Charles Snow - The Affair

Before I lay down, the head porter had rung up to know if I was in my rooms. It seemed a little odd: I thought it might have to do with Arthur Brown’s dinner party that night. At what he called “shamefully short notice”, Brown was organising a dinner in his rooms. For whom, and for what, I wasn’t told, only that he needed me. It sounded as though he were acting fast, as though he were not glossing over the previous night.

I had not been reading for half an hour when I heard steps, a muttering of steps, outside. A tap on the door, and then the head porter, bowler-hat in hand, unctuously calling out my name, and announcing: “Professor Gay!”

The old man was wrapped in a fur coat, with a silk muffler under his beard and round his neck. On his head he wore a wide-brimmed homburg, such as I had not seen for a generation. The head porter was supporting one arm, an assistant porter the other. Another college servant had been conscripted to follow behind, and so a phalanx of four entered the room.

“Ha, ha, my dear fellow! I’ve run you to earth, indeed I have!”

There was nothing for it but to get him into an armchair. He progressed in movements a few inches at a time, but neither embarrassed, nor, so far as I could see, physically discomforted. His lungs did not seem to be troubling him, his breathing was easy. He dismissed the porters with a jaunty wave. “Stay at your posts, men. We shall require you later. When we have conducted our business. We shall summon you by telephone. That’s what we shall do.”

When they had gone, he informed me that he was going to continue to wear his hat — “the draughts in these old rooms, one has to be careful of them nowadays.”

He looked at me, cheeks blooming, pupils white-rimmed but glance eager.

“Well, this is a surprise and a half for you, I’ll be bound!”

It was.

“You can guess what’s brought me here, I’ll guarantee you can guess that.”

I could.

“But you couldn’t guess that I should be able to find you, indeed you couldn’t. Ha, ha. I have good spies. They keep me au fait , my spies do. I know more of what is going on than some people in this college realise. Why, you hadn’t been in Cambridge half a day before I had you taped, my dear chap. Had you taped, indeed I had. That was the day before the special meeting of our so-called Court of Seniors. I knew you were here. I said to myself: ‘Young Eliot is here. A very promising lawyer, that young man is. He’s well spoken of. He’s got his name to make. Why, he might be the man for me!’”

He chuckled.

“You don’t think I’ve come here just to make conversation, do you? Oh, no. If you think that, you’re vastly mistaken. No, my dear chap, I’ve come here for a purpose. I’ve come here for a purpose and a half. I wonder if you have any intimation what the purpose is?”

I had.

“Certain persons thought that I should forget,” said Gay. “Not a bit of it. The psychological moment has arrived. I’ve given them every chance. If they had made amends in their last notification, even if they had mentioned my name, I should have been disposed to let them off. But no, it’s no use looking back. Forward! Forward, that’s the place to look. So now is the time that I bring my suit against the college.”

I was asking about his solicitors, but he interrupted me, his face was shining with triumph, guile, and joy.

“Ah, my dear chap, this is where we help each other. This is a case of mutual help, if ever there was one. That’s why I sought you out this afternoon. I don’t mind telling you, I can do with a good, cool legal head like yours, just to see that we bring all our guns to bear. Fine, cool heads you lawyers have. But I don’t intend to take advantage of you, my dear Eliot. Indeed I don’t. I’ve come here with a proposition. If this case goes into court, I shall insist that you act for me. That will be a fine step in your career. Why, it will make your name! This is going to be a case and a half. It’s a fine thing for a young man like you, to have his chance in a cause célèbre . After all, it isn’t every day that a man of some little note in the learned world brings an action against his own college. I said to myself: ‘This will be a godsend to young Eliot. It will put his foot right on the ladder. There’s no one who deserves to have his foot on the ladder more than young Eliot.’”

Whether he was genuinely under delusions about me, I could not tell. Did he really think that I was still in my twenties? On the envelopes, when he wrote to me, he punctiliously put down style and decoration: had he forgotten what I was doing now, or was he just pretending? Of one thing I was certain. He was completely set in his monomania, and I did not see how we were going to distract him. He wasn’t the first old man I had seen whose monomania kept him very happy. And also — what one had always forgotten in the presence of his preposterous and euphoric vanity — he had throughout his life been more tenacious than most of us. It wasn’t for nothing, it wasn’t simply because he was enthusiastic and vain, that he had made himself into a great scholar. There had been within him the kind of tenacity that could hold him at the same job for sixty years. It was that tenacity which I had walked into the teeth of now.

I repeated, because I could think of nothing better, what did his solicitors advise?

“Ha ha, ha ha!” said Gay. “It’s what you advise that I want to hear.”

No, I told him, he couldn’t take the first step without his solicitors. He gave me a look sly and meaningful, what my mother would have called an “old-fashioned” look.

“I’ll be candid with you, my dear chap, indeed I will. My solicitors are not encouraging me to bring this action, that they’re not. They’re absolutely discouraging me from any such thing.”

“Well,” I said, “that makes it very awkward.”

“Not a bit of it!” cried Gay. “Why, you young men lose heart at the first check. Who are these solicitors of mine, after all? Just a firm of respectable professional men in Cambridge. What is Cambridge, after all? Just a small market town in the Fens. I strongly advise you young men to keep a sense of proportion. My dear Eliot, there is a world elsewhere.”

That did seem a bit cool, after he had lived in the place for over seventy years.

“If you’re not satisfied with them,” I said, “I’ll gladly give you the names of some firms in London—”

“And who might these be?”

“Oh, they’re as good as any in the country.”

“I suppose they’ll take their time, my dear chap? I suppose they’re good old stick-in-the-muds? I suppose you might tip them the wink that there wasn’t any special hurry about old Professor Gay? ”

Gay waved a finger at me, not in the slightest disturbed, but triumphant, full of genial malice and bonhomie . “Ah, you see, my dear chap, I know your little game. You’re trying to play out time, indeed you are.”

I felt the joke was against me. I said: “Oh, no, I just need to be sure that the case is in good hands. After all, anything that concerns you is rather special. If it were anybody else, we shouldn’t take such care—”

“Now I think you’re humouring me,” said Gay, still triumphant. “Don’t humour me. That’s not the point at all. I want to get down to business. To business, that’s where I want to get.”

I tried another tack. Professionally, there was no business I could do, I explained. If I were a barrister taking his case, I could only receive instructions through a solicitor –

“Opportunity only knocks once! Remember that!” cried Gay. “I shall soon be absolutely obliged to ask you a question, my dear Eliot. Yes, it’s a question and a half. Which side of the fence are you coming down on, young man? I’ve told you, it’s all very well to humour me. That’s all very fine and large. But it’s not enough, indeed it’s not. We’ve got to make progress. I’m not the one to be content with marking time. So that’s why I’m asking you the vital question. ‘Under which king, Bezonian?’”