Charles Snow - Last Things

Such conflict as did emerge was on a narrow front. The young Getliffes, both in their early thirties, were more cut off from Charles and his society, more impatient with them, than the rest of us.

‘It’s all romantic,’ said Leonard Getliffe at one point. ‘I’m not a politician, but they don’t know the first thing about politics.’

‘That’s not entirely true,’ I said.

‘Well, look. They think they’re revolutionaries. They also think that revolution has something to do with complete sexual freedom. They might be expected to realise that any revolution that’s ever happened has the opposite correlative. All social revolutions are puritanical. They’re bound to be, by definition. Put these people down in China today. Haven’t they the faintest idea what it’s like?’

That was a point I had to concede. I was thinking, yes, I had seen other groups of young people dreaming of both their emancipation and a juster world. That was how George Passant started out. Well, all, and more than all, of the emancipation he prescribed to us had realised itself – in the flesh – before our eyes. And we had learned – here Leonard was right – you can have a major change in sexual customs and still leave the rest of society (who had the property, who was rich, who was poor) almost untouched.

‘The one consolation is’, said Martin, ‘human beings are almost infinitely tough. If you did put them down in China, they’d make a go of it. I suppose if we were young today, we shouldn’t be any worse off than we actually were. They seem to find it pretty satisfactory.’

He might have been speaking of his son or, nowadays more likely, of his daughter.

‘Think of the time I should have had!’ Irene gave a yelp of laughter. Her husband laughed with her, troubles long dead, and so did the rest of us. One could have remarked that, considering the restrictions, her actual time had not been so uneventful.

Francis brought out a bottle of port, which nowadays we didn’t often drink. Sexual freedom apart, I asked them, did they think there was nothing else in this – assertion, unrest, rebellion, alienation, of the young, you could call it what you liked? It was happening all round the world. Yes, it might be helped by commercialism. Yes, it hadn’t either an ideology or a mass political base. But they (the Getliffes) were writing it off fairly complacently, they might be in for a surprise. Of course, if people of that age (I returned to something I had been thinking in Grenfell’s rooms) were different at all, it was nothing ultra-mundane, it was because of their time and place. But somehow their time was working on them pretty drastically. I wasn’t much moved by historical parallels. This was here and now. There were sometimes discontinuities in history. On a minor scale, we might be seeing one.

I didn’t find it necessary that, the previous summer, I should have been arguing on the Getliffes’ side, in the opposite sense. Well, I had changed my mind. As completely as all this? Perhaps my experience with young Pateman and his student following had prejudiced me against Charles’ friends, or perhaps I had overreacted to him. Anyway, these weren’t another crop of Lester Inces; some day I ought to tell Charles that there I had been wrong.

Most of the dinner party knew that I wasn’t detached, and that I was so interested because of my son. But Francis and Katherine had an affection for him, as well as for us. Martin and Irene too had their reasons for being interested. It was only the young couple and Leonard who were regarding the phenomenon as being a pure exercise in sociology. Since it was a cheerful evening, I didn’t suppress a gibe at the expense of Peter and his wife. They already had two children, five and three. A dozen years or so, and it would be their turn next. Either like this, or something different. Possibly stranger still.

That night at the dinner table, it was natural to think of Francis’ grandchildren a dozen years ahead. Francis’ life, at times strained, dissident, dutiful, had nevertheless held more continuity than most of ours. His father had lived not unlike this. His sons were already doing so. Though Francis’ hospitality was all his own, spontaneous and disconcerting to those who knew only his public face. That night he was in cracking spirits, talking of changes he had already seen, prepared to see more, jeering at himself and me for false prophecies, of which there had been plenty, gazing with astringent fondness at his family and friends. It was natural to think of that family going on.

While we were having our evening at the Getliffes, Bestwick and Charles and the others were at work. They were more active than we, or any of their predecessors, had been: or rather, we had talked a good deal but not acted, while they didn’t recognise any gap between the two. They weren’t ready to wait, as we had waited, until we had won a little, even the most precarious, authority. At eighteen, nineteen, twenty, they were getting down to business. They were doing so that night. Where in Cambridge they met I didn’t know, either then or later: nor what was decided, nor who took part. Charles had learnt discretion very early, and so I found had Bestwick, when I knew him better; neither of them at any stage told me, or even hinted at, anything I shouldn’t hear. It was only later, from another source, and a most unlikely one, that I could piece together fragments of the story.

‘THE only examinations they’d heard of were medical ones. They weren’t very good at getting through those.’

It was Gordon Bestwick, talking of his family.

‘The same would be true of mine,’ I said. ‘I doubt if any one of them had ever taken a written examination until I did.’

Bestwick nodded his massive head, but he was faintly irked. He didn’t want me to be a partner in obscurity. He had been staying with us for a week, the first time, he said, that he had been inside a professional London home. It might have suited his expectations better if this had been more like my own first visits to the Marches, back in the twenties, butlers, footmen, wealth for generations on both sides. I had a feeling that he was disappointed that we lived so simply.

That evening he was sitting in our drawing-room after dinner, alone with Margaret and me. On the other days since Bestwick’s arrival, Charles had prompted me into having a series of guests to dinner, but that night he had some engagement of his own and had begged off. It was late in June, somewhere near the longest day, and the sky was like full daylight over the park.

‘Carlo didn’t suffer from the same disadvantage, though,’ he said.

‘If it was a disadvantage,’ I replied. ‘In some ways you and I may have had the better luck. He thinks so–’

‘And it’s like his blasted nerve. I don’t mind all that much his having been given ten yards start in a hundred, but when he gets explaining that it made things more difficult for him, that’s more than I can take.’

Margaret smiled. The two young men were more than allies, they were on comradely terms. Gordon was, so far as I had heard, the only one of Charles’ intimates who called him by his family pet name. But there was a mixture of envy and admiration which flowed both ways. Charles would have liked the dominance which he, and other acquaintances of ours older than he, couldn’t help feeling in Gordon. One didn’t have to be a talent spotter to recognise Gordon’s ability, that shone out: but I wondered whether there wasn’t something else. One or two chips bristled like iguana scales on his shoulders: but he managed to sink them, when he talked about those who really were deprived. He knew and cared. Privileged men were still vulnerable when they heard that kind of voice.