Charles Snow - The Light and the Dark

Of all our friends, I was much the luckiest. Francis Getliffe’s job was more important (he broke his health in getting the warning sets ready in time for the air battle of 1940 — and then went on obstinately to improvise something for the night fighters), Roy’s was more difficult, but mine was the most interesting by far. My luck in practical matters had never deserted me, and I landed on my feet, right in the middle of affairs. I was attached to a small ministry which had, on paper, no particular charge; in fact, it was used as a convenient ground for all kinds of special investigations, interdepartmental committees, secret meetings. These had to be held somewhere, and came to us simply because of the personality of our minister. It was his peculiar talent to be this kind of handy man. I became the assistant to his Permanent Secretary, and so, by sheer chance, gained an insight into government such as I had no right to hope for. In normal times it could not have come my way, since one can only live one life. It was a constant refreshment during the long dark shut-in years.

At times it was the only refreshment. For I went through much trouble at that period. My wife died in the winter of 1939. Everyone but Roy thought it must be a relief and an emancipation, but they did not know the truth. That was a private misery which can be omitted here. But there was another misery which I ought to mention for a moment. I was often distressed about the war, in two quite different ways. And so was Roy, though in his own fashion.

I will speak of myself first, for my distresses were commonplace. I often forgot them in the daytime; for it was fun to go into Whitehall, attend meetings, learn new techniques, observe men pushing for power, building their empires, very much as in the college but with more hanging on the result; it was fun to go with the Minister to see a new weapon being put into production, to stay for days in factories and watch things of which I used to be quite ignorant; it was fun to watch the Minister himself, unassuming, imperturbably discreet, realistic, resilient and eupeptically optimistic.

But away from work I could not sustain that stoical optimism. For the first three years of the war, until the autumn of 1942, I carried a weight of fear. I was simply frightened that we should lose. It was a perfectly straightforward fear, instinctive and direct. The summer of 1940 was an agony for me: I envied — and at times resented — the cheerful thoughtless invincible spirits of people round me, but I thought to myself that the betting was 5–1 against us. I felt that, as long as I lived, I should remember walking along Whitehall in the pitiless and taunting sun.

As long as I lived. I also knew a different fear, one of which I was more ashamed, a fear of being killed. When the bombs began to fall on London, I discovered that I was less brave than the average of men. I was humiliated to find it so. I could just put some sort of face on it, but I dreaded the evening coming, could not sleep, was glad of an excuse to spend a night out of the town. It was not always easy to accept one’s nature. Somehow one expected the elementary human qualities. It was unpleasant to find them lacking. Most people were a good deal less frightened than I was — simple and humble people, like my housekeeper at Chelsea, the clerks in the office, those I met in the pubs of Pimlico. And most of my friends were brave beyond the common, which made me feel worse. Francis Getliffe was a man of cool and disciplined courage. Lady Muriel was unthinkingly gallant, and Joan as staunch in physical danger as in unhappy love. And Roy had always been extremely brave.

He noticed, of course, that I was frightened. He did not take it as seriously as I did. Like many men who possess courage, he did not value it much. Without my knowing, he took a flat for me in Dolphin Square, the great steel-and-concrete block on the embankment, about a mile from my house. He told me mischievously, sensibly, that it was important I should be able to sleep. He also told me that he had consulted Francis Getliffe upon the safest place in the safest type of building. London was emptying, and it was easy to have one’s pick. He had incidentally given Francis the impression that he was enquiring for his own sake. He made it seem that he was abnormally preoccupied about his own skin. It was the kind of trick that he could not resist bringing out for Francis. Francis replied with scientific competence — “between the third and seventh floor in a steel frame” — and thought worse of Roy than ever. Roy grinned.

For himself, Roy did not pay any attention to such dangers. He gave most acquaintances the impression that he did not care at all. They thought the war had not touched him.

He worked rather unenthusiastically in a comfortable government job. He stayed at the office late, as we all did, but he did not tire himself with the obsessed devotion that he had once spent on his manuscripts. At night he went out into the dark London streets in search of adventure. He found a lot of reckless love affairs. He gave parties in the flat in Connaught Street, he went all over the town in chase of women, and often, just as I used to find so strange when he was a younger man, he went to bed with someone for a single night and then forgot her altogether. Rosalind often came to see him, but, when the air-raids started, she tried to persuade him to meet her out of London. He would not go.

It was an existence which people blamed as irresponsible, trivial, out of keeping with the time. He attracted a mass of disapproval, heavier than in the past. Even Lady Muriel wondered how he could bear to be out of uniform. I told her that, having once been forced into this particular job, he would never get permission to leave. But she was baffled, puzzled, only partially appeased. All her young relations were fighting. Even Humphrey was being trained as an officer in motor torpedo boats. She was too loyal to condemn Roy, but she did not know what to think.

I saw more of him than I had done since my early days in Cambridge. Our intimacy had returned, more unquestioning because of the time we had been kept at a distance. We knew each other all through now, and we depended on each other more than we had ever done. For these were times when only the deepest intimacy was any comfort. Casual friends could not help; they were more a tax than strangers. We were each in distress; in our different ways we were hiding it. We had both aged; I had become guarded, middle-aged, used to the official life, patient and suspicious; he was lighter in speech than ever, not serious now even though it hurt others not to be serious, dissipated, purposeless and without hope. He was still kind by nature, perhaps more kind than when he thought he would come through; he was often lively; but he could see no meaning in his life.

No one could know why we had changed so much, unless they knew all that had happened to us. That we had never told in full. We each had women friends to whom we confided something; Joan knew a great deal about Roy, and there were others who understood part of his story. It was the same with me. It was only in extremity that we needed to be known for what we truly were. That extremity had now come for both of us. We needed to be looked at by eyes that had seen everything, would not be fooled, were clear and pitiless, and whose knowledge was complete; we needed too the compassion of a heart which had known despair. So we turned to each other for comfort, certain that we should find knowledge, acceptance, humour and love.

I knew that he was suffering more than I. It was not the war, though it had become tied up with that — for many states of unhappiness are like a vacuum which fills itself with whatever substance comes to hand. The vacuum would remain, if whatever was now filling it were taken away. So with Roy: the cause lay elsewhere. War or no war, he would have been tormented. If there had been no war, the vacuum would have filled itself with a different trouble. For the wound could not heal: as soon as he realised that his melancholy was an act of fate, that he could not throw off his affliction by losing himself in faith, he could see nothing to look forward to.