45: A Good Letter
Some time after I had seen Ellen into a taxi, I was clearing up work in my office. The sky outside the window was already dark, the secretaries had gone home, all was quiet. The private phone buzzed. Would I call in on Roger before I left?
Through the corridors, deserted now, I trod out the long, maze-like walk. One or two doors were open, lights of offices shone out: always the offices of the top echelon, staying late. Douglas was working, but I did not look in to say good night. I went straight into Roger’s room. From the reading-lamp shone out a cone of light which glared off the paper, was sopped up by the blotting-pad. Roger stood up, looming against the window. For the first time since we had been introduced, years before, he gripped my hand.
‘Well?’ he said.
I was taken aback by his vigorous, active manner. This was like a conversation which one had rehearsed in one’s head and which was going wrong. I muttered something lame, about it being a pity.
‘Never mind about that,’ he said. He gazed at me with sharp, unrelenting eyes.
‘Well?’ he said again. He snapped his fingers.
For an instant I thought he wanted me to take the initiative. It might have been the beginning of a business deal. But I was mishearing him. He went on: ‘It’s time I thought it out again from the beginning, isn’t it?’ He gave out a special kind of exhilaration. The exhilaration of failure: the freedom of being bare to the world.
He was certain where he was, because there was nothing else to be certain of. I thought I knew him. Ellen knew him better. But the way we had seen him that day was not the way he saw himself. The hedges, the duplicities of his nature — either they did not exist for him that day, or he saw through them. This was nothing like the night when David Rubin had begged him to back down, and Roger had played with him.
Across the pool of light, he began to talk. To begin with, as though it were obvious and had to be put out of the way, he said that he would have to go. There was no argument. He was out: so was what he had tried to do.
Then he broke out: ‘But not for good. Not for long. Someone’s going to do it. Maybe I still can.’
It was the last thing I expected. He was talking with a curious impersonality about the future, He did not mention his wife or Ellen, as though ruling out his self-bound concerns, the concern of his own guilt. He did say, as an objective fact, as part of the situation, that he would be on his own: without influence, without powerful friends. Even without money. He would have to start again. ‘It will be harder,’ he said. ‘It’ll be harder than if I’d never done anything at all.’
He looked at me with a caustic, open smile.
‘You don’t think I stand a chance, do you?’
Kindnesses, personal relations, had dropped away. I answered: ‘Not much.’
‘Someone’s going to do it. All we want is time, and luck, and something in the air. Someone’s going to do it.’
Just when he had been at the peak of his power, when it seemed that the Prime Minister and Collingwood were befriending him, he talked about the political process with relaxation, with detachment. Could anyone else have done better than he had done? Could he have avoided the mistakes that he had made? What about mine? If we had handled Brodzinski better? How far did personalities count? Nothing like as much as one liked to think. Only in those circumstances when the hinge is oiled, but the door may swing or not. If that isn’t the situation, then no personality is going to make more than an ineffectual noise.
He wasn’t asking for comfort. He wasn’t even asking for my view. He was speaking as though to himself, in the quiet room. He said, If one goes too far, one’s ruined. If one doesn’t go at all, one might as well not be there.
He said, Trying may have value. Even when it has failed. The situation will never be quite time same again. He said (I remembered when he had first said it): The first thing is to get the power. The next thing is to do something with it. He said: Someone is going to do what I tried to do. I don’t know whether it’ll be me.
He spoke with simplicity, almost with purity. It was hard for anyone outside to find within him that pure and simple feeling. He cared, less than many men, what his own feelings were. He had felt most temptations and passions, but not that kind of self-regard. And yet, he wanted something for himself. When he said, he wanted to get power and ‘do something with it’, he meant that he wanted a justification, a belief that he was doing something valuable with his life. He also wanted a justification, in an older and deeper sense. He wanted something like a faith, a faith in action. He had lurched about until he found just that. Despite his compromises and callousnesses — or to an extent because of them — he had believed in what he was doing. Those round him might suspect him, but there, and there alone, he did not suspect himself.
The irony was that, if our suspicions had been true, he would have been a more successful politician. He might even, within the limits of those years, have done more good.
It was getting on for eight o’clock. All of a sudden, Roger’s manner changed. He pushed one foot against the desk and said, as though we were at work once more: ‘I want you to read this.’
All this time, a letter had been waiting in front of him. It began, ‘Dear Prime Minister’, in his own bold holograph, and continued in typescript. It was a good letter. There was not a sign of reproach or rancour, either overt or hinted at. It said that Roger had been honoured to be the Prime Minister’s colleague. He was sorry that his policy had evoked so much dissension, and that he had emphasized parts of it to an extent which his colleagues could not share, so that both it and he had now become liabilities to the Government. He continued to believe in his policy. He could not persuade himself that it had been wrong. Since he could not honestly change his mind, there was only one course open to him, which he was sure the Prime Minister would sympathize with and understand. He hoped to be of some use to the Prime Minister and the Government as a private member.
There the typing ended. In Roger’s hand, halfway down the third page, was written, black and firm: ‘Yours ever, Roger Quaife.’
As soon as I lifted my eyes he said: ‘Will that do?’
‘It’s good,’ I said.
‘It will be accepted, you know’ (he meant the resignation).
‘Yes, it’ll be accepted,’ I said.
‘With slightly excessive haste.’ We gazed at each other across the desk.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’d better see it go.’
One of the red dispatch boxes was standing beside the telephones. From his hip-pocket he brought out a bunch of keys and unlocked it. He did it with the ceremonial air of a man who is enjoying a privilege. Not many men had ever revelled more in having the liberty of the dispatch-boxes, of being in possession of such a key. He was enjoying the privilege, the physiognomic charm of office, even then.
Punctiliously he placed the letter in the box, and relocked it. He pressed a button, and his principal private secretary — who this last week could have had no time to call his own — opened the door.
‘Will you see this goes to the Prime Minister?’ said Roger. He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone.
The young man, thirtyish, a high class civil servant on the climb, acknowledged it with similar matter-of-fact politeness. It might have been any of the messages he had transmitted for Roger these last years, or would go on transmitting for years to come, although he must have been wondering now whether this was the end, and who his new master would be.
The door closed. Roger smiled.