Charles Snow - Last Things

They were holding on to anything that kept Francis in others’ minds: or perhaps, more primitive than that, they had the feeling that while his name was being mentioned he was not quite obliterated, his shadow (they would have liked to say his spirit or his ghost) was still there. Just as Martin himself had returned to a primitive piety when our father died, and had proposed that he should be buried according to religious rites in which Martin was the last person to believe.

Once Clark had won the Getliffes over, there followed one of the traditional college struggles, though for kindness’ sake Martin had let none of this reach Leonard, not to speak of Katherine. The question was, who was to give the memorial address? In the past this had been the prerogative of old Despard-Smith, the only fellow then in orders. With the result that he had made the oration over Roy Calvert, for whom he cherished extreme and ominous disapproval. Now, by a grisly coincidence, the pattern was repeating itself. There was at present no fellow in orders. So the Master assumed it was his own prescriptive right to make memorial orations. He had every intention of doing so for Francis Getliffe, for whom in life he had scarcely had one amiable thought.

Martin couldn’t explain why Clark was so set on this. It might have been he couldn’t resist, Martin suggested, ‘getting into the act’: after all, Francis was an eminent man. Or it might have been Christian charity. Martin, who was no more disposed to give Clark the benefit of the doubt than Francis had been, did not regard that suggestion of his own with favour.

In any case, Clark’s address was not to happen. Feeling ran round the college, for Francis had become revered by most of the younger fellows. And Arthur Brown, the elder statesman, seventy-seven years old, was deputed to make representations to the Master. Over Roy Calvert’s memorial service, Arthur Brown had tried to displace Despard-Smith, and had failed. This time in old age, the senior fellow since the death of Gay, Arthur was happy to have another go. He was himself, so Martin said, as moved as the younger men. He had a good deal of affection, and more respect, for Francis, despite his affiliations with a government which Arthur was increasingly prone to describe in terms that a Russian émigré in 1920 might have considered sensible as applied to Lenin’s administration, but perhaps a little over-strong. As for Arthur’s opinion of the Master, he would not have mentioned that except to one of his old allies, and they had died or left the college, leaving him alone.

The upshot was that Arthur Brown had emerged from the Lodge, looking contented but flushed, and told the protesters that he would deliver the oration himself. ‘It won’t be exactly a rabble-rouser,’ Martin had said that evening when he told the story, ‘but it’ll be perfectly decent. Which is more than we had a right to expect.’

Since we arrived, Martin and Irene had been waiting to tell us their own news. Irene had known Francis only as an acquaintance, and wasn’t pretending to more than a social sorrow. Martin had lost a friend, and more significantly, an ally, but you could lose friends and allies and still enjoy your joys within the next half hour. Unlike me, Martin had not known Francis for a lifetime. I was absent-minded, even when they felt that deference to mourning had been duly paid.

I was absent-minded, thinking of that occasion in hospital when Francis had said that if I died he would miss me. At the time it had sounded unusually unrestrained for Francis, and simultaneously a little inadequate and a little sentimental. Now I could test it for myself. He had known better than I had. I was already missing him. No more, no less. It wasn’t the fierce and comminatory grief which came like a brainstorm or illness at the death of someone you loved. This was different. Someone you had known for a lifetime. Missing was the right word. To say any more would have been sentimental: but so would to say any less.

Meanwhile, Martin and Irene hadn’t been able to suppress their triumph. The day before, Nina had become engaged to Guy Grenfell. All tied up and formal. The announcement would appear in The Times later that week. There had been family conferences and negotiations because she was so young.

I had seldom seen my brother look so happy. It seemed that all those disappointments and humiliations over his son had been cancelled. It was a pleasingly sarcastic flick – very much in his own style, though he wouldn’t have been grateful for being reminded of it now – that this should happen through the daughter to whom until recently he had given casual affection but not much more.

‘Old Grenfell’, he said, ‘isn’t a bad old creature. Eton, and the Brigade, and the City. But he’s not very good at chairing a meeting. There was him and his wife, the two of us, and the young couple. It was a pretty fatal combination for getting anything done quickly. There was only one thing to settle, ought they to wait a year or not?’

‘I’d been around more than she has before I was her age,’ said Irene with a lively lubricious grin.

‘You weren’t marrying into a respectable family, my girl.’ Martin’s smile was congratulatory, as though addressed not only to his wife but to Nina’s mother.

‘We haven’t any money, of course,’ Martin went on. ‘That was made quite clear. It seemed to puzzle Mrs G. They have quite a lot of money. That was also made quite clear. And that seemed a very reasonable state of things to Mrs G. Somehow it also seemed a rather strong argument to her for them to wait until she’s twenty-one. Old G didn’t quite see the logical connection, but he felt there was some force in it.’

He said, face illumined from inside, as it appeared when for once his self-control had slipped: ‘But they could have argued till the sun blows up, it wouldn’t have made any difference. The girl and boy were fine. I thought Guy was a bit of a wet when she first brought him here, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. He was like a rock. Very polite, long hair and all, but like a rock. He was apologetic, but they were going to get married in August. They were absolutely sure. They didn’t want to be awkward, but they were absolutely sure. They would make any concessions – they’d even have a smart wedding if that would give any pleasure – they didn’t want to disappoint anyone, so long as they were married in August.’

Martin was extracting pleasure, more even than Irene, from the last detail of their daughter’s engagement. He was fundamentally a healthy man, despite his pessimism – or perhaps it was because he was healthy that he could let his pessimism rip. My thoughts cast back to Francis: he too had rejoiced when each of his children married: it was part of the flow, there was a proper time to become a patriarch. Now Martin, whom occasionally I still regarded as my young brother, was enjoying that same proper time. It wasn’t made worse (as he had commented, executing a complex gibe against himself, the worldly people in general, and the worldliness of the world) because Guy was by the standard of Martin’s society, a distinctly desirable husband. Martin had had, in all external things and in some closer to him, less luck than most of us. It was good to hear him saying, without any reserve, tight lip all gone, that this was luck he hadn’t counted on.

He said something else, which made me feel that I had been facile in thinking about Guy. I had assumed that he was a rich young man who relished talk of world convulsions, so long as they took place in drawing-rooms. I remembered predicting to Charles that he would finish up in a merchant bank. So far, said Martin, there was no sign of that. He was trying to find a job in famine relief. And was being held up, by a beautiful piece of security machinery, because of his part in last year’s revolt.