That summer, Roger judged that we were doing a little better than we had calculated. As carefully as a competent Intelligence officer, he was keeping track of his enemies. Not that they were enemies yet, in any personal sense: so far he had fewer of them than most politicians. The ‘enemies’ he watched were those who just because of what they wanted, or because of the forces behind them, could not help trying to stop him.
About those, he was as realistic as a man could be. Yet, like most realistic men, he detested having the hard truth brought to him by another. I had to tell him, early in the scientists’ series of meetings, that Brodzinski was not budging by an inch. It was news we had both feared, but for an afternoon Roger regarded me as though I were an enemy myself.
Soon he was in action again. Before the House rose in July, he had talked to the Party’s defence committee, which meant fifty back-bench Members, some of whom he knew were already disquieted. Right from the beginning, he had made his calculation. He could live with disquiet on the extreme right, in the long run it would boil over: but if he lost the solid centre of his own party, then he was finished. So he talked – in what language I didn’t know, though I could guess – to the respectable county members, the ‘Knights of the Shire’. According to Wyndham, who was moved to unusual lyricism, the meeting went ‘like a dream’.
During August, Roger asked Osbaldiston to convene a group of top civil servants, to get some administrative machinery ready in time for the scientists’ report. Since this was an inter-departmental group, and Rose was the senior member, it met in his room. A vase of chrysanthemums on the desk, as usual, the window open on to the Park, as usual, and as usual Rose welcoming us with a courtesy so exaggerated that it sounded faintly jeering.
‘My dear Douglas, how extremely good of you to spare the time! My dear Lewis, how very good of you to come!’ Since my office was ten yards away, and since the summons was official, it was not in fact a benevolent exertion on my part.
As we sat round the table, Rose’s opposite numbers in the Service departments, Douglas, a Second Secretary from the Treasury, and me, Rose was just perceptibly tart. He didn’t mean this to be a long meeting. He was irritated at having to hold it at all. He did not indulge his mood. He merely said: ‘I take it that we’ve all seen Lewis Eliot’s memorandum on the scientists’ first few meetings, haven’t we? I believe they’ve been instructed to report to your Minister by October, Douglas, or have I got that wrong?’
‘Quite right,’ said Douglas.
‘In that case, I’m obliged to confess that in the meantime, even this distinguished gathering can only hope to produce a marginal result,’ said Rose. ‘We don’t know what they’re going to say. Nor, unless I seriously misjudge our scientific colleagues, do they. All that we can be reasonably certain about, is that they can be relied upon to say several different and probably contradictory, things.’
There were grins. Rose was not alone in that room in having a generalized dislike of scientists.
‘No, Hector, we can go a bit further than that,’ said Douglas, neither piqued nor over-borne. ‘My master isn’t asking you to do anything quite useless.’
‘My dear Douglas, I should be the last person to suggest that your admirable department, or your admirable Minister, could ever ask anyone such a thing.’
Rose found it hard to forget that Douglas had once been a junior civil servant, working under him.
Right,’ said Douglas. I agree we shan’t actually receive the report until October, but–’
‘By the way,’ Rose broke in, getting down to business. ‘I take it there are remote chances we shall get the report by then?’
‘We ought to,’ I said.
‘But before that comes along, we’ve got a pretty shrewd idea what it’s going to say, in general terms? This paper–’ Douglas tapped it – ‘gives us enough. Some of the scientists are producing arguments at one extreme, and some at the other. There’s this chap Brodzinski, and you ought to know that he’s got some backers, who’s trying to push us into investing a very sizeable fraction of our defence budget, and an even higher fraction of our total scientific manpower, on this pet scheme of his. I ought to say, and Lewis will correct me if I’m wrong, that none of the scientists, even those who think he’s a national danger, have ever suggested this scheme is airy-fairy.’
They had studied the first estimates of the cost. Several would have liked to believe in the scheme. They had, though, to shake their heads. The Air Ministry man said his department wished for an opportunity of ‘another look at it’, and Rose said: ‘Of course, my dear Edgar, of course. But I’m afraid we should all be mildly surprised if your ingenious friend can really persuade us that we can afford the unaffordable.’
‘That’s our view,’ said Douglas. ‘It’s just not on.’
Someone, who was taking note of the meeting, wrote a few words. Nothing more formal was said, and there was no formal decision. From that moment, however, it would have been innocent to think that Brodzinski’s scheme stood a good chance.
Douglas said, ‘The other extreme view – and this isn’t such an easy one – is that the country hasn’t got the resources, and won’t have within foreseeable time, to have any genuine kind of independent weapon at all. That is we shan’t be able to make do without borrowing from the Americans: and the scientists think the balance of advantage is for us to be honest and say so, and slide out of the nuclear weapons business as soon as we conveniently can. As I said, this is the other extreme. But I ought to say that it seems to be held by chaps who are usually level-headed, like Francis Getliffe and our scientific adviser, Walter Luke.’
‘No,’ said Rose, ‘this isn’t such an easy one. They know as well as we do that this isn’t just a scientific decision. It’s an economic decision, and, I should have thought, even more a political one.’
Rose was speaking carefully. He knew precisely what Douglas was aiming at. Rose had not yet declared himself, but he was inclined to think that Douglas was right. Not that he liked him. Douglas was tipped to have the final professional success denied to himself, and he was envious. But liking mattered less than one might have thought, in these alliances.
Douglas, tilting back his chair like an undergraduate, speaking with his casual, lethal relevance, was arguing that the Luke–Getliffe view also, wasn’t really ‘on’. Furthermore, it might be attractive to the public, and we ought to be prepared to ‘damp it down’. It might be a practicable policy ten or fifteen years ahead, but it wasn’t a practicable policy now. The scientists thought it was easy to find absolute solutions; there weren’t any. None of the great world pundits, no one in the world – for once Douglas showed a trace of irritation – knew the right way, or whether there was a way at all.
Rose began to speak, massive, precise, qualified. I was thinking that until Brodzinski had been disposed of, Douglas had spoken like a correct departmental chief, representing his Minister’s view. But what he had just said was nowhere near his Minister’s view, and Douglas must have known it. I was sure that he did not feel either irregular or conspiratorial. This wasn’t intrigue, it was almost the reverse. It was part of a process, not entirely conscious, often mysterious to those taking part in it and sometimes to them above all, which had no name, but which might be labelled the formation, or crystallization, of ‘official’ opinion. This official opinion was expected to filter back to the politicians, so that out of the to-ing and fro-ing a decision would emerge. Who had the power? It was the question that had struck me, moving between Basset and Clapham Common. Perhaps it was a question without meaning – either way, the slick answers were all wrong.
I wanted to play for time. The longer it took for official opinion to crystallize, the better. But I was in an awkward position. Officially, I was junior to these Heads of departments; further, I had to take care that I didn’t speak as though I knew Roger’s mind.
The talk went on. Someone had just said, ‘We mustn’t try to run before we can walk.’ Douglas cocked an eyebrow at me, as he heard that well-judged remark – as though indicating that, though we might be on opposite sides, our literary comradeship was not impaired.
I thought this was my best time.
‘I wonder if I could say something, Hector?’ I put in, ‘Just as a private person?’
Hector Rose was irritated. We had never got on, our natures gritted on each other: but he had known me a long time, in this kind of situation he knew me very well, and he could guess that I was going to break the harmony. He wanted me to be quiet. He said: ‘My dear Lewis. Anything you have to tell us, in any of your various capacities, we shall all be delighted to hear. Please instruct us, my dear Lewis.’
‘I just wanted to raise a question, that’s all.’ I was as used to his techniques as he to mine.
‘I’m sure that would be equally illuminating,’ said Rose.
I asked my question: but I asked it in several different ways. Wasn’t Douglas pre-judging the issue when he talked about Getliffe’s view as the ‘other extreme’? Wasn’t this view, in fact, deliberately conceived as a means of taking one first step? Did they assume that no first step could ever be taken? Were they all accepting that the entire process had got out of conscious control?
Osbaldiston spoke first. ‘I don’t think it’s possible, you know, to look too far ahead.’
‘We’re all grateful to you, Lewis,’ said Rose, ‘for a most interesting piece of exegesis. We’re very, very grateful. But I suggest, with great respect, that we’ve got to deal with immediate situations. The problem really is, isn’t it, what our masters can actually perform in the course of the present Parliament? The point at issue is how much, in that time, they could alter their present defence policy, or whether they can alter it at all. We do appreciate, believe me, your taking the trouble to give us – what shall I call it? – a more uninhibited point of view. Thank you very, very, very much.’
I didn’t mind. I had taken none of them with me, but I didn’t expect to. I had done what I intended, that is, warn them that others were thinking flat contrary to them, that official opinion might not be altogether homogeneous. They knew now, since they were far from fools, that those other opinions must have reached Roger, and that I had intended most of all.
Other people were trying to nobble the civil servants, I thought, a night or two later, when Margaret and I were sitting in the stalls at Covent Garden. I looked at the lower right-hand box and there saw, in white tie, white waistcoat, Hector Rose. That was surprising, for Rose was tone-deaf and hated music. I didn’t care for it myself, but had gone to please Margaret: and, as she had pointed out to me, opera at least had the benefit of words. It was even more surprising to see him as a guest of honour, with one of the most forceful of aircraft manufacturers on his right, the aircraft manufacturer’s wife on his left, and two pretty daughters behind him.
It was absurd to suppose that Rose could be bought by dinner and a ticket to the opera. It was absurd to suppose that Rose could be bought by any money under Heaven: it would be like trying to slip Robespierre a five-pound note. And yet, though he could not have wanted to, he had accepted this invitation. I remembered the instructions he used to give me during the war: that a civil servant ought not to be too finicky about accepting hospitality, but should take it if he felt it natural to do so, and if not, not. I wondered how natural Hector Rose felt in the box at Covent Garden..
It was equally absurd to suppose that, when Roger made a counter-move, Lord Lufkin could be bought by a dinner, even by a lavish dinner in his honour. Lord Lufkin was financially capable of paying for his own dinners, even lavish ones. Yet he too, who disliked being entertained, accepted the invitation. He was one of the hardest and most austere of men, as I had known for years, having worked for him long before. He would be about as easy to bribe as Rose himself. I had never heard a bribe, in the crude sense, so much as hinted at, anywhere near these people, much less offered. In my own life, I had been offered exactly one bribe, flat, across the table – but that had happened when I was a don at Cambridge. Nothing of the sort was thinkable with the Roses and the Lufkins, although enormous contracts flowed from Rose and Osbaldiston towards Lufkin, and enormous influence flowed back. If Roger got his policy through, one enormous contract would cease to flow to Lufkin. That was a reason why Roger invented a pretext for fêting him – and the pretext was, rather improbably, the occasion of his sixty-first birthday.
The point was, Lufkin came. A crowd was waiting for him in the penthouse of the Dorchester. In the hot flowery room, door opened to the corridor so that men could watch for Lufkin himself, stood Hector Rose, Douglas, Walter Luke, Laurence Astill, Monty Cave, Leverett-Smith (the new Parliamentary Secretary), Tom Wyndham, MPs, civil servants, scientists, the whole of Roger’s entourage, businessmen, even some of Lufkin’s competitors. At last he was seen, sighted like the first sail of the Armada, turning out of the main passage, walking along the soundless corridor, flanked by two of his own staff and two hotel servants, like so many security men.
He had got lost on the penthouse floor, he said, as Roger greeted him. Lufkin spoke as though his getting lost was much to his credit, but even more to everyone else’s discredit. He stood there, drinking tomato-juice, surrounded by people absorbing the radiations of power. There was one man whom I had seen absorbing such radiations before; he loved them for their own sake, he was an executive, something like a sales manager, of a rival organization. Bald, rosy-cheeked, faintly Pickwickian, he stayed happy in the presence of the great man, smiling when the great man spoke. I remembered that his name was Hood.
When we moved into the dining-room, Lufkin sat on Roger’s right, neat-headed, skull-faced, appearing younger than most of the company, although he was the oldest man present. He was also the most successful man present, in the terms of that world. He was a nonconformist minister’s son who had made a big fortune. But it wasn’t his money which made him so important to Roger: it was partly the concentration of industrial power he had in his hands, partly because he was the most unusual of tycoons. He had taken a peerage from a Labour government, but he was so powerful, so indifferent, that his fellow tycoons had by now to forgive him even that. Able, technically far-sighted, bleak, he sat by Roger’s side, like one who is above the necessity to talk. If I knew him, there would be only one subject on which he would discover the necessity to talk: he would not be above probing the Minister’s intention about the contract. When he knew, which would not be tonight, that the contract might be cancelled, he would then discover the necessity to talk about which alternative contract the Minister was proposing to give him in exchange. I was certain that Roger was prepared for these bargains months ahead. With Lufkin placated, the other tycoons in the industry would have lost their hardest voice. This was one of the oldest tactics of all.
Lufkin’s birthday party, the great table, the flowers, the glass, the miscellaneous crowd – looked a singular festivity. Lufkin himself, who was spare and ascetic, ate almost nothing – the caviare passed him, the pâté passed him. He allowed himself two strong whiskys, which he drank along with his fish, and let the rest of the meal go by. Meanwhile, as I heard, sitting opposite them, Roger was getting to work with flattery.
To an outsider, it would have sounded gross, the flattery squeezed out like toothpaste. My own fear was, not that Roger was overdoing it, but that he was not doing it enough. Lufkin was one of the ablest men, and certainly one of the most effective, that I had known. He was tough, shrewd, curiously imaginative, and for his own purposes a first-rate judge of men. But none of that, none of it at all, conflicted with a vanity so overwhelming that no one quite believed it. In days past, when he had paid me as a legal consultant, I used to hear his own staff chanting his praises like so many cherubim; yet even they, he felt, missed important points in his character and achievements. I remembered hearing spinster-aunts of mine telling me in my childhood that great men never cared for flattery. Well, Lufkin would have been a shock to my aunts. It would have been even more of a shock for them to discover that among my most gifted acquaintances, he liked flattery more than the others – but not all that much more.
Lufkin showed no pleasure as he listened to the eulogies. Occasionally he corrected Roger on points of fact – such as when Roger suggested, in stretching his interests from the chemical industry to aircraft, that he had taken a risk. Lufkin commented: ‘It wasn’t a risk if you knew what you were doing.’
‘It must have taken nerve as well as judgement,’ said Roger.
‘That’s as maybe,’ Lufkin replied. Perhaps from the set of his small, handsome head, one might have told that he was not displeased.
Once or twice they were exchanging serious questions. ‘Don’t touch it. You’ll be throwing good money after bad,’ said Lufkin, as though he couldn’t be wrong. Roger knew, as I did, that he was not often wrong.
I could not guess how they were feeling about each other. I hoped that Lufkin, whose vanity did not fog his cold eye for ability, could scarcely miss Roger’s. I was encouraged when, after Roger had proposed the guest of honour’s health, Lufkin got up to reply. He began to tell the story of his life. I had heard it a good many times, and it was always a sign of favour.
He was a very bad speaker, following a very good one. He had no sense of an audience, while Roger’s tone had been just right. None of that worried Lufkin. He stood, erect and bony as a young man, as confident of his oratory as Winston Churchill in one of his less diffident moods. He began by a few bleak words about governments in general, and ministers in particular. He would have been a richer man, he informed us, if he had never listened to any Minister. Then, with his characteristic gift of getting the moral edge both ways, he added that money had never mattered to him. He just wanted to do his duty, and he was glad Roger Quaife had understood him.
There was nothing oblique or hypocritical about Lufkin. Like a supreme man of action, he believed in what he said and the obvious goodness of his intention. He proceeded to illustrate this by his own story. It was always the same. It bore a curious family resemblance to Mein Kampf. It consisted of about six highly abstract anecdotes, most of which had happened, so far as they had a historical origin at all, before he was twenty. One consisted of the young Lufkin being taken by the family doctor – it was not clear why – to see a factory working at half-strength. ‘I decided there and then that when I had factories of my own, they were going to be full. Or they weren’t going to be open at all. Period.’ Another, which I specially liked, told of a slightly older Lufkin being warned by some anonymous wiseacre – ‘Lufkin, you’ll fail, because you won’t remember that the best is the enemy of the good.’ Lufkin’s skull-face looked impassive, and he added ominously: ‘Well, I had to make that chap an allowance in his old age.’ The story of Lufkin’s life always ended in his early twenties. It did so now, which meant that he had reached a date when many of the dinner-party were scarcely born. That did not concern him. Abruptly he sat down, with a grim smile of satisfaction, and folded his arms on his chest.
There was great sycophantic applause, Hood clapping his hands higher than the hands of the rest, his face radiant, as if he had been swept away by the performance of a world-famous soprano, and thought a standing ovation would be in order. Roger patted Lufkin on the back. Yet, I was becoming pretty sure, neither of them underrated the other. Roger had seen too much of powerful men to be put off by the grotesque aspect of Lufkin. It looked as though they might reach a working agreement, and if so, Roger had scored his first tactical success.