Charles Snow - The Sleep of Reason

Though I didn’t often write in the evening, I put in a couple of hours’ work before dinner. Later, I was busy with the letters that had stayed unread. Often I became irked by claims upon my time, other people’s dilemmas: not that night. I was back with them again.

As I read, I called out the news to Margaret. Nothing to vex either of us, as it happened. Just the balm of getting back into good nick, as Martin and the other games players used to say. A note from Maurice’s tutor — no, nothing worrying, in fact he seemed to be doing a little better. W— (the tutor) would like a chat about future plans for him, just that. Margaret wasn’t listening to any arrangements of W—’s: she was suffused with a tender, unprotected, abjectly-loving smile. At the most vestigial suggestion of good news — practical good news — about Maurice, she blushed as she did when she was first in love. How did one become a favourite child? Why had I, not Martin, been my own mother’s? Margaret loved young Charles because he was himself and because he was mine. But she took his academic skill for granted, just as she did her own. She could judge his ability with detachment. After all, she came from a family of professionals, where, when one got a first, someone like her father or one of his brothers came up and said, Well, it’s nice for you to know you’re not altogether a fool. Maurice she loved, though, with all her tenacious passion. She loved him in a light of his own. She responded like the simplest mother who had scarcely heard of universities and who was bedazzled to find her child was there. If Maurice could struggle through to any kind of degree she would be so proud.

Yes, of course I would see W—, I was saying. But I wasn’t prepared to go out of London yet awhile. After the past fortnight, I needed to get back into my own particular nick. Four hours’ work from 10 a.m. each morning, no lunch anywhere. Then I was at anyone’s disposal for the rest of the day. W— could call the next time he was in London.

Margaret blushed again. When I took the most prosaic administrative step on Maurice’s behalf, she was over-grateful. She asked if I had got through my pile of letters, and then produced another from her bag. “This is from Vicky,” she said. “I wasn’t to trouble you with it unless you were quite well.”

She went on: “She rang up this afternoon. When you were out on your walk. She’s been ringing up every day.”

As she handed me the letter, she said: “If you’d been free, you know, that girl would have fallen for you.”

“No,” I said, “for once you’re wrong.”

“I’m not jealous.”

“No, you’re not jealous, but you’re wrong.”

Margaret was happy, affectionate and obstinate. In snatches as I went through the letter, I persisted: I should have been the first to know. What Vicky needed was not someone to love (we had seen her taste), but a father to talk to. If a young woman had Arnold Shaw as a father, it wasn’t entirely unnatural that she should need to talk to someone else.

The letter was actually concerned with Arnold. I wasn’t to make any effort until I had had a holiday (Vicky could not resist giving me some medical advice). But afterwards, if I could talk to people at the university before the Lent term Court it might be a precaution. As far as she could gather, feeling hadn’t changed. The last Court meeting had gained time, but hadn’t altered the situation.

“I must say,” I cried, “everything seems preposterously normal!”

At the end of her letter, Vicky wrote that she might be coming to London before Christmas, but she wasn’t sure.

“That means that she’s hoping he will ask her,” said Margaret. “That’s normal, too.”

We looked at the big round handwriting, the oddly stilted, official-sounding phrases. “I wonder what her love letters are like?” said Margaret. Sitting together on the sofa, we discussed whether there was anything we could do for her. Of course there wasn’t. But it was a luxury to show concern. To be just to us both, we each felt some concern. We were fond of her, and respected her. Yet, warming us both that night, there was an element of suave mari magno . We were on the shore, watching the rough sea and someone else being tossed about in the storm. We had been through it ourselves, alone and together. That night we were by ourselves, in our own home, trouble past. It was a luxury to show concern.

Back in the flow, it wasn’t long before I was talking to Francis Getliffe about the university quarrels. It happened in a private room at Brown’s Hotel. We were attending a dinner party, but not a social one. We had been attending that same kind of dinner party for a good many years past. This was a group of eminent scientists, in which I was included because I had worked with them for so long. They had been meeting several times a year to produce ideas on scientific policy. They were entertained, with some lavishness, by a wealthy businessman who was both sweet-natured and a passionate follower of the opposition politicians. The scientists didn’t pay much attention to the lavishness, being most of them abstemious: but they were interested in the politicians, for by that autumn it was certain that there would be an election next year and probable that the opposition would win it. This group of scientists had been men of the left all their lives; and they still hoped that, if that happened, some good things could be done.

There they sat round the table, our host’s good wine going, very slowly, down uncomprehending crops. Constantine, his head splendid and at the same time Pied Piperish: Mounteney, granitic, determined not to be appeased: Francis Getliffe: Walter Luke: my brother Martin: several more: our host and a couple of the opposition front bench. Most of the scientists had international reputations, two were Nobel prize winners, and all except Martin were Fellows of the Royal. At one instant, while Constantine was talking — which didn’t differentiate it from a good many other instants — I had a sense that I had been here before.

I was seeing the haze of faces as in a bad group picture — striking faces most of them — of my old acquaintances. Very old acquaintances: for they had all (and I along with them) been at common purposes for getting on for thirty years. We had, as young men, sat round tables like this, though not such expensive ones, trying to alarm people about Hitler: then preparing ourselves for war: then, when the war came, immersing ourselves in it. That had been, in the domain of action, their apotheosis. They had never been so effective before or since. But they hadn’t given up. Nearly all of them had risked unpopularity. Some, most of all Constantine, had paid a price. Some, like Francis Getliffe, had become respectable, though politically unchanged. The truth was that the youngest at the table was Martin, a year off fifty. Why was the evening such a feat of survival? There was scientific ability about, comparable with theirs, but either the younger professionals didn’t take their public risks, or there was something in the climate which didn’t let such rough-hewn characters emerge.

That night, they didn’t sound in the least like sheer survivals. There were candles lit on the dinner table, but they insisted on the full lights above. One or two, like Francis Getliffe, were talking good political sense. As usual, Mounteney didn’t infer, but impersonally pronounced, that if the politicians and I were eliminated, then some progress might be made. Two of the less cantankerous had brought memoranda with them. The chief politician was listening to everyone: he was as clever as they were, yet when they were at their most positive he didn’t argue, but stowed the ideas away. They thought they were using him: he thought he could use some of them. That made for general harmony. All in all, I decided, it wasn’t a wasted evening.