Charles Snow - Homecomings

Seeing her through the chess pieces, I noticed none of these changes, for I was only concerned with her state from day to day. I knew the slightest change in her expression, but I could not see what would be obvious to others. Trying to keep her steady, over the hours, the days, the years, I had lost my judgement about whether she was getting better or worse. All I knew was that tonight she was gay, anxiety-free, and that for this night, which was as far as I could see ahead, there was nothing to worry about.

I had loved her all through my young manhood, and, although my love had changed because of what had happened to us, I loved her still. When I first met her, I thought that the luck was on her side; she was beautiful, she was intelligent, she was comfortably off, above all she did not love me when I passionately loved her. That meant that she had power over me, and I none over her; it meant that she could tantalize me for years, she could show me the cruelty of one who feels nothing. It meant also, but I did not realize it then, that she was the more to be pitied. For it turned out that it was not only me she could not love, but anyone. She craved to; she tried to find someone to love; she tried to find psychiatrists and doctors who would tell her why she could not. Then, all else failing, she fell back on me, who still loved her, and let me marry her.

It could not have gone well. It might have gone a little better, I sometimes thought, if we had had children, which each of us longed for. But we were left with nothing but ourselves.

‘I must get it out,’ she said, staring long-sightedly at the board. With two fingers she touched a piece shaped like a howdahed elephant, which in a European set would have been a castle. Out of anxious habit, my glance fixed, not on the strong broad-tipped fingers, but on the nails. Once again that night I was relieved. Though they were not painted, they were clean and trimmed. There had been times when her sense of deprivation froze her into stupor, when she no longer took care of herself. That frightened me, but it had not happened for some years. Usually she dressed well enough, and as she walked by the embankment pubs or along the King’s Road, people saw a woman with her head high, a muscular stride, a face handsome and boldly made up.

‘You’d better start again systematically,’ I said.

‘Teach me,’ said Sheila.

It was like her to be willing to take a lesson in the theory of chess problems. It was like her also not to have asked a single question about what I had been doing, although she had not seen me for four days. Cambridge, my London job, they did not exist for her. From before our marriage, from the time when she no longer hoped that all would come well for her, she had become more shut up within herself. In fact, trying to look after her, I had broken my career.

When I married, I thought I knew what it would be like. I should have to watch over her dreads; I had seen something of the schizoid chill; I could imagine how tasks trivial to the rest of us were ordeals to her, how any arrangement in the future, even the prospect of going to a dinner party, could crack her nerves. But I had been borne along by passionate love for her, physical passion pent up for years, and perhaps more than that. So I went into it, and, like others before me,soon knew that no imaginative forecast of what a life will be is anything like that life lived from day to day.

I did my best for her. It scarcely helped her at all. But it left me without much energy free. When we married, I had just got a foot in at the Bar, I was being thought of as a rising junior. Unless I parted from Sheila, I could not keep up that struggle. And so I found less strenuous jobs, a consulting one with Paul Lufkin’s firm and a law fellowship at Cambridge, the latter taking me away from the Chelsea house three or four nights a week. When she was at her most indrawn, sitting by her gramophone for hours on end, I was glad, although it was a cowardly relief, to get away.

That February evening, as we sat opposite each other at the chess table in the bright room, I thought of none of these things. It was quite enough that she seemed content. It gave me — what sometimes can exist in the unhappiest of marriages, although an outsider does not realize its power — a kind of moral calm. Habit was so strong that it could wipe away ambitions put aside, crises of choice, a near-parting, all that had gone on in my secret life with her: habit was sitting near her, watching her nails, watching for the tic, the pseudo-smile, that came when strain was mastering her.

‘I saw RSR today,’ she said out of the blue.

‘Did you?’

‘I’ve got an idea he was looking for me.’

‘I shouldn’t be surprised,’ I said.

‘We had a drink. He was in good form.’

Once that would have been a way to provoke my jealousy. Not now. I welcomed anything that would give her interest or hope. She still had bursts of activity in which she lost herself — once or twice, for those were the thirties, in politics; but usually in trying to help some lame dog whom she had met by chance. A little backstreet café where she went by herself — I found that she had lent the proprietor money to keep on the lease. A derelict curate, terrified that he was going to be prosecuted — she was on call for him at any time he wanted. Utterly uninterested in my goings on, her family’s, her old friends’, she could still become absorbed in those of someone new. With them she was selfless, they gave her a flash of hope, she became like the young woman I had first known.

‘He began to talk very airily about getting himself financed again,’ said Sheila.

‘He’s not losing any time, is he?’

‘I wonder if I could do anything for him,’ she said.

‘Plenty of people have tried, you know,’ I said.

It was true. I had only met R S Robinson once; he was a man of sixty, who before 1914 had made a reputation as the editor of an avant-garde monthly. Since then, he had been a hanger-on of letters, ghosting for agents, bringing out uncommercial magazines, losing money, making enemies, always ready with a new project. It was not long since he had manoeuvred an introduction to Sheila; the manoeuvres had been elaborate, he might as well have shouted out loud that he had heard she was well-off.

‘Yes, plenty have tried,’ she said. ‘So much the worse for them.’

She gave me a realistic jeering smile. She always met her down-and-outs with her eyes open. She added: ‘But that isn’t much comfort for him, is it?’

‘But if other people have got involved,’ I said, some second-hand rumour running through my mind, ‘it isn’t encouraging for you.’

‘You’ve heard things against him?’

‘Of course.’

‘I expect,’ said Sheila, ‘ he’s heard things against me.’

She gave a curious mocking laugh, almost brazen-sounding, a sign that her hopes were high. It was a long time since I had seen them so.

‘Perhaps even against you,’ she said.

I smiled back, I could not depress her; at moments like this her spirits could still make mine spring from the earth. But I said: ‘I tell you, he’s run through plenty of well-wishers. There must be something the matter.’

‘Of course there’s something the matter. If not,’ she said, ‘he wouldn’t have any use for me.’ Again she smiled: ‘Look, it’s those with something the matter who need someone. I should have thought even you might have grasped that by now.’

She stood up, went over to the fireplace, grasped the mantelpiece and arched her back.

‘We’re all right for money, aren’t we?’ she asked. Just for once, she, who usually spoke so nakedly, was being disingenuous. She knew our financial state as well as I did. She would not have been her father’s daughter otherwise. Actually, prepared to throw money away as she was, she had a shrewd business head. She knew exactly just how much money need not trouble us. With my earnings and her income, we drew in more than two thousand a year, and lived well within it, even though we kept up this comfortable home and had a housekeeper to look after us.