Charles Snow - Corridors of Power

Our eyes met. For this occasion, we were allies. He said: ‘By the way, one fact seems to be generally known.’

‘Yes?’

‘That he’s not a hundred per cent happy about his master’s policy, or shall I say his master’s ultimate intentions about policy?’ Rose was not given to underlining. That morning he was thinking of Tuesday’s voting, not with Roger’s concentration, for that was total, but with something as channelled as mine. Name by name, he gave his prognosis about last night’s party. There had been twelve members present. All but one were on the extreme right, and so possible enemies of Roger. Of these, three would vote for him, including Lord A — (Rose was, as he might have said himself, most correct. He did not give a vestigial hint that he, a functionary, could possibly have used any persuasion.) Of the others, a maximum of nine would certainly abstain. ‘It’s beginning to look uncomfortable,’ said Hector Rose. He broke off, and went on about the vote. There were bound to be more abstentions. I told him, not the full story of Sammikins, but that he would vote against.

Rose clicked his tongue. He looked at me as though he were going to give a verdict. Then he shook his head, and in a cool tone remarked: ‘I take it you will let your friend Quaife know at once. That is, about the information I was able to collect. I needn’t tell you, you’ll have to do it discreetly, and I’m afraid you mustn’t reveal your source. But he ought to know about these abstentions. You can tell him these people by name, I think.’

‘What good can that do him?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Do you believe that, if he saw them now, he could possibly persuade them back?’

‘No,’ said Rose.

‘Well, then, all he can do is make his speech. He’ll make a better speech the more hope he’s got left.’

‘My dear Lewis, with great diffidence, I think he ought to be able to reckon up his opponents—’

‘I repeat,’ I said with force, ‘what good can that do?’

‘You’re taking a responsibility on yourself.’ Rose stared at me, surprised, disapproving. ‘If I were he,’ he said, ‘I should want to be able to reckon up every scrap of news, however bad it was, until the end.’

I stared back. ‘I believe you would,’ I said.

It wasn’t necessarily the toughest and hardest-nerved who lived in public. Yet sometimes I wondered whether a man as tough and hard-nerved as Rose could imagine what the public life was like, or how much it would have tested him.

He got up. ‘Well, that’s all the bad news for the present.’ He made the grim, Greek messenger joke, said this seemed as far as we could go, and began his paraphernalia of thanks and apologies.

As soon as he had gone, I looked at the clock. It was nearly twenty to twelve. This time I didn’t brood or wait. I went out, through my private office, into the corridor, past the doors of my own department, round three sides of the Treasury quadrangle, on my way to Osbaldiston. I didn’t notice, as I had done times enough, the bizarre architecture, the nineteenth-century waste of space, the gigantic unfilled hole in the centre of the building, like a Henry Moore sculpture pretending to be functional. I didn’t even notice the high jaundiced walls, the dark stretch of corridor up to the next bend, the compartments where the messengers sat on stools reading the racing editions, the labels on the doors just visible in the half light, Sir W— H—, GBE, Sir W— D—, KCB. It was just dark, domesticated, familiar: a topological journey: the doors passing me by like the stations seen from an underground train.

Before I got into the last straight, which led to Douglas’ office, I saw him coming round the corner, head forward, a docket of papers in his hand. ‘I was looking for you,’ I said.

‘I’ve got a meeting,’ Douglas answered. He wasn’t evading me. There was not time to return to his room. We stood there in the corridor, talking in low voices. Occasionally, in the next few minutes, doors opened, young men walked briskly past us, throwing a glance in the direction of their boss. Some would know that he and I were close friends. They might have thought that we were settling a bit of business before the meeting, or alternatively, in the way of the top stratum, at once the casual and machine-like, saving time and an interdepartmental minute.

It wasn’t going quite like that. As we kept our voices down, I was watching his face with a mixture of affection, pity and blind anger. It had changed since his wife’s illness; we had seen it change under our eyes. Now it had the special pathos of a face which, still in essence anachronistically youthful, was nevertheless beginning to look old. Once he had been untouched as Dorian Gray, a character whom he resembled in no other particular, but now all that was gone.

Three times a week, Margaret went to sit with his wife in hospital. By this time, when she wanted to smoke, Mary had to be fed her cigarette. ‘How paralysed can you get?’ she said, with a euphoria and courage that made it worse to watch.

Douglas had come to stay with us some nights, when he couldn’t stand any more either the lonely house or the club. Once he had told us, with bitter, unguarded candour, that there were not two hours together in any day when he didn’t think of her lying there, not to move again, while he was free.

All that was out of my mind. I was saying: ‘How much do you know of the latest attack on Quaife?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Do you realize that they’re going for anyone who has the slightest connection with him? Now it’s Walter Luke—’

‘You can’t have a war,’ said Douglas, ‘without someone getting hurt.’

‘I suppose you’re aware,’ I said angrily, ‘that you’ve been giving aid and comfort to these people?’

‘What are you saying now?’ All of a sudden, his face had become stony. He was as enraged as I was: the more so, because we had in private so often been open with each other.

‘I’m saying, it’s well known that you don’t agree with Quaife.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘Can you tell me that?’

‘I do tell you that, and I expect you to believe it,’ said Douglas.

‘What do you expect me to believe?’

‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘You’ve felt yourself entitled to your private view. Not so private, if I may say so. So have I. I’ve made no secret of it. I haven’t left my Minister in any doubt. I think he’s wrong, and he knows that as well as I do. But no one else knows it, except you, and one or two people I can trust.’

‘So do others.’

‘Do you really think I’m responsible for that?’

‘It depends what you mean by responsible.’

His face had darkened up to the cheekbones.

‘We’d better try to be rational,’ he said. ‘If my Minister wins, then I shall do my best for him. Of course, I shall be carrying out a policy in which I don’t believe. Well, I’ve done that before and I can do it again. I shall try to make the thing work. Without false modesty, I shall do it as well as anyone round here.’

All that he said was absolutely true.

‘You think he can’t win?’ I said.

‘And what do you think?’

His gaze was sharp, appraising. For a second we might have been in a negotiation, listening for a point at which the other would give way.

‘You’ve done a certain amount to make it harder,’ I let fly again.

‘I’ve done exactly what I’ve told you. No more, and no less.’

‘You’re better at singing in unison than some of us, aren’t you?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You realize that the line you’re taking is the line that a good many powerful persons want you to take? Most of them don’t really want Roger Quaife to get away with it, do they?’