Charles Snow - Homecomings

‘Lose by it how?’

‘Lose by it as a person. Just like very optimistic people who shut off anything that is painful to see. I should have thought you’d diminish yourself unless you suffer your sufferings as well as enjoy your joys.’

Margaret gave a smile half malicious, as though gratified that my temper had gone higher than hers.

‘The trouble,’ she said, ‘with the very realistic men who live in this world, like you, is that they’re so hopelessly unpractical when it comes to the point. You don’t think Geoffrey’s realistic, but he’s so much more practical than you are that you don’t begin to start. He likes dealing with children and he likes being happy. Hasn’t it occurred to you that no one except you worries whether they’re “diminishing themselves” or not?’

I was getting the worst of it; I could not overbear her — I was hurt because she had taken his side with such an edge.

In return, I found myself talking to hurt.

I reminded her that I had never been comfortable about recipes for the good life — like those of her father’s friends twenty years before — which depended on one’s being an abnormally privileged person.

‘To be honest,’ I looked at Geoffrey and then at her, ‘yours doesn’t seem to me a great improvement. Your whole attitude would be unthinkable unless you happened to have one of the very few jobs which is obviously benevolent, and unless both of you happened to come from families who were used to doing good rather than having good done to them.’

‘Lewis,’ she called out my name for the first time for three years, but furiously, ‘that’s quite unfair!’

‘Is it?’ I asked her, watching the flush mount from her neck.

‘Well, I wouldn’t deny,’ said Geoffrey, with exasperating fairness and a contented, judicious smile, ‘that there may be something in it.’

‘Do you really say that I patronize anyone?’ she cried.

‘With individuals, no, I shouldn’t say so. But when you think about social things, of course you do.’

Her eyes were dark and snapping; her cheeks were flushed; it was as I remembered her when angry, the adrenalin was pumping through her, all pallor had left her and she looked spectacularly well.

‘I must say,’ Geoffrey remarked pacifically, ‘I’m inclined to think he’s right.’

‘I suppose you’ll say I’m a snob next?’ Her eyes, still snapping, were fixed on me.

‘In a rarefied sense, yes.’

Geoffrey reminded her that it was half past one, time to give Maurice his meal. Without speaking, her shoulders set with energy, with anger against me, she took the tray and led us to the nursery.

‘There he is,’ said Geoffrey, as I got my first glance at the child.

His pen was just outside a strong diagonal of sunlight; sitting with his back to the bars, like an animal retreating at the zoo, he was slowly tearing a magazine to pieces. I had only my brother’s boy to compare him with, and despite what I had heard of his manual precocity, I could not see it. I just saw him tearing up the paper with that solemn, concentrated inefficiency characteristic of infants, which made his hand and elbow movements look like those of a drunken man photographed in slow motion.

I did not go up to him, but went on watching as, after Margaret spoke to him, he continued obsessively with his task. He was, and the sight wounded me though I had prepared for it, a most beautiful child. The genes had played one of their tricks, and had collected together in him the best looks of parents and grandparents, so that already, under the india-rubber fat, one could pick out the fine cheekbones of his mother and the poise of his father’s neck. It was easy to imagine him as a young man, dark, indrawn, hard to approach and gaining admirers just because of that.

Margaret was telling him that his meal was ready, but he replied that he did not want it.

‘What do you want?’ she asked, with that matter-of-fact gentleness she showed to a lover.

The little boy was gripping a ping-pong ball, and, as soon as she lifted him from his pen, he began to lam it at a looking-glass over the mantelpiece, and then at a picture near the cot.

Geoffrey left, to fetch something missing from the tray, but the boy paid no notice, and went on throwing the ball. As he let fly, I was scrutinizing the boneless movement of his shoulder, as fluid as though he were double-jointed. Margaret said to me: ‘It’s a nice way for him to be.’

‘Isn’t he rather strong?’ I asked.

She was smiling at me, the quarrel smoothed away by the animal presence of her son. As she stood with him thigh-high beside her, she could not conceal — what at her father’s party she remained silent about, when Geoffrey was so voluble — her passion for the child. It softened and filled out her face, and made her body lax. Pained again, as by the boy’s good looks, I knew that I had not seen her look more tender.

‘It’s nice for him just to chuck himself about,’ she said.

I caught her meaning. Like many of the sensitive, she had wished often, especially before she gained the confidence that she could make a man happy, that her own childhood had been less refined, had been coarser and nearer the earth.

I put in a remark, to let her know I understood, She smiled again: but Maurice began shouting, violent because she was talking away from him.

While he had his meal I remained outside the circle of attention, which was lit by the beam of sun gilding the legs of the high chair. Geoffrey sat on one side, Margaret in front, the child facing her with unflickering eyes. After two or three spoonfuls he would not eat until she sang; as I listened, it occurred to me that, when I had known her, I had not once heard her singing voice. She sang, her voice unexpectedly loud and deep; the child did not take his eyes off her.

The robust sound filled the room: Geoffrey, smiling, was watching the boy: the beam of sunlight fell on their feet, as though they were at the centre of a stage, and the spotlight had gone slightly off the mark.

The meal was over, Geoffrey gave the child a sweet, for an instant the room went dead quiet. They were still sitting with the sunlight round their feet, as Margaret gazed at her son, either unselfconscious or thinking she was not observed. Then after a moment she raised her head, and I felt rather than saw, for I had looked away, that her glance had moved from the child to me. I turned towards her: her eyes did not fall, but her face went suddenly sad. It was only for a second. She gazed again at the little boy, and took his hand.

It had only been for a second, but I knew. I should have known before, when we parted after her father’s party, certainly when she quarrelled with me in defence of Geoffrey at the dining-table, if I had not desired it too much: I knew now that she was not free of me, any more than I of her.

In the hot room, noisy now with the boy’s demands, I felt, not premonition, not responsibility, not the guilt that would have seemed ineluctable if I had seen another in my place, but an absolute exaltation, as though, all in one move, I had joy in my hands and my life miraculously simple. I did not recognize any fear mixed with the joy, I just felt happy and at one.

IT was a September afternoon when I was waiting, for the first time since her marriage, to meet Margaret alone. It was the day on which I had been helping to interview Gilbert Cooke. Half an hour before I was due at our rendezvous he entered, having already heard from Hector Rose that he was safe.

‘So I diddled them, did I?’ he said, not so much with pleasure as a kind of gloating triumph: which was the way in which he, who did not expect much success, greeted any that came to him. Actually, this was more than a success, for in fact, though not in form, it settled his career for life. Hector Rose was deciding his final judgement on each of the men in the Department who wished to be established in the service; once a week, a committee of four of us sat and interviewed; George Passant’s turn would arrive soon.