Charles Snow - The Sleep of Reason

A copy of the local evening paper under the bookshelf. Headlines about the trial. As he stood up, handsome, grizzled, Denis pointed to it.

“Now,” he said, “you’ve got to forget all about it.”

He was years younger than I was. But he was talking benevolently, as though I were a junior teacher on his staff, coming to him with some domestic trouble.

I said that it wasn’t so easy.

“Lewis, you’ve got to forget about it.” He went on, it might have happened anywhere, it had absolutely nothing to do with the normal run of things, we just had to wipe it out of our minds.

I wasn’t used to being spoken to paternally. Not many men had ever tried to father me. But Denis was one of this world’s fathers, and I didn’t resent it.

“He’s right, you know,” said Alison Geary.

“I promise you,” said Denis, “that we’ll look after anything practical when it’s all over. We’ll look after old George as far as we can.”

Yes, they would visit the Patemans and the two young women, wherever they were sent. It was all in the line of duty. They had visited criminals before now, they took it as naturally as talking to me.

Denis said: “Now forget it and have a drink.”

They had observed, at those dinners at the Shaws’, that I enjoyed drinking. They had laid in more liquor than would be expected in a headmaster’s house and more, I couldn’t help thinking, than they could comfortably afford. But I wasn’t saving their pockets when I told them that, in times of trouble, I drank very little. It was true. They were so kind that I was confiding in them.

“I think I can understand that,” said Denis. He said it with fellow-feeling, as though he had gone through dark nights. Just for an instant, I wondered if he were more complex than he seemed. Heartily he came back: “Still, you must have a little.”

They set to work to distract me both then and through dinner, which, as on the night before, was a delectable English meal. The Vice-Chancellorship — Denis guessed that I might still be made interested in jobs. They hadn’t yet found a successor to Arnold Shaw. They had offered the post to Walter Luke, but he had turned it down. Why? Denis replied, straight-faced: “He said that he didn’t want to become a stuffed shirt.” I couldn’t resist a grin: that sounded like the authentic Walter. Someone asked him if there were other reasons. Denis said, still straight-faced: “He said he couldn’t improve on the one he had already given.”

Comprehensive education — they were both campaigning for it, it meant that our old school, Denis’ and mine, would cease to be a grammar school. “But it’s the only answer,” said Alison eagerly. “It really is.” She was as devoted a radical as her husband; she brought out all the arguments of the day. The lives we were wasting: we three had been lucky in our education, though we hadn’t thought so, we had been lucky, compared with the neighbours round us. This was the only answer. It was also good politics; the public wanted it, whatever the Tories said, and that was nothing against it; but the point was, it was right.

Although she had been talking to distract me, she was committed. Her bright sepia eyes were shining: it was easy to imagine her, quick-stepping, full-bodied, tapping at the voters’ doors.

She couldn’t raise an argument. She spoke about their children. The daughter had been married that winter. Did they like the man? He’s a very good chap, said Denis, we think they’re very happy. Where were they living? He was a schoolteacher in the town, said Alison.

“Well, you did the same,” said Denis, with an uxorious grin.

“He’s an extremely nice man,” said Alison. “He’ll make her a good husband.” Then, as though she couldn’t help it, her face changed. It began to wear an expression I had not seen in her before — was it wistful or shamefaced?

“But I always used to think she’d do something different, after all.”

“She’s going to be happy,” Denis told her, like one repeating himself.

“Yes. She’s a pretty girl,” Alison turned to me, “though I am her mother.”

From the photographs, that I could believe.

“She’s got a lot of imagination too. She always used to be reaching after something wonderful. I used to think that she’d finish up by marrying — well, someone like André Malraux.”

It seemed a curious dream: even though Alison, determined to be practical, explained that she meant, naturally, a younger version of M. Malraux. The Gearys’ marriage was one of the happier ones: but what Alison dreamed for her daughter, she must, of course, once have dreamed for herself.

They didn’t stop working to snag my interest until, very early, I went up to my room. Through the open window came faint scents of the spring. Clouds rushed across the sky, unveiling stars. At the bottom of the garden there were no houses in sight, only a range of trees. The moon, rising above one level branch, was just turning from silver to gold. In some moods that sight would be a comfort or a cheat, telling one that there was an existence more desirable than ours.

I might have remembered, though I didn’t, someone who refused to take false comfort. We did not exist outside out of time. Those were only words which drugged us, which made us blind to our condition. He said to me, on just such a night as this, that he hated the stars.

I stayed at the window, looking out at the night sky.

THE next morning, I arrived early in the entrance hall. Through a side door I could see the courtroom, already nearly full. There was not such a queue outside as on the first day. Lawyers hustled by, swinging their briefcases, on the way to robe. Then, as I stood about, George Passant, also early, joined me. After his loud greeting, which hadn’t varied in all the years, his first remark was: “I’ve been thinking, I don’t think I shall fag to come in today.”

I was so surprised that I hardly noticed the old-fashioned slang.

“You won’t?”

“I don’t see any point in it today.”

His manner was bold, defiant, diffident, like a young man’s. As I looked at him, I didn’t understand. Other people in the hall were looking at him, but there was no demonstration. One might have thought he was frightened of another crowd like that of the night before, but I knew that wasn’t true. His courage was absolute, as it had always been. He was saying that tomorrow or next day, they might be getting somewhere. Then I believed I had it. He had been working out the progress of the trial. This morning or afternoon, which he wanted to escape, the medical evidence would come into court. That, though he couldn’t tell me and was brazening it out, he wasn’t able to endure.

“I think that I shall stay,” I said.

“Well then,” said George with relief, “I’ll see you later on.”

After I had watched him leave, I asked a policeman to take a message to the Deputy Sheriff enquiring whether he could still find me a place. Before the answer came back, I saw, and this was another surprise, for at that time I hadn’t been told of the telephoning between him and Margaret, my brother Martin. He wasn’t smiling, but he said: “I thought you mightn’t mind a bit of company.”

I recognised the clerk from the morning before, polite and welcoming. Yes, of course there were two seats. Yes, of course the Deputy Sheriff would be delighted to invite Dr Eliot. The clerk led us down a corridor behind the court, narrow and white-painted, past the judge’s room, out to the official box.

From there our line of sight was only just above the level of the lawyers’ wigs. We had to look up to see the crowd in the rake of the court, heads lit up by the long windows behind them. The row of barristers, the next row of solicitors — suddenly they reminded me of ministers on the front bench in the Commons, their PPS’s whispering to them: I might have been watching them, as I had done often enough from the civil servants’ box, but the angle was different, for it was like being on the wrong side of the Speaker’s chair.