Charles Snow - The Affair

Suddenly I was reminded of another person who, comically different in temperament, also wished for what Francis did. It was Irene, who in her youth had been a reckless man chaser and who now wanted nothing better than for her and her husband to end up staidly in the Lodge. The resemblance pleased me, but, as I walked with Francis in the quiet damp garden — his face lighter but surprised because he had made a confession, the first I had heard from him, his voice comradely and quite free from resentment, as though glad to have me there — I did not tell him so.

AFTER Francis, there was no one else I had arranged to see that Friday until I dined in hall. So in the afternoon, with nothing to do, I went on a round of bookshops. It was in the third of these, not Heifer’s, not Bowes and Bowes, that, as I was glancing at the latest little magazine, I heard a voice I used to know well.

“I’m sure you’re right. I’m sure you’ve laid your finger on it.”

The voice was plummy, thick and muffled, but it spoke warmly, with teasing affection. I was standing by the rack of periodicals near the door: as I looked up I saw in the inner room, just visible behind the main display shelf Paul Jago talking to his wife.

As I looked up, so did he. I was certain that he had seen me. But he darted his eyes back to his wife, talked to her rapidly and intimately as though pretending that they were quite alone, as though hoping that I should not notice or disturb them.

Should I slip out, I thought? It would be easy to get into the street, so that he would not be embarrassed. Then I revolted. I had known him well once, and had been fond of him. He had been Senior Tutor during my time at the college and had just missed the Mastership, when Crawford was elected. That had been a traumatic blow to him. He had gone on with his routine duties, but he had given up dining and — so I had heard — no one, not even his closest friends, had seen much of him.

I went into the inner room and said: “Well. It’s a long time since we met.”

Not for ten years, not since Roy Calvert’s memorial service. Jago’s appearance had altered since then, but in a way I could not define. He had always looked older than his age, and now his age was catching up with him; he was bald, the fringe of hair had gone quite white, but he was sixty-eight and looked no more. His cheeks and neck were fleshy, but the moods seemed close beneath the skin, so that his expressions were liquid, and even now one could not say that it was a sad face. Behind thick lenses his eyes were still brilliant.

“Why, it’s you!” he cried. Even though he was prevaricating, even though he wanted to evade me, he could not help the warmth flowing out.

Then I thought I saw what had changed. He had become much fatter, but fatter in a way that did not suggest self-indulgence. As a younger man he had had a paunch, but moved lightly: now he showed that special kind of discouraged heaviness which sometimes seems linked with a life of dissatisfaction or strain.

“Darling,” he turned to his wife with an elaborate mixture of protectiveness, courtesy and love, “I think you remember—” Formally he introduced me. “I think you know him, don’t you?”

Of course she knew me. I must have been inside her house twenty or thirty times. But she dropped her eyes, gave me a limp hand and what appeared to be her idea of a grande dame being gracious to someone who might, in the multitude of her acquaintances, conceivably be one.

“Do you spend much time in Cambridge—?” and she addressed me in full style as though it were a condescension on her part.

“I think he’s kept pretty busy in Whitehall,” said Jago. She knew it perfectly well.

“I wish we could offer you better weather,” said Alice Jago. “Cambridge can look very attractive at this time of year.”

Now she was speaking as if I did not know the town. She too had grown fatter, but she was stronger-boned and muscled than her husband and could carry it better. She was a big woman with a plain, white, anxious face. She had a sensibility so tight-drawn that she could detect a snub if one said good morning in the wrong tone; but it was the kind of sensibility which took it for granted that though her own psychological skin was so thin, everyone else walked about in armour. She was so insecure that the world seemed full of enemies. In fact, she had made many. She had done her husband much harm all through his career. But for her, he might have got the Mastership. They both knew it.

His manner to her, which had always been tender, had become more so. When he spoke, he was trying to make her happy, and even while he listened to her he seemed to be taking care of her.

“How are you?” I asked him.

“I’ve quite retired now, I’m thankful to say.”

“He has to spend all his time with me,” said Mrs Jago.

“We’re reading all the books that we’ve always wanted to read,” said Jago. “I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.”

I asked: “Do you see any of our old friends?”

“Oh, I run into them now and then,” said Jago. He said it as though he wished to drop the subject.

“Don’t you think they miss him?” I let slip the remark to Alice Jago.

“If you think I try to prevent my husband going to the college, then you’re very much mistaken.”

“No,” said Jago, “I was glad when I’d shaken hands with my last pupil. The chains had been chafing for a long time, can you understand that? When I used to go into my study in the morning, for my first tutorial hour, I used to think, I shall only have to do this another thousand times. Then another hundred. Then another ten.”

I had seen many people get through years of routine, and come to their last day. Nearly all of them were sad. I asked, didn’t he feel just a tinge of regret at the end?

“Not for a single instant,” said Jago with a flash of pride. “No, I felt that for a good many years I had been wasting too much of my life. Now I was ceasing to. And I was also ceasing to be reminded of some associations that I should willingly forget.”

He looked at me. He was a man of quick human sympathy and recognised it in others. He knew that I had followed him.

“Mind you,” he went on, “I’d taken care not to be reminded of them more than I could help. It was one thing to go on with my pupils and do my best for them. It was quite another to inflict myself on some of our colleagues. I hadn’t seen some of them for years, apart from college meetings, which I couldn’t cut until I gave up office—”

“And now you needn’t go to any more of them,” cried Alice Jago triumphantly.

“I think I can bear that deprivation, don’t you?” he said to me.

“I suppose, while you were still attending, you heard of this Howard business, didn’t you?”

I hesitated about trying it. Mrs Jago looked blank and resentful, as though the name meant nothing and I was shutting her out.

“I couldn’t very well help hearing, could I? I might have had to waste some time over it, because I was third Senior and was due to serve on the Court. But I thought that that was another deprivation I could bear, and so I begged leave to be excused.”

“I should think you did,” she said.

He seemed quite uninterested in the case. I wanted to find out if Francis Getliffe’s circular had reached him: but apparently he did not open his college documents until days after they arrived.

He asked after my doings. He still couldn’t keep back his interest and looked friendly when I spoke about my wife and son. But he brought out no kind of invitation. He did not suggest that I should see him again.

“Well,” he said, a little over-busily, “we mustn’t take up your time. We must be going ourselves.”