Charles Snow - The Sleep of Reason

I replied that I was quite free: when would he like—? “I can come straight round. I shan’t be many minutes.”

Waiting for him, I fetched the ice and brought in a tray of drinks. I was feeling comfortably pleased. This was a surprise, a good end to the year. I hadn’t seen him for months, I thought again, no, not since the April Court. That hadn’t been my fault, but it was good that he should invite himself. He might come to the party the following night, that would be better still; there was something, not precisely nostalgic but reassuring, in going back right through the years. My brother hadn’t really known me when I was in my teens: but George had, and he was the only one, when I was in the state young Charles was approaching now.

I let him in, and took him to the study. Would he have a drink? I hadn’t seen him in full light, I had my back towards him as I heard a sturdy yes. I splashed in the soda, saying that it was too long since we had had an evening together.

Then I sat down opposite him.

“I ought to explain. This isn’t exactly a social visit,” he said.

I began to smile at the formality, so like occasions long ago when he wished to discuss my career and behaved as if there were some mysterious etiquette that he, alone among humankind, had never been properly taught. I looked into his face as he lifted the glass, ice tinkling. He was staring past me; his eyes were unfocused, which was nothing new. His hair bushed out over his ears, in blond and whitening quiffs, uncut, unbrushed. The lines on his forehead, the lines under his eyes, made him appear not so much old as dilapidated: but no more old or dilapidated than when I had last seen him in our traditional pub.

Over the desk, on his right, the window was uncovered, and I caught a glimpse of his great head reflected against the darkness.

It was all familiar, and I went on smiling.

“Well, what’s the agenda?” I asked.

“Something rather unpleasant has happened,” said George.

“What is it?”

“Of course,” said George, “it must be some absurd mistake.”

“What is it?”

“You know who I mean by my niece and the Pateman girl?”

“Yes. “

“They’ve been asking them questions about that boy who disappeared. The one who was done away with.”

For an instant I was immobilised. I was as incapable of action as when I stood at the bedroom window, blinked my eye, and found the black edge still there. That edge: the noise I had just heard, the words: they were all confused.

Without being able to control my thoughts, I stared at George, wishing him out of my sight. I heard my voice, hard and pitiless. Who were “they”? What had really happened?

George, face open but without emotion, said that detectives had been interviewing them: one was a detective-superintendent. “He seems to have been very civil,” said George. Statements had been taken in the Patemans’ house. The young women had been told that they might be questioned again.

“Of course,” said George, “it’s bound to be a mistake. There’s a ridiculous exaggeration somewhere.”

I looked at him.

“There must be,” I said.

“I’m glad you think that,” said George, almost cheerfully.

From the instant I had heard the news, and been frozen, I had taken the worst for granted. With a certainty I didn’t try even to rationalise. Yet here I was, giving George false hope. When, thirty years before, he had faced me with his own trouble — trouble bad enough, though not as unimaginable as this — I had been maddened by his optimism and had tried to destroy it. Here I was doing the opposite. But it was not out of kindness or comradeship. Even less out of gratitude. I couldn’t find a thought for what he had once done for me. Forebodings from the past, linked with this new fact, at the same time incredible and existential, drove out everything else. I wanted not to see him, I wanted to agree with him and have him go away.

I tried to do my duty.

“I suppose,” I said, “I’ve got to ask, but I know it isn’t necessary, you can’t be touched in any way yourself?”

“Well—” George’s tone was matter-of-fact — “they’ve been in on the fringe of our crowd. If anyone wanted to rake up stories of some of the crowd, or me as far as that goes, it might be awkward—”

“No, no, no. Not in this sort of case.” This time my reassurance was honest, impatient.

“That’s what I thought myself.” He spoke amiably but vaguely; he had once been a good lawyer, but now he seemed to have forgotten all his law. He went on: “I ought to have kept more of an eye on them, I grant you that. But the last two or three years, since my health went wrong, I’ve rather gone to pieces.”

He said it with acquiescence, without remorse: as though “going to pieces” had been a vocation in itself.

“What steps have you taken? About those two. What practical steps?”

I heard my own voice hard again.

“Oh, I’ve put them in touch with solicitors, naturally.”

“What solicitors?”

“Eden & Sharples. I didn’t need to look any further.”

Just for a moment, I was touched. Eden & Sharples was the present name of the firm of solicitors where George had been employed, as managing clerk, all his working life. When he was a young man of brilliant promise, they hadn’t been generous to him. Sometimes I used to think that, had they treated him better, his life might have been different. Yet even now, made to retire early, pensioned off, he still thought of the firm with something like reverence. In this crisis, he turned to them as though they were the only solicitors extant. It was misfits like George — it was as true now as when I first met him — who had most faith in institutions.

“Well then,” I said. “There’s nothing else you can do just now, is there?”

That was a question which was meant to sound like leave-taking. I hadn’t offered him another drink: I wanted him to go.

He leaned forward. His eyes, sadder than his voice, managed to converge on mine. “I should like to do something,” he said. “I should like to ask you something.”

“What is it?”

“I told you, I’ve rather gone to pieces. I can’t look after this business. I’m relying on you.”

“I don’t see what I can do.”

“You can make sure — if things get more serious, which is ridiculous, of course — you can make sure that they get the best advice. From the senior branch of the legal profession.” George brought out that bit of solicitor’s venom, just as he used to do as a rebellious young man. But he was more lucid than he seemed. As so often, he both believed and disbelieved in his own optimism. He was anticipating that they would go to trial.

“I can’t interfere. You’ve got to trust the solicitors—”

Once more, George had become lucid. He could admit to himself how the legal processes worked. He said: “I just want to be certain that we’re doing everything possible. I just want to be certain—” he looked at me with resignation — “that I’m leaving it in good hands.”

I had no choice, and in fact I didn’t want any. I said: “All right, I’ll do what I can.”

“That’s very nice of you,” said George.

I had to give him his second drink. He did not say another word about the investigation. For a few minutes he chatted amicably, made his formal enquiry about Charles, and then announced, with his old hopeful secretive restlessness, that he must be off.

When I had seen him to the lift, I went straight into the bedroom, so as to avoid meeting either of the boys. There I sat, neither reading nor thinking, until Margaret returned. She was taking off her hat as she opened the door. At the sight of me she said: “What’s happened?”