Charles Snow - The Sleep of Reason

He added: “It’s a pity, but he’s cut his own throat.”

“He’s got some human quality,” I said.

Katherine broke in: “You said that before. About the other one. And we said his wife was appalling. So she was, but I suppose she was attached to him in her own fashion. When he died, it was just before Penelope had her second baby, she stayed with the coffin and they had to pull her away from the grave.”

For the moment, I had lost track. Who was she talking about?

“And then she died within three months, though no one troubled to know about her and so no one knew what was the matter. As for Walter Luke, it didn’t do him any harm. He went to Barford and got into the Royal Society and nearly got killed—”

“No connection,” Francis smiled at her, though he looked as mystified as I was.

“And finished up perfectly well and got decorated and had another child.”

She ended in triumph: “You did make a frightful ass of yourself that time, Lewis.”

That was a phrase her father used to brandish. I had been quite bemused, but now I had it. She was indulging, as she did more often, in a feat of total recall, just as her father used to. What she had been saying referred to an argument about the Mastership in that house, no less than twenty-six years before. It was the candidate I had wanted, Jago, who had died, and his wife after him — but that was not twenty-six years before, only two. When Katherine got going she existed, just as her father had, in a timeless continuum when the present moment, the three of us there at dinner, was just as real, no more, no less, than the flux of memory.

Francis was slower than I to take the reference. Then he gave her a loving grin, and said to me: “She’s right, you know. You did make an ass of yourself that time.”

It was true. It had been bad judgment. But, though my candidate had lost, though it was so long ago, Katherine and Francis often liked to remind me of it.

“Two can play at that game,” I began, ready to try rougher tactics, but in fact Katherine’s performance had taken the sting from the quarrel, and also, realistically, I knew that Francis, once he had taken up his stance, would be as hard to move as Arnold Shaw himself. So when he said that I was now making the same mistake, that I got more interested in people than in the job they had to do, I let it go. It wasn’t without justice, after all. And it wasn’t without justice that he spoke of Arnold Shaw. Something would have to be done for him, if and when he resigned: the university would give him an honorary degree: he could be found a research appointment to help out his pension. That would be better than nothing, I said. Then I mentioned that I had met Leonard, and the three of us were at one again.

“I’m getting just a little tired,” said Francis, “of people telling me that as a scientist he is an order of magnitude better than I am.” But he said it with the special pride of a father who enjoys his son being praised at his own expense. To give an appearance of stern impartiality, as of one who isn’t going to see his family receive more than their due, he said that their second son, Lionel, wasn’t in the same class. “I don’t think he’s any better than I am,” said Francis judiciously. “He ought to get into the Royal before he’s finished, though.”

I said that they were abnormally lucky: but still, the genes on both sides were pretty good. Francis said, not all that good. His father had been a moderately competent barrister at the Parliamentary Bar. Katherine said: “There’s not been a single March who’s ever produced an original idea in his life. Except, perhaps, my great-uncle Benjamin, who tried to persuade the Rothschilds not to put down the money for the Suez canal.”

Anyway, said Francis, who wanted to talk more of Leonard, a talent like his must be a pure sport. High level of ability, yes, lots of families had that — but the real stars, they might come from anywhere, they were just a gift of fate. “It must be wonderful,” he said, half-wistfully, “to have his sort of power.”

They were so proud of him, as I should have been, or any sentient parent. They were pleased that he was as high-principled as they were: he had recently defied criticism and appointed Donald Howard, who had once been a fellow of the college, to his staff, just because he had been badly treated — although Leonard didn’t even like the man. But, despite their close family life, they seemed to know little or nothing of his unhappiness over Vicky. “It’s high time he got married,” said Katherine, as though that were his only blemish, an inexplicable piece of wilfulness. They wondered what sort of children he would have.

After Francis had driven me to the college gate, I walked through the courts to the Senior Tutor’s house. I had walked that same way often enough when Jago was Senior Tutor. Now I was accustomed to it again, since my brother, after Arthur Brown’s term, got the succession. Lights were shining, young men’s voices resounded: the smell of wistaria was faint on the cool air: it brought back, not a sharp memory, but a sense that there was something I knew but had (like a name on the tip of the tongue) temporarily forgotten.

My brother’s study was lit up, curtains undrawn, and there he and Irene were waiting for me. She fussed round, yelping cheerfully: Martin sat by the fireside in his slippers, sharp-eyed, fraternal, suspecting that there was some meaning in this visit.

Another home, another marriage. A settled marriage, but one which had arrived there by a different route from the Getliffes’. She had been a reckless, amorous young woman: in their first years she had had lovers, had cost him humiliation and, because he had married for love, much misery. But he was the stronger of the two. It was his will which had worn her down. It was possible — I was not certain — that as she grew to depend upon him utterly, she in her turn had been through some misery. I was not certain, because, though he trusted me more than anyone else and occasionally asked me to store away some documents, he preserved a kind of whiggish decorum. If there had been love affairs, they had been kept hidden. Anyway, their marriage had been settled for a long time past, and Martin’s anxiety had its roots in another place.

On my way down to Cambridge, I hadn’t been confident that I should get him to talk. As soon as I entered his study we were easy together, with the ease of habit, and something stronger too. But he had been controlled and secretive all his life, and in middle age he was letting secretiveness possess him. I still didn’t know whether I should get an answer, or even be able to talk at all.

By accident, or perhaps not entirely by accident, for she understood him well, it was Irene who gave me the chance.

We had begun by gossiping. Nowadays the college changed more rapidly than it used to in my time. There were twice as many fellows, they came and went. Many of my old acquaintances were dead. Of those who had voted in the 1937 election, only Arthur Brown, Francis and Nightingale were still fellows. Some I had known since hadn’t stayed for long. One who hadn’t stayed — it was he that Irene was gossiping about — was a man called Lester Ince. He had recently run off with an American woman: an American woman, so it turned out, of enormous wealth. They had each got divorces and then married. The present rumour was that they were looking round for a historic country house.

“A very suitable end for an angry young man,” said Martin, with a tart smile. I was amused. I had a soft spot for Lester Ince. It was true that, since he had started his academic career by being remarkably rude, he had gained a reputation for holding advanced opinions. This had infuriated both Francis and Martin, who believed in codes of manners, and who had also remained seriously radical and had each paid a certain price.