Charles Snow - The Affair

“I’m sorry to drag you up here, Martin,” he said, “but there’s no point in letting things pile up.”

“That would be very serious, wouldn’t it?” Martin was teasing him. I was surprised to see that the two of them were on such easy terms. Yet I ought to have known that when, as with Nightingale and me, two people dislike each other without reason, or more strongly than reason justifies, either of them often tends to make it up with some close attachment of the other.

The Bursary was like a lawyer’s office, the walls piled with metal boxes painted black, letters standing out in white. From the window one could see the hall and lodge, newly washed, light gold Ketton stone in the autumn sun. The room was full of the smell of melted wax.

“I don’t know whether you’ve ever taken part in a sealing, Martin,” Nightingale said with bustling officious pride. “I’m afraid we shall have to leave you out of this one, Eliot,” he turned to me, with the same pleasure in performing the ceremonies, in getting the ritual right. “Only present Fellows are allowed to sign after the college seal. When I put the seal on, I am afraid that for our purpose ex-Fellows don’t exist.” He gave a triumphant smile.

In the mould the wax shone crimson and he tested it with the tip of a finger. Steadily, with a scientist’s precision, he laid the wafer-covered seal on top, closed the mould, and took it to an antiquated iron vice. He spun the arm of the vice round and back, putting pressure on the mould: then he brought it out, replaced it on the table, and undid it. “If it hasn’t taken,” he said, “I shall just have to do it again, of course.”

Meticulously he studied the wax.

“No, it’s all right,” he cried.

As a matter of fact, the result was not startling: for on each side of the impress was a wafer of paper, so that all one could see were indentations something like a faint brass rubbing.

“Now, Martin, if you don’t mind,” said Nightingale, “will you sign on this line here? I shall want another Fellow’s signature, of course. I’ve asked Skeffington to come along. To make it absolutely watertight he ought to have witnessed the sealing too, but I think I’m prepared to stretch a point.”

Within a few minutes, Skeffington had entered the office, while Nightingale was cleaning the great seal. As Skeffington wrote his name on the line beneath Martin’s, Nightingale with delicate, patient fingers extracted fragments of wax. Then reverently he laid the seal on the table in front of us.

“It is a beautiful thing, isn’t it?” he said.

It was not really beautiful. It was a piece of fifteenth-century silver-work, heavy and over-elaborate. Nightingale looked at it as though there could not be a more delectable sight. To him it was lovely. He looked at it with piety for all it meant to him. He had had so many grudges, he had never trusted anyone; he had longed for the college to trust him, and had not expected them to. Now here he was in the Bursary. What to most men would already have become a habit, was to him a delight, a security, a joy.

“Well,” he said, “now this is where Eliot comes in. If you don’t mind filling in your present address and occupation, we want those too. You’re not allowed to put ‘sometime Fellow of the College’, I’m afraid.”

His voice was gleeful. He liked reminding himself that others — particularly me, that morning — were outside the charmed circle, that they did not possess the mana of the college, the mana that he shared in and loved.

After we had signed, Nightingale brought out a bottle of sherry and three glasses. It was a surprise to me, for he had always been a teetotaller, the only one in the college in my time. He still was, so it appeared: but somehow, he was explaining, he always liked to let people celebrate a sealing.

As we were drinking the sherry and getting ready to go, Martin pointed to one of the black boxes on which was painted, in white letters, PROFESSOR C J B PALAIRET, FRS.

“Howard’s professor,” he remarked.

“What?” I said.

“The old man Howard worked with. Francis G was telling you about him last night.”

Even now, I was slow to pick up the reference. In the Howard affair I was an outsider; it still meant nothing to me. Whereas they had been living within the situation. They had kept it to themselves; so all three in that room, together with Brown, Getliffe, Orbell and the others, had lived within the situation more completely even than a society as closed as theirs was used to doing. They all knew every move that had been made.

“The old man’s left a nice bequest to the college, I’m glad to say,” said Nightingale. “Which makes it all the worse.”

“It was a bad enough show anyway, God knows,” said Skeffington. “But I agree, that last gambit — that’s more than anyone can take.”

Just for a second, they were showing their anger. Then Nightingale said: “Wait a minute. I suppose we oughtn’t to discuss it while Eliot is with us, ought we?”

I was irritated. I said: “I’m not quite a stranger here, you know.”

“I’m sorry,” said Nightingale. “But I believe that no one outside the college ought to have heard a word.”

“Arthur Brown and Getliffe didn’t take that view. They were talking to me about it last night.”

“I’m sorry. But I think they’re wrong.”

“I also heard some of it from Howard’s wife,” I said, “and I can’t for the life of me see how you’re going to keep her quiet.”

“We shall keep it all quiet enough for our purposes,” said Nightingale.

When we had left Nightingale alone in the Bursary, and the three of us were walking through the court, Skeffington said: “Bad mark from the Bursar. Loose talk.”

He was a very tall man, and he threw back his head. Just as I had been irritated, so was he. He was a man of means, he had been a regular officer in the Navy: he did not like being what he called “ticked off”. He seemed arrogant and also vain: vain of his striking looks, among other things, I thought. He had strong features, a fleshy chin and handsome eyes; they were the kind of looks that seem to chime with riches, an influential family, an easy life. Nevertheless, he had not chosen such an easy life as he could have had. He was about Martin’s age, just under forty: his career in the Navy had been going according to plan, when he decided that he wanted to make himself into a scientist. That had happened just after the war, and at thirty-two he had started as an undergraduate, taken his degree, and then gone on to research. It was only two years since the college had elected him a research fellow. Academically he was junior not only to Martin and his other contemporaries, but to young men like Tom Orbell. His Fellowship was not yet a permanent one, and within the college he was on probation.

“The Bursar would have been right, if it had been anyone but you, don’t you think?” Martin said to me. He was himself tight-mouthed as a clam.

“The trouble is,” I said, “keeping it a secret as you have done — if ever the story breaks, you’re in a worse mess than ever, aren’t you?”

“There’s something in that,” said Skeffington.

“There’s something in it. But it’s not the whole story,” said Martin. We had stopped at the foot of his staircase. “We took the risk into account. You don’t think we were all that careless, do you?”

“If I’d been you,” I replied, “I’m sure I should have wanted the college to come right out with it as soon as you’d made up your minds.”

“And I’m moderately sure that you’d have been wrong. The point is,” said Martin, “we’ve got enough against this man so that it’s a fair bet he’ll have to go on holding his tongue. Then if he doesn’t hold his tongue, we shall have to bring it all into the open and explain in so many words why we’ve been keeping it dark—”