Charles Snow: The Affair

“Stay here a few minutes,” he said. He smiled at Martin: “He can find his own way to your bedroom, can’t he? After all, he’s done it plenty of times, more than you have, I suppose. And I don’t get many chances to talk to him these days.”

Martin said that it was time he went home to his wife. Like me, he suspected that Arthur Brown was not just idly keeping me back for the sake of company. When we were left alone, Brown made sure that I was settled in the chair opposite to him. He became more than ever hospitable and deliberate. “More brandy?”

No, I wouldn’t drink any more that night.

“Old chap,” he said, “it’s very nice to see you sitting there again.”

He had always been fond of me. At times he had defended and looked after me. Now he had the warm, sharp-edged, minatory affection that one feels for a protégé who has done pretty well. Was everything going all right? How was my wife? My son?

“So everything’s reasonably smooth just now, is it? That’s perfectly splendid. Do you know, Lewis, there was a time when I was afraid things weren’t going to turn out smooth for you.”

He gave me a kind, satisfied smile. Then he said, quite casually: “By the way, when you were talking about the Master’s picture, it just crossed my mind that you might have heard something. I suppose you haven’t, by any chance, have you?”

“No,” I said, surprised.

Brown said: “No, of course, I thought you couldn’t have.”

His expression was steady and unperturbed.

“Just for a moment, though on second thoughts I can see you couldn’t have been, I fancied you might be casting a fly.”

I shook my head, but now I thought I was following him.

“Well, what’s happening?” I said.

“The trouble is,” said Brown with satisfied gravity, “I’m not quite sure how much I’m at liberty to tell you. The whole matter is very much at the stage where no one has wanted to come out in the open. In my judgment the longer they put it off the more chance we have of avoiding ructions and coming to a decent conclusion.”

“What’s the point?” I asked again.

Brown pursed his lips. “Well, within these four walls, I think I’m not breaking any obligations if I tell you this. When the present Master retires, which is at the end of next year, not the academic but the calendar year, some of the society have asked me whether I would consider offering myself as a candidate.”

Yes, I had got there five minutes before. But, until he began to talk, I had not been expecting it. I had taken it for granted that Francis Getliffe had the next Mastership in the bag. On and off over the last two years, I had heard it discussed. The only name that anyone mentioned seriously was that of Francis.

“Who are your backers, Arthur?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “without their permission I don’t think that I ought to specify them at this stage, but I believe they’d let me say that there are enough of them to make the suggestion not entirely frivolous. And I think I might indicate that there were one or two of them recently present in this room.”

He was smiling blandly. He did not seem anxious, elated or depressed.

“If I were to ask for your advice whether to let my candidature go forward or not, Lewis, I wonder what you’d say?”

I hesitated. They were both friends of mine, and I was glad that I should be out of it. But I was hesitating for a different reason. I was afraid, despite what Brown had just said, that he would get few votes — perhaps so few as to be humiliating. I did not like the thought of that. I could not see any college not preferring Francis Getliffe when it came to the point.

“I think I know what’s in your mind,” Brown was saying. “You’re thinking that our friend Francis is out of comparison a more distinguished man than I am, and of course you’re right. I’ve never made any secret of it, I should be satisfied to see Francis Getliffe as Master of this college. Between ourselves, there are only three distinguished men here, and he’s one of them, the other two being the present Master and I suppose we’ve still got to say old Gay. I’ve never had delusions about myself, I think you’ll grant me that, old chap. I’ve never been really first rate at anything. It used to depress me slightly when I was a young man.”

He meant, I knew, precisely what he said. He was genuinely humble: he did not credit himself with any gifts at all.

I said: “I was thinking something quite different.”

Brown went on: “No, it’s perfectly right that the college should consider whether they could put up with an undistinguished person like me, in comparison with a very distinguished one like Francis. But one or two members of the society have put an interesting point of view which has made me think twice before saying no once and for all. Their view is that we’ve just had a Master of great external distinction, even more so than Francis’. So one or two people have represented to me that the college can afford someone who wasn’t much known outside but who could keep things going reasonably well among ourselves. And they paid me the compliment of suggesting that I might have my uses in that respect.”

“They are dead right,” I said.

“No,” he said, “you’ve always thought too much of me. Anyway, some time within the next twelve months I shall have to decide whether to let my name go forward. Of course, it’s my last chance and it isn’t Francis’. Perhaps I should be justified in taking that into account. Well, I’ve got plenty of time to make up my mind. I don’t know which way I shall come down.”

He had, of course, already “come down”. He was thinking, I was sure — although he had no vanity, he was a master-politician — about how his supporters ought to be handling his campaign and about how much more capably he would do it in their place. He was thinking too, I guessed, that it had been useful to talk to me, apart from warmth, affection and reciprocal support. I believed that he was hoping I should mention this conversation to Martin.

ABOUT half past twelve the next morning, which was a Sunday, Martin and I were sitting in one of his window seats gazing over the court. On the far wall, most of the leaves of creeper had fallen by now, but in the milky sunlight one or two gleamed, nearer scarlet than orange. Martin was just saying to me — did I notice one difference from before the war? There were no kitchen servants carrying trays round the paths, green baize over the trays. Martin was saying that for him green baize was what he first remembered about the college, when the telephone rang.

As he answered it, I heard him reply: “Yes, I can come. Glad to.” Then he was listening to another question, and answered: “I’ve got my brother Lewis here. He’ll do for one, won’t he?” Martin put the receiver down and said, “The Bursar’s polishing off some conveyances, and he wants us to go and sign our names.”

“Is he working on Sunday?”

“He enjoys himself so much,” said Martin with a sharp but not unfriendly grin.

As we climbed up the Bursary staircase, which was in the same court, Nightingale had thrown open the door and was waiting for us.

“I must say, it’s good of you to come.” He shook hands with me. He greeted me with a kind of cagey official courtesy, as though anxious to seem polite. He was much better at it than he used to be, I thought. When we had both lived in the college, we had never got on. So far as I had had an enemy, it had been he. Now he was shaking hands, as though we had been, not friends exactly, but at any rate friendly acquaintances.

He was getting on for sixty, but he had kept his fair wavy hair, and he was well-preserved. He did not look anything like so strained as he used to. Several times I had heard Martin and others saying that he was a man whose life had been saved by the war. When I knew him, he had been a scientist who had not come off, and at the same time an embittered bachelor. But he happened, so it seemed, to be one of those people who were made for the military life. He had had a hard war, spectacularly hard for a man of his age: he had been decorated, as he had been in 1917, and he finished up as a brigadier. On top of that, while in hospital, he had managed to get married to a nurse. When he returned, people in the college thought he was transformed. They were so impressed that they wanted to do something for him. As it happened, the Bursar died suddenly: and almost unanimously, or so I gathered, they had given Nightingale the job. They all said that he loved it. No incumbent had ever spent so much time in the bursarial office. As he showed us in, his whole manner was active and proud.