Charles Snow - The Light and the Dark

I was half-ruffled, half-amused, when Roy rushed me away to another shop.

“I’m buying these books,” he said before I could protest. “Just lend me your name. I’ll settle tonight. Talking of names, Lord B. is staying at the Lodge tomorrow” (for Lord Boscastle was a real person, and his sister, Lady Muriel, was the Master’s wife).

Breathlessly we hurried from bookshop to bookshop, buying every copy of Udal’s book before half-past five. Roy sent them as presents, had them put down to my account, asked me to enquire for them myself.

As we left the last shop, Roy grinned.

“Well, that was quite a rush,” he said.

He insisted on paying three pounds for the books that had been put down to me — and, to tell the truth, I did not feel like stopping him.

“I suppose I’m right in thinking that Udal is a friend of yours?” I said.

Roy smiled.

On our way back to the college, he asked:: “Tell me, Lewis, are you extremely tired?”

“Not specially.”

“Nor am I. We need some nets. Let’s have some.”

We changed, and he drove me down to Fenner’s in the cold April evening. The freshman’s match was being played, and we watched the last overs of the day; then Roy bought a new ball in the pavilion, we went over to the nets, and I began to bowl to him. Precisely how good he was I found it difficult to be sure. He had a style, as in most things, of extreme elegance and ease; he seemed to need no practice at all, and the day after a journey abroad or a wild and sleepless night would play the first over with an eye as sure as if he had been batting all the summer. When he first came up, people had thought he might get into the university team, but he used to make beautiful twenties and thirties against first class bowling, and then carelessly give his wicket away.

He was fond of the game, and batted on this cold evening with a sleek lazy physical content. Given the new ball, I was just good enough a bowler to make him play. My best ball, which went away a little off the seam, he met with a back stroke from the top of his height, strong, watchful, leisurely and controlled. When I over-pitched them on the off, he drove with statuesque grace and measured power. He hit the ball very hard — but, when one watched him at the wicket, his strength was not so surprising as if one had only seen him upright and slender in a fashionable suit.

I bowled to him for half-an-hour, but my only success was to get one ball through and rap him on the pads.

“Promising,” said Roy.

Then we had a few minutes during which I batted and he bowled, but at that point the evening lost its decorum, for Roy suddenly ceased to be either graceful or competent when he ran up to bowl.

The ground was empty now, the light was going, chimes from the Catholic church rang out clearly in the quiet. We stopped to listen; it was the hour, it was seven o’clock. We walked across the ground and under the trees in the road outside. The night was turning colder still, and our breath formed clouds in the twilight air. But we were hot with exercise, and Roy did not put on his sweater, but knotted the sleeves under his chin. A few white petals fell on his shoulders on our way towards the car. His eyes were lit up as though he were smiling at my expense, and his face was at rest.

“At any rate, old boy,” he said, “you should be able to sleep tonight.”

The next morning, as I was going out of the college, I met the Master in the court.

“I was wanting to catch you, Eliot,” he said. “I tried to get you by telephone last night, but had no luck.”

He was a man of sixty, but his figure was well preserved, the skin of his cheeks fresh, rosy and unlined. He was continuously and excessively busy, yet his manner stayed brisk and cheerful; he complained sometimes of the books he had left unwritten or had still to write, but he was happier in committees, meetings, selection boards than in any other place. He was a profoundly humble man, and had no faith in anything original of his own. But he felt complete confidence in the middle of any society or piece of business; he went briskly about, cheerful and unaffected, indulging in familiar intimate whispers; he had never quite conquered his tongue, and if he was inspired by an amusing sarcasm he often was impelled to share it. He asked me to the Lodge for dinner the following night, in order to meet the Boscastles. “My wife’s note will follow, naturally, but I was anxious not to miss you.” It was clear that I was being invited to fill a gap, and the Master, whose manners were warm as well as good, wanted to make up for it.

“We’ve already asked young Calvert,” he went on, and dropped into his intimate whisper: “Between ourselves, my brother-in-law never has considered this was the state of life his sister was born to. I fancy she wants to present him with someone who might pass muster. It’s a very singular coincidence that we should possess a remarkably talented scholar who also cuts his hair. It’s much more than we could reasonably expect.”

I chuckled.

“Yes,” said the Master, “our young friend is distinctly presentable. Which is another strong reason for electing him, Eliot. The standard of our colleagues needs raising in that respect.”

I was left in no doubt that Roy had been invited to the original party, and that I was a reserve. The Master could not explain or apologise more, for, indiscreetly as he talked about fellows of the college, he was completely loyal to his wife. Yet it could not have escaped him that she was a formidable and grandiose snob. She was much else besides, she was a woman of character and power, but she was unquestionably a snob. I wondered if it surprised the Master as much as it did me, when I first noticed it. For he, the son of a Scottish lawyer, had not married Lady Muriel until he was middle-aged; he must have come strange to the Boscastles, and with some preconceptions about the aristocracy. In my turn, they were the first high and genuine aristocrats I had met; they were Bevills and the family had been solidly noble since the sixteenth century (which is a long time for a genuine descent); I had expected them to be less interested in social niceties than the middle classes were. I had not found it so. Nothing could be further from the truth. They did it on a grander scale, that was all.

On the night of the dinner party, I was the first guest to arrive, and the Master, Lady Muriel, and their daughter Joan were alone in the great drawing-room when I was announced.

“Good evening, Mr Eliot,” said Lady Muriel. “It is very good of you to come to see us at such short notice.”

I was slightly amused: that sounded like rubbing it in.

I was not allowed to chat; she had discovered that I had an interest in world affairs, and every time I set foot in the Lodge she began by cross-questioning me about the “latest trends”. She was a stiffly built heavy woman, her body seeming cylindrical in a black evening dress; she looked up at me with bold full tawny eyes, and did not let her gaze falter. Yet I had felt, from the first time I met her and she looked at me so, that there was something baffled about her, a hidden yearning to be liked — as though she were a little girl, aggressive and heavy among children smaller than herself, unable to understand why they did not love her.

Seeing her in her own family, one felt most of all that yearning and the strain it caused. In the long drawing-room that night, I looked across at her husband and her daughter. The Master was standing beside one of the lofty fire screens, his hand on a Queen Anne chair, trim and erect in his tails like a much younger man. He and Lady Muriel exchanged some words: there was loyalty between them, but no ease. And Joan, the eldest of the Royces’ children, a girl of eighteen, stood beside him, silent and constrained. Her face at the moment seemed intelligent, strong and sulky. When she answered a direct question from her mother, the friction sounded in each syllable. Lady Muriel sturdily asked another question in a more insistent voice.