Charles Snow - The Sleep of Reason

“I’ve been following this horrible case, you see,” Jack went on. “I’m very sorry you are mixed up in that.”

“As a spectator.”

“No, Lewis, not quite that. Remember, I knew you a long time ago. I understand why you had to go—”

“Do you?”

“I think I do. Trust your old friend.” He put a finger to the side of his nose, in a gesture reminiscent of Azik Schiff talking of millions or of Jack himself, in old days, thinking how to make a quick pound. “You weren’t able to forget how George used to shout at us at midnight outside the jail. And we used to walk down the middle of the tramlines, later on at night, when the streets were empty, dreaming about a wonderful future. So when the future came, and it turned out to be this, you thought you had to stand by George. You weren’t going to let him sit there alone, were you?”

“That’s rather too simple,” I said. Also too sentimental, I was thinking: had he always made life sound softer than it was?

“You see, Lewis, you’re a kind man.” That was more sentimental. I wanted to stop him, but he went on: “I’ve heard people say all kinds of things about you. Often they hate you, don’t they? But they don’t realise how kind you are. Or perhaps they do, and it makes them hate you more.”

“I wish I could believe you,” I said. “But I don’t. I strongly suspect that, if I’d never existed, no one would have been a penny the worse.”

“Nonsense, man. I’m an absolute failure, aren’t I?”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“I do. I’m no use, if you put me up against the people you live among now. But I can see some things that they wouldn’t see if they lived to be a thousand. Perhaps because I’ve been a failure. I can see one or two things about you. I tell you this. You’ve lived a more Christian life than most of the Christians I know.”

It was my turn to say nonsense, more honestly than he had done. It was an astonishing statement, ludicrous in its own right, and also because Jack, when I knew him, took about as much account of Christianity as he did of Hamiltonian algebra.

“Oddly enough,” he said, “that’s what I came to tell you. Just that.”

It was possible — I was still suspicious, but of course I wanted to believe — that he was not pretending and had come for nothing else. A little later I discovered that he had made a special journey from Manchester — “on the chance of catching you”. It would have been more sensible, I said, to have rung up or written. “You know,” said Jack, “I always did like a bit of surprise.”

Perhaps it had been nothing but an impulse. But he had come to hearten me. Once or twice, when we were young men, he had taken time off from his chicanery or amours, to try to find me a love affair which would make me happier. The tone was the same, he liked bringing me comfort. That afternoon, I might have wished that the comfort was harder and nearer the truth — but none of us gets enough of it, we are grateful for it, whatever its quality, when it comes.

In his soft and modulated voice, Jack was talking, sadly, not nostalgically, about our early days. “No, Lewis, we all did each other harm, I’m sure we did. I was a bad influence on George, I know I was. And he wasn’t any good for me. Of course, you didn’t see the worst of it. But you suffered from it too, clearly you did.”

He said, eyes wide open, as when he was playing some obscure trick: “You know, I began to realise something, not so long ago. I thought — look here, I shouldn’t like to die, after the life I’ve lived.”

After a moment, I mentioned that, the summer before, I had met his first wife, Olive. He said: “Would you believe it, I’ve almost forgotten her.”

I knew that he had married again, and asked about it.

“No,” said Jack. “I extricated myself; some time ago.”

Just for an instant, his remorseful expression had broken, and he gave a smile that I had often seen — shameless, impudent, defiant. Or it might have been an imitation of that smile.

“Have you got anyone now?”

“I’ve given all that up.”

“How long for?”

“Absolutely and completely,” said Jack. “For good and all. You see, I’ve taken to a different sort of life.”

He explained that nowadays he spent much of his spare time in church. He explained it with the enthusiasm that once he used to spend on reducing all human aspirations down to the sexual act — and with the same humorous twitch, as though there was someone behind his shoulder laughing at him. How genuine was he? Sometimes one could indulge one’s suspiciousness too much. Would there be another twist, was this the end? Of that I couldn’t guess, I didn’t believe anyone would know the answers, until he was dead.

“Let’s be honest,” said Jack. “I didn’t just come to tell you you’d lived a Christian life. There’s something else—”

Right at the beginning, I had been counting on a double purpose. Now it came, and the laugh was against me.

“I think you ought to be a Christian — in faith as well as works. I really do.”

He asked, had he overrun his time? Could he have a few more minutes? I hadn’t expected that afternoon to end with Jack expending all his emotion trying to convert me. The old arguments flicked back and forth. The old theological questions. Then Jack said, you’d find it a strength, Lewis. You’d find it made this hideous business easier to take. Strangely, that was what I had said myself to Superintendent Maxwell. But now, as I replied to Jack, I did not believe it. Faith did not mean that one acquiesced so quietly, did it? Surely it was deeper than that? Believers had to confront these extremist questions: nothing I had read of them suggested that they were any more reconciled. I should have respected them less if they had been.

At last Jack went away. I offered to introduce him to my wife and son, but he reminded me, with a not quite saintly grin, how pressed I was for time.

When I joined Charles in the drawing-room, he said: “Well, how much did he want to borrow?”

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “the subject didn’t crop up.”

GOING back to the trial by an early train, I stood outside the Assize Hall, not certain whether the others would arrive. Then Martin’s car drew up: he said good morning as he had done for days past, as though we had been pulled back and couldn’t be anywhere else. I had seen politicians meet in the Yard like that during a time of crisis, glad that there was someone else who couldn’t escape, making a kind of secret enclave for themselves. It was a beautiful morning. Close by, the church clock struck the quarter. A few minutes later, as we were getting ready to go into court, we saw George walking towards us, walking very slowly in the hazy sunshine.

As he came up the slope, he said: “Anyway, it won’t be long now.”

I replied: “Not very long.”

“It ought to be over by tomorrow night.” George seemed to be entirely preoccupied by the timetable. When I mentioned that, later in the morning, I should have to leave them and sit in the official box, since I was lunching with the judge, he said: “Oh, are you?” He wouldn’t have been less interested if I had said that I was lunching with the Archbishop of Canterbury. He went on ticking off the last stages of the trial — “I don’t see,” he said, “how they can keep it going beyond tomorrow.”

In the courtroom, more crammed that morning than during the psychiatrists’ evidence, Cora Ross went into the box. She stood there, hair shining, shoulders high and square, as she faced Benskin. She had taken on an expression which had something of the nature both of a frown and a superior smile: her eyes did not meet her counsel’s but (as I recalled from the conversation in prison) were cast sidelong, this time in the direction of Kitty. It was clear from the beginning that Benskin had one of the most difficult of jobs. He didn’t want her to appear too balanced or articulate: on the other hand, the jury mustn’t have any suspicion that she had been rehearsed in seeming abnormal or was herself deliberately putting it on. There had already been whispers that her outburst in court the previous week was a clever piece of acting. And, of course, he was loaded with an intrinsic difficulty. Even if he had been trying to prove that she was mad, not irresponsible, how did sensible laymen expect mad persons to answer or behave? Had they ever seen anyone within hours of a psychotic suicide? Looking, talking, seeming, perhaps feeling, more like themselves than they would ever have believed?