When I telephoned Hector at the Pimlico flat, his greetings were ornate. Pleasure at hearing my voice! Surprise that I should think of him! Cutting through the ceremonial, I asked if he were free that morning: there was a matter on which I should like his opinion. Of course, came the beautiful articulation, he was at my disposaclass="underline" not that any opinion of his could be of the slightest value –
He continued in that strain, as soon as I arrived in their sitting-room. He was apologising for his wife and himself, because she wasn’t there to receive me, to her great disappointment, but in fact she had to go out to do the morning’s shopping. As so often in the past, facing him in the office, I felt like an ambassador to a country whose protocol I had never been properly taught or where some customs had just been specially invented in order to baffle me. I said: ‘What I’ve come about – it’s very private.’
He bowed from the waist: ‘My dear Lewis.’
‘I want a bit of guidance.’
Protestations of being at my service, of total incompetence and humility. At the first pause I said that it was a pleasant morning (the porticoes opposite were glowing in the autumn sunshine): what about walking down to the garden by the river? What a splendid idea, replied Hector Rose with inordinate enthusiasm – but first he must write a note in case his wife returned and became anxious. Standing by my side, he set to work in that legible italic calligraphy. I could not help seeing, I was meant to see.
Darling, I have gone out for a short stroll with Sir L Eliot (the old Whitehall usage which he had inscribed on his minutes, often, when we were disagreeing, with irritation). I shall, needless to say, be back with you in good time for luncheon. Abiding love. Your H.
It was so mellow out of doors, leaves spiralling placidly down in calm air, that Hector did not take an overcoat. He was wearing a sports coat and grey flannel trousers, as he might have done as an undergraduate at Oxford in the twenties. Now that we were walking together, it occurred to me that he was shorter than he had seemed in his days of eminence: his stocky shoulders were two or three inches below mine. He was making conversation, as though it were not yet suitable to get down to business: his wife and he had been to a concert the night before: they had an agreement, he found it delectable to expatiate on their domestic ritual, to get out of the flat two evenings a week. The danger was, they had both realised when they married – Hector reported this ominous fact with earnestness – that they might tend to live too much in each other’s pockets.
It was like waiting for a negotiation to begin.
When we turned down by the church, along the side of the square towards the river, I jerked my finger towards one of the houses. ‘I lived there during the war,’ I said. ‘When I was working for you.’
‘How very remarkable! That really is most interesting!’ Hector, looking back, asked exactly where my flat had been, giving a display of excitement that might have been appropriate if I had shown him the birthplace of Einstein.
We arrived at the river wall. The water was oily smooth in the sun, the tide high. There was the sweet and rotting smell that I used to know, when Margaret and I stood there in the evenings, not long after we first met.
On one of the garden benches an elderly man in a straw hat was busy transcribing some figures from a book. Another bench was empty, and Hector Rose said: ‘I’m inclined to think it’s almost warm enough to sit down, or am I wrong, Lewis?’
Yes, it was just like one of his negotiations. You didn’t press for time and in due course the right time came. The official life was a marathon, not a sprint, and one stood it better if one took it at that tempo. People who were impatient, like me, either didn’t fit in or had to discipline themselves.
Now it was time, as Hector punctiliously brushed yellow leaves from off the seat, and turned towards me. I told him of the job – there was no need to mention secrecy again, or give any sort of explanation – and said, as usual curt because he wasn’t, what about it?
‘I should be obliged if you’d give me one or two details,’ said Hector. ‘Not that they are likely to affect the issue. But of course I am quite remarkably out of things. Which department would this “supernumerary minister” be attached to?’ The same as S––, I said. Attentively Hector inclined his head. ‘As you know, I always found the arrangements that the last lot (the previous government) made somewhat difficult to justify in terms of reason. And I can’t help thinking that, with great respect, your friends are even worse, if it is possible, in that respect.’
‘This minister’ would have a small private office, and otherwise would have to rely on the department? A floating, personal appointment? ‘Not that that is really relevant, of course.’
He was frowning with concentration, there was scarcely a hesitation. He looked at me, eyes unblinking, arms folded on his chest. He said: ‘It’s very simple. You’re not to touch it.’
When he came to the point, Hector, who used so many words, liked to use few. But he didn’t often use so few as this.
Jolted, disappointed (more than I had allowed for), I said, that was pretty definite, what was he thinking of?
‘You’re not immortal,’ said Hector, in the same bleak, ungiving tone. ‘You ought to remember that.’
We gazed at each other in silence.
He added: ‘Granted that no doubt unfortunate fact, you have better things to do.’
He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say anything more emollient. He would neither expand his case, nor withdraw. We had never been friendly, and yet perhaps that morning he would have liked to be. Instead, he broke off and remarked, with excessive pleasure, what a beautiful morning it was. Had I ever seen London look so peaceful? And what a kind thought it was for me to visit a broken-down civil servant! As usual with Hector’s flights of rhapsody and politeness, this was turning into a curious exercise of jeering at himself and me.
There was nothing for it. Very soon I rose from the bench – the old man in the straw hat was still engrossed in esoteric scholarship – and said that I would walk back with Hector to his flat. He continued with mellifluous thanks, apologies, compliments and hopes for our future meetings. The functional part of the conversation had occupied about five minutes, the preamble half an hour, the coda not quite so long.
When I returned home, Margaret, who was sitting by the open window, looking over the glimmering trees, said: ‘Well, you saw him, did you?’
Yes, I replied.
‘He wouldn’t commit himself, would he?’
No, I said, she hadn’t been quite right. He hadn’t been specially non-committal.
‘What did he think?’
‘He was against it.’
I didn’t tell her quite how inflexibly so, though I was trying to be honest. Then the next person I turned to for advice didn’t surprise her. This was what she had anticipated earlier in the morning. It was my brother Martin, and I knew, and she knew that I knew, on which side he was likely to come down. That proved to be true, as soon as I got on the line to Cambridge. Why not have a go? I needn’t do it for long. It would be a mildly picturesque end to my official career. Martin, the one of us who had made a clear-cut worldly sacrifice, kept – despite or because of that – a relish for the world. He also kept an eye on practical things. Had I reckoned out how much money I should lose if I went in? The drop in income would be dramatic: no doubt I could stand it for a finite time. Further – Martin’s voice sounded thoughtful, sympathetic – couldn’t I bargain for a slightly better job? They could upgrade this one, it was a joker appointment anyway, ministers of state were a fairly lowly form of life, that wasn’t quite good enough, he was surprised they hadn’t wanted Francis or me at a higher level. Still –