Charles Snow - The Affair

The Court regrouped itself in the combination room; the blind was pulled down; there was a smell of beeswax, furniture polish, Crawford’s tobacco, honeysuckle from the terrace.

The butler cried out, as though rejoicing in the title: “Sir Francis Getliffe!”

As Francis sat down, Crawford said: “We are very sorry to drag you here on a Sunday afternoon.”

“I should be distressed if anyone worried about that, Master.”

“We know it’s an infliction, but we hope you realise that we’re grateful for your assistance.”

“It couldn’t possibly be an infliction, Master, if I can be of the slightest help—”

It was some time since I had seen Francis at a meeting. I had forgotten that, especially when uneasy, he took on a curious, stylised courtesy like a Spaniard in a play by Calderón.

Looking at him, my eyes made fresh by the tension so that I might have been looking at him for the first time, I thought that his face, also, might have been a seventeenth-century Spaniard’s. In shape, that is: long, thin, without much of a dome to the head. Not in colouring: the skin under the sunburn was pale and the eyes in the arched orbits were a kind of tawny yellow that I had seen only in Anglo-Saxons. They were splendid eyes, I suddenly realised, idealist’s eyes, conceptualiser’s eyes. Under them the skin was stained sepia and furrowed: those were the stains of anxious wear, the demands he had made upon himself, and they would not leave him now. The whole face was that of a man who had ridden himself hard, driven by purpose, ambition, and conscience.

Examining him, I began slowly. I wanted to get the courtesy peeled away. It didn’t matter whether the Court thought I was spinning out the routine, making the best of a bad job. As I went over the old history, asking when he had first heard of the scandal, whether he had looked at Howard’s published papers, formal questions of no interest, I could see Dawson-Hill, lounging in his chair as though this was dull stuff.

“For some time you took it for granted that Howard had faked the photograph in his paper?”

“Certainly.”

“Accordingly, you accepted the verdict of the Court of Seniors, when they first deprived him?”

“In any circumstances I should want very strong reasons not to accept the verdict of the Court of Seniors of this college,” said Francis, inclining his head to the Master and Brown, “and in these circumstances I thought their verdict was inevitable.”

“When did you begin to think otherwise?”

“Later than I should have done.”

That was better. His voice, light-toned and clear, had suddenly hardened.

“You began to think a mistake might have been made?”

“I should like to be clear about the word ‘mistake’.”

“Let me ask you this instead. You began to think the Court had made a wrong decision?”

“I tried to explain that to them. Obviously I didn’t go far enough.”

Francis was now speaking with full authority. This was it, I thought. I was just going in for the coup , when, maddened, I had to stop. There was one person who was not listening, either to full authority or anything else. Old Winslow, sedated by the heat and the glasses of hock, had nodded off, his nutcracker chin sunk low on his chest.

I stopped the question after the first word. Crawford enquired: “Eliot?”

I pointed at Winslow.

“Ah,” said Crawford, without expression. “None of us is as young as he used to be.” Gently he tugged at Winslow’s gown.

The old man reluctantly, with saurian slowness, pulled up his head. Then he gave a smile rueful, red-lidded, curiously boyish.

“I apologise, Master,” he said.

Crawford asked with medical consideration if he was all right. “Perfectly all right, I thank you,” said Winslow snappily, reaching out for the carafe of water in front of the Master’s place. “Please resume your remarkable proceedings,” he said to me.

With an eye on him, intent on keeping him awake, I asked Francis: “You were saying that you hadn’t gone far enough?”

“Certainly not.”

“What do you now think you should have done?”

Francis answered, clear and hard: “You asked me just now about a ‘mistake’. I didn’t accept the word. I ought to have drawn the Seniors’ attention to what may — I do not say it was, but I do say most seriously that it may have been worse than a mistake.”

There was no noise. Along the table I saw Nightingale, pen over the foolscap, in the middle of a note. He did not look up at Francis.

“I’m afraid I’ve not quite caught the drift of this,” said Crawford. “Could you elucidate?”

“I’ll try,” said Francis. “I’ve never concealed my view that throughout this business Howard has behaved like an innocent and not very intelligent man. I’ve told you before that I believe his account of what happened is substantially accurate. I believe that most scientists who studied the facts would come to the same conclusion. They would, of course, as a consequence, have to accept that Palairet did this fraud.”

“As the Master was saying to Martin Eliot before luncheon,” said Brown, “that is just where we fundamentally disagree with him.”

“How can you?” Francis spoke in a quiet tone, brittle but inflexible. “You’ve only been able to go on persuading yourselves because of one single fact. If that one photograph were present in Palairet’s notebook, not one of you could even pretend to think that he wasn’t responsible.”

“The photograph, however, is not present,” Crawford replied. “That is what I meant by something possibly being worse than a mistake.”

“If I understand your innuendo correctly,” said Brown, “you—”

“I am not making an innuendo. I am stating a possibility as clearly as I can. I believe the Court would be culpable if it did not take this possibility into account. It is: that the photograph now missing from Palairet’s notebook was removed not by accident, but in order either to preserve Palairet’s reputation or to continue justifying the dismissal of Howard.”

“That is a very grave thing to say,” said Arthur Brown. He was frowning, but not showing anger. I had no doubt that all the implications of what Francis had said were running through that cunning, politic mind — and at the same time outraging his feelings, because, tough and obstinate as he was, he was not willing that people should think he had done wrong or that he should think so himself.

“I know it,” said Francis.

Beyond Winslow, Nightingale was no longer writing and was gazing, together with the entire Court, at Francis. The lines on Nightingale’s skin were visible, but no more than usual on a tiring day. The furrows ran across his forehead.

“I know it’s a grave thing to say,” Francis repeated. “I must ask the Court to remember that I’ve said it.”

WITHOUT another question, I told the Master that I had finished. Crawford turned to Dawson-Hill.

“Will you kindly proceed, then?”

Crawford’s speech was as deliberate as usual, his moonface took on its formal, meaningless smile: but behind his spectacles his eyes had a smeared, indecisive look.

Dawson-Hill was in a dilemma. He was too shrewd a man, too good a lawyer, not to have seen the crisis coming. It was not, however, the kind of crisis with which he had been trained to deal. Behind closed doors: the shut-in, senatorial faces: not an open word from any of the Court: not a name mentioned. And yet the feeling in the room had tightened like a field of force. Without any guide he had to judge that feeling.

It seemed to me that he had two choices. Either take the risk, come right out with it, ask who could have touched the photograph: or else damp the whole thing down, be respectful and polite to Francis, but get him out of the way and play for time.