by C. P. Snow
He went on: ‘That would be somewhat embarrassing for us. No doubt you will make your own view heard in your own good time. But I suggest you have some obligation to give us a decent interval. You’ve been working with us for a long time. It wouldn’t seem proper if you made matters awkward for us by a dramatic resignation.’
I did not reply. Rose went on: ‘I also suggest it wouldn’t be good for you. I expect it affects you very little. You have other things to occupy you. I understand that. But still, you’ve done your service to the state. It would be a pity to spoil it now. Whoever one is, I think it’s wrong to leave a job with hard feelings. It’s bad for the soul to leave under a cloud.’
I could not tell whether he was being considerate. His manner, which had become more than ever frigid, made the words sound scornful or artificial. Yet he was insistent.
I said: ‘How long should I stay?’
‘The end of the year? Is that asking too much?’
I said I would do it. Rose accepted the bargain, businesslike, without thanks. It was only when I went towards the door that he began to thank me profusely, not for meeting his wishes or accepting his advice, but for the somewhat more commonplace feat of walking along the corridor to see him.
47: Night Sky over London
It was a warm summer night, a year and a half after Roger’s resignation, when Margaret and I arrived at South Street for a party at Diana’s. Not that either of us was thinking of the past. This was just an engagement, it wasn’t more significant than others, it was part of the to-ing and fro-ing. The children were at school, we were free, it was pleasant to drive round the Park through the soft indigo evening.
In the drawing-room upstairs, the guests clattered and drank, keeping eyes alert for the latest entrant. There was a simmer of pleasure as they moved around, the pleasure of being inside the circle, like being in a party on ship-board, with the sea pattering below. It was all still going on, I thought. Going on as, for most of them, it had always been: and as, in their expectations, it always would.
I was curious, as at any of Diana’s parties, about who was in favour now. Collingwood stood by the fireplace, sempiternal, satisfied, unvocal. For a while Monty Cave, who had been promoted that spring, was at his side. Cave had now outdistanced his competitors: all Diana’s influence was behind him: he was being talked of as the next Chancellor. People were continuing to speculate whether Diana would marry him, but, in spite of her resolve to break away from loneliness, she, who wasn’t used to dithering, went on doing so. She was hard-baked enough about the power game, but she couldn’t make herself hard-baked about a second marriage. She was still capable of dreams of love. Her will deserted her. She had had a happy marriage and longed for another. She was not ready for one which was not real.
Lenton came in, did not stay long, but found time to talk, modestly, unobtrusively, to his hostess. As Prime Minister he might be busy, but he was teaching some lessons to men who thought him commonplace. One was, never make enemies if you can help it, and above all, never make enemies by neglect. Before he went, he had beamed, porcine and attentive, at each of his supporters. I noticed him whispering to Douglas Osbaldiston, whom I had not seen at Diana’s before, and who, years before, when his wife was well and we were better friends, used to tease Margaret and me for our excursions into the high life.
Diana kept up with the times, I thought. She used not to pay attention to top civil servants, but here was not only Douglas, but one of his co-equals at the Treasury. Douglas had duly returned there, and had one of the top jobs created for him. All that Hector Rose, now retired, had wished for from the Service, Douglas had obtained. Margaret continued to visit his wife in hospital, and, in the months since I left Whitehall, he had frequently dined with us. Yet, between him and me, the breach wasn’t healed. He had tried; the coldness was one-sided, the fault was mine.
From the ruck of the party, Sammikins halloo’ed at me. He was looking for someone to take to Pratt’s, to finish off the evening. He wasn’t having any luck: he had just been turned down for the sixth time, he announced at the top of his voice, his laugh ringing out like a spirited but inappropriate imitation of Roland’s horn at Roncesvalles. Caro went by at that moment, magnificently pretty, looking as though she were carefree. She tapped her brother on the shoulder, threw a cordial word to Margaret, then spun round at the greeting of somebody else and addressed herself to him with vivacity. She did not come near me, or Margaret, again that night.
I felt my arm gripped. It was Lord Lufkin. He said in a meaningful and grinding tone: ‘That man Hood.’ The tone was meaningful, but for an instant I was lost. Quite lost. The party lapped and hooted round me. All this was still going on. I had forgotten. But Lufkin did not forget.
‘I’ve got him,’ he said.
Lufkin was obsessive enough to go in for revenge. No one else in his position would have done the same. It seemed fantastic that a great tycoon should have spent his energy – not just for a day, but for weeks and months – working out plans for getting a middle-rank employee of another firm dismissed from his job. Yet that was precisely what he had done. He did not regard it as revenge, but as natural justice. When he spoke of it, he did not exhibit triumph or even relish. It was something he had to do, and was able to do. It was part of the rightness of things.
In the roundabout of the party, among the groomed and prosperous faces, for the first time that night I thought of Roger. He was not there. He would not have been invited. If he had been invited, it was not likely that he would have come. Margaret had asked him and Ellen often to our house, but they had accepted only once. Face to face, he was as warm and easy-natured as he had ever been: and yet he shied, like one with an active phobia, from the places and people he had known best in his period of power.
He was still in the House. But, now the divorces had gone through and he had married Ellen, his constituency party would not run him at the next election. He had not lost his hope. He and Ellen were living modestly, in an ambience quite unlike the glitter of Lord North Street. His income, such as it was, came from two or three directorships which Lufkin had stiffly but judiciously put in his way. As for the marriage, we had not seen them at close enough quarters to be anything like certain, but Margaret, prejudiced against it, had nevertheless come to believe that it was firm and good.
Ellen she had not quite brought herself to like. This was partly out of feeling for Caro and partly, I thought to myself with a degree of inner amusement, because in some of the qualities of their natures, she and Ellen were not altogether dissimilar. Both were active, both were capable of violent feeling, both were natural partisans, though Ellen had nothing of the easy flow inbred in Margaret. ‘She is a one-man dog, you know,’ Margaret had once said to me with a rueful grin, ‘she hasn’t anything left over for the rest of us. And that I find a little hard to take. Still, it’s not hard for him to take, and I suppose that’s the important thing.’
Parting from Lufkin, I went through the heat and dazzle, out to the balcony in search of her. There she was, in a group with Francis Getliffe and others, and I took her aside. Lufkin’s news filled my mind, absented me from the party. I felt as though I had suddenly recaptured a long dead grief or joy, and I had to tell her.
She listened, looking at me and then into the brilliant room. She knew, more quickly than I did, that I was not really telling her about Lufkin or Hood, but about Roger’s failure and our own. I was really speaking of what we had tried and failed, to do.
‘Yes,’ said Margaret, ‘we need a victory.’
Her spirit was strong. She was looking back into the room. Just as I had done earlier, she was thinking how it all went on. ‘We need a victory,’ she said. She was not giving up, nor letting me.
Francis Getliffe joined us. For an instant Margaret and I stopped talking, awkwardly. We might have been caught gossiping about him, using his name in malice. Francis wasn’t with us any more. He had given up. Not that he had changed his opinions: but he could not en
dure another struggle. He had retired to his house in Cambridge and to his research. Already, that evening, he had talked about a new idea with as much excitement as when he was young.
Defeat can cut into friendships, I was thinking, as much as being on different sides. Francis and I had been intimate for thirty years. Yet now part of the spontaneity had had to go, almost as much as it had gone with Douglas. It was a tiny price to pay for having gone through the struggle: but still, it was a price.
We talked a little, the three of us, of the college and Cambridge. We went to the end of the balcony. Over the garden, over the rooftops, shone the rusty, vivid night-sky of London, the diffused recognition of all those lives. We talked, more eagerly now, of our children, with the special tenderness of old friends, who have seen each other’s families growing up. The memory of the struggle, even the reason for it, dimmed down. We talked of the children, and were happy. The only puzzle remaining to us that night was Penelope. She and Arthur Plimpton were both in the United States and they had both got married, but not to each other. Francis gave a grim, quixotic smile and thought it was a joke against himself .
Under the town’s resplendent sky we talked of the children and their future. We talked as though the future were easy and secure, and as though their lives would bring us joy.
Strangers & Brothers Series
Series in broad chronological ‘story’ order (see Synopses below for ‘Series order’)
Dates given refer to first publication dates
These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as stand-alone novels
1. Time of Hope 1949
2. George Passant (Originally entitled ‘Strangers & Brothers’) 1940
3. The Conscience of the Rich 1958
4. The Light and the Dark 1947
5. The Masters 1951
6. The New Men 1954
7. Homecomings 1956
8. The Affair 1960
9. Corridors of Power 1964
10. The Sleep of Reason 1968
11. Last Things 1970
Synopses (Both Series & ‘Stand-alone’ Titles)
Published by House of Stratus
A. Strangers and Brothers Series (series order)
These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as stand-alone novels
George Passant
In the first of the Strangers and Brothers series Lewis Eliot tells the story of George Passant, a Midland solicitor’s managing clerk and idealist who tries to bring freedom to a group of people in the years 1925 to 1933.
The Light & The Dark
The Light and the Dark is the second in the Strangers and Brothers series. The story is set in Cambridge, but the plot also moves to Monte Carlo, Berlin and Switzerland. Lewis Eliot narrates the career of a childhood friend. Roy Calvert is a brilliant but controversial linguist who is about to be elected to a fellowship.
Time of Hope
The third in the Strangers and Brothers series (although the first in chronological order) and tells the story of Lewis Eliot’s early life. As a child he is faced with his father’s bankruptcy. As a young man, he finds his career at the Bar hindered by a neurotic wife. Separation from her is impossible however.
The Masters
The fourth in the Strangers and Brothers series begins with the dying Master of a Cambridge college. His imminent demise causes intense rivalry and jealousy amongst the other fellows. Former friends become enemies as the election looms.
The New Men
It is the onset of World War II in the fifth in the Strangers and Brothers series. A group of Cambridge scientists are working on atomic fission. But there are consequences for the men who are affected by it. Hiroshima also causes mixed personal reactions.
Homecomings
Homecomings is the sixth in the Strangers and Brothers series and sequel to Time of Hope. This complete story in its own right follows Lewis Eliot’s life through World War II. After his first wife’s death his work at the Ministry assumes a larger role. It is not until his second marriage that Eliot is able to commit himself emotionally.
The Conscience of the Rich
Seventh in the Strangers and Brothers series, this is a novel of conflict exploring the world of the great Anglo-Jewish banking families between the two World Wars. Charles March is heir to one of these families and is beginning to make a name for himself at the Bar. When he wishes to change his way of life and do something useful he is forced into a quarrel with his father, his family and his religion.
The Affair
In the eighth in the Strangers and Brothers series Donald Howard, a young science Fellow is charged with scientific fraud and dismissed from his college. This novel, which became a successful West End play, describes a miscarriage of justice in the same Cambridge college which served as a setting for ‘The Masters’
The Corridors of Power
The corridors and committee rooms of Whitehall are the setting for the ninth in the Strangers and Brothers series. They are also home to the manipulation of political power. Roger Quaife wages his ban-the-bomb campaign from his seat in the Cabinet and his office at the Ministry. The stakes are high as he employs his persuasiveness.
The Sleep Of Reason
The penultimate novel in the Strangers and Brothers series takes Goya‘s theme of monsters that appear in our sleep. The sleep of reason here is embodied in the ghastly murders of children that involve torture and sadism.
Last Things
The last in the Strangers and Brothers series has Sir Lewis Eliot’s heart stop briefly during an operation. During recovery he passes judgement on his achievements and dreams. Concerns fall from him leaving only ironic tolerance. His son Charles takes up his father’s burdens and like his father, he is involved in the struggles of class and wealth, but he challenges the Establishment, risking his future in political activities.
B. Other Novels
A Coat of Varnish
Humphrey Leigh, retired resident of Belgravia, pays a social visit to an old friend, Lady Ashbrook. She is waiting for her test results, fearing cancer. When Lady Ashbrook gets the all clear she has ten days to enjoy her new lease of life. And then she is found murdered.
Death Under Sail
Roger Mills, a Harley Street specialist, is taking a sailing holiday on the Norfolk Broads. When his six guests find him at the tiller of his yacht with a smile on his face and a gunshot through his heart, all six fall under suspicion in this, C P Snow’s first novel.
In Their Wisdom
Economic storm clouds gather as bad political weather is forecast for the nation. Three elderly peers look on from the sidelines of the House of Lords andwonder if it will mean the end of a certain way of life. Against this background is set a court struggle over a disputed will that escalates into an almighty battle.
The Malcontents
Thomas Freer is a prosperous solicitor who is also the Registrar, responsible for his cathedral’s legal business. His son Stephen is one of a secret group of young men and women known as the core. When Stephen’s group ctivities land them in terrible trouble, no one guesses that the consequences will lead to a death and more.
The Search
This story told in the first person starts with a child’s interest in the night sky. A telescope starts a lifetime’s interest in science. The narrator goes up to King’s College, London to study. As a fellow at Cambridge he embarks on love affairs and searches for love at the same time as career success. Finally, contentment in love exhausts his passion for research.
C. Non-Fiction
The Physicists
C.P. Snow’s sketches of famous physicists and explanation of how atomic weapons were developed gives an overview of science often lacking. This study provides us with hope for the future as well as anecdotes from history.
Trollope
C P Snow’s passion for Anthony Trollope makes for an interesting biography of the famous writer. His early career in the Post Office, his thwarted political ambitions and his person
al life are all recounted here, along with a knowledgable and perceptive take on his ‘art’.
More Non-Fiction coming soon - including The Realists
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