before as irresponsible, a political playboy. If he went into the lobby against his brother-in-law, all that meant would be a paragraph in the gossip columns. It was not the defection which stabbed Roger — but the personal betrayal, for he had an affection, almost a paternal affection, for the younger man. The personal betrayal, and yes, the reason for it, the half-baked, drunken words. All through, Roger had been nagged at by the regrets, even the guilt, of someone living among choices where the simple certainties weren’t enough. For Roger in particular, with his nostalgia for past grandeur, it was tempting to think of a time when you could choose without folly, to make the country both powerful and safe. He had thought in terms as old-fashioned as that. He had often wished that he had been born in a different time, when reason did not take one into decisions which denied the nostalgic heart.

‘You’ve only got to keep your eye on the ball and remember the simple things,’ Sammikins shouted.

Roger had risen to his feet, a massive bulk in the room.

‘No one else tries to remember the simple things?’

‘They decide what will happen to us,’ said Sammikins.

‘Do you think no one else cares what will happen to us?’

‘I hope they do.’