Charles Snow - The Affair

“I hope,” said Alice Jago graciously, “that you enjoy the rest of your visit.” She added, “And good luck in your career,” as though I were one of her husband’s pupils and she was safely projecting me into the future.

Getting back to my rooms after tea, I found a letter on the table. It was addressed in an old man’s hand that I had either forgotten or did not know. When I opened it and looked at the signature, I saw to my astonishment that it was M H L Gay. The handwriting was bold in outline, only a little shaky, and the letter read:

My dear Eliot,

I learn upon good authority that you are residing temporarily in the college. I must ask you most urgently to visit me tonight after my evening meal, which I take at six-thirty upon medical advice, and before eight, which is the time when I nowadays have to suspend my labours for the day. Pray regard this visit as having first priority . The question we have to discuss will brook no delay. You are essential to me because of your legal studies.

I shall await you at seven-fifteen or thereabouts.

Yours ever sincerely,

M H L GAY.

I was irritated even more than astonished. Perhaps it wasn’t so odd that he should, out of the blue, remember who I was: even when he was less senile, his memory had come and gone. Why should he want me? I was irritated, because I had planned to see Arthur Brown in hall and on the side pick up such gossip as was going. I didn’t fancy missing my dinner for the sake of conversation with someone who might not recognise me. Still, there seemed nothing for it. One could not refuse the very old. I had to telephone Brown, saying that instead of that night in hall it would have to be Sunday. I explained why, and Brown, who had guessed the reason for my visit and was at his most impenetrable, nevertheless gave a fat man’s chuckle over the wire. “You’ll find him pretty exigent, old chap. He’ll never let you get away at eight o’clock. If I were you, I should make sure that there are some sandwiches waiting for you in your rooms when you get back.”

The joke seemed even more against me as I walked up the Madingley Road. I had made a mistake in walking at all, because it had begun to rain, a steady seeping rain; the road was dark, Gay’s house was close to the Observatory, and the lights of the Observatory seemed a long way off. The rain was percolating inside the collar of my overcoat: I could feel the damp against my neck, and wet sleeves against my wrists.

In the hall of Gay’s house, the pretty young housekeeper gazed at my clothes. In a foreign accent she asked if I wanted a towel.

From an open door, Gay’s voice resounded: “No, indeed, he doesn’t want a towel! He wants to get down to business! You be sure he does.”

Her brow puzzled, she led me through the door into his study, where Gay, a scarf round his neck, was sitting in an armchair by an enormous fire. Fitting on the armchair was an invalid’s tray, and he still had spoon in hand, working away at his meal.

“That’s the man,” said Gay. He seemed to know my face. “You’re not wet, are you? You’re not wet, I’ll be bound.” He felt the shoulder and arm of my jacket. “Ah, that’s nothing,” said Gay, “that’s not what I call wet. You don’t understand about our English climate yet, my dear,” he said to his housekeeper. “A fine climate ours is, it’s a climate and a half. It makes us the men we are, I’ve not a shadow of a doubt about that.” He gazed at me with faded eyes. “Pray sit down, Eliot. Pray sit down and enjoy yourself.”

I was too much occupied with discomfort, crude physical discomfort, to be amused. As for his housekeeper, pretty as she was, she did not seem to be amused in any circumstances. She kept her puzzled frown.

“Please to offer our guest some cocoa,” Gay said to her.

No, I put in rapidly, I didn’t drink cocoa.

“Now that’s an error on your part, my dear boy. A splendid drink, cocoa is. Why, I sometimes drink a dozen cups a day. Indeed I do.”

Did he mind if I smoked? I asked.

“Ah, now that’s not good for you. It’s not good for me either. I have to be careful with my bronchials at this time of year. I don’t want bronchial trouble at my time of life. It could turn to pneumonia, the doctors say. Old man’s friend, they used to call pneumonia, where I was born. Old man’s friend — no, I don’t like the sound of that. I’m not prepared to give up all that easily, I assure you I’m not.”

I sat in my armchair, not smoking, steam rising from my trouser-legs, while Gay finished his supper. He finished it in an unusual fashion. On one plate he had what appeared to be some sort of trifle, on another a piece of Cheshire cheese and two slices of bread. Methodically Gay cut the cheese into thin sections and put them in the trifle. Then he took a slice of bread and crumbled it over the mixture, which he stirred vigorously with his spoon and then swallowed in six hearty mouthfuls.

“It all goes the same way home,” he explained himself to me.

I had known some old men, but not anyone as old as this. Sitting there, watching him, I thought he was pretty far gone. Then all of a sudden he seemed at least as lucid as he would have been at eighty. He had rung a hand bell to fetch his housekeeper back. She removed the tray and went out again, followed by cries of: “Splendid! That was a splendid supper you gave me!”

I was studying the drawings on the walls, drawings of the Saga heroes that he had made himself some of which I remembered from my visits before the war, when he said: “Ah, I thought today — it’s very fortunate we have Eliot here. Eliot is a lawyer by training, he’s the man to go to for legal guidance. Indeed he is.”

“How did you know I was here at all?”

“Ah ha! I have my spies. I have my spies.” (How in the world, I wondered, did the old man pick up jargon of the ’40s and ’50s, like that phrase, or “first priority”?)

He stroked his beard with self-satisfaction and asked: “Do you know, Eliot, why I thought of you today? He’s the man, I thought. No, you can’t be expected to see the connection. Why, I’ve just received a remarkable communication from one of our Fellows. If you go to that desk, my dear chap, you’ll find this communication under the paper-weight. Certainly you will. I don’t mislay important communications, whatever certain people think.”

The “communication” was Francis Getliffe’s note. I handed it to Gay who, from the interstices of his chair, brought out a reading glass.

“There it is. To all Fellows . No, I don’t like that. I think a special copy should have been sent to me, what? Initialled at the bottom by ‘FEG’. I have looked up our college list, and I find that must be young Getliffe. To all Fellows . These young men aren’t careful enough. Indeed. But still, this isn’t a time to think of our amour propre . These are important issues, Eliot, important issues.”

“Do you mean,” I said, “that you’re concerned about what Getliffe says?”

With cunning, with a certain grandeur, Gay replied: “I’m concerned in a very special way about what Getliffe says.”

“You mean, you’re interested in forming a majority?”

“Oh, no, my dear chap. I’ve seen too many fly-sheets in my time. What do you think of that? I must leave these minutiae to the younger men. They must make up their own majorities. I trust them to get on with their own little squabbles, and I expect they’ll do very well. Fine young men we’ve got. Getliffe’s a fine young man. Brown’s a fine young man. Oh no, I’m not the one to take part in little differences within the college. They all come right in a few years. But no, my dear chap, that isn’t the point at all .”