Margaret, who had been listening, asked, not innocently, whether those two, Hector Rose and Martin, cancelled each other out. I was as non-committal as she expected Rose to be, but to myself I thought that my mind was making itself up. Then, not long afterwards, we were disturbed again. A telephone call. A government backbencher called Whitman. Not precisely a friend, but someone we met at parties.
‘What’s all this I hear?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I replied.
‘Come on. You’re being played for, you know you are.’
‘I don’t understand–’
‘Now, now, of course you do.’
In fact, I didn’t. Or at least I didn’t understand where his information came from. Was it an intelligent bluff? The only people who should have known about this offer were the private office, Margaret, Hector Rose, Martin. They were all as discreet as security officers. I had the feeling, at the same time euphoric and mildly paranoid, of living at the centre of a plot, microphones in the sitting-room, telephones tapped.
More leading questions, more passive denials and stonewalling at my end.
‘You haven’t given your answer already, have you?’
‘What is there to give an answer to?’
‘Before you do, I wish you’d have dinner with me. Tonight, can you make it?’
He was badgering me like an intimate, and he had no claim to. I said that I had nothing to tell him. He persisted: ‘Anyway, do have dinner with me.’ Out of nothing better than curiosity, and a kind of excitement, I said that I would come.
I duly arrived at his club, a military club, at half past seven, and Whitman was waiting in the hall. He was a spectacularly handsome man, black-haired, lustrous-eyed, built like an American quarterback. He had won a Labour seat in 1955 and held it since, something of a sport on those backbenches. A Philippe Égalité radical, his enemies called him. He had inherited money and had never had a career outside politics, though in the war he had done well in a smart regiment.
‘The first thing’, he said, welcoming me with arms spread open, ‘is to give you a drink.’
He did give me a drink, a very large whisky, in the club bar. Loosening my tongue, perhaps – but he was convivial, expansive and not over-abstinent himself. Nevertheless, expansive as he was, he didn’t make any reference to his telephonic attack: this evening had been mapped out, and, like other evenings with a purpose, the temperature was a little above normal. More drinks for us both. He was calling me by my Christian name, but that was as common in Westminster as in the theatre. I had to use his own, which was, not very appropriately, Dolfie.
Gossip. His colleagues. The latest story about a senior minister. A question about Francis Getliffe. The first lead-in? Dolfie in the Commons had, as one of his specialities, military affairs. We moved in to dinner, which he had chosen in advance. Pheasant, a decanter of claret already on the table. An evening with a purpose, all right, but he was also a man who enjoyed entertaining. More chat. We had finished the soup, we were eating away at the pheasant, the decanter was getting low, when he said: ‘By the way, are you going into the Government, Lewis?’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘you do seem to be better informed than I am.’
‘I have my spies.’ He was easy, undeterred, eyes shining, like a man’s forcing a comrade to disclose good news.
‘You don’t always trust what they tell you, do you?’
‘A lot of people are sure that you’re hesitating, you know–’
‘I really should like to know how they get that curious impression. And I should like to know who these people are.’
His smile had become sharper.
‘I don’t want to embarrass you, Lewis. Of course I don’t–’
‘Never mind about that. But this isn’t very profitable, is it?’
‘Still, you could tell me one thing, couldn’t you? If you’ve accepted today, it will be in the papers tomorrow. So you won’t be giving anything away.’
I was on the edge of saying, this discussion would get nowhere, it might as well stop. But I could keep up my end as long as he could, one didn’t mind (not to be hypocritical, it was warming) being the object of such attention. Further, I was getting interested in his motives.
‘I don’t mind telling you’, I said, ‘that there will be nothing in the papers tomorrow. But that means nothing at all.’
‘Doesn’t it mean you have had an offer?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Anyway, you haven’t accepted today?’
‘I’ve accepted nothing. That’s very easy, unless you’ve got something to accept.’
Whether he had listened to the qualification, I was doubtful. His face was lit up, as though he were obscurely triumphant. With an effort, an effort that suddenly made him seem nervous and overeager, he interrupted the conversation as we took our cheese. More chat, all political. When would the next election be? The Government couldn’t go on long with this majority. With any luck, they’d come back safe for five years. Probably ten, he said, with vocational optimism. His own seat was dead secure, he didn’t need to worry about that.
It was not until we had gone away from the dining-room, and had drunk our first glasses of port in the library, that he began again, persuasive, fluent, with the air of extreme relief of one getting back to the job.
‘If it isn’t boring about what we were saying at dinner–’
‘I don’t think we shall get any further, you know.’ I was still cheerful, still curious.
‘Assuming that an offer – well, I don’t want to make things difficult’ (he gave a flashing, vigilant smile) – ‘assuming that an offer may come your way–’
‘I don’t see much point, you know, in assuming that.’
‘Just for the sake of argument. Because there’s something I want to tell you. Very seriously. I hope you realise that I admire you. Of course, you’re an older man than I am. You know a great deal more. But I happen to be on my own home ground over this. You see, you’ve never been in Parliament and I have. So I don’t believe I’m being impertinent in telling you what I think. You see, I know what would be thought if anyone like you – you, Lewis – went into the Government.’
He was speaking now with intensity.
‘It wouldn’t do you any good. Anyone who admired you would have to tell you to think twice. If they were worried about your own best interests.’
He said: ‘It’s a mistake for anyone to go into politics from the outside. It’s a mistake for anyone to take a job in the Government unless he’s in politics already. A job that people in the Commons would like to have themselves. I beg you to think of that.’
Yes, I was thinking about that, with a certain well-being, as I left him for a moment in order to go to the lavatory. As usual, as with a good many warnings, even when they were least disinterested, there was truth in what he said. And yet, in a comfortable mood, enhanced by Whitman’s excitement and the alcohol, I felt it would be agreeable – if only I were dithering on the edge – not to be frightened off. There was a pleasure, singularly unlofty, in being passionately advised not to take a job which one’s adviser wanted for himself. As, of course, Whitman wanted this. Not that I had heard him mentioned. On the contrary, the gossip was that he was too rich, and too fond of the smart life, to be acceptable to his own party.
On the way back from the lavatory, those thoughts still drifting amiably through my mind, I saw the back of someone I believed I recognised, moving very slowly, erect, but with an interval between each step, towards the lift. I caught him up, and found that, as I had thought, it was Sammikins. But his face was so gaunt, his eyes so sunk and glittering, that I was horrified. Horrified out of control, so that I burst out: ‘What is the matter?’