Charles Snow - The Affair

Nightingale raised his head from his notes.

“Eliot hasn’t answered the Master’s question, I think.”

“No—” I was beginning, but Nightingale went on: “You’ve suggested, though of course we know the suggestion isn’t your own invention, and we’re none of us holding you to blame—”

He smiled quite openly, smoothing the lines from his face — “But you’ve suggested that a distinguished old man has gone in for a bit of scientific forgery, so to speak. And mind you, and I want to stress this once again to everyone here, a very petty bit of scientific forgery at that. I mean, this work of Howard’s, or the work that’s referred to in Notebook V, is trivial compared with the old man’s real contribution. Nothing of this kind could possibly have added one per cent to his reputation. You’re asking us to believe that a man absolutely established, right at the top of his particular tree, is going to commit forgery for the sake of that? Putting it in its lowest terms, I’m sorry, but it just doesn’t wash. I think it’s up to you to answer the Master’s question.”

Brown turned his head towards Nightingale. Crawford nodded.

Until then, I had not known how the Court worked among themselves. I had had no sense of the balance of power. It was clear, the instant one noticed the others listening to Nightingale, that we outside had underestimated him. He carried more weight than I liked. Not that he had been offensive to me; he was brisk, efficient, impersonal, speaking to me as though we were acquaintances doing a piece of business. That impersonal tone was a strength. And it was another strength, of course, that he was immersed in the detail. More than anyone there, he knew what he was talking about.

“I can’t say anything very useful, as I didn’t know Palairet,” I replied to Crawford. “But do you want me to say why I don’t think it’s impossible?”

“We should be interested,” said Crawford.

I caught sight of Dawson-Hill along the table. His eyelids were pulled down in a half-smile of ridicule, or perhaps of professional sympathy. It seemed incredible to him, not used to academic meetings, that they should have rushed off in chase of this red herring. No rules, no relevance, in Dawson-Hill’s terms, but instead they had obstinately got their heads down to the psychology of scientific fraud.

I did my best. I reproduced the names and anecdotes Francis Getliffe had told me, when we first talked about the affair, before the Audit Feast. Those frauds had happened. We knew nothing, or almost nothing, about the motives. In no case did money come in — in one, conceivably, the crude desire to get a job. The rest were quite mysterious. If one had known any of the men intimately, would one have understood?

Anyone’s guess was as good as mine. But it didn’t seem impossible to imagine what might have led some of them on, especially the more distinguished, those in positions comparable with Palairet’s. Wasn’t one of the motives a curious kind of vanity? “I have been right so often. I know I’m right this time. This is the way the world was designed. If the evidence isn’t forthcoming, then just for the present I’ll produce the evidence. It will show everyone that I am right. Then no doubt in the future, others will do experiments and prove how right I was.” The little I had picked up about Palairet — it didn’t seem right out of his nature. I knew, I said to Winslow, that he gave one the impression of being a modest man. I should be prepared to believe that was true. But there was a kind of modesty and a kind of vanity which were hard to tell apart — and mightn’t they, in fact, be one and the same thing? Reading the rubrics in his notebook, couldn’t one at least think it possible that the aura of his personality had that particular tinge? Couldn’t one at least imagine him getting old and impatient, knowing he hadn’t much time, working on his last problem, not an important one, if you like, but one he was certain he knew the answer to? Certain that he knew how the world was designed? Almost as though it was the world designed by him . And mixed with that, perhaps, a spirit of mischief, such as one sometimes finds in the vain-and-modest — “this is what I can get away with”.

Catching Brown’s gaze, I knew that I had made a mistake. It was not just that his mind was made up against Howard. It was also that he didn’t like or trust what I was saying. He was a man of genuine insight, the only one on the Court. He knew the people around him with accuracy, compassion and great realism. But, although he had that insight, he had no use for psychological imaginings. As a rule, even when we were on opposite sides, he thought me sensible about people. This time, he was dismissing me as too clever by half.

It had been an awkward situation, and I had mishandled it. Under the pressure from Crawford and Nightingale, I had had no option except to take a risk, but I had shown bad judgment. Looking round the Court, I had to recognise that I had done more harm than good.

AFTER the aside on Palairet, Crawford pushed the combination room bell, and the butler carried in a tray, on which a coffee-pot and jug struck sparks from the sunlight. He was followed by a servant, carrying cups upon another of the massive college trays. The Court settled down to drink their coffee. Dawson-Hill was interested in the silverware. What was the date of the trays? he asked, and Brown, behaving as though this were a comfortable party after hall, replied with care. Dawson-Hill began asking about eighteenth-century silversmiths. Each appeared to regard it as the most reasonable of conversations.

It was the kind of phlegm, oblivious of time, that I had met, chafed against and envied, learned to imitate without truly possessing, all my official life. Men of affairs weren’t sprinters: they weren’t tied to the clock: if you hurried them when they didn’t propose to be hurried, you were not one of them.

The college clock was chiming a quarter past eleven before the trays were taken away. Crawford, settled in his chair, addressed me: “Well, Eliot, I understand this is the stage in our proceedings when you would like to bring Howard in?”

I said yes. Crawford rang. After a wait of minutes, the door opened. First the butler, with a figure behind him. At the first sight, entering at the dark end of the room, Howard looked pale, ill-tempered, glowering. With one hand he was pulling his gown across his chest.

“Good morning,” said Crawford, “do sit down.”

Howard stood still, undecided where he should go, although there was only the one chair vacant in front of him.

“Won’t you sit down?” said Crawford, as though standing up might be a curious preference.

Polite, active, Dawson-Hill jumped up and guided Howard into the chair. Once again, Crawford seemed disinclined to take part himself. He merely asked Howard if he would mind answering questions put to him by “our colleagues”, and then called on me to begin.

Turning half-left in my seat, trying to make Howard look at me — he was a yard away along the table — I could not get his eye. He was staring, and when I spoke to him he continued to stare, not at Brown but past him, into the corner of the room, where motes were jigging in parallel beams of sun. He was staring with mechanical concentration, as though he were watching a spider build its web.

All I could do with him, I had decided in cold blood weeks before, was to make everything sound as matter-of-fact as I could manage. So I started off on his career: he had come up to the college in 1939, hadn’t he? And then he had joined the Army in ’41? He could have stayed and gone on with his physics — how had he managed to avoid being kept as a scientist?