Charles Snow - Corridors of Power

With a curious detachment he replied: ‘That is possibly so.’

‘If he doesn’t win, you’ll be sitting pretty, won’t you? You will have scored a nice new piece of credit for yourself? You’ll have everything waiting for you?’

He looked at me without expression. He said, in a quite friendly voice: ‘One thing. You know I’ve had my own view all along about this business. Don’t you believe it was an honest view?’

I had to say, Yes, of course I did.

I burst out, without remembering that I had once heard Cave make the same accusation to Roger: ‘But all you’ve done or not done — you must have realized that it wouldn’t exactly impede your progress, mustn’t you?’

In my fury, I was astonished to see him give a smile — not an intimate smile, but still genuine.

‘If I’ve worried about that sort of consideration, Lewis, we should never do anything, should we?’

After glancing at his watch he said, in a businesslike tone: ‘You’ve made me a bit late.’

He went off towards his meeting quickly but not in a rush, head thrust forward, papers in hand, along the corridor.

In the middle of the afternoon, my PA came in with a letter marked ‘Urgent’. It must have been delivered by hand, she said. The handwriting on the envelope looked like a woman’s, but I did not recognize it. Then I found that the note was signed ‘Ellen’. I read:

I expect you will be at the debate Monday and Tuesday. I have got to stay away, of course. I can’t even communicate with him until it’s all over. Will you please — I have to ask you this — let me know how things are going? I trust you to tell me the bare truth, whatever it is. I shall be in the flat alone, on both evenings. Please ring up, whatever you have to tell me.

I thought of her that evening, as Margaret and I went out to the theatre, just as an anaesthetic against the suspense. Roger was at home working at his speech, Caro with him. Ellen was the loneliest of all. I talked of her to Margaret. There she was, hearing nothing of him. Once she had feared that, if his career was broken, she would lose him. Now the blackmail had come out, now Caro had confronted him, Ellen must have the contradictory fear. Yet I was sure that she prayed for his success. Margaret said: ‘She’s not as good as you think she is.’

I said: ‘She tries to be.’

Margaret had met Ellen only socially, and then in the past, with her husband. It was Caro whom Margaret knew and loved, as I did not, Caro whom she had tried to comfort. Now, as we stood in the foyer of the Haymarket, avoiding the sight of acquaintances because we wanted to be together, she asked if the position was clear-cut — was Ellen facing that dilemma, either getting him, or seeing him prevail? I said, I didn’t believe that either of them knew. There could be something in it? I didn’t answer her.

‘If there’s the slightest bit in it,’ said Margaret, ‘I’m grateful was never tested that way about you.’

Monday came and dragged, like a day in my youth when I was waiting for the result of an examination. Hector Rose sent his compliments, and informed me that he expected to be in the Box for the last hours of the debate the following night. Otherwise I had no messages of any kind all that morning.

I hesitated about ringing Roger up. I detested being wished good luck myself (at root I was as superstitious as my mother); and I decided that he, also, would like to be left alone. I did not want to go to a club for lunch, in case I met Douglas or anyone else involved. I was tired of pretending to write or read. Instead, while the others were at lunch, I did what I should have done as a young man, and walked blankly round St James’s Park in the sunshine, catching, and being tantalized by, the first scent of spring; then through the streets, calling in at bookshops, nibbling away at time.

In the afternoon, the office clock swept out the minutes with its second hand. There was no point in leaving until half-past four: I did not wish to sit through question time. I rang my private secretary, and went with obsessive detail into next week’s work. After that, I had a session with my PA, making sure that she knew where I would be each hour of that day and the next. At last it was four twenty-five. Not quite the starting-time, but I could permit myself to go.

Then, as I was hurrying down the corridor, I heard a voice behind me. It was my PA, eager, comely, spectacled. My own devices had gone back on me: she knew the time too well. A lady was on the telephone, said Hilda: she said she had to speak to me immediately, it was desperately important, she couldn’t wait a minute. Thwarted, anxious, not knowing what to be anxious about, I rushed back. Was Caro going to break some news? Or was it Ellen, or from home?

It was none of them. It was Mrs Henneker.

‘I should never have believed it possible.’ Her voice came strongly over the phone. What was it? I asked.

‘What do you think?’

I did not feel inclined for guessing-games. It turned out that she had had a letter by the afternoon post, five minutes before, from a publisher. They had actually told her they didn’t consider her biography of her husband would be of sufficient interest to the general public. ‘What do you think of that?’

She sounded almost triumphant in her incredulity.

Oh well, I said, there were other publishers — trying to put her off, maddened because I was not out of the room.

‘That’s not good enough!’ Her voice rang out like a challenge.

I would talk to her sometime in the nearish future.

‘No.’ Her reply was intransigeant. ‘I think I must ask you to come round straight away.’

I said I had important business.

‘What do you call this, if it isn’t important?’

It was utterly and absolutely impossible, I said. I was occupied all the evening, all the next day, all the week.

‘I’m afraid,’ she said sternly, ‘I consider this entirely unsatisfactory.’

I said, incensed, that I was sorry.

‘Entirely unsatisfactory. Can’t I make you understand what has happened? They actually say — I’d better read you the whole letter.’

I said I hadn’t time.

‘I believe in putting first things first.’

I said goodbye.

Just as I got to the end of the corridor, I heard my telephone ringing again. I was quite sure it was Mrs Henneker. I walked on.

Down in Great George Street, the evening light bland and calm, I still felt menaced by that monomaniac voice, as though that was the cause of my worry, and not what I was going to listen to in the House. Looking up, I could see the informatory light shining above Big Ben, with a clear violet sky beyond. Though I had seen it so often, it stirred a memory, or at least a disquiet, the reason for which seemed mixed with the monomaniac voice. I was tugging at the roots of memory, but they would not be pulled out. Was it the night my wife and I went to dine at Lord North Street and, arriving too early, had walked round by St Margaret’s? The light had been shining that evening, too; yet there had been no disquiet, we had been at leisure, and content.

In the central lobby, busy with cavernous activity, members were meeting constituents, acquaintances, taking them off to tea. When I got into the officials’ box, I could have counted less than a hundred members in the chamber. There seemed as yet no special excitement in the air. The Opposition opener was speaking, like a man who is settling down to a steady lecture. He was prosy but confident, saying nothing new. It was a standard speech, gaining nothing, losing nothing. For a while I felt the needle pass away.

On the front bench, Roger was leaning back, fingers entwined, hands under his chin: Tom Wyndham sat dutifully behind him. There were three other Ministers on the front bench, Collingwood among them. A few members entered, others left. Figures were dotted here and there on the empty benches, some not listening. It might have been a borough council, assembled out of duty, for a discussion of something not specially earth-shaking, such as a proposal for a subsidy to the civic theatre.