Charles Snow - The Sleep of Reason

“I think,” put in Muriel, quick, sure-footed, “Daddy said that we’re having dinner with you soon, aren’t we?” (She meant Azik, Rosalind and herself.)

Yes, I said.

“That will be nice.”

Pat looked at me, as though he would have liked to wink. He wasn’t used to anyone as cool as this — who could, so equably, declare his proposition closed.

As Margaret and I were given a lift home in one of the diplomatic cars, acquaintances beside us, we couldn’t have our after-the-play talk. In the lift, going up to our flat, she was silent, and stayed so until she had switched on the drawing-room lights and poured herself a drink. She asked if I wanted one, but her tone was hard. Sitting in the chair the other side of the fireplace, she said: “So that’s the way it is!”

Her face was flushed: the adrenalin was pouring through her: she was in a flaming temper.

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I haven’t any idea.”

“You have,” she said. “Your nephew. What does he think he’s up to?”

“How should I know?”

“It’s intolerable,” she cried. I was thinking, yes, she was kind, she took to heart what Vicky might go through: but also Margaret was no saint, she was angry because she herself had, at intervals, been taken in by Pat. I was getting provoked, because of the disparity we both knew between Margaret’s kind of temper and my own. I had to make an effort to sound peaceful.

“Look here, I don’t know much about this girl (Muriel), but if it’s any consolation to you, I fancy that she can look after herself—”

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” she said. But she said it with edge and meaning.

We were on the verge of a quarrel. I said: “I don’t understand.”

“I was thinking of her father.” She went on, with exaggerated reasonableness: “Of course he was in a higher class than your nephew Pat. But shouldn’t you have said that there might be some sort of resemblance—?”

“Nonsense.” This was an old argument. With the gap in age between us, she had felt shut out from parts of my youth. At times she was jealous of the friends who had known me when I was a young man. Francis Getliffe and Charles March — with those she was on close terms. George Passant, she had worked to understand. But Roy Calvert, who was dead, whom she could never know, she could not help believe that I had inflated, had given a significance or an aura that he could not conceivably, in her eyes, have possessed.

“Well, Pat does set out to be a miniature Byronic hero, doesn’t he?”

“Roy Calvert,” I said, “had about as much use for Byronic heroes as I have.”

“But still,” she said, “you do admit that he succeeded in bringing misery to everyone, literally everyone, so far as I’ve ever heard, who had any relations with him?”

I sat without speaking.

“I know you claim that he had a sort of insight. But I can’t convince myself that the spiritual life, or the tragic sense, or whatever they like to call it, is a bit like that.”

Like her, I spoke with deliberate carefulness, as though determined either to take the bite out of my voice or not to overstate my case.

“I’m not sure that nowadays I should see him quite in the same way. But of one thing I am perfectly certain. Of all the men and women I’ve ever known, he was the most selfless. He’s the only one, and he suffered for it, who could really throw his own self away.”

Now we were quarrelling. We had learned, early in our marriage, that it was dangerous to quarrel. If I had been like her, there would have been no danger in it. Her temper was hot: the blood rushed: it was soon over. But with me, usually more controlled, temper, once I had lost it, smouldered on.

Margaret, watching me, knew this bitter streak in me and knew it more acceptantly than I did myself.

“If you say that,” she said, “then I’ve got to take it.”

I accused her of making a concession. I said that neither of us wanted the other to make concessions which were not genuine. Between us there couldn’t be that kind of compromise–

“Perhaps it was not quite genuine,” she said with a difficult smile. “But — what am I to do?”

Somewhere, filtering towards my tongue, were words that would make us both angrier. Suddenly, as though by some inexplicable feedback, I said in a mechanical tone: “Pat was sucking up for an invitation to our party. For both of them.”

Margaret gave a shout of laughter, full-throated, happy laughter.

“Oh God,” she cried. “What on earth did you say?”

“Oh, just that we hadn’t decided whether we were going to give one.”

“It must be wonderful to be tactful, mustn’t it?”

Margaret went on laughing. We were certainly going to give a party, she said. After all (her mood had changed, she was still flushed, but now with gaiety), we had a lot to be thankful for, this past year. My eye. Young Charles’ successes. Maurice’s survival. Her father better. Various storms come through. It would be faint-hearted not to give a party. But one thing was sure, she said. He was not going to bring that girl. Was that all right? Yes, I said, caught up by her spirits, that was completely all right. Without a pause between thought and action, she went to the study, brought back a sheet of paper, and, although it was late, began writing down a list, a long list, of names.

FOR the next four days, Margaret enjoyed planning the party. It had become a token of thanksgiving. Every evening we sat in the drawing-room and added some more names. The list grew longer; we knew a good many people, most of them in professional London, but widerspread than that. We had changed the date to Christmas Eve. This was partly because there was another New Year’s party, to which we felt inclined to go: but also because we calculated that Pat would be back with his family in Cambridge, and so we could invite the Schiffs. That calculation, however, went wrong. Martin and Irene decided to come for the night, and, together with their children, to have Christmas dinner with us next day. Margaret swore: would anything get rid of that young man? But she was in high spirits, the party occupying her just as it might have done when she was a girl. There weren’t enough refusals, I complained. The senior Getliffes couldn’t come, but Leonard could. Others accepted from out of London. There’s nothing like an operation to make people anxious to see one, I said.

Still, it was agreeable, when Maurice had come down from Cambridge and Charles had returned from school, to have the four of us sitting before dinner, talking about this domestic ritual. Maurice had young men and girls he wanted to invite, some of them lame ducks. Charles had school friends who lived in the London area. Throw them all in, we agreed. The age range of the party would be about sixty years. As we sat there in the evening, the week before Christmas, I thought that in contrast to Maurice’s untouched good looks, Charles already appeared the older. He had just won a scholarship, very young: but sometimes, as on the morning he visited me in hospital, he seemed preoccupied. I noticed that, instead of staying in bed late, as he used to do in the holidays, he got up as early as I did, riffling through the letters. I had been older than that, I thought, when I was first menaced by the post. But he was controlled enough to live a kind of triple life: his emotions were his own, but, as the Christmas nights came nearer, curtains not yet drawn at tea-time, black sky over the park, he sat with us teasing Margaret, dark-eyed, ironic, enjoying the preparations as much as she did.

It was the afternoon of 23rd December, about five o’clock. Margaret had not got back from visiting her father, the boys were out. I was, except for our housekeeper, alone in the flat. I had been reading in the study, the light from the angle-lamp bright across my book. There were piles of papers by the chair, a tray of letters on the room-wide desk, all untidy but findable, at least by the eye of memory; all the grooves of habit there. The telephone rang. I crossed over to the far side of the desk. “This is George.” The strong voice, which had never lost its Suffolk undertone, came out at me. I exclaimed with pleasure: I had not seen him for months. “I’d rather like to have a word,” the voice went on robustly. “I suppose you’re not free, are you?”