The Affair

19: Remark from an Official Guest

THE Court of Seniors was taking its time, so Margaret and I heard in London. Weekly meetings, a summons to Howard to give written evidence, a summons to Francis Getliffe — it all looked, both inside the college and to us, as though they were being stately to save their faces. Laura told Margaret that, when Howard was reinstated, they proposed to stay a couple of years at Cambridge and then move. There seemed surprisingly little gossip about the affair within the college: certainly none reached us. Some of them were beginning to get busy about the autumn election, however, and there were reports that both Brown’s “caucus” and Getliffe’s had already met.

For myself, I received one direct communication from the college. It came from old Gay. He reminded me that I had promised to “take legal soundings” and finished up by a reference to “certain infractions of privilege, of privilege won by a lifetime’s devotion to scholarship, which, for the sake of others, are not lightly to be borne nor tamely to be brooked”.

In April I had to go to Cambridge on official business. On business which was, as it happened, at that time top secret: for Walter Luke, the head of the Atomic Energy Establishment at Barford, wanted to talk to the Cavendish about the controlled thermo-nuclear reaction. There was a slice of the work he planned to divert to Cambridge. It had to be done with what Luke called our “masks and false noses” on, and when he went to negotiate I, as his boss in the hierarchy, went too.

Outside the conference room windows it was a piercing blue April afternoon, a sunny afternoon with a wind so cold and pure that it made one catch one’s breath. As we sat there in the Old Schools, I looked out at the bright light, resentful at being kept in, resentful without understanding why, as though the springs of memory were being plucked, as though once I had been out in the cold free air and known great happiness. And yet, my real memories of days like that in Cambridge were sad ones.

Shaking myself, I got back to the argument. Round the table were the Vice-Chancellor, Crawford as an ex-Vice-Chancellor, three scientists, one of them Francis Getliffe, Walter Luke, and me. Negotiations were going slowly, and not well. They were not going well partly because Luke, as well as being a good deal the youngest man present, was also a good deal the most impatient. Incidentally he was — and that didn’t make it easier either — probably the most gifted. There was a fair amount of ability in the room, two Nobel Prize winners, five Fellows of the Royal Society. For imagination and sheer mental drive, I would have put Luke before any of them. But for persuasive power in a genuinely difficult situation, he wouldn’t have been the first partner I should have chosen.

It was a genuinely difficult situation. In principle, they were all ready for the Cavendish to take on some of the thermo-nuclear work. Luke told them, though one or two knew beforehand, the minimal facts about it. It was peaceful, he said, no one need have any moral qualms. In fact, the reverse. The only people who need have moral qualms were those who in any way obstructed it. For this, if it came off, would meet the human race’s need for energy for ever. If this country got it first, it would stay as a major power for a couple of generations. “I’m not going to sell you something we haven’t got,” said Luke. “It’s not in the bag yet. But if I were going to stick my neck out, I should say the chances weren’t worse than evens.”

So far, so good. Everyone liked the sound of that. The first trouble was that, if any of the research came to a Cambridge laboratory, it would mean a special kind of security. “You won’t like it,” said Luke. “I don’t like it. No one in his senses likes it. It’s mostly bloody nonsense, anyway. But we’ve got to have it. If you want to know why, you’d better ask Lewis Eliot.”

Some of them were uneasy. It wasn’t that they were unused to security. But, as I had to explain what this special kind would mean, they thought it would be not only a nuisance inside the university, but something worse. The Vice-Chancellor and Crawford questioned me. I thought it was bad policy to gloss over the difficulties; I was ready to be as patient as they were, but Luke was getting restive.

“I can’t credit that we’re going to hold it up just because of a couple of flatfoots and a bit of vetting and the other thing—”

Towards six o’clock, negotiations adjourned until the next day, Crawford, Getliffe, Luke and I walked back to the college. Not willing, not able, to let the controversy fade out, Luke was saying that all these doubts and hesitations were anachronisms, they’d forgotten the time they were living in, the first thing we’d got to make sure was that “this country can earn its living”. If this reaction came off, then the country could earn a living till our grandchildren’s time or longer. Anything which got in its way was suicidal. Unless, Luke said, someone else was brighter than he was and could see another way to keep us “a jump ahead”. Luke’s voice, which still kept the rumble of the Devonport dockyard in which he had started, rolled out unsubdued as we entered the first court.

In the bright and dramatic twilight, I looked at him. It was the kind of light which, after a brilliant day, suddenly gives shadows and moulding to faces — so that one has something like an optical illusion that the day, instead of darkening, is getting brighter. Luke’s cheekbones stood out through flesh that was no longer full: his skin was matt, and the colour was washed out: his bristly, strong hair had gone quite grey. Although his backbone was ramrod stiff as he walked, he had a limp that had not left him since a radiation accident. He had aged more quickly than anyone I knew. When the college had first elected him — and it was only eighteen years before — he had been younger-looking than most men of twenty-four. His cheeks had been fresh and high-tinted; he had been quiet, discreet, determined to get on, certain that he would leave a great corpus of scientific work behind him.

It hadn’t gone like that. War and the scientific revolution had played tricks on him. As a young man, he would never, not even in a fantasy, have imagined himself as he was that night, walking into his old college, possessed in his early forties of power, a title, a place in the Establishment. Not that he disliked these things: people did not get what they didn’t want. But he had expected quite different successes, and still valued them more. Compared with these two older men, Crawford and Getliffe, he knew that in natural talent he was their equal or superior; he had got into the Royal Society younger than either of them; he had a touch of genius which they hadn’t. And yet, his creative work was slender by the side of theirs. In fifty years’ time, when students read through the scientific textbooks, there would be pages about Crawford’s discoveries; there would be descriptions of the Getliffe layer and the Getliffe effect; there would be a little, but only a very little, to keep alive Luke’s name.

I did not know how much he regretted it. He was not an introspective man and, argumentative and articulate as he was, he did not often confide. All his imagination, vitality, crude and crackling force, seemed to have become canalised into the job he had set himself, what he called “seeing that the country can earn a living”. Somehow his ambition, his scientific insight, his narrow and intense patriotism, had all fused into one.

When Francis had gone up to his rooms, Crawford asked Luke and me into the Lodge. There, in the study, after he had given us a drink, Crawford said, fingers together, gazing across the fireplace: “I think I hope you get your way about this matter, Luke; I’m not certain, but I think I hope you get your way.”

“I should damned well hope you do,” said Luke.

“No, speaking as an old-fashioned man of science, I don’t see it’s as straightforward as that,” said Crawford imperturbably. With his usual respect both for ability and position, he approved of Luke: but he wasn’t to be bulldozed when an idea was being talked about. Crawford didn’t like disagreement on “personalia”, but when it came to an idea, he remembered that he was a son of the manse and became, at about half the speed, as disputatious as Luke himself.

As they argued (Crawford kept saying “you aver that…” which I could not recall having heard anyone say before) they were enjoying themselves. I wasn’t, for I had less taste for amateur metaphysics.

Just as we were getting ready to go, Crawford remarked: “By the by, I’m afraid that I shan’t be able to be with you tomorrow.”

I said that we shouldn’t reach a decision anyway.

“As a matter of fact,” said Crawford, “I’ve got to attend to a rather troublesome piece of college business.”

“What’s that?” Luke asked. “The Howard flap, I suppose?” For once, Crawford was taken aback, Buddha-smile dissolved into an astonished fretting stare.

“I really don’t understand how you’ve heard that, Luke,” he cried.

“God love me,” Luke gave his harsh guffaw, “it’s all round the scientific world. Someone told me about it at the Ath. God knows how long ago.”

“Then I’m very distressed to hear it.”

“Never you mind.” Luke was still grinning. “You couldn’t have stopped it. Nothing’s ever going to stop scientists talking, as you ought to know. Hell, that’s what we’ve been chewing the rag about this afternoon! As soon as the boys in the Cavendish heard there was something fishy about Howard’s paper, nothing could have stopped it going round. If you ask me, you’ve been bloody lucky that it’s been kept as quiet as it has.”

“I should be very sorry to think,” said Crawford, “that anyone in the college has spoken a word outside.”

“That’s as may be,” Luke replied.

“I’ve never had the slightest indication,” Crawford went on, “that anyone in the university outside this college knows anything of the unpleasantness we’ve been through.”

“Like a bet?” said Luke.

Crawford had recovered his equilibrium. He gave a smile, melon-lipped, contented with himself. “Well,” he said, “I don’t want to say any more, but tomorrow I think there’s every chance we shall have finished with this unfortunate business once for all.”

20: A Piece of Paper

AFTER another day of meetings, which had again been adjourned, without giving Luke and me what we were asking for, I went in the evening to Martin’s rooms. Earlier in the day I had telephoned him, telling him what Crawford had said. The lights in the high eighteenth-century windows, late additions to the court, did not dominate it as they would when it was full dark: they just stood welcoming. I expected Martin to be waiting for me with the result.

What I did not expect was to enter the room and find not Martin, but Howard and his wife waiting there. Howard, who was reading an evening paper, looked up and said hallo. Laura said good-evening, addressing me in full, politely, formally, brightly.

“Martin let us know that the verdict was coming through tonight,” she explained.

“Nothing yet?”

“Not yet.” She remarked that Martin had gone out to see if he could “pick up anything”. Both she and Howard seemed quite undisturbed.

Their nerves were steadier than mine, I thought. If I had been in their place, I couldn’t have endured to plant myself in the college waiting, however certain I had been of what I was going to hear. In fact, the more certain I had been, the more I should have been impelled, by a streak of superstitious touching-wood, which they would both have despised, to make it a bit hard for the good news to catch up with me. In their place, I should have gone for a walk, away from telephones or messengers, and then returned home, hoping the news was there, still wishing that the envelope could stay unopened.

Not so these two. They were so brave that they seemed impervious. Howard had found in the paper something about an English soldier being killed on what he called “one of your colonial adventures”. He would have liked to make me argue about politics. The curious thing was that, as he talked, protruding the Marxist labels, making them sound aggressive, he was also cross because the platoon had walked into an ambush. A cousin of his was serving with that brigade, and Howard suddenly slipped into a concern that I might have heard at Pratt’s, irritated, paternal, patrician. One felt that, change his temperament by an inch, he would have made a good regimental officer.

There was a sound of footsteps on the staircase outside. I knew them for Martin’s, though they might have sounded like a heavier man’s. I stopped talking. Howard was looking towards the door.

Martin came in. He had a piece of paper in his hand. His eyes were so bright that, just for an instant, I thought that all was well. We were sitting round the chimney-piece, and he did not speak until he had reached the rug in front of us.

“I am sorry to be the one to tell you this,” he said to them in a hard voice. “It’s bad.”

Without another word he gave the note to Howard, who read it with an expression open and washed clean. He did not speak, passed the note to his wife, and once more picked up the evening paper. In a moment Laura, her colour dark, a single furrow running across her forehead, gave me the note. It carried the address of the college Lodge, and read:

The Court of Seniors, at the request of the College, have reconsidered the case of Dr D J Howard, formerly a Fellow. They have concluded that there is no sufficient reason for them to amend their previous decision.

R T A Crawford.

Master of the College.

In a tone so quiet that it became a whisper, as though we were in a sick-room or a church, Martin told me that the notice had not yet gone round: it was just being duplicated in the college office, and he had collected a copy there. As he sat down, without saying any more, he looked at me, as if for once he did not know the etiquette, as if he was lost about what to say to these two or do for them. I hadn’t any help to give. He and I sat there in silence, watching Laura gaze with protective love at Howard. He was holding the newspaper low, so as to catch the light from the reading-lamp. The only movement he made, the only movement in the whole room, was that of his eyes as they went down the page.

He did not turn over. I could not tell whether he had stopped reading, or whether he was reading at all.

All of a sudden he let the paper drop. As it fell, the front page drifted loose and we could see the headlines, bold and meaningless, upon the rug.

“I hope they’re satisfied now,” he shouted. He began to swear, and the curses came out high and grating. “Oh, yes,” he cried, “I hope they’re satisfied!” He went on shouting and cursing, as though Martin and I were not there. At last he sat up straight, looked at Martin, and said with a curious sneering politeness: “If it comes to that, I hope you’re satisfied too.”

“Don’t speak like that to me!” Martin broke out. Then, getting back his usual tone, he said: “Look, this isn’t going to get us anywhere—”

“What I want to know is, why wasn’t I asked to talk to that Court again, after they said they’d probably want me? I want to know, who stopped that? I suppose you’re all pleased by the masterly way you’ve handled things. It’s not important to be fair, all that matters is that everything should look fair.”

Howard did not seem to have noticed the flash of Martin’s temper. For him, everyone was an enemy, everyone was a part of “them”, most of all those who had pretended to be working on his side. His voice changed. “I’m positive, if I could explain how I wrote that paper, if I could explain quietly and sensibly and not get panicked, then the Court would see the point.” He was looking ingenuous and hopeful, as though the issue were still in the future and the Court could still be influenced. He was caught up by one of those moments of hope that come in the middle of disasters, when time gets jangled in the mind and it seems that one still has a chance and that with good management one is going to emerge scot-free and happy.

Another splinter of mood: he began to shout again. “By God, they wanted to get me! I should like to have heard what they’ve been saying this last fortnight. I should like to know whether it’s just a coincidence that you happened to be here,” he said to me, with the same jeering courtesy that he had used to Martin. “But I don’t suppose they wanted any extra help. They were determined to get me, and one’s got to hand it to them, they’ve made a nice job of it.”

“It isn’t finished yet,” said Laura. She had gone near to him; she was speaking with impatience and passion.

“They’ve made a very pretty job of it, I think they deserve to be congratulated,” cried Howard.

“For God’s sake,” said Laura, “you’re not giving up like that!”

“I should like to know—”

“You’re not giving up,” she said. “We’ve got to start again, that’s all.”

“You know nothing about it.”

He spoke to her roughly — but there was none of the suspiciousness with which he would have spoken to anyone else that night. Between them there flared up — so ardent as to make it out of place to watch — a bond of sensual warmth, of consolatory warmth.

“It’s not finished yet, is it?” she appealed to Martin.

“No,” he said. He spoke to Howard. “Laura’s right. I suggest we cut the inquests and see about the next step.”

Martin’s manner was business-like but neither enthusiastic nor friendly. He was no saint. He had none of the self-effacingness of those who, in the presence of another’s disaster, don’t mind some of the sufferings being taken out on themselves. He didn’t like being accused of treachery. He would gladly have got Howard out of sight and never seen him again. Martin had himself taken a rebuff, more than a rebuff, in the Seniors’ verdict that night.

“You’ve got a formal method of appeal,” said Martin. “You can appeal to the Visitor, of course.”

“Oh, that’s pretty helpful,” said Howard. “That’s your best idea yet. Do you really think a bishop is going out of his way to do any good to me? And when I think of that particular bishop — Well, that ought to be the quickest way of finishing me off for good and all.” He said it with his paranoid sneer.

A bite in his voice, Martin replied: “I said that it was the formal method. I mentioned it for one reason and one reason only. You’re probably obliged to go through the whole formal machine before you bring an action for wrongful dismissal. I still hope we can get this straight for you without your bringing an action.”

“Do you?”

Martin’s tone kept its edge, although he went on without being provoked: “But after what’s happened, I couldn’t blame you if you went straight ahead. I don’t think any of us could.”

Howard looked startled. He was startled enough to go in for a practical discussion: did Martin really advise him to see a solicitor straight away? No, Martin replied patiently, but it was only fair to say that most men would think it justified. How did one start going about an appeal to the Visitor? Howard went on, beginning to look tired, confused, and absent-minded, his eyes straying to his wife, as though it was she only that he wanted.

Martin continued to reply, ready to bat on about procedure. It was Howard who said that he wasn’t going “to do anything in a hurry”, that he had “had enough for one night”. He left the room with his arm round Laura, and once more the two of us, watching them, felt like voyeurs.

After the door had closed behind them, Martin sat gazing into the grate. At last I said: “Were you prepared for this—?” I pointed to the slip of paper with the Seniors’ verdict.

“I wish I could say yes.”

He answered honestly, but also in a rage. Despite his caution and his warnings — or perhaps because of them — he had been totally surprised, as surprised as any of us. He was furious with himself for being so, and with the men who caused it.

“There’ll have to be a spot of trouble now,” he said, able, since the Howards went, to let the anger show. People often thought that those who “handled” others, “managers” of Martin’s kind, were passionless. They would have been no good at their job if they were. No, what made them effective was that they were capable of being infuriated on the one hand, and managerial on the other.

Vexed as he was, Martin did not lose his competence. There were two tasks in front of him straight away, first to prevent any of his party doing anything silly, second to keep them together. Without wasting time, he said that we had better walk round and see Skeffington; he had heard him say that he was going to dine at home.

When we got to the bottom of the staircase, Martin looked across the court. The chapel door was open wide, a band of light poured on to the lawn; a few young men, gowns pulled round them, were hurrying away from evensong.

“It isn’t anything special in the way of festivals, is it?” said Martin, nodding towards the chapel.

We paused for an instant. There was no sign of Skeffington coming round the path; there was only the chaplain, shutting the door behind him.

Not there, said Martin. We went through the screens, bustling and jostling with young men, some pushing early into the hall, some swinging off with beer-bottles. In the second court there were lights in old Winslow’s rooms.

“I wonder what he thinks he’s doing,” I said.

“He’s never had any judgment,” said Martin. “He took you all in, but he never had much sense.”

I was thinking, as Martin unlocked the side door, how I had seen Winslow in his full power, a formidable man: and how the stock exchange of college reputations went up and down, so that Martin, nine years younger, saw him only as a failure. On that stock exchange, Brown’s reputation had kept steady since my time, Crawford’s had climbed a bit, Nightingale’s had rocketed — while men whose personalities filled the college when I was there, Winslow, Jago, had already been written off long before their deaths.

We crossed to the row of cottages and Martin pulled at the hand bell of Skeffington’s. There was no answer, although from the living-room, faintly lit, came a sound of voices. Martin pulled again. Suddenly lights sprang up behind the curtains, and substantial steps came to the door. It was Mrs Skeffington. As she opened the door, her face was reddened, her manner flustered. She said: “Oh, it’s you two, is it? I’m afraid you’ve caught me on the wrong foot.”

Martin asked if Julian was there.

No, she was alone, he had gone off for a meal at a pub.

Could we come in, since Martin wanted to leave a message for him?

“You’ve caught me on the wrong foot,” Mrs Skeffington repeated, as we sat there in the living-room. I thought I knew why she was so embarrassed. It wasn’t, or at least not immediately, because Julian had gone off alone. She had lived a long time with a marriage which had worn dry, so that she had forgotten how to conceal it, if indeed she had ever tried. No, it was something much sillier. She had been sitting by herself in that little parlour, with a tray in front of her, scrambled eggs on toast and a good stiff whisky: and the sound of voices which we had heard in the lane outside came from the television set. It was now safely turned off, but Mrs Skeffington looked like a great, chapped-cheeked schoolgirl caught in the act: her hearty, brickdropping, county assurance had dropped from her quite. She couldn’t believe that men like Martin and me would have spent such an evening. She had an impression, which filled her with both ridicule and awe, that her husband’s colleagues spent their entire existence at their books. She was certain that if we saw what she had been enjoying, we should despise her. With dazzled relief, she realised that we were not going to question her or comment. She poured out whiskies for us both, drank her own and helped herself to another. She drank, it seemed to me, exactly as her brothers would have done after a day’s hunting.

Martin was set on getting her to understand his news. “Look, Dora, this is important.” Next morning, by the first delivery, Julian would get the Court’s decision. Martin told her the form of words.

“That’s a slap in the eye for some of you, isn’t it?” she said. “They’re as good as saying that old Uncle Cecil wasn’t up to any monkey-business, aren’t they?”

“Yes, they’re certainly saying that.”

“Well,” said Dora Skeffington, “I must say I’m rather glad. None of my family ever thought much of Cecil. My mother used to say that he was a bit common, though I never understood how she made that out. But still, he did more than some of them and he was always decent to me when I was a little girl.”

She sat back, basking in the comfort of family piety and several drinks. But she was neither stupid nor, except when she felt it was due to herself, obtuse. She felt the absence of response. She said: “What’s the matter? Don’t you believe the old man’s all right?”

“Not for a minute. Nor will Julian. That’s why I don’t want him to fly off the handle—”

Martin told her that this meant that the affair had only got worse. None of the revisionists could accept this verdict, neither Julian, nor he, nor Francis, nor any of their followers. All it meant was that they were back where they started, with passions higher. The danger was, Julian might make things worse, if he insisted on behaving like a “wild man”. Martin’s plan was to call a meeting of the majority by the end of the week. Would she tell Julian to keep out of action until then?

“I’ll tell him,” said Dora. “Mind you, I don’t know what good it’ll do.”

She sounded both sad and jocular. Sad because it was a disappointment that old Palairet wasn’t going to be left in peace, and sad too because she couldn’t answer for her husband and spoke of him as one might speak of a not-very-close friend. And at the same time amused, because somehow she thought of her husband, not only as someone worth a certain kind of admiration, but also as a bit of an ass. Superb, handsome, high-minded, priggish, high-principled, extravagantly brave — that was how others saw him, but not she. Yet she was utterly loyal. Loyal partly because it was both her nature and training to be so: but also, oddly, just because their marriage had worn so thin and dry. Somehow that strengthened their knockabout, not-very-close friendship, instead of weakening it. They had become allies, neither of them humorous, each of them priding themselves on “seeing the joke” in the other. It meant that, when she had to choose between Palairet’s good name and her husband’s principles, or even her husband’s whims, there was no choice for her. She would make higher sacrifices than that for him. With her own kind of clumsy devotion, she was with him whatever he wanted to do. Others might admire him more, other women might long for the chance of admiring him, but she happened to be married to him.

21: Two Approaches to a Statesman

THE next evening, Walter Luke and I came back from a day of negotiations late but pleased with ourselves. It was too late to talk in our rooms: we went straight into the combination room, affable because, as Luke was saying, most of what we had come for was “in the bag”. As soon as we entered the room, however, no one could have stayed affable. We had walked right into the hiss and ice of a quarrel. G S Clark was standing there, his useless leg braced against the table, Nightingale behind him. Two or three of the young scientists were talking angrily and did not lower their tone as we came in. Francis Getliffe was listening, with an expression fine-drawn, distressed, furious. One of the young men was saying that it was “an outrage”.

“Aren’t you going in for propaganda?” replied Clark.

“I’ve got to say,” Getliffe interrupted, “that I’ve never seen anything worse handled.”

“What do you mean, worse handled?” said Nightingale, smiling, more in control than the others.

“Do you really think you can fob us off without an explanation?” said a scientist.

“Do you really think the Court didn’t consider that?” G S Clark was asking.

“Do you know better than we do what they considered?”

“I’m prepared to trust them,” said Clark.

“I should like to know why.”

“I’m sorry,” said Clark, “but that seems a little adolescent. I should have thought it reasonable to trust a Court of Seniors of this college to behave at least as responsibly as you would yourself.”

For some instants, Luke had been standing, for once looking stupefied and incapable of action, on the edge of the fracas. He asked: “What is all this?”

“I don’t know how much you ought to hear, Luke, not being a Fellow—” Nightingale began.

Luke broke in: “Oh, come off it, Alec. Is it the business I was talking to Crawford about two nights ago—?”

“I think you’re bound to be told this some time,” said Nightingale. “The Seniors have been sitting on an appeal on behalf of a man called D J Howard. We’ve just informed the college that we’ve had to decide against him.”

Luke stared round at the angry faces.

“Well,” he said, “I hope to God you’ve got it right.”

He was oddly at a loss. He had forgotten, if indeed he had ever paid much attention to it, how intense and open the emotions could show in a closed society like this. For fifteen years he had been used to high scientific affairs. He had seen great decisions taken, and had at least twice forced a great decision himself. He had been in the middle of a good deal of politics, but it had been controlled, official politics, with the feelings, the antagonisms, the hates and ambitions, kept some distance beneath the skin. It hadn’t been different in kind from the college’s politics, but there was a difference — Luke had forgotten how much — in nakedness and edge. The curious thing was, in terms of person-to-person conflict, when one moved from high affairs to the college one moved from a more sheltered life to a less.

It was the precise opposite of what most of us would have imagined. Just as, I thought, most of us would never have imagined another move, from a more sheltered life to a less. Observe the lives of tycoons, like my acquaintance Lord Lufkin, or boss administrators, like Hector Rose; they had much power, they carried responsibility, they were hard-working to an extent that the artists I knew could not begin to conceive. And yet, in a special sense, they were also sheltered. Neither Lufkin nor Rose had met a direct word of hostility for ten years: they did not have to listen to a breath of criticism of themselves as persons. While people whom they, the bosses, thought passed happy-go-lucky lives, the artists living right out of “the world”, had to take criticism, face to face, as straightforward as a school report, each week of their lives as part of the air they breathed.

As the butler announced dinner, Brown had walked into the combination room: President for the night, he took Luke and me into hall behind him. After grace, his eyes peered down the high table. Francis Getliffe and Martin were several places down from the President — and beyond them, having arrived late, was Skeffington, his head inches above any man’s there. Brown’s face was composed, high-coloured and full; his eyes were sharp behind their spectacles, not missing a trick. For all his heavy composure, he responded to atmosphere as one of the most sensitive of men. He had only had to get inside the combination room to sniff the trouble in the air.

From the head of the table, he watched the faces — and then, in his unfussed way, he talked to Luke and me as though it were a perfectly ordinary evening, as though, after his ten thousand dinners at the high table, this was just his ten thousand and first. The immemorial topics: new buildings: the flowers in the garden: which head of a house was retiring next. Walter Luke wasn’t specially designed to meet that unflurried patter. Once Brown broke it, and asked us a question, wrapped up but shrewd, about the “military side” of Luke’s work. Brown did not approve of pacifism; if horrific bombs could be made, of course his country ought to make them. Then he returned to harmless talk, deliberately small beer, produced — since Brown was not afraid to seem boring — to damp down controversy, and to prevent anyone raising “awkward subjects”.

It went on like that at our end of the table. It might have been a college evening at its most placid. To Luke, who went away immediately after dinner, it must have seemed that the excitement had died. When Brown took his seat in the combination room, he asked the junior Fellow to see whether the company wanted wine, and himself called out to Francis and Martin — “Won’t you stay for a few minutes?” They were standing up: they glanced at each other, and Francis said that they had some business to attend to. Still speaking as though all were smooth, Brown said, “Well, Julian, what about you?” Skeffington also had been standing up: but when he heard Brown’s question, he dropped into a chair not far from Brown at the combination room table.

“That’s right,” said Brown.

“No, Mr President,” Skeffington threw his head back, “it’s not right at all.”

“Can’t you stay?”

“All I want to do is to tell you this is a bad show, and I for one am not prepared to sit down under it.”

“I’m sorry to hear you say that,” Brown said, playing for time. “I suppose you must be talking about this decision, which the Seniors couldn’t see any alternative to making—”

“There was a very simple alternative, Mr President.”

“What was that?”

“To admit that there’d been a crashing mistake. Then to make it up to the poor chap.”

“I’m sorry,” said Brown. “We’re all human and liable to error, but on this particular issue, speaking for myself, I’ve seldom been more certain that I was right.”

“Then it’s time we had someone unprejudiced on this wretched Court—”

“Are you seriously suggesting that we should give up our places on the Court of Seniors simply because we don’t find ourselves able to accept your judgment?”

“No. Simply because you don’t want to admit the facts when you see them.”

Brown said, dignified and still equable in tone: “I think we’d better leave this for tonight. I don’t think you will persuade us to abdicate our responsibility, you know. I fancy we’d better leave it for tonight and talk it over later, if you feel disposed.”

“No. I feel disposed for something which will bring results.” At that, Martin, who had been standing behind us, said to Skeffington that it was time to go.

“I intend to have results and have them quickly,” cried Skeffington. “I am not going to have this innocent chap left with a black mark against him while you put us off with one sidestep after another. If you can’t give us a decent constitutional method of getting a bit of simple justice, then we shall have to try something else.”

“I’m not clear what else you can try,” Brown replied.

“I am ready to make the whole case public,” said Skeffington. “I don’t like it, it won’t do much good to any of us or to this college. But it will do some good to the one chap who most needs it. The minute we’ve let a breath of fresh air into this wretched business, you haven’t got a leg to stand on.”

“I hope I don’t understand you, as I am afraid I do,” said Brown. “Are you intending to say that you’re prepared to get the college into the papers?”

“Certainly I am.”

“I’m obliged to tell you,” said Brown, “that I’m astonished to hear the bare suggestion. All I can hope is that when you’ve slept on it you will realise how unforgivable all of us here would judge any such action to be.”

Skeffington replied, “Don’t you realise some of us here won’t sleep at all? It’s better than letting this chap be done down forever.”

“I repeat,” said Brown, “I hope you’ll sleep on it.”

“Unless someone else can think up a nicer way, I’m ready to blow the whole thing wide open.”

“I should be surprised if you didn’t think better of it.”

“I shan’t.”

Skeffington’s wild irritability seemed to have left him. He glanced over his shoulder at Francis and Martin, still waiting for him. He stood up, proud, vain, sure of himself. With the return of a naval officer’s politeness — towering over the table, he appeared so theatrically handsome that he looked more like an actor playing a naval officer — he said, “Good night, Mr President”, and the three of them went out.

Brown returned the good night, but for a few moments he sat thinking, the decanter static before him in its silver runner. Two or three of the scientists had followed the others, and there were only half a dozen of us scattered around the long table. Of these Nightingale stayed until the decanter had gone round, and then, apologising to Brown, said that he had an hour’s work to do before he went home. He spoke good-temperedly, not making any reference to the scene we had all witnessed. Neither did Clark, who departed soon after; he did mention, however, that he would be ringing Brown up that night or next morning, and it sounded like business. I hadn’t much doubt that there would be other telephone calls about Skeffington’s threat before the end of the night.

Soon Tom Orbell and I were left alone with Brown. He summoned Tom from the far end of the table, telling him to sit at his left hand. “It’s rather a small party for an April evening,” said Arthur Brown, and proceeded impassively to tell us how, as a junior Fellow, he had found himself the only man dining at high table, one night in full term. But Brown’s front was not impregnable. At the end of the story he became silent; just for an instant, he was too much preoccupied to be master of ceremonies; he turned to me and said, “I know you are inclined to believe that the Seniors’ judgment isn’t the right one, Lewis.”

“I’m afraid I do,” I said.

“But you wouldn’t deny that our friend Skeffington made an exhibition of himself, would you?”

For once Brown, the most solid of men, was asking for support. He was speaking to me not as an opponent, but as an old friend.

I could not help replying: “I should have preferred him to do it in a different way, of course I should.”

“I thought you would,” said Brown, with a smile relieved, comradely, but still brooding. “I thought we should agree on that.”

Just then Tom put in, deliberately innocent, his eyes wide open, as though he were exaggerating his youth: “I wonder if you’d let me say something, Arthur?”

“My dear chap?”

“I think you know that, like Lewis, I don’t see quite eye to eye with you over this. On this one single occasion, I do very sincerely think you’re wrong.”

“I appreciate that,” said Brown.

“It’s the only time since I’ve been here that, when it’s come to a decision, I haven’t felt you were incomparably righter than anyone else.”

“You’re much too kind to me.”

Brown was watching Tom with care. He knew — it didn’t take a wary man to know — that Tom was up to something. For what purpose Tom was trying to get round him, he couldn’t foresee. I was thinking that Tom, quite apart from his hidden violence, was a subtle character. He was fluid, quick-moving, full of manoeuvre, happy to play on other men. But, like other subtle characters, he was under the illusion that his manoeuvres were invisible. In fact, they were seen through, not only by people like Brown and me, but by the simplest. And that was true of most subtle men. As they went round, flattering, cajoling, misleading and promising, the only persons who found their disguise totally convincing were themselves.

“So I was wondering if you’d let me ask one question. Don’t you think it might be a mistake to be too intransigent over this? I respect your attitude. I respect your opinion on the justness of the affair, though quite sincerely I can’t agree with it. But don’t you think it might be a mistake — well, one might call it a mistake in tactics, if you don’t misunderstand me, to be too intransigent? Because there are several people like me who would follow your lead over anything else, who simply can’t do it over this. And I do suggest it might be a mistake to put them off too much.”

Brown replied, “I think I can speak for the other Seniors. Naturally we realised that the decision couldn’t be a popular one.”

“I really wasn’t thinking of the other Seniors. If I may say so, Arthur, I was thinking of you.”

“No,” said Brown. “Again I’m not betraying a confidence, I think, when I say there is no difference between us on the Court.”

“There is one very important difference, if you’ll allow me to say so.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, that none of the other Seniors is a candidate for the mastership this autumn, and you most certainly are.”

Brown’s face was heavy: “I don’t see where this is leading us.”

“There’s something I’ve wanted to say for a long time. Perhaps I oughtn’t to. I don’t think you’ll like it. It isn’t my place to say it anyway.”

“I’d rather you did.”

Tom was put off by Brown’s tone, formal and stern.

Would Tom realise, even at the last second, I was worrying, that he had misjudged his man?

He hesitated; then, once more acting the innocent, making his spontaneity into a technique, he cried: “Yes, damn it, I will say it! Arthur, you know I want to see you get the mastership. I want it more than anything in the college, I mean that most sincerely. And you know that some of us are working for you as hard as we can. Well, we’ve been a little anxious, or at least I have, about the effect your part of this affair is going to have. You see, it can’t be helped, but everyone takes it for granted that you’re the toughest obstacle to doing anything for Howard. If you hadn’t been there, everyone assumes that something might have been patched up. That may or may not be fair, but it’s what a lot of people are thinking. And, don’t you see, it’s bound to have a bad effect on some of those who ought to be your supporters. There’s Taylor and one or two others. I’ve been counting on their votes, and now I can see us losing them unless we’re careful. There’s Martin Eliot. He’s not committed to anyone. But I can’t see that it would even be possible for him to vote for you if this affair goes much further. Arthur, I’m not asking you to change your mind. Of course, I know you can’t. You believe what you believe, just as much as we do. But I am asking you to slip into the background and let people think you’re being as fair-minded as they always expected you to be. I’m asking you to slip into the background, and let the others do the fighting.”

Brown had heard him out, but his own reply was prompt and hard. “I should like to believe that you don’t intend it.”

“I do, very sincerely.”

“You’re asking me to alter my behaviour in a position of trust. I oughtn’t to have to tell you that I can’t consider it.”

Brown was plucking his gown round him, ready to get up from his chair. “And it oughtn’t to be necessary for me to tell you, which I will do now, since I don’t wish the subject to be raised again, that during the whole course of this unfortunate business, I have not given a second’s thought to any possible reactions on the mastership election or on my chances in it.”

Brown stood up.

“I’m sorry to leave you a little earlier than I expected, Lewis,” he said. With steady steps he walked out of the room.

The interesting thing was, all Brown said was true. He had been manipulating the college for a generation. He was cunning, he knew all the ropes, he did not invent dilemmas of conscience for himself. He wanted the mastership, and he would do anything within the rules to get it. But it had to be within the rules: and that was why men trusted him. Those rules were set, not by conscience, but by a code of behaviour — a code of behaviour tempered by robustness and sense, but also surprisingly rigid, surprising, that is, to those who did not know men who were at the same time unidealistic, political, and upright. “Decent behaviour”, for Brown, meant, among other things, not letting anyone interfere with one’s integrity in a judicial process. On the Court of Seniors, he felt in the position of a judge, and so, automatically, without any examination of conscience, he fell into behaving as he thought a judge should behave. At the same time he was following, move by move, the campaign of G S Clark to get him votes for the autumn: but when he said that he had not so much as considered how many he would lose or gain by his judge-like stand, it sounded unrealistic for such a realistic man, but it was true.

That was a temptation which did not exist for him. It existed much less for him than for a more high-principled man like Francis Getliffe, who had wavered about Howard when he knew his duty was clear. Brown was under no such temptation; he believed that he had to condemn Howard, and guided by his code, he was not tempted to examine either his own motives or any price he might have to pay.

That was why men trusted him. His cunning, his personal skills, his behaviour, his mixture of good-nature and unbendingness, were all of a piece. As a young man, I believed, he had known unhappiness. He had known what it was like not to be loved; he always had sympathy, which came from a root deeper than good-nature, for those who had got lost in their sexual lives. But all that was long over. As an ageing man, he was utterly, sometimes maddeningly, unshakably, at one.

Tom watched as the door closed behind Brown, utterly astonished. He could not conceive what he had done. What he had said, seemed to him quite innocuous. He was just giving legitimate political advice. It was unimaginable to him that it hit Brown as something like blackmail.

I was thinking — uncomfortably, for I had an affection for Tom and was getting concerned for him — that subtle men like him would be wiser not to play at politics.

22: “Under Which King, Bezonian?”

SITTING in my room the following afternoon, I found myself with nothing to do. The bargain with the university was made, except for a formality which I could knock off next day: Luke had returned to London: I could stretch myself out on the sofa like an undergraduate, and read a book. I had the luxurious feeling that all time was spread out ahead. Did one feel that as a young man, and if so, did one chafe against it? Was it luxurious now just because it was the contradiction of the official life?

Before I lay down, the head porter had rung up to know if I was in my rooms. It seemed a little odd: I thought it might have to do with Arthur Brown’s dinner party that night. At what he called “shamefully short notice”, Brown was organising a dinner in his rooms. For whom, and for what, I wasn’t told, only that he needed me. It sounded as though he were acting fast, as though he were not glossing over the previous night.

I had not been reading for half an hour when I heard steps, a muttering of steps, outside. A tap on the door, and then the head porter, bowler-hat in hand, unctuously calling out my name, and announcing: “Professor Gay!”

The old man was wrapped in a fur coat, with a silk muffler under his beard and round his neck. On his head he wore a wide-brimmed homburg, such as I had not seen for a generation. The head porter was supporting one arm, an assistant porter the other. Another college servant had been conscripted to follow behind, and so a phalanx of four entered the room.

“Ha, ha, my dear fellow! I’ve run you to earth, indeed I have!”

There was nothing for it but to get him into an armchair. He progressed in movements a few inches at a time, but neither embarrassed, nor, so far as I could see, physically discomforted. His lungs did not seem to be troubling him, his breathing was easy. He dismissed the porters with a jaunty wave. “Stay at your posts, men. We shall require you later. When we have conducted our business. We shall summon you by telephone. That’s what we shall do.”

When they had gone, he informed me that he was going to continue to wear his hat — “the draughts in these old rooms, one has to be careful of them nowadays.”

He looked at me, cheeks blooming, pupils white-rimmed but glance eager.

“Well, this is a surprise and a half for you, I’ll be bound!”

It was.

“You can guess what’s brought me here, I’ll guarantee you can guess that.”

I could.

“But you couldn’t guess that I should be able to find you, indeed you couldn’t. Ha, ha. I have good spies. They keep me au fait, my spies do. I know more of what is going on than some people in this college realise. Why, you hadn’t been in Cambridge half a day before I had you taped, my dear chap. Had you taped, indeed I had. That was the day before the special meeting of our so-called Court of Seniors. I knew you were here. I said to myself: ‘Young Eliot is here. A very promising lawyer, that young man is. He’s well spoken of. He’s got his name to make. Why, he might be the man for me!’”

He chuckled.

“You don’t think I’ve come here just to make conversation, do you? Oh, no. If you think that, you’re vastly mistaken. No, my dear chap, I’ve come here for a purpose. I’ve come here for a purpose and a half. I wonder if you have any intimation what the purpose is?”

I had.

“Certain persons thought that I should forget,” said Gay. “Not a bit of it. The psychological moment has arrived. I’ve given them every chance. If they had made amends in their last notification, even if they had mentioned my name, I should have been disposed to let them off. But no, it’s no use looking back. Forward! Forward, that’s the place to look. So now is the time that I bring my suit against the college.”

I was asking about his solicitors, but he interrupted me, his face was shining with triumph, guile, and joy.

“Ah, my dear chap, this is where we help each other. This is a case of mutual help, if ever there was one. That’s why I sought you out this afternoon. I don’t mind telling you, I can do with a good, cool legal head like yours, just to see that we bring all our guns to bear. Fine, cool heads you lawyers have. But I don’t intend to take advantage of you, my dear Eliot. Indeed I don’t. I’ve come here with a proposition. If this case goes into court, I shall insist that you act for me. That will be a fine step in your career. Why, it will make your name! This is going to be a case and a half. It’s a fine thing for a young man like you, to have his chance in a cause célèbre. After all, it isn’t every day that a man of some little note in the learned world brings an action against his own college. I said to myself: ‘This will be a godsend to young Eliot. It will put his foot right on the ladder. There’s no one who deserves to have his foot on the ladder more than young Eliot.’”

Whether he was genuinely under delusions about me, I could not tell. Did he really think that I was still in my twenties? On the envelopes, when he wrote to me, he punctiliously put down style and decoration: had he forgotten what I was doing now, or was he just pretending? Of one thing I was certain. He was completely set in his monomania, and I did not see how we were going to distract him. He wasn’t the first old man I had seen whose monomania kept him very happy. And also — what one had always forgotten in the presence of his preposterous and euphoric vanity — he had throughout his life been more tenacious than most of us. It wasn’t for nothing, it wasn’t simply because he was enthusiastic and vain, that he had made himself into a great scholar. There had been within him the kind of tenacity that could hold him at the same job for sixty years. It was that tenacity which I had walked into the teeth of now.

I repeated, because I could think of nothing better, what did his solicitors advise?

“Ha ha, ha ha!” said Gay. “It’s what you advise that I want to hear.”

No, I told him, he couldn’t take the first step without his solicitors. He gave me a look sly and meaningful, what my mother would have called an “old-fashioned” look.

“I’ll be candid with you, my dear chap, indeed I will. My solicitors are not encouraging me to bring this action, that they’re not. They’re absolutely discouraging me from any such thing.”

“Well,” I said, “that makes it very awkward.”

“Not a bit of it!” cried Gay. “Why, you young men lose heart at the first check. Who are these solicitors of mine, after all? Just a firm of respectable professional men in Cambridge. What is Cambridge, after all? Just a small market town in the Fens. I strongly advise you young men to keep a sense of proportion. My dear Eliot, there is a world elsewhere.”

That did seem a bit cool, after he had lived in the place for over seventy years.

“If you’re not satisfied with them,” I said, “I’ll gladly give you the names of some firms in London—”

“And who might these be?”

“Oh, they’re as good as any in the country.”

“I suppose they’ll take their time, my dear chap? I suppose they’re good old stick-in-the-muds? I suppose you might tip them the wink that there wasn’t any special hurry about old Professor Gay?”

Gay waved a finger at me, not in the slightest disturbed, but triumphant, full of genial malice and bonhomie. “Ah, you see, my dear chap, I know your little game. You’re trying to play out time, indeed you are.”

I felt the joke was against me. I said: “Oh, no, I just need to be sure that the case is in good hands. After all, anything that concerns you is rather special. If it were anybody else, we shouldn’t take such care—”

“Now I think you’re humouring me,” said Gay, still triumphant. “Don’t humour me. That’s not the point at all. I want to get down to business. To business, that’s where I want to get.”

I tried another tack. Professionally, there was no business I could do, I explained. If I were a barrister taking his case, I could only receive instructions through a solicitor –

“Opportunity only knocks once! Remember that!” cried Gay. “I shall soon be absolutely obliged to ask you a question, my dear Eliot. Yes, it’s a question and a half. Which side of the fence are you coming down on, young man? I’ve told you, it’s all very well to humour me. That’s all very fine and large. But it’s not enough, indeed it’s not. We’ve got to make progress. I’m not the one to be content with marking time. So that’s why I’m asking you the vital question. ‘Under which king, Bezonian?’”

Baffled, I said that he knew he had my sympathy –

“Not good enough, my dear chap. Not good enough for the needs of the moment. Time is not on our side. Indeed it isn’t. You see, I’ve got a little surprise for you. You could absolutely never guess what my little surprise is, could you?”

I had an awkward feeling that I could.

“I’ll put you out of suspense. Yes, indeed. It’s no use talking to me about solicitors. I’ve already provided myself with one. A fine solicitor he is. Not the man to let the grass grow under his feet. If I tell him you’re our man, you’ll get a letter from him before you can say Jack Robinson. So I can’t give you long to make up your mind. That’s as plain as a pikestaff, isn’t it?”

Triumphant, he seemed ready to go.

“This is the time for action,” he cried. “Action, that’s what I want to see!”

23: Bargains at a Small Dinner-Party

UNDER the chandeliers in Brown’s room, eight of us sat at the dinner-table. The names themselves would have had a simple eloquence for anyone inside the affair: Nightingale, Winslow, Clark, and Brown himself, on one side; Getliffe, Martin, me, and yes, though I hadn’t expected it, Skeffington, on the other. It meant, and everyone present knew that it meant, some attempt at peace-making, it was a kind of response, almost instinctive and yet at the same time calculated, which all of us had seen before in the college when feeling ran high. Perhaps Brown had a point to score or a bargain to make: that was more likely than not. But also he wanted, unsentimentally but also unquestioningly, out of a desire for comfort as well as piety, to prevent “the place getting unliveable-in”, to ensure that it “didn’t come apart at the seams”.

On the other side, men like Francis Getliffe and Martin wanted the same thing. In bodies like the college, I was thinking, there was usually a core with a strong sense of group self-preservation. That had been true in the struggles I had seen there. Passions had gone from violence to violence, the group emotions were spinning wildly, and yet, from both sides of the quarrel, there had come into existence a kind of gyroscopic flywheel which brought the place into stability once more. This was the fiercest quarrel I had seen in the college. It was not accidental that Brown and the others, the bitterest of partisans, were behaving at dinner as though they were not partisans at all.

It was such a dinner as Brown liked to give his friends. Not lavish, but carefully chosen: only Brown could have got the kitchens to produce that meal at twelve hours’ notice. There was not, by business men’s standards, or writers’, much to drink: but what there was was splendid. Brown was a self-indulgent man in a curious sense; he liked drinking often, but only a little, and he liked that little good. That night he brought out a couple of bottles of a ’26 claret. Very rare, he said, but drinkable. Winslow made a civil remark as he drank. With most of them, I thought, it was going down uncomprehending crops. No one in the college nowadays, except Brown himself and Tom Orbell, cultivated a taste in wine.

As I ate my devils on horseback and drank the last of the claret, I was wondering whether, if he had not made his démarche to Brown the night before, Tom Orbell might have been at this dinner. True, he was junior to everyone there. But still, he was committed in the affair, and yet in all other respects was a Brown man. I couldn’t help feeling that Brown would have seen good reasons for having him along. Nightingale, Winslow and Skeffington had, so I had heard, attended the first Getliffe caucus; Clark was the only man present pledged to vote for Brown. Seeing them together, seeing how differently, while they were fighting out the affair, the alignment ran, I couldn’t begin to prophesy how many of these allegiances were going to survive intact until the autumn.

While dinner went on, no one mentioned the Howard case. The nearest anyone came to it was myself, for, sitting next to Brown, I gave him a précis of my talk with Gay and said that in my view they had no choice but to placate the old man, and the sooner the safer. Brown asked Winslow if he had heard.

“No, my dear Senior Tutor, I have been sunk in inattention.”

Did he realise how often that happened to him now? Was he brazening it out?

“I think we may have to ask you to form a deputation of one and discuss terms with the Senior Fellow.”

Winslow roused himself.

“I have done a certain amount of service for this college, most of it quite undistinguished, in a misspent lifetime. But the one service I will not do for this college is expose myself to the conversation of M H L Gay. It was jejune at the best of times. And now that what by courtesy one refers to as his mind appears to have given up the very unequal struggle, I find it bizarre but not rewarding.”

There were grins round the table, though not from Skeffington, who throughout the meal had sat stiffly, participating so little that he surrounded himself with an air of condescension. Winslow, encouraged because his tongue had not lost its bite, went on to speculate whether Gay was or was not the most egregious man who had ever been awarded fifteen honorary degrees. “When I was first elected a Fellow, and had quite a disproportionate respect for the merits of my seniors, he was in his early thirties, and I simply thought that he was vain and silly. It was only later, as the verities of life were borne in upon me, that I realised that he was also ignorant and dull.”

In an aside, Brown told me that Gay would have to be “handled”. “I blame myself,” he whispered, while the others laughed at another crack by Winslow, “for having let it slide. After the first time you gave us the hint.”

Quietly, his voice conversational, he began talking to the party, when for an instant everyone was quiet. There did seem a need, said Brown, for a little discussion. He was glad to see them all round his table, and he had taken the liberty of asking Lewis Eliot for a reason that he might mention later in the evening. All sensible men were distressed, as he was, by the extent to which this “unfortunate business” had “split the college”.

Then Brown, with dignity and without apology, made an appeal. He said that the Court of Seniors had spent months of their time and had now reached the same decision twice. “I needn’t point out, and I know I am speaking for my two colleagues among the Seniors present tonight, that if we had felt able to modify our decision on Tuesday, we were well aware that we should make personal relations within the college considerably pleasanter for ourselves.” But they had felt obliged to reach the same decision, without seeing any way to soften it. They knew that others in the college — including some of their own closest friends — believed that they were wrong: “It’s even worse than voting on plans for a new building,” said Brown, with the one gibe that he permitted himself, “for dividing brother from brother.” But still the decision was made. He didn’t expect their critics to change their minds. Nevertheless, wasn’t it time, in the interests of the college, for them to accept the decision at least in form? It had been a deplorable incident. No doubt some of the trouble could have been minimised if the Seniors had been more careful of their friends’ sensibilities. He felt culpable himself on that score. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t have affected the decision; that was made now. In the interests of the college, couldn’t they agree to regard the chapter as closed?

Martin and Getliffe, who were sitting side by side, glanced at each other. Before either had spoken, Skeffington broke in. “So far as I’m concerned, Senior Tutor, that’s just not on.”

Brown pursed his lips and gazed at Skeffington with sharp eyes.

“I hoped,” he said, “that you would consider what I’ve just said.”

“It doesn’t touch the issue,” said Skeffington.

“I’m afraid,” said Getliffe, “that several of us can’t let it go at this stage.”

“No, that’s not acceptable, Arthur,” Martin put in. “We didn’t want to, but we’ve got to take it further.”

That meant, since he and Brown understood each other and spoke the same language, an appeal to the Visitor. Brown was considering, but again Skeffington was quick off the mark.

“You know, Martin, that’s no good for me.” He turned to Brown with arrogant awkwardness. “I spoke out of turn last night. I’m sorry. I oughtn’t to have hit the ceiling with a senior. That was a bad show. But I stick to every word I said. If there’s only one way to get this poor chap a square deal, then I’ve got no option.”

Brown did not hesitate any more. In a round, deliberate tone, as though he were dealing with a commonplace situation, he said, addressing himself to Martin and Getliffe: “Well, I can see that you haven’t lost your misgivings. In that case, I have a proposition to make which might ease your minds. Put it another way: it might show you that we on the Court of Seniors realise that you still have grave doubts on your consciences.”

There was no question that Arthur Brown had come equipped. If the first offer failed, as he expected it to, then he had the second ready. There was no doubt also why he was doing it, and why in the last few hours he had worked so fast. It wasn’t because Francis and Martin stayed inflexible. Brown addressed his offer to them, but really all the time it was to Skeffington that he was speaking. Skeffington’s threat had forced him, even while he thought it was an outrage.

To bring the college into the public light, to “get it into the papers”, was to Brown inadmissible and inexcusable. For Skeffington to threaten him, took him out of the area of responsible men. From now on, Skeffington could not be trusted in college affairs, nor could his opinion carry any weight. And yet, it was he who had broken through.

The curious thing was, Brown and Martin and all good performers in closed politics often exaggerated the importance of the shrewd, the astute, the men who knew the correct moves. At least as often as not, in a group like the college, the shrewd moves cancelled each other out and the only way to win was through the inadmissible and the inexcusable.

Brown’s offer was conciliatory and well-prepared. He said that he made it after consulting the other Seniors. Nightingale nodded his head, but Winslow was sleepy after dinner in the warm room. The proposal in essence was that the Seniors volunteered of their own free will and without pressure from the college to have a third and final enquiry. But, Brown said, it was pointless their doing this without some difference in procedure. Therefore the Seniors proposed, again of their own free will, one minor and one major change. The minor change was that, under the statutes, they had the power to co-opt other members: their suggestion was that they should ask Paul Jago to serve. If he had been willing in the first instance, he would have been one of the Court all through. “Some of us know him well, though he’s rather dropped out of things in late years,” said Brown, who used to be his closest friend. “We feel that he would bring a fresh mind to our problems. And I don’t think that his worst enemies would ever have said that he was lacking in human sympathy and kindness.”

“I’m sorry to say,” G S Clark remarked, “that I’ve hardly spoken to him.”

“Oh, in the old days, G S, he’d have done a lot for you,” said Brown, quick to meet the unspoken opposition.

“Could you give us a little information about him?”

“What do you want me to tell you? I think Lewis will agree, he was always very good about anyone in trouble—”

That was why I wanted him on the Court. He had more human resources than most men. But it did not satisfy Clark, who looked so sensible, so reasonable, so sweet-eyed, the knuckles of his bad hand purple-raw on the table, that I felt half-hypnotised and at a loss.

“Has he any strong attachments?” Clark persisted.

“I should have said, he had strong personal attachments, if that’s what you mean—”

It wasn’t.

“I meant rather, is he attached to causes?”

“I shouldn’t have thought so,” Brown replied.

“Well, then, is he a religious man?”

“No, I couldn’t say that. His father was in orders, he was a Fellow of Trinity, Dublin, but I always imagined Paul reacted against Papa pretty early on.”

Clark was looking troubled. Brown added, with the cheerful laugh of one man of sane opinions talking of another, “Of course, Paul has always been a sound conservative. In fact, he sometimes went a bit further in the right direction than I was able to follow him. You know what these old Protestant Irish families are like.”

Clark had broken into a beautiful acceptant smile. Now at last I had it. He had been suspicious in case Jago happened to be a man of progressive views. Paranoia didn’t exist only on one side, I was thinking. Clark was ready to detect the sinister whenever he heard a radical word. And that air had blown round the college, more than Francis or Martin thought, living in it, right through the course of the affair. Even at this table, most of them felt a kind of group-content and group-safety, as they heard of a sound conservative. Certainly Skeffington did, the “troublemaker”.

Paranoia wasn’t all on one side: and then by free association, the thought of Howard, staring blank-eyed, deluded with persecution mania, asking who could have removed the photograph, flickered through my mind.

It was agreed to ask Jago.

The second change — “and this,” said Brown, “is why I took it upon myself to bring Lewis Eliot into our exchange of views,” came as a surprise. It was that the Court should have two lawyers in attendance, “one, to look after the interests of Howard, and the other, if I may say so, to give some help to the Seniors themselves”.

For the first, Brown said, at his most cordial and benign, he hoped that they might obtain “the good offices of our old friend here” — he beamed at me. He knew that Lewis hadn’t practised law for a long time, but this wasn’t a formal trial. He felt sure that Francis Getliffe and Martin and the others would rest quieter if they knew that Lewis was there to give Howard guidance. As for the other lawyer, it meant letting someone else into the secret, but they had in mind “a distinguished member of the college, known to the older people here, and someone who wouldn’t be overweighted by Lewis, which I think we should all feel that the circumstances required”.

Brown finished by saying to Francis and Martin that he made the offer with the full authority of the Master. Just for an instant, he sounded like a shogun speaking formally of the Kyoto Emperor. The Seniors realised they couldn’t make much claim on the lawyers’ time; they believed that the entire re-hearing could be compressed into a few days.

Francis Getliffe was asking me if I could manage it. Running through my pocket-book, I said that I hadn’t three consecutive week-days free until the end of June.

“That’s all right,” said Martin. “So you’ll do it, will you?”

“If you can wait that long—”

“Good.” Martin spoke suddenly, freshly, and with enthusiasm. For a second, across the dinner-table, we had gone back over the years. He was no longer the hard and independent man, more capable in so many ways than I was myself. He was a younger brother speaking to an older, investing in me, as when he was a child, greater faith than I deserved.

This would mean another two months’ wasting time, Skeffington burst out.

“I’m sure we all regret that,” said Brown, steady but not cordial. “But I hope we should all agree that it would be a mistake to spoil the ship for a ha’porth of tar.”

“I don’t know that I can take it.”

“You’ve got to take it,” Francis Getliffe said. “Brown has gone a long way to meet us. It’s a fair offer, and we’ve got to make it work.” Francis said it with authority. Skeffington acquiesced with meekness because, as well as having an overweening sense of his duty, he had also a capacity for respect. He had a simple respect for eminence: to him, Francis was near the peak of eminence, and he both listened to him and was a little afraid of him.

Suddenly, however, Skeffington drew support from someone who had little respect for eminence and was afraid of no one. G S Clark, with his gentle, petulant smile, broke in: “I must say, with due respect, I’ve got a lot of sympathy for Julian’s view. I couldn’t disagree with him more over the merits of this case, but heavens above, I think he’s right to push on with it.”

“No,” said Nightingale, “we’ve got to get the right answer.”

“You’re preaching to the converted,” Clark replied. “I’m sure we’ve already got the right answer, and we’re going to get it again.”

“We’ll see what happens,” Nightingale answered, with a smile open and confident.

“I’m sorry, I still support Julian on the time-table,” said Clark. “I don’t feel like accepting delay.”

“Then you’d better feel like it. Because that’s the way it’s going to be.”

Nightingale said it amiably enough, and, like Francis, with authority — though Francis’ came from himself and Nightingale’s from his office.

“The general opinion does appear to be against you, G S,” said Brown. Winslow roused himself and muttered, “Hear, hear.”

Clark smiled across Winslow at Skeffington.

“We seem to be in a minority of two. If it were a meeting, we could have our names written in the minutes.”

There was a curious accord between them. They stood at the two extremes, both utterly recalcitrant. As often with extremists, they felt linked. They had a kinship, much more than with their own sides, the safe and sensible people in the middle.

Well then, said Brown, we were agreed. He was just putting a last question, when I slipped in one of my own. I had been thinking to myself over the chance of having Jago on the Court. Would Brown mind if I took a hand in persuading him to act? Brown, anxious to concede us any inessential point, agreed at once and went on with his question.

“I should like to ask everyone round the table, presuming that the Seniors reach a decision according to the methods we’ve agreed on tonight, whether they could see their way to pledge themselves to regard that as the finish. I’m not asking anyone to answer here and now. I expect you’ll want to sleep on it. But I suggest to you that it wouldn’t be unreasonable, if we’re to get this place back on an even keel.”

“Content,” said Winslow, suddenly revivified.

“I am very happy,” said Nightingale.

“I’m not fond of hypothetical pledges,” said Francis, “but, yes, I think it’s reasonable.”

“I agree, this must be all or nothing,” said Martin.

Brown looked at Clark.

“What is your present feeling, G S?”

“Oh, it’s bound to turn out right,” said Clark.

“And you?” Brown said to Skeffington.

“I shall try to accept what the Seniors decide,” Skeffington replied, after a long pause, his head high, staring at the wall. “But I’m not making any promises tonight. And I don’t see how I shall ever be able to.”

24: Hermitage

NEXT morning, the clock on the Catholic church was striking eleven as I walked along by Fenner’s to the Jagos’ house. The trees were dense with blossom; the smell of blossom weighed down the air, the sky was heavy. I was coming unannounced, and I had no idea what reception I should get. All I knew was that Brown, wishing to clinch the bargain of the night before, had seen to it that the Master sent a letter to Jago by messenger.

In the dark morning the petals shone luminescent, the red brick houses glowed. Jago’s was at the corner of a side street. I had not been there before, as, when I knew him, they had been living in the Tutor’s residence: but he had owned this house for forty years, since the time when, as a young don, he had married one of his pupils. They had lived there in the first years of the marriage, and when he retired they had gone back. It was ugly and cosy from the outside, late nineteenth-century decorated, with attic gables, and, through a patch of garden, a crazy pavement leading to the front door.

After I rang, the door was opened by Mrs Jago. She stood there massive, pallid, and anxious. She looked at me as though she did not know whether to recognise me or not.

“Good morning, Alice,” I said.

At her stateliest, she replied in form.

I said that I was sorry to appear without warning, but could I have a quarter of an hour with Paul?

“I’m afraid my husband is much too busy to see visitors,” she said.

I said: “It’s fairly important—”

“On matters of business, I’m afraid my husband has nothing to say to anyone.”

“I should like you to tell him that I’m here.”

Once she had disliked me less than she had disliked most of Paul’s colleagues. She stared at me. I did not know whether I should get the door slammed in my face.

“Please be good enough to come in,” she said.

Preceding me down a passage, she was apologising for the state of the house — “not fit for visitors”, she cried. In fact, it was burnished and spotless, and had a delicious smell. That, too, she had worked at, for it came from bowls of pot-pourri chosen to complement the smell of wood-fires. For anyone with a sharp nose, it was the most welcoming of houses. Not in other respects, however. When Alice Jago opened the study door and cried out that I had come to see him, Jago’s voice did not express pleasure.

“This is unexpected,” he said to me.

“I shan’t take much of your time.”

As he stood up to shake hands, he was watching me with eyes shrewd and restless in the fleshy face.

“Perhaps I have an idea what brings you here,” he said.

“Perhaps you have,” I replied.

“Ah well, sit you down,” said Jago. His natural kindness was fighting against irritability. He might have been a man essentially careless and good-natured, intolerably pressed by his job, not knowing what it was to have five minutes free, driven mad by the latest distraction.

The study could not have been more peaceful. Out of the French windows one saw the garden, with blossoming trees spread-eagled against the wall. The room was as light, as bright, as washed free from anxiety, as though it looked out to sea. They used it together. There was one chair and table and rack of books for him, the same for her, and another rack between them. Jago saw me examining the third rack. Realising that I was puzzled, quick to catch a feeling, he said: “Ah, those are the books we’re reading to each other just now. That was a good custom your generation didn’t keep up, wasn’t it?”

He was saying that one of them read to the other for an hour each evening, taking it in turns. That winter they had been “going through” Mrs Gaskell. It all seemed serene. Perhaps, in spite of her neurosis, his pride, the damage she had done him and the sacrifice he had made for her, they truly were at peace together, more than most couples in retirement, provided that they were left alone.

I was not leaving them alone. Mrs Jago gazed at me, uncertain how to guard him, protect herself. With her most lofty impersonation of a grande dame, she said: “May I offer you a cup of coffee?”

I said that I would love one.

“It will be cold, needless to say.”

It was not cold. It was excellent. As I praised it, Alice Jago said with rancour: “When I was obliged to entertain because of Paul’s position, no one ever wanted to come to see me. So naturally I had to give them decent food.”

“Darling,” said Jago, “that’s all past history.”

“I expect,” said Alice Jago to me, “that now you’ve had your coffee you’d like to talk to Paul alone.”

“I hope he doesn’t expect so,” said Jago. He had not sat down again, and now he moved, on soft slippers, towards her.

“I think he’ll appreciate that I don’t see anyone alone nowadays. Anything he wants to say, I’m sure he’ll be ready to say to us together.”

“Of course,” I said. To myself, I was wishing it wasn’t so. While I was thinking about it again, I noticed the books on their two reading-racks. As with others who had waited a lifetime “to catch up with their reading”, Jago’s didn’t appear very serious. There were half a dozen detective stories, a few of the minor late nineteenth-century novels, and a biography. On Mrs Jago’s rack stood the Archer translations of Ibsen, together with a Norwegian edition and dictionary: it looked as though she were trying to slog through the originals. She used to be known in the college as “that impossible woman”. She could still put one’s teeth on edge. But it was she who had the intellectual interest and the tougher taste.

“I suppose,” I said, “you did receive a letter from Crawford this morning?”

“Yes,” Jago replied, “I received a letter from the Master.”

“Have you answered it?”

“Not yet.”

“I hope you won’t,” I said, “until you’ve listened to me.”

“Of course I’ll listen to you, Lewis,” said Jago. “You were always a very interesting talker, especially when the old Adam got the better of you and you didn’t feel obliged to prove that there wasn’t any malice in you at all, at all.” His eyes were sparkling with empathy, with his own kind of malice. He had scored a point, and I grinned. He went on: “But I oughtn’t to conceal from you that I don’t feel inclined to accept the Master’s kind invitation.”

“Don’t make up your mind yet.”

“I’m very much afraid it is made up,” said Jago.

Mrs Jago was sitting in the chair next to mine, both of us looking out to the garden as to the sea. He was sitting on her chair-arm, with his hand on hers.

“I don’t feel inclined,” he said, “to get involved in college affairs again. I can’t believe it’s good for them, and it certainly isn’t good for us.”

“I’m asking you to make one exception.”

“When I was looking forward to retiring,” he replied, “I thought to myself that I would make just one exception. That is, I should have to drag myself away from here and set foot in the college once more. But not for this sort of reason, my dear Lewis.”

“What was it, then?”

“Oh, I think I shall have to cast my vote when they elect the next Master. This autumn. It would be misunderstood if I didn’t do that.”

“Yes,” said Alice Jago. “It’s a pity, but you must do that.”

At first hearing it seemed strange. The last time those votes had been cast — that was the wound, which, except perhaps in this room, the two of them had not been able to get healed. And yet, it was the sort of strangeness one could, at least viscerally, understand. I had heard more than once that he was committed to vote, not for his old friend Arthur Brown, but for Getliffe — as though choosing the kind of distinction which he didn’t possess and which had been thrown up against him. I thought of asking, and then let that pass.

“Look,” I said, “this is a human situation.” I told him, flat out, why I wanted him on the Court of Seniors. He was much too shrewd and perceptive a man to dissimulate with. I said that I believed Howard was innocent. Jago might not agree when he heard the complete story and studied the evidence — all his prejudices, I said, for I too knew how to dig in the knife of intimacy, would be against Howard. Nevertheless, Jago had more insight than any of them. I wanted to take the chance. If he happened to decide for Howard, that would make it easier for the others to change their minds than anything I could say.

“I don’t see what claim you have on me,” said Jago. “It would be different if I knew anything about this man already.”

“Don’t you feel some responsibility?”

“Why should I feel responsibility for a man I don’t know and a college I’ve had no control over for seventeen years?”

“Because you have more sympathy than most people.”

“I might have thought so once,” he replied simply and gravely, “but now I doubt it.”

“You like people.”

“I used to think so,” said Jago, in the same unaffected tone, “but now I believe that I was wrong.” He added, as though he were speaking out of new self-knowledge and as though I deserved the explanation: “I was very much affected by people. That is true. I suppose I responded to them more than most men do. And of course that cuts both ways. It meant that they responded to one. But, looking back, I seriously doubt whether I genuinely liked many. I believe that in any sense which means a human bond, the people I’ve liked you could count on the fingers of one hand. I’ve missed no one, no one now living in this world, since we thought we hadn’t enough time left to waste, and so spent it all with each other.” He was speaking to his wife. It sounded like flattery, like the kind of extravagant compliment he used to give her to bring a touch of confidence back. I believed that it was sincere.

“Haven’t you found,” he turned to me again, in a tone lighter but still reflective, “that it’s those who are very much affected by people who really want to make hermits of themselves? I don’t think they need people. I certainly didn’t, except for my own family and my wife. I’ve got an idea that those who respond as I responded finally get tired of all human relations but the deepest. So at the end of their lives, the only people they really want to see are those they have known their whole lives long.”

He glanced at me, his eyes candid, amused and searching.

“If your man has had the atrocious bad luck you think he has, I’m sure you’ll persuade them, Lewis. But, as far as I’m concerned, I think you can see, can’t you? — it would have to be something different to make me stir.”

It was no use arguing. I said goodbye almost without another word. I thanked Alice Jago for putting up with me.

“Not at all,” she said, with overwhelming grandeur.

I went out into the street, the blossom dazzling under the leaden cloud-cap. I felt frustrated, no, I felt more than that: I felt sheer loneliness. I wasn’t thinking of the affair: it would mean working out another technique, but there was time for that. Under the trees, the sweet smell all round me, I couldn’t stay detached and reflect with interest on the Jagos. I just felt the loneliness.