Charles Snow - Homecomings

‘I think it may be,’ I said.

‘It really does suggest that we can see our way through the next three years without looking unnecessarily imbecile. It really does look as though we might possibly do ourselves some good.’

He was meaning high praise, the plan seemed to him realistic; and that was praise from a master.

Very pleased, I replied: ‘I don’t deserve much of the credit.’

‘May I inquire who does?’

‘Passant has done at least sixty per cent of the job and probably nearer seventy per cent.’

‘My dear Lewis, that’s very handsome of you, but I don’t think you need indulge in quite such excessive magnanimity.’

He was smiling, polite, rigid, closed.

‘It’s perfectly true,’ I said, and described what George had done. Patient as always, Rose heard me out.

‘I am very much obliged to you for that interesting example of job analysis. And now, my dear chap, you must allow others the pleasure of deciding just how much credit is due to you and how much to your no doubt valuable acquisition.’

Meanwhile George walked about with a chuff smile, complacent because he knew the merit of his work, complacent because he was certain it was recognized. For years he had endured being underestimated and, now that at last he was among his intellectual equals, he felt certain that he would get his due. At one time that impervious optimism had annoyed me, but now I found it touching, and I was determined to make Rose admit how good he was. For Rose, however antagonistic to George, would think it his duty to give him a fair deal.

Oblivious of all this, George went happily about, although, after his first weeks in London, he did not accompany me on reflective bachelor strolls at night. An absent-minded, unfocused look would come into his eyes as we took our after-office drink and, like a sleepwalker, he would go out of the pub, leaving me to walk back to Pimlico alone.

Curiously enough, it was from Vera, wrapped in her own emotions, neither observant nor gossipy, that I received a hint. One evening in May, as she came in for the last letters of the day, she stared out of the window with what — it was quite untypical of her — looked like a simper.

‘We don’t seem to be seeing as much of Mr Passant, do we?’ she said.

‘Haven’t you?’

‘Of course not,’ she flushed. She went on: ‘Actually, there’s a story going about that he has found someone who is keeping him busy.’

When she told me, it sounded both true and the last thing one would have expected. For the girl who was taking up George’s time was a typist in another department, virginal, obstinate, and half his age; their exchanges seemed to consist of a prolonged argument, suitable for the question-and-answers of an old-fashioned women’s magazine, of whether or not he was too old for her. Even to Vera, it seemed funny that George should be so reduced; but, so the story ran, he was captivated, he was behaving as though he were the girl’s age instead of his own. No one would have thought he was a sensualist; he was only eager to persuade her to marry him. I remembered how he had tried to get married once before.

‘Isn’t it amusing?’ said Vera, with fellow-feeling, with a lick of malice. ‘I say good luck to him!’

I was thinking, with a spectator’s impatience, that she and George would have been well matched. She might be dense, or humourless, or self-deceiving, but George would have minded less than most men, and underneath it she was as strong as he was. Instead, she had found someone who it seemed could give her nothing, which was a singular triumph for the biological instinct. Now, to cap it all, George was doing the same. Yet she was totally committed, and so perhaps was he. Speculating about them both, I felt extreme curiosity, irritation, and a touch of envy.

INTO my dusty bedroom, where the morning light was reflected on the back wall, Mrs Beauchamp entered with the breakfast tray at times which tended to get later. Breakfast itself had reached an irreducible minimum, a small pot of tea and a biscuit.

‘I do what I can, Mr Eliot,’ said Mrs Beauchamp, not apologetically but with soft and soothing pride.

While she stood there, as though expecting congratulations, and then paddled about on the chance of more exposures of human wickedness, I picked up the newspaper. Each morning, gripped by an addiction I could not control, like one compelled to touch every pillarbox in the street, I had to run my eye down the column of Births, searching for the name of Hollis. After Gilbert’s final piece of gossip, this habit had taken hold of me long before Margaret’s child could possibly be born: and, each morning I did not find the name, I felt a superstitious relief and was ready to pander to Mrs Beauchamp.

One morning in May — we were waiting for the invasion, there was a headline on the outside of The Times — I was giving way to the addiction, the routine tic, scanning through the ‘H’s before I opened the paper.

The name stood there. It stood there unfamiliar, as it might be in an alphabet like Russian, which I did not easily read and had to spell out. Margaret. A son.

‘Anything interesting, Mr Eliot?’ came Mrs Beauchamp’s unctuous voice, as from the end of an immense room.

‘Nothing special.’

‘There never is, is there?’

‘An old friend of mine has just had a child, that’s all.’

‘There was a time when I should have liked a little one, Mr Eliot, if I may put it like that. But then when I saw what they grew up into, I must say I thought I’d had a blessing in disguise.’

When I got rid of her, I read the notice meaninglessly time and time again, the paper still unopened. Despite my resolutions, I could not drive the thought down, the thought of seeing her. I wrote a note, in words that were no different from when I used to write to her, to say I had read the news.

I knew the wisdom of those who cut their losses: how often had I advised others so? Don’t meet, don’t write, don’t so much as hear the name: come to terms, give your imagination to others, dismiss the one who has gone. That was what I had set myself, mainly for my own sake, perhaps with a relic of responsibility for her. It was not much help to remember it now; then at last I managed to tear the letter up.

Walking along the square, I was trying to domesticate the news. She would be very happy: even if she had not been happy without qualification before, which I did not wish to think of, this would make up for it. Maybe her children would become more important than her husband. That might have been so with me. Then as I thought of her, with detachment and almost with pleasure, the possessive anger broke through, as though my stomach had turned over and my throat stopped up. This child ought to have been mine.

I was trying to domesticate the news, to think of her gently as though we had known each other a long time before; she would be an over-careful mother, each mistake she made with the child she would take to heart; she did not believe so much in original endowment as I did, she believed that children were a bit more of a blank sheet; the responsibilities would weigh on her, would probably age her — but, with children, she would not think that her life was wasted.

As I thought of her gently, the anger stayed underneath.

With an attention more deliberate than before, I set myself to squeeze interest out of the people round me. It was then I really got to know the predicament of Vera and Norman. Towards the end of the summer, when the flying-bombs stopped and we could talk in peace, they visited me together several times: and then Norman took to coming alone.

When I first saw them together, I thought that beside her he was insignificant. He was small, with a sallow, delicate face; he had been unfit for the Army and had stayed in his Civil Service job which, like Vera, he had entered at sixteen. He seemed to have nothing to say, although his expression was sensitive and fine; when I tried to lead him on, throwing out casts about books or films, I found he was as uncultivated as she. They went to dances, listened to a little music, walked in the country at weekends; they were each earning about £400 a year, which to them meant comfort, and their lives were oddly free from outside pressure. To me, remembering the friends in my young manhood, whose origins were similar to theirs, Vera’s and Norman’s whole existence, interests and hopes seemed out of comparison more tame.