‘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.’
We were each working out the chances. Personality for personality, Gilbey’s backers were powerful, and had the social pulclass="underline" but in the long run, big business, with the military and the scientists, usually won.