Corridors of Power

by C. P. Snow

  Brodzinski stared at me with lambent eyes. He understood some of Whitehall politics much better than most Englishmen: but on these matters of honorific etiquette, he was mystified. He could not have guessed where Roger or Douglas Osbaldiston, or anyone else, came in. On the other hand, he gave a very English reply.

  ‘It doesn’t matter whether I get recognized. All that matters is that we do the right thing.’

  ‘The Minister is extremely grateful for the advice you have given. I know he’ll want to tell you so himself.’

  Brodzinski sat back in the leather-covered chair, his great chest protruding like a singer’s. His face, wide and shield-shaped, was hard with thought, the flap of dusty hair fell to his eyebrows. He was still preoccupied, I guessed, with the thought of drafting going on without him. Yet he was happy. Roger he had spoken of as a trusted, powerful friend. He was sitting with me as though I were another friend, lesser, but still powerful.

  ‘It will soon be time,’ he said, ‘for the Minister to assert himself.’

  I was having to feel my way.

  ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘what any Minister can do on his own is pretty limited.’

  ‘I am afraid I do not understand you.’

  ‘I mean,’ I said, ‘you mustn’t expect miracles. He’s a very able man, as I’m sure you realized a long time ago, and he’s prepared to do things that most Ministers wouldn’t. But, you know, he can’t do much without the support of his colleagues at all levels. He can only do what a great many people think ought to be done – not just himself.’

  There was a rim of white all round his irises. His gaze was fixed on me, and stayed so. He said:‘I still do not understand you–’ Once more he addressed me in full. ‘Or, at least I hope I do not understand you.’

  ‘I am saying that the area of freedom of action for a Minister is smaller, a great deal smaller, than most people can ever understand.’

  ‘I can see that could be so.’ He seemed exaggeratedly reasonable, and once more he was optimistic. ‘But let us come to practical examples. There are questions – we have been trying to discuss them this afternoon – where there is not unanimity of opinion. There cannot be unanimity of opinion. There will be differences, with some scientists taking Getliffe’s view, and some scientists taking mine. Am I correct?’

  ‘There hasn’t been unanimity so far, has there?’ I was trying the effect of sarcasm, but he went on, set-faced, as though we were already agreed:

  ‘Well then, in such circumstances, the Minister can use his authority on one side or the other: am I correct again?’

  ‘In some circumstances,’ I replied ‘he could.’

  ‘In these circumstances, then?’ He was throwing in all the weight of his nature, bearing me down. Yet his expression looked as though all was simple, as though difficulties did not exist, and his friends, including me, would give him what he longed for: as though disappointment did not exist on this earth.

  I was searching for the words. At last I said: ‘I don’t think you must count on it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to explain, the Minister is bound to listen to his advisers. You’ve been giving him one kind of advice. But – you know this don’t you? – the overwhelming majority of opinion is dead against you. The Minister can’t say that the pros and cons are about equal, and then just decide.’

  ‘I think I understand. I think I understand clearly.’ His heavy hands on his thighs, Brodzinski stared at me. His face had not altered, but his eyes had flared up. The transition was complete, as if the switch of suspicion had, between one instant and the next, been turned on in his mind. A second before, beautiful, expectant clarity: now, the sight of an enemy.

  ‘What do you understand?’

  ‘It is very easy. The Minister is not to be allowed to make up his own mind. These scientists have been carefully picked by other officials. Of course they have. They advise one thing, I advise another. Then other officials surround the Minister. They pick and choose, they are not willing to let the matter be discussed. Of course they are not. I see what I am expected to understand.’

  ‘You mustn’t look for sinister explanations.’

  ‘I do not look for them. I am obliged to see them.’

  ‘I am not prepared,’ I said, my voice getting harder, ‘to listen to suggestions that you have not been treated fairly. Do you really believe that my colleagues have been trying to do you down?’

  ‘I am not speaking about your colleagues.’

  ‘You mean me?’

  ‘I believe there is a saying – If the cap fits, wear it.’

  I had become the spider in the web, the origin of persecution. No one likes being hated: most of us are afraid of it: it jars to the bone when we meet hatred face to face. But it was better that I should be the enemy, not Roger.

  I had to sound as if I didn’t mind being insulted, as though I had no temper of my own. I wanted to lash out and do it better than he did. Temperaments like his clashed right at the roots with mine: even if he were not being offensive, he would have tempted me to say something hard. But I was doing a job, and I couldn’t afford luxuries, certainly not the luxury of being myself. I said, sounding like a middle-aged public man: ‘I repeat, the Minister is very grateful for all the effort you’ve put into this work. I think I ought to say that he has an exceptionally high opinion of you.’

  ‘I hope you are right.’

  ‘He has made it perfectly clear–’

  ‘I hope you are right.’ Suddenly his face was full of illumination, as though he were looking over my shoulder. ‘Then I shall go straight to him in the future.’

  ‘That may not be possible, when he’s occupied–’

  ‘That,’ said Brodzinski, ‘is for the Minister to say.’

  With ritual courtesy, he inquired what I should be doing for Christmas. With dignity he thanked me for entertaining him. When I took him to the top of the stairs, he gripped my hand in his immense one. I returned to the drawing-room, and stood preoccupied, not noticing acquaintances about the room, with my back to the fire. I was thinking angrily of Roger. He should have broken the news himself.

  A cheerful little old man patted my arm. ‘I saw you caballing down there–’ he pointed to the end of the room – ‘with that scientist chap.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ I said.

  ‘Talking a bit of shop?’

  ‘Talking a bit of shop,’ I said.

  I was wondering just how I could have done it better. One thing was clear: I could hardly have done it worse. I was wondering what Brodzinski would do next.

  I was letting myself get worn down by one man. It seemed foolish, right out of proportion, as I stood there by the fire, in the drawing-room of the Athenaeum.

  It seemed even more foolish, half an hour later, in the drawing-room of my own flat. Francis Getliffe was there before me, having come for dinner before he got the late train back to Cambridge. He was talking to Margaret, who liked him best of my old friends, who shone at him as if, in different circumstances, he might have been her choice. This was not so, and he knew it was not. She was fond of him, both because she recognized his reciprocal affection, and because she admired what his life had been. Like hers, it had been signally without equivocation. They knew how to talk to each other simply, without parentheses.

  The room was bright, the pictures were lively on the walls, it was a home such as in my young manhood I thought I should never have. I mentioned that I had had a scene with Brodzinski. Margaret was smiling, because of the place where it had happened. Francis was impatient. The sooner he delivered the report to Roger, the better: as for this man, he could not see that he mattered. Nor could I, drinking before dinner in my own home.

  Francis had quite a different concern. Soon after I arrived, a young man and a girl came into the room, both of them flushed. The young man was Arthur Plimpton, who immediately took charge of the drinks. He made Margaret lie back, and went round with a tinkling tray, refilling our glasses
, calling Francis and me ‘Sir’, with his mixture of respect and impudence. The girl was Penelope, Francis’ younger daughter.

  She was nineteen, but looked older. She was taller than her father, Junoesque and, in a rosy flowering fashion, beautiful. She did not much resemble either of her parents. Where that particular style of beauty came from, no one could explain; if I had not known, it would not have occurred to me that her mother was Jewish.

  Arthur had managed to get his way. It had been easy to coax Margaret into inviting them to stay with us for a week. It had not been so easy for Penelope to accept. Francis, who usually rejoiced in his children’s love-affairs and marriages, did not seem to rejoice in this. The fact was, that someone had let him know, after Arthur had got inside the family, how rich the young man was. Francis did not like it: or rather, he would have liked them to get married, but could not let anyone see it, even his oldest friends. He would not, even by an ordinary invitation, appear to be encouraging his daughter to marry a fortune. His sense of punctilio was getting stiffer as he grew older: he had all the hard pride of the English professional classes, plus something added of his own.

  It amused me, having known Francis since we were both young. I had seen him, less orthodox than now, marrying for love, but also marrying into a rich family. I had seen him defying taboos, a Gentile carrying off a Jewish girl. I had seen him less respectable than now. Other people, meeting him in his middle fifties, regarded him as he and I regarded the dignitaries of our own youth – Sir Francis Getliffe, high principled, decent, full of gravitas, a little formal and, yes, a little priggish. I could not regard him so. Even when he was behaving stiffly, I could still hear, as none of us can help hearing with the friends of our youth, the chimes of another time: the ‘chimes of midnight’, in the empty, lonely streets we had once walked together.

  That did not prevent Margaret and me from twitting him, saying that he was showing ridiculous decorum, and ourselves opening our house to Arthur. I was fond of Penelope, who happened to be my goddaughter, but of the pair it was Arthur who was the more fun.

  That night at dinner, he had two objectives. One was to absorb the conversation. He could not get over his discovery that Sir Francis, so eminent, so strait-laced about domestic behaviour, was, when he talked about the world, by American standards wildly radical. Arthur could not have enough of it. It shocked him, and gave him a thrill of guilt. Not, I thought, that anything Francis, Margaret or I said would affect him by as much as one per cent. But I thought also, with a certain grim satisfaction, that it would do him no harm to hear us talk about communists as though they were human beings.

  Arthur’s second objective was less intellectual. It was to get Penelope to himself. Towards the end of the meal, Francis was looking at his watch. He would soon have to leave for Liverpool Street. If Arthur waited half an hour, he and Penelope could slip out without a word. But Arthur was a young man of spirit.

  ‘Sir Francis,’ he said, ‘we will have to be going ourselves. I must say, it’s been a very fine evening.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ said Margaret, since Francis did not reply.

  ‘Penny and I are going to dance some place.’

  They were both waiting. Penelope, who was not talkative, had an inward-turning smile.

  They might be late, Arthur went on, and asked Margaret if they could have a key.

  ‘I’ll get her back safe and sound,’ Arthur said to Francis.

  Francis nodded.

  ‘And I’ll send her back to Cambridge in time for Christmas,’ Arthur went on, a little lordly, and knowing it.

  I joined in, to stop Arthur teasing Francis any more. I said we would all travel to Cambridge together. We were taking our children, as we did each year, to spend Christmas with my brother Martin.

  Francis, back in authority again, asked us all to come to his house on Boxing Day. There was to be a great party of Francis’ children, a couple of grandchildren, Martin’s family and ours.

  Just for an instant, Arthur looked appealing. He wanted to be invited. Francis knew it, and glanced at him from under high, quixotic eyebrows. Arthur might be obstinate, but he had met another obstinate man. This time Francis held the initiative. He did not budge. He gave no invitation. He said politely that in five minutes he must be off.

  Resilient, Arthur was on his feet.

  ‘We have to go too. Come on, Penny. It’s been a very fine evening, Sir Francis.’

  They told Margaret they wouldn’t want breakfast, and would see her later in the morning. Arthur said good night to Francis, and Penelope kissed him. Then they went out, a handsome couple, cherishing their secrets, disclosing nothing except happiness, full of the pride of life, full of joy.

  18: The Euphoria of Touching Wood

  On a bright January morning, the telephones kept ringing in my office. Did I know, did anyone know, who was going to be the new Prime Minister? Had anyone been summoned to the Palace? All over Whitehall, all through the maze of the Treasury Building, men were gossiping. To some, in particular to Ministers like Roger, the answer mattered. To one or two, it would be decisive. No one in Roger’s circle knew what it was going to be. They had not been ready for the resignation. Now the Chancellor was being backed: so was the Home Secretary. Moral sentiments were being expressed, and a good deal of damage being done.

  After lunch, we heard that Charles Lenton had been sent for. There had not been such a turnover of fortune for over thirty years. By the end of the afternoon, people in high places were discovering virtues in Lenton that had not before been so vividly perceived. He was a middle-ranking Minister who had, for a short time after the war, been in charge of Hector Rose’s department. He was now fifty-five, young to be Prime Minister. He was a lawyer by profession, and people commented that he must be the first Conservative Prime Minister since Disraeli without substantial private means. He was hearty, healthy, unpretentious: he looked amiable and slightly porcine, except that, as a political cartoonist and a smart photographer happily observed, he was born with bags under his eyes. Rose said: ‘At any rate, my dear Lewis, we shan’t be dazzled by coruscations of brilliance.’

  Roger said nothing. He was waiting to see where the influence lay. In the London network, messages about the Prime Minister began flashing like the bulbs on a computer. Whom he listened to, where he spent the weekend, whom he had a drink with late at night.

  Within three months, Roger and his friends were certain of one thing. The Prime Minister had set himself up with a confidant. This was not in itself surprising: most men in the ‘first place’ (as some liked to call the Prime Ministership) did so. But it was more surprising when they realized who the confidant was. It was Reggie Collingwood.

  From the outside, the two of them had nothing in common. Collingwood was arrogant, unsocial, in a subfusc fashion grand – whereas the Prime Minister was matey and deliberately prosaic, as though his ambition was to look natural in a bowler hat, coming in on the Underground from Purley. Yet there it was. At once the gossips were tipping Ministers whom Collingwood appeared to fancy. They all agreed that Roger’s stock was on the way down.

  It sounded too near the truth. I had heard from Caro herself that Collingwood had never got on with her family. They were too smart, too much in the high world, for him. Collingwood might have spent a lot of time in the high world, but he did not approve of it. As for Roger, Collingwood had had nothing to do with him. They had not had so much as a drink together. At Basset, during that weekend twelve months before, they had met like remote acquaintances: and then Roger had found himself in, or forced, a quarrel.

  Before long, the gossips began to hedge. Monty Cave was brought back into the Government, and promoted to full Ministerial rank. The commentators got busy once more. Was this a gesture towards Roger? Or was the PM playing both ends against the middle? Or, a more ingenious gloss, was he showing the left wing of the party that he had nothing against them, before he eased Roger out?

  A few days after Cave’s appointment, I
was sitting in the barber’s in Curzon Street when I heard a breathy whisper near my ear. ‘Well, what’s going to happen tomorrow night?’

  As soon as I got out of the chair, I heard some more. Apparently Roger had been summoned to one of those private dinners which busybodies like my informant were beginning to know about: dinners with the Prime Minister and Collingwood and a single guest, which took place, because Collingwood didn’t like the Tory clubs, in his own suite at an old-fashioned hotel.

  ‘Well, what are they going to say to him?’

  I didn’t know. I didn’t even know whether the story was true. My informant was a man with a selfless passion for gossip. As I walked down the street in the sunshine, I was thinking bleakly of the old Dostoievskian phrase, that I had heard something ‘on not specially reliable authority.’

  But it was true. In forty-eight hours we knew, when Caro telephoned Margaret to ask if they could come to dinner that night, with no one present but the four of us.

  They arrived very early. The sun was still high over the Park, blinding Caro as she sat down opposite the window. She screwed up her eyes, hooted, told Margaret that she wanted a drink but that Roger needed one first. Roger had scarcely spoken, and Caro’s voice, as in her own house, took charge. But Margaret liked her more, and got on with her better, than I did.

  Soon they were sitting side by side on the sofa, all of us suddenly quiet.

  I said to Roger: ‘So you saw them last night, did you?’

  ‘Why do you think,’ said Caro, ‘that we’ve parked ourselves on you like this?’

  From his armchair, Roger was gazing, eyes blank, at the picture over the fireplace.

  ‘How did it go?’ I asked.

  He muttered, as though he were having to force himself to talk.

  I was at a loss. He was not inhibited because Margaret was there. He knew that she was as discreet as I was, or more so. Both he and Caro felt safe with her, and trusted her.

  Roger brushed both hands over his eyes, forehead and temples, like a man trying to freshen himself.