Charles Snow - The Affair

“You can’t do that.”

“Can’t I?”

He stared at me.

“You can’t wash this dirty linen in public, simply to prove a platitude? If there really had been a faked photograph stuck in the old man’s notebook, then it wouldn’t need outside scientists to tell us that in all reasonable probability he must have produced the photograph himself—”

“That’s all I’m asking you to agree on.”

“It’s extremely hypothetical and extremely academic.”

“Well, if necessary, I should want responsible scientists to confirm it.”

“The Seniors wouldn’t be pleased if you brought them in.”

I was sure — and I was counting on it — that he had been warned by the Master and Brown that, whatever he did, none of the proceedings must leak outside.

“I shall have to bring them in,” I said, “unless you and I agree on this as common ground.”

“Do you think the Court would dream for a moment of letting you?”

“In that case, I shall have to make myself more unpleasant than I want to.”

“You wouldn’t do your case any good,” he said. “You wouldn’t do yourself any good, as far as that goes. And it’s remarkably academic anyway. I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you mean it.”

I replied, “Yes, I mean it.”

Dawson-Hill was studying me, his eyes large, not as gay as the rest of the young-seeming face. He had met me as an acquaintance for nearly thirty years. Now he was trying to decide what I was like.

“Right,” he said lightly, without a change of expression. “It’s too trivial to argue over. Common ground.”

Each of us said he had no other point to raise. We smoked cigarettes, looking out into the garden. Soon afterwards, with a cheerful, social good night, he left.

Through the window I caught the scent of syringa mixed with the late-night smell of grass. For an instant it pulled a trigger of memory, flooding me with feelings whose history that night I could not recall. Then my mind started working again in the here and now. I had not told Dawson-Hill that, over the missing photograph, I held a card whose value I was not certain of, and which I was still undecided whether or how to play. But I might have to.

One night a few weeks before, sitting with Martin, working up what I should say before the Seniors, both of us comfortable because we were on the same side, I had asked — what I was sure he had asked himself too — just why that photograph happened to be missing. I had said that of course it could have been an accident. I had gone on to ask whether it could have been deliberate. Neither of us replied: but I believed the same answer was going through our heads.

It had been a half-suspicion of mine for months, ever since, perhaps before, Martin and I had listened to Howard’s outburst, and Martin had threatened him that if anyone else heard him it would ruin his case. It was the kind of suspicion that others must have had, so fantastic, so paranoid, that one did not bring it to the surface. With me, it had flared up as I listened to G S Clark at Brown’s dinner-party.

Last Christmas, before Palairet’s notebooks reached Skeffington, there had only been one person with the chance to handle them. That was Nightingale. Was it credible that Nightingale had seen the photograph first, realised that it was a fake which proved Howard’s story true, and pulled it out?

It didn’t matter what I believed, but only what I could make others believe. If I were going to do the slightest good in front of the Court, I could not myself let out even the hint of a suspicion. That was simple tactics. To Crawford, Brown and Winslow, such a suspicion coming from me, as I acted as Howard’s lawyer, doing my best with his case, would kill that case squalid dead.

And yet, that suspicion might have to be set to work within them. Staring sightlessly at the dark garden, I wasn’t hopeful, I didn’t see the way through. I couldn’t do it. Who could, or would?

NEXT morning I had breakfast late, as I used to when I lived in college. The kidneys and bacon, the hard toast, the coffee: the sunlight through the low windows: the smell of flowers and stone: it gave me a sense of déja vu and in the same instant sharpened the strangeness of the day. Under the speckled sunshine, I read my newspaper. I had asked Martin and the others to leave me alone this first morning before the Court. All I had to do was ring up the head porter and tell him to see that Howard was available in college from half past ten. Then I went back to my newspaper, until the college bell began to toll.

The single note clanged out. It was five to ten, and we were due in the combination room on the hour. I walked through the fresh, empty, sunny court, the bell jangling and jarring through my skull. Through the door which led to the combination room, Arthur Brown, gown flowing behind him, was just going in. Following after him, from the lobby inside the door I borrowed a gown myself.

The bell tolled away, but in the room the four Seniors and Dawson-Hill had all arrived and were standing between the table and the windows. At night, the table dominated the room: but not so in the morning sunlight. The high polish on the rosewood flashed the light back, while outside the lawn shone in the sun. Seven chairs were set at the table, four on the side near the windows, the others on the fireplace side. Before each chair, as at a college meeting, were grouped a blotter, a pile of quarto paper, a steel-nibbed pen, a set of pencils. In addition to the college statutes, in front of the Master’s place loomed a leather-bound Victorian ledger with gold lettering on the back, a collection of Palairet’s notebooks, a slimmer green book also with gold lettering, and at least three large folders stuffed out with papers.

Good mornings sounded all round as I joined them. If these had been my business acquaintances, it crossed my mind, they would have shaken hands: but in the college one shook hands at the most once a year, on one’s first appearance each Michaelmas term. Arthur Brown observed that it was a better day. Nightingale said that we deserved some good weather.

Suddenly, with an emptiness of silence, the bell stopped. Then, a few seconds later, the college clock began to chime ten, and in the distance, like echoes, chimed out other clocks of Cambridge.

“Well, gentlemen,” said Crawford, “I think we must begin.”

Upright, soft-footed, he moved to the chair. On his right sat Winslow, on his left Brown; Nightingale was on the far right, beyond Winslow. They took up the places on the window side. Crawford pointed to the chair opposite Brown, across the table — “Will you station yourself there, Eliot?” Dawson-Hill’s place was opposite Nightingale and Winslow. The seventh chair, which was between Dawson-Hill’s and mine, and which faced the Master’s, was to be kept — so Crawford announced — “for anyone you wish to bring before us”.

Crawford sat, solid, image-like, his eyes unblinking as though they had no lids. He said: “I will ask the Bursar, as the Secretary of the Court of Seniors, to read the last Order.”

The leather-bound ledger was passed via Winslow to Nightingale, who received it with a smile. It was a pleased smile, the smile of someone who thoroughly enjoyed what he was doing, who liked being part of the ritual. Nightingale was wearing a bow-tie, a starched white shirt, and a new dark suit under his gown: he might have been dressed for a college wedding. He read: “A meeting of the Court of Seniors was held on April 22nd 1954. Present the Master, Mr Winslow, Mr Brown, Dr Nightingale. The following Order was passed: ‘That, notwithstanding the decision reached in the Order of April 15th 1951, the Court of Seniors was prepared to hold a further enquiry into the deprivation of Dr D J Howard, in the presence of legal advisers .’ The Order was signed by all members of the Court.