Last Things by C. P. Snow Read Free Book Online Page A

courtesies continued. Lord Ampleforth, who spoke next, paid compliments to the noble Lord, Lord Getliffe, ‘who brings to your Lordships’ house his great scientific authority and the many years of effort he has devoted to our thinking on defence’. Lord Ampleforth, who despite his grand title had started his career as a radio manufacturer called Jones, was a rougher customer than Francis and more of a natural politician: he drew some applause from his own side when he expressed ‘a measure of concern’ about Francis’ ‘well-known’ views upon the nuclear deterrent. Even so, one again needed a little inside information to grasp what he really felt about Francis. It helped perhaps to know that he had, during the time of the previous government, rigorously removed Francis from his last official committee. More courtesies. The noble Lord’s international reputation. The wisdom he brought to our counsels. Assurances of support in everything that contributed to the country’s security.
    As soon as Lord Ampleforth finished, Francis got up from his place and nodded to me as he went out, so that I joined him in the lobby. He gave me a creased saturnine smile. As we walked over the red carpet down the warm corridor – so red, so warm that I felt rather like Jonah in one of his more claustrophobic experiences or alternatively as I had done after an optical operation, with pads over both eyes – Francis remarked: ‘That chap reminds me of a monkey. A very persistent monkey trying to climb a monkey-puzzle tree. That is, if they do.’
    All I knew of monkey-puzzles was the sight of them in front of houses more prosperous than ours, in the streets where I was born. However, Francis was not occupied with scientific accuracy. Lord Ampleforth had climbed, he was saying, over all kinds of resistance: on the shoulders of and in spite of their efforts to throw him off, better men than himself. Including a number of the scientists we knew.
    ‘He’ll go on climbing,’ said Francis with cheerful acerbity. ‘Nothing will ever stop him. Not for long.’
    Affable greetings along the corridors. Congratulations to Francis on his speech. Lord Ampleforth had an astonishing gift, Francis was saying, for ingratiating himself with his superiors, and an equally astonishing gift for doing the reverse with those below.
    We entered the guest room. More mateyness, from men round the bar, more congratulations on the speech. I couldn’t help thinking that they might have found Francis’ present line of thought more stimulating. But he was popular there. As we sat in a window seat looking over the river, lights on the south bank aureoled in the November mist, people greeted him with the kind of euphoria that one met in other kinds of enclave, such as a college or a club.
    One of the new ministers, from a table close by, was engaging Francis in earnest, low-voiced conversation. So, getting on with my first drink, I gazed from our corner into the room. It wasn’t altogether novel to me: when Francis was in London, I sometimes met him there: but my first visit had been much further back, in the thirties, when I had been invited by an acquaintance called Lord Boscastle. So far as I could trust my memory, it had been different then. Surely there had been less people, both in the chamber and round this room? Somewhat to his surprise, Lord Boscastle’s first speech for twenty years had not been much of a draw.
    Had the place really been socially grander, or was that a young man’s impression? I remembered noticing, even in the thirties, that there were not many historic titles knocking about. Lord Boscastle, who bore one and was a superlative snob, had once remarked, with obscure and lugubrious satisfaction, that the House was quintessentially middle-class. Well, that night, there were still three or four historic titles on view. One of them was sitting at the bar, with a depressed stare, imbibing gin. There was another, at a table surrounded by his