Charles Snow: Time of Hope

These séances happened whenever my mother could get her friends together. When these two, Maud and Cissie, came to tea, there would be whispers and glances of understanding. My mother would give me some pennies to buy sweets or a magazine, and they left to find a room by themselves. I was not told what they did there. My mother, proud in all ways, did not like me to know that she was extremely superstitious.

‘Have you had your supper, dear?’ she said that night. ‘It’s all ready for you on the table.’

‘I’m just showing your mother some tricks,’ said Maud, who was portly and good-natured.

‘Never mind,’ said my mother. ‘You go and have your supper. Then it’ll be your bedtime, won’t it?’

But in fact I had no particular ‘bedtime’. My mother was capable but preoccupied, my father took it for granted that she was the stronger character and never made more than a comic pretence of interfering at home; I received nothing but kindness from them: they had large, vague hopes of me, but from a very early age I was left to do much as I wanted. So after I had finished supper I came back along the passage to the empty dark front room; from the other sitting-room came a chink of light beneath the door, and the sound of whispers from my mother and her friends — their fortune-telling was always conducted in the lowest of voices.

I found some matches, climbed on the table, lit the gas lamp, then settled down to read. Since I had arrived at the house, found all serene, seen my mother, I was completely reassured. I was wrapped in the security of childhood. Just as the misery had been eternal, so was this. The dread had vanished. For those moments, which I remembered all my life, had already passed out of mind the day they happened. I curled up on the sofa and lost myself in The Captain .

I read on for some time. I was beginning to blink with sleepiness, the day’s sun had made my forehead burn; perhaps I should soon have gone to bed. But then, through the open window, I heard a well-known voice.

‘Lewis! What are you doing up at this time of night?’

It was my Aunt Milly, who lived two houses down the road. Her voice was always full and assertive; it swelled through any room; in any group, hers was the voice one heard.

‘I never heard of such a thing,’ said Aunt Milly from the street.

‘Well, since you are up — instead of being in bed a couple of hours ago,’ she added indignantly, ‘you’d better let me in the front door.’

She followed me into the front room and looked down at me with hot-headed, vigorous reprobation.

‘Boys of your age ought to be in bed by eight,’ she said. ‘No wonder you’re tired in the morning.’ I argued that I was not, but Aunt Milly did not listen.

‘No wonder you’re skinny,’ she said. ‘Boys of your age need to sleep the clock round. It’s another thing that I shall have to speak to your mother about.’

Aunt Milly was my father’s sister. She was a big woman, as tall as my mother and much more heavily built. She had a large, blunt, knobbly nose, and her eyes protruded: they were light blue, staring, and slightly puzzled. She wore her hair in a knob above the back of her head, which gave her a certain resemblance to Britannia. She had strong opinions on all subjects. She believed in speaking the truth, particularly when it was unpleasant. She thought I was both spoilt and neglected, and was the only person who tried to govern my movements. She had no children of her own.

‘Where is your mother?’ said Aunt Milly. ‘I came along to see her. I’m hoping that she might have something to tell me.’

She spoke in an accusing tone that I did not understand. I told her that mother was in the other room, busy with Maud and Cissie — ‘playing cards,’ I fabricated.

‘Playing cards,’ said Aunt Milly indignantly. ‘I’d better see how much longer they think they’re going on.’

Through two closed doors I heard Aunt Milly’s voice, loud in altercation. I even caught some of her words: she was wondering how grown-up people could believe in such nonsense. Then followed a pause of quiet, in which I imagined my mother must be replying, though I could hear nothing. Then Aunt Milly again. Then a clash of doors, and Aunt Milly rejoined me.

‘Playing cards!’ she cried. ‘I don’t think much of cards, but I wouldn’t say a word against it. If that was all it was!’

‘Aunt Milly, you have—’ I said, defending my mother. Aunt Milly had reproved her resonantly for suggesting whist last Boxing Day. I was going to remind her of it.

‘Seeing the future!’ said Aunt Milly with scorn, as though I had not made a sound. ‘It’s a pity she hasn’t something better to do. No wonder things get left in this house. I suppose I oughtn’t to tell you, but someone ought to be thinking of the future for your father and mother. I’ve said so often enough, but do you think they would listen?’

Outside, in the hall, my mother was saying goodbye to Maud and Cissie. The door swung slowly open and she entered the room. She entered very deliberately, with her head high and her feet turned out at each step; it was a carriage she used when she was calling up all her dignity. She had in fact great dignity, though she invented her own style for expressing it.

She did not speak until she had reached the middle of the room. She faced Aunt Milly, and said: ‘Please to wait till we are alone, Milly. The next time you want to tell me what I ought to do, I’ll thank you to keep quiet in front of visitors.’

They were both tall, they both had presence, they both had strong wills. They were in every other way unlike. My mother’s thin beak of a nose contrasted itself to Aunt Milly’s bulbous one. My mother’s eyes were set deep in well-arched orbits, and were bold, grey, handsome, and shrewd. Aunt Milly’s were opaque and protruding. My mother was romantic, snobbish, perceptive, and intensely proud. Aunt Milly was quite unselfconscious, a busybody, given to causes and good works, impervious to people, surprised and hurt when they resisted her proposals, but still continuing active, indelicate, and undeterred. She had no vestige of humour at all. My mother had a good deal — but she showed none as she confronted Aunt Milly under the drawing-room mantel.

They had been much together since my parents’ marriage. They maddened each other: they lived in a state of sustained mutual misunderstanding; but they never seemed able to keep long apart.

‘Please to let my visitors come here in peace,’ said my mother.

‘Visitors!’ said Aunt Milly. ‘I’ve known Maud Taylor longer than you have. It’s a pity she didn’t get married when we did. No wonder she wants the cards to tell her that she’s going to find a husband.’

‘When she’s in my house, she’s my visitor. I’ll thank you not to thrust your opinions down her throat.’

‘It’s not my opinions,’ said Aunt Milly, loudly even for her. ‘It’s nothing but common sense. Lena, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.’

‘I’m not in the least ashamed of myself,’ said my mother. She kept her haughtiness; but she would have liked to choose a different ground.

‘Reading the cards and looking at each other’s silly hands and—’ Aunt Milly paused triumphantly, ‘—and gaping at some dirty tea leaves. I’ve got no patience with you.’

‘No one’s asked you to have patience,’ said my mother stiffly. ‘If ever I ask you to join us, then’s the time for you to grumble. Everyone’s got a right to their own opinions.’

‘Not if they’re against common sense. Tea leaves!’ Aunt Milly snorted. ‘In the twentieth century!’ She brought out those last words like the ace of trumps.

My mother hesitated. She said: ‘There’s plenty we don’t know yet.’