Charles Snow - The Light and the Dark

He added severely: “One will have to think twice about accepting invitations — if there’s a risk of being made miserable. One will just have to refuse.”

It sounded heartless. In a sense, it came from too much heart. It was the cool, like Lady Boscastle, who could bear to look at others’ wretchedness. Her husband became hurt, troubled, angry — angry with the person whose wretchedness embarrassed him so much.

When I went out into the street, I stood undecided, unable to make up my mind. Should I look in at the ball where Roy was dancing — to ease my mind, to see if he was there? Sometimes any action seemed soothing: it was better than waiting passively to hear bad news. It was difficult to check myself, I began to walk to the ball. Then, quite involuntarily, the mood turned within me. I retraced my steps, I went down the empty street towards my rooms.

I slept fitfully, heard the last dance from the college hall, and then woke late. Bidwell did not wake me at nine o’clock; when he drew up the blind, he told me that he had let me sleep on after last night’s party. He also told me that he had not seen Roy that morning: Roy had not been to bed nor come in to breakfast.

I got up with a veil of dread in front of the bright morning. I ate a little breakfast, read the newspaper without taking it in, read one or two letters. Then Roy himself entered. He was still wearing his dress suit: he was not smiling, but he was absolutely calm. I had never seen him so calm.

“I’ve been waiting about outside,” he said. “Until you’d finished breakfast. Just like a pupil who daren’t disturb you.”

“ What have you done ?” I cried.

“Nothing,” said Roy.

I did not believe him.

“You have finished now, haven’t you? I didn’t want to hurry you, Lewis.” He looked at me with a steady, affectionate glance. “If you’re ready — will you come into the garden?”

Without a word between us, we walked through the courts. Young men were sitting on the window sills, some of them still in evening clothes; through an open window, we heard a breakfast party teasing each other, the women’s voices excited and high.

Roy unlocked the garden gate. The trees and lawns opened to us; no sight had ever seemed so peaceful. The palladian building stood tranquil under a cloudless summer sky.

“ What have you done ?” I cried again.

“Nothing,” said Roy.

His face was grave, quite without strain, absolutely calm. He said: “I’ve done nothing. You expected me to break out, didn’t you? No, it left me all of a sudden. I’ve done nothing.”

Then I believed him. I had an instant of exhausted ease. But Roy said: “It’s not so good, you know. I’ve done nothing. But I’ve seen it all. Now I know what I need to expect.”

His words were quiet, light, matter-of-fact. Suddenly they pierced me. They came from an affliction greater than any horror. No frantic act could have damaged him like this. Somehow his melancholy had vanished in an instant; during the night it had broken, not into violence, but into this clear sight. At last he had given up struggling. He had seen his fate.

“It’s not easy to take,” said Roy.

He looked at me, and said: “You’ve always known that I should realise it in the end.”

“I was afraid so,” I said.

“That’s why I hid things from you.” He paused, and then went on: “I don’t see it as you do. But I see that I can’t change myself. One must be very fond of oneself not to want to change. I can’t believe that anyone would willingly stay as I am. Well, I suppose I must try to get used to the prospect.”

He did not smile. There was a humorous flick to the words, but the humour was jet-black.

“Shall I go mad?” he asked quietly.

I said: “I don’t know enough.”

“Somehow I don’t think so,” said Roy with utter naturalness. “I believe that I shall go through the old hoops. I shall have these stretches of abject misery. And I shall have fits when I feel larger than life and can’t help bursting out. And the rest of the time—”

“For the rest of the time you’ll get more out of life than anyone. Just as you always have done. You’ve got the vitality of three men.”

“Except when—”

I interrupted him again.

“That’s the price you’ve got to pay. You’ve felt more deeply than any of us. You’ve learned far more of life. In a way, believe this, you’ve known more richness. For all that — you’ve got to pay a price.”

“Just so,” said Roy, who did not want to argue. “But no one would choose to live such a life.”

“There is no choice,” I said.

“I’ve told you before, you’re more robust than I am. You were made to endure.”

“So will you endure.”

He gazed at me. He did not reply for a moment. Then he said, as though casually: “I shall always think it might have been different. I shall think it might have been different — if I could have believed in God. Or even if I could throw myself into a revolution. Even the one that you don’t like. Our friends don’t like it much either.”

The thought diverted him, and he said in a light tone: “If I told them all I’d done — some of our friends would have some remarkable points to make. Fancy telling Francis Getliffe the whole story. He would look like a judge and say I must have manic-depressive tendencies.”

For the first time that morning, Roy gave a smile. “Very wise,” he said, “I could have told him that when I was at school. If that were all.”

He talked, concealing nothing, about how the realisation had come. It had been in the middle of the night. Rosalind was dancing with an acquaintance. Roy was smoking a cigarette outside the ballroom.

“It had been breaking through for a long time. Some of my escapes were pretty — unconvincing. You would have seen that if I hadn’t kept you away. Perhaps you did. But in the end it seemed to come quite sharply. It was as sharp as when I have to lash out. But it wasn’t such fun. Everything became terribly lucid. It was the most lucid moment I’ve ever had. It was dreadful.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I shall be lucky if I forget it. It was like one of the dreams of God. But I knew that I could not get over this, I had seen how things must come.”

“Lewis,” he said, “if someone gave me a mirror in which I could see myself in ten years’ time — I should not be able to look.”

We had been sitting down; now, without asking each other, we walked round the garden. The scent of syringa was overmastering in that corner of the garden, and it was only close to that one could pick up the perfume of the rose.

“It’s not over,” said Roy. “We’ve got some way to go, haven’t we?”

His step was light and poised on the springy turf. After dancing all night, he was not tired.

“So we can be as close as we used to be,” he said. “I hope you can bear it. You won’t need to look after me now. There will be nothing to look after.”

He was speaking with extreme conviction. He took it for granted that I should understand and believe. He spoke with complete intimacy, but without any trace of mischief. He said gravely: “I should like to be some good to you. I need to make up for lost time.”

I had thought, at the dinner party in the Adlon, how in England it was still natural for men like Roy and me to have our introductions to those in power. I thought it again, at the beginning of the war; for, within a few days, Roy had been asked for by a branch of intelligence, Francis Getliffe had become assistant superintendent of one of the first radar establishments, I was a civil servant in Whitehall. And so with a good many of our Cambridge friends. It was slick, automatic, taken for granted. The links between the universities and “government” were very strong. They happened, of course, as a residue of privilege; the official world in England was still relatively small and compact; when in difficulties it asked who was a useful man, and brought him in.