At last he said, putting his hands on the table, making his voice hearty and valedictory: “Well, that seems as far as we can go just now.” He continued, in the same dismissive tone, but deliberately, as though he had been working out the words: “My advice to you” — he was speaking to Skeffington — “is to keep on at Nightingale and see if you can’t convince each other of the points that are still left in the air. By far the best thing would be for the two of you to produce a combined report. The essential thing is that the two of you ought to agree. Then I’m sure nearly all the rest of us would accept your recommendation, whether you wanted us to stay put or take some action. In fact, I’m sure that’s the only satisfactory way out, either for you or the rest of us.”
“Do you think it’s likely?” Martin asked sharply, pressing him for the first time.
“That I don’t know.”
Francis’ thoughts had turned into themselves again. Martin rose to go. He knew they were getting nowhere: it would be a mistake to test Francis any more that day. But Skeffington, although he got up too, was not acquiescing. In an impatient, aggrieved tone, he said to Francis: “When you mentioned me changing my mind about the explanation, you don’t seriously think that’s on the cards, do you? You don’t seriously think that now I’ve had this evidence through my hands, I could possibly change my mind, do you? If you still think I could, why don’t you have a look at the evidence for yourself?”
“No,” said Francis. “I’ve got enough to do without that.”
He had replied bleakly. When he was opening the door for us he said to Skeffington, as though intending to take the edge off the refusaclass="underline" “You see, these new results of mine are taking up all my time. But if you and Nightingale do a report, either alone or together, then I’ll be glad to have a look at that.”
11: Looking Out into the Dark
THAT night, when we were back in our flat in London and the children had gone to bed, Margaret told me that she would like to write to Laura Howard. Just as Skeffington felt on Christmas Day, she wanted them to be sure she was on their side.
“Do you mind?” she asked, her eyes steady and clear. She would take care not to harm me; but she was irking to act, springy on her feet with restlessness. She was more headstrong than the rest of us.
“I’m thinking of writing to her fairly soon,” said Margaret speculatively, as though it might be within the next month, while she was moving with the certainty of a sleep-walker towards her typewriter.
During the weeks which followed, she heard several times from Laura, and it was in that way that I kept an insight into the tactics. Nothing had come of Francis Getliffe’s idea of a combined report. It became common knowledge that both Skeffington and Nightingale were writing to the Master on their own. Before either report was in, the sides were forming. They were still three or four votes short of a majority for re-opening the case. By the end of January Skeffington’s report was known to be complete and in the Master’s hands. It was said to go into minute detail and to run to a hundred pages of typescript. (I wondered how Martin had let that pass.) Nightingale’s, which was delivered a little later, was much shorter. Within the college, these reports were not secret and any Fellow could read them who chose. But it had been agreed, for security reasons, that there should only be three copies of each in existence.
Laura’s letters were a curious mixture of business-like information and paranoia. Margaret said: “Has it ever struck you that when people get persecution mania, they usually have a good deal to feel persecuted about?”
It all seemed to be going slowly, but on the lines one could have forecast. It was clear that Martin could not risk putting forward a formal motion for re-opening until he had his majority secure.
One Friday evening in February, I arrived home later than usual, tired and jaded. It was raining hard, and I had had to walk from Marble Arch the quarter of a mile or so along the Bayswater Road. The warmth of the flat was comforting. From the nursery I could hear Margaret playing with the little boy. I went into the drawing-room looking forward to the quiet, and there, sitting under the standard lamp by the window, the light full on her face, was Laura Howard.
I saw her with surprise, and with something stronger than surprise, involuntary recoil. I had a phobia of entering a room expecting to be by myself, and finding someone there. For an instant I was inclined to gibber. Was Margaret looking after her? I asked, my tongue feeling too large for my mouth, resentfully wishing to push her out, knowing — what usually I did not know at all — exactly what it is to be pathologically shy. Of course Margaret was looking after her, said Laura, firm, composed, utterly unflirtatious. She added: “We’ve been putting our heads together.”
“Have you?”
“I’m not satisfied with the way things are going. I don’t want them to get stuck, and they will get stuck unless we’re careful.”
I was recovering myself. She did not think of explaining what “things” were. She was as single-minded as ever. I had never seen a woman of her age so inseparably fused into her husband’s life. She sat there, pretty, healthy, and most men would have felt that beneath her skin there was the inner glow of a sensual, active, joyous woman. Most men would have also known that none of that inner glow was for them.
When Margaret came in, she heard Laura repeating that “things were getting stuck”.
“Yes,” said Margaret, glancing at me guiltily, her colour high, “Laura rang me up and so I thought it might be useful if she came along.”
“I see,” I said.
“Would you like to hear what she’s been telling me?”
I could not refuse.
Succinctly, competently, Laura brought out something new. According to “information from the other side”, there had been a suggestion that, if the feeling became strong enough, the Seniors ought to offer to re-open the case before a majority asked for it. I nodded my head. That sounded reasonable, precisely the sort of step that experienced men would consider. Apparently the suggestion had been made by Crawford first, and “the other side”, or rather, the more influential members, Arthur Brown, Nightingale and Winslow, had spent some time discussing it. Now they had decided that it wasn’t necessary: the feeling was not more than “a storm in a teacup”, it would soon blow over. All they had to do was “stick in their heels”.
Even the phrases sounded right.
“Your intelligence service is pretty good, isn’t it?” I said to Laura.
“I think it is.”
“Where does it come from?”
“I’m not at liberty to say,” she replied without a blench.
She was not worried. The situation was less promising than three weeks before — “We’ve gone backwards,” she said. But, like so many active people, like Margaret herself, she was freed from worry just by taking action. Why had things deteriorated, I was trying to get her to explain. So far as I could gather, it must have been the effect of the reports. Nightingale’s seemed to have been fair in tone, but uncompromising in its conclusion, and that had gone home.