Charles Snow - The Conscience of the Rich

‘But you see why I’m anxious that Charles shouldn’t do anything more to upset Mr L — till my marriage is settled. If Charles begins to talk about his career or his independence again, it will only make things more difficult. Of course, I shall be the chief affliction. If I’m to have the slightest hope of getting away with it, Mr L mustn’t feel there’s anything else wrong with his family.’

Charles caught my eye.

‘Don’t you see, Lewis,’ she said, ‘I still have the worst time in front of me? Somehow I must break the news to Mr L.’

‘How much does he know?’

She shook her head.

‘It will be the biggest disaster he’s ever had,’ she said.

I said: ‘Are you sure of that?’

Katherine said to Charles:

‘Don’t you agree? Don’t you agree that I’m right?’

Charles did not answer.

Katherine said: ‘I’m positive that I’m right. Lewis, you simply can’t understand what this will mean to him.’

She spoke to Charles: ‘You know, I feel gross asking you to think of the slightest point that might affect my chances. But, as things have turned out, I can’t do anything else. I must have a clear field, mustn’t I?’

‘I’ve been telling you so for days,’ Charles teased her.

‘You see, Lewis,’ said Katherine, ‘I shall marry Francis whatever happens. I knew I should never have a minute’s doubt — if ever he asked me. I’m not a self-sacrificing person, and however much it upsets Mr L it’s more important for me than for him. I’m worried about him, but I shan’t feel that I’ve done wrong.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘If the worst comes to the worst,’ she said, ‘we can live on what Francis earns. It won’t exactly support me in the condition I’ve been accustomed to. But still—’

‘Francis is pretty proud,’ said Charles. ‘He’s not as sensible as he tries to appear. He’d like to have you without a penny.’

‘He’s always taken the gloomiest view and expected to keep me,’ said Katherine. ‘At any rate, that’s settled. We shall be married by December. But it’s obvious that I want to placate Mr L as much as I humanly can. I’m prepared to be thrown out if there’s no other way, but it would be an enormous horror for us both. I expect I should feel it even more than I think now.’

‘Yes, you would,’ said Charles.

‘You know it, don’t you?’ She looked at him.

Then Katherine said: ‘Whatever happens, Mr L must be told soon.’

As soon as I got back to London after that weekend, Ann asked me to dine with her. Once more she took me out in luxury, this time to the Ritz. I took it for granted, going out with her, that the waiters would know her by name: I was not surprised when other diners bowed to her. As usual, she set herself out to buy me expensive food and wine.

Looking at her across the table, I had no idea what she wanted to talk to me about that night. Not Katherine’s marriage, I was sure. Not Charles, at least directly, it soon seemed. No, the first person she began to mention was Ronald Porson. She wanted to tell me that he had given up trying to see her: that even he accepted that it was over and done with. As she told me, Ann was referring back to the coming-out dance three months before, when I blamed her for letting Ronald’s attendance drag on: she wanted me to admit that she had been firm. Laughing at her, I saw the shyness wiped away from her face as though it had been make-up; and yet my piece of criticism rankled, she might have just been listening to it.

At the same time she was giving me something like a warning about Porson. She said that now he bore a grudge against the Marches, and he was a man who could not stop his grudges breaking out; she talked about him with a kind of remorseful understanding, because she could not love him back.

She knew him well, she was fond of him, she was afraid of what he might do. Although he had got nowhere himself, she told me, he had some influence; his father had been an ambassador, he had his successful acquaintances.

‘What can he do?’ I said with scepticism.

‘Would you like him as an enemy?’ she replied.

But it was not really Porson she had got me there to talk about. Politics: the depression was deepening all over Europe: had I been following the German election? She was in earnest. All she said was business-like. She had a clear sight of what was coming. She was better informed than I was. It was not quite like the politics I used to talk with my friends in the provincial town; we had been born poor, we spoke with the edge of those who rubbed their noses against the shop windows and watched others comfortable within; she had known none of that. She was more generous than we were, but she hoped as much.

As we talked — we were not so much arguing as agreeing — I felt a curious excitement in the air. Her voice at the same time quickened and sank to something like a whisper; her blue eyes had gone wide open, were staring at me, or past me, with the kind of stare that one sees in someone who is obsessed by the thought of making love. In fact, it might have been the beginning of a love-affair.

Yet she was totally in love with Charles: I was just as single-minded in my love for Sheila: that was why Ann and I could keep up a friendship without trouble to either of us.

The excitement tightened, and I was completely at a loss. She whispered: ‘Look, Lewis. Isn’t it time you came in with us?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Isn’t it time you came into the party?’

When at last I heard the question, I thought I had been a fool. Nevertheless, up to that evening she had been discreet, even with me; she had talked like someone on the left, but so did many of our friends, none of whom were communists in theory, let alone members of what she called ‘the party’.

I looked at her. The strain had ended. She was brave, headstrong, and full of faith.

I owed her an honest answer. Trying to give it to her, I felt at a disadvantage just because she was brave and full of faith. I felt at a disadvantage, too, because I happened not to be well that night. Giving her reasons why I could not come in I did not make either a good or an honest job of it. Yet I did manage to make the one point that mattered most to me. She wasn’t as interested as I was, I told her, in the nature of power and those who held the power. The more I thought of it, the less I liked it. Any régime of her kind just had to give its bosses great power without any check. Granted that they were aiming at good things, it was still too dangerous. People with power began to get detached from anything but power itself. No one could be trusted with power for long.

For a time she argued back with the standard replies, which we both knew by heart, then she gave up.

‘You’re too cynical,’ she said.

‘I’m not in the least cynical.’

‘You’re too pessimistic.’

‘I don’t think so, in the long run.’ But I wished that my hopes were as certain as hers.

She was disappointed with me, and put out, but she wasted no more time. This was what she had come for, and she had failed. She had a business-like gift of cutting her losses. She decided that in my own fashion, I was as obstinate as she was.

She asked me to order more brandy: even after a disappointment, she liked giving me a good time. In a voice still lowered, but not excited by now, only brisk, she said: ‘You’ll keep this absolutely quiet, of course, won’t you?’

She meant about herself and the party. She spoke with trust. In the same tone I said: ‘Of course.’ I went on: ‘It’s the sort of secret I’m not bad at keeping.’

She looked at me, her face open and gentle, and said: ‘Nor am I.’