Charles Snow - Corridors of Power

Through the sparkling, frosty night, I hurried round to Lord North Street. On the stairs I heard laughter from the drawing-room. As I got inside, I saw with astonishment, with the desire to touch wood, that Caro, Margaret and Roger were all looking cheerful. A plate of sandwiches was waiting for me, since I had not eaten all day.

‘What have you been doing to Trafford?’ Roger asked, as though to put me at my ease.

‘Do you understand it?’ I cried.

‘Whatever does he hope for?’ Caro spoke with genuine, full-throated scorn, not pretending. She must have heard each overtone of the insinuation, but she laughed like one saying — ‘If that is the worst they can do!’

‘Have you had any repercussions?’ I asked.

‘Not one.’ Roger spoke with studious interest, with the euphoria which sometimes breaks through in the middle of a crisis, ‘Do you know, I can’t begin to imagine why he did it. Can you?’

I couldn’t answer.

‘If no one can supply any motive — Why, I shall soon be forced to think that he meant what he said.’ His tone was unforced, free from rancour. He gave a laugh, like a man easy among his friends. He had drunk little, he was keyed up for action next day. He was hoping more simply than he had hoped for weeks.

Next morning I woke early and lay listening to the papers as they thudded on to the hall floor. They didn’t settle either what I feared, or what I hoped. The Times was playing down the whole debate: on the middle page, Trafford only got a couple of lines. The Telegraph gave bolder headlines and more space: if one knew the language, one knew that they were anti-Roger. But they also muffled Trafford’s attack. The Express was angry with the chief Labour speaker. I dressed and went up Albion Gate to buy the other morning papers. I came back to breakfast, neither Margaret nor myself out of our misery, either for good or bad. In the morning light, she was ashamed of herself for having been so elated the night before.

I wondered whether Roger, too, had hated the morning. I wondered whether Caro had tried to give him comfort, as Margaret did to me. She knew, better than I did, that time and the hour ran through the roughest day.

Nothing happened — that didn’t make the day smoother — until, once more at tea-time, I was within a few minutes of leaving for the House. Then a telephone call came through; this time, not from Mrs Henneker. Instead, a friend of Sammikins had a piece of news. He had just come away from the Lords. He wanted to tell me that old Gilbey had, ten minutes before, taken a hand.

By this time, Lord Gilbey was very ill. He hadn’t been able to make a public appearance for twelve months, and his doctors were surprised that he had lived at all. Yet that afternoon, he had been impelled to make a public appearance, even if it were his last. He had arrived in the Lords. The subject for his intervention could not have seemed promising, for some peer, ennobled for scientific eminence, was moving for papers on the state of the country’s technological education. This hadn’t deterred Gilbey. Standing up, frail, white as bleached bread, he had supported the motion with passion. He didn’t understand technology, but he wanted it, if that was the price of keeping us strong. He was for anything, whether it was technology or black magic, if competent persons like the Noble Lord proved that it was necessary to keep us strong and make us stronger. He would assert this to his dying day, which wouldn’t be far off.

He had spoken for five minutes, an old soldier’s attack on adventurers , men who were too clever for their good or ours. Adventurers in high places, careerists in high places. He begged the Noble Lords to beware of them. He wanted to make this plea, even if it were for the last time.

It was pure revenge. He might die before the summer, but hatred for Roger would live as long as he did. It didn’t sound like a hero’s end: and then I thought that it might be just his willingness to end like this which had made him a hero.

I was relieved to be back in the box, relieved to sit beside Hector Rose instead of Douglas. On this night it was better to have the company of an ally who wasn’t a friend than the other way round. Arms folded across his chest, Rose watched with trained, cold eyes. As, at intervals of half an hour, three members whom he had designated by name got up with hostile speeches, he permitted himself to say: ‘According to plan.’ Yet, even to him, fresh as he was, the debate was not giving any answer. The tone had become more bitter on both sides. The benches were full now, members were squatting in the aisles. There were echoes of Trafford; words like ‘gambler’, ‘adventurer’, ‘risk’, ‘surrender’, snapped into the Chamber, but all from men we had already written off. Several speakers sat down, leaving it vague how they intended to vote. When a Labour ex-Minister began a preamble on strategy, Rose said quietly: ‘I give him forty minutes. Time for us to eat.’

I didn’t want to leave.

‘No, you must.’

Douglas had made the same estimate about the speaker’s staying-power. As we reached the Hall together, Rose gave him lavish and courteous greetings, but pointedly did not invite him to come along with us.

We hurried through the yard, across to a Whitehall pub. There Rose, who normally had delicate tastes in food, put down a large hunk of cheese and a scotch egg, and inspected me with satisfaction as I did the same. ‘That will keep us going,’ he said dutifully.

We hadn’t spoken about the debate. I said the one word: ‘Well?’

‘I don’t know, my dear Lewis, I don’t know.’

‘Any chance?’

‘He’ll have to pull something out of the bag himself, shouldn’t you have thought?’

He meant, in the final speech.

I wanted to scratch over the evidence, to reckon the odds, but Rose wouldn’t have it.

‘It doesn’t seem profitable,’ he said. Instead, he had his own recourse. He drew out a stiff, plain pocket-book, such as I had often seen him use in meetings, and began to write down numbers. Maximum possible number of members on the Government side, 315. He jotted down the figure, without an inquiry or a doubt, like a computing machine. Unavoidable absences, illness, and so on — the Whips appeared to expect eight. Available votes, 307. Rose did not hesitate: Cabinet dubious, Minister not sticking to the rules, he couldn’t afford defections. 290 votes, and he might be safe: 17 abstentions. (From the debate, we now knew there would be at least nine, and one vote, Sammikins’, against.)

Anything under 280, and he was in great danger.

Anything under 270, and it was all over.

Rose went on with his own kind of nepenthe. He didn’t think the Opposition vote was relevant, but in his clear, beautiful script he continued to write figures. Maximum: 230. Absences: 12. Abstentions: perhaps 25.

The majority would not be significant. Roger could survive provided he received the 290 votes from his own side, plus or minus 10. That would be the figure which all informed persons would regard as decisive that night.

Rose looked up with the pleasure of one who has performed a neat operation. It struck me, even in the suspense, that the figures would be hard to explain to anyone not steeped in this kind of parliamentary process. The figures looked blank, the margins negligible. They would decide at least one career, maybe others, conceivably a good deal else.

When we returned to our places, the ex-Minister had only just finished. More speeches, the House becoming packed. The shouts of laughter were louder, so were the protests, but most of the time there was a dense silence. It was a dense, impatient silence. Men looked at Roger, sitting heavily on the front bench, chin in hand. The last perfunctory ‘hear-hears’ after the last Opposition speech damped down. Again the silence. Voice from the Chair — ‘Mr Quaife.’