Charles Snow - Homecomings

Suddenly, towards the end of the meal, with eyes glistening he said to me: ‘I’ve stolen a march on you.’

‘What have you been up to?’

‘I’ve been inside a house you might be interested in.’

I shook my head.

‘The house of a family that means something to you,’ said Gilbert, knowing, hot-eyed, imperious. Then he said, gazing straight at Margaret: ‘Nothing to do with you.’

For an instant, I wondered whether he had met the Knights.

‘Who is it?’ I asked.

‘Put him out of his misery,’ said Margaret, also on edge.

‘He ought to be able to guess,’ said Gilbert, disappointed, as though his game were not quite a success.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Well, then,’ Gilbert spoke to Margaret. ‘He’s got a new secretary. I’ve found out about her young man and his family. I’ve had tea with them.’

It was such an anticlimax that I laughed out loud. Even so, the whole performance seemed gigantesque. It was true that I had a new secretary, a young widow called Vera Allen: I did not know anything about her life. Gilbert told us that she was in love with a young man in the office, whose family he had tracked down.

When Gilbert described the visit, which he had planned like a military operation, his curiosity — for that alone had driven him on made him appear more gigantesque, at times a little mad. Telling us with glee of how he had traced their address, made an excuse for an official visit to Kilburn, called at the house, found they were out, traced them to a pub and persuaded them to take him home for a pot of tea, he was not in the slightest gratifying a desire to go slumming. He would have gone off on the same chase if the young man’s father had been a papal count.

Gilbert’s inquisitiveness was so ravening that he was as happy, as unceremonious, wherever it led him, provided he picked up a scrap of human news. Having an evening pot of tea with this young man’s parents, he felt nothing but brotherliness, except that hot-eyed zest with which he collected gossip about them, Helen, her marriage, perhaps at fourth-hand about Margaret and me.

‘You are a menace,’ said Margaret, but with indulgence and a shade of envy for anyone who could let himself rip so far.

When we went out from the restaurant into the bitter throat-catching air, we were still happy, all three of us. Gilbert continued to talk triumphantly of his findings and, walking between us, Margaret took his arm as well as mine.

ROSE worked fast after the meeting, and within a fortnight the contract was given to one of Lufkin’s rivals. During that fortnight, several of the Minister’s colleagues were rumoured to have gone to dinner at St James’s Court; the Minister’s own position was precarious and some of those colleagues did not wish him well. But, once the contract was signed, I thought it unlikely that Lufkin would waste any more time intriguing against the old man. Lufkin was much too practical a person to fritter himself away in revenge. For myself, I expected to be dropped for good, but no worse than that. Lufkin cut his losses, psychological as well as financial, with a drasticness that was a taunt to more contemplative men.

With that business settled and my mind at ease, I walked early one Saturday afternoon along the Bayswater Road to Margaret’s flat. It was mid-December, a mild wet day with a south-west wind; the street, the park, lay under a lid of cloud; the soft mild air blew in my face, brought a smell from the park both spring-like and rich with autumnal decay. It was a day on which the nerves were quite relaxed, and the mild air lulled one with reveries of pleasures to come.

For a couple of days I had not seen Margaret; that morning she had not telephoned me as she usually did on Saturday, but the afternoon arrangement was a standing one, and relaxed, comfortable with expectancy, I got out the latchkey and let myself into her room. She was sitting on the stool in front of her looking-glass: she did not get up or look round: the instant I saw her reflection, strained and stern, I cried: ‘What is the matter?’

‘I have something to ask you.’

‘What is it?’

Without turning round, her voice toneless, she said: ‘Is it true that Sheila killed herself?’

‘What do you mean?’

Suddenly she faced me, her eyes dense with anger.

‘I heard it last night. I heard it for the first time . Is it true?’

Deep in resentment, I stood there without speaking. At last I said: ‘Yes. It is true.’

Few people knew it; as Mr Knight had suggested that night we talked while Sheila’s body lay upstairs, the newspapers had had little space for an obscure inquest; I had told no one.

‘It is incredible that you should have kept it from me,’ she cried.

‘I didn’t want it to hang over you—’

‘What kind of life are we supposed to be living? Do you think I couldn’t accept anything that has happened to you? What I can’t bear is that you should try to censor something important. I can’t stand it if you insist on living as though you were alone. You make me feel that these last twelve months I have been wasting my time.’

‘How did you hear?’ I broke out.

‘We’ve been pretending—’

‘How did you hear?’

‘I heard from Helen.’

‘She can’t have known,’ I cried out.

‘She took it for granted that I did. When she saw I didn’t, what do you think it was like for both of us?’

‘Did she say how she’d heard?’

‘How could you let it happen?’

Our voices were raised, our words clashed together.

‘Did she say how she’d heard?’ I shouted again.

‘Gilbert told her the other day.’

She was seared with distress, choked with rage. And I felt the same sense of outrage; though I had brought the scene upon myself, I felt wronged.

Suddenly that desolation, that dull fury, that I wanted to visit on her, was twisted on to another.

‘I won’t tolerate it,’ I shouted. Over her shoulder I saw my face in her looking-glass, whitened with anger while hers had gone dark.

‘I’ll get rid of him. I won’t have him near me.’

‘He’s fond of you—’

‘He won’t do this again.’

‘He’s amused you often enough before now, gossiping about someone else.’

‘This wasn’t a thing to gossip about.’

‘It’s done now,’ she said.

‘I’ll get rid of him. I won’t have him near me.’

I said it so bitterly that she flinched. For the first time she averted her glance: in the silence she backed away, rested an arm on the window-sill, with her body limp. As I looked at her, unseeing, my feelings clashed and blared — protests, antagonism, the undercurrent of desire. Other feelings swept over those — the thought of Gilbert Cooke spying after Sheila’s death, searching the local paper, tracking down police reports, filled my mind like the image of a monster. Then a wound re-opened, and I said quietly: ‘There was someone else who went in for malice.’

‘What are you talking about?’

In jerky words, I told her of R S Robinson.

‘Poor Sheila,’ Margaret muttered, and then asked, more gently than she had spoken that afternoon: ‘Did it make much difference to her?’

‘I’ve never known,’ I said. I added: ‘Perhaps not. Probably not.’

Margaret was staring at me with pity, with something like fright; her eyes were filled with tears; in that moment we could have come into each other’s arms.

I said: ‘I won’t have such people near me. That is why I shall get rid of Gilbert Cooke.’

Margaret still stared at me, but I saw her face harden, as though, by a resolution as deliberate as that on the first evening we met alone but more painful now, she was drawing on her will. She answered: ‘You said nothing to me about Robinson either, or what you went through then.’