Charles Snow - Last Things

Before the operational experience and in the bedroom since, I had been discovering this for myself. In fact, it was something each of us had to discover for himself: you couldn’t reach it by empathy, it was too unfamiliar, and perhaps too disconcerting, for that. Not long ago, in full health, I dismissed the third and slightest of the themes – different from Davidson’s – which had preoccupied me, the concern, partly voyeuristic, partly conscientious, for political things. That dismissal was final, I didn’t doubt it: but now I could imagine, not playing the chess game of politics in any shape or form, but – if a cause or even a whim impelled me – raising my voice with a freedom which I hadn’t known before.

Something similar was true of the second theme, which was the kinds of love. Sexual love, parental love (so different that we confused ourselves by giving them the same name), they had never let me go: and often my public behaviour had seemed to me like the performance of a stranger. A pretty good performance, since on the level of action I had some of my temperament under control. Well, those kinds of love – I thought of the last talks with Margaret and my son – were creating within themselves something new, in part unforeseeable by me. Not in marriage, perhaps defying fate we should both think that: but certainly in my relation with my son. I hadn’t any foreknowledge of what we should be saying to each other in ten years’ time, if I lived so long. That wasn’t distressing, but curiously exciting, the more so since that date of 28 November. It was as though I were quite young again, having to learn, with the sense, on the whole a pleasurable sense, of surprise ahead, what a human relation was like.

Third and last, myself alone. My own solitude, different from Austin Davidson or anyone else’s. In so much we are all alike: but in one’s solitude one is unique. I had been confronted by mine, since the operation, more than in all my life before. In a fashion that had astonished me. And given me a sense of change, and also a kind of perplexed delight, for which I had been totally unprepared. Somehow that was a delight too, as though I had suddenly seen a horizon wide open in front of my eyes.

A clock was striking somewhere outside the hospital. I didn’t count the strokes, but there might have been twelve. I was sleepy by now, and turned onto my side. As often immediately before sleep, faces came, as if from a vague distance, into the field of vision under the closed lids: one came very clear and actual, nearly a dream, not yet a dream. It was a face which hadn’t any waking significance for me, the matey comedian’s face of a barrister acquaintance, Ted Benskin.

NEXT day (for by this time the Press had done its work and so, I guessed, had gossip) I was dividing potential visitors into sheep and goats, those I wanted to see and those I didn’t. Among the goats, to be kept out with firmness, were those whose motives for inspecting me didn’t need much examination – such as Whitman, my back-bencher acquaintance, who was presumably anxious to see that I was safely incapacitated, or Edgar Hankins, looking for a last personal anecdote to put into one of his elegiac post-mortems.

On the other hand, Rosalind was to be welcomed and, a somewhat more surprising enquirer, Lester Ince. Rosalind entered during the morning, bearing more flowers from her husband and, after she had kissed me and sat down, spreading her own aura of Chanel.

‘Well, old thing. You don’t look too bad.’ She had never given up either the slang of her youth or the indomitable flatness of our native town.

How was she? She couldn’t grumble. And Azik? He was on one of his business trips. Still, there were compensations. What did she mean? She usually got a present when he went abroad. With lids modestly downcast, with a smile that might have been either furtive or salacious, she held out the second finger of her right hand. On it gleamed a splendid emerald.

‘What do you think that cost?’ she said, and explained, again modestly: ‘I had to know for the sake of the insurance.’

‘A good many thousand.’

‘Fifteen,’ said Rosalind, with simple triumph.

What about her daughter? No, Rosalind didn’t see much of her. The divorce would soon be through. Was Muriel intending to marry again? ‘She never tells me anything,’ Rosalind replied, hurt, aggrieved. She recaptured some of her spirit when she switched to young David. ‘He’s a different kettle of fish. He tells me everything.’

‘He won’t always, you know.’ Rosalind might be as hard as they came, a child of this world, or, in her own language, as tough as old boots; but there (as she had done already with her daughter) she could suffer as much as the rest of us.

‘Perhaps he won’t. But he’s lovely now.’

Rosalind continued, as usual not frightened of the obvious. We were all getting older. It would be nice when she was an old lady to have a handsome young man to take her out. David would be twenty-one in nine years’ time. ‘And you know as well as I do’, said Rosalind, ‘what that will make me.’

There were few square inches of Rosalind, except for her hair, which had been left to nature unassisted. Couturiers, jewellers, cosmetic-makers had worked for their money, and Azik had duly paid; yet she minded less than many people about growing old.

She also didn’t appear to mind overmuch about my misadventures. She had known me so long, she took my continued existence for granted. So far as she showed an interest, she was inclined to blame Margaret, whom she had never liked, for neglecting me.

‘You’ll have to look after yourself that’s all,’ she said. If I wanted any advice, there was always the ‘old boy’ (one of her appellations for Azik). After which, she said a brisk goodbye and departed like a small and elegant warship succeeded by a wash of scent.

That was still lingering on the air when, a couple of hours later, Lester Ince came in.

‘Who’s your girlfriend?’ he said, sniffing, a leer on his cheerful pasty face. ‘That’s not Margaret’s.’

Lester was one of those men who, solidly masculine, nevertheless were knowledgeable about all the appurtenances of femininity. It made other men more irritated with him, particularly as he seemed – incomprehensibly to them – to have his successes, including his present wife. I had been mildly surprised when I heard that he wanted to visit me. I was a good deal more surprised when he said that he had been thinking about me and had something to propose. He wasn’t really a friend: he didn’t object to me as vigorously as he did to Francis or my brother, but that wasn’t specially high praise. Perhaps he would have been just as concerned if any acquaintance had run into physical trouble. Anyway, his proposal was down to earth. He was offering me Basset for my convalescence.

Although I hadn’t the most fugitive intention of accepting (all I wanted was to be left undisturbed at home), I was touched, as one was by a bit of practical good nature: touched enough to pretend that I couldn’t make up my mind. Of course, one had to be more apolaustic than I was to be fit for Basset. That was a view which Lester sternly repudiated. Compared with many others, he reproved me, it wasn’t a big house : as the owner of Chatsworth might point out that his establishment was diminutive by the side of Blenheim.

My second line of defence was that we couldn’t help getting in their way. Lester bluffly answered that they would be leaving after Christmas anyway; they weren’t prepared to endure another English winter. I was reflecting, when I first met Lester he was living with his first wife and family in a dilapidated house in Bateman Street: if I knew anything about Cambridge temperatures, the conjugal bedroom wouldn’t get about fifty degrees most of the year, and Lester had found it satisfactory for his purposes. Now, however, he behaved like a frailer plant. He had recently acquired a place in the Bahamas. It would be very good for them, he assured me earnestly. Not only to escape the winter rigours, but because there was a danger in living in a house like Basset. They didn’t want to become like birds in a gilded cage . And they proposed to avoid that danger, I tried to ask without expression, by having their own beach in the Bahamas? Lester gazed at me, also without expression.