Charles Snow - The Light and the Dark

One February afternoon, I met Joan in the court. I asked first about her mother. She looked at me with her direct, candid gaze: then her face, which had been heavy with sadness, lost it all as she laughed.

“That’s just like Roy,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Asking the unexpected question. Particularly when it’s right. Of course, she’s going through more than he is at present. She will, until she’s told him. After that, I don’t know, Lewis. I haven’t seen enough of death to be sure. It may still be worse for her.” She spoke gravely, with a strange authority, as though she were certain of her reserves of emotional power. Then she smiled, but looked at me like an enemy. She said: “Has Roy learned some of his tricks from you?”

“I have learned them from him,” I said. She did not believe it. She resented me, I knew. She resented the times he agreed with me; she thought I over-persuaded him. She envied the casual intimacy between us which I took for granted, for which she would have given so much. She would have given so much to have, as I did, the liberty of his rooms. Think of seeing him whenever she wanted! She loved him from the depth of her warm and powerful nature. Her love was already romantic, sacrificial, dedicated. Yet she longed too for the dear prosaic domestic nearnesses of everyday.

It was a Sunday when I spoke to Joan; the Wednesday after Roy’s name was on the dining list for hall, but he did not come. Late at night, long after the porter’s last round at ten o’clock, he entered my room without knocking and stood on the hearth-rug looking down at me. His face was drawn and set.

“Where have you been?” I said.

“In the lodge. Looking after Lady Mu.”

“She told him this afternoon,” he added, in a flat, exhausted voice. “She needed someone to look after her. She wouldn’t have been able to cope.”

“Joan?”

“Joan was extremely good. She’s very strong.”

He paused, and said quietly: “I’ll tell you later, old boy. I need to do something now. Let’s go out. I’d like to drive over to—” the town where we had both lived — “and have a blind with old George. I can’t. They may want me tomorrow. Let’s go to King’s. There’s bound to be a party in King’s. I need to get out of the college.”

We found a party in King’s, or at least some friends to talk and drink with. Roy drank very little, but was the gayest person there. I was watching for the particular glitter of which I was afraid, the flash in which his gaiety turned sinister and frantic. But it did not come. He quietened down, and young men clustered round to ask him to next week’s parties. He was gentle to the shy ones, and by the time we set off home was resigned, quiet and composed.

We let ourselves into college by the side door, and walked through the court. When we came in sight of the Lodge windows, one light was still shining.

“I wonder,” said Roy, “if he can sleep tonight.”

It was a fine clear night, not very cold. We stood together gazing at the lighted window.

Roy said quietly: “I’ve never seen such human misery and loneliness as I did today.”

I glanced up at the stars, innumerable, brilliant, inhumanly calm. Roy’s eyes followed mine, and he spoke with desolating sadness.

“I hate the stars,” he said.

We went to his rooms in silence, and he made tea. He began to talk, in a subdued and matter-of-fact tone, about the Master and Lady Muriel. They had never got on. It had not been a happy marriage. They had never known each other. Both Roy and I had guessed that for a long time past, and Joan knew it. I had once heard Joan talk of it to Roy. And he, who knew so much of sexual love, accepted the judgment of this girl, who was technically “innocent”. “I don’t believe,” said Joan, direct and uncompromising, “that they ever hit it off physically.”

Yet, as Roy said that night, they had lived together for twenty-five years. They had had children. They had had some kind of life together. They had not been happy, but each was the other’s only intimate. Perhaps they felt more intimate in the supreme crisis just because of the unhappiness they had known in each other. It was not always those who were flesh of each other’s flesh who were most tied together.

So, with that life behind them, she had to tell him. She screwed up her resolve, “and if I know Lady Mu at all, poor dear,” said Roy, “she rushed in and blurted it out. She hated it too much to be able to tell him gently. Poor dear, how much she would have liked to be tender.”

He did not reproach her for not having told him before, he did not hate her, he scarcely seemed aware of her presence. He just said: “This alters things. There’s no future then. It’s hard to think without a future.”

He had had no suspicion, but he did not mind being fooled. He did not say a word about it. He was thinking of his death.

She could not reach him to comfort him. No one could reach him. She might as well not be there.

That was what hurt her most, said Roy, and he added, with a sad and bitter protest, “we’re all egotists and self-regarding to the last, aren’t we? She didn’t like not mattering. And yet when she left him, it was intolerable to see a human being as unhappy as she was. I told you before, I’ve never seen such misery and loneliness. How could I comfort her? I tried, but whatever could I do? She’s not been much good to him. She feels that more than anyone thinks. Now, at the end, all she can do is to tell him this news. And he didn’t seem to mind what she said.”

Roy was speaking very quietly. He was speaking from the depth of his dark sense of life.

Silently, we sat by the dying fire. At last Roy said: “We’re all alone, aren’t we? Each one of us. Quite alone.” He asked: “Old boy — how does one reach another human being?”

“Sometimes one thinks one can in love.”

“Just so,” he said. After a time, he added: “Yet, sometimes after I’ve made love, I’ve lain with someone in my arms and felt lonelier than ever in my life.”

He broke out: “If she was miserable and lonely today, what was it like to be him? Can anyone imagine what it’s like to know your death is fixed ?”

After she left him, Lady Muriel had gone to his room once again, to enquire about his meals. Joan had visited him for a few minutes. He had asked to be left alone for the evening. That was all Roy knew of his state.

“Can you imagine what he’s gone through tonight? Is he lying awake now? Do you think his dreams are cheating him?”

Roy added: “I don’t believe he’s escaped the thought of death tonight. It must he dreadful to face your death. I wonder how ours will come.”

When he knew the truth, it was a long time before the Master asked to see any of his friends. He told Roy, who alone was allowed to visit him, that he wished to “get used to the idea”.

He talked to Roy almost every day. Throughout those weeks, he saw no one else, except his family and his doctor. He no longer mentioned the book on the heresies. He said much less than he used to. He was often absent-minded, as though he were trying to become familiar with his fate.

Then there came a time, Roy told me, as his own spirits darkened, when the Master seemed to have thought enough of his condition. He seemed to have got bored — it was Roy’s phrase, and it was not said lightly — with the prospect of death. He had faced it so far as he could. For a time he wanted to forget. And he became extraordinarily considerate.

That was at the end of term, and he invited us to call on him one by one — not for his sake, but for ours. In his detached and extreme consideration, he knew that each of us wanted to feel of some help to him. He felt, with a touch of his old sarcasm, that he could give us that last comfort.