Charles Snow - The Affair

“With respect, and admitting that my own standards of behaviour haven’t been what I should like — I don’t think I should.”

“Have you forgotten,” I said, “what it’s like to be chafing because things aren’t going right? Did you never make a cynical remark when you were in that state?”

“Not that kind of remark,” said Clark. He gave me a sweet smile. I had to keep my voice from getting rougher. He provoked me more than most men did. Yet his manner towards me stayed benign and friendly.

“What’s more,” he said, “I’ve never heard a scientist talk like that about his scientific work.”

“You can’t seriously believe that Howard announced to you — you’ve never been a special friend of his, have you? — that he was going in for fraud?”

“All I’m entitled to believe, on the strength of what he said that morning, is that he’s not a man of good character.”

“What do you mean by good character?”

“Yes,” G S Clark replied, “I was afraid that you and I might not see alike on that.”

“I’m sure we don’t.” I spoke harshly and I made sure that the Court recognised the harshness. I had decided that my only tactics were to change my tone. With the same edge, I asked: “Why did you want to appear here at all this morning?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, still equable, “but I understood any Fellow had a right to do so. Perhaps the Master will correct—”

“Of course you had a right to,” I said. “But most Fellows didn’t exercise it. Why did you?”

“I can’t answer for others’ sense of their responsibility, can I?”

“I’m talking about your sense of your responsibility. Why did you want to come?”

“Under correction,” said Clark, “I thought I had something to tell the Court.”

“Why did you think it was worth telling?”

My tone had hardened further. The Master was stirring, clearing his throat, ready to stop me. Clark stayed unbullied, obdurate.

“That is what,” he said, “I’ve been trying to explain.”

“You didn’t appear just through personal animus?”

“I’m sorry, Eliot—” Crawford was beginning, but Clark said: “I’m quite prepared to answer, Master. I can honestly say that I have no personal animus whatsoever against this man.”

His confidence was unshaken. Brown was frowning; the Court was against me. But he was going where I wanted to lead him.

“I accept that. It might be less dangerous if you had,” I said. “But you have political animus?”

“I don’t approve of his political convictions.”

Still the Court was against me.

Still they felt — one could sense it in the room — that what he stood for, not always what he said, was right.

“I meant rather more than that,” I said. “Don’t you really think that a man of his convictions is a bad man?”

G S Clark was so set that he didn’t budge. He said: “I’m never quite happy at judging character outside the Christian framework.”

“You’ve got to. Don’t you really believe that a man of Howard’s convictions isn’t to be trusted in any circumstances?”

“In many circumstances, I believe his convictions would be an obstacle to my giving him trust as I understand it.”

“Don’t you really believe that he’s not a man of the same kind as yourself?”

Clark gave a smile sweet and obstinate. “I believe there are certain differences.”

“Don’t you really believe that such men ought to be got rid of?”

“Really, Master,” Dawson-Hill protested, “you can’t permit that question—”

Clark was still smiling. I let it go at that.

In my last speech, which was a short one, but which was interrupted by lunch, I tried to make use of Clark’s special kind of prejudice. Could the Court really give the faintest encouragement to the view that character and opinion went hand in hand? Wasn’t this nonsense, and dangerous nonsense? Didn’t we all know scientists — and I named one — whose opinions were indistinguishable from Howard’s, and whose integrity was absolute? Wasn’t it the chronic danger of our time, not only practical but intellectual, to let the world get divided into two halves? Hadn’t this fog of prejudice — so thick that people on the two sides were ceasing to think of each other as belonging to the same species — obscured this case from the beginning? Hadn’t it done harm to the college, to Howard himself, and to the chance of a just decision?

I said this without emollient words. G S Clark had given me the opening, and I was talking straight at Crawford, some of whose beliefs I thought I might still touch. But it was not only tactics that made me speak out so. Just as tenaciously as Clark believed what he had said that morning, I believed this.

Then I said, and this time I was talking straight at Brown: “As a matter of fact, I’ve come to know Howard moderately well on account of this business. I don’t say that he would be my favourite holiday companion, but I think he’s an honest man.”

It was then that we stopped for lunch, which was a sombre, creaking meal. Nightingale, alone of the four Seniors, did not look tired; he seemed buoyed up by the energy of strain, just as, in an unhappy love-affair, one is as springy as though one had been taking benzedrine. Outside the Master’s dining-room the sunlight was brilliant. Crawford and Brown, not altering their habits by a single tick, drank their ritual glasses of wine, but I noticed that old Winslow, as though determined to keep his lids propped up, drank only water.

When we were back in the combination room I did not go on long. I said that, in the whole hearing, there had been just one critical piece of testimony — Francis Getliffe’s. He hadn’t produced a new fact: but he had produced a new and dangerous possibility. What he had said couldn’t be unsaid. He had deliberately told the Seniors it mustn’t be. No one wanted to bring up new suspicions, which would only fester because they couldn’t be proved. No one wanted to institute new proceedings. Surely the best, and as far as that went the only, course was to declare a moratorium. Howard’s innocence had to be officially recognised. Those I represented could not be content with less. But they were quite prepared to regard anything else that had been said or done as though it had not been. I finished, looking across the table: “I don’t believe there’s any other course for the Court which is either prudent or just. If the Court doesn’t do it, I can’t see how the college will be worth living in for a decade. Just for policy’s sake, even if there were a shade of doubt about Howard, I should try to persuade you to avoid that. But in my view there is no shade of doubt — so it isn’t only policy or ordinary human sense that I’m asking you to act on. Those would be good reasons for altering your decision about Howard. But the best reason is that the decision — although most of us would have made it in your place — happened to be unjust.”

Dawson-Hill was quite unjaded. He had the stamina of a lawyer trained for trials. He showed less wear and tear than anyone present. Yet, like me, he chose to cut his speech short. Partly, I thought, he felt the elder men were exhausted. Partly, like me, he couldn’t get any response in that strained but deadened room. His tone throughout, under the casual mannerisms, was sharper than at any previous time, sometimes troubled, and often edged.

“Can Sir Francis Getliffe be wrong, I ask myself?” he demanded, at his most supercilious. “I can only conclude that, just occasionally, in the world of mortal circumstances, the answer might conceivably be yes. Of course, I recognise that Sir Francis is most high-minded. Even those of us who disagree with him on public issues recognise that he is more high-minded than is given to most of us. But I ask myself, can a man so high-minded, so eminent as a scientist, conceivably be wrong? Is it possible to be high-minded and at the same time rather curiously irresponsible?”