Charles Snow - The Affair

Winslow was enjoying himself, so were some of the others. I thought the chaplain was not fair game, though Tom Orbell would have been, and so I said: “You’ve been in chapel more than seven times, you know.”

“My dear boy?”

“Electing Masters and so on.”

“I take the point,” said Winslow. “Though I’m not sure that those occasions can fairly be counted against me. But yes, I grant you, I’ve been inside the building four times for magisterial elections. Three of which, it became fairly clear soon after the event, showed the college in its collective wisdom choosing the wrong candidate.” He added: “Now I come to think of it, I suppose that by this time next year I shall have to go inside the building again for the same purpose. My dear Tutor, have you worked out when the election falls due?”

“December 20th,” said Martin without hesitation.

“Unless I die first,” said Winslow, “I shall have to assist in the French sense at that ceremony. But I’m happy to say that this time I can’t see even this college being so imbecile as to make a wrong choice. Just for once, the possibility does not appear to be open.”

“You mean —?”

“It’s not necessary to ask, is it? Francis Getliffe will do it very well.”

No one contradicted the old man. I could not resist making things slightly more awkward for Tom Orbell.

“I seem to remember,” I said, “having heard Brown’s name mentioned.”

“My dear Eliot,” said Winslow, “Brown’s name was mentioned last time. I then said it would mean twenty years of stodge. I should now say, if anyone were crass enough to repeat the suggestion, that it would mean seven years of stodge. It is true, seven would be preferable to twenty, but fortunately it is impossible for my colleagues, even with their singular gift for choosing the lowest when they see it, to select stodge at all this term.”

“Getliffe is generally agreed on, is he?”

“I’ve scarcely thought the matter worth conversation,” said Winslow. “The worthy Brown is not a serious starter by the side of Francis Getliffe. And that is the view of all the seniors in the college, who are showing surprising unanimity for once in a way. I had a word with the Bursar recently. We agreed that there would have to be a pre-election meeting, but we saw no reason why there should be more than one. Which, I may tell you young men” — Winslow looked round the table — “is entirely unprecedented in the last sixty years in this college. I even find that our late Senior Tutor, the unfortunate Jago, is completely at one with the Bursar and myself. As I say, we all think Getliffe will do it very well.”

As my eyes met Tom Orbell’s, his were bold, light, wide open. For whatever reason, he was not going to argue. Was it deference, or was he just not ready to show his hand? While Martin, listening politely to Winslow, gave no sign whether he agreed or disagreed. In a moment he got the old man talking of past college follies: of how a “predecessor of mine in the office of Bursar showed himself even more egregiously unfitted for it” by selling the great Lincolnshire estate. “If it hadn’t been for that remarkable decision, which shouldn’t have been made by anyone with the intelligence of a college servant, this institution would be approximately half as rich again.”

Further inanities occurred to Winslow. As we stood up while the waiters cleared the table and arranged chairs in a crescent round the fire, he was reflecting on the number of Fellows in his time who had been men of a “total absence of distinction”.

“A total absence of distinction, my dear Tutor,” he said to Martin, with even greater cheerfulness.

“Wasn’t there something to be said for old —?” said Martin, his own eyes bright.

“Nothing at all, my dear boy, nothing at all. He would have made a very fair small shopkeeper of mildly bookish tastes.”

He settled into the President’s chair, which was the second, as one proceeded anti-clockwise from the far side of the fireplace. In the middle of the room, the rosewood table shone polished and empty: when the college dined in the combination room, it was the habit to drink wine round the fire.

“It can’t be too often said,” Winslow addressed himself to Taylor and the youngest of the others, both in their twenties, well over fifty years his juniors, “that, with a modicum of exceptions, Cambridge dons are not distinguished men. They are just men who confer distinctions upon one another. I have often wondered who first uttered that simple but profound truth.”

The port glasses were filled as Winslow announced: “I believe this bottle is being presented by Mr Eliot, for the purpose — correct me if I am wrong, my dear Tutor — of marking the appearance here of his brother. This is a remarkable display of fraternal good wishes.”

With sardonic gusto, Winslow proposed my health and then Martin’s. We sipped the port. The fire was warm on our faces. Martin and I, not to be outfaced by Winslow, spoke of previous times when we had dined together in that room. The old man, satisfied with his performance, was becoming a little sleepy. The room was hot and comfortable. Some of the young men began to talk. Then the door clicked open: for a second I thought it was the waiter with the coffee, coming early because it was Christmas night: but it was Skeffington.

Winslow roused himself, his eyes red round the rims.

“My dear boy,” he said, “this is a most unexpected pleasure. Pray take a glass of port.”

“I apologise, Mr President,” said Skeffington. I noticed that his first glance had been in the direction of Martin.

“Don’t apologise, but sit down and fill your glass.”

It was unusual, but not startlingly so, for Fellows who had missed dinner to drop in afterwards for wine. As a rule, one would have taken it without curiosity, as most of them were taking it that night. But I couldn’t; nor, I felt sure, could Martin. Skeffington had sat down, and in silence watched his glass being filled. He was not dressed: for him, so formal and stiff with protocol, that was odd in itself. In a blue suit, his head thrown back, his cheeks high-coloured, he looked out of place in that circle.

The conversation went on, but Skeffington did not take part in it and Winslow was nearly asleep again. It was not long before Martin got to his feet. When we had said our good nights, and were outside in the court, I was not surprised to hear Skeffington come up behind us. “As a matter of fact,” he said to Martin, “I should like a word with you.”

“Do you want me alone?” said Martin.

“I’d just as soon Lewis knew,” said Skeffington.

Martin said that we had better go up to his rooms. They struck dank and cold, even on that muggy night. He switched on the electric fire, standing incongruously in the big sixteenth-century hearth.

“Well, Julian?” said Martin.

“I didn’t think I ought to keep it to myself any longer.”

“What is it?”

“The last few days I’ve been going more into the business of this chap Howard.”

“Yes?” Martin was still impassive, but bright-eyed.

“I can’t see any way out of it. I believe that he’s been telling the truth.”

FOR an instant, none of us moved. It would have been hard to tell whether Martin had heard what Skeffington had just said. He was not looking at Skeffington. He gazed steadily at the hearth, in which the electric fire had one small incandescent star, much brighter than the glowing bars, where a contact had worked loose.

“What made you go into the business again?” he said at last, as though merely curious, as though that were the only question on his mind.