Charles Snow - Homecomings

It was the kind of demand which, had it come from an acquaintance, I should have evaded with a clear conscience. I had taken some responsibility for these two; they thought I had given them intimacy, could I just shut it off when otherwise I had to accept the consequences?

As soon as I had smelt the danger ahead of them, I had wanted excuses to absent myself. It was a dilemma I did not like, any more than I liked my own feelings. I did what I had not done for years, and asked advice. I did not want worldly advice; I longed for Margaret’s; indeed, one night I read through the Hollises in the London directory, wondering whether they might have returned to the town, knowing that I had a true reason for writing to her, knowing also that it was a pretext. At last I went with my trouble to George Passant.

A few months past, the young woman he had been pursuing with such adolescent ardour had closed their years of argument and gone back home. She had refused to marry him; she had refused to sleep with him; and George, comically frustrated for a man of passion, seemed to an observer to have got nothing out of it. But that was not what he thought. ‘It’s been a magnificent affair!’ he cried, as though his gusto had mysteriously slipped into the wrong groove. As he grew older, he seemed to luxuriate more and more in his own oddity.

Nevertheless when on an autumn night we went into the Tothill Street pub and I confessed the story, he was surprisingly prosaic.

‘It would be absolutely ridiculous for you to take the slightest risk,’ he said.

I had told him my relations with Vera and Norman as accurately as I could. I had also told him of the police investigations, which I could confide to no one else: with George, however uproarious his own life was being, any secret was safe.

As he listened to me, he looked concerned. It occurred to me that he took pride in my public reputation. He did not like to see me rushing into self-injury as he might have done himself: he had always had a streak of unpredictable prudence: that evening, he was speaking as sensibly as Hector Rose.

‘If you could make any effective difference to the old man’s [Lacey’s] chance of getting off then we might have to think again,’ said George, ‘though I warn you I should be prepared to make a case against that too. But that question doesn’t arise, and there is obviously only one reasonable course of action.’

George ordered pints of beer, facing me with his aggressive optimism, as though the sane must triumph.

‘I’m not so sure,’ I said.

‘Then you’re even more incapable of reason than I ever suspected.’

‘They’ll feel deserted,’ I said. ‘Especially the young man. It may do him a certain amount of harm.’

‘I’m afraid,’ said George, ‘I can’t take into account every personal consequence of every action. Particularly as the poor chap’s going to have such harm done him anyway that I can’t believe your demonstrating a little common sense would matter a button in the general catastrophe.’

‘There’s something in that,’ I replied.

‘I’m glad you’re showing signs of recognition.’

‘But I took them both up,’ I said. ‘It’s not so good to amuse myself with them when they’re not asking anything — and then not to stand by them now.’

‘I can’t admit that they’ve got the slightest claim on you.’ George’s voice rose to an angry shout. He pulled down his waistcoat and, his tone still simmering, addressed me with a curious formality.

‘It’s some considerable time since I have spoken to you on these matters. I should like to make it clear that everyone who has had your friendship has had the best of the bargain. I am restricting myself to talking of your friendships, I had better emphasize that. With some of your women, I couldn’t give you such a testimonial. So far as I can make out, you treated Margaret Davidson badly and stupidly. I shouldn’t be surprised if the same weren’t true of Betty Vane and others. I expect you ought to reproach yourself over some of those.’

I was thinking, George was not so inattentive as he seemed.

‘But I don’t admit that anyone alive has any right to reproach you about your friendships. I should like to see anyone contradict me on that point,’ said George, still sounding angry, as though he were making a furious debating speech. But his face was open and heavy with affection. ‘I can work it out, I might remind you that I can work it out as well as anyone in London, exactly what you’ve given to those two. You’ve been available to them whenever they’ve wanted you, haven’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve never protected yourself, have you? You’ve let them come to you when you’ve been tired and ill?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘You’ve let them take precedence over things you enjoy. You’ve kept away from smart parties because of them, I should be surprised very much if you haven’t.’

I smiled to myself. Even now, George kept a glittering image of ‘smart parties’ and of the allure they must have for me. Yet he was exerting his whole force, he was speaking with a thumping sweetness.

‘I know what you’ve given them. A good many of us can tell from personal experience, and don’t forget my experience of you goes back farther than the others. Sometimes I’ve thought that you haven’t the faintest idea of how people appreciate what you’ve done for them. I should like to inform you that you are known to be a preposterously unselfish friend. I have the best of reasons for knowing it.’

George was a human brother. He fought with his brother men, he never wanted to be above the battle. He did not understand the temptation, so insidious, often so satisfying to men like me, of playing God: of giving so much and no more: of being considerate, sometimes kind, but making that considerateness into a curtain with which to shut off the secret self I could not bear to give away. Some of what he said was true: but that was because, in most of the outward shows of temperament, what one loses on the swings one gains on the roundabouts. Because I had been so tempted to make myself into a looker-on, I asked little of those I was with. I was good-natured, sometimes at a cost to myself, though not at a fundamental cost. I had become unusually patient. I was fairly tolerant by temperament, and the curve of my own experience made me more so. Judged by the ordinary human standards, I was interested and reliable. All that, I had gained — it was what George saw, and it was not quite negligible — by non-participation. But what George did not see was that I was being left with a vacuum inside me instead of a brother’s heart.

In the end, I gave the evidence. I tried to accept my responsibility to Vera and Norman as though I felt it. So far as the gossip reached me, I did not lose much; although I did not recognize it for months to come, I gained something.

That winter, sitting alone in my room, I thought often of myself as I had done on the night of Munich; but had learned more of myself now, and disliked it more. I could not help seeing what had gone wrong with me and Margaret and where the profound fault lay. It could have seemed the legacy that Sheila had left me: that was an excuse; the truth was meaner, deeper, and without any gloss at all. It was the truth that showed itself in my escape into looking-on. I knew now how much there was wrong with those who became spectators. Mr Knight was a spectator of the world of affairs, because he was too proud and diffident to match himself against other men: and I could see how his pride-and-diffidence was as petty as vanity, he would not match himself because they might see him fail. Superficially, unlike Mr Knight, I was not vain: but in my heart, in my deepest relations, it was the same with me.