The Postmaster General Page 2

  “Oh, regular!” admitted the persuasive J., still seated, and he gave a very slight half-smile. He sat silent for a moment, still keeping that half-smile and rapidly considering the full consequences. It would tie him. It would leave a record to have the Postmaster-General’s share in the arrangement written and undersigned by J. himself. It would give Halterton a hold on him. But then, Halterton seemed to insist, and it was necessary to have Halterton’s signature now, at once.

  “Very well,” he said at last. “It might have been better to leave that part of it as a gentleman’s agreement, and verbal, but perhaps you’re right.”

  He drew out from among the papers a blank sheet, headed it with no date or address of any kind, and with the fine, hard nib of his neat fountain pen—symbolic of the man—he wrote rapidly for several minutes, covering the large sheet of paper with his stiff handwriting. Then he pushed the note over to the Minister. Halterton took it up and read it slowly, half aloud:

  “MY DEAR HALTERTON …”

  “I put it like that, Wilfrid,” interrupted J., “it’s not likely that they’ll give ye more than a Baronetcy, and of course I couldn’t call ye Wilfrid. And whether you choose to be Sir Wilfrid or whether you don’t, ’t’ll work either way.”

  “All right,” sighed Halterton, and he began reading again:

  “My dear Halterton …”

  “I am going to approach you with a proposition which I do sincerely hope you will smile on. I know what a modest view you take of your own talents, especially in the business line; but you are the only man in England who does; and what is more, your administration while you were at the Post Office not only gave you just the kind of experience we want, but earned you the respect and admiration of everybody. So what I want to ask you is simply this: ‘Would you, now that you are out of public life, and I suppose enjoying plenty of leisure, consent to take up the Managership of our Corporation?’ Since my appointment as Chief Permanent Commissioner was settled there has been a great deal of discussion on the board as to who should be called in; but I don’t like these long discussions, and I don’t like a vacant place. Still less do I like having to do two jobs at once. I need hardly tell you that when your name was mentioned we were unanimous about it. The only trouble was whether you would consent. For we know how you value your leisure. But do say yes! It would be a personal favour to me; and, what I am afraid I value even more, you would make all the difference to what is now a great public service. I am putting my whole heart into this, and I do beg you not to refuse.

  “Yrs. ever,

  “JAS. HAGGISMUIR MCAULEY.”

  It was a fine clear signature, worthy of the man whose mother had been born a Haggismuir of Haggismuir.

  Mr. Wilfrid Halterton finished his reading of it, and looked up. There was, what is odd in a man well over fifty, and especially in a man over fifty whose genius has raised him to one of the greatest public positions in the world, a faint tinge of colour upon either cheek.

  “I think, J.,” he said, “I think it would be more … er, regular, wouldn’t it, if you were just to write a … a postscript with a word or two about … well, about the salary?”

  “Regular again, Wilfrid!” said J., with that same faint momentary half-smile of a few minutes before. “All right. What was it I said the other day?”

  There was a long pause. At last, almost in a whisper, came the words:

  “You said ten thousand, J.” Then, in a still lower tone, “Free of tax.”

  “All right, Wilfrid,” replied J., in a cheerier tone than he had yet used. He scribbled off the postscript, and after that the figures, then the phrase, “Free of tax,” he added, “and official residence, of course, if you care to use it.” And the neat initials followed: “J.H.M.”

  The Postmaster-General was not quite sure; he had always understood that an initialled addendum to a memorandum or habendum ridendum, or any other official binding thing, “went,” as the saying goes. At any rate, he felt he could not ask for anything more.

  “Now,” said J., in a more business-like tone than he had yet used, “ye’ll keep that—and date it when the time comes.”

  “I suppose it will need some address, won’t it?” asked Halterton.

  “Hey? What does that matter? Ye can add it. Ye can write in whatever you like. That’s not what counts. ’Tis my name at the end that counts. Ye can write in wherever I happen to be at the time.”

  “Very well, very well,” said Halterton.

  James Haggismuir McAuley got up and stretched himself. He also yawned, which, with him, was a gesture of satisfaction and completeness: but he was careful to put his hand in front of his mouth.

  “Now,” said he, “we must get them in their envelopes, and we’ll each take his own. … I’ve brought the envelopes to fit—not that it matters much. Do you sign yours—your typewritten one.”

  Wilfrid Halterton brought out his little fountain pen mounted in gold and slowly inscribed his name. McAuley blotted the same: folded the fateful document which gave the contract, stuck it in the open envelope; gummed it carefully down and put it in the inner pocket of his coat.

  Halterton, always influenced by example, more slowly pocketed James McAuley’s generous and as yet undated offer. But he added something of his own, under a vague feeling that it rendered him more secure. He took up a pencil and wrote, in his rather straggling hand, across the top of the paper which James McAuley had given him:—

  “James McAuley’s letter. Handed to me March 3, 1960. W.H.”

  He could always rub it out when the time came to use it, and meanwhile there it was as a sort of record. McAuley watched him as he wrote and folded it with too much deliberation, and put it into its corresponding envelope, making only one boss shot. Then, licking the flap and pressing it down, to keep state secrets hidden from all profane eyes, Wilfrid Halterton, Postmaster-General, put the envelope into the pocket of the morning coat he was wearing—the side-pocket away from Mr. McAuley.

  “Now,” said that great captain of industry—or, at least, of applied science—or anyhow, of finance; “I must be off.” He looked at his watch for about the fourth time. “Aye, man! I must be off. I’m in a hurry—I shall be late.”

  He shook hands warmly with his host as the Postmaster-General showed him to the door, walking at his side. James Haggismuir McAuley stopped a moment in the passage, looked up at the wall, and said:

  “That’s a fine etching, Wilfrid!”

  Wilfrid turned his long thin neck round to follow the connoisseur’s gaze. As he did so, in the tenth of a second James Haggismuir McAuley had removed the envelope from the side-pocket, passed it in a flash round his back into his other hand, and got it into that breast-pocket of his where its little brother already lay.

  That business transaction did not take five seconds all told. It had taken Wilfrid Halterton ten to move his neck.

  He began the story of the etching, of its value, of its acquirement by him, when he felt his hand warmly grasped again by his friend from the outer, non-political world; he heard the door slam; he sighed, stooped his head somewhat forward, and shuffled back into his study.

  Chapter II

  As Wilfrid Halterton once more sat by himself in front of his wireless heater, he was filled with that powerful impression men receive but once or twice in the course of a lifetime; the impression that a whole tide about them has changed; that they have passed out of one long phase, during which the current has carried them in one direction, and that now they have come to a second phase, in which the current is to carry them the opposite way. He felt that he had achieved—or, as the phrase goes among statesmen, “made good.”

  His own position in the negotiation just concluded was but one out of many such. The deal about his future salary was of a commonplace sort, something we have all come to expect in political arrangements. But it was the first one he had made in all his years of Parliament, and it impressed him accordingly. He had always been far too timid a man, in a profession w
here timidity is sometimes fatal, and always a handicap. Some women (and men) had blamed Mrs. Boulger for giving him Cabinet rank at all. But we know that if a man attains such a position it cannot be without high talent, which his eminent colleagues have recognized. Such talents he had abundantly shown during his tenure of office. He himself had now been for more than six months at the head of a vast machine; he had delivered daily 264,748,942 letters; 968,477,321 postcards; 7,263,402 telegrams; stamps of all denominations to the value of £6,923,410 6s. 3d. —more than the entire yearly revenue of Guatemala— and at the same time carried parcels and issued licences for armorial bearings, dogs, and male servants.

  Wilfrid Halterton had managed all this for now over half a year, and there had been no hitch. It should have given him a better opinion of himself. Besides which, he should have remembered that a man is not given powers of this exalted kind unless he be also competent to deal with many other activities. Having shown his capacity for handling this huge, intricate business of the Post Office, he would be naturally chosen to direct in turn the finances of the nation, its Foreign Affairs, its Navy, its immense Police machine, public and secret, and perhaps its Museums, or even the London Parks. For it is a presumption in our constitution, and a wise one, that the talents sufficing for a Cabinet Minister in one Department will suffice for him in any other and a statesman must shift around.

  Wilfrid Halterton should, I say, therefore have been less modest in the first months of high office. None the less, his original mood remained with him, and he was glad to think that his first considerable political success, this negotiation of his with James McAuley, would enable him to re-enter private life. He was content to leave to others the glory of public fame, and to take in its place a largely increased income.

  He would make the delay as short as possible. There would have to be an interval, of course, between the establishment of the new Television Corporation and his taking over the prepared place and the salary agreed upon: convention demanded that, and convention must always be observed. No man in the House of Commons was more sensitive upon such points. No man knew better the decencies of public life; no man shrank more sensitively from censure in these matters. Such delicacy went naturally with his character; it was the more laudable side of that in him which also produced his hesitations. When these things are done too quickly there is—illogically enough —a savour of something indecent about them.

  He pondered for a moment as he leant back in his low chair and gazed fixedly down his long legs at the glowing grid of the heater; he was estimating what exactly the interval ought to be between this moment and his taking his salary at the head of the new Television Corporation.

  Better too long than too short. J. would set to work without delay. The vote establishing the Television Corporation would come on almost immediately. It would be in public use not long after the Easter recess, and earning by the end of the summer at latest. There had been some talk of nominating young Collum to the first Chief Commissionership for a year or more, to give him time and an income for marrying Joan Bailey—who had nothing—for buying his furniture and all that—before taking up the new post at the League of Nations. Then J. would naturally succeed, and the Managing Directorship would be open—say an interval of little more than twelve months all told.

  His own resignation ought to take place, then, in about six months, so that when he accepted the management it should be with an air of leisure quite unconnected with the Post Office. This delay of six months is generally understood to be the least required between a man’s ceasing to take an official salary and beginning to receive the larger private City emolument which is the natural reward of political services. Well, if the Charter came into effect in the late summer, that would mean his own resignation, say, about next Easter, in rather more than a year. He could make use of J.’s letter then, date it six months after that, say in the autumn of next year, eighteen months all told.

  He made all these calculations for his own satisfaction, and through them all ran the substantial prospect of which he was now assured.

  Wilfrid Halterton had been born to considerable wealth; the only son of old John Halterton of Reldwell Hall in Essex. The Halterton Library, at his old college at Cambridge—Merrion—was witness to the family fortune and generosity.

  But things had not gone well since his father died, now twenty-five years ago. He had managed ill; he had suffered badly from one big crash in investment; he had grown embarrassed. He had mortgaged. He had got into arrears. Some years of increasing difficulty had preyed upon him. The more relieved was he at the new prospect: that document with J.’s firm signature to it, the certitude of ample security, the old income of his early manhood and more.

  He meditated on that document. He recalled J.’s face and gesture while it was being drafted, and the light on the paper. He would not, of course, fill in the date as yet; there was plenty of time for that. Then, not for any useful purpose, but from that sort of itch we all have to read again a letter which has filled our thoughts, he felt in his coat-pocket for the envelope. He would pull out McAuley’s offer and go through its terms again exactly—though the only thing of moment was clear enough in his brain—the salary; free of tax.

  For a second or two he wondered why his hand did not meet any envelope in that pocket, and he still groped. Then he woke up, with a start, leant forward and thrust into the pocket three or four times, as if he were looking for some small object like a coin. No. There was nothing there.

  Memory of a recent instinctive movement is nearly always accurate; but one never knows. He plunged his other hand into the pocket on the other side. Ah, there it was! No … that envelope was one which had been there all day. It was the note from his tailor. It was of a different size, too.

  He grew half curious and half alarmed. He got up out of his chair. He actually took off his coat. He took everything out of his pockets and turned the linings inside out. There was not a sign of the thing.

  Then he went down on his knees and lit a match to explore the darkness under the table. He drew blank. He went out of the room and searched all the short way to the front door, along the passage. There was nothing. He stood in a quandary, his eyes fixed again upon that etching which McAuley had praised. It brought the movements of that quarter of an hour back to him as vividly as though he were still living in those moments. How could the thing have gone? He spent another futile five minutes back in the room, crawling about the carpet on all fours; lifting the corners in the vain idea that it might be lurking there.

  Then he stood up again and pondered fruitlessly. He had heard no servant in the hall outside; no one had come in by the front door. If anyone in the house should find that envelope it would be awkward … but that was impossible … there had been no time for such a thing; no one could have known what he had had upon him.

  Further search seemed useless. Things do disappear in this extraordinary way. The bother about this particular thing was the unpleasantness of knowing that such a letter might be lying about loose. He said to himself that there was no time to be lost: the essential thing was to communicate with J. at once.

  He had had time to get home to his flat by this time, surely? He must telephone. He went to the little room at the back where his private telephone stood, and when he had got on to McAuley’s flat in Marble Arch House at the top of Park Lane, not half a mile off, he heard, even as the servant answered, another voice speaking which he could have sworn was that of McAuley himself.

  It was not a voice near the instrument—it could not quite certainly be made out—but he thought he caught certain words.

  The voice that presently did answer him clearly and directly was that of McAuley’s secretary: he knew her well—an efficient gentlewoman, of like nationality with her employer, Rose Fairweather by name. That voice said, in singularly distinct tones, that J. had been in for a moment, and had gone out again.

  Halterton was almost positive he had heard J.’s voice, and that, in spite
of its faintness and his inability to catch all the words, one patch of those words had been: “If it’s him,” and another, “You don’t know when.”

  In answer to a second more nervous questioning there had come the still more distinct reply, that not only had J. just gone out but that he would not be back for dinner, and that Miss Fairweather did not know where he had gone or when he would return. … No, he might not be back till long after midnight. … No, he had not dressed, and he hadn’t taken a bag. … Oh yes, he would be back some time next morning at latest … yes, he would get his post. … And with that Wilfrid Halterton had to be content. But it left him in an agony.

  As he walked slowly back to his study from the private instrument in the little room he asked himself what a man ought to do in such circumstances.

  Here he was, with a document which no one else must see, lying about lost and to be found by heaven knows who. It was a document vital to him, and he himself was deprived of its use and without guarantee. J. would certainly act very soon; hardly, perhaps, next day, but certainly within a few days; and then all the world would know that the Charter was as good as granted. And he, Wilfrid Halterton, would be there without his side of the affair secure under his own keeping. Obviously there was only one thing to be done. He couldn’t make out why he hadn’t thought of it at once. Since J. was not on the telephone, he must write to him. He could not help thinking that J., for some reason or other, had wanted not to be bothered. He was almost certain he had heard that voice, and nearly as certain that he had heard those two fragmentary phrases. He quite understood that McAuley should want not to be bothered, but still he ought, after such an important transaction, to have come to the instrument. Anyhow, it was too late now. He must write, and he must send it round at once, or even take it himself, to make certain.

  He did it in only a few lines.

  “MY DEAR J.,