Charles Snow: The Affair

“It’s no use saying so, but I’ve always wished you wouldn’t dwell on it.”

“It’s no use saying so. Don’t you think my wife remembers everything that happened? Most of all, the note that this man Nightingale sent round?”

Brown nodded.

“If it hadn’t been for what Nightingale did then, she believed then and she still believes things might have gone the other way. So she thinks she ruined me.”

“Looking back,” said Brown, “for any comfort it may be worth, I don’t believe it made a decisive difference—”

“That’s neither here nor there,” said Jago, brilliant, set free. “My wife does. She did so at the time. That is what I have to tell you. Do you know what she did, three months after the election was over?”

“I’m afraid I can guess,” said Brown.

“Yes, she tried to take her life. I found her one night with her bottle of sleeping-pills empty beside her. And a note. You can imagine what the note said.”

“I can.”

After an instant’s pause, Jago glanced straight at Brown and said: “And so I feel entitled to ask you not to rule out the possibility, the bare possibility, that this man Nightingale may have done something else. I admit there’s no connection. So far as I know, he may have been spotless ever since. But still I feel entitled to ask you not to rule the possibility out.”

Brown said: “You’re not making this easy for either of us, are you?”

“Do you think,” cried Jago, “that it’s been easy for me to tell you this?”

Brown did not reply at once. I heard the hiss and tinkle as Jago refilled his glass.

Then suddenly Jago, as though in a flash he had seen Brown’s trouble, made another switch.

“You won’t admit the possibility, not even the possibility, that in any circumstances Howard might be innocent?”

For an instant Brown’s face lightened, as though he welcomed Jago’s question, put that way round.

He said: “Will you repeat what you’ve just asked me?”

When Jago had done so, Brown sat without expression. Then he said, slowly and deliberately: “No, I can’t be as positive as that.”

“Then you do admit the possibility that the man’s innocent?” Jago threw back his head in triumph.

“The bare possibility. I think I shouldn’t be comfortable with myself unless I do.”

I lit a cigarette. I felt the anticlimax of relief.

“Well, what action are you going to take?” Jago pressed him.

“Oh, that’s going much too far. I shan’t even have my own mind clear until tomorrow.”

With friendly roughness Jago went on: “Never mind the formalities. There’s some action you must take.”

“I’ve still not decided what it is.”

“Then it’s pretty near time you did.”

Jago drank some whisky, laughing, exhilarated because he had got home.

“An old dog can’t change his tricks. I’m not as quick as some of you,” said Brown, domesticating the situation. “You mustn’t expect too much. Remember, both of you, I’ve only admitted the bare possibility. I’m not prepared to see other people blackguarded for the sake of that. And that’s as far as I’m able to go tonight. Even that means eating more of my words than I like doing. I don’t mind it with you, Paul, but it isn’t so congenial elsewhere. Still, I’ve got this far. I think I shouldn’t be entirely easy if we didn’t make some accommodation for Howard.”

Brown did not like saying he had been wrong. He liked it less than vainer men: for, genuinely humble as he was, believing without flummery that many men were more gifted, he nevertheless had two sources of pride. One was, as Jago had told him, in his summing-up of people: the other was in what he himself would have called his judgment. He believed that half his colleagues were cleverer than he was, but he didn’t doubt he had more sense. Now, for once, that modest conceit was deflated. And yet he seemed, not only resentful, but relieved. For days, I suspected, maybe for weeks, his stubbornness — which, as he grew older, was becoming something more than tenacity, something more like an obsession — had been fighting both with his realism and his conscience. Brown had had his doubts about the Howard case. Perhaps, as with many characters of exceptional firmness, he had them and did not have them. He didn’t mind, in secret he half-welcomed, the call Jago had made on his affections. For Brown had been able to use it as an excuse. Just as Jago was not above working his charm, his intensity, for his own purposes (was this half-revenge, I had been thinking? had he exaggerated the story he had just told?), so Brown was not above working the strength of his own affections. He was really looking for an excuse inside himself for changing. The habit of stubbornness was becoming too strong for him. He was getting hypnotised by the technique of his nature. He was glad of an excuse to break out. His affection for Jago gave him precisely that. It allowed him, as a visit from me alone almost certainly would not have done, to set his conscience free.

There was another reason, though, not so lofty, why Brown welcomed an excuse to change. His own stubbornness, his own loyalties, had been getting in the way of his political sense. He knew as well as anyone that during the affair he had mismanaged the college. If he “stuck in his heels”, he would go on mismanaging it. In the end, since much of Brown’s power depended on a special kind of trust, it would take his power away.

It had been astonishing to me, throughout the affair, how far stubbornness could take him. He was a supreme political manager. Nevertheless, his instincts had ridden him; they had ridden him right away from political wisdom; for the only time in his career as a college boss, he had not been sensible.

But now at last, triggered by that night, his conscience and his sense of management, which pulled in the same direction, were too strong.

In euphoria, Jago was talking about the college, rather as though he were visiting it, from the loftiest position in the great world outside, after a lapse of years. He mentioned Tom Orbell, who had been his last bright pupil. Brown was unbuttoned enough to say: “Between ourselves, Paul, I hope that young man gets a very good job elsewhere .” None of us needed an explanation of that sinister old college phrase. It meant that a man, even though a permanency as Tom was, would be under moral pressure to apply for other posts. It was getting late, and Jago and I stood up to say goodbye.

“Don’t let it be so long before you come in again,” said Brown to Jago.

“It shan’t be long!” Jago cried.

I wondered how long it would be.

“It shan’t be long!” Jago hallooed back up the stairs.

When we got into the court, I realised that he was unsteady on his feet, on feet abnormally small and light for such a heavy man. I had not paid attention, but he had been drinking hard since we arrived. I should have liked to know how much he drank with his wife at home. Cheerfully he weaved his way at my side to the side gate.

The fine spell had broken. The sky was overcast, a bleak wind blew into our faces, but Jago did not notice.

“Beautiful night!” he cried. “Beautiful night!”

He fumbled his key in the lock, until I took it from him and let him out.

“Shall you be all right?” I asked.

“Of course I shall be all right,” he said. “It’s a nice walk home. It’s a beautiful walk home.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “Go and sleep well,” he said.

OUT of the window, as I sat at breakfast next day, the garden was dark; the room struck cold. All the morning the room struck cold, while I waited for a message from the combination room, where the Seniors were having their last meeting. To myself, I had given them an hour or so to find a formula. By twelve o’clock there was still no news. I couldn’t judge whether the delay was good or bad. I rang up Dawson-Hill, who also was waiting in his room: no, he had heard nothing.