Charles Snow - The Affair

It was true, they had given me the college’s best spare set. Dawson-Hill, so he said, observing mine, had to put up with one much inferior. He observed it with a dash of surprise and no discernible rancour. In fact, he seemed to draw an obscure pleasure from changes of fortune, from the sheer worldliness of the world.

When we had first met, he had been the young man with the future, the brightest catch among young barristers. I had been a young provincial, said to be clever, but not in his swim. He had been polite, because that was his nature: he had laid himself out to amuse, because he had rather people round him were happy than unhappy: but he hadn’t expected to see much of me again. Our acquaintanceship had gone on like that for years. Then I left the bar, and he went on. He thought he had done pretty well. But he was a little surprised to find that, somehow, by processes which to him were pleasurably mysterious, I had become better-known. He was surprised, but not in the least hipped. This was the world. Clever chaps bobbed up when you didn’t expect them. It just showed that one often judged wrong. He was not an envious man, and nothing like so much a snob as he looked. He was ready to accept that I deserved what had happened to me. It made him like me more.

But, though he liked me more, he was as tough as he had ever been. He wasn’t the opponent I should have chosen. Partly because he was in practice, and I had not done any real legal work for years. But much more because, though he sounded a playboy, he was hard-willed, the least suggestible of men.

As we sat in the window-seat, gazing into the garden on the cloud-grey summer evening, chatting casually before we started business, I had only one advantage. It was not just that I knew the background of the case much better: that didn’t count for much against a lawyer of his class. But I also knew the people better. That might cut both ways: it wasn’t all gain: but it was all I had to play with.

“Perhaps we’d better settle one or two things,” I said. We faced each other on the seat. It all looked slack, informal: it wasn’t as informal as all that, and it went very quickly. “We can’t expect them to keep to the rules of evidence, can we?” said Dawson-Hill.

“That won’t happen,” I said.

“We’d better tell them, when something wouldn’t be evidence in court. Agreed?”

I nodded.

“Apart from that, it’ll have to be catch as catch can. Agreed?”

Again I nodded.

“It’s taken for granted we talk to members of the Court as and when they want us to? For instance, I am invited to dine with the Master on Monday night. I won’t pretend the case isn’t likely to crop up. Any objections?”

“None.” He needn’t have asked. There wasn’t any analogy in law that I could think of. He had been asked down to advise the Seniors, who were also the judges: what was to stop him talking to them?

“Well, then, Lewis, I think it’s for you to start tomorrow.”

“What about your starting the case against Howard first?”

“No, no. You’re arguing against a decision.” Dawson-Hill gave his superior, mouth-pulled-down smile. “The Master made that clear at tea-time. And if he hadn’t, it stands out a mile from the papers. No, no. You start tomorrow.”

I should have to give way in the end; I might as well give way quickly. But it was a point to him. In this case, I would much rather he had to make the running.

“So who are you going to bring in tomorrow?” he asked, after I had acquiesced. This wasn’t mild curiosity. He wanted to know the schedule of my case, and he was within his rights.

“Howard.”

“You’re starting with him, are you?” He was smiling. It was another point to him. He knew what it meant, the instant I said it — I was not confident of my chief witness.

“I fancy,” he went on, with a touch of neutral professional malice, “that if I spend a bit of time on him, that might keep us most of tomorrow.”

“I fancy it might,” I replied. On Sunday, I reported, I should bring in Skeffington, Martin, Francis Getliffe. I didn’t see why we shouldn’t get them all into the morning session. Who was he going to call?

“Only one. The man Clark.”

“What’s he going to say?”

Again this was a professional question, and this time it was I who was within my rights.

“Character-evidence. Character-evidence of a negative kind, I’m afraid. Reports of your chap Howard discussing his work.”

“Can you possibly think that that’s admissible?”

“My dear Lewis, we’ve agreed, you can tell them what wouldn’t be allowed in law.”

“It’s going pretty far.”

“It’s not going as far,” said Dawson-Hill, “as Mr Howard and his supporters seem to have gone. Or am I wrong?”

Sitting there in the subdued light, his face even more unnaturally youthful because one could not see the etching beneath his eyes, he might have been asking me to have a drink. And yet, I suddenly realised that he was committed. He was not just acting like an eminent lawyer doing a good turn for his old college. That was true, but it wasn’t all.

Up to that moment, I had been taking it for granted that, as a natural conservative, his feelings would be on the side of authority. I had also taken it for granted that, as a good professional, he would want the side that brought him down to win. Both these things were true — but they were nothing like all. Reasonable and dégagé as he sounded, he was as much engaged as I was. He was dead set against Howard, and perhaps even more against “his supporters”. Another phrase which he used, in the same high, light, apparently careless tone, was “the Howard faction”.

It was a warning. Now I had had it, I stopped that line of conversation.

Instead I said that it was time we defined what was “common ground”. If we didn’t, there was no chance of old Winslow keeping up with us, or even Crawford, and there would be no end to it.

“I can’t for the life of me,” said Dawson-Hill, once more offhand, professional, “see how they’re going to spin it out beyond Tuesday morning. And that’s giving them all Monday to natter, bless them.”

“Tuesday morning?” I told him he had never lived in a college.

The spirit of personal feeling had passed. We were down to business again.

“All right,” said Dawson-Hill. “Common ground?”

“Do we agree that the photograph in Howard’s thesis, reproduced in his paper, was faked? That is, a deliberate fake by someone ?”

“Agreed.” This was the photograph, with the expanded drawing-pin hole, which had set the affair going.

“Your line, of course, is that it was faked by Howard. Mine is that it was faked by old Palairet. Agreed?”

“Not within the area of common ground,” said Dawson-Hill, sharp on the draw. It was the way we were going to argue, he conceded, but he wouldn’t agree to more. I hadn’t expected him to.

“But I think this,” I said, “must be common ground. The missing photograph in Palairet’s notebook. The caption under that photograph refers, in the opinions of the scientists I’m calling, to a photograph similar to the one in Howard’s thesis and by definition faked. I don’t expect you to admit that the caption does necessarily bear that meaning. But assume that the photograph were not missing and that it was faked — then is it common ground that it must have been faked by Palairet?”

“I don’t see any need to accept that.”

“I see great need.”

“I’m sorry, Lewis, I’m not playing.”

“If you don’t, I shouldn’t be able to leave it there. You see, the Court have listened to the college scientists often enough. I should have to insist on getting scientists from outside to examine Palairet’s notebooks—”