Charles Snow - Last Things

From the window, there was the view over Tyburn gardens which I had seen so often, waking him in the morning, that now I didn’t see at all. The shelves round the room were stacked with books, which, with a streak of possessive conservatism, he refused to have touched: the geological strata of his books since he began to read, children’s stories, C S Lewis, Henry Treece, other historical novels, Shakespeare, Latin texts, Greek texts, Russian texts, political treatises, modern histories, school prizes, Dostoevsky. Under the shelves were piles of games, those also not to be touched. Once or twice Margaret glanced at them as the wife of Pastor Brand might have done. We didn’t know where he was, nor precisely when to expect him. There had been a cable from Constantinople, asking for money. He had had to stop for days in an Anatolian village; that was all the news.

‘Well,’ said Margaret, looking at the childhood room, ‘I think it’s how he likes it, isn’t it? I hope he will.’

On the bright chilly April days we were listening for the telephone. But, while we were waiting for news of him, we received other news which we weren’t waiting for: two other pieces of news for which we were utterly unprepared, arriving in the same twenty-four hours.

The first came in the morning post, among a batch of press cuttings. It was an article from a paper, which, though it was well known, I didn’t usually read. The title was simply Secret Society , and at the first glance was an attack on the new Government’s ‘back-room pundits’. There was nothing specially new in that. The Government was already unpopular with the Press: this paper was thought of as an organ of the centre, but a lot of abuse was coming from the centre. Like most people who had lived or written in public, I was used to the sight of my own name, I was at the same time reading and not reading. Lord Getliffe. Mounteney. Constantine and Arthur Miles. Sir Walter Luke. Sir Lewis Eliot…

The writer didn’t like us at all, not any of us. That didn’t matter much. What did matter was that he had done some research. Some of his facts were wrong or twisted, but quite a number true. He had done some neat detective work on the meetings (‘grey eminence’ meetings) which we used to hold, through the years when the present Government was in opposition, in Brown’s Hotel. He reported in detail how Francis had been offered a post in October; he knew the time of Francis’ visit to Downing Street, not only the day but the hour. But what made me angry was the simple statement that the same offer might soon be made to me.

Whatever I said, I shouldn’t be believed, I told Margaret. No correction made any difference. That was an invariable rule of public life.

‘It’s a nuisance,’ she said.

‘It’s worse than that. If they were thinking of asking me, they wouldn’t now.’

‘That doesn’t matter. You know it doesn’t.’

‘Even things I don’t specially want, I don’t like these people sabotaging. Which, of course, is the whole idea.’

Margaret said – and it was true – that I was upset out of all proportion.

That afternoon, Margaret went out, and it was after teatime before she joined me in the drawing-room. She looked at me: she knew, better than anyone, that my moods, once set, were hard for me to break, and that I had been regressing to the morning’s news.

‘I’ve got something else for you,’ she said.

I replied, without interest. ‘Have you?’

‘I’ve been to see Muriel.’

That didn’t stir me. I said again: ‘Oh, have you?’

‘She’s got rid of Pat.’

At last I was listening.

‘She’s got rid of him.’

‘Does she mean it?’

‘Oh yes, she means it. It’s for good and all.’

Margaret said, she hadn’t begun to guess. Nor had I. Nor, so far as we knew, had Azik or Rosalind. Possibly not the young man himself. It was true, Muriel had remained at Eaton Square, a couple of months now since the baby was born: but that seemed to us like a spoiled young woman who enjoyed being looked after. Not a bit of it. During that time she had, with complete coolness, telling no one except her solicitor, been organising the break. Her solicitor was to dispose of the Chelsea flat: he was to buy a house where she would take the baby. She had sent for Pat the evening before, just to tell him that she didn’t wish to see him again and that an action for divorce would, of course, go through. So far as Margaret could gather, Muriel had been entirely calm during this interview, much less touched by Pat’s entreaties, wiles, sorrows and even threats than Margaret herself on a less critical occasion. It seemed to me strangely like Muriel’s father disposing of a college servant. In a methodical, businesslike fashion she had, immediately he left, written him a letter confirming what she had just said.

‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ said Margaret.

We felt, for the moment, nothing but surprise. It was clear that Muriel had made her decision months ago, kept it to herself, not altered it by a tremor, and worked out her plans. She didn’t seem heartbroken: she didn’t even seem outraged: she just behaved as though she had had enough of him. As we talked, Margaret and I were lost, neither of us could give any kind of insight, or even rationalisation. Why had she married him? Had she been determined to escape from a possessive mother? Her life, until she was twenty, had been shielded, by the standards of the day. Rosalind was both worldly and as watchful as a detective, and it had been difficult for Muriel not to stay a virgin. Perhaps Pat had been the most enterprising young man round her. Certainly he had contrived to seduce her: but there might have been some contrivance on her part too, so that she became pregnant and stopped any argument against the marriage. Yet all that seemed too mechanical to sound true. Was she one of those who were sexually avid and otherwise cold? Somehow that didn’t sound true either. Was it simply his running after women that made her tired of him? Or was that an excuse? She might have plans for the future, but if so those too she was keeping to herself. She might be looking for another husband. Alternatively, it seemed as likely that she had no use for men. Neither Margaret nor I would trust our judgment either way. She had her child, and that she must have wanted; Margaret said that in a singular manner, on the surface undisturbed, she was a devoted mother.

While we were still talking, still mystified – it must have been getting on for seven – there were Italian cries, our housekeeper’s, penetrating to us from rooms away, cries that soon we made out as excited greetings, which must come from the front door. ‘Here he is! Here he is!’ she was shouting, and Charles entered the room.

As Margaret embraced him, she broke out: ‘Why didn’t you let us know?’

‘Anyway, I’m here.’

He needed a shave, he was wearing a jacket, roll-top sweater and dirty jeans. It was the first time I had seen him sunburnt, and he wasn’t over-clean after the travel. He looked healthy but thin, his face, high-cheekboned, masculine, already set in the pattern that would stay until he was old. He stretched out on the sofa, long feet protruding over the end.

I asked him to have a drink. After Islamic countries, he was out of practice, he said: yes, he would like a gin. He began to describe his route home: we wanted to hear, we were glad to have him there, we were trying to throw off the beginning of the day. He was in high spirits, like one who has made a good voyage. Suddenly he threw his legs off the sofa, sat up straight, gazed at me with alert eyes.

‘You’re looking sombre,’ he said.

Of Margaret and me, I was the one whose face he could read the quicker.