I asked what had gone wrong now. Francis paid no attention and went on: “I want you to realise one thing. It’s his fault we’ve got into this absurd position. I mean by that, if he had had the scientific judgment of a newt, he’d never have taken the old man’s experiments on trust. It’s almost unbelievable that anyone working in his field accepted them without having another look. If Howard’s innocent, which I’m inclined to think he is, then he must break all records for stupidity. I must say, there are times when stupidity seems to me the greater crime.”
We did another turn across the lawn. Francis broke out again: “Of course, we never ought to have elected him in the first place.”
I told him, because I wanted to make him easier, that that reminded me of his father-in-law on an occasion we both knew, looking for a first cause. Francis gave a reluctant grin, but his voice did not soften.
“Now we’ve got to clear up this mess,” he said. “All I hope is that it doesn’t take too long.”
“Why is the time it takes worrying you so much?”
I asked him straight out, not knowing whether he wanted to reply. We had been friendly for nearly thirty years, and I had not seen him at such a disadvantage before. I was bewildered to know why. True, he didn’t like being wrong, even less than most of us. Like most men of his granite-like integrity, he had a streak of vanity inextricably fused within it. He did not like falling below the standard he set himself, either in his own eyes or anyone else’s. He did not like my having to make this visit, to remind him of his duty. It was the first time it had happened, though several times in our friendship he had reminded me of mine. None of that seemed to explain a malaise as strong as his, as we walked backwards and forwards across the lawn. We had walked like that before. The inner lawn was not overlooked by any window, and as young men we used to go there at night and talk out our plans or troubles undisturbed.
After a time, he said in a voice no longer angry but quiet and surprised: “You’re quite right. I didn’t want any friction in this place just now.”
I did not say anything. On the next turn he went on: “I’m afraid it’s only too simple. When those two came to see me, I wasn’t as completely impressed by their case as they were. That was genuine, and to a limited extent it still is. But if I’d been reasonably responsible, I should have got down to what they had to say. The fact was, Lewis, I didn’t want to.”
He was speaking with the candour, the freshness, which sometimes comes to men not given to introspection when they talk about themselves.
“No, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want the risk of making myself unpleasant to everyone who counts for anything here. I just didn’t want to blot my copybook. I needn’t tell you why, need I?”
I did not say anything.
“You know, Winslow and Nightingale and those others, they’re my backers. The election’s coming on this autumn, and the fact of the matter is” — he hesitated — “I should like it.”
As we turned, he went on: “The curious thing is, I can’t really tell why I should like it so much. I should make a pretty fair job of it, as good as anyone else they’re likely to put in the Lodge, by and large. But that doesn’t come into it. It’s not really the sort of thing that matters to me, I should have said. All I seriously wanted was to do some adequate research and leave some sort of record behind me. Well, I haven’t done as much as I should have liked, but I’ve done something. I believe I’ve got ten more years’ work in me, and I shall do some more. The work’s come off pretty well, all things considered. Looking back to the time we both started, I should have been moderately content with what I’ve been able to do. That’s all that ought to matter. As for the rest, I’ve had more than my share of the honours going round. I didn’t think I was specially greedy: and so why should I want the Mastership into the bargain? But I do, you know. Enough to make me put up a disgraceful exhibition about this wretched case.”
As we went on walking, in a silence more relaxed than before, I was thinking, I could have given him one reason why he wanted it. Francis, who had gone through so many struggles, in college, in government, even in public, was not a rebel by nature. His politics had come through duty and intellect, not through a passion of nonconformity, not even through that residue of identification with those outside, pushing their noses against the shop-window, that I, on the surface a more compromising man than Francis, and one who had lived closer to the Establishment, still preserved. In the long run Francis, who out of principle would stick out as one dissenting voice in the council of the Royal or any group of respectable bosses, wished to end his days with them. His intellect, his duty, would not let him alter his opinions, but in a curious sense he wanted to be “respectable”, and to be received by the respectable. He would be soothed, a final uneasiness assuaged, if the men he had argued with so long, the Winslows and Nightingales and Arthur Browns, made him Master. He still would not qualify anything he said: but he would have come home.
Suddenly I was reminded of another person who, comically different in temperament, also wished for what Francis did. It was Irene, who in her youth had been a reckless man chaser and who now wanted nothing better than for her and her husband to end up staidly in the Lodge. The resemblance pleased me, but, as I walked with Francis in the quiet damp garden — his face lighter but surprised because he had made a confession, the first I had heard from him, his voice comradely and quite free from resentment, as though glad to have me there — I did not tell him so.
14: Two Views of Retirement
AFTER Francis, there was no one else I had arranged to see that Friday until I dined in hall. So in the afternoon, with nothing to do, I went on a round of bookshops. It was in the third of these, not Heifer’s, not Bowes and Bowes, that, as I was glancing at the latest little magazine, I heard a voice I used to know well.
“I’m sure you’re right. I’m sure you’ve laid your finger on it.”
The voice was plummy, thick and muffled, but it spoke warmly, with teasing affection. I was standing by the rack of periodicals near the door: as I looked up I saw in the inner room, just visible behind the main display shelf Paul Jago talking to his wife.
As I looked up, so did he. I was certain that he had seen me. But he darted his eyes back to his wife, talked to her rapidly and intimately as though pretending that they were quite alone, as though hoping that I should not notice or disturb them.
Should I slip out, I thought? It would be easy to get into the street, so that he would not be embarrassed. Then I revolted. I had known him well once, and had been fond of him. He had been Senior Tutor during my time at the college and had just missed the Mastership, when Crawford was elected. That had been a traumatic blow to him. He had gone on with his routine duties, but he had given up dining and — so I had heard — no one, not even his closest friends, had seen much of him.
I went into the inner room and said: “Well. It’s a long time since we met.”
Not for ten years, not since Roy Calvert’s memorial service. Jago’s appearance had altered since then, but in a way I could not define. He had always looked older than his age, and now his age was catching up with him; he was bald, the fringe of hair had gone quite white, but he was sixty-eight and looked no more. His cheeks and neck were fleshy, but the moods seemed close beneath the skin, so that his expressions were liquid, and even now one could not say that it was a sad face. Behind thick lenses his eyes were still brilliant.
“Why, it’s you!” he cried. Even though he was prevaricating, even though he wanted to evade me, he could not help the warmth flowing out.