Charles Snow - The Sleep of Reason

I still had an answer to get out of him, though part of it had come through what he hadn’t said.

“The legal line, I take it, will be pretty obvious,” I said. “The defence for those two, I mean.”

“I thought you were suggesting that there wasn’t any,” said George, withdrawn again.

“Oh, it’ll all depend on their state of mind, won’t it?”

Intentionally, I said it in a matter-of-fact tone, like one lawyer to another. But George ceased to be lacklustre, he straightened himself, his voice was brisk with action.

“Of course it does!” he cried. “I suppose everyone realises that, you’d better make sure they do.”

I said, it looked as though counsel would have no other choice.

“Of course, they must be mad,” said George.

“You didn’t say so, when I asked you about them, did you?”

I had said that as an aside, and George took no notice. “Of course, they must be mad,” he repeated, with an increase of vigour.

“What makes you think so?”

“That’s the answer,” George shouted.

“Did you ever see any signs in either of them, which make you think so?”

“Damn it, man,” he said, “I’m not a bloody mental doctor.”

“What sort of signs did you see?”

“I tell you, I’m not a mental doctor.”

I asked: “Why do you think they are mad?”

George stared at me, as he used to when he was young, face protesting, defiant, full of hope.

“I’m assuming they’ve done what you say,” he said. “No sane person could have done it. That’s all.”

“Is it as easy as that?”

“Yes,” he cried. “It’s as easy as that. They’re criminal lunatics, that’s what they are. Only lunatics could behave as they did. They’re nothing to do with the rest of us—”

I had to tell him: “The police don’t think so. They think they’re as sane as any of us.”

George cursed the police, and said: “They’re not bloody mental doctors either, are they?”

“I expect,” I said, “that those two are being watched by doctors all the time.”

“Well,” he said, fierce and buoyant, “we’ve got to bring in our own. I can rely on you, can I, that the lawyers get hold of the right people—”

He went on, as though he had realised the truth from the moment I broke the news; the comforting and liberating truth. He was active as I had not seen him for a long time. Happy again, he went on examining me about the defence.

“It stands to reason,” he cried, “they must be as mad as anyone can possibly be.”

Soberly, firmly, he began to talk about the trial. The committal proceedings wouldn’t take long. He wasn’t going to ask me to come. But when it came to the Assizes, George said, he would have to attend himself.

“It won’t be very pleasant, I accept that,” he said.

He asked, with a half-smile: “Can you be there?”

I said, “What use would that be?”

“I should feel better if you were somewhere round, you know,” he said.

IT occurred to me that Maxwell, for reasons of his own, would be in favour of my paying a visit to the jail. So, back at the Residence, I rang him up. Passant wanted me to talk to his niece, I said: he wasn’t in a fit state to do it himself: it wasn’t a job I welcomed, but what was the drill? Maxwell said that he would speak to the governor. If she wouldn’t see me, they couldn’t force her, that was the end of it.

Later in the evening, the telephone rang, and Vicky, who was sitting with me, went into the hall to answer it. In a moment she returned and told me: “It’s for you. Police headquarters.”

I heard Maxwell’s voice, brisk, sounding higher-pitched than when one met him in the flesh. All fixed. I could go to the jail at four o’clock the following afternoon. She hadn’t shown any interest. They had asked if she objected, and she said she didn’t mind whether I went or not.

When I got back to the drawing-room, Vicky enquired: “All right?”

“I suppose so,” I said.

She knew why I was staying in the town, but she hadn’t asked about any of the details. She assumed that I was trying to help old friends. She might have noticed that I was unusually silent. Perhaps not: she had her own concerns, she didn’t think there could be anything wrong with me. In any case, she was not inquisitive.

Instead she was talking in high spirits about her father’s dinner party next day. Her spirits were high because she had heard from Pat (who, I thought, either got fond of her in absence or was keeping her in reserve) that week. She was also pleased because her father, instead of resisting the advice which I relayed from Francis Getliffe, had, contrary to all expectation, taken it. He had actually invited Leonard and his other young academic critics to dinner. It was to be an intimate dinner so that he could put his “cards on the table”, as he had told both of us euphorically, implying that we should have to keep out of the house. Vicky was herself euphoric. She couldn’t help but think of Leonard and her father as clever, silly, squabbling men, and now perhaps they would take the opportunity to stop making idiots of themselves.

Next afternoon, just before four, I was outside the main gate of the jail. Above me the walls stretched up, red brick, castellated, a monument of early nineteenth-century prison architecture — and a familiar landmark to me all through my childhood, for I passed it on the route between home and school. Passed it without emotion, of course: it just stood there, the gates were never open. And yet, even before the inset door did open that afternoon, let me in, closed behind me, I felt the nerves at my elbows tight with angst — the sort of tightness one felt visiting a hospital, perhaps, as though one were never going to escape? No, more shameful than that.

A policeman met me, gave me the governor’s compliments, told me the governor was called away to a meeting but hoped that next time I would have a glass of sherry with him. The policeman led me up flights of stone stairs, right up to the top of the building, along a corridor, white-painted, to a door marked CONFERENCE ROOM.

“Will you wait here, sir?” said the policeman. “We’ll get her along.”

The room was spacious, with a long table: it was dark here, but through the window I could see the russet wall of the prison, and over the wall the bright evening sky.

After a time there were footsteps outside, and two women entered. One was in police uniform: in the twilight she seemed buxom and prettyish. Should she switch on the light? she asked. Yes, it might be better, I replied. Her voice sounded as uneasy as mine.

The exchange of domesticities went on. Should she send for a cup of tea? I hesitated. I heard her ask her companion — though with the room now lit up, I had glanced away — whether she would like a cup of tea. Some sort of affirmation. You can sit down, said the policewoman to her companion. I took the chair on the other side of the table: and then, for the first time, I had to look at her.

“May I give her a cigarette?” I called to the policewoman, who had gone right to the end of the room.

“Yes, sir, that’s allowed.”

I leant over the table, as wide as in a boardroom, and offered a packet. The fingers which took the cigarette were square-tipped, nails short, not painted but neatly varnished. I had not really looked at her before, not in the few minutes in the Patemans’ living-room; her eyes met mine just before I held out a match, and then were half-averted.

Her face was good-looking, in a strong-boned, slightly acromegalic fashion, more like her uncle’s than I had thought, though unlike him she did not have a weight of flesh to hide her jaw. Her hair, side-parted, cut in a thick short bob, was the same full blond. But it was her eyes, quite different from his, from which I could not keep my own away. George’s were a light, almost unpigmented blue, the kind of colour one sees only in Nordic countries: hers were a deep umber brown, so heavily charged that, though they stayed steady while averted from me, they seemed to be swimming in oil.