‘We’ve been thinking about that, naturally,’ he said. He added gnomically: ‘Not that we’re not always busy. We can’t spend too much time on one thing, you understand.’
He volunteered a piece of information. The proper operations had been set going. A three-line Whip had gone out. Three or four dissidents were being worked on.
There was no side-talk round the table. Everyone was attending. Everyone knew the language. This meant that, in formal terms, the Government was not backing down. This was the maximum show of pressure on its party. It could do no more.
But also, I was thinking, as I listened to Collingwood’s grating, confident voice, it could do no less. They had gone too far not to bring out the standard procedure now. We were no nearer to knowing what had happened that morning.
Conceivably, Collingwood and the other Ministers could not have told us, even if they had wanted to. Not because of secrecy; not because some had their own different designs: but simply because of the way Cabinet business was done.
Word had come out from the Cabinet room that Lenton was, when he wanted to be, an efficient chairman. More than most recent Prime Ministers, he often let Ministers introduce topics, he encouraged an orderly discussion round the table, and even took a straw-vote at the end. But this didn’t always happen.
Lenton was efficient and managerial. He was more self-effacing than most Prime Ministers. He was also a ruthless politician, and he knew a Prime Minister’s power. This power had increased out of all proportion since Collingwood entered politics. The Prime Minister, they used to say piously, was the first among equals. It might be so, but in that case, the first was a good deal more equal than the others.
It wasn’t a matter of charisma. It wasn’t even a matter of personality. The awe existed, but it was practical awe. The Prime Minister had the jobs in his hand. He could sack anyone, and appoint anyone. Even a modest man like Lenton did just that. Any of us, on the secretariat of committees, who had seen any Prime Minister with his colleagues, noticed that they were frightened of him, whoever he might be.
If he didn’t want a decision in Cabinet, it took a bold man to get one. In office, men tended not to be bold. Lenton, who could be so businesslike, had become a master at talking round a subject, and then leaving it in the air. It looked sloppy: little he cared: it was a useful technique for getting his own way.
Perhaps that, or something like it, had happened that day. None of us except Collingwood knew what the Prime Minister thought of Roger or his policy. My guess, for some time past, had been that he thought it was rational but that it couldn’t be pressed too far. If Roger could placate, or squeeze by, the solid centre of the party, then it would be good for the Government. They might win the next election on it. But if Roger had stirred up too much opposition, if he went beyond his brief and campaigned only for the Getliffe portions of the White Paper, he needn’t be rescued. Roger was expendable. In fact, it was possible that the Prime Minister would not be heartbroken if Roger had to be expended. For that pleasantly modest man had some of the disadvantages of modesty. He might not be over-fond of seeing, at the Cabinet, a colleague much more brilliant than himself, and some years younger.
I fancied that little had been said, either in Cabinet or in meetings tête-à-tête. Maybe the Prime Minister had spoken intimately to Collingwood, but I doubted even that. This kind of politics, which could be the roughest of all, went on without words.
That night, Collingwood, bolt upright on Caro’s right hand, showed no sign of embarrassment, or even of the disfavour one can’t totally suppress towards someone to whom one is doing a bad turn. His quartz eyes might have been blind. So far as he was capable of cordiality, he was giving it, like a moderate-sized tip, to Monty Cave. Cave was the hero of the evening, Cave looked on the short list for promotion. But Collingwood bestowed a smaller, but judicious, cordiality upon Roger. It was hard to believe that he bore him rancour. This was the behaviour, straightforward, not forthcoming, of someone who thought Roger might still survive, and who would within limits be content if he did so.
He was just as straightforward when Caro pressed him about who would speak in the debate. Roger would have the last word, said Collingwood. The First Lord would have to open. ‘That ought to do,’ said Collingwood. To Caro, to me — did Diana know already? — this was the first sharp warning of the night. The First Lord was a light-weight; it sounded as if Roger was not being given a senior Minister to help him out.
‘Are you going to speak, Reggie?’ said Caro, as unabashed as she had ever been in Roger’s cause.
‘Not much in my line,’ said Collingwood, as though inadequacy in speech were a major virtue. He rarely spoke in the House, and then mumbled through a script so execrably that he seemed unable not only to speak, but to read. Yet he managed to communicate to the back-bench committees. Perhaps that was what he meant when he looked up the table at Roger and said, with self-satisfaction, ‘I’ve done something. I’ve done something for you already, you know.’
Roger nodded. But suddenly I noticed, so did others, that his eyes were fixed on Monty Cave. The pretence of heartiness, the poise, the goodwill, had all drained away from Roger’s expression. He was gazing at Cave with intense anxiety, not with liking, not with anything as final as enmity, but with naked concern.
We followed his glance. Cave gave no sign of recognition. The rest of us had finished eating, but Cave had cut himself another slice of cheese. His lips, fat man’s lips, glutton’s lips, child’s lips, were protruding. He looked up, eyes hard in the soft face.
Just for an instant even Caro’s nerve failed. There was a silence. Then her voice rang out, full, unquailing; ‘Are you going to speak, Monty?’
‘The Prime Minister hasn’t asked me to,’ said Cave.
This meant that he couldn’t speak, even if he wanted to. But there was a note in his voice, quiet, harmonious, that rasped the nerves.
Caro could not help asking him: ‘Isn’t there anything else you can do for Roger?’
‘I can’t think of anything. Can you?’
‘How should we handle it then?’ she cried.
Suddenly I was sure that this question had been asked before. At the morning’s Cabinet? It was easy to imagine the table, Lenton droning away with deliberate amiability, not letting the issue emerge, as though there weren’t an issue, as though no policy and no career depended upon it. It was easy to imagine Cave sitting silent. He knew as well as any man alive that Roger needed, not just his acquiescence, but his support. There was he, the bright hope of the party avant-garde, its best debater, maybe a leader. They were waiting for him. He knew what depended on it.
‘How should we handle it, Monty?’
‘I’m afraid it all depends on Roger. He’s got to settle it for himself,’ he said in a soft, modulated, considered tone, along the table to Caro.
It was out now. For years Cave’s attitude to Roger had been veiled. He had disagreed with some of Roger’s policy in detaiclass="underline" but yet, he should have been on the same side. He knew why he was making pretexts for minor disagreements. Much more than most politicians, Cave knew himself. He hadn’t forgiven Roger for holding back over Suez. Far more than that, Roger was a rival, a rival, in ten years’ time, for the first place. By keeping quiet, Cave might be able to see that rival done for.