Charles Snow - The Sleep of Reason

Mrs Pateman let me in. The light in the passage was behind her, and I could not see her face. She said nothing except that my overcoat was wet. I put down my suitcase and went into the parlour, into claustrophobia and the disinfectant smell. There, sitting at the table, plates not cleared away, were both Mr Pateman and his son. Dick nodded, Mr Pateman, head thrown back, gave me a formal good evening. I sat down by the slack fire, no one speaking. Then Mr Pateman said, in a challenging, more than that, attacking tone: “I hope you’re bringing us good news, sir.”

“I’m afraid not,” I said.

He stared at me.

“I don’t want you to make any mistake from the beginning. I don’t credit a single word that anyone brings up against my daughter.” He was hostile and at the same time his confidence seemed invulnerable. But now I could, though the room was dim, watch Mrs Pateman’s face: it was washed youthful by fear. I said: “I’ve got nothing to say about her.”

“I didn’t expect it,” said Mr Pateman. “Some of us don’t need telling about our children.”

“I’ve only come,” I said, “to give you a message from her friend.”

“Mind you,” said Mr Pateman, ignoring me, “I know that certain people want to drag her through the courts.” With confidence, with the brilliance of suspicion, he went on: “I’ve got my own ideas about that.”

I tried to speak gently, in the direction of his wife: “You’ve got to prepare yourselves for the trial, you know.”

“Thank you,” said Mr Pateman, “we are prepared for more than that. My daughter’s room” — he pointed towards the front of the house — “is waiting for her as soon as this trial is over. It’s waiting for her empty, with not a penny coming in.”

How soon would the trial be? Mrs Pateman asked in a timid voice. I explained that they would be sent from the police court to the assizes — that would be two or three months ahead. To my surprise, Mr Pateman accepted this information without protest: perhaps he had discovered it already. Would he accept a different kind of information, if I warned him that his hopes were nothing but fantasy and that he was going to hear the worst? I might have warned him, if we had been alone: in the presence of his wife, certainly frightened, maybe clinging to his hopes, I hadn’t the courage to speak.

“I’ve only come,” I repeated, “to give you a message from Cora Ross.”

“I don’t want anything to do with that woman,” said Mr Pateman.

“It was just this — when it comes to the trial, she wants you to know, they’re going to be loyal to each other.”

“I shouldn’t expect anything else. From my daughter,” said Mr Pateman, with complete opacity, dismissing the news as of no interest, getting back to his own suspicion: “I never liked the look of that woman, she was a bad influence all along. I always had my own ideas about her.”

He stared at me accusingly: “I don’t want to say this, but I’ve got to. I never liked the look of that woman’s uncle. He’s a friend of yours, sir, I’ve been told?”

“That’s true,” I said.

“I don’t want to say this, but he’s been the worst influence of all. Even if he is a friend of yours, he’s a loose liver. There’s bad blood in that family, and it’s a pity my daughter ever came anywhere near them. That’s why certain people want to drag her through this business. They think anyone who goes round with that woman must be as bad as she is. And that woman wouldn’t have turned out as bad if it hadn’t been for her uncle.”

“I don’t agree with that,” said Dick Pateman, who had been sitting with an expression as aggressive as his father’s.

“Some of us,” said Mr Pateman, “have spent a lifetime summing people up.”

“Passant would have been all right,” Dick went on, “if only they’d given him a chance.”

“I can’t agree.”

Dick continued. “They” were to blame, “the whole wretched set-up”, the racket, the establishment, society itself. We should have to break it up, said Dick. Look what they had done to his father. Look at what they were doing to him. His discontent was getting violent (I gathered he was having more trouble with examinations at his new university). Kitty would be happy in a decent society. There was nothing wrong with her. As for Cora Ross, if she’d “done anything”, that was their fault: no one had looked after her, she’d never been properly educated, she’d never been found a place.

I didn’t answer. What did he believe about the crime? Certainly not the naked truth. He was more lucid than his father, and more angry. He seemed to accept that Cora Ross was involved. But his indignation comforted him and at the same time deluded him. It removed some of the apprehension he might have had about his sister. So much so that I had to ask one question: had he talked to her solicitors? No, he said, his father had done that.

All the news in that home, then, had come from Mr Pateman. He and Dick must have sat in the parlour arguing with no more sense of the fatality than they showed tonight. It was intolerable that they should be so untouched. The dark little room, with its single bulb, pressed upon one. We were shut in, they didn’t mind being shut in. Their faces were as bold as when I had first seen them. The disinfectant smell seemed to become stronger, mixed with the sulphuretted smell of the slack fire.

“Yes,” said Mr Pateman, “I’ve done my best with those people” (the solicitors to whom Eden & Sharples had sent Kitty’s case).

He confronted me with glass-bright eyes.

“And thereby hangs a tale”, he announced.

For an instant, I thought he was going to give some of their opinions.

He said: “They’re running up their bills, those people are. I want to know, where is the money coming from?”

It was a question for which I was totally unready. I hadn’t even asked George about the legal costs for his niece. In the midst of shock, I hadn’t given it the vestige of a thought. Yet it was certain that George couldn’t afford to pay himself. His friends in the town were better off than they used to be: perhaps they had already supported him, but I didn’t know.

“It will cost some money,” I said.

“That doesn’t get me very far.”

I said that the whole expenses wouldn’t be less than several hundred pounds.

“You’re not being very helpful, sir.”

I said: “I’m just telling you the facts.”

“Do you think it’s helpful to mention a sum like that to me, after the way I’ve been treated?”

I said (I was recalling that the structure of legal financing had changed since the time I practised) that they were not to worry. Legal aid would be forthcoming. In a case like this, no one had to think about solicitors’ and barristers’ fees.

“Oh no,” said Mr Pateman, “we’ve already been granted legal aid. So has the other one, they tell me.”

“Then what are you worrying about?”

“Charity,” said Mr Pateman with a superior smile. “I don’t like my family receiving charity.”

My patience was snapping. “You can’t have it both ways—”

“I always believe in exploring avenues,” he went on, still invulnerable.

“I don’t know what you’re thinking of.”

“Newspapers. That’s what I’m thinking of.”

Yes, he had heard of newspapers paying for the defence in a murder case, and getting an article out of it afterwards. Wasn’t that true?

“Do you really want that to happen?” I asked.

“It would recoup us all for some of our losses. It would mean my daughter was paying her way.”

He appeared to want, though he didn’t specifically say so, advice about the popular press, or perhaps an introduction. I had no intention of giving either, and got up to leave; once more Dick nodded and Mr Pateman and I exchanged formal good nights. In the passage Mrs Pateman, who had followed me out, plucked at my sleeve.