Charles Snow - The Affair

Just then his wife’s voice, just a shade off-English, the consonants a little too sharp for English, broke in.

“I’m going to take Lewis from you, G S. Remember, I have known him longer than I have you.”

That was true. When she first knew me, she had been a refugee and the wife of another. Then she had been called Hanna Puchwein; she had been a pretty, elegant young woman with a neat, glossy, hamitic head, snapping black eyes, disconcerting in her integrity and bitter temper. She had got rid of Puchwein in what seemed a fit of pique; there were plenty of men round her, and she nearly married the most unsuitable. We had thought her then the worst of pickers: even so, I was astonished when I heard that she had suddenly married Clark. It was not only astonishing to hear, it was obscurely disagreeable.

That night, her face was still pretty, her forehead bland and intelligent in her pointed, cat-like face: but the black hair was going grey, and she was not bothering to do anything with it, even to keep it tidy. She used to be beautifully groomed, but she seemed to have given up.

She said that she had been talking to Margaret, she asked after our child, but with the touch of impatience of people who haven’t any. In turn, I asked her how she liked Cambridge now.

“It is all right,” she said, with sharpness and pride.

Did she see much of the college, I asked her.

“As much as a woman can.”

“What are they thinking about just now?”

“Are they ever thinking about anything?” She said it just as contemptuously as she would have in the past. I was glad, it showed the old Adam was not dead. She corrected herself: “No, that is not fair. Some of them are clever men, some of them do good work. But a lot of them are not precisely what I was brought up to think of as intellectuals. Even those who do good work are often not intellectuals. Perhaps that is one of the secrets of this country that a foreigner is not expected to understand.”

I asked her, were there any major rifts in the college at present?

“What is there for them to have rifts about?” she said.

I grinned to myself. She had always had a lucid grasp of theoretical politics: I imagined that, unlike her husband, she was passionately radical still. But, intelligent as she was, she had not much insight, less perhaps than anyone of her intelligence I had known.

“Lewis!” came an enthusiastic, modulated voice over my shoulder. “Hanna, my dear Hanna!” Tom Orbell came between us, carrying not only a glass but a bottle, his cheeks gleaming pink almost as though they were a skin short, sweat on his forehead, his blue eyes cordial and bold. Punctiliously he gave me the bottle to hold, murmuring happily, “I’m afraid I’m rather drunk,” seized Hanna’s hand and bent down to kiss it.

“My dear and most admired Hanna!” he said.

“Have you finished that article?” Her tone was cross, but there was a dash of affection in it.

“Of course I have,” said Tom, with the indignation of one who, for once, is in the right. As a matter of fact, I knew, and she ought to have known, that he was an industrious man.

“I’m very glad to hear it,” said Hanna.

“Will you let me tell you about it? When will you let me give another little dinner-party for you?”

“Oh, in the New Year,” she said. “Now look, Tom, I don’t often see Lewis—”

“Why have I got to leave you with him? He’s a bit of a menace, is Lewis—”

Hanna frowned, and Tom, who had regripped the bottle, gave it to me again. Once more with great elaboration, and a bow that became something like a genuflexion, he kissed her hand.

When he had merged into the party, Hanna said: “Why does that young man behave in the way he imagines Continentals to behave? I suppose he imagines that Continentals are polite to women. Why does he think so? Why does he think I should like it? Why do young Englishmen like that go in for hand-kissing? Is it only those like that young man who are sexually insecure?”

She still sounded ratty. Nevertheless, I thought she had a soft spot for him.

“Yes,” she was saying with asperity, “I think it is because he is sexually insecure that he kisses hands. You cannot imagine Martin performing like that, can you?” I could not. “Or that lourdon Lester Ince?”

Irene split us up, and for a few moments I stood on the fringe of the party, watching Martin, as usual deliberate, easy-mannered, planted among his guests, while his wife moved avidly about.

As a young woman she would have been on the look-out for a man. She still moved just as frenetically, just as darting-eyed. Yet that had gone, all gone. Not that she regretted it much, I thought. She was happy here, and across the room I could hear her squeals of glee.

I heard another sound of glee at my shoulder, and Tom, in a state of airborne hilarity, was whispering to me a story about Mrs Skeffington. She had not long arrived, and within two minutes, Tom was telling me, had dropped her biggest “clanger” yet. I did not know her, and across the room he pointed her out. She was very tall, almost as tall as her husband, but as plain as he was handsome. According to Tom she was something of a grande dame and, what made it worse, spoke like one. Apparently she had improved the occasion, soon after she got to the party, by announcing to Irene: “I think it’s so sensible of people to think out how to entertain, and strike out for themselves. If they can’t give dinner-parties, why shouldn’t they give bits and pieces afterwards?”

Tom rejoiced. Observant, labile, malicious, he was a very good mimic. Somehow he managed, not only to sound, but to look like Mrs Skeffington, county to the bone, raw-faced.

“It still goes on, my dear Lewis,” said Tom. “ It still goes on .”

“At some levels,” I said, “I think it’s getting worse.”

“Give me your hand.” Tom, half-way between inflation and rage, insisted on gripping my hand in his, which was unexpectedly large and muscular for so fat a man. He wanted to go on denouncing exponents of English snobbery, radicals, complacent politicians, unbelievers, all the irreconcilable crowd of enemies that he managed to fuse into one at this time of night. He had not said a word about the Howards. They had not been so much as mentioned since I arrived at Martin’s house.

“But what do you want , Tom?” I enquired, getting impatient.

“I want something for this college.”

“Do other people here” — I waved my hand at the party — “want anything definite?”

He gazed at me with eyes wider open, but guarded. He was deciding not to let me in.

“I want something for this college, Lewis. I mean that very sincerely.”

Before long I was confronted by Skeffington, who called his wife and introduced me to her. I thought that, though his manner was as lofty as ever, he looked jaded and ill at ease. He did not say much, while his wife and I conscientiously made some Cambridge exchanges — new buildings, traffic, comparison of College gardens. Suddenly Skeffington interrupted us: “What are your plans for tomorrow?” he said.

It seemed a curious question.

“Well,” I said, “we’ve got four children in this house—”

“Yes, but when the fun and games are packed up and you’ve got them to bed?”

It still seemed an odd cross-examination. However, I said that, since we should have the big meal at mid-day (“quite right,” said Mrs Skeffington) Martin and I had thought of giving our wives a rest and dining in hall at night.

“I’ve never done it before on Christmas Day.”

Skeffington was not interested in my experiences.

“That’s cut and dried, is it? You’re going to show up there?”