Charles Snow - Time of Hope

The more I could keep Mrs Knight on the theme of physical comfort, the better, I thought to myself; and so I praised the house, the sight of it from the village, the drawing-room in which we sat. Mrs Knight forcefully agreed.

‘It’s perfect for our small family,’ she said. ‘As I was obliged to explain to my neighbour, Mrs Lacy, only yesterday. Do you know what she had been saying, Sheila? I shouldn’t have believed my ears, if I hadn’t heard Doris Lacy talk and talk and talk for the last twenty years. Of course, she’s a great friend of mine and I’m devoted to her and I know she’d say the same of me’ — Mrs Knight put in this explanation for my benefit — ‘but the trouble is that she will talk without thinking. And she can’t have been thinking at all — even she couldn’t have said it if she’d thought for a single moment — she can’t have been thinking at all when she talked about this house. She actually said’ — Mrs Knight’s voice was mounting louder as her indignation grew — ‘that this house wa dark . She said that this house was dark . She who doesn’t get a ray of sun till half past three!’

She got fairly started on the misdeeds, the preposterous errors of judgement, the dubious gentility and mercenary marriage, of Mrs Lacy. She kept asking Sheila for her support and then rushing off into another burst of indignation. It was some time before she turned on me. She collected herself, regarded me with open eyes, said how gallant it was for me to visit them on such an afternoon. Then, with elaborate diplomacy, she said ‘Of course, it doesn’t feel like living in the country, now Sheila is growing up. She brings people to see us who are doing all kinds of interesting things. Why, it was only the other day we saw one of her friends who they say has a great future in his firm—’

The knife of jealousy twisted. Then I felt a flood of absolute relief, for Sheila said clearly: ‘He’s dense.’

‘I don’t think you can say that, Sheila.’

‘I can.’

‘You mustn’t be too hard on your friends,’ said Mrs Knight busily. ‘You’ll be telling me next that Tom Devitt isn’t interesting. He’s a specialist at the infirmary,’ said Mrs Knight to me, and continued with enthusiasm, ‘and they say he’s the coming man. Sheila will be telling us that he’s dense too. Or—’

The involuntary smile had come to Sheila’s mouth, and on her forehead I could see the lines. The jealous spasm had returned, with Tom Devitt’s name, with the others’ (for Mrs Knight had by no means finished), but it merged, as I watched Sheila, into a storm of something that had no place in romantic love, something so unfamiliar in my feeling for her that I did not recognize it then. It only lasted for a moment, but it left me off my balance for Mrs Knight’s next charge.

‘I think I remember Sheila saying that you were kept very busy,’ she remarked. ‘Of course, I know we can’t all choose exactly what we want, can we? Some of us have got to be content—’

‘I’ve chosen what I want, Mrs Knight,’ I said, a little too firmly.

‘Have you?’ She seemed puzzled.

‘I’m a law student. That’s what I’ve chosen to do.’

‘In your spare time, I suppose?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m reading for the Bar. Full-time. I shan’t do anything else until I’m called.’ It was technically true. It had been true since one o’clock that day. ‘I shan’t earn a penny till I’m called.’

Mrs Knight was not specially quick in the uptake. She had to pause, so as to readjust her ideas.

‘I do my reading in the town,’ I said. ‘Then I go up to my Inn once a term, and get through my dinners in a row. It saves money — and I shall need it until I get a practice going, you know.’

It was the kind of career talk she was used to hearing; but she was baffled at hearing it from me.

‘All the barristers I’ve known’, she said, ‘have eaten their dinners while they were at college. I remember my cousin used to go up when he was at Trinity—’

‘Did he ever get through an examination?’ asked Sheila.

‘Perhaps he wasn’t clever at his books,’ said Mrs Knight, becoming more cross, ‘but he was a good man, and everyone respected him in the county.’

‘My friends at the Inn’, I put in, ‘nearly all come from Cambridge.’ Here I was stretching the truth. I had made one or two friendly acquaintances there, such as Charles March, who were undergraduates, but I often dined with excessively argumentative Indians.

Mrs Knight was very cross. She did not like being baffled and confused — yet somehow I had automatically to be promoted a step. She had to say, as though Sheila had met me at the house of one of their friends ‘I’ve always heard that a barrister has to wait years for his briefs. Of course, I suppose you don’t mind waiting—’

I admitted that it would take time. Mrs Knight gave an appeased and comforted sigh, happy to be back on firm ground.

Soon after, there was a footfall outside the room, a slow footfall. Mrs Knight’s eyes widened. ‘He’s coming!’ she said. ‘He must have finished!’

Mr Knight entered with an exaggeratedly drooping, an exaggeratedly languid step. He was tall, massive, with a bay window of a stomach that began as far up as his lower chest. He was wearing a lounge suit without a dog collar, and he carried a sheaf of manuscript in his hand. His voice was exaggeratedly faint. He was, at first glance, a good deal of an actor, and he was indicating that the virtue had gone out of him.

He said faintly to his wife: ‘I’m sorry I had to be late, darling,’ sat in the armchair which had been preserved for him, and half closed his eyes.

Mrs Knight asked with quacking concern whether he would like a cup of tea. It was plain that she adored him.

‘Perhaps a cup,’ he whispered. ‘Perhaps just a cup.’

The toast had been kept warm on the hotplate, she said anxiously. Or she could have some fresh made in three minutes.

‘I can’t eat it, darling,’ he said. ‘I can’ eat it, I can’t eat anything .’

The faintness with which he spoke was bogus, Actually his voice was rich, and very flexible in its range of tone. He had a curious trick of repeating a phrase, and at the second turn completely altering the stress. Throughout his entry, which he enjoyed to the full, he had paid no attention to me, had not thrown me an open glance, but as he lay back with heavy lids drawn down he was observing me from the corner of an eye that was disturbingly sly and shrewd.

When at last he admitted to a partial recovery, Mrs Knight introduced me. She explained volubly the reason for my eccentric attire, taking credit for her speed of action. Then, since they seemed still to be worrying her, she repeated my statements about doing nothing but read for the Bar, as though trusting him to solve the problem.

Unlike his wife, Mr Knight was indirect. He gazed at Sheila, not at me.

‘You never tell me anything, do you, my dear girl,’ he said. ‘You never tell me anything.’

Then slyly, still looking at her, he questioned me. His voice stayed carefully fatigued, he appeared to be taking a remote interest in these ephemeral things. In fact, he was astute. If he had been present, I should never have succeeded for a minute in putting up my bluff with Mrs Knight. Without asking me outright, he soon got near the truth. He took a malicious pleasure in talking round the point, letting me see that he had guessed, not giving me away to his wife.

‘Isn’t there a regulation’, he inquired, his voice diminishing softly, ‘by which you can’t read for the Bar if you’re following certain occupations? Does that mean one has to break away? I take it, you may have had to select your time to break away — from some other occupation?’