Charles Snow - The Light and the Dark

Rosalind had two lines of attack ready planned. She was cunning, she had not been successful at her business for nothing; she knew it was worse than useless for a move to come from Roy’s friends. The only hope was to get hold of people of influence. She wanted two different kinds of plea: first, by the leading orientalists, to say that as a scholar he was irreplaceable; second, by officials, to say that he was needed for a special job in an office. She was cunning but she did not know her way about this world; she needed me to tell her where to try.

She had no luck that afternoon. I sent her to old Foulkes, who was back in uniform again, a brigadier at the War Office. He had worked there seven days a week since the beginning of the war. I took her to the door in the side street, and waited on the pavement. It was an hour before she came out. She was angry and downcast. “I don’t believe the old idiot has ever seen a woman before. Oh, I suppose he’s rather sweet, but it’s just my luck to find someone who’s not susceptible.” Foulkes had told her that her husband had a European reputation. “Tell anyone so. Often do. Only man to keep our end up.” Rosalind parodied Foulkes ill-temperedly. But Foulkes would not say a word that would stand in the way of a man who wanted to fight. He had heard his colleagues wonder why Calvert had thrown up a safe job. “I’ve told them,” Foulkes had said, with his usual vigour. “No mystery. No mystery at all. He just wants to fight for his country. Proud of him. So ought you to be,” he had finished at great speed.

There was no other scholar in reach that day; and the officials who might be useful had all gone home for the weekend. Rosalind was frustrated, aching for something to do; but I persuaded her there was nothing, at least for the moment, and she returned to Curzon Street for tea. When I saw her next, as I arrived there for dinner that same night, I noticed at once that she was more restless. She was savage in her concern.

I was surprised to see the table laid for four. I had expected that Joan would spare herself; but she had decided with tough, masochistic endurance, to stick it out, and meet Roy’s wife and child. Both Joan and Lady Muriel agreed that it was a beautiful baby. I watched Joan nurse it with an envious satisfaction, a satisfaction that to my astonishment seemed stronger than envy. Her voice, like her mother’s, was warm and loving when she spoke to it.

At dinner she was far more at her ease than Rosalind, who sat silent, dark-faced, going over her plans. Joan tried to cheer her up. I was not prepared for such magnanimity. And I was not prepared to hear Rosalind suddenly tell them that she intended to go to any lengths to get Roy out.

“Behind his back?” Lady Muriel enquired.

“It’s the only way,” said Rosalind.

“I should consider that quite unsuitable, Mrs Calvert,” said Lady Muriel.

“You can’t, Rosalind,” cried Joan. “You can’t do such a thing.”

“I may want you to introduce me to people,” said Rosalind to Lady Muriel.

“I couldn’t think of it without Roy’s permission,” said Lady Muriel, outraged, shocked to the core. “I know he would not consider giving it. It would be unforgivable to go behind his back.”

Rosalind had not expected such opposition. She had wanted Lady Muriel as an ally. Now she was dejected, angry, hostile.

“If you were his wife,” she said, “you wouldn’t be so ready to do nothing.”

Joan put in: “I know how you feel.” Her face was heavy: she spoke with deep emotion. “We should all feel like that. It’s awful to do nothing. But you’ve got to think of him.”

“I’m thinking of nothing else—”

“I mean in another way. He has made his choice, Rosalind. It wasn’t an easy choice, surely you must know. It came out of all he’s gone through. He hasn’t had an easy life. You must leave him free. You can’t presume to interfere with him. There are some parts of anyone’s life — however much you love them — that you have to force yourself to leave alone.”

She was consumed with feeling. She leaned forward and asked Rosalind, in a quiet low tone: “Do you deny for a moment that Roy would say the same?”

“Of course he’d say the same,” said Rosalind. “He’d have to. He’s too proud to do anything else. But—”

“He’s not proud,” cried Joan. “No one could possibly be less proud. This is so much deeper, it’s part of him, surely you must see.” She hesitated, and then spoke sternly, almost harshly: “Perhaps this will make you understand. You know that I loved him?”

“Yes.”

“I would go to him now if he called me. Well, if he had been mine — I should have done what I’m telling you to do. It would have been agony — it is agony enough now, don’t you see? — but I should have left him alone.”

For a moment Rosalind was overawed by the passionate force of the other woman. Then Rosalind said: “I’ve got to keep him alive.”

They looked at each other with dislike and misunderstanding. They would never understand each other. They knew him quite differently, I thought. Joan knew the struggle of his spirit, his melancholy, his tragic experience, better than any woman. Rosalind did not seem to know those at all. She paid no attention to the features which distinguished him among men. She knew him where he was like all other men — she took it for granted that, like all other men, he was frail, frightened, a liar to himself and her. She took him for granted as a creature of flesh and bone; whatever he said, whatever the dark moods, he longed to live.

Was that why he had married her? Had she given him a hope of the fibres, a hope of the press of life itself stronger than any despair?

I caught sight of Lady Muriel, stiff-necked, troubled, heavy-footedly leading the conversation away. She was horrified. Perhaps until that moment she had not let herself recognise her daughter’s love for Roy. Now it had been proclaimed in public: that was the final horror. Her sense of propriety was ravaged. It plucked away the screen behind which she had been trained to live. She gazed at her daughter with dismay, indignation — and an inarticulate pity.

Rosalind left London next day, and she did not confide her plan to me again. However, she sent me a note, saying that Roy had discovered what she was up to, and had stopped her. It was probably true, I thought, that he had found out. But I very much doubted whether it would stop her: she would merely take more care about her secrecy. For of us all she was the most single-minded. When she was set on a purpose, it was with every scrap of her body, cunning and will.

Yet she did not bring it off. I was certain that she was not deterred by Roy’s order. Probably she was only stopped by a more remote, abstract obstacle: it was next door to impossible to extract a trained pilot. I talked the whole affair over with the minister. He was the most adept of men at knowing when a door would give. He shook his head, and said it was too late.

After listening to Rosalind, I had to speak to Roy alone. He had borrowed a house in Cambridge for her and the baby; he was training on an East Anglian airfield, and it was long odds that he would be stationed on one the following spring; he could get back to Cambridge often. I wrote that I must see him; I would take an evening off: could he arrange to dine in hall one night?

When I arrived at the college, it was just before dinner time. Roy was waiting for me at the porter’s lodge. He was wearing one of his old elegant suits, and had a gown thrown over his shoulder.

“My dear old boy,” he said.

We walked through the court. It was half-past seven on an October night, and already dark. The lights at the foot of the staircases were very dim, and one could scarcely see the list of names. Mine was still there, the white paint very faded; when we passed Roy’s old staircase, we saw a new name where his had been.