We drank the tea, we ate the muffins. Rose was expressing a mannerly interest in the book reviews in the Sunday papers. He had noticed something on a subject that was bound to interest my wife, to whom again, his regrets for intruding that day –
Usually I was patient: but I could wait no longer. I said: ‘What’s all this about?’
He gazed at me with an expression I could not read.
‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘that something has happened about Roger Quaife. Is that it?’
‘Not directly,’ said Rose, in his brisk, businesslike tone. So at last he was engaged. He went on:‘No, so far as I know, that’s all right. Our masters appear to be about to sanction what I must say is an unusually sensible White Paper. It’s going to the Cabinet next week. It’s a compromise, of course, but it has got some good points. Whether our masters stick to those when they get under shot and shell — that’s quite another matter. Will our friend Quaife stick to it when they really get at him? I confess I find it an interesting speculation.’ He was speaking from his active, working self: but he was still watching me.
‘Well, then?’ I said.
‘I do think that’s reasonably all right,’ he said, glad to be talking at a distance, like an Olympian god who hadn’t yet decided on his favourite. ‘I don’t believe you need have that on your mind.’
‘Then what do I need to have on my mind?’ Again I could not read his expression. His face was set, authoritative, and when he wasn’t forcing smiles, without pretence.
‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I’ve been having to spend some time with the Security people.’ He added sharply: ‘Far too much time, I may say.’
Suddenly, comfortably, I thought I had it. Tuesday was New Year’s Day. Each year, Rose sat in the group which gave out Honours. Was it conceivable that something had leaked, from our office? I asked: ‘Have some of the names slipped out?’
Rose looked at me, irritated. ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite understand you.’
‘I meant, have some of the names in next week’s list got out?’
‘No, my dear chap, nothing like that. Nothing like that at all.’ It was rare for him to let his impatience show through. He had to make an effort to control it, before he spoke calmly, precisely, choosing his words: ‘I didn’t want to worry you unnecessarily. But I think I remember telling you, some months ago, about representations from various quarters, which I said then that I was doing my best to resist. When would that be?’
We both had good memories, trained memories. He knew, without my telling him, that it had been back in September, when he warned me that ‘the knives were sharpening’. We could both have written a précis of that conversation.
‘Well, I’m sorry to have to tell you, but I haven’t been able to resist indefinitely. These people — what do they call them, in their abominable jargon? “pressure groups”? — have been prepared to go over our heads. There’s no remedy for it. Some of our scientists, I mean our most eminent scientists advising on defence policy — and that, I need hardly tell you, is our friend Quaife’s policy — are going to be put through a new security investigation. I fancy the name for this procedure, though it is not specially elegant, is “double checking”.’
Rose was speaking with bitter distaste, distaste apparently as much for me as for the pressure groups, as he went on with his exposition, magisterial, orderly, and lucid. Some of this influence had been set in motion by Brodzinski, working on the members whom he knew. Some might have got going independently. Some had been wafted over via Washington — prompted, perhaps, by Brodzinski’s speeches, or his friends there, or possibly by a re-echo of the Question in the House.
‘We could have resisted any of these piecemeal,’ said Rose. ‘Though, as you may have noticed, our masters are not at — shall I say, their most Cromwellian — when faced with a “suggestion” from our major allies. But we could not resist them all combined. You must try to give us the benefit of the doubt.’
Our eyes met, each of us blank-faced. No one apologized more profusely than Rose, when apologies were not needed: no one hated apologizing more, when the occasion was real.
‘The upshot is,’ he went on, ‘that some of our more distinguished scientists, who have done good service to the State, are going to have to submit to a distinctly humiliating experience. Or alternatively, be cut off from any connection with the real stuff.’
‘Who are they?’
‘There are one or two who don’t matter much to us. Then there’s Sir Laurence Astill.’
I could not help smiling. Rose gave a wintry grin.
‘I must say,’ I said, ‘I think that’s rather funny. I wish I could be there when it happens.’
‘I have an idea,’ said Rose, ‘that he was thrown in to make things look more decent.’
‘The others?’
‘One is Walter Luke. Between ourselves, since he’s a chief Government scientist, I take that distinctly ill.’
I swore.
‘But still,’ I said, ‘Walter’s a very tough man. I don’t think he’ll mind.’
‘I hope not.’ He paused. ‘Another is a very old friend of yours. Francis Getliffe.’
I sat silent. At last I said: ‘This is a scandal.’
‘I’ve tried to indicate that I don’t regard it with enthusiasm myself.’
‘It’s not only a scandal, but it’s likely to be serious,’ I went on.
‘That was one of my reasons for dragging you here this afternoon.’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I know Francis very well. I’ve known him since we were very young men. He’s as proud as a man can be. I doubt, I really do doubt, whether he’ll take this.’
‘You must tell him he’s got to.’
‘Why should he?’
‘Duty,’ said Rose.
‘He’s only been lending a hand at all because of duty. If he’s going to be insulted into the bargain—’
‘My dear Lewis,’ said Rose, with a flash of icy temper, ‘a number of us, no doubt less eminent than Getliffe, but still reasonably adequate in our profession, are insulted in one way or another towards the end of our careers. But that doesn’t permit us to abdicate.’
It was almost the only personal complaint I had heard him make, and then half-veiled. I said:‘All Francis wants is to get on with his research and live in peace.’
Rose replied: ‘If I may borrow your own debating technique, may I suggest that, if he does so, there is slightly less chance that either he or any of the rest of us will live in peace?’
He continued sharply: ‘Let’s drop the nonsense. We all know that Getliffe is the scientific mind behind Quaife’s policy. For military things, I think we’re all agreed that he’s the best scientific mind we’ve got. That being so, he’s just got to swallow his pride. You’ve got to tell him so. I repeat, that was one of my reasons for giving you this news today. We’ll probably hear of this unpleasantness tomorrow afternoon. You’ve got to soften the blow before he hears, and persuade him. If you believe in this policy so much — and I thought, forgive me, that there were certain indications that you did — you can’t do any less.’
I waited for a moment, then said, as quietly as I could: ‘What I’ve only just realized — is that you believe in this policy so much.’
Rose did not smile or blink, or show any sign of acquiescence.
‘I am a civil servant,’ he said. ‘I play according to the rules.’ Briskly he asked me: ‘Tell me, how embarrassing is this going to be for Francis Getliffe?’