Charles Snow - The Affair

Then he asked, how was I going to handle Francis Getliffe next day? He thought I ought to come right out in the open, and say that we should probably never be able to prove our case “down to the last drawing-pin”. Without the second photograph we could not do it. With a man like Francis, it would be a mistake to minimise the difficulties or try to cover up where we were weak.

As we planned, each of us felt kinship and a curious kind of support. It was comforting — it was more than comforting, it was an active pleasure — to be at one, to be using our wits on the same side.

THE next morning after breakfast, I was looking out of the guest room window into the Fellows’ garden when Francis Getliffe arrived. The trees were bare, the branches were not stirring. It seemed to be a windless day with the cloud-cap very low. Francis said that it was warm outside, we might as well walk in the garden, I should not need a coat.

The turf was soft with rain, still springy under our feet, brilliant as moss. In the flower-bed to our right I could not see a single flower, not even the last of the snowdrops. We were walking slowly, but Francis nevertheless moved with lunging strides, a foot longer than mine, although he was two or three inches the shorter man.

We had not gone far, we had not gone out of the formal garden into the “wilderness”, when Francis said: “I think I know what you’ve come for.”

“Do you?”

“It doesn’t really need an inspired guess, does it?” Then he said, stiffly and proudly, “I’m going to save you a certain amount of trouble. I’d better say straight away that I regard myself as very much to blame. I’m sorry that I’ve delayed so long. There’s no doubt about it, Martin and Skeffington have produced a case that no one has got a serious answer to yet. I’m sorry that I didn’t tell them so, when they first came to see me. The sooner this business is cleared up, the better.”

I felt a sense of anticlimax, a sense of absurd let-down, as though I had put my shoulder against a door which was on the latch. Also I felt embarrassed, because Francis was so ashamed of himself, stiff with me because he was ashamed.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“It’s done.”

“What have you done?”

“I’ve just sent this out. It went off before I came to see you.”

“This” was a mimeographed note with “ Confidential: to All Fellows ” in the top left-hand corner. It read: “I have now studied the new evidence relating to the thesis and publications of D C Howard and the notebooks of the late C J B Palairet, FRS. In my view, Dr Skeffington is right in representing that there is a case to answer. I think it is urgent that the college should request the Court of Seniors to consider this case without delay. FEG. 19.2.54.”

This note, as I knew, would be taken round by the college messenger. It would reach most of the Fellows by the lunchtime delivery, and all of them that day.

“I should have thought,” I said, “that ought to collect the majority for re-opening the case, anyway.”

“I should hope so,” Francis said.

“I notice you don’t say that you’re a hundred per cent convinced yourself?”

“That was as far as I felt inclined to go.”

In silence we walked through to the inner lawn, right at the bottom of the garden, close to the college wall. In the greenhouse in the corner great carnations shone into the aqueous morning, into the green and grey. Francis suddenly broke out, his voice tight with anger: “This man Howard must be as stupid as they come.”

I asked what had gone wrong now. Francis paid no attention and went on: “I want you to realise one thing. It’s his fault we’ve got into this absurd position. I mean by that, if he had had the scientific judgment of a newt, he’d never have taken the old man’s experiments on trust. It’s almost unbelievable that anyone working in his field accepted them without having another look. If Howard’s innocent, which I’m inclined to think he is, then he must break all records for stupidity. I must say, there are times when stupidity seems to me the greater crime.”

We did another turn across the lawn. Francis broke out again: “Of course, we never ought to have elected him in the first place.”

I told him, because I wanted to make him easier, that that reminded me of his father-in-law on an occasion we both knew, looking for a first cause. Francis gave a reluctant grin, but his voice did not soften.

“Now we’ve got to clear up this mess,” he said. “All I hope is that it doesn’t take too long.”

“Why is the time it takes worrying you so much?”

I asked him straight out, not knowing whether he wanted to reply. We had been friendly for nearly thirty years, and I had not seen him at such a disadvantage before. I was bewildered to know why. True, he didn’t like being wrong, even less than most of us. Like most men of his granite-like integrity, he had a streak of vanity inextricably fused within it. He did not like falling below the standard he set himself, either in his own eyes or anyone else’s. He did not like my having to make this visit, to remind him of his duty. It was the first time it had happened, though several times in our friendship he had reminded me of mine. None of that seemed to explain a malaise as strong as his, as we walked backwards and forwards across the lawn. We had walked like that before. The inner lawn was not overlooked by any window, and as young men we used to go there at night and talk out our plans or troubles undisturbed.

After a time, he said in a voice no longer angry but quiet and surprised: “You’re quite right. I didn’t want any friction in this place just now.”

I did not say anything. On the next turn he went on: “I’m afraid it’s only too simple. When those two came to see me, I wasn’t as completely impressed by their case as they were. That was genuine, and to a limited extent it still is. But if I’d been reasonably responsible, I should have got down to what they had to say. The fact was, Lewis, I didn’t want to.”

He was speaking with the candour, the freshness, which sometimes comes to men not given to introspection when they talk about themselves.

“No, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want the risk of making myself unpleasant to everyone who counts for anything here. I just didn’t want to blot my copybook. I needn’t tell you why, need I?”

I did not say anything.

“You know, Winslow and Nightingale and those others, they’re my backers. The election’s coming on this autumn, and the fact of the matter is” — he hesitated — “I should like it.”

As we turned, he went on: “The curious thing is, I can’t really tell why I should like it so much. I should make a pretty fair job of it, as good as anyone else they’re likely to put in the Lodge, by and large. But that doesn’t come into it. It’s not really the sort of thing that matters to me, I should have said. All I seriously wanted was to do some adequate research and leave some sort of record behind me. Well, I haven’t done as much as I should have liked, but I’ve done something. I believe I’ve got ten more years’ work in me, and I shall do some more. The work’s come off pretty well, all things considered. Looking back to the time we both started, I should have been moderately content with what I’ve been able to do. That’s all that ought to matter. As for the rest, I’ve had more than my share of the honours going round. I didn’t think I was specially greedy: and so why should I want the Mastership into the bargain? But I do, you know. Enough to make me put up a disgraceful exhibition about this wretched case.”

As we went on walking, in a silence more relaxed than before, I was thinking, I could have given him one reason why he wanted it. Francis, who had gone through so many struggles, in college, in government, even in public, was not a rebel by nature. His politics had come through duty and intellect, not through a passion of nonconformity, not even through that residue of identification with those outside, pushing their noses against the shop-window, that I, on the surface a more compromising man than Francis, and one who had lived closer to the Establishment, still preserved. In the long run Francis, who out of principle would stick out as one dissenting voice in the council of the Royal or any group of respectable bosses, wished to end his days with them. His intellect, his duty, would not let him alter his opinions, but in a curious sense he wanted to be “respectable”, and to be received by the respectable. He would be soothed, a final uneasiness assuaged, if the men he had argued with so long, the Winslows and Nightingales and Arthur Browns, made him Master. He still would not qualify anything he said: but he would have come home.