In Their Wisdom Read online

  Further, Jenny had resisted him over the holiday and it was desirable to demonstrate what was her proper place.

  Without a preliminary he stared at her, spoke straight at her, as though they were the only people in the room.

  ‘Your bit of business,’ he said, ‘I may as well tell you what to do.’

  Jenny, though she hadn’t been tactless, flushed as the Minister had done a few minutes before. She wasn’t prepared for this. He was doing it all over again. In that drawing-room, in front of a party half of which were strangers whom she hadn’t previously met, including the Cabinet Minister and Sir Ernest Packe, Swaffield recapitulated the history of the will, his own insistence that it had to be reversed, the court case, now the appeal. This didn’t take over long, despite snatches of Swaffieldesque mischief. Although Jenny was not in a mood to appreciate it, it was a masterly piece of exposition, as compact and well ordered as Sir Ernest would have been capable of.

  There was just one oddity, which Symington alone could appreciate. They had now received an opinion from distinguished legal authority, and Swaffield had talked to him that week. In fact that opinion was suitably ambiguous. It could be read as inclining to the view that the appeal wouldn’t be allowed. Swaffield, like a Prime Minister studying a paper which wasn’t exactly what he required, chose to interpret it in his own way, that is in favour of an immediate settlement. Swaffield was ordering Jenny to call it a day.

  ‘They offered us a price to buy her off,’ said Swaffield to the party, who appeared interested, not only for politeness’ sake, Haydon-Smith nodding a sapient head.

  ‘But it wasn’t big enough,’ said Swaffield. ‘Well, we’ll up that offer, enough to keep them quiet. Three-quarters of a loaf is better than no bread. It’s time we were shut of the whole business.’

  ‘My girl,’ he shot a command at Jenny, ‘that’s what you do.’ He gazed at her with triumph, wanting her to be obstinate, ready to ride her down.

  Strange faces were looking at her with curiosity.

  ‘Of course,’ said Jenny. ‘I’m sure you’re being very wise.’

  She didn’t say it with especial grace. She had more than her share of counter-suggestibility. Often she hated the man. Yet she also respected him. Whatever his whirlpool of motives was, she had learned that his judgement – even when he made it sound brash and grotesque – was curiously cool.

  ‘I’m sure that’s right,’ said Symington. ‘You do agree, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I do.’ She was sharper with him than with Swaffield, regarding him as a friend, thinking she ought to be protected more. ‘You’re preaching to the converted.’

  Lord Clare intervened: ‘We all hope this can be pushed under the carpet now. We really don’t want any more in the papers.’

  Lord Clare said the obvious with loftiness, and others acquiesced. Journalists had been following up the Julian Underwood–Liz Hillmorton connection, and among that party journalists were not popular.

  Swaffield was still gazing at Jenny, and fired off another interrogation. Flushed again, she replied, not over-gently but with something like submissiveness and deference. He couldn’t draw her. She agreed, she would do what she was told. Swaffield gave a shrug, as though deflated and at a loss, like someone who had pushed strenuously against a door and found it on the latch.

  Soon afterwards, though it wasn’t eleven o’clock, early for a dinner which started at half past eight, Swaffield was showing signs of impatience again. Just as he had been tapping a foot because his guests hadn’t arrived, now his foot was tapping, his eyes growing hot, because they wouldn’t go away. Those who had most to do with him suspected that he was expecting another visitor that night, or maybe there was another visitor already in the house. That aspect of Swaffield none of them knew. He enjoyed living everyone’s lives in public, but there was one exception, his own.

  Some of the party recognised the signs and began to say good night. The Haydon-Smiths, the Packes, somewhat surprised, stood up themselves.

  ‘You have to go, have you?’ said Swaffield, not making a more resolute attempt to detain them. ‘I know, I know, I’m not a pradge owl myself.’

  That singular phrase, a relic of Swaffield’s past, was unintelligible to them all. It seemed to mean that he didn’t go late to bed: which, to the Symingtons, was also unintelligible, since it wasn’t long since they had been requisitioned for a supper at one in the morning.

  As the party was standing about the room, door open, leave-taking complete, Swaffield made a last gnomic remark.

  ‘Glad you came. It’s been nice listening to you.’

  Was that great smile malicious or naïve? Did he really not remember that he had been talking himself eighty per cent of the time?

  The Packes moved to their official car outside. The Haydon-Smiths, with benevolent good nights, moved to theirs. Mrs Haydon-Smith, who considered the evening had been bizarre, asked her husband what he thought of Swaffield. In private Haydon-Smith wasn’t devoid of humour, but he had a politician’s gift of not condemning a man until he was safely finished, even to his wife or in his own mind, particularly if he was a man of power like Swaffield. Haydon-Smith considered, and then replied:

  ‘I think I should say, he’s a distinctly unusual fellow.’

  18

  The Chamber was abnormally populated that evening, so were the library, the guest room, the bar, and surreptitious lurking places. Peers’ wives sat on one side of what was also called the Bar, and other guests opposite to them. At the further end of the Chamber, elderly dignitaries from the Commons sat on the steps of the throne, bottom by bottom with the sons of peers, one or two in their teens. Spectators looked down from the galleries.

  As in a theatre with a certain hit, sheer numbers produced their own excitement. There was more laughter than the House was used to, even the vestigial trace of hysteria, which an actor would have recognised, underneath the phlegm. A skilful speaker could have played on it. No one did so. The courtesies flowed out. Speeches were being read from sheaves of what might have been notes, but were delivered intact to the Hansard reporters. Reading speeches was forbidden by a rule of order which was always being broken. There was another rule of order against acerbity of speech, and that was usually obeyed. It was being obeyed that evening. It was 28 October, the second day of the debate on the intention to enter the European Community. The vote would be taken later in the night.

  About the result, there was no suspense. It required invincible ignorance to feel any. Anyway, it didn’t matter, since the Commons had been debating for five and a half days, and were about to vote handsomely in favour. The only perceptible suspense was about the size of the majority. In the bar, some cheerful betting had been going on, on the lines of an old style transatlantic crossing, high field, middle field, low field. High field was 400 and above. That’s about right, said someone, as confidently as he would have done a generation before in the Queen Mary. ‘This is a classical case of over-kill,’ said a more judicious voice.

  The whips weren’t on, and so most of the Opposition were voting with the Government. Although the whips weren’t on, discreet notices had gone out and, not entirely as a coincidence, faces which weren’t familiar had appeared for those two days, also to vote with the Government. The argument over Europe was shadow-boxing. The political nation was for entry; and, very strongly, some of the brightest young. All cool-minded observers knew that a referendum would have decided against it. So also, said liberal persons in the bar, would a referendum have decided against the abolition of hanging. So also, said conservative persons, would a referendum have decided against fighting in 1939.

  There were dissidents scattered round the House that night. As wasn’t uncommon, the extreme right and the extreme left were speaking the same language. As was less common, a few professional economists, though not speaking the same language, joined them. And there were one or two, like the unquenchable Lanjuinais throughout the French Revolution, who said no to everything.


  In the guest room a dispute broke out, half gibing, half intense. As the evening went on, most people present felt that the air, though not undisturbed, was on the whole benign.

  From the opening on the previous afternoon the speeches were running nine or ten to one in favour of entry. Not many of them were exultant. The tone stayed sober, practical, sometimes qualified (il faut parier, the old Pascalian phrase), once or twice idealistic, from men influenced by the young.

  It was the only time Hillmorton, Ryle, Sedgwick, could remember all three of them speaking in the same debate: and all three on the same side.

  As a luminary in the House, ex-senior Minister, Tory elder statesman, Hillmorton was number four on the list for the first afternoon. His speech had been singularly unlike his private conversation, not in the least ironic or detached, and only intermittently reflective. It might have been designed to give comfort to the Clares and Lorimers of his own party, but the curious thing was, he hadn’t any such intention, he had always been more orthodox or commonplace on his feet than anyone who heard his ruminations would believe.

  This was right, he said, as enthusiastically as at a Conservative garden party, the Government was right, there was no other way. He didn’t wish to live to see the people of this country getting poorer than their fellow Europeans. This was the only way to prevent that. He thought it his duty (said gravely) not to minimise the difficulties. In his judgement there would be some years of hardship, and perhaps sacrifice for many, immediately after entry. But any spirited people could take some sacrifice in the present, when that was the condition of a better future. A sturdy rumble of hear hears as he sat down: also notes passed from the front bench, to whom in private Hillmorton’s scepticism from above the battle was frequently not a source of encouragement.

  In this House, unlike the Commons, the order of speakers was fixed in advance, by an apparatus solemnly referred to as ‘the usual channels’, which actually meant the party whips, with ancillary help from the leaders. ‘The usual channels’, trying to take care of Sedgwick’s physical state, put him in early on the second afternoon. He had insisted on speaking, which was something of an embarrassment, and those who had once heard his crisp patrician English were embarrassed most, listening to the fumbles of his tongue. But the speech itself was as crisp as the utterance used to be. Most of the elder statesmen, and many who hadn’t been statesmen, let alone elder ones, devoutly believed that the importance of a topic bore an exact relation to the suitable length of one’s speech. Hence in this debate it wouldn’t have been proper to speak for less than half an hour. Sedgwick thought that ten minutes was as long as anyone ought to speak on anything, including the end of the world. Ten brisk minutes. He believed in entry into Europe as incisively as anyone there. Almost all scientists did. They were by vocation internationalists. The nation-state seemed to them, at best, obsolescent. Europe was only a starting point. It would be significant if it were the sign of a movement towards a more rational world.

  Relaxed applause when the effort of speaking was finished, interspersed with mutters that this was too academic, scientists wouldn’t get down to bread-and-butter.

  Ryle, who had no claims to special consideration, got up at an uninvigorating time – just before eight o’clock on the second evening, most members out for dinner, fatigue descending on the dutiful – and proceeded to make a bad and confused speech. Partly it was that, though in terms of action he had decided on this matter years before, he was, somewhere behind the will, more divided than his friends. Was it his historian’s training, was it temperament, was it, curiously enough, not being an aristocrat or an intellectual patrician that tied him to the past more than they were tied?

  Anyway, he made a bad speech which attracted no interest and wasn’t mentioned in the parliamentary reports the following morning. It was a muddled historical disquisition. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this country had been lucky beyond the limits of luck (so earlier on had the Venetians been, that old echo wouldn’t stop recurring, though he kept it to himself). During the last hundred years, the luck had run out. At the peak of the country’s power our predecessors, including predecessors in this House and the other place, had shown preposterously little foresight – not for want of being told. Now we were back in something like our natural power position – but with historical legacies lingering over and imperial debts to pay. So we had to make the luck for ourselves, carve out a realistic position. Of the possible choices, none of the others was now realistic – except Europe, it was left as the only choice.

  Ryle sat down, dissatisfied, not over-concerned about the effect of a speech, but feeling that this was worse than most. Acquaintances in the House went in for lavish congratulations to anyone on almost any speech, rather as though oral expression were a new and astonishing accomplishment, and, as he walked down the corridors and sat in the bar, he received a few that night. With Hillmorton in a corner, however, Ryle, like Jenny after her evidence in court, was conscious of an absence of praise. Hillmorton coped with the occasion by generalised comments on the whole debate. ‘I doubt if anything specially novel has been said, wouldn’t you think?’

  ‘Possibly,’ Hillmorton continued to muse, ‘after all this time there isn’t anything novel left to say. Possibly,’ Hillmorton mused more lengthily, ‘it would be a mistake to try.’

  Which was as near as Hillmorton would come to evaluating the performance of James Ryle. The bar was so noisy that they moved to the guest room, but that was as noisy and more crowded. People were waiting about now until the closing speeches from the front benches.

  The House became as packed as it had ever been: men were sitting in the gangways and on the cushions in front of the Lord Chancellor, standing all over the Chamber, the galleries full: all to hear the winding-up utterances, which, though satisfactorily long, quite long enough for the gravity of the proceedings, did not, as Hillmorton might have been prophesying, strain after anything novel to say.

  At last, at the drawn-out last, the motion was put. Large roars of content. Scattered defiant rumbles of not content. ‘I think the contents have it.’ Defiant rumbles again. ‘The contents will go to the right by the Throne, the not contents will go to the left by the Bar.’ It took over a quarter of an hour for the contents to traipse through the lobby (it was the biggest vote in the House’s records, partly for the undramatic reason that the number of members had not previously been so high).

  ‘The contents have voted four hundred and fifty-one. The not contents have voted fifty-eight.’ Rollicking reverberating hear hears. The euphoria, the relief of a consummation. Someone observed there was as much excitement as though (a) the result signified, whereas the Commons had settled the matter (b) this particular vote was in doubt, instead of being inevitable all along. But the person who observed that, wasn’t capable of group emotion.

  Excitement continued. Men celebrating in the bars as others like them had done at the end of wars. The guest room became so hot with the fumes of alcohol, tobacco and victory that the windows were thrown open. Hillmorton and Ryle were standing near by, and they looked out for a breath of air. Over the river was a temperate, misty, wistful autumn night and Ryle looked back to the celebrations.

  ‘Not exactly a case of the pathetic fallacy,’ he said.

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Hillmorton. He knew that the other man wasn’t at his most tranquil. Casually, easily, Hillmorton went on: ‘I think we’ve done enough for honour. Let’s go along.’

  So they went along in the mist, past the railings of Parliament Yard. They could have called at Ryle’s flat, which was near, or at one of his clubs, which wasn’t far away, but it was to Brooks’ that they walked. To Ryle, after that evening, it might have seemed a suitably elegiac choice. On the other hand Hillmorton didn’t reveal any elegiac thoughts.

  He said, again casually, ‘Well, that’s settled.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  They were standing at the crossing, waiting for the lig
hts to change.

  ‘Give it ten years. It will be interesting to see what comes of it.’

  ‘I must say,’ Ryle broke out, ‘that’s a very profound remark.’ Hillmorton gave an affable smile, not showing his reflections as directly as his friend. In case of doubt or feeling, detachment was a good cover, so were lofty platitudes, either would do.

  They went on with their walk to St James’s Street, taking nearly but not quite the course which Hillmorton used in daylight. Instead of turning alongside the park, they went down Whitehall, deserted at that time of night, only one light shining high up the Treasury.

  When they were young men, this street had had some charm for them, the charm of authority, perhaps for Hillmorton the charm of something like power. Memories didn’t come back to order. There they were, two substantial elderly men walking slowly, thoughts drifting through their minds, Hillmorton saying something, not significant, about the future. Past Downing Street, but he didn’t recollect the first time he had been summoned there. Nor did Ryle recollect an acquaintance, back in the thirties, saying with enthusiasm, ‘Do you realise, this is the most important street in the world?’ That hadn’t in cold fact been true then. At one time, at one privileged time, it might have been. It wouldn’t be true again.

  All that, those two had accepted long ago. You came to terms. They had been coming to terms those last two days. You didn’t overstay your welcome, or pretend for ever that you were stronger than you were. And yet, though Hillmorton hid it, there was regret somewhere in their mood. At the same time they had the confidence of those who had had the luck and had known what it was like to be listened to. That didn’t forsake you so easily.