Charles Snow - Last Things

That afternoon, walking past Palace Yard in one of the first autumn fogs, I was again mystified that I should be so serene. Work was going well, but there I wasn’t at the mercy of my moods; it would have gone as well if I had been cursing myself. Margaret and I were entertaining more than we usually did, catching up with friends and acquaintances, the Marches, the Roses, the Getliffes, Muriel, Vicky Shaw and her father. That was agreeable: but it wasn’t the origin of my present state.

The secret lay – though I should never have predicted it – in the sheer fact of saying no, in what Charles called my abdication. Certainly I had seen others, among them my brother Martin, gain a gratification out of giving up ‘the world’ – in Martin’s case, when he was very much in it and with the prizes dangling in front of him; he had become content, or even euphoric, out of great expectations denied. But that wasn’t so with me. This job of Walter Luke’s – orating in the fog-touched chamber – hadn’t been part of my own expectations. No, the satisfaction came, if I understood it at all, from one’s own will. In most of the events of a lifetime, the will didn’t play a part. We were tossed about in the stream, corks bobbing manfully, shouting confidently that they could go upstream if they felt inclined. Somehow, though, the corks, explaining that it would be foolish to go upstream, went on being carried the opposite way.

Very rarely one was able to exercise one’s will. Even then it might be an illusion, but it was an illusion that brought something like joy. It could happen when one was taking a risk or remaking a life. Sometimes I speculated whether people at the point of suicide felt this kind of triumph of the will. I should have liked to think that Sheila went out like that. What did Austin Davidson feel as he swallowed his pills and took what he believed to be his last drink?

Earlier, it would have been easy to ask him. No one would have been less embarrassed than Davidson, and he would have given an account of classical lucidity. During one of my visits that November, I began telling him of my experience, in the hope that I might lead on to his own. But I hadn’t realised, nor had Margaret, seeing him so often, how much further away he had slipped. When I told him that I had been offered the job, he said, eyes vacantly staring: ‘Did they give you a book?’

I wanted to leave it, but he insisted. I said, no, since I had refused, I didn’t get anything: and then, slowly, sickeningly slowly to one who had been so clever, I tried to explain. Government. Ministers. Politics.

He strained to comprehend, cheeks flushed. He managed to say: ‘No serious man has anything to do with politics.’

With relief at getting a little communication, I said that was a good apostolic pre-1914 sentiment. Then I hurried on, abandoning any attempt to try a new question. I went back to the familiar conversational forms. Those he could still understand, and, for some of the time (it was the longest of hours), take part in.

As soon as I returned home, I asked Margaret – what had been her impression of him earlier that week? Much as he usually was, she replied: not taking much interest, but he hadn’t done for months. I told her that I thought I saw – I might be imagining it – a difference. If I’d seen him for the first time that afternoon, I shouldn’t have given him long to go.

‘Of course it may just be a bad day,’ I said. ‘But I think you ought to be prepared.’

She nodded. ‘Yes, I am.’

Prepared, perhaps, both for loss and for relief. The strain of the long illness told on her more than on me, because it was she who loved him. If you loved – instead of being fond of – someone taking a long time to die, there were times when you wanted the release. What had been my mother’s phrase for it? A happy release. One of those hypocritical labels which half-revealed a truth. Then, when the release came, you felt the loss more, because it was mixed with guilt. As with so many consequences of love, what you lost on the swings you lost also on the roundabouts.

Meanwhile, I believed that I knew a way to give him pleasure. I had tried it once before – any more often, and he would have been suspicious. He was physically capable of reading, so the doctors said, and yet he refused even to glance at a newspaper. Still, one had to allow for remote chances. It meant a certain amount of contrivance, and a visit to my stockbroker.

Late the following week – I had seen him in the interval – I entered the familiar, the too familiar, hospital room, catching the smell of chrysanthemums and chemicals, with underneath the last echo of cigarette smoke and faeces. From the bed Davidson muttered, but it was not until I was facing him that he looked at me. Instead of sitting at the end of the bed, I carried a chair round to his left-hand side. It was becoming forlorn to expect that he would begin a conversation. I had to start straight off: ‘You’ve not lost your touch, you know.’

‘What are you talking about?’ he said in a dull tone.

‘I was telling you, you haven’t lost your touch. You’ve made me quite a bit of money.’

The bird-brown eyes flickered. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘You did some listening to financial pundits in your time, didn’t you? Well, you’re not the only one.’

He gave the sketch of a smile.

‘Do you remember telling me about a year ago’ – actually it was slightly longer, soon after he was taken into the clinic – ‘that you guessed that it was time to go into metals? Particularly nickel. And you produced some rules about the right kind of share. I tell you, I did some listening. And took some action.’

‘Unwise. You forgot the first rule of investment. Never act on tips from an enthusiastic amateur.’ He was shaking his head, but there was colour in his voice.

‘You’re about as much an amateur as the late lamented Dr W G Grace.’

This esoteric remark, to begin to understand which one had to be born ( a ) in England, ( b ) not later than 1920, made him laugh. Not for long, but audibly, sharply.

‘So I took some action. I thought you might as well know the exact score – here’s a letter from my broker. Would you like to read it–?’

‘No, you read.’

The letter said – ‘The purchase of Claymor Nickel has turned out very profitable for you. We bought on Oct. 14, 1964, 3000 shares, which then stood at 21/6. The price this morning is 47/9. This shows a gross gain of just under £4000. If you wish to sell, there will as you know be a capital gains tax of 30%, but the net profit will still be £2600 approximately. However, in our opinion the price is likely to rise still higher.’

I broke off: ‘I said, you haven’t lost your touch, have you?’

‘One can’t help being right occasionally, don’t you know.’ But he was very pleased, so pleased that he went on talking, though he had to stop for breath. ‘Anyway, I’ve not made you poorer, which is more than one can say of most advice. That is, unless you’ve taken some other tips from me which have probably been disastrous–’

‘Not one.’

‘I must admit, it’s agreeable to be some trivial use to you. Even when one’s finishing up in this damned bedroom. It’s not unpleasant to be some trivial use–’

‘I don’t call it trivial–’

Davidson lifted his head a few inches from the pillows. His expression was lively and contented. In a tone in which one could hear some of his old authority, which in fact was curiously minatory, he said: ‘Now you ought to get out of that holding. Tomorrow. They may go higher. But remember, tops and bottoms are made for fools. That was the old Rothschild maxim, and they didn’t do too badly out of it.’