Charles Snow - The Sleep of Reason

My mood, I knew, was wearing Margaret down. I told her so, and told her I was sorry. She didn’t deny it. If I could have been more articulate, it would have been easier for her. She accepted — there was no argument, she took it for granted — that I should have to attend the trial. But she thought I oughtn’t to be left alone there, with no one to turn to. Would it be useful if she came herself? She would come for part of the time anyway, if her father didn’t need her. Who else? There weren’t many people, as I grew older, to whom I gave my intimacy. Charles March, perhaps Francis — but they were too far away from the roots of my youth. Without my knowing it at the time, Margaret rang up my brother Martin. He would understand it as the others couldn’t. Her relation with Martin had always been close: they couldn’t have been each other’s choice, and yet there was a tie between them as though it might have been pleasant if they had. She talked to him with that kind of trust. Yes, he was ready to hang about the trial in case I wanted him. But — and again I didn’t know it at the time — she found, as they talked, that he too, underneath his control and irony, seemed unusually affected.

One Sunday, when we had fetched Charles from school to have lunch at home, Margaret mentioned the date of the trial. The assizes would be beginning in April: how long would the trial take? Anyone’s guess, I was saying: probably three or four days, perhaps a week or two, depending on how the defence played it. Margaret told Charles that meant he might not be seeing much of me during the Easter holidays. I said, he could possibly endure that extreme deprivation. Charles gave a preoccupied grin.

After lunch, he and I were alone in the drawing-room. He was looking out of the window: it was a serene milky day in late February, smoky sunshine and mist, the branches on the trees just showing the first vestigial thickening.

Charles turned away and said: “So you’re going to this trial, are you?”

“Yes, I’ve got to.”

“Why have you got to?”

“One of those women is a niece of old George’s, you know.”

“I knew that.” He was sitting on the arm of a chair: his face was clouded. “But you can’t do any good.”

“I can’t desert him now,” I said.

“You won’t do any good. You won’t make any difference to him.”

“Perhaps a little,” I said.

“I doubt it,” said Charles. In a hard, minatory tone he went on: “I don’t think you ought to go.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“This trial will have all the press in the world. They’ll be after you.”

“I shall just be there in the court, that’s all—”

“Don’t fool yourself. You’re a conspicuous figure.”

“They might notice I was there,” I said. “Still—”

“This is going to be the horror of horrors. Don’t fool yourself. You ought to have learned by now that you’ll land yourself in trouble. Don’t you realise that someone is going to link you up with the Passants? There’ll be a lot of mud flying round. Some of the mud will stick. On you.”

His expression was so dark that my temper was rising. I tried to seem casual.

“I think you’re exaggerating,” I said. “But even if you weren’t, does it matter all that much?”

“I should have thought you’d had enough of it,” he replied, not with kindness so much as reproach.

“Look here, I’ve known George since I wasn’t much older than you are today. Do you really expect me to leave him absolutely alone now ?”

“If you could do any good, no.”

“Whether I can do any good or not—” I was speaking harshly.

“That’s sentimental. You’re taking a stupid risk which won’t do any good to him and will do you some harm. There’s no justification at all.”

“Good God, Carlo,” I cried. “You’re talking like a Chief Whip—”

“I don’t care what I’m talking like. I’m telling you, you’re being sentimental, that’s all.”

“You really think I ought to abandon an old friend just to avoid a bit of slander—”

“That’s not a good piece of translation.”

“Put it any way you like.”

“I’ll accept it your way. And I say — if you can’t be any good to him, the answer is yes.”

I was bitterly angry with him. Was it because he reminded me — too nakedly — of an aspect of myself when young, when I was rapacious and at the same time calculating the odds? Was it also because, with a cowardice of the nerves, I should have liked to agree with him and follow his advice?

“Do you believe,” I said, my temper grinding into my voice, “that you’ll be able to live your own life without taking this kind of risk? My God, if you can be that cold, what sort of life are you going to have?”

Charles had become angry in his turn. His skin, which, different from mine or Margaret’s, didn’t colour in the sun, took on a kind of pastel flush. He said: “I shall take more risks than you ever did.”

“Say that when you’ve done it.”

“I shall take more risks than you did. But I shall know what I’m taking them for.

“As for being cold,” he went on, eyes black with resentment, “I think you’re wrong. I’m not sentimental, if that’s what you mean. I never shall be. I’m not going to waste so much of myself.”

For some time we sat in mutinous silence, each of us hurt, each of us throwing the blame upon the other. Then Margaret entered, the low sunlight streaming on to her face, which unlike ours was tranquil and bright. In an instant, though, she felt the fury in the room. It astonished her, for she had scarcely heard Charles and me exchange a bad-tempered word.

“Whatever’s the matter with you two?” she burst out.

“Carlo’s been telling me that I oughtn’t to go to the trial,” I said, shrugging it off.

“No,” she spoke to Charles, “he’s right to go.” She said it soothingly, but Charles, smothering his pride, began to tease her: why was she always so certain of her moral position? The teasing went on, light and easy. He could talk so easily because of the difference between them. That afternoon he couldn’t have talked to me like that. He didn’t give a glance in my direction. He was responding to her with fondness and detachment. He couldn’t have told, or wanted to know, how he was responding to me: and nor in reverse could I.

AS Margaret and I approached the old Assize Hall, there was a smell of moist grass, sweet and taunting. It was the kind of April morning which, when one is happy, is lit up with hope: on the patch of lawn beside the steps, dew sparkled in the wave of sunlight. In front of the Georgian façade, policemen were standing, faces fresh in the clear light. The smell of grass returned, sweet and seminal. Looming behind the building was a Gothic wall, a relic of the historic town: we were half-a-mile away from the shopping streets, and close to the quarter where I had taken Charles for a walk the year before.

The entrance hall was high, bright from the lofty windows, crowded, people hurrying past. There were spectators making their way into the courtroom, policemen in plain clothes, rooted on thick legs, policemen in uniform stationed by the doors. At the far end of the hall barristers, in gowns but not yet wearing their wigs, pushed to and from the robing-room. The hall fell into shade, as the spring wind outside drove clouds across the sun. Then bright again. On the wall panels stood out the arms of the county regiments. Across the far end, near where the barristers appeared and disappeared, a long trestle table carried a couple of tea urns and plates of sandwiches, cakes, and sausage rolls, as though at an old-fashioned church fête.