Corridors of Power Read Free Page B

respect did not come easily to him.
    ‘Well then,’ said Roger, ‘let us assume, as I should have thought for safety’s sake we ought to, that the West – which means you – and the Soviet Union may get into a nuclear arms race on something like equal terms. Then how long have we got to do anything reasonable?’
    ‘Not as long as I should like.’
    ‘How many years?’
    ‘Perhaps ten.’
    There was a pause. The others, who had been listening soberly, did not want to argue. Roger said: ‘Does that suggest an idea to anyone?’
    He said it with a sarcastic twist, dismissively. He was pushing his chair back, signalling that we were going back to the drawing-room.
    Just as he was holding open the door, bells began to ring in the passage, up the stairs, in the room we were leaving. It was something like being on board ship, with the bells ringing for lifeboat-drill. Immediately Roger, who a minute before had seemed dignified – more than that, formidable – took on a sheepish smile. ‘Division bell,’ he explained to David Rubin, still wearing the smile, ashamed, curiously boyish, and at the same time gratified, which comes on men when they are taking part in a collective private ritual. ‘We shan’t be long!’ The members ran out of the house, like schoolboys frightened of being late, while David and I went upstairs alone.
    ‘They’ve gone off, have they? Time something broke you up.’ Caro greeted us robustly. ‘Whose reputations have you been doing in? Men ought to have–’ With lively hand, she exemplified cats’ whiskers sprouting.
    I shook my head, and said that we had been talking about David’s expert subject, and the future. Margaret looked at me. But the division bell had quite smashed the mood. I no longer felt any eschatological sense, or even any responsibility. Instead, in the bright drawing-room, all seemed serene, anti-climactic, and slightly comic.
    They had just started on what was becoming more and more a sacramental subject in such a drawing-room – schools for the children, or more exactly, how to get them in. One young wife, proud both of maternity and her educational acumen, with a son born three months before, announced that within an hour of his birth he had been ‘put down’ not only for Eton, but for his first boarding school – ‘And we’d have put him down for Balliol too,’ she went on, ‘only they won’t let you do that, nowadays.’
    What had Caro arranged for her children? What was Margaret doing for ours? Across the room I watched David Rubin listening, with his beautiful, careful, considerate courtesy, to plans for buying places thirteen years ahead for children he had never seen, in a system which in his heart he thought fantastic. He just let it slip once that, though he was only forty-one, his eldest son was a sophomore at Harvard. Otherwise he listened, grave and attentive, and I felt a desire to give some instruction to Mrs Henneker, who was sitting beside me. I told her that American manners were the best in the world.
    ‘What’s that?’ she cried.
    ‘Russian manners are very good,’ I added, as an afterthought. ‘Ours are some of the worst.’
    It was pleasing to have startled Mrs Henneker. It was true, I said, getting immersed in comparative sociology, that English lower-class manners were rather good, appreciably better than American; but once you approached and passed the mid-point of society, theirs got steadily better and ours got steadily worse. American professional or upper-class manners were out of comparison better. I proceeded to speculate as to why this should be.
    I had a feeling that Mrs Henneker did not find this speculation profitable.
    The men came pelting up the stairs, Roger in the rear. The division was over, the majority up to par. From then on, the party did not get going again and it was not later than half-past eleven when Margaret and I took David Rubin away. The taxi throbbed along the Embankment towards Chelsea, where he