Charles Snow: Time of Hope

‘We know as much as we want to about tea leaves,’ said Aunt Milly. She roared with laughter. It was her idea of a joke. She went on, ominously: ‘Yes, there’s plenty we don’t know yet. That’s why I can’t understand how you’ve got time for this rubbish. One of the things we don’t know is how you and Bertie and this boy here are going to live. There’s plenty we don’t know yet. I was telling the boy—’

‘What have you told Lewis?’ My mother was fierce and on the offensive again. When Aunt Milly had jostled her away from propriety and etiquette and made her justify her superstitions, she had been secretly abashed. Now she flared out with anxious authority.

‘I told him that you’ve let things slide for long enough. No wonder you’re seeing it all go from bad to worse. You never ought to have let—’

‘Milly, you’re not to talk in front of Lewis.’

‘It won’t hurt him. He’s bound to know sooner or later.’

‘That’s as may be. I won’t have you talk in front of Lewis.’

I knew by now that there was great trouble. I asked my mother: ‘Please, what is the matter?’

‘Don’t you worry,’ said my mother, her face lined with care, defiant, protective, and loving. ‘Perhaps it will blow over.’

‘Your father’s making a mess of things,’ said Aunt Milly.

But my mother said: ‘I tell you, you’re not to talk in front of the child.’

She spoke with such quiet anger, such reserve of will, that even Aunt Milly flinched. Neither of them said another word for some moments, and one could hear the tick of the clock on the mantelpiece. I could not imagine what the trouble was, but it frightened me. I knew that I could not ask again. This time it was real; I could not run home and be reassured.

Just then the latch of the front door clicked, and my father came in. There was no mystery why he had been out of the house that night. He was an enthusiastic singer, and organized a local male-voice choir. It was a passion that absorbed many of his nights. He came in, batting short-sighted eyes in the bright room.

‘We were talking about you, Bertie,’ said Aunt Milly.

‘I expect you were,’ said my father. ‘I expect I’ve done wrong as usual.’

His expression was mock-repentant. It was his manner to pretend to comic guilt, in order to exaggerate his already comic gentleness and lack of assertion. If there was clowning to be done, he could never resist it. He was a very small man, several inches shorter than his wife or sister. His head was disproportionately large, built on the same lines as Aunt Milly’s but with finer features. His eyes popped out like hers, but, when he was not clowning, looked reflective, and usually happy and amused. Like his sister’s his hair was on the light side of brown (my mother’s was very dark), and he had a big, reddish, drooping moustache. His spectacles had a knack of running askew, above the level of one eye and below the other. Habitually he wore a bowler hat, and while grinning at his sister he placed it on the sideboard.

‘I wish you’d show signs of ever doing anything,’ said Aunt Milly.

‘Don’t set on the man as soon as he gets inside the door,’ said my mother.

‘I expect it, Lena. I expect it.’ My father grinned. ‘She always puts the blame on me. I have to bear it. I have to bear it.’

‘I wish you’d stand up for yourself,’ said my mother irritably.

My father looked somewhat pale. He had looked pale all that year, though even now his face was relaxed by the side of my mother’s. And he made his inevitable comment when the clock struck the hour. It was a marble clock, presented to him by the choir when he had scored his twentieth year as secretary. It had miniature Doric columns on each side of the face, and a deep reverberating chime. Each time my father heard it he made the same remark. Now it struck eleven.

‘Solemn-toned clock,’ said my father appreciatively. ‘Solemn-toned clock.’

‘Confound the clock,’ said my mother with strain and bitterness.

As I lay awake in the attic, my face was hot against the pillow, hot with sunburn, hot with frightened thoughts. I had added some codicils to my prayers, but they did not ease me. I could not imagine what the trouble was.

For a fortnight I was told nothing. My mother was absent-minded with worry, but if she and my father were talking when I came in they would fall uncomfortably quiet. Aunt Milly was in the house more often than I had ever seen her; most nights after supper there boomed a vigorous voice from the street outside; whenever she arrived I was sent into the garden. I got used to it. Often I forgot altogether the anxiety in the house. I liked reading in the garden, which was several steps below the level of the yard; there was a patch of longish grass, bordered by a flower bed, a rockery and some raspberry canes; I was specially fond of the trees — three pear trees by the side wall and two apple trees in the middle of the grass. I used to take out a deckchair, sit under one of the apple trees, and read until the summer sky had darkened and I could only just make out the print on the shimmering page.

Then I would look up at the house. The sitting-room window was a square of light. Sometimes I felt anxious about what was being said in there.

Apart from those conferences, I did not see any change in the routine of our days.

I went as usual to school, and found my mother at midday silent and absorbed. My father went, also as usual, to his business. He took to any routine with his habitual mild cheerfulness, and even Aunt Milly could not complain of the hours he worked. We had a servant-girl of about sixteen, and my father got up when she did, in the early morning, and had left for work long before I came down to breakfast, and did not return for his high tea until half past six or seven.

For three years past he had been in business on his own. Previously he had been employed in a small boot factory; he had looked after the hooks, been a kind of utility man and second-in-command, and earned two hundred and fifty pounds a year. On that we had lived comfortably enough, servant-girl and all. But he knew the trade, he knew the profits, he reported that Mr Stapleton, his employer, was drawing twelve hundred a year out of the business. To both my parents, to Aunt Milly, to Aunt Milly’s husband, that income seemed riches, almost unimaginable riches. My father thought vaguely that he would like to run his own factory. My mother urged him on. Aunt Milly prophesied that he would fail and reproached him for not having the enterprise to try.

My mother impelled him to it. She chafed against the limits of her sex. If she had been a man she would have driven ahead, she would have been a success. She lent him her savings, a hundred and fifty pounds or so. She helped borrow some more money. Aunt Milly, whose husband in a quiet inarticulate fashion was a good jobbing builder and appreciably more prosperous than we were, lent the rest. My father found himself in charge of a factory. It was very small. His total staff was never more than a dozen. But there he was, established on his own. There he had spent his long days for the past three years. At night I had often watched my mother look over the accounts, have an idea, ask why something had not been done, say that he ought to get a new traveller. That had not happened recently, in my hearing, but my father was still spending his long days at the factory. He never referred to it as ‘my business’ or ‘my factory’ — always by a neutral, geographical term, ‘Myrtle Road’.

One Friday night early in July my mother and father talked for a long time alone. When I came in from the garden I noticed that he was upset. ‘Lena’s got a headache. She’s gone to bed,’ he said. He gazed miserably at me, and I did not know what to say. Then, to my astonishment, he asked me to go with him to the county cricket match next day. I thought he had been going to tell me something painful: I did not understand it at all.