Charles Snow - The Affair

WHEN the butler came into the combination room on the Sunday night and ritually announced, “Master, dinner is served,” Crawford told me that, since there were no visitors dining, I was to follow him in and sit at his right hand. As we stood in our places waiting for the grace to finish, I saw the heavy face of Arthur Brown, dead opposite to me.

It was a full Sunday night, and we had scarcely spoken in the combination room. Once we had sat down to our soup, he gave me a smile of recognition, and told me that he had already asked the Master’s permission to present a bottle after dinner to drink my health. He knew why I was in the college, but he was at the same time too warm-hearted and too cunning to let that affect his welcome. Crawford nodded, with impersonal cordiality. He liked a glass of port, he didn’t mind me, he wasn’t what Gay would have called “on the spot” as to what had been going on that weekend.

Brown gazed down the table. He noticed, just as I did, that neither Francis Getliffe nor Nightingale were dining. Martin was there, so were Tom Orbell and most of the younger Fellows: there were also several members of the college present who were not Fellows but had university jobs. Brown must have been calculating that, until and unless they dispersed, there was no chance of a show-down that night. Whether he found the thought satisfactory, I could not guess. As though it were the only trouble on his mind, he was informing the Master that Winslow’s sciatica was worse.

“Ah, well,” said Crawford, who was inclined to take a biological, or alternatively a cosmic, view of human miseries, “a man of eighty ought to expect that bits of the machine are beginning to run down.”

“I don’t think he’d find that much consolation just at present,” said Brown.

“Speaking as one trained in medicine, I should have thought he’d been remarkably lucky with his physical constitution. And with his medical history, if it comes to that I can’t think of many men who’ve lived as long and had so little wrong with them.”

“The old chap seemed rather sorry for himself when I dropped in on him before hall,” Brown said.

“That was very considerate of you, Senior Tutor,” said Crawford. Without irony at his own expense, or anyone else’s, he said: “Do you think I ought to visit him?”

Brown considered: “There’s certainly no need to put yourself out. No, I’m inclined to think he’s had enough visitors for twenty-four hours. But if you could send round a note? And perhaps a book? He complained of being short of reading matter.”

“That shall be done,” said Crawford. He kept his Buddha-like, contented smile. He was either oblivious that he was being told how to do his job, or else he accepted it. He was capable of thinking “Brown is better at these personalia than I am”, and it would not disturb him in the least.

This was the way things worked, I thought. Since Chrystal’s death, those two had been the government of the college. No doubt other people had been let in, sometimes and for some things — Nightingale now and then, after he became Bursar, and occasionally Francis Getliffe. But if I knew Brown, they would never have been let right in. Nor should I, though he liked me better, if I had stayed in the college.

The curious thing was, as men, Crawford and Brown had not much use for each other. Crawford was not one to whom friends mattered: he probably thought of Brown as a dullish colleague, a run-of-the-mill administrator, one of those humble persons who kept the wheels going around. While Brown had once had a positive dislike for Crawford. Deep down, I believed — Arthur Brown was loyal and tenacious in all things, including his antipathies — that it remained. He had opposed Crawford’s election with every resource that he could pull out. When he lost, people thought that his days of influence in the college were over. They could not have been more wrong. Crawford was arrogant, not overactive, not interested in men’s motives, but quite a fair judge of what they could do. He was also human enough to like the support of a man who had previously been all against him. It was not a friend to whom a normal man wanted to give the spoils of office, but an enemy who had just come over. So when Crawford saw Brown settling himself to help, the supreme college manager, he took him with open arms.

As for Brown, he loved managing so much, that, whoever had been Master, he could not have avoided waiting there at his side. For people like him, who lived in affairs, it was part of the rub of life to put loves and hates, particularly hates, out of sight, and almost out of mind. Brown’s happened to be unusually strong, stronger than a politician’s ought to be: even so, he could behave, not for days but for years, as though he had forgotten. For the practical purpose, like running the college, in front of him, he seemed able to conceal from himself an inconvenient personal dislike. I thought that if I reminded him what he really felt for Crawford, he would be shocked, he would take it as a blemish on good taste.

Through dinner, Crawford, in good world-historical form, was enquiring of me, of Brown, of anyone at large, how China could avoid becoming the dominant power on earth? Not in the vague future, but in finite time: perhaps not in our time, but in our sons’. It was not until we were sitting round the table in the combination room that Brown got in much of a word.

The company had dwindled. I watched Brown peer inquisitively as several of the younger Fellows, not waiting for wine, said good night and went out in a bunch. There was a party at Lester Ince’s house, Martin told Brown. “In my young days,” said Brown, “our seniors would have looked down their noses if we hadn’t stayed in the room on Sunday night. Still, it leaves a nice little party to drink Lewis’ health.” In fact, it left him and the Master, Martin, Tom Orbell and me, and a couple of non-Fellows. “Which means one glass apiece,” said Brown. “That’s rather meagre for a beastly winter night and an old friend. I think I should like to ask permission, Master, to order another bottle.”

“Very generous of you, Senior Tutor, very generous indeed.” I was now certain that Brown wanted to keep the non-Fellows at the table and so avoid an argument. He did not manage it. They each of them drank their port but, quite early, before half past eight, they had got up and gone. The rest of us were alone, one of the bottles still half-full. I glanced at Martin, who gave the slightest of nods. I was just going to lead in, when Crawford himself addressed us round the table: “I suppose you’ve all had the opportunity to read Getliffe’s fly-sheet by now, haven’t you? I seem to remember, Eliot—” he said, imperturbably gazing at me — “that you’re familiar with this unfortunate business.”

“I think we can take it,” said Arthur Brown, “that Lewis is quite familiar with it. I fancy he was able to study Francis Getliffe’s production at least as soon as any of us.”

He spoke with his usual lack of hurry, but he was irritated that the Master had opened the subject. Himself, he would have let others make the running.

“I know the situation pretty well,” I said to Crawford. “I think I ought to say straight away that I am parti pris .”

“What exactly do you mean, Eliot?”

“I mean, that if I were a Fellow now, I should be in favour of re-opening this case, without any qualification at all.”

“I’m surprised to hear you say that,” Crawford said. “You must forgive me, Eliot, but it does sound like a premature judgment.”

“I’m surprised to find that you feel in a position to make any judgment whatever,” said Brown sternly. “Do you think that the people who decided this issue were altogether irresponsible? I think you might remember that we spent several months devoting as much care to our decision as I for one have ever devoted to anything.”