Charles Snow - The Conscience of the Rich

Then Katherine remembered her afternoon mail.

‘The only letter I’ve opened is my husband’s,’ she said comfortably. ‘Being in this state makes me even more lazy than I usually am. Lewis, will you pander to my condition and fetch in the others?’

As I gave them to her, I saw that one was a long foolscap envelope, with her address in green typescript, and I realized that it was her weekly copy of the Note .

She read it last. I felt a flicker of uneasiness, nothing more, as she opened the sheets, and went on chatting to Mr March. Suddenly we heard Katherine’s voice, loud and harsh.

‘I think you ought to listen to this, Mr L.’

She read, angrily and deliberately:

‘“ Armaments and Shares . As foreshadowed in Note (Mar. 24 ’36) certain personages close to Government appear interested in armaments programme in more ways than one. Hush-hush talk in Century (exclusive City luncheon club, HQ 22 Farringdon St), Jewish candidates quietly blackballed, president George Wyatt, co-director of Sir Horace (Cartel-spokesman) Timberlake — (see Note , Nov. 17 ’35, Feb. 2 ’36, Apr. 15 ’36), that heavy killings made through inside knowledge (official) armaments contracts, both ’35 (Abyssinian phoney scare) and ’29. E.g. ’29 Herbert Getliffe KC employed Jan. 2–June 6, advice WO contract Howard & Hazelhurst: £10,000 worth H & H bought name of G L Paul, May 30, £15,000 worth H & H F E Paul, June 2, G L and F E Paul brothers H Getliffe’s wife. Usual lurkman technique (see Note , Feb. 9 ’36). Have junior ministers, names canvassed in Century, also used lurkmen? Allow for Century’s anti-Semitism. But Note satisfied background hush-hush scandal. Story, transactions, dates, ministers, later.”’

The room was quiet. Then Mr March cried out: ‘My son has done this.’

Katherine said: ‘It’s an outrage. It must be Ann. Don’t you agree that it must be Ann? Charles told me that she wrote for them—’

Mr March said: ‘He must have known her intentions and he is responsible for it all. He is responsible for it all.’

I broke in: ‘I’m sure that is not true. God knows this is bad enough. But I’m sure neither of them knew it was coming. Charles knew nothing last night. Unless he’s read this thing today, he still knows nothing now.’

‘How can you speak for my son?’ Mr March shouted.

I said: ‘If he has done this he would have told you. He couldn’t have made himself speak to you as he did last night, if he knew this was on the way. It’s not in his nature.’

I had spoken with insistence, and Mr March sat silent, huddled in his chair, his chin sunk in his breast.

I had to go on speaking. I tried to explain, without making excuses for Ann, what had happened. I said that she was on the point of going to the Note and asking them to keep the story out. After the threat at the end of this piece, it was imperative to say nothing which might make it harder for her.

Mr March gave a sullen nod of acquiescence, but he was looking at me as though I were an enemy, not a friend.

He said: ‘I shall judge my son by his actions now. That is all that I can do.’

Katherine said: ‘This is her fault. She’s not content with crippling Charles. Now she’s trying to damage the rest of us. I wish to God she’d never set foot in this house.’

Mr March said quietly: ‘I wished that the first moment I saw her. I have never been able to forgive him for marrying her.’

As soon as I arrived back in London, I telephoned to Ann. She had already seen the issue, she said, and spoken to Seymour. He had guaranteed that nothing more would be published on the story for four weeks: he was himself going to Paris for a fortnight, picking up news, but he would be ready to discuss the problem with her as soon as he returned, and with Charles also if he liked to come along.

‘You’ll do it,’ I said, ‘the minute he gets back?’

‘Of course.’

‘He’s not putting you off while he slips something in?’

‘He wouldn’t do that to me.’ Her reply sounded constrained, on the defensive: she did not like my being so suspicious: she could feel that I suspected something else. I thought it more likely than not that Seymour had already got the first piece in without giving her a chance to see it. She resented any such thought: when she gave her trust, as she did to Seymour, she gave it without reserve. Yet she went on to ask me a favour: when she and Charles arranged the meeting with Seymour, would I come too? I was puzzled: what use could I be, I said. She stuck to it. She said, as was true, that I had given Seymour legal advice once or twice; on some things, she went on, he might listen to me.

When Seymour got back, he raised no objection. On the contrary, he rang up on the day they had fixed for the talk, and invited me himself, in his high-spirited, easy, patrician voice. I might even call for him after dinner at the Note office, he suggested.

So I duly climbed the five flights of stairs, in the murk and the smell of shavings and mildew. The Note office was at the top of a house just off the Charing Cross Road: on the other floors were offices of art photographers, dingy solicitors, something calling itself a trading company: on the fifth landing, in two rooms, was produced — not only edited but set up, duplicated, and distributed — the Note . In one of the rooms a light was burning, as Seymour’s secretary was still working there, at half past eight. She was working for nothing, as I knew, a prettyish girl with a restless smile. Humphrey (she enjoyed being in the swim, calling him by his Christian name) had been called away, she said, but he was expecting us all at his flat in Dolphin Square.

When at last I got there, he was alone. He was a short, cocky, confident man, nearly bald, although he was no older than Charles; he was singularly ugly, with a mouth so wide that it gave him a touch of the grotesque. His manner was warm and amiable. He put a drink into my hand and led me outside on to the terrace; his flat was high up in the building, and from the terrace one could look down over all western London, the roofs shining into the sunset. But Seymour did not look down: he did not refer to why I was there: he just launched, with a kind of obsessive insistence mixed with his habitual jauntiness, into what he had been hearing in Paris, whom he had seen, what he had been learning about the Spanish war. When I made a remark, he kept up a sighing noise which indicated that he had more to say.

At last I managed to get in my own preoccupation. He was an easy man to be off-hand with, because he was so off-hand and confident himself. I said: ‘What about this campaign?’

‘What campaign?’

‘The one that Ann March and Charles are coming about.’

‘Oh that.’ He gave a gnome-like grin.

‘Why did you start on Philip March at all?’

‘Do you think we’re really interested in him?’ said Seymour with cheerful contempt. ‘He’s never been more than a city figurehead. No, the chaps we’re really interested in are Hawtin and his pals. I think we might be able to put them on the spot, don’t you?’

I asked him — what facts had he really got hold of? About Philip March? About Hawtin? What facts were there, beside those about the Getliffe dealings?

Seymour grinned again, but did not answer. Instead he said: ‘Should you say old March cut any ice among that gang?’ (‘That gang’ meant the people who had the real power, the rulers, the establishment: Seymour, like other communists I knew, had a habit of breaking into a curious kind of slang: from him, in his cultivated tone, it sounded odd.)