Charles Snow - The Light and the Dark

He was a big man, tall, loose-framed, dark-haired, and dark-skinned. He looked older than his age; his face was mature, adult and decided. As he greeted us, there was great warmth in his large, dark, handsome eyes. He was dressed in old flannels and a thin calico coat, but he talked to Rosalind as though he also had been to a smart lunch, and he settled down between her and me without any sign that this was a first meeting.

“How’s the book going?” asked Roy.

“It’s very gratifying,” said Udal. “There doesn’t seem to be a copy left in Cambridge.”

“Excellent,” said Roy, without blinking, without a quiver on his solemn face.

Udal had arrived back from Italy the day before.

“Didn’t you adore Italy? Were the women lovely? What were you doing there?” asked Rosalind.

“Looking at churches,” said Udal amiably. Rosalind had just remembered that he was a clergyman. She looked uncomfortable, but Udal was prepared to talk about anything she wanted. He thought the women were beautiful in Venetia and Friulia, but not in the South. He suggested that one required a dash of nordic blood to produce anything more than youthful comeliness. He had gone about with his eyes open, and spoke without inhibition. Rosalind was discomfited.

She was discomfited again when, with the same ease, he began talking of his practical requirements.

“Roy,” he said, “it’s time I found a job.”

“Just so,” said Roy.

“You don’t mind me talking about myself?” Udal said affably to Rosalind and me. “But I wanted to see Roy about my best moves. I’m not much good at these things.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said to Roy. “A country living would suit me down to the ground. I can make do on three hundred a year. And it would mean plenty of leisure. I shouldn’t get so much leisure in any other way.”

“That’s true,” said Roy.

“How do I set about getting one?”

“Difficult,” said Roy. “I don’t think you can straightaway.”

They talked about tactics. Udal knew exactly what he wanted; but he was oddly unrealistic about the means. He seemed to think it would be easy to persuade the college to give him a living. Roy, on the other hand, was completely practical. He scolded Udal for indulging in make-believe, and told him what to do; he must take some other job at once, presumably a curacy; then he must “nurse” the college livings committee, he must become popular with them, he must unobtrusively keep his existence before them. He must also cultivate any bishop either he or Roy could get to know.

Udal took it well. He was not proud; he accepted the fact that Roy was more worldly and acute.

“I’ll talk to people. I’ll spy out the land,” said Roy. He smiled. “I may even make old Lewis get himself put on the livings committee.”

“Do what you can,” said Udal.

Rosalind was upset. She could not understand. She could not help asking Udal: “Doesn’t it worry you?”

“Doesn’t what worry me?”

“Having — to work it all out,” she said.

“I manage to bear it. Would it worry you?”

“No, of course not. But I thought someone in your position—”

“You mean that I’m supposed to be a religious man,” said Udal. “But religious people are still ordinary humans, you know.”

“Does it seem all right to you?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said.

“I’m afraid I still think it’s peculiar.” She appealed to Roy. “Roy, don’t you think so?”

“No,” he said. “Not in the least.”

His tone was clear and final. Suddenly I realised she was making a mistake in pressing Udal. She was exposing a rift between herself and Roy. In other things she would have felt him getting further away: but here she was obtuse.

“I’m not able to speak from the inside,” said Roy. “But I believe religion can include anything. It can even include,” his face, which had been grave, suddenly broke into a brilliant, malicious smile, “the fact that Ralph hasn’t just called on me — for valuable advice.”

“That’s not fair,” said Udal. For a moment he was put out.

“You need someone to unbelt. I’m sure you do.”

“I am short of money,” said Udal.

“Just so,” said Roy.

Roy’s gibe had been intimate and piercing, but Udal had recovered his composure. He turned to Rosalind.

“You expect too much of us, you know. You expect us to be perfect — and then you think the rest of the world just go about sleeping with each other.”

Rosalind blushed. Earthy as she was, she liked a decent veil: while he had the casual matter-of-fact touch that one sometimes finds in those who have not gone into the world, or have withdrawn from it.

“You’re not correct either way, if you’ll forgive me,” Udal went on. “Roy here wouldn’t let me call him a religious man yet: but do you think he’s done nothing so far but chase his pleasures? He’s already done much odder things than that, you know. And I’m inclined to think he will again. I’m just waiting.”

He spoke lightly, but with immense confidence. Then he smiled to himself.

“This is the right life for me, anyway,” he said. “It will give me all I want.”

“Will it?” said Rosalind sharply.

He was relaxed, strong in his passiveness.

But she opposed her own strength, that of someone who had gone into the world and could imagine no other life. It was not a strength to be despised. Udal looked at her, and his face was no more settled than hers.

Roy watched them with a glance that was penetrating, acute, and, it suddenly seemed to me, envious of each of them.

From the afternoon when he forced me to confide, my relation with Roy became changed. Before, he had seemed a gifted and interesting young man whose temperament interested me, whom I listened to when he was despondent, whom I liked seeing when I had the time. Now he had reached out to me. He had put self aside, risked snubs, pierced all the defence I could throw in his way. He had made me accept him as an intimate on even terms. Insensibly, perhaps before I knew it, my friendship with him became the deepest of my life.

I had met him first, as I have said, when he was a boy of fifteen. It was only for an hour, but the circumstances were strange, and had stayed in my memory. For Roy had fallen in love, with an innocent and ecstatic adolescent passion, with a young man whom I knew. His innocence made him indiscreet — or perhaps, even then, he cared nothing for what people thought. At any rate, there was a commotion among a group of my acquaintances. Roy was brought in to tell his story: and I remember him, entirely composed, his face already sad when he was not smiling, although his smile was brilliantly and boyishly gay. His speech was curiously precise, and one heard the echoes of that precision years later; as an affirmative when we questioned him, he used a clear “just so”.

The story was hushed up. Roy’s father behaved with a mixture of energy, practical sense, and an obstinate refusal to believe that his son could do anything irregular or eccentric. Roy himself was not embarrassed by the incident either then or later. I sometimes thought, in fact, that it gave him an added and gentler sympathy. He was not the man to respect any conventions but his own. With his first-hand knowledge of life, he knew that any profound friendship must contain a little of the magic of love. And he was always as physically spontaneous as an Italian. He liked physical contact and endearing words. He would slip his arm into a friend’s on the way to hall or as the team went out to field: if anyone had recalled that scandal of the past, he would only have met Roy’s most mischievous and mocking grin.