Charles Snow - Homecomings

‘Oh no, he’s done that,’ whispered Mr Knight, with his eyes closed.

‘You’ve left her alone in this empty house ,’ Mrs Knight went on.

‘He’s done as much as anyone could have.’ Mr Knight spoke up, a little louder, defending me. She looked baffled, even frustrated, and began another attack.

‘ Please , my dearest,’ he ordered her in a loud voice, and she gave way. Then with the gentleness he always showed to her, he said, as though explaining: ‘It is his affliction as well as ours.’

Out of the corner of his eye he glanced at me, and murmured: ‘The last time I saw her’ — he meant the visit eighteen months before — ‘I couldn’t help thinking she was in a bad state. I believe I mentioned it, didn’t I, Lewis, or did I just think it to myself? The last time I saw her. I wish that I had been wrong.’

And yet, the fact that he had been perceptive, more perceptive than I or anyone else had been, gave him a vestigial comfort; even that night his vanity glowed for an instant.

‘She shouldn’t have done it,’ cried Mrs Knight, in anger but with the only tears I had seen in her eyes.

‘I have no comfort to give you, dearest,’ he said. ‘Or you either.’ Once more he was gazing into the fire, the corner of his eyes sidling towards me. In my hearing he had not once spoken of the consolations of his religion. The room was quiet, all we heard was the ticking of the clock. Somehow we had passed into a patch of those doldrums which often lurk in the path, not only of a quarrel, but of any scene of violent feeling.

Breaking the quiet, Mrs Knight asked whether there would have to be an inquest. I said yes. When? I told her that it was already arranged, for the following afternoon. Mr Knight half-raised his lids with a speculative expression, looked as though he had something to say but had thought better of it. Then he mentioned casually: ‘Tomorrow afternoon? Not that I want anyone to give it a thought except my doctor, but it will presumably be a considerable strain on me.’

‘You’ve stood it well so far,’ said Mrs Knight.

‘If Ross [his doctor] were here, he would tell us it was dangerous,’ Mr Knight continued. ‘I’m morally certain he would forbid it. But he won’t have to know until he has to patch me up afterwards.’

In a new kind of numbness I exclaimed: ‘Never mind, don’t take any risks. I can get through it by myself.’

Mrs Knight cried: ‘No, we can’t think of leaving you.’

Mr Knight muttered: ‘I wouldn’t willingly think of leaving you, it would throw all of it on to your shoulders—’

Mrs Knight broke in: ‘We can’t do it.’

Mr Knight went on: ‘One doesn’t like to think of it, but Lewis, in case, in the remote case, that my wretched heart was getting beyond its degree of tolerance tomorrow afternoon, are you sure that you could if need be manage by yourself?’

So Mr Knight, whose empathy was such that he knew more than most men both what my life with Sheila had been and what my condition was that night, was only anxious to escape and leave me to it: while Mrs Knight, who blamed me for her daughter’s unhappiness and death, felt in her fibres that they ought to stand by me in the end, give their physical presence if they could give nothing else. She felt it so primally that for once she gave up thinking of her husband’s health.

There were those, among whom I had sometimes been one, who believed that, if she had not pampered his hypochondria, he would have forgotten his ailments half the time and lived something near a normal life. We were wrong. She had a rough, simple nature, full of animal force: but, despite her aggressiveness, she had always been, and was now as much as ever, under his domination. It was he who felt his own pulse, who gave the cry of alarm, and she who in duty and reverence echoed it. Even that night he could not subdue it, and for a few moments she was impatient with him.

In the end, of course, he got his way. She soon realized that the inquest would tax his heart more than she could allow; she became convinced that it was he who out of duty insisted on attending, and she who was obliged to stop him; she would have to forbid his doing anything so quixotic, even if I was prostrate without them.

As it was, I said that I would settle it alone, and they arranged to return home next morning. I did not mention Charles March’s offer to give a false certificate, so that we could have avoided the inquest. I wondered how Mr Knight would have reconciled his conscience, in order to be able to accept that offer.

In his labyrinthine fashion, Mr Knight asked how much publicity we had to be prepared for. I shrugged it off.

‘No,’ said Mr Knight, ‘it will hurt you as much and more than us, isn’t that true?’

It was, but I did not wish to admit it, I did not like the times that day when the thought of it drove out others.

Perhaps the war-news would be a blessing to us, Mr Knight was considering. I said I would do my best with my Press acquaintances. The Knights could go home next morning: I would do what could be done.

Relieved, half-resentful, half-protective, Mr Knight began inquiring where I would sleep tomorrow night, whether I could take a holiday and get some rest. I did not want, I could not bear, to talk of myself, so I made an excuse and left them alone.

At dinner none of us spoke much, and soon afterwards, it must have been as early as nine o’clock, Mrs Knight announced that she was tired and would go straight to bed. Of all women, she was the least well designed for subterfuges: she proclaimed her piece of acting like a blunt, embarrassed, unhappy schoolgirl. But I had no attention to spare for her; Mr Knight was determined to speak to me in intimacy, and I was on guard.

We sat in the drawing-room, one each side of the fireplace, Mr Knight smoking a pipe of the herb-tobacco which out of valetudinarian caution he had taken to years before. The smell invaded me and I felt a tension nearly intolerable, as though this moment of sense, the smell of herb tobacco, was not to be endured, as though I could not wait to hear a word. But when he did speak, beginning with one of his circuitous wind-ups, he astonished me: the subject he wanted to get clear before they left next day was no more intimate than the lease of the house.

When I married Sheila, I had had no capital, and Mr Knight had lent us the money to buy a fourteen years’ lease, which had been in Sheila’s name. This lease still had six years to run, and Mr Knight was concerned about the most business-like course of action. Presumably, after all that had happened, and regardless of the fact that the house was too large for a man alone, I should not wish to go on living there? If it were his place to advise me, he would advise against. In that case, we ought to take steps about disposing of the lease. Since the loan had been for Sheila’s sake as well as mine, he would consider it wiped off, but perhaps I would think it not unreasonable, as he did himself, particularly as Sheila’s own money would come to me under her will, that any proceeds we now derived from the lease should go to him?

Above all, said Mr Knight, there was a need for speed. It might be possible to sell a house before the war developed: looking a few months ahead, none of us could guess the future, and any property in London might be a drug on the market. I had always found him one of the most puzzling and ungraspable of men, but never more so than now, when he took that opportunity to show his practical acumen. I promised to put the house in the agents’ hands within a few days.

‘I’m sorry to lay this on your shoulders too,’ he said, ‘but your shoulders are broad — in some ways—’

His voice trailed away, as though in the qualification he might be either envying me or pitying me. I was staring into the fire, not looking at him, but I felt his glance upon me. In a quiet tone he said: ‘She always took her own way.’