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Authors: C. P. Snow
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into which Margaret had been born. Nevertheless, despite her family, Diana had taken it for granted, from her childhood, that she belonged to the smartest of smart worlds. Taking it for granted, she duly got there, with remarkable speed. Before she was twenty-one, she had married Chauncey Skidmore, and one of the bigger American fortunes. Seeing her in middle-age, one couldn’t help thinking that it was she, not the Skidmores, not her friends in the international circuit, who had been made for just that world.
It seemed like the triumph of an adventuress: but it didn’t seem so to her, and it didn’t seem so when one was close to her. She was self-willed and strong-willed; she was unusually shrewd: but she had the brilliance and yes, the sweetness, of one who had enjoyed everything that happened to her. When she married Chauncey Skidmore, she loved him utterly. She had been widowed for over a year, and she still mourned him.
At dinner that night, there were – although the Quaifes were not arriving till the next day – eighteen at table. Diana had a habit of commanding extra guests from people to whom she let houses on the estate, or from masters at Winchester close by. I looked up at the ceiling, painted by some eighteenth-century Venetian now forgotten. The chatter had gone up several decibels, so that one could hear only in lulls the rain slashing against the windows at one’s back. Confidentially, the butler filled my glass: the four footmen were going round soft-footed. For an instant it seemed to me bizarre that all this was still going on. It was, however, fair to say that it did not seem bizarre to others present. A spirited conversation was proceeding about what, when Diana’s son inherited the house, would need doing to the structure: or whether she ought to start on it, bit by bit. In her ringing voice, Diana turned to Collingwood on her right: ‘Reggie, what do you think I ought to do?’ Collingwood did not usually utter unless spoken to. He replied: ‘I should leave it for him to worry about.’ That seemed to show the elements of realism. It occurred to me that, a quarter of a century before, I had sat in rich houses, listening to my friends, the heirs, assuming that before we were middle-aged, such houses would exist no more. Well, that hadn’t happened. Now Diana’s friends were talking as though it never would happen. Perhaps they had some excuse.
I was watching Collingwood. I had met him before, but only in a group. He struck me as the most puzzling of political figures – puzzling, because politics seemed the last career for him to choose.
He was a handsome man, lucky both in his bone-structure and his colouring. His skin tone was fresh and glowing, and he had eyes like blue quartz, as full of colour, as opaque. For his chosen career, however, he had what one might have thought a handicap; for he found speech, either in public or private, abnormally difficult. As a public speaker he was not only diffident and dull, but he gave the impression that, just because he disliked doing it so much, he was going to persevere. In private he was not in the least diffident, but still the words would not come. He could not, or did not care to, make any kind of conversation. It seemed a singular piece of negative equipment for a politician.
And yet, he had deliberately made the choice. He was a well-to-do country gentleman who had gone into merchant banking and made a success of it. But he had broken off that career; it was politics that he could not resist; if it meant making speeches, well then, it meant making speeches.
He carried weight inside the Cabinet, and even more inside his party, far more than colleagues of his who seemed to have ten times his natural gifts. That was why, that night at dinner, I was anxious when I heard, or thought I heard, a reply of his to Diana, which sounded like dubiety about the Quaifes. I could not be sure; at such a table, listening to one’s partner, who in my case
It seemed like the triumph of an adventuress: but it didn’t seem so to her, and it didn’t seem so when one was close to her. She was self-willed and strong-willed; she was unusually shrewd: but she had the brilliance and yes, the sweetness, of one who had enjoyed everything that happened to her. When she married Chauncey Skidmore, she loved him utterly. She had been widowed for over a year, and she still mourned him.
At dinner that night, there were – although the Quaifes were not arriving till the next day – eighteen at table. Diana had a habit of commanding extra guests from people to whom she let houses on the estate, or from masters at Winchester close by. I looked up at the ceiling, painted by some eighteenth-century Venetian now forgotten. The chatter had gone up several decibels, so that one could hear only in lulls the rain slashing against the windows at one’s back. Confidentially, the butler filled my glass: the four footmen were going round soft-footed. For an instant it seemed to me bizarre that all this was still going on. It was, however, fair to say that it did not seem bizarre to others present. A spirited conversation was proceeding about what, when Diana’s son inherited the house, would need doing to the structure: or whether she ought to start on it, bit by bit. In her ringing voice, Diana turned to Collingwood on her right: ‘Reggie, what do you think I ought to do?’ Collingwood did not usually utter unless spoken to. He replied: ‘I should leave it for him to worry about.’ That seemed to show the elements of realism. It occurred to me that, a quarter of a century before, I had sat in rich houses, listening to my friends, the heirs, assuming that before we were middle-aged, such houses would exist no more. Well, that hadn’t happened. Now Diana’s friends were talking as though it never would happen. Perhaps they had some excuse.
I was watching Collingwood. I had met him before, but only in a group. He struck me as the most puzzling of political figures – puzzling, because politics seemed the last career for him to choose.
He was a handsome man, lucky both in his bone-structure and his colouring. His skin tone was fresh and glowing, and he had eyes like blue quartz, as full of colour, as opaque. For his chosen career, however, he had what one might have thought a handicap; for he found speech, either in public or private, abnormally difficult. As a public speaker he was not only diffident and dull, but he gave the impression that, just because he disliked doing it so much, he was going to persevere. In private he was not in the least diffident, but still the words would not come. He could not, or did not care to, make any kind of conversation. It seemed a singular piece of negative equipment for a politician.
And yet, he had deliberately made the choice. He was a well-to-do country gentleman who had gone into merchant banking and made a success of it. But he had broken off that career; it was politics that he could not resist; if it meant making speeches, well then, it meant making speeches.
He carried weight inside the Cabinet, and even more inside his party, far more than colleagues of his who seemed to have ten times his natural gifts. That was why, that night at dinner, I was anxious when I heard, or thought I heard, a reply of his to Diana, which sounded like dubiety about the Quaifes. I could not be sure; at such a table, listening to one’s partner, who in my case
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