Charles Snow - Homecomings

‘But what?’

‘There’s not much in it,’ I replied.

‘Yes, I was afraid so.’

‘Were you?’

‘People often talk about you, you know.’

The crowd pressed upon us, they parted me from her, although before we had to talk at large, she was muttering about something she wished for me. She had begun to say it with an impatient, eager smile.

As I was speaking to the newcomers, I noticed a tall youngish man detach himself from another group and whisper to Margaret, who was glancing in my direction.

She looked tired, she seemed to be wanting to go home, but soon she beckoned to me.

‘You haven’t met Geoffrey, have you?’ she said to me. He was a couple of inches taller than my six feet, very thin, long-handed, and long-footed; he was thirty-five, good-looking in a lantern-jawed fashion, with handsome eyes and deep folds in his cheeks. The poise of his head was arrogant, other men would judge him pleased with his looks; but there was nothing arrogant about him as we shook hands, he was as short of conversation as I had been with Margaret a few minutes before, and just as I had opened imbecilely about the pictures, so did he. He had known about me and Margaret long before he married her; now his manner was apologetic, quite unlike his normal, so I fancied, as he asked my opinion of the pictures, in which his interest was, if possible, less than mine.

Margaret said they must be going soon, Helen would be waiting up for them.

‘That’s my sister-in-law,’ Geoffrey explained to me, still over-embarrassed, over-considerate. ‘She’s sitting in with the infant.’

‘She still hasn’t any of her own?’ I asked Margaret. I recalled the times when, joyful ourselves, we had arranged her sister’s well-being, the conspiracies of happiness. Margaret shook her head: ‘No, poor dear, she had no luck.’

Geoffrey caught her eye, and he said, in what I took to be his confident doctor’s voice: ‘It’s a thousand pities she didn’t get some sensible advice right at the beginning.’

‘But yours is well?’ I spoke to both of them, but once more I was asking Margaret.

It was Geoffrey who replied.

‘He’s all right,’ he said. ‘Of course, if you’re not used to very young children, you might get him out of proportion. Actually, for general development, he’d certainly be in the top ten per cent of two-year-olds, but probably not in the top five.’

His tone was exaggeratedly dry and objective, but his eyes were innocent with love. He went on, with the pretence of objectivity which professionals believe conceals their pride: ‘Only yesterday, it’s simply an example, he took a flash lamp to pieces and put it together again. Which I couldn’t have done at the age of four.’

Conscious of Margaret’s silence, I expressed surprise. Geoffrey’s tone changed, and as he spoke to me again I thought I heard something hard, jaunty, almost vindictive: ‘You’d better come and see him for yourself.’

‘No, he wouldn’t enjoy it,’ said Margaret quickly.

‘Why shouldn’t he come for lunch, then he can inspect the boy?’

‘It would be very inconvenient for you.’ Margaret spoke straight to me.

I replied to Geoffrey: ‘I’d like to come.’

Soon afterwards, sharply, Margaret said again that they must be going home. I walked with them out of the room, into the hall, where, through the open door, we could hear the rain pelting down. Geoffrey ran out to bring the car round, and Margaret and I stood side by side staring out into the dark terrace, seeing the rain shafts cut through the beam of light from the doorway. On the pavement the rain hissed and bounced; the night had gone cool; a clean smell came off the trees, making me feel for an instant calm when, knowing nothing else for certain, I knew I was not that.

Neither of us turned towards the other. The car came along the kerb, veils of rain shimmering across the headlights.

‘I shall see you then,’ she said, in a flat, low voice.

‘Yes,’ I said.

AS I sat between Margaret and Geoffrey Hollis at their dining-table, I wanted to speak amiably to him.

Outside the sun was shining, it was a sleepy middle-of-the-day; no one was to be seen in the Summer Place gardens; the only sound, through the open windows, was the soporific sweep of buses along the Fulham Road. I had only arrived a quarter of an hour before, and we spoke, all three of us, as though we were subdued by the heat. Geoffrey was sitting in a shirt open at the neck, and Margaret in a cotton frock; we ate boiled eggs and salad and drank nothing but iced water. In between times Geoffrey and I exchanged polite curiosity about our working days.

In the dining-room, which was like a pool of coolness after the streets, all we said sounded civil. I was hearing what it meant to be a children’s doctor, the surgery hours, the hospital rounds, the proportion of nights he could expect a call. It was useful, it was devoted, it was no more self-indulgent than the meal he ate. Nor was the way he talked about it. He had admitted that in some respects he was lucky. ‘Compared with other doctors anyway,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Any other sort of doctor is dealing with patients who by and large are going to get worse. With children most of them are going to get better. It gives it quite a different flavour, you see, and that’s a compensation.’

He was provoking me: it was enviable, it was admirable: I wanted to prove it wasn’t.

Suspicious of myself, I changed the subject. Just to keep the conversation easy, I asked him what he thought of some news from the morning’s paper.

‘Oh yes,’ he said indifferently, ‘a parent who came in mentioned it.’

‘What do you think?’

‘I haven’t any idea.’

‘It’s pretty plain, isn’t it?’

‘Maybe,’ he replied. ‘But, you see, I haven’t read a morning paper.’

‘Are you as busy as all that?’ I tried to be companionable.

‘No,’ he said, with pleasure, tilting his head back like someone who had taken a finesse. ‘It’s a matter of general policy. Twelve months ago we decided not to take a daily paper. It seemed to me that far more days than not, it was going to make me slightly miserable without any gain to anyone, and with just conceivably a fractional loss of efficiency to myself. In any case I don’t believe in adding to the world’s stock of misery, even if it’s through my own. So we decided the sensible course was to stop the paper.’

‘I couldn’t do that,’ I broke out.

‘Quite seriously,’ said Geoffrey, ‘if a lot of us only bit off what we could chew, and simply concentrated on the things we can affect, there’d be less tension all round, and the forces of sweetness and light would stand more chance.’

‘I believe you’re dangerously wrong,’ I said.

Again he was provoking me; the irritation, which would not leave me alone at that table, was jagging my voice; this time I felt I had an excuse. Partly it was that this kind of quietism was becoming common among those I knew and I distrusted it. Partly Geoffrey himself seemed to me complacent, speaking from high above the battle; and, like many people who led useful and good lives, even like many who had a purity of nature, he seemed insulated by his self-regard.

Suddenly Margaret spoke to me.

‘He’s absolutely right,’ she said.

She was smiling, she was trying to speak easily, as I tried to speak to Geoffrey, but she was worried and angry.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘We’ve got to deal with things that are close enough to handle,’ she said.

‘I don’t believe,’ I said, getting angrier, ‘that you can cut yourself off from the common experience around you. And if you do, I am sure you lose by it.’