Charles Snow - The Affair

He looked at Martin. “As a matter of fact, I’ve brought it along with me.”

“May I see it?” Even Martin’s politeness was wearing sharp.

Skeffington opened a briefcase which he had brought with him into the room, and produced a thick exercise book, such as I remembered using in the Oxford Senior class at school. Sticking out of it was a bookmarker. “Yes,” said Skeffington, “I’ve kept the place.” It sounded so matter-of-fact as to be absurd. Just as it did when he assured us that he had signed a receipt for the exercise book with the Bursar’s clerk.

“All right, Julian,” said Martin. Then Skeffington put his fingers, delicate, square-tipped, on the marker and said: “Here we are.”

I had gone across to glance at the book over Martin’s shoulder. My first impression was of an almost empty page. Then I read at the top, in a spiky, old-fashioned holograph, the date, July 20th, 1950. Underneath the date were several lines of handwriting, which began: Tried diffraction experiments using neutron source A and crystal grating B, encouraging results . Then a blank space in the middle of the page, with a rim of sticky paper, as though something had been removed. Underneath, at the bottom of the page, the handwriting went on: Above print gives strong support for view that diffraction of neutrons at higher speeds, corresponding to wavelengths shown above, follows precisely the same pattern as at low speeds (see CJBP, Proc. Roy. Soc. A…1942, 1947). Have always predicted this. Follow up.

“The photograph’s missing, is it?” said Martin.

“The point is,” Skeffington said loudly to me, “that what he says at the bottom can’t be true. This is where the Howard paper starts off.” He tapped the page. “It can’t be true.”

“If there ever was a print there,” Martin was reflecting, “either it couldn’t have shown anything at all—”

“Or else that had been blown up too.”

“Where is it?” said Martin.

Skeffington shrugged his shoulders.

“Something was there once, wasn’t it?”

“The point is,” he went on loudly again, “if Howard saw that print and that entry, then his story stands up as near as makes no matter. However you read that entry, the old man was fooling himself, if he wasn’t fooling anybody else. I don’t know what he was up to — he must have been crackers. But I do know that it gees with the Howard story, and I don’t believe that there’s any way out of it. Can you see one ?”

“If the print were there,” said Martin in a soft, deliberate tone, “then I don’t think I could.”

“But still.”

Martin sat frowning. He asked me for a cigarette. After a time he said: “I can’t believe there isn’t a way out of it.”

“Do you think I want to believe it?” Skeffington’s tone, just as when he started to explain, was haughty and annoyed. “It isn’t exactly pleasant for me to stir up mud about the old man — and, if I had to stir up mud about someone connected with my family, I shouldn’t choose to do it on behalf of anyone like Howard. We never ought to have let in a chap like that. But the point is, we did let him in, and I believe he’s an innocent man—”

“Oh, yes, Julian,” Martin roused himself, and for once was speaking restlessly, sarcastically, and without civility. “We know that you believe that. It’s like G H Hardy’s old crack: If the Archbishop of Canterbury says he believes in God, that’s all in the way of business, but if he says he doesn’t, one can take it he means what he says. We don’t need persuading that you mean what you say. We know you believe it. But I don’t see that recognising your conviction gets us very far.”

At Martin’s tone, so untypically sharp, Skeffington showed no resentment. He just threw his head back and said: “It might get us a bit further when I’ve settled what to do next.”

Martin was composed and cautious again. He said: “I hope you won’t do anything until we’ve all thought it over.”

“I can’t wait long.”

“I’m not asking you to wait long.”

“I should like to see Nightingale tomorrow.”

“I hope you won’t do anything,” said Martin, “until we’ve thought it over.”

“I can’t put it off. That isn’t good enough—”

“No one’s asking you to put it off. Look, it’s Boxing Day tomorrow. I’d be grateful for another twenty-four hours after that. Then I’ll be ready to talk.”

Reluctantly, Skeffington acquiesced. He went on: “But there’s something I want your advice on now. Lewis, you’ve heard the state of the game. I want to know, shall I write to this chap Howard tonight? I mean, I don’t feel specially inclined to talk to him. But he hasn’t had a square deal, and I think he’s entitled to know that someone like me is going to make it his business to see that he gets one.”

“It would be a good thing to write to him, I should have thought,” I said. “So long as you make it clear you’re only speaking for yourself.”

I was thinking, Skeffington was a brave and honourable man. He had not had an instant’s hesitation, once he believed that Howard was innocent. He was set on rushing in. Personal relations did not matter, his own convenience did not matter, nor how people thought of him. Both by nature and by training, he was single-minded: the man had his rights, one had to make sure that justice was done. Yet, inside that feeling, there was no kindness towards Howard. There was no trace of a brotherly emotion at all. The only residue of feeling he had for Howard was contempt . Contempt not because he and Skeffington had not an idea in common, but just because he was an object of justice. I had seen the same in other upright men: one was grateful for their passion to be just, but its warmth was all inside themselves. They were not feeling as equals: it was de haut en bas : and, not only towards those who had perpetrated the injustice, but also, and often more coldly, towards the victim, there was directed this component of contempt.

“The chief thing is, isn’t it,” I said, “that you mustn’t raise false hopes?”

“I think it would be much better,” said Martin, “if you didn’t write at all until we’ve talked it over. Won’t that give you a clearer idea of just what you can and cannot say?”

THROUGH the wet and windy Boxing Day, Martin played in the big drawing-room with the children — played just as I remembered him in our own childhood, concentrated and anxious to win. Irene and Margaret were laughing at us when he and I had a game together. He had invented a kind of ping-pong, played sitting down with rulers at a low table, and complicated by a set of bisques.

Though our wives knew what was on Martin’s mind, for we had told them last thing the night before, no one would have guessed it. He was out to win, within the rules, but just within the rules. His son, Lewis, watched with the same bright eyes, the same concentration, as his father’s: so did my son. When we had finished, Martin coached them both, patiently showing them how to cut the ball, repeating the stroke while the minutes passed, as though going through his head there was no thought of Skeffington’s conversion, no thought of anything except the cut-stroke at ping-pong. Outside, through the long windows, one could see the trees lashing and the grass dazzling in the rain.

Just before tea, the children went of to put records on their gramophone. Martin said to me: “I don’t know. I don’t know. Do you?”

For years we had talked like acquaintances. But we could still get on without explanation: we caught the tone of each other’s voice.