Charles Snow - Last Things

‘I hope you’ve left something in,’ said Walter, boisterous and avuncular again.

‘A little.’

‘Well, what’s it going to be?’

‘I can’t tell you anything definite yet.’

‘Tell me something indefinite, then.’

Charles grinned. Not perturbed, he said: ‘I do think that the things worth doing in my time are going to be a bit different.’

‘Why? Different to what?’ Walter said.

‘Different from things that your contemporaries did. I think we ought to do things which will actually affect people’s lives. Quite quickly. Here and now. Not in a couple of generations’ time. In our own.’

‘What does all that add up to?’

‘Don’t I wish I knew?’

‘You’re thinking of something like the other end of this place?’ Walter jerked a thumb in the direction of the Commons.

‘No, not quite that, perhaps.’

‘Anyway, you don’t know yet, do you?’

‘No, not yet.’

‘Oh, don’t rush yourself. There’s plenty of time,’ said Walter. When Charles was expressing indecision, speaking almost bashfully, I doubted it. I didn’t believe that Charles had started the conversation for my benefit, either to challenge or (what might have been more likely, as our relation changed) to prepare me. It was a mistake growing out of egotism or paranoia to suspect that all actions were aimed in one’s own direction. Even with a person to whom one was close: he could have, and had, his own purposes which were quite independent of one’s own. That, I was sure, was true of Charles as they started talking in the guest room. The mention of Roy Calvert had no reference to me, or to any thought of his that Roy’s daughter and I had been dissolving hostilities because of him. He had her on his mind, that was all.

But there had come an opportunity, or a turn in the talk, so that he could say something, not much but something, which he wished me to hear. It might have been easier to do so via Luke, using him as an interpreter, so to speak: quite likely it was, whether out of consideration or semi-secretiveness, or father-son aphasia, of which we all knew the intermittences. scarcely mattered.

The one certain thing was that he had passed on a message. If I asked for its final meaning, I should be evaded. There had been the best of openings to tell me, if he chose. He knew, it didn’t need repeating, it would oppress him if repeated, what I wanted for him. Not his happiness: that was for him to get: to wish that would have been mawkish, and though I could be so about acquaintances, I wasn’t about those closest to me. But I did wish, in the most elementary and primal fashion, for his well-being.

He knew that well enough. Once when he was nine or ten I had taken him for a walk, and he had rushed in front of a car. Quick-footed he had backed away, with not more than inches to spare. The driver cursed, ‘You won’t have a long life, you won’t.’ Charles saw that I was pallid and couldn’t speak. Sometimes when still a child he asked me about it, and got brushing-off answers. Then he gave up asking. But when my eye went wrong he took my arm with solicitous and much more than filial care, much more compensatory than filial, whenever I had to cross a road.

On our corner table, there was a round of drinks. Walter Luke was giving instruction to Charles about science in the last war, pointing with blunt fingers at the end of a stiff, strong arm. Charles had returned to his absorbent posture, chin in hand.

ALTHOUGH towards the end of November Margaret received news that Maurice’s wife was pregnant it was not until Christmas that we saw her. Meanwhile Margaret, whom I have never known beg for favours except for her elder son, was shamelessly using any influence either of us possessed to get him a job in London. She wasn’t searching for anything lofty – just the equivalent of what he was doing in the Manchester hospital or perhaps a clerkship in an almoner’s office. ‘Though I expect he’d think that was too soft an option for him, wouldn’t he?’ she said. She was smiling, making a decent show of being sarcastic, but underneath the sarcasm melted away.

Still, she was being practical. When the baby was born, she was determined to be within reach. Expecting what? Her moods oscillated as I watched them; some moments she was very happy, almost triumphant, as she had been when she was pregnant herself; at others she was dreading, with a rational dread with which I was touched myself, that the child would be born afflicted. Yes, there was a chance, said some of the medical scientists, told of the mother’s family history. Not worse than one in four, perhaps better than one in sixteen. But these were worse odds than one got in any of the ordinary risks of life.

Whatever could be done, Margaret was doing. From the beginning the child was to have the best doctors, whether Maurice and his wife liked it or not. I told her she was behaving like old Mr March in his heyday (I should have mentioned Azik Schiff too, if this conversation had happened three months earlier). Margaret replied, ‘You know what I feel about his marriage, you haven’t needed telling, have you?’ Just for once she was asking for pity or even pitying herself. ‘Well, if they get a healthy child, that’ll make up for everything, I swear I’ll be good to it. And to her as well.’

‘So you will if the child is born – unlucky,’ I said. ‘Even more so.’

I meant it. There were some, including Margaret, who thought that her son Maurice was naturally good. Margaret had more original sin, maybe, but she made herself good by effort. There was no one who would behave better and more patiently – though she wasn’t patient by nature – if the baby was what she often feared. She would cherish it and its mother, so that everyone thought such love came easy to her.

She had invited them to stay over Christmas with us, and on Christmas Eve we had what by courtesy one could call a family dinner party – with Margaret and me, Maurice and Diana, Charles and Muriel. Until recently that had been a night when we had often filled the flat with a mass all comers’ party. But, because I was surreptitiously as atavistic or superstitious as my mother, we had killed the custom dead. On 23 December 1963, George Passant had called on me and had, not broken, but declared the news which still at times hag-rode me: which had cut off any thoughts about one whole phase of my youth. The following night, I had had to be host to one of those mass parties. Not again. That was four years before, and the memory was still sharp and shrivelling.

And yet, as we sat at dinner, I would almost have welcomed a crowd of people trampling in soon. Diana took her place at my right hand, sidling in with her head down, giving out an air of being ill-treated, injured, self-regarding and full of conceit. I had suspected it the first time I met her: now I couldn’t miss it. Margaret had, half-heartedly to be sure, accused me of being hard on her. That I couldn’t take. If I pretended not to see her as I did, who was that a kindness to? I wasn’t going to patronise her. In fact, as Margaret had discovered that afternoon, she wasn’t at all easy to patronise, even for the most necessary of purposes.

To begin with, she had enjoyed being made such a fuss of, which Margaret was doing, spontaneously and happily, as soon as they arrived. Wonderful about the child. Margaret’s sister had no children. Margaret had the two boys. In Margaret’s family this would be the first child of the new generation. Diana was frowning to understand, but Maurice did some explaining. When she had gathered in the praise, she tossed her head, just as I remembered girls at a palais de danse in the provinces when I was a youth, giving the same response when they were asked for a dance. It didn’t mean they were going to refuse. It meant that they would graciously accept, saying in the phrase which I had heard not long since from the lips of Muriel’s mother, ‘I don’t mind if I do.’