Charles Snow - The Sleep of Reason

“It’s a job where you’re doing some good, though.”

“You don’t feel that so much if you’re dealing with outpatients nine to five,” said Vicky. “I might have enjoyed being a children’s doctor. Because they’re going to get better, most of them.”

“Maurice’s father was just that. Is just that. Did you know?” I put in. It was easier for me to say it than for Margaret.

“Yes, I should have liked it too,” Margaret said.

“But you don’t need to be too disappointed if Maurice doesn’t, isn’t that right?” Pat turned to her again. “You’re sure you haven’t been guiding him, without meaning too?”

He told her that might be why Maurice couldn’t — really couldn’t, for all his sweetness and good will — force himself to work. Did Margaret believe it? Perhaps she would have liked to. And, though Pat was continuing to efface himself, he would have liked to believe it too. For in secret, and sometimes not so much in secret, he put the blame for his own academic disasters down to his father’s fault. If Martin hadn’t wanted him to be a scholarly success–

As we sat at the dinner table, Pat continued to talk comfortingly to Margaret. I didn’t interrupt. As Margaret knew, or would remember when the euphoria had dropped, I couldn’t accept those consoling explanations: but I didn’t propose to break the peace of the evening. As for Vicky, it was the peace of the evening that she was basking in. Pat was doing well. He was being listened to. They didn’t go to many dinner parties with middle-aged couples. It was all unexacting and safe. It was like a foretaste of marriage.

Happily, Vicky put in another word about child-doctoring. It had improved, out of comparison, since before the war. Children’s health was better in all classes. It was lucky to have been born in the 1950s. Then she mentioned that people a mile or so from my father’s house would next week be escorting their children back and forth from school. A boy of eight had disappeared a day or two before, there was a wave of anxiety going round. “I hope they find him,” said Vicky.

Margaret remarked that once, when Maurice was a child, she had been beside herself when he was an hour late. Then Pat broke in and told her another story of Maurice at Cambridge.

While Pat and Margaret talked to each other, Vicky was able to pass some information on to me. Her glance sometimes left me and flicked across the table: she wanted a smile, she gave a smile back: but that didn’t prevent her telling me the news. It was worrying news, and she had to tell me before the evening was over. But she didn’t sound worried, her words were responsible while her face was not. Anyway, she had gathered (not, so far as I could learn, from Leonard Getliffe) that there might shortly be another resolution before the Court. The three academics, Leonard and two others, who had kept away from the vote of confidence, were growing more dissatisfied. At the least, they wanted some definition of the Vice-Chancellor’s powers. No, they were being careful, they were hoping to find a technique that didn’t hurt him — but they meant business.

Did Arnold know? I asked. He was quite oblivious, Vicky said. She tried to warn him, but he behaved as though he didn’t want to know.

Would I make sure to come to the next Court? That was on the day of the congregation in October? Yes, I said, I intended to come.

“You might be able to make him understand,” she said.

“I doubt it.”

“You may have to tell him the truth.”

I swore.

“But you will come? You promise me?”

“Of course I’ll come.”

She was content. After that, we returned to the drawing-room, and were chatting like a family circle when, towards ten o’clock, Maurice came in. He kissed his mother, kissed Vicky, then sank down into an armchair with a tired easygoing sigh. When Margaret asked him, he said that he had been sitting with a schizophrenic patient all afternoon. It took a bit of effort, he said: until this holiday he hadn’t known what schizophrenia could mean. He was wearing a shabby suit, his face — unlined in spite of his fatigue — pallid by the side of Pat’s doggy vigour. Margaret had a plate of sandwiches ready for him, and he began to scoff them. He glanced at Pat, who was by this time at least his customary four drinks over par. “I’m a long way behind, aren’t I?” said Maurice, with his objective smile. Margaret gave him a stiff whisky, which he put down at speed.

“Better,” he said. It surprised some people, but he wasn’t at all ascetic about alcohol. Whether he was ascetic about sex, I couldn’t (it was strange to be so baffled with someone one had watched since infancy) have sworn.

Before long, he and Pat and Vicky were talking together. Any one of them was easy with Margaret or me, didn’t feel, or let us feel, the gap of a generation: but together they were drawn by a gravitational pull. Curiously, their voices got softer, even Pat’s, which could be strident when he was confronting his elders. Was it fancy, or did they and their friends whisper to each other more than we used to do?

Yes, Maurice said to them, he would be going back to Cambridge in a fortnight to “have another bash”. A singular phrase, I thought, for that gentle young man, not one which the professionals in the family would find encouraging. Vicky was giving him some advice about medical examinations. Maurice listened acceptantly and patiently. Soon he switched off: what were they going to do? Well, Vicky said, her holiday would be over in a few days, she’d be returning to the hospital. Pat said that he’d be staying in London: he’d got some sort of job (it sounded as though he had collected a little money too), he’d be able to paint at nights and weekends.

“You’ll be separated again, won’t you?” said Maurice.

“It can’t be helped,” said Vicky.

“How do you manage?”

“Oh, we have to manage,” she said.

“I suppose,” said Maurice, “you get on the phone and tell each other when you’re free.”

He meant — so I thought — that it was Pat who told her when he was free.

“It’s nice when we do see each other,” said Pat, just as evenly as Maurice was speaking.

“I should have thought,” said Maurice, “that it was an awful strain.”

“We’re getting used to it,” she said.

“Are you?”

“Are you worried about me, Maurice?” Vicky asked.

“Yes, I am.” He answered with absolute naturalness.

“Oh, look, I’m pretty tough.”

“I don’t think you ought to rely on that for ever. Either of you.”

He spoke to Pat. “What do you think?”

Pat replied, with no edge in his voice: “Perhaps you’re right.”

At dinner there hadn’t been a word about their plans, partly because Pat was repressing all his own concerns, partly because neither Margaret nor I felt we could intrude. But Maurice hadn’t been so delicate, and no one was upset. It might be a happy love affair, but he had picked up (as, in fact, we had also, in the midst of happiness and peace) that there was something inconclusive in the air. As for their plans, they seemed that night to have none at all. So Maurice, less involved in this world than any of us, told them that it was time they got married.

To me, as I listened to the quiet voices, the odd thing was how they took it. Pat: with no sign of resentment, as though it were a perfectly reasonable conversation about how they were going to get back to Islington when they left the flat. Well, Pat wasn’t touchy. But Vicky? She too wasn’t resentful, or even apprehensive. She seemed to take it as a token of kindness, but not really relevant to her and Pat. She might have been nervous about this intervention, if she hadn’t been so certain that, just because she and Pat were themselves, in due course he would marry her. She had, I thought, a kind of obstinacy which no one outside could budge — obstinacy or else a faith (it was here, and nowhere else, that she showed something like conceit) in her own judgment.