Charles Snow - The Sleep of Reason

Soon afterwards the same young man patted Vicky’s knee and jerked his thumb towards the floor. To my surprise, she gave an enthusiastic nod. When she started to dance, she appeared much older than anyone there: she wasn’t dressed for the occasion, she was as out of place as someone arriving in a lounge suit at a function with all the others in white tie and tails. But, again to my surprise, she danced as one who loved it: she had rhythm from the balls of her feet up to her pulled-back hair: she had more animal energy than the boys and girls round her. It was a strange fashion to end that day, watching Vicky enjoy herself.

“Nice,” she said in the taxi going home. It occurred to me that all this was a legacy of Pat’s, and that she might be thinking of him.

It was not, however, quite the end of that day. When we arrived at the Residence, the windows were shining but there were no cars standing in the drive. We seemed to have timed it right, said Vicky efficiently. As we went into the hall, Arnold Shaw came out of the drawing-room to greet us. His colour was high, his melon lips were pursed and smiling. They’ve gone? she asked. He nodded with vigour, and said, expansively, come in and get warm.

In the bright drawing-room, used glasses on the coffee tables, Shaw stood on the hearthrug, braced and grinning.

“You’ve been in prison this afternoon, Lewis, haven’t you?” he said to me. He said it with taunting good nature, eyes bright, as though this was the sort of eccentric hobby I should indulge in, having no connection with serious living.

I said that I had.

“Well, I’m out of prison myself, you’ll be glad to know,” he announced. “And that means that I’m going to give us all a drink.”

At a quick and jaunty trot he left the room. As we waited for him, Vicky was happily flushed but didn’t speak. For me, his one casual question had triggered other thoughts.

He returned balancing a tray on which shone two bottles of champagne and three tulip glasses. While he was twisting off the wire from one bottle, Vicky burst out: “So everything is all right, is it?”

“Everything is all right,” he said.

The cork popped, carefully he filled a glass, watching the head of bubbles simmer down.

“Yes,” he said, “I shall be going at the end of the term.”

“What?” cried Vicky.

“I’m resigning,” he said, filling another glass. “I’ve told them so. Of course they’ll treat it as confidential until I get the letter off tomorrow. I had to explain the protocol—”

“Oh, blast the protocol,” said Vicky. Tears had started to her eyes.

I had been jolted back into the comfortable room, into their company.

“You can’t do it like this, Arnold,” I began.

“You’ll see if I can’t. It’s the right thing to do.”

“You must give yourself a bit of time to think.” I was finding my way back to an old groove, professional concerns, the talk of professional men. “This is an important decision. You’ve got to listen to your friends. You haven’t even slept on it—”

“Quite useless.” He spoke with mystifying triumph. “This is final. Full stop.”

Vicky, cheek turned into her chair, was crying. For once, she was past trying to boss him: she wasn’t often like a child in his presence, but now she was. She couldn’t make an effort to dissuade him. She didn’t seem even to listen as I said: “Hadn’t you better tell us what has happened?”

“It’s simple,” said Arnold Shaw. “They were all very friendly—”

“In that case, this is a curious result.”

“They were all very friendly. No one minded speaking out. So I asked them whether, if I went on as Vice-Chancellor, I had lost their confidence.”

“And they said—”

“They said I had.”

“In so many words?”

“Yes. In so many words.” Arnold refilled his glass, looking at me as though he were master of the situation.

“I must say, it all sounds very improbable,” I told him.

“They were absolutely direct. I respected them for it.”

“You must find respect very easy.”

“I don’t like double-dealing,” said Arnold Shaw.

“But still — why have you got to listen? These are only three or four young men—”

“No good, Lewis.” Shaw’s expression was happy but set. “They’re my best young professors. Leonard is alpha double plus, but the others are pretty good. They’re the people I’ve brought here. They’re going to make this place if anyone can. A Vice-Chancellor who has lost the confidence of the men who are going to make the place hasn’t any business to stay.”

“Look here, there are some other arguments—”

“Absolutely none. It’s as clear as the nose on your face. I go now. And I’m right to go.”

Arnold, like one determined to have a celebration, poured champagne into my glass. He was so exalted that he scarcely seemed to notice that his daughter was still silent, huddled in her chair. At a loss, I drank with him, for an instant thinking that of all well-meant interventions Francis Getliffe’s had been the most disastrous. It was the only advice I could remember Arnold Shaw taking. Without it he would have battered on, unconscious of others’ attitudes, for months or years. Yet, though unlike my old father he had no nose for danger, he took it far more robustly, in fact with elation, when he was rubbed against it. Of course, he was many years the younger man. My father, when his own dismissal came, had nothing else to live for. But still — it was an irony that I didn’t welcome — it was often the unrealistic who absorbed disasters best.

“I remember, Lewis, I told you one night in this house,” Arnold pointed a finger, “I told you I should decide when it was right to go. No one else. It didn’t matter whether any of the others, or any damned representations under heaven, were aiming to get rid of me. If I thought I was doing more good than harm to this place, then I should stay and they would have to drag me out feet first. But I told you, do you remember, that the moment I decided, myself and no one else, that I was doing more harm than good, then I should go, and that would be the end of it. Well, that’s the position. I can’t be anymore good in this job. So I go at the earliest possible time. That’s the proper thing to do.”

He was just as intransigent as when he was resisting any compromise or moderate suggestion in the Court. He was more than intransigent, he felt victorious. He was asserting his will, and that buoyed him up: but more than that, he was behaving according to his own sense of virtue or honour, and it made him both happy and quite immovable. He had scarcely listened to anything I said: and, as for Vicky, perhaps she realised at once when first she heard his news and began to cry, how immovable he was.

At last she had roused herself and, eyes swollen, began to talk about their plans. Yes, they would be moving from the Residence, they would have to find another house. She didn’t say it, but she was becoming protective again. How much would he miss his luxuries, and much more, all the minor bits of pomp and ceremony? Would he be impregnable, when once he knew that he had really lost his place? Vicky said nothing about that, but instead, in a factual and prosaic manner, was calculating how much income they would have.

Arnold insisted on opening the second bottle of champagne, I didn’t want it, but he was so triumphant, in some way so unshielded, that I hadn’t the heart to say no.

THE Patemans’ house was not on the telephone, and I sent a note that I should call on them at half past six, at Cora Ross’ request, before I caught my train back to London. That was the day after my visit to the jail. The clear weather had broken, it was raw and drizzling in the street outside, the street lamps shone on the dark front window, curtains left undrawn.