She said it with submission. Gossips at Basset, and places like it, often said confidently that she ran him. Partly because she was splendid to look at, partly because, as in the incident of Sammikins, Roger behaved to her with deference and chivalry. She’s the master in that set-up, the gossips said in knowledgeable whispers, particularly in Caro’s smart, rich world.
Caro had just told me who the master was. She said it as though with surprise at her own submission. Also, as she spoke, there was a jab of triumph at my expense, for she was insisting that I was a subordinate also. She liked insisting on it — because Caro, who seemed as dashing and as much a gambler as her brother, whom other women grumbled had had all the luck, was jealous of her husband’s friends.
‘No one’s going to push him where he doesn’t want to go,’ she said, ‘it’s just as well to get that straight.’
‘I’ve done a certain amount of business with him, you know,’ I said.
‘I know about the business you’ve been doing. What do you take me for?’ she cried, ‘that’s why I’ve got to talk to you. What is it all going to add up to?’
‘I should guess,’ I said, ‘that he’s a better judge of that than I am.’
‘I’ve not said so to him’ — Caro’s eyes were fierce — ‘because one never ought to say these things or even think them, once he’s made up his mind, if one’s going to be any help — but I doubt if he’s going to get away with it.’
‘It’s a risk,’ I replied. ‘But he’s gone into it with his eyes open.’
‘Has he?’
‘What do you mean? Don’t you believe in what he’s doing?’ I asked.
‘I’ve got to believe in it.’
‘Well?’
‘I can’t argue with you. I don’t know enough,’ she said. ‘But I’d follow my instincts, and I don’t think he’s got an even chance of getting away with it. So I want to ask you something.’ She was speaking, not in a friendly tone, but with passion.
‘What is it?’
‘He’ll do what he wants in the long run. I’ve given you fair warning. But you and your friends can make it more difficult for him. Don’t. That’s what I’m asking you. I want you to give him room to manoeuvre. He may have to slide gracefully out of this whole business. That doesn’t matter, if he does it in time. But if he gets in it up to the neck, then he might ruin himself. I tell you, you and your friends mustn’t make it too difficult for him.’
She was no more intellectual than Sammikins. She rarely read anything, except fashionable memoirs. But she knew this game of high politics better than I did, perhaps better than Roger did himself. She knew it as a game, in which one won or lost. It did not count whether Roger had to abandon a policy. What did count, was whether his chances of a high office were going up or down. To that, she was utterly committed, utterly loyal, with every cell of her flesh.
Previously, I had been getting colder to her. But suddenly the passion of her loyalty moved me.
I said, the whole campaign was in his hands. He was too good a politician not to smell the dangers.
‘You’ve got to make it easy for him.’
‘I don’t think you need worry—’
‘How do you expect me not to? What’s going to happen to him if this goes wrong?’
‘I should have thought’ — I was now speaking gently — ‘that he was a very tough man. He’d come back, I’m sure he would.’
‘I’ve seen too many future PMs,’ she said, the edge having left her voice also, ‘who’ve made a mess of something, or somehow or other taken the wrong turn. They’re pretty pathetic afterwards. It must be awful to have a brilliant future behind you. I don’t know whether he could bear it.’
‘If he had to bear it,’ I said, ‘then of course he would.’
‘He’d never be satisfied with second prizes. He’d eat his heart out. Don’t you admit it? He’s made for the top, and nothing else will do.’
As she gazed at me with great open guiltless eyes, she was immersed in him. Then, all of a sudden, the intimacy and tension broke. She threw her head back in a hearty, hooting laugh, and exclaimed: ‘Just imagine him giving up the unequal struggle and settling down as Governor-General of New Zealand!’ She had cheered up, and had poured herself another drink.
I was amused by Caro’s picture of ultimate failure and degradation.
Soon I said that it was time I went home. She tried, insistently, naggingly, to keep me there for another quarter of an hour. Although we were on better terms by now, she was not fond of me. It was simply that, with husband away, children away, she was bored. Like Diana, and other rich and pretty women, she was not good at being bored, and the person nearest to her had to pay for it. When I refused to stay she sulked, but began thinking that she would enjoy gambling her time away. As I left the house, she was ringing round her friends, trying to arrange for a night’s poker.
17: The Switch of Suspicion
I had said to Caro that Roger was too good a politician not to smell the dangers. In fact, a nose for danger was the most useful single gift in the political in-fighting: unless it stopped one acting altogether, in which case it was the least. That winter, while others were still vertiginous about Suez, Roger was looking out for opponents, critics, enemies, a year ahead. His policy would be coming into the open then. It was better tactics to let powers like Lufkin get the first taste of it from Roger direct. Patiently he set himself to dine out with them, telling them a little, occasionally letting out a burst of calculated candour.
Moving round Whitehall and the clubs, I got some of the backwash of all this. I even heard a compliment from Lord Lufkin, who said: ‘Well, considering that he’s a politician, you can’t say that he’s altogether a fool.’ This evaluation, which in both form and content reminded me of the New Criticism, was the highest praise I remembered Lufkin bestowing on anyone, with the solitary exception of himself.
Towards the end of December, Roger passed one of these forestalling operations on to me. The scientists had fallen behind with their report, but we knew it was going to be delivered early in the New Year; we knew also what it was going to contain. There would be differences in detail between Laurence Astill and Francis Getliffe, but by and large they would all be saying the same thing, except for Brodzinski. He had retained an implacable confidence throughout, absolutely assured both that he was right and that he must prevail. It was clear that he would insist on writing a minority report.
My job, said Roger, was to give him a hint of the future, to pacify him, but to warn him that for the present he couldn’t bank on much support, that Government couldn’t do much for him.
My own nose for danger twitched. I still reproached myself for not having been open with Douglas Osbaldiston from the start, when he had invited me to do so. I thought it was right to be open with Brodzinski now. But I felt sure that Roger ought to do it.
Roger was vexed and overtired. When I said that I shouldn’t have any success, Roger replied that I had been doing these things all my life. When I said that Brodzinski was a dangerous man, Roger shrugged. No one was dangerous, he replied, unless he represented something. He, Roger, was taking care of the industry and the military. Brodzinski was just a man out on his own. ‘Are you afraid of a bit of temperament? We’re going to run into worse than that, you know. Are you going to leave everything to me?’