Last Things (15 page)

Now it was time, as Hector punctiliously brushed yellow leaves from off the seat, and turned towards me. I told him of the job – there was no need to mention secrecy again, or give any sort of explanation – and said, as usual curt because he wasn’t, what about it?

‘I should be obliged if you’d give me one or two details,’ said Hector. ‘Not that they are likely to affect the issue. But of course I am quite remarkably out of things. Which department would this “supernumerary minister” be attached to?’ The same as S––, I said. Attentively Hector inclined his head. ‘As you know, I always found the arrangements that the last lot (the previous government) made somewhat difficult to justify in terms of reason. And I can’t help thinking that, with great respect, your friends are even worse, if it is possible, in that respect.’

‘This minister’ would have a small private office, and otherwise would have to rely on the department? A floating, personal appointment? ‘Not that that is really relevant, of course.’

He was frowning with concentration, there was scarcely a hesitation. He looked at me, eyes unblinking, arms folded on his chest. He said: ‘It’s very simple. You’re not to touch it.’

When he came to the point, Hector, who used so many words, liked to use few. But he didn’t often use so few as this.

Jolted, disappointed (more than I had allowed for), I said, that was pretty definite, what was he thinking of?

‘You’re not immortal,’ said Hector, in the same bleak, ungiving tone. ‘You ought to remember that.’

We gazed at each other in silence.

He added: ‘Granted that no doubt unfortunate fact, you have better things to do.’

He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say anything more emollient. He would neither expand his case, nor withdraw. We had never been friendly, and yet perhaps that morning he would have liked to be. Instead, he broke off and remarked, with excessive pleasure, what a beautiful morning it was. Had I ever seen London look so peaceful? And what a kind thought it was for me to visit a broken-down civil servant! As usual with Hector’s flights of rhapsody and politeness, this was turning into a curious exercise of jeering at himself and me.

There was nothing for it. Very soon I rose from the bench – the old man in the straw hat was still engrossed in esoteric scholarship – and said that I would walk back with Hector to his flat. He continued with mellifluous thanks, apologies, compliments and hopes for our future meetings. The functional part of the conversation had occupied about five minutes, the preamble half an hour, the coda not quite so long.

When I returned home, Margaret, who was sitting by the open window, looking over the glimmering trees, said: ‘Well, you saw him, did you?’

Yes, I replied.

‘He wouldn’t commit himself, would he?’

No, I said, she hadn’t been quite right. He hadn’t been specially non-committal.

‘What did he think?’

‘He was against it.’

I didn’t tell her quite how inflexibly so, though I was trying to be honest. Then the next person I turned to for advice didn’t surprise her. This was what she had anticipated earlier in the morning. It was my brother Martin, and I knew, and she knew that I knew, on which side he was likely to come down. That proved to be true, as soon as I got on the line to Cambridge. Why not have a go? I needn’t do it for long. It would be a mildly picturesque end to my official career. Martin, the one of us who had made a clear-cut worldly sacrifice, kept – despite or because of that – a relish for the world. He also kept an eye on practical things. Had I reckoned out how much money I should lose if I went in? The drop in income would be dramatic: no doubt I could stand it for a finite time. Further – Martin’s voice sounded thoughtful, sympathetic – couldn’t I bargain for a slightly better job? They could upgrade this one, it was a joker appointment anyway, ministers of state were a fairly lowly form of life, that wasn’t quite good enough, he was surprised they hadn’t wanted Francis or me at a higher level. Still –

Margaret, who had been listening, asked, not innocently, whether those two, Hector Rose and Martin, cancelled each other out. I was as non-committal as she expected Rose to be, but to myself I thought that my mind was making itself up. Then, not long afterwards, we were disturbed again. A telephone call. A government backbencher called Whitman. Not precisely a friend, but someone we met at parties.

‘What’s all this I hear?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I replied.

‘Come on. You’re being played for, you know you are.’

‘I don’t understand–’

‘Now, now, of course you do.’

In fact, I didn’t. Or at least I didn’t understand where his information came from. Was it an intelligent bluff? The only people who should have known about this offer were the private office, Margaret, Hector Rose, Martin. They were all as discreet as security officers. I had the feeling, at the same time euphoric and mildly paranoid, of living at the centre of a plot, microphones in the sitting-room, telephones tapped.

More leading questions, more passive denials and stonewalling at my end.

‘You haven’t given your answer already, have you?’

‘What is there to give an answer to?’

‘Before you do, I wish you’d have dinner with me. Tonight, can you make it?’

He was badgering me like an intimate, and he had no claim to. I said that I had nothing to tell him. He persisted: ‘Anyway, do have dinner with me.’ Out of nothing better than curiosity, and a kind of excitement, I said that I would come.

I duly arrived at his club, a military club, at half past seven, and Whitman was waiting in the hall. He was a spectacularly handsome man, black-haired, lustrous-eyed, built like an American quarterback. He had won a Labour seat in 1955 and held it since, something of a sport on those backbenches. A Philippe Égalité radical, his enemies called him. He had inherited money and had never had a career outside politics, though in the war he had done well in a smart regiment.

‘The first thing’, he said, welcoming me with arms spread open, ‘is to give you a drink.’

He did give me a drink, a very large whisky, in the club bar. Loosening my tongue, perhaps – but he was convivial, expansive and not over-abstinent himself. Nevertheless, expansive as he was, he didn’t make any reference to his telephonic attack: this evening had been mapped out, and, like other evenings with a purpose, the temperature was a little above normal. More drinks for us both. He was calling me by my Christian name, but that was as common in Westminster as in the theatre. I had to use his own, which was, not very appropriately, Dolfie.

Gossip. His colleagues. The latest story about a senior minister. A question about Francis Getliffe. The first lead-in? Dolfie in the Commons had, as one of his specialities, military affairs. We moved in to dinner, which he had chosen in advance. Pheasant, a decanter of claret already on the table. An evening with a purpose, all right, but he was also a man who enjoyed entertaining. More chat. We had finished the soup, we were eating away at the pheasant, the decanter was getting low, when he said: ‘By the way, are you going into the Government, Lewis?’

‘Look,’ I said, ‘you do seem to be better informed than I am.’

‘I have my spies.’ He was easy, undeterred, eyes shining, like a man’s forcing a comrade to disclose good news.

‘You don’t always trust what they tell you, do you?’

‘A lot of people are sure that you’re hesitating, you know–’

‘I really should like to know how they get that curious impression. And I should like to know who these people are.’

His smile had become sharper.

‘I don’t want to embarrass you, Lewis. Of course I don’t–’

‘Never mind about that. But this isn’t very profitable, is it?’

‘Still, you could tell me one thing, couldn’t you? If you’ve accepted today, it will be in the papers tomorrow. So you won’t be giving anything away.’

I was on the edge of saying, this discussion would get nowhere, it might as well stop. But I could keep up my end as long as he could, one didn’t mind (not to be hypocritical, it was warming) being the object of such attention. Further, I was getting interested in his motives.

‘I don’t mind telling you’, I said, ‘that there will be nothing in the papers tomorrow. But that means nothing at all.’

‘Doesn’t it mean you have had an offer?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Anyway, you haven’t accepted today?’

‘I’ve accepted nothing. That’s very easy, unless you’ve got something to accept.’

Whether he had listened to the qualification, I was doubtful. His face was lit up, as though he were obscurely triumphant. With an effort, an effort that suddenly made him seem nervous and overeager, he interrupted the conversation as we took our cheese. More chat, all political. When would the next election be? The Government couldn’t go on long with this majority. With any luck, they’d come back safe for five years. Probably ten, he said, with vocational optimism. His own seat was dead secure, he didn’t need to worry about that.

It was not until we had gone away from the dining-room, and had drunk our first glasses of port in the library, that he began again, persuasive, fluent, with the air of extreme relief of one getting back to the job.

‘If it isn’t boring about what we were saying at dinner–’

‘I don’t think we shall get any further, you know.’ I was still cheerful, still curious.

‘Assuming that an offer – well, I don’t want to make things difficult’ (he gave a flashing, vigilant smile) – ‘assuming that an offer may come your way–’

‘I don’t see much point, you know, in assuming that.’

‘Just for the sake of argument. Because there’s something I want to tell you. Very seriously. I hope you realise that I admire you. Of course, you’re an older man than I am. You know a great deal more. But I happen to be on my own home ground over this. You see, you’ve never been in Parliament and I have. So I don’t believe I’m being impertinent in telling you what I think. You see, I know what would be thought if anyone like you – you, Lewis – went into the Government.’

He was speaking now with intensity.

‘It wouldn’t do you any good. Anyone who admired you would have to tell you to think twice. If they were worried about your own best interests.’

He said: ‘It’s a mistake for anyone to go into politics from the outside. It’s a mistake for anyone to take a job in the Government unless he’s in politics already. A job that people in the Commons would like to have themselves. I beg you to think of that.’

Yes, I was thinking about that, with a certain well-being, as I left him for a moment in order to go to the lavatory. As usual, as with a good many warnings, even when they were least disinterested, there was truth in what he said. And yet, in a comfortable mood, enhanced by Whitman’s excitement and the alcohol, I felt it would be agreeable – if only I were dithering on the edge – not to be frightened off. There was a pleasure, singularly unlofty, in being passionately advised not to take a job which one’s adviser wanted for himself. As, of course, Whitman wanted this. Not that I had heard him mentioned. On the contrary, the gossip was that he was too rich, and too fond of the smart life, to be acceptable to his own party.

On the way back from the lavatory, those thoughts still drifting amiably through my mind, I saw the back of someone I believed I recognised, moving very slowly, erect, but with an interval between each step, towards the lift. I caught him up, and found that, as I had thought, it was Sammikins. But his face was so gaunt, his eyes so sunk and glittering, that I was horrified. Horrified out of control, so that I burst out: ‘What is the matter?’

He let out a kind of diminuendo of his old brazen laugh. His voice was weak but unyielding, as he said: ‘Inoperable cancer, dear boy.’

I couldn’t have disentangled my feelings, it was all so brusque, they fought with each other. Affronted admiration for that special form of courage: sheer visceral concern which one would have felt for anyone, sharpened because it was someone of whom I was fond: yes (it wouldn’t hide itself, any more than a stab of envy could), something like reproach that this apparition should break into the evening. Up to now I had been enjoying myself, I had been walking back with content, with streaks of exhilaration: and then I saw Sammikins, and heard his reply.

Could I do anything, I said unavailingly. ‘You might give me an arm to the lift,’ he said. ‘It seems a long way, you know.’ As I helped him, I asked why I hadn’t been told before. ‘Oh, it’s not of great interest,’ said Sammikins. The irritating thing was, he added, that all his life he had drunk too much: now the doctors were encouraging him to drink, and he couldn’t manage it.

I was glad to see the lift door shut, and a vestigial wave of the hand. When I returned to the library, Whitman, who was not insensitive, looked at me and asked if something had gone wrong.

An old friend was mortally ill, I said. I had only heard in the last few minutes.

‘I’m very sorry about that,’ said Whitman. ‘Anyone close?’

‘No, not very close.’

‘Ah well, it will happen to us all,’ said Whitman, taking with resignation, as we had all done, the sufferings of another.

He ordered more drinks, and, his ego reasserting itself, got back to his plea, his warning, his purpose. Politics (he meant, the profession of politics) was a closed shop, he insisted, his full vigour and eloquence flowing back. Perhaps it was more of a closed shop than anything in the country. You had to be in it all your life, if you were going to get a square deal. Any outsider was bound to be unpopular. I shouldn’t be being fair to myself unless I realised that. That was why he had felt obliged to warn me, in my own best interests.

I found myself sinking back into comfort again, my own ego asserting itself in turn. There were instants when I was reminded of Sammikins, alone in a club bedroom upstairs. Once I thought that he too, not so long ago, had been hypnotised by the ‘charm of politics’, just as much as this man Whitman was. The charm, the say-so, the flah-flah, the trappings. It made life shine for them, simply by being in what they felt was the centre of things.

Yet soon I was enjoying the present moment. It began to seem necessary to go on to the attack: Whitman ought to be given something to puzzle him. So I expressed gratitude for his action. This was an exceptionally friendly and unselfish act, I told him. But – weren’t there two ways of looking at it? In the event, the unlikely event, of my ever having to make this choice, then of course I should have to take account of all these warnings. I was certain, I assured him, that he was right. But mightn’t it be cowardly to be put off? In that way, I didn’t think I was specially cowardly. Unpopularity, one learned to live with it. I had had some in my time. One also had to think of (it was time Whitman was properly mystified) duty.