Corridors of Power Page 6

  Back in the house, I felt the constraint tightened again, as soon as the Quaifes arrived. I caught Margaret’s eye: in the midst of the party we couldn’t talk. Yet soon I realized that, whatever the reason, it was not that which had worried me most: for just before lunch, I found Caro and Diana drinking whisky, and agreeing that Gilbey must be got rid of.

  ‘You’re in on this, Lewis!’ cried Diana. ‘Old Bushey’ (Gilbey) ‘has never been the slightest bit of good to us, has he?’

  I sat down. ‘I don’t think this is his line,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be pie-faced,’ said Diana. ‘He’s a nice, smart cavalry officer, and he’d have married an actress if they’d let him, but that’s his ceiling and you know it.’

  ‘He’d never have married an actress, he’s the biggest snob of the lot of them,’ said Caro.

  ‘Do you think the priests would have got to work?’ said Diana. Gilbey’s family was Catholic, and to these two he seemed to have lived in the backwoods. There was much hooting hilarity, which did not disguise the truth that Diana and Caro understood each other and meant business.

  ‘The point is,’ said Diana, ‘he’s no good. And we can’t afford him.’

  She glanced at Caro with appraising eyes, at a pretty woman twenty years younger than herself, at a pretty woman as tough as herself, at an ally.

  ‘I can tell you this,’ Diana added sharply, ‘Reggie Collingwood is certain that we can’t afford him.’

  It ought to have been good news. After an instant, Caro frowned.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve got no special use for Reggie,’ she said.

  ‘Listen,’ said Diana, ‘you have got to be careful. And Roger, of course. But you have got to be very careful.’

  If I had not been there, she would have said more. A few minutes later we went in to lunch.

  As for me, until after dinner on the Sunday night, I remained half-mystified. The hours seeped away, punctuated by meals; I might have been on an ocean crossing, wondering why I hadn’t taken an aircraft. The rain beat down, the windows streamed, the horizon was a couple of fields away; it was, in fact, singularly like being on a ship in gloomy, but not rough, weather.

  I did not get a word with Roger alone. Even with Margaret, I managed to speak only in our own rooms. She was having more than her share of the philosophy of Lord Bridgewater, while in the great drawing-room of Basset, in various subsidiary drawing-rooms, in the library, I found myself occupied with Mrs Henneker.

  She was nothing like so brassy as I had previously known her. When she discovered me alone in the library on Saturday afternoon, she still looked dense, but her confidence had oozed away. The curious thing was, she was outfaced. Through the misted window, we watched Diana and Caro stepping it out along the drive in mackintoshes and hoods, taking their exercise in the drenching rain.

  ‘The rich think they can buy anything,’ said Mrs Henneker heavily. The mana of Diana’s wealth was too much for her, just as it might have been for my relatives or my old friends or others really poor. There was a certain irony, I thought. Mrs Henneker herself must have been worth a hundred thousand pounds or so.

  Mrs Henneker did not listen to any repartee of mine. But she had a use for me. Perhaps under the provocation of the Basset opulence, her purpose had crystallized. She was going to write that biography of her husband, and I could be of minor assistance.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘I’ve never done any writing, I’ve never had the time. But my friends always tell me that I write the most amusing letters. Of course, I should want a bit of help with the technique. I think the best thing would be for me to send you the first chapters when I’ve finished them. Then we can really get down to work.’

  She had obsessive energy, and she was methodical. On the Sunday morning, while most of the house-party, Roger among them, went to church, cars squelching on the muddy gravel, she brought me a synopsis of her husband’s life. After the drawn-out luncheon, Diana’s neighbours staying until after tea, Mrs Henneker got hold of me again, and told me with triumph that she had already written the first two paragraphs, which she would like me to read.

  When at last I got up to my dressing-room, light was streaming in from our bedroom and Margaret called out. I’d better hurry, she said. I replied that I had been with Mrs Henneker: she found my experience funnier than I did. As I pulled off my coat, she called out again: ‘Caro’s brother seems to have stirred up the dovecotes.’

  She had been hearing about it after tea. At last I understood one of Cave’s obliquities the morning before. For Caro’s brother was called, not only by his family but by acquaintances, ‘Sammikins’. He was also Lord Houghton, a Tory MP, young and heterodox. Recently, Margaret and I recalled, he had published a short book on Anglo-Indian relations. Neither of us had read it, but the newspapers had splashed it about. From the reviews, it seemed to be anti-Churchill, pro-Nehru, and passionately proGandhi. It sounded a curious book for a Tory MP to write. That was part of his offence. ‘He’s not exactly their favourite character, should you say?’ said Margaret. She was frowning at herself, and her dress, in the glass. She was not quite so uncompetitive, these days, as she would have had me think.

  I could guess what Diana had said to Caro. At dinner the topic was not mentioned, and I began to hope that we were, for the time being, safely through. The conversation had the half-intimacy, the fatigue, the diminuendo, of the close of a long weekend. Since there was no host, the men did not stay long round the dining-table, and in the drawing-room afterwards, we sat round in a semi-circle, Diana, impresario-like, placing herself between Collingwood and Roger, encouraging them to talk across her.

  Suddenly Lord Bridgewater, open-faced, open-eyed, cleared his throat. We knew what was coming. He hadn’t been born in this society, but he had taken its colour. At home he was an amiable man, but he had a liking for unpleasant jobs. He spoke across the width of the room to Caro. ‘I hope we shan’t hear any more of Sammikins, you know what I mean.’ For once, almost for the first time, I saw Caro put out. She flushed. She had to control herself: she hated doing so. It was in her nature not only not to give a damn, but to say that she didn’t. After a pause, she replied, a little feebly: ‘Horace, I’m sorry, but I’m not my brother’s keeper.’ Sammikins was a couple of years younger than she was, and listening, I was sure that she loved him.

  ‘Some people,’ said Collingwood, ‘would say that he could do with one.’

  ‘They’d better say that to him,’ said Caro, ‘that’s all.’

  ‘He’s not doing any good to the Party,’ said Lord Bridgewater, ‘he’s not doing any good at all.’

  Collingwood looked at Caro. His eyes brightened in women’s company, but his manner did not change and he said straight at her: ‘It’s got to be stopped.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, that if Sammikins won’t stop it himself, we shall have to stop him.’

  In Collingwood’s difficult, senatorial tone, the nickname sounded more than ever ridiculous. Caro was still just keeping her temper.

  ‘I don’t think,’ she replied, ‘that any of you have the slightest idea what he’s like.’

  ‘That doesn’t enter,’ said Collingwood. ‘I mean, that if he writes anything like this again, or makes any more speeches on the same lines, we can’t have anything more to do with him.’

  On the other side of Diana, I saw Roger’s frowning face. He was gazing at his wife. She, dark with shame, was shaking her head as though telling him to keep quiet. Up to now, she knew – better than anyone there – that he had not made a false move, or one not calculated, since he entered the Government. This wasn’t the time to let go.

  Caro gave Collingwood a social smile.

  ‘You mean,’ she said, ‘you’re ready to take the whip away?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘That wouldn’t matter much, for him.’

  I believed that, for an instant, she was talking professional politics in the sense Collingwood would understand.
Her brother, as heir to his father’s title, could not reckon on a serious political career.

  ‘That’s not all,’ said Collingwood. ‘No one likes – being right out of things.’

  There was a pause. Caro thought successively of things to say, discarded them all.

  ‘I utterly disagree with nearly everything you’ve said.’ It was Roger’s voice, not quietened, addressed to the room as well as to Collingwood. He must have been enraged by the choice he had to make: now he had made it, he sounded spontaneous and free.

  Like Caro, I had been afraid of this. Now that it had happened, I felt excited, upset, and at the same time relieved.

  ‘I don’t know how you can.’ Collingwood looked lofty and cold.

  ‘I assure you that I do. I have the advantage, of course, of knowing the man very well. I don’t think many of you have that advantage, have you?’ Roger asked the question with a flick, his glance moving towards his wife. ‘I can tell you, if a few of us had his spirit and his idealism, then we should be doing a lot better than we are.’

  Caro had flushed right up to her hair-line. She was anxious for Roger, she knew he was being unwise: but she was proud of him, proud because he had put her first. She had not known what to expect, had tried to persuade herself that she hoped for his silence. But he had not been silent: and she was filled with joy. I saw Margaret flash her an exhilarated glance, then flash me a worried one.

  ‘Aren’t you forgetting judgement, Quaife?’ asked Lord Bridgewater.

  Roger swept on. ‘No, I’m not forgetting judgement. But we’re too inclined to talk about judgement when we mean the ability to agree with everyone. That’s death. Let’s have a look at what this man has really done. He’s stated a case – pretty roughly, that I’ll grant you: he hasn’t taken the meaning out of everything he said, which is another gift we tend to over-value. In one or two places he’s overstated his case. That I accept, and it’s a fault you’re always going to find in sincere and passionate men. But still, the major points in his book are substantially true. What is more, everyone in this room, and almost everyone competent to express an opinion, knows they are substantially true.’

  ‘I can’t agree,’ said Collingwood.

  ‘You know it. You may disagree with the attitudes, but you know the points are true. That’s why you’re all so angry. These things are true. The sin this man has committed is to say them. It’s quite all right for people like us to know these things. But it’s quite wrong for anyone to say them – outside our charmed circle. Aren’t we all coming to take that for granted more and more? Isn’t it becoming much more desirable to observe the etiquette rather than tell the truth? I don’t know whether it frightens you, but it certainly frightens me. Politics is too serious a business to be played like a private game at a private party. In the next ten years, it’s going to be more serious than anything we’ve ever imagined. That’s why we need every man who’s got the spine enough to say what he really thinks. That’s why we need this man you’re all so bitter about. That’s why–’ he finished, in a conversational tone, speaking to Collingwood – ‘if there is any question of his being pushed out, I shouldn’t be able to sit quietly by.’

  ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t,’ Collingwood replied, in his own awkward kind of conversational tone. He was quite composed. There was no sign of what effect Roger had made on him, or whether he had made any effect at all. ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t.’

  7: Another Home

  The next night, Monday, Margaret and I were due to dine at the Osbaldistons’. As our taxi drew up, we could not help reflecting that it was something of a change from Basset; for the Osbaldistons lived in a house, detached, but only just detached, on the west side of Clapham Common. It might have been one of the houses I had visited as a boy, feeling that I was going up in the world, in the provincial town where I was born, the houses of minor professional men, schoolmasters, accountants, solicitors’ clerks.

  We went up the path between two rows of privets; the front door had a panel of coloured glass, leaded, in an acanthus design, and the passage light shone pinkly through.

  Inside the house, I was thinking that there was no need for Douglas Osbaldiston to live like that. The decoration and furnishing had not been changed from the fashion of the early twenties: beige wallpaper with a satin stripe and a discreet floral dado: some indifferent romantic landscapes, water-colours, in wooden frames, gate-legged tables, a sideboard of fumed oak with green handles. At the top of the Civil Service, he could have done much better for himself. But, just as some men of Douglas’ origins or mine set themselves up as country gentlemen, Douglas did the reverse. It was done out of deliberate unpretentiousness, but, as with the bogus country gentlemen, it was becoming a little of an act. When, over dinner, we told him that we had been at Basset for the week-end, he whistled cheerfully, in excellent imitation of a clerk reading the gossip columns and dreaming of social altitudes inaccessible to him. Yet Douglas knew – for he was the most clear-headed of operators – that just as he suspected that places like Basset still had too much effect on government decisions, so Diana Skidmore and her friends had an identical, and perhaps a stronger, suspicion about his colleagues and himself. Neither side was sure where the real power rested. In the great rich house, among the Christian names of the eminent, there were glances backwards, from the knowledgeable, in the direction of suburban villas such as this.

  In the tiny dining-room, we were having an excellent dinner, cooked by Mary Osbaldiston: clear soup, a steak and kidney pie, lemon soufflé. It was much better than anything to be found at Basset. When I praised the meal, she flushed with gratification. She was a fine-featured woman, intelligent and undecorated as Douglas himself; she had no style and much sweetness. Margaret and I were fond of her, Margaret especially so, both of us knowing that they had a deprivation we had been spared. They had longed for children, and had had none.

  Douglas had the pertinacity and precision of a boss administrator; he wanted to know exactly why and how I had come to know Diana Skidmore. He was not in the least envious of my extra-official life; he was not asking entirely through inquisitiveness, through needing another piece of information about how the world ticks.

  He listened, with the direct concentration of a detective. Anything about business, anything that might affect ministers, was a concern of his. In particular, when I told him about Roger’s outburst, he regarded that as very much a concern of his.

  ‘I must say,’ said Douglas, ‘I thought he was a cooler customer.’

  His face had ceased to look like a scholar’s.

  ‘Why in God’s name did he choose this time of all times to blow his top? Lord love me, we don’t have much luck in our masters–’

  I was saying that I thought we had been lucky in Roger, but Douglas went on: ‘I suppose he did it out of chivalry. Chivalry can be an expensive luxury. Not only for him, but for the rest of us.’ His wife said that we didn’t know the relations of Caro Quaife and her brother. Perhaps that was the secret.

  ‘No,’ said Douglas. ‘I don’t see how that could be much excuse. It was an irresponsible thing to do. I can’t imagine indulging in that sort of chivalry if anything hung on it–’ He grinned at his wife. It sounded bleak, but it was said with trust. Douglas knew precisely what he wanted; he was tough and, in his fashion, ruthless; he was going to the top of his own tree, and his dégagé air wasn’t enough disguise; but his affections were strong, and he was a passionate man, not a cold one.

  ‘Mind you, Lewis,’ said Douglas, ‘if this man Quaife gets away with this performance, he’s in a very strong position. The best way to arrive is to arrive with no one to thank for it. He must know that as well as we do.’

  Douglas had his full share of a man of action’s optimism. The optimism which makes a gulf between men of action and purely reflective men, which makes a man insensitive to defeat until it has really happened. He was telling us that he himself had some news on the brighter side: he would cheer us up with it,
and after we had all moved together into the ‘front room’.

  As soon as I heard that phrase, I was amused. To talk about the ‘front room’ as his mother or mine might have done, was going a bit too far in the direction of modesty, even for Douglas. This house, though small, was not as small as that, and the so-called ‘front room’ was in fact a study. On the desk lay a black official brief case. Round the walls, in bookshelves which ran up to the ceiling, was packed one of the most curious collections of nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels that I had seen. Douglas allowed himself something between a luxury and an affectation. He liked to read novels in much the state in which they had first been read. So in the shelves one could find most of the classical English, Russian, American and French novels in editions and bindings not more than a few years away from their original publication.

  We sat within sight and smell of those volumes, while Douglas told us the hopeful news. He was not exaggerating. The news was as promising as he had said, and more unexpected. It was – that several influences, apparently independently, were lobbying against Gilbey and for Roger. They were influences which ‘had the ear’ of senior Ministers, who would be bound at least to listen. The first was the aircraft industry, or that part of it represented by my old boss, Lord Lufkin, who had extended his empire since the war. The second was a group of vociferous Air Marshals. The third, more heterogeneous, consisted of scientists. Lufkin had been to see the Chancellor: a couple of Air Marshals had lunched with the Prime Minister, the scientists had been talking ‘at Ministerial level’.

  ‘It’s one of the slickest campaigns I’ve ever seen,’ said Douglas.

  ‘Who sparked it off?’

  ‘You won’t believe it, but some of the lines seem to go back to a chap of no consequence at all.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The man Brodzinski.’

  Douglas added, ‘Of course, if it hadn’t been him, it would have been someone else.’ Like most high-class administrators, Douglas did not believe much in personal flukes. ‘But I must say, he seems to have a pretty good eye for the people who cut ice in our part of London.’