Corridors of Power (35 page)

Those other lives did not respond much. A few did, not many. Perhaps they sent their messages to the corridors very rarely, when the dangers were on top of them: otherwise, perhaps the messages came not at all.

Back towards the Strand, the hall of my old Inn blazed out like a church on a Sunday night. We were on our way to a Bar concert. In the Inn buildings, lighted windows were shining here and there, oblongs of brilliance in a bulk of darkness. We passed the set of chambers where I had worked as a young man. Some of the names were still there, as they had been in my time. Mr H Getliffe: Mr W Allen. On the next staircase, I noticed the name of a contemporary: Sir H Salisbury. That was out of date: he had just been appointed Lord Justice of Appeal. Margaret, feeling that I was distracted, pressed my arm. This was a part of my life she hadn’t known; she was apt to be jealous of it, and, as we walked past the building in the sharp air, she believed that I was homesick. She was wrong. I had felt something more like irritation. The Bar had never really suited me, I had not once thought of going back. And yet, if I could have been content with it, I should have had a smoother time. Like Salisbury. I shouldn’t be in the middle of this present crisis.

The Hall was draughty. Chairs, white programmes gleaming on them as at a Church wedding, had been set in lines and then pushed into disorder, as people leaned over to talk. The event, though it didn’t sound it, was an occasion of privilege. Several Members from both front benches were there: Lord Lufkin and his entourage were there; so was Diana Skidmore, who had come with Monty Cave. As they shouted to one another, white-tied, bedecked, no one would have thought they were in a crisis. Much less that any of them resented, as I did, the moment in which we stood. They were behaving as though this was the kind of trouble politicians got into. They made jokes. They behaved as if these places were going to stay their own: while as for the rest – well, one could be reminded of them by the russet light of the City sky.

They weren’t preoccupied with the coming debate, except to make some digs at Roger. What they were really interested in at this moment – or at least, what Diana and her friends were really interested in – was a job. The job, somewhat bewilderingly, was a Regius Professorship of History. Diana had recovered some of her spirits. There was a rumour that she had determined to make Monty Cave divorce his wife. Having become high-spirited once again, Diana had also, once again, become importunate. Her friends had to do what she told them: and what she told them was to twist the Prime Minister’s arm. The PM had to hear her candidate’s name from all possible angles. This name was Thomas Orbell.

It was not that Diana was a specially good judge of academic excellence. She would have been just as likely to have a candidate for a bishopric. She treated academic persons with reverence, as though they were sacred cows: but, though they might be sacred cows, they did not seem to her quite serious. That didn’t stop her getting excited about the claims of Dr Orbell, and didn’t stop her friends getting excited for him or against. Not that they were wrapped up in the academic life. It was nice to toss the jobs around, it was nice to spot winners. This was one of the pleasures of the charmed circle. Margaret, who had been brought up among scholars, was uneasy. She knew Orbell and did not want to spoil his chances. She was certain that he wasn’t good enough.

‘He’s
brilliant
,’ said Diana, herself resplendent in white, like the fairy on a Christmas tree.

In fact, Diana’s enthusiasm, the cheerful, cherubim-chanting of a couple of her ministerial friends, Margaret’s qualms, were likely all to be beside the point. True, the Prime Minister would listen; true, he would listen with porcine competence. Orbell’s supporters might get words of encouragement. At exactly the same moment, a lantern-jawed young man in the private office, trained by Osbaldiston, would be collecting opinions with marmoreal calm. My private guess was that Tom Orbell stood about as much chance for this Chair as he did for the Headship of the Society of Jesus.

In the library after the performance, where we had herded for sandwiches and wine, I noticed Diana, her diamonds flashing, talk for a moment to Caro alone. Just before we left, Caro spoke to me and passed a message on.

Diana had been talking to Reggie Collingwood. He had said they would all have to ‘feel their way’. It was conceivable that Roger would have to ‘draw in his horns’ a bit. If so, they could look after him.

It sounded, and was meant to sound, casual and confident. But it was also deliberate. Collingwood wasn’t given to indiscretion. Nor, when it came to confidences, was Diana. This remark was intended to reach Roger: and Caro was making sure that it reached me. As she told me, she took me by the arm, walking towards the door, and gazed at me with bold eyes. This was not a display of affection. She did not like me any better, she was no warmer to Roger’s advisers, as she walked on my arm, her shoulders, because she was a strapping woman, not far below my own. But she was making certain that I wasn’t left out.

The Bar concert had taken place on a Thursday night. On the Saturday morning I was alone in our drawing-room, the children back at school, Margaret off for a day with her father, now both ill and valetudinarian, when the telephone rang. It was David Rubin.

This was not, in itself, a surprise. I had heard the day before that he was over on one of his State Department visits. I expected that he and I would find ourselves at the same meeting on Saturday afternoon. That turned out to be true, and David expressed his courteous gratification. But it was a surprise to hear him insisting that I arrange an interview with Roger. Apparently he had tried Roger’s office the day before and had been rebuffed. It was odd enough for anyone to rebuff him: much odder for him to come back afterwards. ‘This isn’t just an idea of visiting with him. I want to say something to him.’

‘I rather gathered that,’ I said. Over the phone came a reluctant cachinnation.

He was flying out next morning. The interview would have to be fixed for some time that night. I did my best. First of all, Caro would not put me through to Roger. When at last I made her, he greeted me as though I had brought bad news. Did I know that Parliament met next week? Did I by any chance remember that he was preparing for a Debate? He wanted to see no one. I said (our voices were petty with strain) that he could be rude to me, though I didn’t pretend to like it. But it was unwise to be rude to David Rubin.

When I saw Rubin that afternoon, for the first time in a year, he did not look so formidable. He was sitting at a table, between Francis Getliffe and another scientist, in one of the Royal Society’s rooms in Burlington House. The room smelled musty, lined with bound volumes of periodicals, like an unused library. The light was dim. Rubin, lemur-like circles under his eyes, looked fastidious and depressed. When I passed a note along, saying that we were due at Lord North Street after dinner, he gave a nod, as from one who had to endure much before he slept.

He had to endure this meeting. He was by now too much of a Government figure to hope for a great deal. He was more pessimistic than anyone there. It was not an official meeting. Everyone in the room, at least in form, had attended as a private citizen. Nearly all were scientists who had been, or still were, concerned with the nuclear projects. They were trying to find a way of talking directly to their Soviet counterparts. Several men in the room had won world fame – there were the great academic physicists, Mounteney, who was chairman, Rubin himself, an old friend of mine called Constantine. There were also Government scientists, such as Walter Luke, who had demanded to take part.

All three Governments knew what was going on. Several officials, including me, had been invited. I remembered other meetings in these musty-smelling rooms, nearly twenty years before, when scientists told us that the nuclear bomb might work.

David Rubin sat like one who has listened often enough. Then, all of a sudden, he became interested. Scientific good will, legalisms, formulations – they vanished. For the door opened, and to everyone’s astonishment, there came into the room Brodzinski. Soft-footed, for all his bulk, he walked to the table, his barrel chest thrust out. His eyes were stretched wide, as he looked at Arthur Mounteney. In his strong voice, in his off-English, he said, ‘I’m sorry to be late, Mr Chairman.’

Each person round the table knew of his speeches in America and knew that Getliffe and Luke had been damaged. Men like Mounteney detested him and all he stood for. For him to enter, and then make this little apology – it irritated them all, it was a ridiculous anti-climax.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Arthur Mounteney, ‘why you’re here at all.’ His long and cavernous face was set. He couldn’t produce a soft word among his friends, let alone now.

‘I was invited, Mr Chairman. As I suppose my colleagues were, also.’

This I took to be true. Invitations had gone to the scientists on the defence committees as well as to the scientific elder statesmen. Presumably Brodzinski’s name had remained upon the list.

‘That doesn’t mean there was any sense in your coming.’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Chairman. Am I to understand that only those of a certain kind of opinion are allowed here?’

Walter Luke broke in, rough-voiced: ‘That’s not the point, Brodzinski, and you know it. You’ve made yourself a blasted nuisance where we can’t get at you. And every bleeding scientist in this game is having the carpet pulled from under him because of you.’

‘I do not consider your attitude is correct, Sir Walter.’

‘Come off it, man, who do you take us for?’

This was unlike the stately protocol of a meeting chaired by Hector Rose.

Francis Getliffe coughed, and with his curious relic of diffidence said to Mounteney: ‘I think perhaps I ought to have a word.’

Mounteney nodded.

‘Dr Brodzinski,’ said Francis, looking down the table, ‘if you hadn’t come here today I was going to ask you to call on me.’

Francis was speaking quietly, without Mounteney’s bleakness or Walter Luke’s roughneck scorn. He had to make an effort, while they could quarrel by the light of nature. Nevertheless, it was Francis whom we all listened to, Brodzinski most of all.

Brodzinski, although nobody had thought, or perhaps wished, to invite him (since the normal courtesies had failed) to sit down, had found himself a chair. He sat in it, squarely, heavy as a mountain and as impervious.

‘It’s time you heard something about your behaviour. It’s got to be made clear to you. I was going to do that. I had better do it now. You must realize there are two things your scientific colleagues hold against you. The first is the way you have behaved to some of us. This is not important in the long run: but it is enough to make us prefer not to have any personal dealings with you. You have made charges about us in public and, as I believe, more charges in private, that we could only meet by legal action. You have taken advantage of the fact that we are not willing to take legal action against a fellow scientist. You have said that we are dishonest. You have said that we have perverted the truth. You have said that we are disloyal to our country.’

‘I have been misrepresented, of course,’ said Brodzinski.

‘Not in the least.’

‘I have always given you credit for good intentions, Sir Francis,’ said Brodzinski. ‘I do not expect the same from you.’

His expression was pure, persecuted, and brave. It was the courage of one who even now, believed in his locked-in self that they would see how right he was. He felt no conflict, no regret nor remorse, just the certainty that he was right. At the same time, he wanted pity because he was being persecuted. He was crying out for pity. The more they saw he was right, the more they would persecute him.

Suddenly a thought came to me. I hadn’t understood why, the previous summer, he had given up attempting to see Roger: as though he had switched from faith to enmity. It must have been the day the offer of his decoration arrived. He had accepted the decoration – but he could have felt, I was sure he could have felt, that it was another oblique piece of persecution, a token that he was not so high as the Getliffes of the world, a sign of dismissal.

‘I had to make some criticisms,’ he said. ‘Because you were dangerous. I gave you the credit for not realizing how dangerous you were, but, of course, I had to make some criticisms. You can see that, Dr Rubin.’

He turned with an open, hopeful face to David Rubin, who was scribbling on a sheet of paper. Rubin raised his head slowly and gazed at Brodzinski with opaque eyes.

‘What you did,’ he said, ‘was not admissible.’

‘I did not expect any more from you, Dr Rubin.’ This answer was so harsh and passionate that it left us mystified. Rubin believed that Brodzinski had remembered that he was a Gentile talking to a Jew.

‘You said we were dangerous,’ Francis Getliffe went on. ‘I’ve finished now with your slanders on us. They only count because they’re involved in the other damage you’ve done. That is the second thing you must hear about. It is the opinion of most of us that you’ve done great damage to decent people everywhere. If we are going to use the word dangerous, you are at present one of the most dangerous men in the world. And you’ve done the damage by distorting science. It is possible to have different views on the nuclear situation. It is not possible, without lying or irresponsibility or something worse, to say the things you have said. You’ve encouraged people to believe that the United States and England can destroy Russia without too much loss. Most of us would regard that suggestion as wicked, even if it were true. But we all know that it is not true, and, for as long as we can foresee, it never will be true.’

‘That is why you are dangerous,’ said Brodzinski. ‘That is why I have to expose myself. You think you are people of good will. You are doing great harm, in everything you do. You are even doing great harm, in little meetings like this. That is why I have come where I am not welcome. You think you can come to terms with the Russians. You never will. The only realistic thing for all of us is to make the weapons as fast as we know how.’