It occurred to me that all his life Lord Gilbey had been in search of glory. Glory in the old pre-Christian sense, glory such as the Myceneans and Norsemen fought for. Put him in with a shipload of Vikings, and he would have endured what they did, and boasted as much. True, he was Catholic-born: he did his religious duties, and that morning, so he had told me, he had been visited by his ‘confessor’. But it was not salvation that he prayed for, it was glory.
Looking at him prostrate, so handsome, so unlined, I wondered if that was why this attack had knocked him out. It must have been — one didn’t need to be a doctor to see it — graver than we had officially been told. Was it the kind of attack that comes to men who have been taught to suppress their own anxieties? No one could be less introspective; but even he must have known that he had made a mess of his political job, which needed, by a curious irony, a variety of courage that he did not begin to possess. He must certainly have known that he was being criticized, conspired against, threatened with being kicked upstairs. He had shown no sign of it. He had sat among the colleagues who thought least of him, and remained charming, vain, armoured. Probably he didn’t let himself think what their opinion of him was, or what they intended. Was this the price he paid?
Next afternoon, I went to see Roger in the House. I sat in the civil servants’ Box, within touching distance of the government benches, while he answered a question. It was a question put down by one of the members whom Lufkin used for these purposes, to embarrass Gilbey. ‘Was the Minister aware that no decision had yet been announced on—’ There followed a list of aircraft projects. Roger would, in any case, have had to answer in the Commons, but with Gilbey ill, he was in acting charge of the department. The questioner pointedly, and I suspected, under instructions, demonstrated that he was not making difficulties for Roger himself. When Roger gave a dead-pan, stonewalling reply, neither the member nor any of the aircraft spokesmen followed with a subsidiary. There were one or two half-smiles of understanding. After questions, Roger took me along to his room. It struck me that, although I often called on him now, he almost never took me to the tea-room or the bar. I had heard it mentioned that he spent too little time in casual mateyness among crowds of members, that he was either too arrogant, or too shy. It seemed strange, when he was so easy with anyone in private.
The room was cramped, unlike his stately office in the Ministry across Whitehall. Beyond the window, mock gothic, the afternoon sky was sulphurous.
I asked him if he had visited Gilbey yet. Yes, of course, he said, twice.
‘What do you think?’ I said.
‘Don’t you think he’s probably lucky to be alive?’
I said yes. Then I told him what I had thought in the Clinic the day before, that it might be a psychosomatic illness. Or was I psychologizing too much?
‘You mean, if I hadn’t put on the pressure, and we’d all said he was wonderful, he might still be on his feet? You may very well be right.’
‘I meant a bit more than that,’ I said. ‘Presuming the old man gets better and comes back to the job: then what?’
I did not need to go further. I meant, a man in Gilbey’s condition oughtn’t to have to live among the in-fighting. If he did, there was a finite danger that he wouldn’t live at all.
Roger had missed nothing. His eyes met mine in recognition. He was smoking a cigarette, and he did not answer for a time.
‘No,’ he said at last, ‘I’m not going to take any more responsibility than I’m bound to. This isn’t very real.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘He’s out,’ said Roger, ‘whatever I do now. He’ll never come back.’
‘Is that settled?’
‘I’m sure it is,’ he said. He broke off.
‘Do you want an answer to the question you’re really asking?’
I said, ‘Leave it.’
‘I’m prepared to answer,’ he said. ‘I should go on regardless.’
He had been speaking without smoothness, as though he were dredging up the words. Then he said, in a brisk tone: ‘But this isn’t real. He’s out.’
He went on, with a sarcastic smile, ‘I’m sure he’s out. I’m not so sure I’m in.’
‘What are the chances?’
Roger answered, with matter-of-fact precision: ‘Slightly better than evens. Perhaps 6–4 on.’
‘Did you do yourself harm,’ I put in, ‘at Basset? That last night?’
‘I may have done.’ He went on, with a baffled frown, like a short-sighted child screwing up his eyes: ‘The trouble was, I couldn’t do anything else.’
A couple of days later, I arrived at the London Clinic immediately after lunch. Gilbey might not have moved a millimetre in seventy-two hours. Eyes staring at the ceiling, hair shining, face unblemished. He spoke of Roger, who had visited him that morning. Affably, with friendly condescension, Gilbey told me, what I knew myself, that Roger had had a distinguished record in the last war.
‘You wouldn’t think it to look at him,’ said Gilbey, harking back to our previous conversation. ‘But he’s all right. He’s quite all right.’
Gilbey proceeded to talk, enjoying himself, about his own campaigns. Within a few minutes however, he received a reminder of mortality. His secretary busily entered the quiet, the marmoreally-composed sickroom, Gilbey static except for his lips, me unmoving beside him, the trees motionless in the garden outside.
‘Sir,’ said the secretary. He was an elegant young man with a Brigade tie.
‘Green?’
‘I have a telegram for you, sir.’
‘Read it, my dear chap, read it.’
Since Gilbey’s eyes did not alter their upward gaze, he did not know that the telegram was still unopened. We heard the rip of paper.
‘Read it, my dear chap.’
Green coughed. ‘It comes from an address in SW10 — I think that’s Fulham, sir.’ He gave the signatory’s name. ‘Someone called Porson.’
‘Please read it.’
Momentarily, I caught a glance from Green’s eyes, pale, strained, hare-like. He read: ‘All the trumpets will sound for you on the other side.’
Just for a second, Gilbey’s mouth pursed, then tightened. Very soon, the modulated voice said to the ceiling: ‘How nice!’
In a voice even more careful, unemphatic, clipped and trim, he added: ‘How very nice!’
9: Two Kinds of Alienation
As soon as I could, after the telegram had been read, I said goodbye to Gilbey. I indicated to Green that I wanted a word with him outside. Nurses were passing by, the corridor was busy, it was not until we reached the waiting room that I could let my temper go.
In the panelled room, with its copies of the Tatler, the Field, Punch on the console table, I said: ‘Give me that telegram.’
As I glanced at it — the words shining out as though innocent of trouble — I said: ‘You bloody fool!’
‘What?’ said Green.
‘Why in God’s name don’t you read telegrams before you bring them in? Why hadn’t you got the wit to invent something, when you saw what you’d got in front of you?’
I looked at the telegram again. Porson. It might be. In this lunacy, anything was possible. An old acquaintance of mine. For the sake of action, for the sake of doing anything, I rushed out of the room, out of the Clinic, shouted for a taxi, gave the address, just off the Fulham Road.