Charles Snow - The Affair

Crawford continued to deliver himself. The one thing on which all serious people were agreed, all over the world, was that privilege must be done away with; the amount of it had been whittled away steadily ever since he was a young man. All the attempts to stop this process had failed, just as reaction in its full sense had always failed. All over the world people were no longer prepared to see others enjoying privilege because they had a different coloured skin, or spoke in a different tone, or were born into families that had done pretty well for themselves. “The disappearance of privilege — if you want something that gives you the direction of time’s arrow,” said Crawford, “that’s as good as anything I know.”

Hanna could not restrain herself. With a sharp smile, she said: “It’s still got some way to go, shouldn’t you say?”

She looked round the table at the white ties, the evening dresses, the panelled walls beyond, the amplitude of the Lodge dining-room, the lighted pictures on the walls.

“Fair comment, Mrs Clark,” said Crawford, imperturbable, gallant. “But we mustn’t be misled by appearances. Speaking as the present incumbent, I assure you that I can’t imagine how my successors in the next generation are going to manage to run this Lodge. Unless indeed a society which is doing away with privilege decides to reward a few citizens for achievement by housing them in picturesque surroundings that no one else is able to afford. It would be interesting if a certain number of men of science in the next generation were still enabled to live in Lodges like this or the Carlsberg mansion at Copenhagen.”

As the talk became chit-chat, I was paying attention to Mrs Nightingale, whom I had not met before. She was a plump woman in the late thirties, a good twenty years younger than he was. Her shoulders and upper arms were beginning to ham out with fat; her eyes were full, sleepy, exophthalmic. But that sleepy plumpness was deceptive. Underneath she seemed energetic and quick-moving. When I said to her, pompously, as we were considering whether to pour sauce on to the pudding: “Now if we’re wise—”, she replied, dead-panned but instantaneous: “ Don’t let’s be wise.” Between her and Nightingale there passed glances sparkling with both humour and trust. She referred to him as the Lord Mayor, a simple private joke which continued to delight him. They were happy, just as Martin and the others had told me. I was astonished that he had found such a nice woman.

I had been half-expecting Martin to lead in Howard’s name. All through dinner he did not mention him; he was still playing his part in the chit-chat when the women left us. But in fact it would have been surprising if he had not waited until the men were alone. College manners were changing in some of the young men, but not in Martin. He would no more have thought of discussing college business in the Lodge in front of wives than Crawford would, or Brown, or old Winslow. Though Martin was used to the company of women like Margaret or Hanna, though he knew how they detested the Islamic separation, Martin would not have considered raising his question that night until they had gone.

When the door had closed behind them, Crawford called for us to sit nearer to him. “Come up, here, Nightingale! Come beside me, Eliot! Will you look after yourself, Martin?” It occurred to me, still thinking of Martin’s manners, that while he kept some of old-style Cambridge, Crawford had, in just one respect, dropped his. Crawford called his contemporaries by their surnames, and that had been common form until the ’20s. Even in my time, there were not many Fellows who were generally called by their Christian names. But, since the young used nothing else, since Martin and Walter Luke and Julian Skeffington had never been known by anything but their Christian names to their own contemporaries, the old men also began to call them so. With the result that Crawford and Winslow, who after fifty years of friendship still used each other’s surnames, seemed oddly familiar when they spoke to the younger Fellows. As it happened, I came just at the turning-point, and to both Crawford and Winslow, though my brother was “Martin”, I remained “Eliot”.

The five of us had been alone for some time, the decanter had gone round, before Martin spoke. He asked, in a casual, indifferent, almost bored manner: “Master, I suppose you haven’t thought any more about the Howard business?”

“Why should I? I don’t see any reason why I should, do you?” said Crawford.

Martin replied: “Why should you indeed?”

He said it dismissively, as though his original question had been silly. He was sitting back in his chair, solid and relaxed, with Clark between himself and Crawford. Though he looked relaxed, his eyes were on guard, watching not only Crawford, but Nightingale and Clark. He said: “As a matter of fact, I thought I heard that it was just possible some fresh evidence might still turn up.”

“I don’t remember hearing the suggestion,” said Crawford. He spoke without worry. “I must say, Martin, it sounds remarkably hypothetical.”

“I suppose,” said Martin, “that if more evidence really did turn up, we might conceivably have to consider reopening the case, mightn’t we?”

“Ah well,” said Crawford, “we don’t have to cross that bridge till we come to it. Speaking as a member of our small society, I’ve never been fond of hypothetical situations involving ourselves.”

It was a reproof, good-humoured, but still a reproof. Martin paused. Before he had replied, Nightingale gave him a friendly smile and said: “There’s a bit more to it than that, Master.”

“I’m getting slightly muddled,” said Crawford, not sounding so in the least. “If there is any more to it, why haven’t I been informed?”

“Because, though there is a bit more to it on paper,” Nightingale went on, “it doesn’t amount to anything. It certainly doesn’t amount to enough to disturb you with at Christmas. I mean, Martin is perfectly right to say that a certain amount of fresh evidence has come in. It’s not fair to accuse him of inventing hypothetical situations.”

Crawford laughed. “Never mind about that. If he’s not used to being misjudged at his age, he never will be.”

“No,” Nightingale persisted. “I for one am grateful that he mentioned the matter.”

“Yes, Bursar?” said Crawford.

“It gives us the chance to settle it without any more commotion.”

Martin leaned forward and spoke to Nightingale: “When did you hear about this?”

“Last night.”

“Who from?”

“Skeffington.”

Just for an instant, Martin’s eyes flashed.

“It’s all perfectly in order, Master,” Nightingale said to Crawford. “You’ll remember, Skeffington and I were the committee deputed to make a technical report to the Seniors in the first instance. Naturally we’ve assumed it was our duty to keep our eyes open for any development since. It happens that the last instalments of Professor Palairet’s scientific papers have arrived at the Bursary since the Seniors made their decision. Both Skeffington and I have gone through them. I think it’s only fair for me to say that he’s made a more thorough job of it than I’ve been able to do. The only excuse I’ve got is that the Bursary manages to keep me pretty busy.”

“We all know that,” said Crawford.

“So these very last notebooks I hadn’t been able to do more than skim through. It was those that Skeffington brought to my attention last night.”

“When did you hear?” Suddenly Clark spoke in a quiet voice to Martin, but Nightingale had gone on: “I’m glad to say that I saw nothing which makes the faintest difference to my original opinion. If I were writing my report to the Seniors again today, I should do it in the same terms.”