Charles Snow - The Sleep of Reason

“What have you come here for?” she asked.

“George asked me to.”

“What for?”

I didn’t answer until two cups of tea had been placed on the table. I sipped mine, weak, metallic-tasting, like Whitehall tea.

I had to submerge or discipline what I felt. Going into the jail, preparing for this visit, I had been nervous. In her presence, I still was. It might have been anxiety. It might have been distaste, or hatred. But it was none of those things. It was something more like fear.

“He wanted me to see if there was anything I could do for you.”

“I shouldn’t think so.”

She had been wearing a half-smile ever since I looked at her. It bore a family resemblance to the expression with which George, at our last meeting and often before that, asked me for a favour, but on her the half-smile gave an air, not of diffidence, but of condescension.

“He asked me to come,” I repeated.

“Did he?”

“He wanted me to see if you needed anything.”

My remarks sounded, in my own ears, as flat as though I were utterly uninterested: and yet I was longing to break out and make her respond. ( What have you done? What did you say to each other? When did that child know? )

“I like George,” she said.

“Did you see much of him?”

“I used to. How is he?”

“He’s not too well.”

“He doesn’t look after himself.”

The flat words faded away. Silence. The other questions were making my pulses throb ( Who suggested it? Didn’t you ever want to stop? Are you thinking of it now? ) as, after a time, I asked, in the stiff mechanical tone I couldn’t alter: “How are they treating you?”

“All right, I suppose.”

“Have you any complaints?”

A pause. Her glance moved, not towards me, but down to her lap.

“This dress they’ve given me is filthy.”

It was a neat blue cotton dress, with a pattern of white flowers and a pocket. I could see nothing wrong with it.

“I’ll mention that,” I said.

Another pause. “Anything else?” I asked.

“I shouldn’t mind seeing a doctor.”

“What’s the matter?”

She wouldn’t reply. Was she being modest? I looked at her body, which, contradicting her face, was heavy, deep-breasted, feminine. ( Did you ever feel any pity? Will you admit anything you felt? )

“I’ll tell them.”

Flat silence. Forcing myself, I said: “I used to be a lawyer. I’m not sure if you know that.”

She gave the slightest shake of her head.

“If I can be any help—” ( Did you do everything they say? What have you done? )

“We’ve got our lawyers,” she answered, with what sounded like contempt.

“Have you talked to them?”

“They’ve asked me a lot of questions.”

“Are you satisfied?”

“It didn’t get them very far,” she said.

Silence again. I was trying to make another effort, when she said: “Why have we got different lawyers?”

For an instant I thought she was confused between solicitors and barristers, and started to explain; but she shrugged me aside and went on: “Why have Kitty and me got different lawyers?”

“Well, the defence for one of you mightn’t be the same as for the other.”

“They’re trying to split us up, are they?”

“It’s common practice—”

“I thought they were. You can tell them they’re wasting their time.”

She went on, bitter and scornful: “You can go and tell the Patemans so.”

I began, this must have been the solicitors’ decision, but she interrupted: “Yes, those Patemans have always wanted to come between me and Kitty. That’s all they’re good for, the whole crowd of them.”

Her anger was grating. She went on: “You wanted to know if there was anything you could do for me, didn’t you? Well, you can do this. You can tell that crowd they’re wasting their time.”

She went on, nothing was going to split her and Kitty. With bitter suspicion, she said: “I suppose you’ll get out of it, won’t you? You won’t go and tell them so.”

I said, if it was any comfort to her, I would.

“I should like to see their faces when you did.”

Once more, angrily, she said that I should slip out of it. I said without expression that I would tell them.

“I hate the whole crowd of them,” she said.

After that, she seemed either exhausted or more indifferent.

My attempts to question her (the internal questions were dulled by now) became stiffer still. I gave her a cigarette and then another. To eke out the minutes, I kept raising the cup to my lips, saving the last drops of near-cold tea.

At last I heard the policewoman moving at the far end of the room (for some time we had been left alone). “Afraid your time is up, sir.” I heard it with intense relief. I said to Cora that I would come again, if she wanted me.

She didn’t say a word: her half-smile remained. Outside the jail, in the fresh night air, I still felt the same intense relief, mixed with shame and lack of understanding. The great walls, which dominated the road in daytime, were now themselves dominated by the neon lights. I didn’t clearly remember, five minutes afterwards, what it was like inside.

Some time later, when I met Vicky in the town — I was taking her out for dinner in order to leave the Residence free for Arnold Shaw’s private party — she did not so much as ask me what I had been doing. Some young women would have noticed that I was behaving with a kind of bravado, but Vicky took me for granted. Which was soothing, just as it was to see her happy. The small talk of happiness, merely the glow, still undamped, of a letter from Pat. The pleasure of sitting at a restaurant table opposite a man. The pleasure, incidentally, of a very good meal. She had nominated an Italian restaurant which had not existed in my time, and she tucked into hearty Bolognese food with a young and robust appetite. When I lived in the town, we couldn’t have eaten like this, even if we had had the money, but since the war people had learned to eat. Restaurants had sprung up: there was even good English cooking, which I had never tasted as a boy. Other things might go wrong, but food got better.

The pink-shaded lamp made her face look more delicate, as faces look when the light is softening after a sunny day. She was talking more than usual, and more excitedly. Once I wondered if she was wishing — as a good many have wished in the lucky lulls in a love affair — that time could stand still. No, I thought. She was too brave, too positive, not apprehensive enough for that.

We had to spin the evening out. Arnold Shaw’s dinner party had started early, but we were not to arrive back until eleven. “Anyway,” said Vicky, “it’ll be nice to have them stop nattering at each other, won’t it? He ought to have patched it up months ago.” Although I was dawdling over our bottle of wine, I couldn’t do so for another hour and more.

“What shall we do?” I said.

“I know,” said Vicky with decision.

“What?”

“Don’t you worry. Leave it to me.”

After we left the restaurant, she led me down a couple of side streets past a window which was darkened but, as in the wartime blackout, had a strip of light visible along the top edge. On the door, also in dimmed light, was the simple inscription HENRY’S.

“We go in here,” said Vicky.

Inside it was as dark as in a smart New York restaurant. If it hadn’t been so dark, Vicky and I might have looked more incongruous, for her skirt was much too long and my hair much too short. But the young people, lolling about at crowded tables drinking coffee, were too polite or good-natured to notice. They pushed along, made room for us, settled us down. It was not only dark, the noise was deafening: a record player was on full blast, couples were twisting on a few square yards of floor. It was so noisy that some young man, hair down to his shoulders, had to point to a coffee cup to inquire what we wanted.