Charles Snow - Homecomings

But there was one authority who did not regard her so. Soon after I had asked her about George — she would not give away any more — I let her out, and, as I was returning along the hall-passage to my room, heard an excited, insinuating voice from the next landing.

‘Mr Eliot! Mr Eliot!’

‘Yes, Mrs Beauchamp?’ I called out irritably. I could not see her, this was early in 1944, the black-out was still on, and the only light was from the blue-painted bulb in the hall.

‘I must have, that is if you can spare the time of course, I must have a little private word entre nous .’

I went up the stairs and made her out, in the spectral light, standing outside her own closed door.

‘I think I must tell you, Mr Eliot, I’m sure I shouldn’t be doing my duty if I didn’t.’

‘Don’t worry too much.’

‘But I do worry when it’s my duty, Mr Eliot, I’m the biggest worrier I’ve ever met.’

It was clear that I had not yet found a technique for dealing with Mrs Beauchamp.

‘You see, Mr Eliot,’ she whispered triumphantly, ‘before you came in this evening the door of your room just happened to be open and I just happened to be going upstairs, actually I had just been doing a bit of shopping, not that I should ever think of looking in your room if I didn’t hear a noise, but I thought, I know Mr Eliot would want me to pay attention to that, I know you would, Mr Eliot, if you’d seen what I’d seen.’

‘What did you see?’

‘Always respect another person’s privacy, Major Beauchamp used to say,’ she replied. ‘I’ve always done my best to live up to that, Mr Eliot and I know you have,’ she added puzzlingly as though I, too, had sat under Major Beauchamp’s moral guidance.

‘What did you see?’

‘ Écrasez l’infâme ,’ said Mrs Beauchamp.

In a whisper, fat-voiced and throbbing, she broke out: ‘Oh, I’m sorry for that poor friend of yours, poor Mr Passant!’

This seemed to me an absurd let-down; to imagine that George, having been turned down, was going out heartbroken into the night, was too much even for Mrs Beauchamp.

‘He’ll get over it,’ I said.

‘I’m sure I don’t quite follow you,’ she replied virtuously.

‘I mean, Mr Passant won’t worry long because a young woman doesn’t feel free to have dinner with him.’

Speaking to Mrs Beauchamp I often found myself, as if hypnotized by her example, becoming more and more genteel.

‘If it were only that!’

Dimly, I could perceive her hands clasped over her vast unconfined bust.

‘Oh, if only it were that!’ She echoed herself.

‘What else could it be?’

‘Mr Eliot, I’ve always been afraid you’d think too well of women. A gentleman like you is always apt to, I know you do if you don’t mind my saying so, you put them on a pedestal and you don’t see their feet of clay. So did Major Beauchamp and I always prayed he’d never have reason to think different, because it would have killed him if he had and I hope it never will you, Mr Eliot. That secretary of yours, I don’t like to speak against someone who you are so good to, but I’m afraid I have had my eyes on her from the start.’

That did not differentiate Vera sharply from any other woman who came to the house, I thought.

‘Looking as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth,’ said Mrs Beauchamp with a crescendo of indignation. She added: ‘ Cherchez la femme! ’

‘She’s a friend of mine, and I know her very well.’

‘It takes a woman to know another woman, Mr Eliot. When I looked into the room tonight, with the door happening to be open and hearing that poor man cry out, I saw what I expected to see.’

‘What in God’s name was that?’

‘I saw that young woman, who’s so nice and quiet when she wants to be with gentlemen like you, like a ravening beast seeking for whom she may devour.’

‘What are you wanting to tell me?’ I said. ‘Do you mean that Mr Passant was trying to seduce her, or that she was encouraging him, or what?’

‘Nice people talk about men seducing women,’ Mrs Beauchamp remarked in an oozing, saccharine whisper. ‘Nice people like you, Mr Eliot, can’t believe that it’s the other way round, it’s not even six of one and half a dozen of the other, you should have seen what I saw when I was going up those stairs!’

‘Perhaps I should.’

‘No, you shouldn’t, I should have kept your eyes away from that open door.’

‘Now what was it?’

‘It’s only that I don’t like to tell you, Mr Eliot.’

But Mrs Beauchamp could not hold back any longer.

‘Because I saw that young woman, at least I suppose she’d call herself a young woman, and even from where I was I could see that she was crammed with the lust of the eye and the pride of life, I saw her standing up with her arms above her head, and offering herself with the light full on, ready to gobble up that poor man, and he was cowering away from her, and I could see he was shocked, he was shocked to the soul. If that door hadn’t been open, Mr Eliot, I don’t like to imagine what she would have been doing. As it was, it was a terrible thing for me to have to see.’

I suppose she must have seen something: what the scene had actually been, I could not even guess. Just for an instant, such was the mesmerism of her Gothic imagination, I found myself wondering whether she was right — which, the next day in cold blood, I knew to be about as probable as that I myself should make proposals to Mrs Beauchamp on the landing outside her door. I could make no sense of it. It was conceivable that Vera had been slapping George’s face, but though George was awkward he was not brash, he was slow moving until he was certain a woman wanted him. Anyway, they had somehow planted themselves in a moment of farce; and when I saw them in the office, Vera tweeded and discreet, George bowing his great head over the papers, I should have liked to know the answer.

Constraint or no constraint, they had to work at close quarters, for we were occupied more intensely and secretly than before on a new project. It was in fact not so much a new project, as an administrator’s forecast of what was to be done if the Barford experiment succeeded. It happened to be the kind of forecast for which the collaboration of George and me might have been designed. George was still out of comparison better than I was at ordering brute facts: within weeks, he had comprehended the industrial structures on which we had to calculate with an accuracy and speed that only two men I knew could have competed with, one of those two being Hector Rose. On the other hand, George lacked what I was strong in, a sense of the possible, the nose for what not to waste time thinking about. It was I who had to pick my way through conferences with Lufkin and other firms’ equivalents of Lufkin.

When I had to negotiate with Lufkin, he was as reasonable as though our previous collision had never occurred. For my part I realized that I had been quite wrong in keeping him out: we should have gained three months if the first contract had gone to him. No one held it against me: it had been one of those decisions, correct on the surface, for which one gathered approval instead of blame. Yet I had not made a worse official mistake. It was clear enough now that, if the Barford project came off, we should be fools to keep Lufkin out again.

When, in the late spring, I delivered my report to Rose, he first expressed his usual mechanical enthusiasm: ‘I must thank you and congratulate you, if you will allow me, my dear Lewis, I do thank you most warmly for doing this job for us.’

I was so used to his flourishes, taking the meaning out of words, that I was surprised when he said, in his rarer and dryer tone: ‘This looks about the best piece of work you’ve done here.’