Corridors of Power

by C. P. Snow

  It heartened Margaret, whose nature was purer than mine. Myself, I was discouraged. I was remembering the outbursts of idealism that I had listened to, from young men as good as this one, back in my own group, in a provincial town, when our hopes had been more revolutionary than Arthur could have believed, but still as pure as his. I fell silent, half-hearing the argument, Arthur and Margaret on one side, David Rubin on the other, Rubin becoming more and more elaborate and Byzantine. I was signalling to Margaret to come away. If I stayed there, I should just become more despondent, and more drunk.

  There was one glint of original sin, as Arthur saw Margaret and me getting ready to go. He might have been talking with extreme purity; but he was not above using his charm on Margaret, persuading her to invite Penelope to stay at our flat, and, as it were coincidentally, him too. I supposed he was trying to get her out of the atmosphere of the Cambridge house. But I was feeling corrupt that night, and it occurred to me that, like most of the very rich people I had known, he was trying to save money.

  15: Self-defence

  On the Sunday afternoon, Margaret and I walked down, under the smoky, blue-hazed autumn sky, to Trafalgar Square. We could not get nearer than the bottom of the Haymarket. Margaret was taken back, high-coloured, to the ‘demos’ of her teens. For her, more than for me, the past might be regained; she could not help hoping to recapture the spirit of it, just as she hoped that places we had visited together in the past might always hold a spark of their old magic. She was not as possessed by time lost as I was, yet I believed she could more easily possess herself of it. The speeches of protest boomed out. We were part of a crowd, we were all together. It was a long time since I had been part of a crowd, and, that day, I felt as Margaret did.

  During the next few days, wherever I went, in the offices, clubs and dinner-parties, tempers were more bitter than they had been in this part of the London world since Munich. As at the time of Munich, one began to refuse invitations to houses where the quarrel would spring up. This time, however, the divide took a different line. Hector Rose and his colleagues, the top administrators, had most of them been devoted Municheers. Now, conservative as they were, disposed by temperament and training to be at one with Government, they couldn’t take it. Rose astonished me when he talked.

  ‘I don’t like committing my own future actions, my dear Lewis, which in any case will shortly be of interest to no one but myself – but I confess that I don’t see how I’m going to hypnotize myself into voting Conservative again.’

  He was irked because for once he had known less than usual about the final decision: but also, he was shocked. ‘I don’t mind these people–’ he meant the politicians, and for once did not use the obsequious ‘our masters’ – ‘failing to achieve an adequate level of intelligence. After all, I’ve been trying to make them understand the difference between a precise and an imprecise statement for nearly forty years. But I do mind, perhaps I mind rather excessively, when they fail to show the judgement of so many cockatoos.’ Bitterly, Rose considered the parallel, and appeared to find it close enough.

  He was sitting in his room behind the bowl of flowers. He said: ‘Tell me, Lewis, you are rather close to Roger Quaife‚ is that true? Closer, that is, than one might expect a civil servant, even a somewhat irregular civil servant, to be to a politician, even a somewhat irregular politician?’

  ‘That’s more or less true.’

  ‘He must have been in it, you know. Or did you hear?’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ I said.

  ‘The rumour is that he put up some sort of opposition in Cabinet. I should be mildly curious to know. I have seen a good many Ministers who were remarkably bold outside, but who somehow were not quite so intransigent when they got round the Cabinet table.’

  There was a new rasp in Rose’s tone. He went on: ‘It might conceivably do a trivial amount of good, if you dropped the word to Quaife that a number of comparatively sensible and responsible persons have the feeling that they suddenly find themselves doing their sensible and responsible work in a lunatic asylum. It can’t do any harm, if you communicate that impression. I should be very, very grateful to you.’

  Even for Rose, it took an effort of discipline that afternoon to return to his duties, to his ‘sensible and responsible work’.

  Meanwhile, Tom Wyndham and his friends of the back benches were happy. ‘I feel I can hold my head up at last,’ said one of them. I did not see Diana Skidmore during those days, but I heard about her: the whole of the Basset circle was solid for Suez. Just as the officials seemed slumped in their chairs, the politicians became brilliant with euphoria. Sammikins, for once not odd man out, exuded more euphoria than any of them. In his case, there was a special reason. He happened, alone among his right wing group, to be pro-Zionist. Whether this was just a whim, I did not know, but he had applied for a commission in the Israeli Army, and he was riotously happy at the prospect of getting in one more bout of fighting before he grew too old.

  In the clubs, the journalists and political commentators carried the rumours along. We were all at the pitch of credulity or suspiciousness – because in crisis these states are the same, just as they are in extreme jealousy – when anything seemed as probable as anything else. Some supporters of the Government were restive, we heard. I had a conversation myself with Cave and a couple of his friends, who were speaking the same bitter language as the officials, the professional men. ‘This is the last charge of Eton and the Brigade of Guards,’ said one young Conservative. How could we stop it? How many members of the Cabinet had been against it? Was—going to resign? Above all, what had Roger done?

  One morning, during a respite from Cabinet meetings, Roger sent for me to give some instructions about the scientists’ committee. He did not volunteer a word about Suez. I thought that, just then, it would do no good to press it. Soon a secretary came in: Mr Cave had called. Would the Minister see him?

  On the instant, as soon as the name was mentioned, Roger’s equable manner broke. ‘Am I never going to get a minute’s peace? Good God alive, why don’t some of you protect me a bit?’

  He relapsed into sullenness, saying he was too busy, too pestered, she must make some excuse. The girl waited. She knew, as well as Roger did, that Cave was the most talented of Roger’s party supporters. She knew he ought not to be turned away. At last Roger, with a maximum of ill-grace, said he supposed she had better send him in.

  I made to go out, but Roger, frowning, shook his head. When Cave entered, his head was thrown back from his slack, heavy body, eyes flickering under the thick arches of brow. Roger had made himself seem matey again. It was Cave who came to the point.

  ‘We can’t grumble about things being dull, can we?’

  There were a few remarks, affable, half-malicious, to which Roger did not need to reply. All of a sudden, Cave ceased being devious.

  ‘Is there really any bit of sanity in this affair?’ he said.

  ‘What am I expected to say to that?’

  ‘I’m speaking for some of your friends, you know,’ said Cave. ‘Is there anything which you know and we don’t, that would alter our opinion?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so, should you?’

  ‘No, Roger,’ said Cave, who, having thrown away side-digs or any kind of malice, was speaking with authority. ‘I was asking you seriously. Is there anything we don’t know?’

  Roger replied, for a second friendly and easy: ‘Nothing that would make you change your minds.’

  ‘Well, then; you must know what we think. This is stupid. It’s wrong. On the lowest level, it won’t work.’

  ‘This isn’t exactly an original opinion, is it?’

  Neither Cave nor I knew then, though I was able to check the date later, that on the night before the Cabinet had heard of the veto from Washington.

  ‘I’m quite sure it’s your own. But how much have you been able to put it across?’

  ‘You don’t expect me to tell you what’s happened in the Cabinet, do yo
u?’

  ‘You have been known to drop a hint, you know.’ Cave, his chin sunk down, had spoken with a touch of edge.

  At that remark, Roger’s temper, which I had not seen him lose before, except as a tactic, broke loose. His face went white: his voice became both thick and strangulated. He cried: ‘I’ll tell you one thing. I’ve not lost my senses. I don’t believe this is the greatest stroke of English policy since 1688. How in hell can you imagine that I don’t see what you see?’ His anger was ugly and harsh. He did not relish the voice of conscience, perhaps most of all, when it came from a man as clever, as much a rival, as Monty Cave: but that wasn’t all. That was only the trigger.

  ‘I’ll tell you another thing,’ Roger shouted. ‘You’re wondering what I said in Cabinet. I’ll tell you. I said absolutely nothing.’

  Cave stared at him, not put off by violence, for he was not an emotional coward, but astonished. In a moment he said, steadily: ‘I think you should have done.’

  ‘Do you? Then it’s time you learned something about the world you’re living in.’ He rounded on me. ‘You pretend to know what politics is like! It’s time you learned something, too. I tell you, I said absolutely nothing. I’m sick and tired of having to explain myself every step of the way. This is the politics you all talk about. Nothing I could have said would make the slightest difference. Once these people had got the bit between their teeth, there was no doubt what was going to happen. Yes, I let it go on round me. Yes, I acquiesced in something much more indefensible than you’ve begun to guess. And you expect me to explain, do you? Nothing I could have said would have made the faintest difference. No, it would have made one difference. It would have meant that one newcomer would have lost whatever bit of credit he possessed. I’ve taken risks. You’ve both seen me take an unjustified risk.’

  He was referring to his defence of Sammikins. He was speaking with extreme rancour, as though denouncing the folly, and worse, of somebody else. ‘If I were any good at what I’m trying to do, I never ought to allow myself to take risks for the sake of feeling handsome. I only ought to take one risk. I’ve got a fifty per cent chance of doing what I set out to do.’

  He snapped his fingers, less unobtrusively than usual. ‘If I can’t do what we believe in, then I reckon no one is going to do it. For that, I’ll make a great many sacrifices you two would be too genteel to make. I’ll sacrifice all the useless protests. I’ll let you think I’m a trimmer and a time-server. I’ll do anything. But I’m not prepared for you two to come and teach me when I’ve got to be noble. It doesn’t matter whether I look noble or contemptible, so long as I bring this off. I’m fighting on one front. That’s going to be hard enough. Nothing that any of you say is going to make me start fighting on two fronts, or any number of fronts, or whatever you think I ought to fight on.’ There was a pause.

  ‘I don’t find it as easy as you do,’ said Monty Cave. ‘Isn’t it slightly too easy to find reasons for doing nothing, when it turns out to be advantageous to oneself?’

  Roger’s temper had subsided as suddenly as it had blown up.

  ‘If I were going to fall over backwards to get into trouble, whenever there are decent reasons for keeping out of harm’s way, then I shouldn’t be any use to you, or in this job.’

  For a man of action – which he was, as much so as Lord Lufkin – Roger was unusually in touch with his own experience. But as he made that reply, I thought he was speaking like other men of action, other politicians that I had known. They had the gift, common to college politicians like my old friend Arthur Brown, or national performers like Roger, of switching off self-distrust, of knowing when not to be too nice about themselves. It was not a romantic gift: but it was one, as more delicate souls like Francis Getliffe found to their disadvantage, the lack of which not only added to the pain of life, but cost one half the game.

  16: Pretext for a Conversation

  The days of Suez were over. Monty Cave, with two other junior Ministers, had resigned from the Government. There were still dinner-parties from which it was advisable to excuse ourselves. But I could not excuse myself from Gilbey’s speech in the House of Lords.

  It was not an occasion made for drama. There were perhaps forty men lolling on the red benches, under the elaboration of stained glass, the brass and scarlet of the galleries, the chamber more flashy than the Commons, the colours hotter. If Roger had not asked me, I should not have thought of listening. The Government spokesman was uttering generalities, at the tranquillizing length which Douglas Osbaldiston judged suitable, about the defence programme after Suez. The Opposition was expressing concern. One very old peer muttered mysteriously about the use of the camel. A young peer talked about bases. Then Gilbey rose, from the back of the Government benches. He was looking ill, iller than he really was, I thought. It occurred to me that he was doing his best to emulate the elder Pitt. But I hadn’t realized what he was capable of. Speaking to an official brief, he was fumbling, incompetent, and had embarrassed us for years. On his own, he was eloquent, and as uninhibited as an actor of his own generation playing Sydney Carton.

  ‘I should have liked to speak before your lordships in the uniform which has been the greatest pride and privilege of my life,’ he told them in his light, resonant, reedy tenor. ‘But a man should not wear uniform who is not well enough to fight.’ Slowly he put his hand on his heart. ‘In recent days, my lords, I have wished devoutly that I was well enough to fight. When the Prime Minister, God bless him, decided with a justice and righteousness that are as unchallengeable as any in our history, that we had to intervene by force of arms to keep the peace, and our own inalienable rights in Suez, I looked the world in the face as I have not been able to do these last ten years. For a few days, true Englishmen were able to look the whole world in the face. Is this the last time that true Englishmen will have that privilege, my lords?’

  As usual with Lord Gilbey, it was ham. As usual with his kind of ham, it was perfectly sincere.

  But Gilbey, despite his sincerity, was not so simple as he seemed. This speech was a threnody for his own England: but it turned into an opportunity for revenge on those who had kicked him out. He was not clever, but he had some cunning. He had worked out that the enemies of Suez within the Government had been his own enemies. As the rumours that Roger was anti-Suez went round the clubs, Gilbey had decided that these were the forces, this man the intriguer, who had supplanted him. Like other vain and robust men, Gilbey had no capacity for forgiveness whatsoever. He did not propose to forgive this time. Speaking as an elder statesman, without mentioning Roger by name, he expressed his doubts about the nation’s defences, about ‘intellectual gamblers’ who would let us all go soft. ‘This is a knife in the back,’ an acquaintance in the gallery wrote on an envelope and passed to me.

  Gilbey was finishing. ‘My lords, I wish for nothing more than that I could assure you that the country’s safety is in the best possible hands. It is a long time since I lay awake at night. I have found myself lying awake, these last bitter nights, wondering whether we can become strong again. That is our only safety. Whatever it costs, whether we have to live like paupers, this country must be able to defend itself. Most of us here, my lords, are coming to the end of our lives. That matters nothing to me, nothing to any of us, if only, at the hour of our death, we can know that the country is safe.’

  Again, slowly, Gilbey put his hand on his heart. As he sat down, he took from his waistcoat pocket a small pill-box. There were ‘Hear hears’, and one or two cheers from the benches round him. Gilbey took a capsule, and closed his eyes. He sat there with eyes closed, hand on heart, for some minutes. Then, bowing to the Woolsack, leaning on the arm of a younger man, he left the Chamber.

  When I had to report this performance to Roger, he took it better than other bad news. ‘If it comes to playing dirty,’ he said, ‘aristocrats have got everyone else beaten, any day of the week. You should see my wife’s relatives when they get to work. It’s a great disadvantage to be held bac
k by middle-class morality.’

  He spoke with equanimity. We both knew that the enemies, both as people and as groups, would become visible from now on. The extreme right, he was saying, was bound to be ten times more powerful in any society like ours, or the American society, than the extreme left. He had been watching them before this. It was not only Gilbey who would be talking, he said.

  No, it was not only Gilbey who would be talking, as Caro proved to me a few days later, when she came to have a drink at our flat. She herself, like all her family, had been pro-Suez. At the dinner-table in Lord North Street, she had been outspoken for it, while Roger had not said much. Had they arranged this between themselves, or did they know the moves so well that they did not need to? It was good tactics for Roger to have a wife, and a Seymour, who was talking the party line. Good tactics or not, pre-arranged or not, Caro believed what she said. Once again, people were not clever enough to dissimulate. When Caro talked to me with a bold, dashing, innocent stare, I was furious with her, but I did not doubt that she was honest. She was as much pro-Suez as Lord Gilbey, and for the same reason. What was more, she insisted that Roger’s constituents were pro-Suez too, including many of the poor.

  She pressed me to visit them, wanted so urgently to take me, that I suspected she might have another motive. She wore me down. One afternoon in November, she drove me down to what she called her ‘office’. We had not far to go, for Roger held one of the safe Kensington seats. Caro drove through the remnants of gentility in Queen’s Gate, the private hotels, the flats, the rooming-houses, the students’ hostels, past the end of Cromwell Road and Earl’s Court – crowded with the small-part actresses, the African students, the artists, all displaying themselves in the autumn sun, and (I remarked to Caro) as remote from Lord Gilbey’s concerns as if he were a Japanese daimyo. Caro just said: ‘Most of them don’t vote anyway.’