Charles Snow - The Affair

Brown pursed his lips and gazed at Skeffington with sharp eyes.

“I hoped,” he said, “that you would consider what I’ve just said.”

“It doesn’t touch the issue,” said Skeffington.

“I’m afraid,” said Getliffe, “that several of us can’t let it go at this stage.”

“No, that’s not acceptable, Arthur,” Martin put in. “We didn’t want to, but we’ve got to take it further.”

That meant, since he and Brown understood each other and spoke the same language, an appeal to the Visitor. Brown was considering, but again Skeffington was quick off the mark.

“You know, Martin, that’s no good for me.” He turned to Brown with arrogant awkwardness. “I spoke out of turn last night. I’m sorry. I oughtn’t to have hit the ceiling with a senior. That was a bad show. But I stick to every word I said. If there’s only one way to get this poor chap a square deal, then I’ve got no option.”

Brown did not hesitate any more. In a round, deliberate tone, as though he were dealing with a commonplace situation, he said, addressing himself to Martin and Getliffe: “Well, I can see that you haven’t lost your misgivings. In that case, I have a proposition to make which might ease your minds. Put it another way: it might show you that we on the Court of Seniors realise that you still have grave doubts on your consciences.”

There was no question that Arthur Brown had come equipped. If the first offer failed, as he expected it to, then he had the second ready. There was no doubt also why he was doing it, and why in the last few hours he had worked so fast. It wasn’t because Francis and Martin stayed inflexible. Brown addressed his offer to them, but really all the time it was to Skeffington that he was speaking. Skeffington’s threat had forced him, even while he thought it was an outrage.

To bring the college into the public light, to “get it into the papers”, was to Brown inadmissible and inexcusable. For Skeffington to threaten him, took him out of the area of responsible men. From now on, Skeffington could not be trusted in college affairs, nor could his opinion carry any weight. And yet, it was he who had broken through.

The curious thing was, Brown and Martin and all good performers in closed politics often exaggerated the importance of the shrewd, the astute, the men who knew the correct moves. At least as often as not, in a group like the college, the shrewd moves cancelled each other out and the only way to win was through the inadmissible and the inexcusable.

Brown’s offer was conciliatory and well-prepared. He said that he made it after consulting the other Seniors. Nightingale nodded his head, but Winslow was sleepy after dinner in the warm room. The proposal in essence was that the Seniors volunteered of their own free will and without pressure from the college to have a third and final enquiry. But, Brown said, it was pointless their doing this without some difference in procedure. Therefore the Seniors proposed, again of their own free will, one minor and one major change. The minor change was that, under the statutes, they had the power to co-opt other members: their suggestion was that they should ask Paul Jago to serve. If he had been willing in the first instance, he would have been one of the Court all through. “Some of us know him well, though he’s rather dropped out of things in late years,” said Brown, who used to be his closest friend. “We feel that he would bring a fresh mind to our problems. And I don’t think that his worst enemies would ever have said that he was lacking in human sympathy and kindness.”

“I’m sorry to say,” G S Clark remarked, “that I’ve hardly spoken to him.”

“Oh, in the old days, G S, he’d have done a lot for you,” said Brown, quick to meet the unspoken opposition.

“Could you give us a little information about him?”

“What do you want me to tell you? I think Lewis will agree, he was always very good about anyone in trouble—”

That was why I wanted him on the Court. He had more human resources than most men. But it did not satisfy Clark, who looked so sensible, so reasonable, so sweet-eyed, the knuckles of his bad hand purple-raw on the table, that I felt half-hypnotised and at a loss.

“Has he any strong attachments?” Clark persisted.

“I should have said, he had strong personal attachments, if that’s what you mean—”

It wasn’t.

“I meant rather, is he attached to causes?”

“I shouldn’t have thought so,” Brown replied.

“Well, then, is he a religious man?”

“No, I couldn’t say that. His father was in orders, he was a Fellow of Trinity, Dublin, but I always imagined Paul reacted against Papa pretty early on.”

Clark was looking troubled. Brown added, with the cheerful laugh of one man of sane opinions talking of another, “Of course, Paul has always been a sound conservative. In fact, he sometimes went a bit further in the right direction than I was able to follow him. You know what these old Protestant Irish families are like.”

Clark had broken into a beautiful acceptant smile. Now at last I had it. He had been suspicious in case Jago happened to be a man of progressive views. Paranoia didn’t exist only on one side, I was thinking. Clark was ready to detect the sinister whenever he heard a radical word. And that air had blown round the college, more than Francis or Martin thought, living in it, right through the course of the affair. Even at this table, most of them felt a kind of group-content and group-safety, as they heard of a sound conservative. Certainly Skeffington did, the “troublemaker”.

Paranoia wasn’t all on one side: and then by free association, the thought of Howard, staring blank-eyed, deluded with persecution mania, asking who could have removed the photograph, flickered through my mind.

It was agreed to ask Jago.

The second change — “and this,” said Brown, “is why I took it upon myself to bring Lewis Eliot into our exchange of views,” came as a surprise. It was that the Court should have two lawyers in attendance, “one, to look after the interests of Howard, and the other, if I may say so, to give some help to the Seniors themselves”.

For the first, Brown said, at his most cordial and benign, he hoped that they might obtain “the good offices of our old friend here” — he beamed at me. He knew that Lewis hadn’t practised law for a long time, but this wasn’t a formal trial. He felt sure that Francis Getliffe and Martin and the others would rest quieter if they knew that Lewis was there to give Howard guidance. As for the other lawyer, it meant letting someone else into the secret, but they had in mind “a distinguished member of the college, known to the older people here, and someone who wouldn’t be overweighted by Lewis, which I think we should all feel that the circumstances required”.

Brown finished by saying to Francis and Martin that he made the offer with the full authority of the Master. Just for an instant, he sounded like a shogun speaking formally of the Kyoto Emperor. The Seniors realised they couldn’t make much claim on the lawyers’ time; they believed that the entire re-hearing could be compressed into a few days.

Francis Getliffe was asking me if I could manage it. Running through my pocket-book, I said that I hadn’t three consecutive week-days free until the end of June.

“That’s all right,” said Martin. “So you’ll do it, will you?”

“If you can wait that long—”

“Good.” Martin spoke suddenly, freshly, and with enthusiasm. For a second, across the dinner-table, we had gone back over the years. He was no longer the hard and independent man, more capable in so many ways than I was myself. He was a younger brother speaking to an older, investing in me, as when he was a child, greater faith than I deserved.