Charles Snow - The Light and the Dark

For days he painted the room from the ceiling to the floor. In the end, the walls gleamed in pink, green and terracotta. The desks, once a shining white, he painted also, the platforms pink and the legs green. It picked out their strange shapes. From then on, the whole room was bright with colour, was covered with the vivid desks in their bizarre lines. It took visitors aback, when they called to inspect his manuscripts.

I felt helpless and utterly useless, though he seemed to like having me with him. I feared, with a growing dread, the lightning flashes of elation. I told myself that perhaps this state would pass, and meanwhile tried to prevent him dining in hall or being seen much in the college. I did not want him to do himself harm there — and also I had the selfish and practical reason that I did not want him to do harm to myself or Arthur Brown. I dined with him in the town, we went to see friends in their colleges and houses, I persuaded him to spend several nights in his London flat. Rosalind, who had written to me often during the past eighteen months and who kept sending me presents, only needed a word by telephone: she followed him there, and for the first day or two gave him release — temporary, perhaps, thoughtless, certainly, not the release he himself looked for, but still release.

It was, of course, noticed by the college that he had not dined often in hall since his election. But they concluded that he was indulging in a wild round of celebration. They minded very little; by the custom of their class, and of this particular academic society, they did not take much notice of drinking. They nodded in a matter-of-fact and cheerful way. The Master met him once in the court when his eyes were bright with drink, and said to me next day: “Roy Calvert seems to be going about with vineleaves in his hair. I suppose it’s only natural.”

I wished it were as natural as that.

I paid very little attention when Roy asked me to the meeting in honour of Lyall. It was on one of my usual evenings in London, during Roy’s stay. I had gone round from my house in Chelsea to his flat in Connaught Street, just behind the Bayswater Road. Rosalind let me in. She was busy trying the effect of some new boxes with bright, painted, porcelain lids.

Roy had taken the flat while he was an undergraduate, but Rosalind was the only woman who had left her stamp on it. Soon after she first stayed there, she set about making it into something more ornate, lush, comfortable, and mondain.

“How do you like them?” she said, viewing the boxes.

“A bit boudoir-ish,” I said.

“Oh dear.” Superficially she was easy to discourage. She and I got on very well in an unexacting fashion.

“How is Roy?”

“The old thing’s dressing. I don’t think there’s much the matter with him.”

“Is he cheerful?”

“He’s as cheerful as you bright people usually manage to be. I don’t take too much notice of his moods, Lewis. I’ve been keeping him in bed. There’s plenty of life in the old thing still,” she said with a dying fall. One of her uses to him, I thought suddenly, was that she treated him as though he were a perfectly ordinary man. She loved what to her meant romance, the pink lamp-shades in the restaurant car, the Italian sky, great restaurants, all the world of chic and style: at a distance Roy was romantic because he gave her those: in the flesh, though she loved him dearly, he was a man like other men, who had better be pampered though “there was not much wrong with him”.

Roy entered in a dressing-gown, shaved and fresh.

“You here?” he said to me in mock surprise. And to Rosalind: “What may you be doing, dear?”

“Flirting with Lewis,” she said immediately.

He smacked her lightly, and they discussed where they should go for dinner, so that he might know what clothes to wear. “We’re not taking you, old boy,” said Roy over her shoulder: he gave her just the choice that made her eyes rounder, Claridge’s, the Canton, Monseigneur’s. He seemed far less depressed than when I last saw him, and I was nothing but amused when he asked me to the Lyall celebration.

“We shan’t take you tonight,” he said. “I’m simply jealous of you with Rosalind. But I’ll take you somewhere else on Thursday. You need to come and hear us honour old Lyall.”

“Oulstone Lyall?”

“Just so. I need you to come. You’ll find it funny. He’ll be remarkably stuffed.”

I soon had reason to try to remember that invitation exactly, for I was compelled to learn this state of his right through; but I was almost certain that there was nothing dionysiac about him at all that evening, no lightning flash of unnatural gaiety. It was probable that his ease and pleasure with Rosalind made his spirits appear higher than they were. In reality, he was still borne down, though he could appear carefree as he entertained Rosalind or laughed at me.

Sir Oulstone Lyall was seventy years of age that autumn, and scholars in all the oriental subjects had arranged this meeting as a compliment. It was arranged for the Thursday afternoon in the rooms of the British Academy. There were to be accounts of the contemporary position in various fields of scholarship — with the intention of bringing out, in a discreet and gentlemanly way, the effect and influence of Lyall’s own work. It was a custom borrowed from German scholars, and the oldfashioned did not like it. Nevertheless, most of the orientalists in the country came to the meeting.

The Master travelled up from Cambridge that morning and lunched with Roy and me. Away from the Lodge, he was in his most lively form, and it was he who first made a light remark about Sir Oulstone.

“Between ourselves,” said the Master, “it’s a vulgar error to suppose that distinguished scholars are modest souls who shrink from the glory. Knighthoods and addresses on vellum — that’s the way to please distinguished scholars. I advise you to study the modesty of our venerable friend this afternoon.”

Roy laughed very loudly. There was something wild in the sound; at once I was worried. I wished I could get him alone.

“And if you want to observe human nature in the raw,” said the Master, jumping into his favourite topic, “it’s a very interesting point whether you ought to go out and find a pogrom or just watch some of our scientific colleagues competing for honours.”

“How did Lyall get there?” said Roy, in a piercing insistent tone.

“Between ourselves,” the Master replied, “I’ve always felt that he was rather an old humbug.”

“I’ve heard a story about Erzberger. Master, do you remember anything?” said Roy, with abnormal concentration.

The Master did remember. He was himself modest and humble, his professional life was blameless. But he was always ready to indulge in a detached, abstract and cheerful cynicism. He did not notice that Roy’s glance was preternaturally attentive and acute — or perhaps he was stimulated by it.

For the rest of our lunch until it was time to walk up to Piccadilly, he told Roy what he knew of Lyall and Erzberger. The Master had actually met Erzberger when they were both young men.

“He was an astonishingly ugly Jew. I thought he was rather pushful and aggressive. He once asked me — ‘What does an outsider like me have to do to get a fellowship?’” But, so we gathered from the Master, he was brilliantly clever, and had a rarer gift than cleverness, a profound sense of reality. He went to work with Lyall, and they published several papers together on the medieval trade routes in Central Asia. “It was generally thought that the real views were Erzberger’s.” Then there was an interval of several years, in which Erzberger told a good many people that he was preparing a major work. “He never believed in underrating himself.” He had never been healthy, and he died in his thirties of consumption. No unfinished work was ever published, but two years after his death Lyall produced his own magnum opus, the foundation of his fame, on the subject on which they had worked together. In the preface he acknowledged his gratitude to his lamented friend Erzberger for some fruitful suggestions, and regretted his untimely death.