The letter was actually concerned with Arnold. I wasn’t to make any effort until I had had a holiday (Vicky could not resist giving me some medical advice). But afterwards, if I could talk to people at the university before the Lent term Court it might be a precaution. As far as she could gather, feeling hadn’t changed. The last Court meeting had gained time, but hadn’t altered the situation.
“I must say,” I cried, “everything seems preposterously normal!”
At the end of her letter, Vicky wrote that she might be coming to London before Christmas, but she wasn’t sure.
“That means that she’s hoping he will ask her,” said Margaret. “That’s normal, too.”
We looked at the big round handwriting, the oddly stilted, official-sounding phrases. “I wonder what her love letters are like?” said Margaret. Sitting together on the sofa, we discussed whether there was anything we could do for her. Of course there wasn’t. But it was a luxury to show concern. To be just to us both, we each felt some concern. We were fond of her, and respected her. Yet, warming us both that night, there was an element of suave mari magno. We were on the shore, watching the rough sea and someone else being tossed about in the storm. We had been through it ourselves, alone and together. That night we were by ourselves, in our own home, trouble past. It was a luxury to show concern.
Back in the flow, it wasn’t long before I was talking to Francis Getliffe about the university quarrels. It happened in a private room at Brown’s Hotel. We were attending a dinner party, but not a social one. We had been attending that same kind of dinner party for a good many years past. This was a group of eminent scientists, in which I was included because I had worked with them for so long. They had been meeting several times a year to produce ideas on scientific policy. They were entertained, with some lavishness, by a wealthy businessman who was both sweet-natured and a passionate follower of the opposition politicians. The scientists didn’t pay much attention to the lavishness, being most of them abstemious: but they were interested in the politicians, for by that autumn it was certain that there would be an election next year and probable that the opposition would win it. This group of scientists had been men of the left all their lives; and they still hoped that, if that happened, some good things could be done.
There they sat round the table, our host’s good wine going, very slowly, down uncomprehending crops. Constantine, his head splendid and at the same time Pied Piperish: Mounteney, granitic, determined not to be appeased: Francis Getliffe: Walter Luke: my brother Martin: several more: our host and a couple of the opposition front bench. Most of the scientists had international reputations, two were Nobel prize winners, and all except Martin were Fellows of the Royal. At one instant, while Constantine was talking — which didn’t differentiate it from a good many other instants — I had a sense that I had been here before.
I was seeing the haze of faces as in a bad group picture — striking faces most of them — of my old acquaintances. Very old acquaintances: for they had all (and I along with them) been at common purposes for getting on for thirty years. We had, as young men, sat round tables like this, though not such expensive ones, trying to alarm people about Hitler: then preparing ourselves for war: then, when the war came, immersing ourselves in it. That had been, in the domain of action, their apotheosis. They had never been so effective before or since. But they hadn’t given up. Nearly all of them had risked unpopularity. Some, most of all Constantine, had paid a price. Some, like Francis Getliffe, had become respectable, though politically unchanged. The truth was that the youngest at the table was Martin, a year off fifty. Why was the evening such a feat of survival? There was scientific ability about, comparable with theirs, but either the younger professionals didn’t take their public risks, or there was something in the climate which didn’t let such rough-hewn characters emerge.
That night, they didn’t sound in the least like sheer survivals. There were candles lit on the dinner table, but they insisted on the full lights above. One or two, like Francis Getliffe, were talking good political sense. As usual, Mounteney didn’t infer, but impersonally pronounced, that if the politicians and I were eliminated, then some progress might be made. Two of the less cantankerous had brought memoranda with them. The chief politician was listening to everyone: he was as clever as they were, yet when they were at their most positive he didn’t argue, but stowed the ideas away. They thought they were using him: he thought he could use some of them. That made for general harmony. All in all, I decided, it wasn’t a wasted evening.
After the rest had gone, Francis and Martin, not so frugal as their colleagues, stayed with me for a final drink. But Martin, when I mentioned Arnold Shaw, did not take any part in the conversation. He and Francis, though they were sometimes allies, were not friends. There had always been a constraint between them, and now, for a simple reason, it was added to. Francis had come to know of the misery that Vicky was causing his son. Francis also knew that she was infatuated with Pat, whom he thought a layabout. In all that imbroglio, Francis could not help remembering that Pat was Martin’s son: and — with total unfairness from a fair-minded man — he had come to put the blame on Martin and regard him with an extra degree of chill.
As I tentatively brought in the name of Arnold Shaw, I got a response from Francis which surprised me. In his own house in the spring, he had had no patience with me. This night, sitting by the littered table in Brown’s, he answered with care and sympathy. “Of course,” he said, “I still think you overrate the old buffer. You’re putting yourself out too much, I’m certain you are. But that’s your lookout—”
I said that I hadn’t any special illusions about Arnold: but I didn’t want him to be pushed out in a hurry, hustled out by miscellaneous dislike.
“Leonard doesn’t dislike him,” Francis was saying. “He thinks he’s a damned bad Vice-Chancellor, but otherwise he’s rather fond of him.”
He looked at me with a considerate smile, and went on: “I don’t believe you’re going to alter the situation there. It’s gone too deep. But what do you really want?”
I replied, I too accepted that there wouldn’t be peace until Arnold left. The decent course was to make it tolerable for him, to ease him out, with a touch of gratitude, over the next three years.
Francis shrugged. “Nice picture,” he said. But, in a friendly fashion, he continued: “Look, I think the only hope is for him to come to terms with the young Turks. I don’t imagine it will work, mind you, but I’m sure it’s the only hope.” That is, according to Francis, Shaw would have to take the initiative (as anyone fit to be in charge of an institution, he added tartly, would have done long ago). He would have to face Leonard and his colleagues, no holds barred. They were used to harsh argument, they would respect him for it. Couldn’t I pass on the word, that this was worth trying? “You know, if he doesn’t try it,” said Francis, “there’ll be the most God-almighty row.”
Francis was speaking as though he were on my side: yet in principle he wasn’t. And when he disagreed in principle, he wasn’t often as sympathetic as this. It occurred to me that he might be affected by my physical misadventure. Most people when you were incapacitated or ill tended insensibly to write you off. They took care of you in illness, but did less for you in action. Your mana had got less. With a few men, particularly with strong characters like Francis — perhaps by a deliberate effort — the reverse was true. They seemed to behave, or tried to behave, as though your mana had increased.