Charles Snow - The Affair

She chuckled. “To tell you the truth,” she said, “I’ve only got one ambition for the old thing now. That is, for him to retire. That’s the only one.”

Francis smiled at her. It had been a good marriage. But just at that instant, as she said “that’s the only one”, he couldn’t lie to himself or even pretend to us that it was the only one for him.

THE next morning, Sunday, the Court of Seniors were sitting at the combination room table waiting. They were waiting for Skeffington. He had been asked to be ready at half past ten. There was no sign of him.

Impatiently, on edge because he was my witness, I went to the window and gazed into the sunny court. Turning back to the table, I asked Crawford if he would like me to ring up Skeffington’s house. Just as he was replying, the butler came in. He told the Master that Dr Skeffington was in the college; the head porter had seen him enter the chapel nearly half an hour before; he had still not reappeared.

“Thank you, Newby,” said Crawford. “Bring him in as soon as he’s available, if you don’t mind.”

When we were alone again, Brown told us that there was no service in chapel between eight and eleven that day. “He must be praying,” said Brown. “That’s what I get round to. He must be praying.”

He added: “Well, God forbid that I should cause any of His little ones to stumble, but I wish the man weren’t such an infernal time about it.”

“I’m very ignorant of these necromantic proceedings,” said Winslow, “but I take it that Skeffington isn’t attempting to bring supernatural influences to bear on our actions in this room? Or am I wrong?”

The old man was happy. He felt as though back in the Cambridge of the ’90s, when unbelief, rude, positive unbelief, was fun. As he proceeded to inform the Court with relish, he still had exactly as much interest in “religious exercises” as he had in the magic of savage tribes.

“I suppose Skeffington would like us to see a difference between his activities and rain-making. But I confess I think it’s a major intellectual error to endow his activities with a sophistication that they don’t inherently possess. I must say, praying before giving evidence does seem a singular example of sympathetic magic. I find it a very remarkable thing for a supposedly intelligent man to do.”

So, in private, did Crawford. Did Brown, who punctiliously attended college chapel, but, I often thought, out of social, not religious, piety, out of attachment to established things? It was neither they nor Nightingale who protested — but, from the opposite side of the table, Dawson-Hill, who said: “I don’t find it remarkable in the least, you know.”

“Really?”

“I should have thought it was entirely natural.”

Dawson-Hill smiled, self-possessed, unabashed. I should have remembered that he was a devout Catholic. I was ready for him to remind us that he had been to Mass that morning, but at that moment the butler loudly called out Skeffington’s name.

I cut my own examination short. Skeffington had nothing new to say, the Court had heard his opinion, fervent and lofty, times enough before. Everything fitted into place, once one saw Palairet had done it: the thing clicked, as it had clicked for him when he went through the notebooks: the missing photograph “told its own story”: Palairet had done it, and nothing else was “on the cards”.

I passed him on to Dawson-Hill, expecting them to be easy with each other. From the first question and answer, they couldn’t get on. It wasn’t that Skeffington gave anything away; it wasn’t that Dawson-Hill had thought of anything subtle. No, they just twitched a nerve of resentment in each other. Their eyes met only perfunctorily. Their handsome profiles were half-averted. Each of them was aware of his looks, I thought — to an extent which apparently irritated, not only more homely men, but also each other. Dawson-Hill took considerable care of his; his hair, that morning showing not a sliver of grey, was as burnished as an elegant undergraduate’s. Was it the other’s vanity each didn’t like? They were both looking-glass vain.

There was more to it than that. Dawson-Hill saw someone “out of the same stable” as himself, belonging to just the same pocket of the upper middle-class, where smartness was making its last stand. That made the nerve of resentment quiver, when he found him hostile, in the enemy camp, in a case like this. Despite his tolerance, his free and easy sense of fairness — Dawson-Hill was not devoid of either — he could not help feeling that this man should be on his side.

Then I thought again what I had thought the night before. What made Skeffington resentful was that, in everything but his sense of honour, he felt it too. Speaking before the Court that morning, he would have liked not to have quarrelled with their ruling. He wanted to become one of them — or rather, he did not so much want it as think that was his proper place. One could hear that wish-to-accept in his voice; it made him angrier with Dawson-Hill, with the Court, with all who disagreed with him. It made his rebellion more peremptory.

Round the table the Seniors were listening to him with formal politeness, not attention. He hadn’t made much effect that day, but such as it was, it had been negative.

I was relieved to see him go.

Martin, who came in next, said precisely what he had contracted to say. He did not speak about the missing photograph. On all other points, he was careful, considerate, and unbudging. For himself, he said, he was convinced an injustice had been done. He could understand why others might not be convinced: wasn’t it enough for them to see that an injustice might have been done? He was too practised a committee man to overstate his case: but he was also too practised to seem compromising where he didn’t intend to be.

Dawson-Hill tried a few sighting-shots of questions, but then left him alone, with the final word: “What it boils down to, if I understand you, is that, in a matter which is full of room for different opinions, you are giving the Court yours?”

“I think,” said Martin, “it is rather more than that.”

Crawford asked him the questions he had asked me, about Palairet and scientific fraud. Martin, more cautious than I had been, and a better judge of the Court, would not be drawn, except to say that he was forced to think Palairet had done it.

“Well, Martin,” said Crawford, with a cordiality not so impersonal as usual, “that may be the point where we have to agree to differ.”

When Martin had gone, and the rest of us went into the Lodge for lunch, I was sure that Dawson-Hill believed it was all over. He showed me the teasing and slightly guilty kindness that one shows to a rival who has done his best, when the best isn’t good enough. I was also sure that not one of the Court was ready to change his mind. It was true, Brown as well as Crawford had not been quite unaffected by Martin. The most Martin had done was to make Brown reflect that they hadn’t “handled the responsible chaps on the other side” too well. After they had “dug in their heels about this case” — Brown felt immovably that that was his duty — then they would have to spend some time and care “building bridges”.

Brown sipped a glass of hock with sober content, Dawson-Hill reminisced about travels down the Rhine, old Winslow put away three glasses. Then Brown noticed that I was not touching mine. “You’re not drinking, Lewis?”

“It’s very fine,” Dawson-Hill said. “You oughtn’t to miss it, you really oughtn’t to.” I said, not in the middle of the day. Brown was peering at me. He had noticed that I had been sitting silent. Did he suspect that I had not yet given up?