Charles Snow - The Affair

There was another, and a longer, church-like hush. We had finished all the conversation we could make. We had not, we never had, a thought in common. We were both controlling ourselves, ready to wait.

At last Nightingale said: “I wanted to talk to you about this afternoon.”

“Do you?” I replied.

“I should like to know why Getliffe said what he did.”

“He must have felt it was his duty,” I said.

“I take it you were responsible for this?” His voice was still controlled, but there was a strained, creaking note within it.

“I think that, for anything that concerns his actions, you’ll have to ask Getliffe himself. Isn’t that right?”

“Do you imagine for an instant that I can’t see the power behind the scenes?”

“Do you imagine that I or anybody else could persuade Getliffe to say a word he didn’t believe?”

“I want to know why he said this.”

“Now look,” I said, speaking as violently as he had done but more quietly, “this will get you nowhere. The point is, Getliffe has said it. And what he says it’s quite impossible for the Seniors to ignore. That’s the brute fact—”

“Do you think we’re trying to ignore it? What do you think we’ve been doing since we adjourned?”

He emphasised the “we” as though, through being on the Court, he still drew not only strength but pride. I looked straight at him. The bones of his forehead, under the thick, wavy fair hair, were strong. He had crows’ feet beneath his eyes, fine lines on his eyelids. The delicate etching of his skin seemed not to match the heavy, almost acromegalic, bones. His eyes stared full into mine — they were lustrous, innocent eyes, they held feeling but no insight. As we gazed at each other, the corners of his mouth stretched, as if he were using his muscles, his whole physical force, to master himself. He spoke in a voice which, though monotonous, was low, and said: “I hope you’ll listen to me, Eliot.”

I said yes.

“I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye. I don’t know how much I was to blame. I don’t mind telling you this — if I had my time over again, I should try not to say some of the things I’ve said.”

It wasn’t an intense statement. It didn’t contain remorse. Yet it sounded sincere, and curiously business-like.

Before I could reply, he asked me: “I suppose there are some things you’ve said you’d like wiped off the record, aren’t there?”

“Of course.”

That seemed to satisfy him.

“We haven’t always seen eye to eye,” he repeated. “That’s agreed on both sides, but it oughtn’t to affect the issue.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re no man’s fool, Eliot,” he replied, still in the same level, business-like fashion. “You know as well as I do, and better, I shouldn’t be surprised, that this afternoon got us into deep water.”

In contrast to his tone, his stare was illuminated.

“Now I’m asking you to help us out of it,” he said. “I’m asking you to put the past into cold storage and help us out of it.”

I was having to keep myself matter-of-fact. All his energy, his strained obsessive energy, was pouring out of him. His words were flat, yet one wasn’t listening to them but to the force behind them. It made the air in the room seem denser, the light more dim.

“So far as I can see,” I said, “there’s only one conceivable way out.”

He took no notice of me.

“We’ve got into deep water,” he went off again. “You know as well as I do, and a good deal better, that a suspicion was raised this afternoon. We’re intended to suspect that someone may have falsified the books to do this man Howard down. We’re intended to suspect someone. Someone? It might be me.”

I looked at him without speaking.

There was a pause.

He said: “I don’t expect you to worry about that. Why should you? But I tell you that it isn’t the issue. It isn’t what we think of one another. We’ve seen a lot of things happen to one another. I’m not talking about what might happen to either of us now. I don’t expect you to worry about that. But I do expect you to worry about something else.”

He went on: “If this goes on, what’s the end of it going to be? If people begin suspecting as you want them to, then I can tell you the result, and I hope it’s one you haven’t thought of. They suspect someone. All right. I tell you, it might be me. Someone in this college. An officer of this college. What is going to be the effect on the place?”

He was speaking very fast, half-inarticulately, but with passion.

“I’d give a lot to keep the college out of danger, Eliot. I hope you would. I don’t mind saying, it’s done everything for me. I don’t mean when I was a young man. A bright young man ought to be able to look after himself. No, it’s done everything for me when I was afraid I was going to peter out. They trusted me. They gave me an office. It’s the only thing anyone’s ever elected me to. I’ve done my best not to let them down. I tell you, that office is the best thing that ever happened to me. Do you wonder that I’m not prepared to see anything bad happen to this place? That’s why I’m talking to you. I’d give all I’ve got to keep it safe.”

I believed him. I believed him without the flicker of a doubt. It wasn’t the easy-natured who were most seized by this kind of loyalty. It wasn’t the successful: old Gay had as little as a man could reasonably have. It wasn’t the self-sufficient. No, most of all it was those like Nightingale who were self-absorbed without being self-sufficient. For an instant, I wondered, was that also true of Howard? When I heard his mumbling statement that he was thinking of the college, I had thought he was confused, I had dismissed it. Was I being too sceptical, were these two alike in that one spot? Was it possible, when Howard gave his reason for not suing the college, a reason which he only half-admitted to himself, that it was true?

With Nightingale, the force of his feeling beat down on me. It was so strong that, not only recognising it but overcome, I lost all certainty of what he was like, much less what he had, or had not, done. I could not be sure at that moment whether I believed he had ripped out the photograph in cold blood. All I was sure of was this ferocious, self-bound loyalty. Whether I suspected him or not, had become remote or indeed meaningless. And yet I could simultaneously and quite easily imagine that if the photograph had come his way, and if it seemed to threaten his idea of the college’s honour, then he would have had it out — without his conscience being troubled, even though it meant victimising Howard, because this was an act of conscience too.

I had to struggle to keep detached, that is, detached enough not to give a point away.

I replied: “No one wants to do the college the slightest harm.”

“I’m glad to hear you say it.”

“No one,” I said, picking out the words, “would want to press the suspicion you mentioned further than he had to. But—”

“Yes?”

“As I said before, there’s only one conceivable way out. If the Seniors can change their decision against Howard, then no one’s going to cause any unnecessary trouble. But if the Seniors can’t change their decision, then I’m afraid it would be very difficult to stop.”

He was waiting for me to continue, but I had finished. The telephone rang. I could hear him replying to the porter’s lodge, saying that he wouldn’t be long. He looked at me, his eyes shining: “Is that all?”

“I can’t say any more tonight.”

“Do you want to speak to your — friends?”

I said: “That would make no difference.”

He acted as though exhilarated, and not disappointed. He seemed only to have heard the half of my reply, the anodyne half. He seemed not to have grasped what the reply meant. Or perhaps he was still borne up by the excitement of having spoken without restraint. Cheerfully, in a tone hearty and almost friendly, he said that he would have to go, his wife was waiting for him in the car outside the college. Together we walked down the stairs and through the courts. Nightingale looked up at the sky, where the first stars were coming out: “Now I call this something like weather.”