Charles Snow - Homecomings

‘Yes,’ I said.

Again he looked at me. As though satisfied, he said: ‘Accepting that, then, I come straight on to the next question. Why did he plead guilty? If he hadn’t, from what you’ve just said, he’d have had you all in difficulties—’

I agreed.

‘Then why did he?’

‘I’ve often wondered,’ I said, ‘and I’ve got no explanation at all.’

‘What I want to be convinced of,’ said Austin Davidson, ‘is that there were no unfair threats — or unfair inducements as far as that goes — before he was tried.’

Once more I did not resent the words, they were too impersonal for that. Instead of replying with official palaver, I was searching for the literal truth. I said that, after Sawbridge was arrested, my first-hand knowledge ended but I thought it very unlikely that anything unfair had been done.

‘Why do you think that?’

‘I’ve seen him since, in prison. And if there had been anything of the sort, I can’t imagine why he shouldn’t complain. It isn’t as though he’s been converted, he’s still a Communist. If he had anything to complain of, I don’t think he’d be excessively considerate about our feelings.’

‘That’s a genuine point,’ said Davidson. I could feel he was believing me, as he continued: ‘Well, I’ve only one more question. Fourteen years seemed to most of us a savage sentence. Was there any influence from government or your official people to suggest that he ought to be made an example of?’

‘On that,’ I replied, ‘I know no more than you do.’

‘I should like to know what you think.’

‘I should be astonished if there were anything said directly,’ I said. ‘The most that can have happened is that judges like all the people round them are affected by a climate of thought.’

Staying very still, Davidson did not speak for some time, until, throwing back his forelock like a boy, he said: ‘Well, I don’t think there’s any more you can tell me, and I’m glad to have found someone who could speak straight.’

He continued: ‘So on the whole you are happy about the Sawbridge business, are you?’

He might have meant it as a formal ending, but I was suddenly provoked. I had not enjoyed defending the establishment: but I was also irked by the arrogance of men of decent feeling like Davidson, who had had the means to cultivate their decent feelings without the social interest or realism to imagine where they led. I spoke sharply, not like an official. I finished up.

‘You ought not to think that I like what we’ve done. Or a good many other things we’re having to do. People of my sort have only two choices in this situation, one is to keep outside and let others do the dirty work, the other is to stay inside and try to keep off the worst horrors and know all the time that we shan’t come out with clean hands. Neither way is very good for one, and if I had a son I should advise him to do what you did, and choose a luckier time and place to be born.’

It was a long time since I heard my own temper running loose. Davidson was looking at me with a friendly and companionable frown.

‘Yes,’ he remarked, ‘my daughter said you must be feeling something like that.

‘I asked her about you,’ he went on casually, and added, with a simplicity that was at the same time arrogant and pure: ‘I’ve never fancied myself at judging people when I first meet them. So I have to find out about them in my own fashion.’

For a fortnight I was immersed in that kind of comfort which is like a luxurious cocoon as one delays before a longed-for and imminent fate, which I had also known after my first meeting with Margaret. I was still not calculating; I, who had calculated so much, went about as though the machine had been switched off; now that I had a card of re-entry into the Davidson family, I still felt the future free.

I still felt so, when I wrote a note to Davidson, telling him I had a little more information about the Sawbridge case, if he chose to call. He did call: he seemed satisfied: afterwards we walked together down Victoria Street. It was a blazing hot day, people were walking in the shade, but Davidson insisted on keeping to the other side.

‘We mustn’t miss a second of this sun,’ he said, as though it were a moral axiom.

He walked with long strides, his head down, his feet clumpingly heavy on the pavement for so spare a man. His shirt-sleeves hung beneath his cuffs, over-long and unbuttoned. Shabby as he was, passers-by noticed him; he was the most striking and handsome figure in the street. I thought how like that shabby carelessness was to Margaret’s.

Suddenly he said: ‘I’m giving a show at my house next week.’ A private view, he explained, for two young painters. ‘Would that interest you?’

‘Very much,’ I said. I said it eagerly, without any guard.

Not looking at me, Davidson lolloped along.

‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘Do you know anything about pictures? It’s a waste of your time and mine if you don’t, don’t you know.’

‘I know a little.’

‘You’re not bluffing, are you?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I’d better ask you a few questions.’

There and then, in Victoria Street in the sweating sunshine, as we passed offices of consultant engineers, Davidson gave me a brisk viva. Embarrassed, anxious to pass, doing my best, I nevertheless felt a twinge of amusement, as a comparison struck me. To Davidson, whose taste had no use for concealments, this was a matter to be cleared up in the open; it was just a question of whether I was equipped to look at pictures or not; there were no overtones, no other motives, on his side or mine.

It did not occur to him that I was snatching at the chance to meet his daughter again. Yet he was a man who, so I had heard and I had no reason to doubt it, had once been well-known for his love-affairs. Sheila’s father, the Reverend Laurence Knight, had been a faithful husband, living obscurely all his life in a country vicarage: yet, in Davidson’s place, he would have known precisely what I was after, not now, when it was easy to see, but within minutes of our first meeting. Mr Knight, incidentally, would have tantalized me and then found some excuse for holding back the invitation.

Davidson did not go in for any flourishes: he just formed his opinion, and announced: ‘You’d never have made a living at it, don’t you know.’

I was in suspense; I agreed.

‘It might just be worth your while to come along,’ he said, staring at the pavement in front of him. ‘But only just.’

Waiting in my flat on the evening of the private view I saw the sky over Hyde Park turn dark, sodden with rain to come. Standing by the window, I kept glancing at my watch, although it was still not time to leave, and then gazed out again over the trees into the leaden murk. Then I looked back into the room. On the little table by the sofa the reading-lamp was gleaming, and a book which I had left open shone under the light.

It was peaceful, it never seemed so peaceful. For an instant I wanted to stay there, and not go out. It would be easy to stay; I need only telephone and make an apology, in that party I should not be missed, the significance I was giving it was my own invention, and besides myself no living person knew. I looked at the lamp and the sofa, with a stab almost of envy.

Then I turned back to the window, reading my watch, impatient that it was still not time to go.

IN the hall of Davidson’s house the brightness, clashing with the noise of the party within, took me aback; it was Davidson himself who came to greet me.

‘You decided it was worth while, did you?’ he asked.