Charles Snow - Homecomings

There was another comparison distinctly less congenial. There was someone else who looked on, and felt lifted above ordinary mortals as she did so. Mrs Beauchamp — yes, we had something in common. Yes, Mr Knight and she and I were members of the same family.

Lonely in that first winter of peace, I thought of how joyful Margaret and I had been at first, and how towards the end I had gone to her, the taxi racketing in the steely light, guilt beating on me like rain upon the window. I could understand more of it now. First I had tried to make her into a dream image, a kind of anti-Sheila: then I had transformed her into Sheila come again: I had been afraid to see her as she was, just herself, someone whose spirit was as strong as mine.

Although I did not know it, I was gaining something.

Just as, when Margaret at last admitted defeat about our relation, I had seen in her a secret planner devising (almost unknown to herself) a way out — so now, myself defeated, disliking what I had come to, the secret planner began to work in me.

Often, when a branch of one’s life has withered, it is others who first see the sap rise again. One is unconscious of a new start until it is already made: or sometimes, in the same instant, one knows and does-not-know. Perhaps when, believing myself preoccupied over Vera and Norman, I furled through the telephone directory for Margaret’s address, I was already committing myself to a plan which might reshape my life; perhaps, months earlier, when I stood outside the house of my first marriage and thought I had no hope of any other home, hope was being born.

Perhaps I knew and did-not-know. But, in fact, the first signs of the secret planner which I observed, as though I were watching an intruder and a somewhat tiresome one, were a little absurd. For all of a sudden I became discontented with my flat at Mrs Beauchamp’s. Instead of being able to put up with anything, I could scarcely wait to make a change. Restlessly, quite unlike myself, I called on agents, inspected half a dozen flats in an afternoon, and took one before night. It was on the north side of Hyde Park, just past Albion Gate, and too large for me, with three bedrooms and two sitting-rooms, but I told myself that I liked the view over the seething trees, over the Bayswater Road, along which I used to walk on my way to Margaret.

That night, for the first time, I was in search of Mrs Beauchamp and not she of me. I rapped on her door, rattled the letter-box, called her name, but, although I did not believe that she was out, got no reply. So I left a note and, feeling that her technique was well-proved and that I might pay her a last compliment by copying it, sat with the door open listening for her steps. Even then I did not hear her until the scuffle of her slippers was just outside my door.

‘Mr Eliot, I found your little letter saying that you wanted to speak to me,’ she whispered.

I asked if she had been out, knowing for certain that she could not have been.

‘As a matter of fact, I haven’t, Mr Eliot,’ she said. ‘To tell you the honest truth, I’ve been getting so worried about the catering that I just can’t sleep until daylight, and so I have been allowing myself a little doze before I have to set about my bit of an evening meal.’

Whatever she had been doing, I believed it was not that. Her expression was confident, impenetrable, wide-awake. ‘Catering’ meant getting my morning tea, and her remark was a first move towards stopping it.

‘I’m sorry to drag you down,’ I said.

‘It’s part of my duty,’ she replied.

‘I thought I ought to tell you at once,’ I said, ‘that I shall have to leave you soon.’

‘I’m very sorry to hear you say that, Mr Eliot.’ She gazed at me with a firm glance, disapproving, almost inimical, but also a little pitying.

‘I shall be sorry to go.’

I said it as a civility: oddly, Mrs Beauchamp compelled civility, it was impossible to suggest to her what I thought of her and her house.

‘I shall be sorry to go,’ I repeated. Then I felt a pang of genuine, ridiculous, irrational regret.

‘No one has to live where they don’t want to, Mr Eliot.’

Her expression showed no diminution of confidence. If I felt a pang of sadness, she had never appeared less sad. Others might find any parting a little death, but not Mrs Beauchamp.

‘If you don’t mind me asking, after the little talks we’ve had when you’ve been lonely and I was trying to cheer you up,’ her tone was soft as ever, perhaps a shade less smooth, ‘but if you don’t mind me asking, I was wondering if you intended to get married again?’

‘I haven’t been thinking of it.’

‘Well then, that’s something, and, without pushing in where I’m not welcome, that’s the wisest thing you’ve said tonight or for many a long night, Mr Eliot. And I hope you’ll remember me if any woman ever gets you in her clutches and you can’t see a glimpse of the open door. Never notice their tears , Mr Eliot.’

After that exhortation, Mrs Beauchamp said briskly: ‘Perhaps we ought to have a little chat about the catering, Mr Eliot, because you’ll be here another two or three weeks, I suppose.’

Most people, on being given notice, served their time out with a good grace, I was thinking: in fact, they were more obliging in that last fortnight than ever before. But Mrs Beauchamp’s was a tough nature. She had decided that making my morning tea was too much for her; the fact that I was leaving soon did not weaken her. In a good-natured whisper she told me that I should get a nice breakfast, much nicer than she had been able to do for me, over in Dolphin Square. She looked at me with a sly, unctuous smile.

‘Well, Mr Eliot, I’m sure you’ll live at better addresses than this, if I may say so. But, though I suppose I’m not the right person to tell you and it doesn’t come too well from me, I just can’t help putting it to you, that a lot of water will have to flow under the bridges, before you find a place where you’ll be as much at home!’

WHEN I decided to take up again with Gilbert Cooke, I knew what I was doing. Or at least I thought I did. I had left open no other line of communication with Margaret; he would have news of her; I had to hear it. Beyond that, my foresight was cut off.

So I telephoned to his new office late on a May afternoon. Was he free that night? His voice was stiff. No, he was not certain. Yes, he could find time for a quick meal. Soon we were walking together across the park; under the petrol-smell of a London summer there was another, mixed from the grass and the wall-flowers, sharpened by the rain. It brought back walking in London as a student, the smell of the park promising and denying, taunting to a young man still chaste.

Massive beside me, his light feet scuffing the ground, Gilbert was saying little: unless I asked a question, his lips were squashed together under the beaky nose. I had forgotten that he was proud. He was not prepared to be dropped and then welcomed back. I had forgotten also that he was subtle and suspicious.

He did not believe that I suddenly wanted him for his own sake. He guessed that I was after something, perhaps he had an inkling of what it was. He was determined not to let me have it.

Yet he could not resist letting me know that he still had his ear to the ground. As we climbed the Duke of York’s Steps he said, out of the blue: ‘How’s the new flat?’

I said — irked that he could still surprise me — all right.

‘Is it going to work?’

‘I think so.’

‘It’ll be all right if the old lady gets better or worse. Because if she gets worse the agents will have to put someone else in. But it’s going to be fatal if she stays moderately ill.’