Free The Light and the Dark by C. P. Snow

fellow could almost certainly be relied upon, but he would be abroad all the summer, and votes had to be given in person. In order to get a majority at all, Brown needed either his friend Chrystal or mine, Getliffe; in order to force an issue during the summer, he needed both. There were talks in all our rooms, late into summer nights. Chrystal might come in, reluctantly and ill-temperedly, as a sign of personal and party loyalty: I could not use those ties with Francis Getliffe, who prided himself on his fairness and required to be convinced.
    Brown would not be hurried. “More haste, less speed,” he said comfortably. “If we have a misfire now, we can’t bring our young friend up again for a couple of years.” He did not propose to take an official step until he could “see his votes”. By statute, a fellowship had to be declared vacant before there could be any election. Brown could have collected a majority to vote for a vacancy: but it was not sensible to do so, until he was certain it could not be filled by anyone but Roy.
    These dignified, broad-bottomed, middle-aged talks went on, seemingly enjoyed by most of those engaged. For they loved this kind of power politics, they knew it like the palm of their hands, it was rich with its own kind of solid human life. It was strange to hear them at work, and then see the subject of it all walk lightly through the college. There was a curious incongruity that he of all men should be debated on in those comfortable, traditional, respectable, guarded words: I felt it often when I looked at him, his white working coat over a handsome suit, reading a manuscript leaf at his upright desk: or watched him leave in his car, driving off to his London flat to meet Rosalind or another: or saw his smile, as I told him Arthur Brown’s latest move – “extremely statesman-like, extremely statesman-like,” mimicked Roy, for it was Brown himself who liked to use the word.
    As a research student and ex-scholar, Roy was invited to the college’s summer feast. This took place near the first of June and was not such a great occasion as the two great feasts of the year, the audit and the commemoration of benefactors. The foundation plate was not brought out; nevertheless, on the tables in the hall silver and gold glittered in the candlelight. Well above the zone of candlelight, high towards the roof of the hall, the windows glowed with the light of the summer evening all the time we sat there and ate and drank. The vintages were not the college’s finest, but they were good enough; the food was lavish; as the high windows slowly darkened and the candles flickered down, the faces round one shone out, flushed, bright-eyed, and content.
    It was to this feast that the college invited a quota of old members each year, selected at random from the college lists. As junior fellow, I was sitting at the bottom of one of the two lower tables, with an old member on each hand: Roy came next to one of these old members, with a fellow of another college on his left. It seemed that he decided early that the fellow was capable of looking after himself; from the first courses he devoted himself to making the old member happy, so that I could concentrate on the one on my right. With half an ear I kept listening to Roy’s success. His old member was a secondary schoolmaster of fifty, with a sensitive, unprepossessing, indrawn face. One felt that he had wanted much and got almost nothing. There was a streak of plain silliness in him, and failure had made him aggressive, opinionated, demanding. I tried, but he put me off before I could get close: in a few moments, he was giving advice to Roy, as an experienced man to a younger, and there was brilliance in the air. Roy teased him simply, directly, like a brother. It was all spontaneous. Roy had found someone who was naked to life. He laughed at his aggressiveness, stopped him when he produced too many opinions, got him back to his true feeling. Before the