Charles Snow - The Sleep of Reason

It would have been easy, one would have expected, to envy Francis. He had had so much. And yet, curiously enough, he had not attracted a great deal of envy. Nothing like as much as our old colleague, Walter Luke: not as much as I had at times myself. What makes a character envy-repellent? On the whole, the people I had known who attracted the least envy were cold, shut in, mildly paranoid. But none of that was true of Francis, who was — at least in intimacy — both kind and warm. So was she, and they were showing it that evening.

Though Katherine complained that she hated entertaining, and had given that as a reason why Francis should not become Master of the college (the hidden reason was that he shrank from the in-fighting), this house had, with the years, taken on a marked resemblance to the ground floor of an American hotel. One son and one daughter lived in Cambridge; and they, their children, their friends, their friends’ children, paid visits as unpredictable as those in a nineteenth-century Russian country house. In the midst of the casual family hubbub, the Getliffes took care of others: they knew that Margaret would want news of her son Maurice, and so, along with a party of young people, some of whom I couldn’t identify but who all called Francis by his Christian name, he had been brought in for a pre-dinner drink. By one of the sardonic tricks of chance, it was just that same considerate kindness which had brought ill-luck to their eldest son: for, on a similar occasion, when Leonard first brought Vicky Shaw to see them, they had invited my nephew Pat: and it was in this drawing-room that she had fallen in love.

In a corner of the room, I was talking to Maurice about his work.

“I wish I were brighter,” he said with his beautiful innocent smile, as he had said to me before, since for years Margaret and I had had to watch him struggle over one scholastic hurdle, then another. He bore no malice, even though the rest of us found these hurdles non-existent. He was fond of his step-brother, who was a born competitor. Sometimes I couldn’t help thinking — it was a rare thought for me — that he was naturally good. He had been a beautiful child, and now was a good-looking young man. I should have guessed, when I first saw him as an infant, that by now he would appear indrawn: but that had proved dead wrong. He had turned out good-looking in an unusual fashion, as though the world hadn’t touched him: fair, unshadowed, with wide-orbited idealist’s eyes. Yet the world probably had touched him, for those were the kind of looks that at school had brought him plenty of attention. And he would get the same from women soon, I thought. He gave affection very easily: he might be innocent, but he accepted all that happened round him. He liked making people happy.

Margaret was devoted to him. Partly with the special devotion, and remorse, that one feels for the child of a broken marriage: partly because there was something of her own spirit in him. But none of her cleverness, nor of his father’s.

I was trying to discover how things were going. He was in his first year. He hoped to become a doctor, like his father. Psychologically, that would be a good choice for him. He wanted to look after others: given the faith which he, like Margaret, didn’t find, he would have made a priest.

The trouble was, the college had told us that he was unlikely to get through the Mays (the Cambridge first year examinations). I was inquiring what he thought, and which subjects were the worst.

“I’m afraid I’m pretty dense,” he said.

“No, you’re not,” I said. I let some impatience show. Often I felt that, just as he accepted everything else, he accepted his own incompetence.

“You believe I’m doing it on purpose, don’t you?” He was teasing me. He and I had always been on friendly terms. He wasn’t in the least frightened of me: nor, so far as I had ever seen, of anyone else. He had his own kind of insight.

At last the Getliffes and I were left alone. For once there was no one else present when we went into dinner. Francis, who had seen me spend a long time with Maurice, began talking about him.

“I’m afraid,” he said, “he isn’t going to make it.”

“He’s very nice,” said Katherine.

“He’s not even stupid,” said Francis. “I know, it must be a worry for you both.”

The two of them were not only loving parents, they took on the duties of parents at one remove. It seemed like a way of giving thanks for their own good fortune. The problems of friends’ children — not only those of intimate friends like us — they spent their time upon. About Maurice, Francis had had interviews with his tutor and supervisors. Francis and Katherine hadn’t known the inside of a broken marriage: but their sympathy was sharp, they could feel for both Margaret and me; in different senses, it made us more vulnerable through Maurice.

They were sympathetic, but also practical. With a creased, unsentimental smile, Francis said that, come hell, come high water, we had to get the young man through some sort of course. Damn it, he had to earn a living. His supervisors said he didn’t seem to possess any approach to a memory. He couldn’t memorise anything. “I should have thought,” said Francis, “that’s going to make medicine pretty well impossible. The anatomy they learn is sheer unscientific nonsense, but still they’ve got to learn it.”

He gave me some consolatory examples to tell Margaret, of intelligent people who had nothing like a normal memory, and there we had to leave it, Katherine reluctantly, for she, like all her relatives I had once known so well, couldn’t resist coming back to test an aching tooth.

The dinner was good. Francis, who had been so gaunt and quixotic right into his mid-fifties, was at last beginning to put on a little weight. I was comfortable with them both, and more than that. But I should have to leave in an hour or two, for I was staying with my brother. It was time to discharge what I had come for.

“Francis,” I said, “I wonder if you can give a hand about old Arnold Shaw.”

He had heard most of the immediate story — though neither he nor Katherine were above enquiring about the details of the students’ goings on. I told him that the present issue was effectively settled: it looked as though two or three of the students would be placed elsewhere: and then Shaw would get a confirmatory vote and, in form, a victory. But, I said, it might be an expensive victory. He had had plenty of enemies before. Now there would be more. There might come a point, not too far off, when his position became untenable. Could Francis use his influence as Chancellor? Could he talk to the academics in private? And to some of the dignitaries? After all, he could speak with real authority. He just had to tell them that, in spite of his faults, Shaw was doing a good job.

Francis had been listening as carefully as he used to listen in Whitehall. He passed the decanter round to me, and watched me fill my glass. He said: “I don’t think I can tell them that.”

“Why not?”

“Quite simply, I don’t believe he is.”

“Oh come,” I said. Incautiously, I hadn’t been prepared for this. “Look, I know he’s an awkward customer, I have to stand more of it than you do, but after all he has put the place on the map.”

“I don’t believe,” said Francis, “that a man ought to be head of a university if he gets detested by nearly all the students and most of the staff.”

It was years since I had seen him in action: I had half-forgotten how decisive he could be.

“Remember,” I said, “that he’s brought in the staff — at least, he’s brought in all of them that are any good.”

“He is a good picker.” Francis was irritatingly fair. “Yes, that’s been his contribution. But now he’s got them, he can’t get on with them. It’s a pity, but the place will be at sixes and sevens so long as he’s there.”