Charles Snow - The Affair

There was a murmur of voices from inside the house, and Irene left us. I heard her saying from the passage between her kitchen and the Clarks’, “Yes, he’s here.”

“I know it,” came Hanna’s voice, clear, the intonation off-English.

The two women came into the drawing-room and walked towards us, Hanna neat and catlike by Irene’s side. The previous year, Hanna had been letting herself go: but now her hair, which had strayed grey and wispy, was glossy black again, trim on the shapely Hamitic head. Despite her age she had preserved, or re-attained, something of the look of a student — an intelligent, well-groomed student, eager, argumentative, ratty.

“I can’t stay long,” she said, refusing to sit down.

I pointed to her husband, doing another limp across the lawn. “I know. He will tire himself.” For an instant she spoke like a nurse.

Then she said: “He appears before the Court tomorrow? You know that?”

I replied that of course I did.

“This is all beastly!” cried Hanna. “This is rotten!” She was angry with me because she was having to be disloyal. Whatever feeling she had had for Clark had been corroded: but she was a woman who wanted to be loyal, who thought she would have been happy being loyal, and somehow luck and history had always tripped her up. She wanted to be loyal to a cause, to be loyal to a man. She did not like to lead a shabby life. Her politics were pure and unpersonal, she was not predatory in her human relations. And yet, for reasons which with all her intelligence she did not understand, she was constantly finding herself in traps like this.

“I thought you must be warned. He will say” — she glanced with black eyes on to the lawn — “that Howard does not know what truth is. He will give examples about Howard talking of his scientific work.”

She went on: “ He believes that no one with Howard’s opinions has any conception of truth at all. Or any other of the private virtues. He believes that. He means what he says. That is the strength.”

She cried: “Are you ready for that, Lewis?”

“I think so.”

“Don’t underestimate him.”

I said that I didn’t, which was true. But Hanna would have liked a more fiery response. With an ill-tempered toss of her head she said: “I never know where I am with you Anglo-Saxons. I never know when you’re going to be soft and when you’re going to be tough. Living your life, Lewis, I suppose you must have had to be tough in your time.”

Martin told her gently: “He’ll have it in hand.”

“Will he?” she asked.

Once more she refused to sit down. She could not stay long, she said, watching for Clark to begin his climb into the house. But she did stay just long enough to give a display of subtlety. How many of the younger Fellows had I seen, said Hanna, mondaine, brimming with the sophistication of Central Europe, travelled, experienced, twice-married, since I arrived in the College? She didn’t mean Howard, of course — for whom, being vixenish as well as subtle that night, she expressed contempt. “The dullest sort of left-wing camp-follower.” She didn’t mean Howard — but which of the others, she said with an inconsequence so airy that it knocked one down, had I managed to see?

It showed the subtlety of a schoolgirl of sixteen. I saw Irene’s eyes, narrow and sly, glinting towards Martin. They were both amused, but they were amused with a touch of concern. For Martin and I were fond of Hanna, and so, more oddly, was Irene. And here Hanna was trying, by guile, to get us to talk of Tom Orbell.

When he had first begun to lavish worship on her, she hadn’t paid much attention. Then she had come to like him. With her usual lack of instinct, she had let her imagination dwell on Tom. She was at a stage — perhaps for the first time in her life — when being loved could compel love. Maybe already the first crystal of feeling had become sharp within her. I hoped not. She was hard, she could be viperish, but she was also generous. She had never begrudged those she knew the good things that had come their way — not successes which she didn’t mind about, but the serenity and the children she had never had. I was afraid, I was sure Irene was afraid, that this was another of her boss-shots. Tom was a gifted man, and a man of force: but I believed it suited his nature to give his love without return. Once she responded, with a vulnerable, impatient, mature love, he might be frightened off. That would mean humiliation for him — but for her, it could be worse than that.

FROM the beginning of the Tuesday morning session, G S Clark was sitting opposite the Master, his face fresh, his eyes sky-blue, looking frail, like one of Dickens’ saintly, crippled children in the midst of able-bodied men. As I listened to him, he did not seem either saintly or crippled. He was the best witness who had come before the Court. He knew exactly what he had come to say, and without fuss, qualification or misgiving, said it. He did not believe in Howard’s honesty, he told Dawson-Hill; he made no bones about it; he did not believe he was straight either as a man or a scholar. That was true in general and in particular. Clark said he couldn’t trust a scientist who said there might be “something in” Lysenko, who went in for complicated apologetics when faced with attacks on the truth. To Clark that chimed with all he knew of Howard, and with one piece of evidence in particular.

This piece of evidence he wanted to give the Court. Clark did not claim much for it; but it did show, he said, what Howard thought about his science. The incident had happened four years before, while Howard was in the middle of his work with Palairet. Clark could date it precisely, because it took place on the first day of the Yorkshire match at Fenner’s.

“I was walking across Parker’s Piece,” said Clark. Listening, I remembered hearing that he never missed a match. He took a passionate, vicarious joy in the athletic life. “And Howard caught me up. That’s not very difficult, at the pace I have to go.” He gave his fresh smile, with the absence of self-pity so complete that it was embarrassing. “I was surprised to see him, because I knew he was working up in Scotland. But he told me he was staying in college for the weekend. I asked him how his research was going. He said that he was fed up. I tried to encourage him a bit — I said that not even a scientist could expect a new discovery every day of the week. I don’t want to put words into his mouth, but I think I remember how he replied. He said something very close to this: ‘I’m not interested in any damn’ discoveries. All I’m interested in is cooking up a thesis. Then I can publish a paper or two by hook or by crook. That’s the way everyone’s playing this game. And I’m going to play the same game too.’”

It sounded the literal truth. As Clark spoke, he had the expression, open-eyed, credulous and observant, that I had seen in professional security officers. He was not the man to invent: and indeed, if anyone had wanted to invent evidence, they would have invented something more damaging than that. It did not seem very damaging. It was an anticlimax after all the preparation. Yet I felt that everyone there was trusting his word, and at the same time liking him.

Soon it was my turn. I asked at once: “I accept the conversation you’ve reported, completely. But is it really significant?”

“Recalling it in the light of what’s happened,” said Clark, “I think it may be.”

“I should have thought,” I said, “that those remarks are just what you might expect, from a young man disappointed, in a bad patch, with his work not coming out? I should have thought a lot of us at that age might have said very much the same?”