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.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. He leaned forward. ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘if I said what the position seemed like tonight – I should have to say that I’ve got it in the palm of my hand.’
He sounded realistic, sober, baffled. He sounded as though he didn’t want us to see, didn’t want himself to see, that he was happy.
‘Isn’t that good news?’ said Margaret.
‘I can’t believe it,’ said Roger.
‘You can, you know,’ said Caro gently.
‘You’ve all got to remember’ – Roger was speaking with care – ‘that things change very fast at the top. I’m in favour now. It may not last twelve months. Things may begin to go the other way. Remember your uncle and what happened to him. You ought to know what to expect,’ he said to Caro. ‘So ought Lewis and Margaret. They’ve seen enough. For all we know, I’m at the top of the hill tonight. I may start moving downwards tomorrow. Or perhaps I’ve already started. We’ve all got to remember that.’
It was the sort of solemn warning that a sanguine man gives to others, because he feels he ought to give it to himself. Roger sounded so cautious, statesmanlike and wise; he was trying to be all those things; but in his heart he didn’t believe a word of it. Behind his puzzled, twisted expression, he was lit up with hope – or almost with hope realized. There were times that evening when he felt that what he wanted to do was already done. There were also times when he was thinking of his next office, and of his next office but one.
Yet, all through the evening, he spoke with self-knowledge, as though he were putting pretensions on one side, almost as though he had been deflated. It was a curious result of success, or the foretaste of success.
We stayed for a long time drinking before dinner. Yes, he had had a reception the night before that he hadn’t dared imagine. The PM had been cordial; of course the PM was professionally cordial, so it didn’t mean much. What did mean something was that he had assured Roger of support. As for Collingwood, he had gone out of his way to be friendly; which, from him, who never troubled to be friendly, or couldn’t be, had been something no one could have expected.
‘The extraordinary thing is,’ said Roger, his face puzzled and simple, ‘he seems to like me.’
‘Why not?’ said Margaret.
‘Why should he?’ said Roger.
He went on: ‘You know, it’s the first time anyone at the top has crooked his finger at me and said in effect – “My boy, your place is up here.” Up to now they’ve let me crawl up and fight every inch of the way. I’m not the sort of man people feel inclined to help, you know.’
He had spoken with a trace of passion. To others, I was thinking, even to me, that complaint rang strangely. He was too formidable a man for one to think of him as being ‘promising’, as needing patronage or protection. To most men, to the Collingwoods and their kind, he must have seemed mature and dominant, even before he was forty, long before he had in any sense ‘arrived’. Yet Roger did not see himself like that. Perhaps no one saw himself as beyond question, formidable, mature, dominant. Roger knew that, when other men had been helped up, he had been left alone. He spoke as though this had been a wound: as though, years before, it had made him harden his will.
‘Never mind,’ said Caro, ‘they like you, they’re telling you you’re in.’
Roger said, ‘They’ve left it pretty late.’
As we sat at dinner, he was amiable but absent-minded, until Caro, looking prettier than I had seen her, had been talking about her brother. He broke into a conversation. Across the table, he said to his wife: ‘It doesn’t matter much being liked, for this kind of life.’
We might have been back in the drawing-room, still discussing the Prime Minister and Collingwood. We hadn’t realized, while we talked, that he was daydreaming contentedly away.
For a second, Caro didn’t take the reference. Then she misjudged him. She said: ‘But they do like you.’
She went on telling him that Collingwood was sincere. She seemed to be reassuring Roger that he got liked as easily as most men. But that wasn’t a reassurance he needed. With a grin, part shame-faced, part sarcastic, he said: ‘No, that’s neither here nor there. I meant it doesn’t matter much being liked. For serious purposes, it doesn’t really count. Nothing like so much as your relatives have always thought.’
She hesitated. His tone had not escaped her. He had spoken of ‘your’ relatives as though he had not accepted them, would never accept them, as being his. Yet that was reversing the truth. It had not been easy for him, I had been told, at the time of his marriage. She had loved him to the highest pitch of obstinacy and they had had to put up with her decision. He was not wholly unacceptable, it wasn’t as though she had been a wild young girl and he something like a dance-band leader: he was presentable, he would ‘do’. But he was not ‘one of them’. They would have made him into ‘one of them,’ if will had been the only element involved; but they could not do it. Years later, there were times when they still couldn’t help behaving as though he were the local doctor, or the parson, whom Caro happened to have invited to a meal.
‘That’s how most of them got on,’ said Caro.
‘Not in the real stuff,’ Roger replied. ‘What you want is someone who believes what you do. It’s preferable if he doesn’t want to cut your throat.’
He was speaking as he had once done, when we were dining at the Carlton Club. It was a theme his mind kept digging into. Personal relations, so Roger went on saying, didn’t decide anything in the real ‘stuff’. Being one of a group, as with the Whig aristocrats from whom Caro’s family descended, decided much more. But in the long run, his job didn’t depend on that. In the real issues he wasn’t going to get support, just because Reggie Collingwood enjoyed splitting a bottle with him. These things weren’t as easy: they weren’t as romantic. ‘If they like me, and it seems that they may do, they’ll take a little longer to kick me out. They might even kick me upstairs. But that’s all the benefit I should get out of being liked. While as for support – that’s a different cup of tea. They’re going to support me for a bit – because it fits in with what they want to do. Because they believe we’re on the same side. Up to a point. They’re watching me, you know. I tell you, real politics isn’t as personal as people think.’
Margaret said: ‘Doesn’t that make it worse?’
Roger replied: ‘Don’t you think it’s probably better?’ His tone was not bantering. It wasn’t even specially wise. It was eager. Suddenly I felt in him – what was often hidden, because of his will, his tricks, even the power of his nature – something quite simple. He knew the temptations, the charm of politics, the romantic trappings – but there were times when he wanted to throw them right away. There were times when he could tell himself, and be full of faith, that there was something he wanted to do. Then he could feel that there was a justification for his life. He wanted that grace more than most men: the lumber dropped away from him, he seemed to himself light, undivided, at one.
In the drawing-room, drinking after dinner, tired, content, Roger went on talking about politics. One story had come up the night before, which Collingwood had said he ought to know. A rumour was running round about Cave’s appointment. It had reached the clubs; they could expect it in the political columns next Sunday, said Collingwood, who didn’t appear to know that in Whitehall we had heard it already. It was that this appointment had been the pay-off for Roger and his associates. Roger had struck a bargain with Charles Lenton when the Prime Ministership fell vacant. He and his friends would support Lenton for the place, but they had fixed the price, and the price was a Ministry for Cave.
‘What do you think of that?’ asked Roger. He, like Collingwood, seemed to have been surprised by the rumour. Collingwood was an unsociable widower, but I thought there was less excuse for Roger.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘it’s not the most terrible accusation I’ve ever heard.’ I was laughing at him. He had been enjoying himself, talking without humbug. All night his mood had been realistic, modest, almost chastened: that was the way he faced the promise of success. And yet, at this mild bit of slander, he felt indignant and ill-used.
‘But it’s not true!’ Roger raised his voice.
‘They’ll say worse things than that, which won’t be true either,’ I said.
Roger said: ‘No, the point is: politics are not like that. God knows, I’ve played it rougher than that before now. If necessary I shall play it rough again. But not like that.’ He was speaking with complete reasonableness. ‘Of course politics can be corrupt. But not corrupt in that fashion. No one makes that kind of bargain. It’s not that we’re specially admirable. But we’ve got to make things work, and they couldn’t work like that, and they don’t. I’ve never seen anyone make a deal of that kind in my life. It’s only people who don’t know how the world ticks who think it ticks like that.’
I was thinking, I had once, twenty years before, seen someone propose such a deal. It had happened in my college. The college politicians had turned it down at sight, outraged, just as Roger was, by a man who didn’t know ‘how the world ticks’, by a man who made the world look worse than it was because he had all the cynicism of the unworldly.
We had not drawn the curtains, and through the open windows a breeze was blowing in. For an instant I leaned out. There was a smell of petrol from the Bayswater Road, mixed with the smell of spring. It was a clear night for London, and above the neon haze, over the trees in the park, I could make out some stars.
I turned back to the room. Roger was stretched out, quiet, and happy again, on the sofa. Margaret had asked him a question I did not catch. He was replying without fuss that the decisions had to be taken soon. He might soon cease to be useful. He would be lucky if he had ten years.