‘Now perhaps,’ he said, ‘we can get down to serious business.’
He did not speculate on who would get Gilbey’s job. He might have been holding off, in case I knew more than I actually did. Whereas in fact, the moment I regained my own office, I rang up Roger and was asked to go round at once. He was in his Whitehall room, not across the way. When I got there, I looked at the clock. It was just after half-past four.
‘Yes,’ said Roger, sitting loose and heavy behind his desk, ‘I know all about it.’
‘Have you heard anything?’
‘Not yet,’ He added evenly: ‘Unless I hear tonight, of course, it’s all gone wrong.’
I did not know whether that was true, or whether he was placating fate by getting ready for the worst.
‘I didn’t go to the House this afternoon. I thought that was asking a bit much.’
He gave a sarcastic grin, but I thought he was playing the same trick.
He would not mention his plans, or the future, or any shape or aspect of politics at all. We talked on, neither of us interested, finding it hard to spin out the time, with the clock ticking. A man from his private office came in with a file. ‘Tomorrow,’ said Roger roughly. As a rule he was polite with his subordinates.
Through the open window came the chimes of Big Ben. Half-past five.
‘This is getting pretty near the bone,’ said Roger.
I asked if he wouldn’t have a drink. He shook his head without speaking.
At nineteen minutes to six — I could not help but watch the clock — the telephone buzzed. ‘You answer it,’ said Roger. For an instant his nerve had frayed.
I heard an excited voice from his own office. The call was from Number 10. Soon I was speaking to the Prime Minister’s principal private secretary, and passed the telephone to Roger.
‘Yes,’ said Roger, ‘I can come along. I’ll be with you at six.’
He looked at me without expression.
‘This looks like it,’ he remarked. ‘I don’t know, there may be a catch in it yet.’
I took a taxi home, with the whole afternoon’s story, except for the dénouement, ready to tell Margaret. But she was dressed ready to go out, and laughing at me because my news was stale. Diana Skidmore had been tracking the day’s events and had rung Margaret up, asking us round for drinks at her house in South Street.
Park Lane was full of party frocks, morning suits, grey top hats, those who had stuck out the royal garden party to an end and were now humbly walking to buses and tubes. One or two top hats and frocks turned, a little less humbly, into South Street, and into Diana’s house.
It was, by the standards of Basset, small, the rooms high but narrow; yet, because it was more crowded with valuable objects, gave an even greater sense of opulence, opulence compressed, each of its elements within arm’s reach. At Basset, one could walk by a bank of flowers between one precious acquisition and the next: space itself gave some effect of simplicity, of plein air. But here in South Street, despite Diana’s efforts, the effect was not unlike that of an auctioneer’s saleroom or a display of wedding-presents.
When Margaret and I arrived, Diana, with an air of concentrated sincerity, was explaining to a guest what an extremely small house it was. She was giving her explanation with a depth of architectural expertness which I didn’t know she possessed: which she hadn’t possessed until a month or two before. It sounded as though she had passed from the influence of her musician under the influence of an architect, and got delight out of showing it off — just as a young girl, first in love, gets delight out of mentioning the man’s name.
It was very foolish, I felt sometimes in the presence of Diana, to imagine that worldly people were cynical. Born worldlings, like herself, were not in the least cynical. They were worldlings just because they weren’t, just because they loved the world.
Seeing Margaret and me, Diana slid her guest on to another group, and became her managing self, all nonsense swept away. Yes, she had found out that Roger was with the Prime Minister. He and Caro had been invited to come when they could, and if they felt like it.
‘No one in politics here,’ said Diana briskly. ‘Is that right?’ She wasn’t going to expose them, if the prize had been snatched away at the end.
We mingled among the party, most of them rich and leisured. Probably the majority had not so much as heard of Roger Quaife. Margaret and I were sharing the same thought, as we caught each other’s eye: he ought to be here by now. I noticed that Diana, who did not easily get worried, had taken an extra drink.
Then they came, Caro on one side of Roger, and on the other her brother Sammikins, all of them tall, Roger inches taller than the other man, and stones heavier. We had only to look at Caro to know the answer. She was glowing with pleasure, with disrespectful pleasure, that she wanted to cast over us all. They each took a glass of champagne on their way towards us.
‘That’s all right,’ Roger said. It sounded unconcerned, in the midst of kisses and handshakes. It sounded ludicrously tight-lipped. A stranger might have thought he looked the same as he had looked a couple of hours before. Yet, beneath a social smile, reserved, almost timid, his eyes were lit up, the lines round his mouth had settled — as though triumph were suffusing him and it was a luxury not to let it out. Beneath the timid smile, he gave an impression both savage and youthful. He was a man, I was thinking, who was not too opaque to suffer his sorrows or relish his victories.
‘The old boy hasn’t done too badly, has he?’ said Caro to Margaret. Sammikins was trumpeting with laughter.
At close quarters he looked like an athlete, light on his feet with animal spirits. He had eyes like Caro’s, large, innocent and daring. He had her air, even more highly developed, of not giving a damn. He showed more open delight at Roger’s appointment than anyone there. Talking to me, he was enumerating in a resounding voice all the persons whom it would most displease.
Joining our group, Diana was avid for action. ‘Look,’ she said to Roger, ‘I want to give you a real party. We can clear the decks here and lay it on for later tonight. Or have it tomorrow. Which would you like?’
Sammikins would have liked either. So would Caro, but she was looking at Roger.
Slowly he shook his head. He smiled diffidently at Diana, thanked her, and then said: ‘I don’t think it’s the right time.’
She returned his smile, as though she had a soft spot for him, not just a political hostess’. With a rasp, she asked: ‘Why isn’t it the right time?’
‘There have been thousands of Cabinet Ministers before me. Most of them didn’t deserve a party.’
‘Oh, rubbish. You’re you. And I want to give a party for you.’
He said: ‘Wait till I’ve done something.’
‘Do you mean that?’ cried Diana.
‘I’d much rather you waited.’
She did not press him any further. Somehow she, and the rest of us, partly understood, or thought we did. What he said might have been priggish. It was not that, so much as superstitious. Just as he had been placating fate in his own office, so, in a different fashion, the job in his hands, he was doing now. It was the superstitiousness of a man in spiritual training, who had set himself a task, who could not afford to let himself be softened, who was going to feel he had wasted his life unless he brought it off.
Part Two
‘In The Palm Of My Hand’
11: Introduction of an Outsider