One odd thing was, that while the Inces imitated those lower down the social ladder, they were not in the least political. I had been used, years before, to upper-class left-wingers, conscientiously calling each other Des, and Pat, and Bert, and on envelopes punctiliously leaving off the “Esquire”. But this was nothing like the same thing. It was not a “going to the people”. The Inces did not even trouble to vote. They weren’t making an intellectual protest. They just felt freer if they cut the ties of class.
It seemed to suit them. If they weren’t happy that night, they gave a remarkable impersonation of being so. Between each dance Lester Ince drank a bottle of beer; he had the sort of heavy, games-playing physique, not unlike Martin’s, that could mop it up. He danced with his wife as though he were uxorious and glad of it. Ugly, frog-like, cosy, she had such appeal for him that she took on charm for us watching. The temperature of the room, thermometric and psychological, was rising. The young dons were getting off with the women. Married couples, research students with an eye for girls, intellectual-looking girls with an eye for the research students — I was speculating about the curious idée reçue dear to men of action, business men and people in the great world, that intellectual persons were less interested in sex than they were. So far as one could generalise at all, in my experience the opposite was true.
In the taxi, Martin had said that we should have to talk to Ince. It wasn’t a good time, but in view of Crawford’s “wobbling” we mightn’t have another. And so, after we had been there an hour, Martin caught him on the landing outside the room and beckoned to me.
“Christ,” Ince was saying, “I’d a hell of a sight sooner go back to my wife.”
“Two minutes,” said Martin. Then he said straight out that Getliffe’s note had “put the cat among the pigeons”, and he wanted just one more vote.
“You’ve got a one-track mind, Marty. Strike me pink you have.”
“I shouldn’t have thought so,” said Martin, “but still—” Ince had drunk a lot of beer but he was not drunk, just cheerful with drink. Standing with heavy legs firmly planted, he considered and then said: “It’s no go. I’m not playing.”
“You can’t dismiss it like that, you know.”
“Can’t I hell?”
I did not know him well, but I felt that at heart he was decent, sound and healthy. It came as a shock to find his tone not only flippant, but callous. I said that I was surprised.
“It’s good for you to be surprised, Lew. If it comes to that, why in Christ’s name are you messing about here?”
I replied just as rudely: “Because people like you are behaving like fools or worse.”
“I won’t take that from you or anyone else.”
“You’ve damned well got to take it,” said Martin.
Ince stared at us, legs immovable, with a matey smile. He was neither abashed nor at a loss.
“I’m just not playing, Marty,” he said.
“Why not?”
“I don’t feel obliged to give a reason. I didn’t know they’d made you a sort of confessor for anti-God men—”
For an instant I saw Martin’s face go pale. He was more provoked than I was by the insolence of younger men. But though his temper had risen he did not let it go. He would not do that, except as a tactical weapon or at home.
“I think you are obliged to give a reason,” he said.
“Why?”
“If you want to be taken seriously. Which I hope you do.”
For the first time, Ince’s expression was clouded. He was a strong character, but he gave me the impression that he had not often crossed wills with other strong characters: while for Martin, this was nothing new.
“I’m not interested,” he said.
“That’s a meaningless thing to say,” Martin replied.
“So far as I’m concerned, this is a squabble among scientists. All I want is for you to go and sort it out among yourselves, and good luck to you and a nice long goodbye kiss.”
“It’s not a squabble among scientists,” I said. “That’s just letting yourself out. We’re telling you, you can’t—”
“I’m telling you, can’t I hell?”
“Look,” I said, “you must admit, there’s a chance, we think it’s a near certainty, that an innocent man has been victimised. Do you think that’s so good?”
“Oh, if that sort of thing happens, it always comes out all right in the wash.”
“Good God above,” I said, “that’s about the most optimistic statement on human affairs that I’ve ever heard.”
“Oh, it’s not true of your sort of affairs. Not the big stuff. Not on your life,” said Ince. “How many people have you seen done down in your time?”
“Quite a lot,” I said, “but not quite—”
“Then why the sweet hell don’t you go and put that right?”
“I was going to say,” I replied, “not quite in this way. And just because a lot of people are done down inevitably, that’s no reason to add another.”
“If you really want to know, that’s why I wash my hands of this schemozzle,” said Ince. “There’s too much Pecksniffery about it for me. Christ knows what you’ve seen, Lew, but then you come here and do a Pecksniff on me. And you’re not the worst of them. There’s too much Pecksniffery about your scientists, Marty. You think you can do anything you like with the rest of us, and switch on the moral uplift whenever you feel good. That’s why I’m bleeding well not playing. You go and do good, I shan’t get in your way. But I don’t want to hear about it. I’m nice and happy as I am, thank you very much.”
18: Conversion
NEXT day, when Martin came to my rooms to take me to lunch, neither of us had any more news. In hall, where half a dozen Fellows were already sitting, no one spoke a word about the case, though there were some there, such as Nightingale and Tom Orbell, who must have known each move that had been made. Apart from an old man, a deaf clergyman from a village outside the town, who had come in to lunch each day since before my time, the rest of them had been lecturing or working in the laboratories. Lester Ince announced that he had been talking to a class about Beowulf. “What have you been telling them?” asked Tom Orbell.
“That he was a God-awful bore,” said Ince.
Below the high table, relays of undergraduates came in and out. The doors flapped, the servants slapped down plates. It was a brisk, perfunctory meal, the noise level in the hall very high: afterwards only four of us, Martin and I, Nightingale and Orbell, went into the combination room for coffee.
After the cosiness of the room at night, it looked bleak, with no fire to draw the eye, no glasses on the table to reflect the light. Through the windows one could see the head and shoulders of a young man running round the court; but the room seemed darker than at night, the beams of the ceiling nearer to one’s head.
The four of us sat round the gaping fireplace, with the coffee jug on a low table close by.
“Shall I be mother?” said Nightingale, as though he were in the mess, putting on a cockney accent. As he poured out, he seemed in high spirits, quite unresentful of my presence, less worried by the situation than either Crawford or Brown had been the night before. He was not exactly indifferent to it, but full of a suppressed, almost mischievous satisfaction. He behaved like a man with inside knowledge, concealed from us, which if it were disclosed would make us recognise that we did not stand a chance.
He was talking about his plans for a new building. He had an ambition, perhaps the last ambition he had left, to leave his mark upon the college. He wanted to put up a building with another eighty sets of rooms.
“If we’re going to do it, we’ve got to do it properly,” said Nightingale, “I intend to do the young gentlemen well.”