Rose did not keep us long. He asked Francis if he were happy about the work of the scientific committee. Yes, said Francis. Was he, if it came to a public controversy — ‘and I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you, but there may be mild repercussions’ — willing to put the weight of his authority behind it?
‘Yes,’ said Francis, and added, what else could he do?
There were thanks, courtesies, goodbyes, more thanks and courtesies. Soon Francis and I were walking across the Park to the Duke of York’s Steps. ‘What was that in aid of?’ Francis asked.
‘He was telling you that there’s going to be a God-almighty row.’
‘I suppose we had to expect it, didn’t we?’
‘More than we bargained on, I fancy.’ I repeated what Rose had said to me. I went on: ‘He can be so oblique that it drives you mad, but he was suggesting that I’m going to be shot at.’
On the grass, couples were lying in the sunshine. Francis walked on, edgy, preoccupied. He said that he didn’t see how that could happen. It was more likely to happen to himself.
I said: ‘Look, no one wants to bring bad news. But I’ve got a feeling, though Rose didn’t say a positive word, that he thinks that too.’
Francis said, ‘I’m tired of all this.’
We went a few yards in silence. He added: ‘If we get this business through, then I shall want to drop out. I don’t think I can take it any more.’ He began to talk about the international situation: what did I think? Intellectually, he still stuck to his analysis. The technical and military arguments all pointed the same way: peace was becoming much more likely than war. Intellectually he still believed that. Did I? Yet when Quaife and the scientists tried to take one tiny step, not dramatic, quite realistic, then all Hell was ready to break loose.
‘Sometimes I can’t help thinking that people won’t see sense in time. I don’t mean that people are wicked. I don’t even mean they’re stupid. But we’re all in a mad bus, and the only thing we’re all agreed on is to prevent anyone getting to the wheel.’
We were climbing up the steps. He said sharply: ‘Lewis, I could do with some advice.’
For a second, I was afraid he was thinking of resigning. Instead he went on: ‘I just don’t know what to do about Penelope and that young man.’
His tone had become even more worried and sombre. On the way across the Park he, who knew more about it than most men, had been gloomy over the military future. Now he spoke as though his daughter had really been the problem on his mind. He spoke exactly as a Victorian parent might have spoken, as though all the future were predictable and secure except for his daughter’s marriage, and the well-being of his grandchildren.
He was on his way, he said, to meet her in the Ladies’ Annexe of the club (the Athenaeum). Would I come too? It might help him out. He hadn’t the slightest idea of what had been happening, or what she planned. He did not know whether she and Arthur were secretly engaged, or had even thought of getting married. Arthur had, that summer, returned home to America. Francis did not know whether they had quarrelled.
He did not know — but this he didn’t say, for she was his daughter, and both of us were talking more prudishly than if she had been another girl — whether she had been sleeping with Arthur. For myself, in private, I thought it highly probable.
As we sat in the drawing-room of the Annexe, waiting for her, Francis looked more baffled than I had known him. Both he and his wife were lost. Penelope was more obstinate than either of them, and she wasn’t given to explaining herself. She had never been an academic girclass="underline" she had taken some sort of secretarial course, and she showed about as much interest in Francis’ scientific friends as she would have done in so many Amazonian Indians. At present, however, she was prepared to recognize their existence. It had occurred to her that some of them lived in the United States; no doubt one could be persuaded to give her a job.
‘I’ve got to stop it,’ said Francis, as we went on waiting. ‘I can’t have her going over.’ He spoke resolutely, like King Lear in the storm, and about as convincingly. He had already ordered a bottle of champagne, with the air of a man trying to keep an exigent girl-friend in a good temper.
At last she came in, with her flouncing walk, flushed, handsome, frowning. ‘I thought it was number twelve,’ she said. She gazed at us firmly giving us the blame for her own mistake.
‘As you see,’ I replied, ‘you thought wrong.’
‘It used to be number twelve.’
‘Never.’
‘I remember going to number twelve.’ She spoke with an extreme display of mumpsimus, persisting confidently in error.
‘In that case, either you remember wrong, or you went to the wrong place before.’
She stopped lowering, and gave me an open, happy grin. I could imagine what Arthur and others saw in her.
With a healthy thirst, she put down two glasses of champagne.
Francis’ manner to her was courteous but uneasy, very much as when he was talking to Hector Rose. He told her that — from Oxford was dining with them. ‘How old is he?’ Penelope sat up.
‘Forty-seven or eight.’
Penelope sank back.
‘Now if you’d ever seen him,’ I remarked, ‘you’d certainly have put on a new dress.’
‘Of course I shouldn’t.’ Then a thought struck her. ‘Does he know people in America?’
‘Why America?’ I said, trying to help Francis out.
‘Oh, I’m going there this fall or next spring.’
Francis cleared his throat. Screwing himself up, he said: ‘I’m sorry, Penny, but I wish you’d get that out of your mind.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m afraid it can’t happen.’
‘We’ll see.’
Francis took the plunge.
‘I don’t mean that we couldn’t find a way for you to earn your keep. I expect we could—’
‘Then let’s get going!’ said Penelope, with enthusiasm.
‘That isn’t the point. Don’t you see it isn’t?’
Francis paused: then rushed on: ‘Don’t you see, we can’t let you deposit yourself on young Plimpton’s doorstep?’
‘Why not?’
Penelope stretched herself luxuriously, with the poised expression of one who has said her last word for the evening.
Francis continued a one-sided conversation, without answers. Didn’t she see that they couldn’t let her? Didn’t she realize that they had to behave like responsible persons?
Suddenly his tone became gentler, and even more embarrassed. He said: ‘All that’s bad enough, but there’s something worse.’
This time she responded: ‘What’s that?’
‘My dear girl, I’m not going to ask you what your feelings are for young — Arthur, or what his are for you. I don’t think any of us is entitled to ask that.’
She gazed at him with splendid grey eyes, her face quite unreadable.
‘But suppose you do care for him, and something went wrong? You’re both very young, and the chances are that something will go wrong. Well, if you’ve gone over to be with him, and then you’re left alone — that’s a risk I just can’t think of your taking.’
Penelope gave a gnomic smile and said: ‘When I go to America I may not see Arthur at all.’
23: Visit to a Small Sitting-room
It was still September. In the middle of the morning, the telephone rang on my desk. My personal assistant was speaking: someone called Ellen Smith was on the line, asking to talk to me urgently. The name meant nothing: what did she want? No, said the PA, she had refused to say. I hesitated. This was one of the occupational risks. Then I said, ‘All right, put her through.’