It was the sort of solemn warning that a sanguine man gives to others, because he feels he ought to give it to himself. Roger sounded so cautious, statesmanlike and wise; he was trying to be all those things; but in his heart he didn’t believe a word of it. Behind his puzzled, twisted expression, he was lit up with hope — or almost with hope realized. There were times that evening when he felt that what he wanted to do was already done. There were also times when he was thinking of his next office, and of his next office but one.
Yet, all through the evening, he spoke with self-knowledge, as though he were putting pretensions on one side, almost as though he had been deflated. It was a curious result of success, or the foretaste of success.
We stayed for a long time drinking before dinner. Yes, he had had a reception the night before that he hadn’t dared imagine. The PM had been cordial; of course the PM was professionally cordial, so it didn’t mean much. What did mean something was that he had assured Roger of support. As for Collingwood, he had gone out of his way to be friendly; which, from him, who never troubled to be friendly, or couldn’t be, had been something no one could have expected.
‘The extraordinary thing is,’ said Roger, his face puzzled and simple, ‘he seems to like me.’
‘Why not?’ said Margaret.
‘Why should he?’ said Roger.
He went on: ‘You know, it’s the first time anyone at the top has crooked his finger at me and said in effect — “My boy, your place is up here.” Up to now they’ve let me crawl up and fight every inch of the way. I’m not the sort of man people feel inclined to help, you know.’
He had spoken with a trace of passion. To others, I was thinking, even to me, that complaint rang strangely. He was too formidable a man for one to think of him as being ‘promising’, as needing patronage or protection. To most men, to the Collingwoods and their kind, he must have seemed mature and dominant, even before he was forty, long before he had in any sense ‘arrived’. Yet Roger did not see himself like that. Perhaps no one saw himself as beyond question, formidable, mature, dominant. Roger knew that, when other men had been helped up, he had been left alone. He spoke as though this had been a wound: as though, years before, it had made him harden his will.
‘Never mind,’ said Caro, ‘they like you, they’re telling you you’re in.’
Roger said, ‘They’ve left it pretty late.’
As we sat at dinner, he was amiable but absent-minded, until Caro, looking prettier than I had seen her, had been talking about her brother. He broke into a conversation. Across the table, he said to his wife: ‘It doesn’t matter much being liked, for this kind of life.’
We might have been back in the drawing-room, still discussing the Prime Minister and Collingwood. We hadn’t realized, while we talked, that he was daydreaming contentedly away.
For a second, Caro didn’t take the reference. Then she misjudged him. She said: ‘But they do like you.’
She went on telling him that Collingwood was sincere. She seemed to be reassuring Roger that he got liked as easily as most men. But that wasn’t a reassurance he needed. With a grin, part shame-faced, part sarcastic, he said: ‘No, that’s neither here nor there. I meant it doesn’t matter much being liked. For serious purposes, it doesn’t really count. Nothing like so much as your relatives have always thought.’
She hesitated. His tone had not escaped her. He had spoken of ‘your’ relatives as though he had not accepted them, would never accept them, as being his. Yet that was reversing the truth. It had not been easy for him, I had been told, at the time of his marriage. She had loved him to the highest pitch of obstinacy and they had had to put up with her decision. He was not wholly unacceptable, it wasn’t as though she had been a wild young girl and he something like a dance-band leader: he was presentable, he would ‘do’. But he was not ‘one of them’. They would have made him into ‘one of them,’ if will had been the only element involved; but they could not do it. Years later, there were times when they still couldn’t help behaving as though he were the local doctor, or the parson, whom Caro happened to have invited to a meal.
‘That’s how most of them got on,’ said Caro.
‘Not in the real stuff,’ Roger replied. ‘What you want is someone who believes what you do. It’s preferable if he doesn’t want to cut your throat.’
He was speaking as he had once done, when we were dining at the Carlton Club. It was a theme his mind kept digging into. Personal relations, so Roger went on saying, didn’t decide anything in the real ‘stuff’. Being one of a group, as with the Whig aristocrats from whom Caro’s family descended, decided much more. But in the long run, his job didn’t depend on that. In the real issues he wasn’t going to get support, just because Reggie Collingwood enjoyed splitting a bottle with him. These things weren’t as easy: they weren’t as romantic. ‘If they like me, and it seems that they may do, they’ll take a little longer to kick me out. They might even kick me upstairs. But that’s all the benefit I should get out of being liked. While as for support — that’s a different cup of tea. They’re going to support me for a bit — because it fits in with what they want to do. Because they believe we’re on the same side. Up to a point. They’re watching me, you know. I tell you, real politics isn’t as personal as people think.’
Margaret said: ‘Doesn’t that make it worse?’
Roger replied: ‘Don’t you think it’s probably better?’ His tone was not bantering. It wasn’t even specially wise. It was eager. Suddenly I felt in him — what was often hidden, because of his will, his tricks, even the power of his nature — something quite simple. He knew the temptations, the charm of politics, the romantic trappings — but there were times when he wanted to throw them right away. There were times when he could tell himself, and be full of faith, that there was something he wanted to do. Then he could feel that there was a justification for his life. He wanted that grace more than most men: the lumber dropped away from him, he seemed to himself light, undivided, at one.
In the drawing-room, drinking after dinner, tired, content, Roger went on talking about politics. One story had come up the night before, which Collingwood had said he ought to know. A rumour was running round about Cave’s appointment. It had reached the clubs; they could expect it in the political columns next Sunday, said Collingwood, who didn’t appear to know that in Whitehall we had heard it already. It was that this appointment had been the pay-off for Roger and his associates. Roger had struck a bargain with Charles Lenton when the Prime Ministership fell vacant. He and his friends would support Lenton for the place, but they had fixed the price, and the price was a Ministry for Cave.
‘What do you think of that?’ asked Roger. He, like Collingwood, seemed to have been surprised by the rumour. Collingwood was an unsociable widower, but I thought there was less excuse for Roger.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘it’s not the most terrible accusation I’ve ever heard.’ I was laughing at him. He had been enjoying himself, talking without humbug. All night his mood had been realistic, modest, almost chastened: that was the way he faced the promise of success. And yet, at this mild bit of slander, he felt indignant and ill-used.
‘But it’s not true!’ Roger raised his voice.
‘They’ll say worse things than that, which won’t be true either,’ I said.