Charles Snow - The Conscience of the Rich

‘Why didn’t you remember?’ I said.

‘What was there to remember?’

‘Didn’t you think how Philip March’s name kept coming in, when we were all worried before Katherine’s wedding?’

‘I didn’t give it a thought,’ she replied.

‘Why not?’

‘I had plenty of things against him, but I could never have imagined he’d have got mixed up in a wretched business like this, could you have done?’

I took her at her word. I asked her:

‘But you must have imagined that if you dug up the Getliffe affair—’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If you did that, it was coming close to home.’

I meant that it would damage Katherine through her husband: Ann knew what I meant, and did not pretend.

‘I thought of that, of course I did. But we wanted the exact dope on Getliffe just as a lead-in to the job. It was a good time ago, I didn’t think we should want to use it.’

‘Did you think there was a risk?’

She looked straight at me.

‘Yes, I thought there was a risk. I didn’t think it was very real.’

‘Are they going to use it?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. It’s possible.’

‘How possible?’

‘It’s just about as likely as not.’

All the time I had been with her, I had had a feeling that I scarcely knew her at all. It was not her politics that struck so strange: I expected all that. I expected her sense of duty. It was not that she had been unfriendly or ambiguous. On the contrary, she had been precise, direct, completely in command of herself. It had been I who was showing the temper and wear-and-tear. What made her seem so strange was just that control. Her voice had not given a quiver of strain. Her head had stayed erect, unnaturally still, as though the muscles of her neck were stiff.

To my astonishment, she did not know the exact position about the original Getliffe scandal. Porson had refused to tell her the details, and she had not discovered them from anyone else: when she failed, the Note had set another person on the same search. It was characteristic of them that she had not been told whom he had been talking to, or whether he had got all the facts. I asked again if the Note were going to use the story. She gave the same answer as before.

‘Can it be stopped?’ I broke out. ‘I could go to Humphrey Seymour—’

‘You’d better not waste any time.’

‘I don’t want to go unless it’s necessary.’

She meant: this was her work, these people were her allies, it was bitter to get in their way.

‘It’s irresponsible,’ I said, ‘not to go to him at once.’

‘We’ve got different ideas of responsibility, haven’t we?’

‘Not so completely different,’ I said. ‘If your people really begin splashing Philip March’s name about, you know what it will mean.’

‘I haven’t any special concern for Philip,’ she said. ‘He’s a reactionary old man. If he has had his fingers in this business, then he deserves what comes to him.’

‘I wasn’t thinking so much of him.’ I paused. ‘But Mr March?’

She replied: ‘You know what happened between us. Since then I haven’t felt that he had any claim on me.’

I paused again. Then I said: ‘Have you thought what it would mean for Charles?’ Her eyes stayed steady, looking into mine. For a second I totally misread her face. She had spoken of Mr March in a reasonable tone, but one hardened, I thought, with resentment, the memory of an injustice still fresh. Her eyes were sparkling; she seemed just about to smile. Instead her throat and cheeks reddened: her brow went smooth with anger. At last her control had broken, and she said:

‘I won’t tolerate any interference between Charles and me. Go and make your own wife love you as much as I love Charles. If she’s capable of recognizing who you are. Then I might listen to anything you say about my marriage.’

I did not speak.

Ann said: ‘I’m sorry. That was an unforgivable thing to say.’

Slowly — I was not thinking of her or Charles — I replied: ‘You wouldn’t have said it unless—’ I stopped, my own thoughts ran away with me. I made another effort: ‘Unless you were afraid of what you might do to Charles.’

We both sat silent. I was leaning forward, my chin in my hands. I scarcely noticed that she had crossed the room until I felt her arm round my shoulders.

‘I’m desperately sorry,’ she said.

I tried to talk to her again.

‘I still think,’ I said, ‘that you ought to speak to Seymour pretty soon.’

‘It’s not easy. Don’t you see it’s not easy?’

I told her that she would have to do it. She pressed my hand and went back to her chair. We sat opposite each other, not speaking again, until Charles came in.

She sprang up. He took her in his arms and kissed her. She asked how the surgery had gone. He told her something about a case, his arms still round her, and asked about herself. They were absorbed in each other. No one could have seen them that night without being moved by the depth and freshness of their love.

Over his shoulder Charles glanced at me, sitting in the pool of light from the reading-lamp.

‘Hallo,’ he said. ‘You’re looking pale.’

‘It’s nothing.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I tell you, it’s nothing. No, I’ve been talking to Ann about this Getliffe business.’

He glanced at Ann. ‘I expected that was it,’ he said. They sat side by side on the sofa. Without waiting for any kind of preliminaries, I said: ‘I’ve been telling Ann she ought to go straight to Seymour.

To my astonishment, Charles began to smile.

‘Why is that funny?’ I was on edge.

‘Did you know he was at school with me? It’s strange, I shouldn’t have guessed that he’d crop up again—’

He was still smiling at what seemed to be a memory.

‘I’m quite sure,’ I said, ‘that Ann ought to go round to the Note tomorrow.’

‘That’s getting a bit frantic, isn’t it?’ Charles said, in a friendly tone.

I could not help overstating my case. ‘Tomorrow,’ I repeated, getting more emphatic because I could not find a reason.

‘You don’t want to go along unless it’s the last resort, do you?’ said Charles to Ann, and their eyes met in trust.

The curious thing was, Charles did not seem much worried. Ann was so torn that she had said something I should not be able to forget. That apart, I was acutely anxious. Yet Charles, who was himself given to anxiety, who had much more foresight than most men, seemed almost immune from what was affecting us. True, he was much further from politics than Ann was, a good deal further even than I was myself. Nevertheless, it was strange to see him so unruffled, giving us the drinks which, in the grip of the argument, Ann had not thought of. With a kind of temperate irritation, he said: ‘I must say, the thing which I really dislike is that we misled Mr L. Quite unintentionally, of course, but it’s the sort of thing any of us would dislike, wouldn’t they?’

He meant, when Mr March told him of the rumours about Sir Philip and he had said that neither he nor Ann had any knowledge of them. It had been true then: at the time, Ann was trying to find out about Getliffe and no one but Getliffe. But it would not have been true a week or two later.

‘I’ve explained the position to him now, of course,’ he said.

‘Did he accept it?’ I asked.

‘As much as he could accept anything,’ said Charles.

‘When did you talk to him?’

Charles gave me the date. I had seen Mr March since, but he had not mentioned a word about it.

‘I also explained Ann’s connection with the Note ,’ said Charles. ‘I thought it was right to do that.’