Charles Snow - The Sleep of Reason

I told her, dry and hard.

“This is dreadful.” Still wearing her coat, she had come and put her arms round me.

“I’m sorry for George,” she said.

“I don’t know who I’m sorry for.”

She was listening to each inflexion. Even she could not totally divine why I was so much upset. George was my oldest friend, but she knew that we met seldom and couldn’t really talk. Even so, even if the relation had been closer, George himself was not in danger or involved. It was all at one remove, startling that it should come so near, perhaps–

“You won’t tell the boys tonight, will you?”

“They’ll read it in the papers—”

“Don’t tell them tonight, though.”

She meant, she didn’t want their spirits quenched before tomorrow’s party.

“You’ll find,” I said, “that they can take it. People can take anything. That’s the worst thing about us. Those two will take it. Maurice will take it because he’s naturally good — and Charles because, like us, he isn’t.”

I had spoken roughly, and she frowned. She frowned out of bafflement and concern. Still she could not divine why I was so much upset. Nor could I. I couldn’t have given a reason, either to her or to myself, why this had struck me like another arrest of life. Not so near the physical roots as the blinded eye — but somehow taking hold of more of my whole self, stopping me dead.

Maybe (I tried to explain it as I lay awake, later that night) a physical shock, one could domesticate, it was part of the run of this existence, it wasn’t removed from Margaret and my son, it was in the nature of things. But George’s announcement didn’t happen to one, it didn’t happen even when one heard it and, at the same instant, foresaw what was to come. Nevertheless, I couldn’t reach, any more than Margaret, what I really felt.

Back in our bedroom — hours before the time I lay awake — Margaret was still asking me to keep the news from the boys, at least for a couple of days. Of course I would, I promised. She searched my face, wondering what that would give away. Then I snapped back to this home of ours, and told her she ought to know me better: didn’t she remember times, nearer the bone than this, when I had been able to pretend?

JUST before nine on Christmas Eve, as we sat round waiting, Charles wanted to arrange a sweepstake on the first guest to arrive. Martin, Irene and Pat had been dining with us: Pat, to whom parties were like native air, was making sure that the hired waiters knew their job. Standing in the drawing-room, decorous, empty, expectant, paintings throwing back the light, Margaret, Irene and Martin were taking their first drinks. As for me, I should have to be on my feet for the next few hours: anyway, it was better not to drink that night.

If Charles’ sweep had been arranged, no one would have won it. The bell rang on the stroke of nine: the first guest entered: it was Herbert Getliffe, whom only I knew and whom most of the others had scarcely heard of. He entered, a little dishevelled, his glance at the same time bold and furtive. He was in his mid-seventies by now, years older than his half-brother Francis. When I first entered his chambers (and found myself exploited until I learned the tricks of one of the trickiest of men), most people prophesied that he would be a judge before he finished. Herbert would have prophesied that himself: it was his ambition. But it hadn’t happened. He had, fairly late in life, got on to the snakes instead of the ladders. He might pour out his emotions, but he was pathologically tight with money. That put him on the final snake. For, although it was hushed up, he had been over-ingenious with his income tax returns. After that, no judgeship. He had carried on with his practice until a few years before. He made more money, and, when his wife died, saved it by living in a tiny Kensington flat and inviting himself out to meals with his friends. They did not mind having him, for, though his ambition had failed him, his ebullience hadn’t. As he grew old, most of us — even while we remembered being done down — became fond of him.

With great confidence, he called my wife Marjorie. He seemed under the impression that she was an American. Breathlessly, with extreme gusto, he told her a story of his daughter, who was living “in a place called Philadelphia”. His style of conversation had become more mysteriously allusive: Margaret, who had met him just once before, looked puzzled. Helpfully he explained: “Pa. USA.”

In the morphology of such a party, four people had come in by ten past nine, and then something like fifty in the next few minutes. Expectancy left the rooms, the noise level climbed. I had to walk round, looking after the strangers. An African friend of Maurice’s, lost among the crowd. As I talked about his work, I saw Douglas Osbaldiston, fresh-faced, still young-looking, standing among a group of young women. There were long tables, laid with food and glasses, in each of the bigger rooms: but within half-an-hour a hundred bodies stood round them, more were coming, one had to push one’s way. I couldn’t spend time with my own friends. Lester Ince, who had been drinking before he arrived, introduced me to his new wife, ornamental, a couturier’s triumph. She was full of enthusiasm for any of Lester’s acquaintances, but he was chiefly occupied with hilarity because I was going about with a glass of tomato juice.

In the crowd, the noise, trying to spot the lonely, I put last night’s news out of mind. Yet once — as though it were unconnected — I was thinking, as I introduced Vicky to Charles March, that Christmas Eve was an unlucky night. Why had we fixed on it? There had been one Christmas Eve, at another party, which even now I couldn’t forgive.

I shook hands with Douglas Osbaldiston in the press. Friendly, kind, competent, he asked about an acquaintance: could he help? Was any night a lucky night for Douglas? He was at the top of the Treasury by now, as had been predictable long before. Some of the young people in these rooms thought about him as the high priest — unassuming, yes, but stuffy and complacent — of what they still called “the Establishment”. Early next morning, as on every morning, he would go to his wife’s bedside. The paralysis had, after six years, crept so far that she could not light a cigarette or turn the pages of a book. He had loved her as much as anyone there would ever love.

In the innermost room, one of the opposition front bench, who had attended the scientists’ dinner, was holding court. No, not holding court, for he was as matey and unassuming as Douglas himself. Standing there, listening to the young, chatting, tucking away names in a computer memory.

In another room Monty Cave, who had in July become a Secretary of State, held his own court. It had needed staff-work by Martin, assisted by Pat — who had been amiable to Vicky but became over-conscientious in his party duties — to keep the front benches apart. Not because the two of them were political opponents, but because they were personal enemies. We didn’t want a battle of practised distaste, even though Monty, who was not a favourite with many, would come off worst.

Gilbert Cooke, plethoric, hot-eyed, like a great ship in sail, burst through to me. He was in search of my son Charles, intent on talking about the old school. But when I saw them together, Charles was politely slipping away. Their school was for Gilbert the most delectable of topics of conversation, but Charles did not share that view, especially if there were comely girls close by. For Charles, whatever letter he was waiting for in the mornings, was on the lookout that night. There was a daughter of Charles March’s, shy and pretty, whom he knew I should have liked him to take out. Instead I kept noticing his head close to that of Naomi Rubin, David Rubin’s youngest, who was working in London and who was years older than Charles. She looked bright, nothing like so pretty as the March girl: but she was listening, and I didn’t doubt that he was dissimulating his age.