Charles Snow - Time of Hope

Then I knew jealousy. Where had they gone after the car drove away? Had he kissed her? Had he slept with her? Were they, at this moment when I was lying sleepless, in each other’s arms? For the first time in my thoughts of Sheila, my sensual imagination was active, merciless, gave me no rest.

The night ticked by, slower than my racing heart. Again I knew that it was all planned. Again, with detailed precision, but with another purpose, I went over each word that she had spoken since her invitation — her excitement when she first asked me to go, her tense exaltation, the tone in which she had telephoned at the cafe. It was the edge of cruelty. I had been hurt by motiveless cruelty on that morning of childish humiliation — but this was the first time I had felt cruelty in love. Did I know that night that it was the end of innocence? I felt much that I had imagined of love stripped from me by her outrage, and in the darkness, I saw in her and in myself a depth which was black with hate, and from which, even in misery, I shrank back appalled. I had always known it in myself, but kept my eyes away; now her outrage made me look.

In the creeping winter dawn, my thoughts had become just two. The first was, I must dismiss her from my mind, I must forget her name — and, as I got more tired, I kept holding to that resolve. The second was, how soon would she write to me, so that I could see her again?

The days passed; and, working in my room, a veil kept coming between my eyes and the page. When the veil came, I would hear some phrase of Sheila’s, and that set going my thoughts as through the sleepless night I sat there at my books, but I could not force my eyes to clear.

I heard nothing, I saw no one, I received no letter, for day after day. George and Jack and I had arranged to meet to see the new year in; but after one drink George went off to an ‘important engagement’, and Jack and I were left alone.

‘He must have found somebody,’ said Jack. ‘Good luck to him.’

We argued about how we should spend the night. Jack’s idea was that there could be no better way than of going to the local palais-de-danse and picking up two girls; but, at the mention of the word, I re-heard Sheila saying ‘we went to the palais’, and I could not face the faintest chance, the one chance in ten thousand, of seeing her there.

I wanted to stay in the public house, drinking. Jack was discontented, but, in his good-natured way, agreed. For him, it was a sacrifice. It was only to be convivial, and because he liked us, that he endured long drinking parties with George and me.

Amiably he sipped at his whisky, and made a slight face. He was so accommodating that I wanted to explain why I could not go to the palais; I was also longing to confide, and I knew that I should get sympathy and some kind of understanding; yet when I began, my pride clutched me, and the story came out, thin, half-humorous, so garbled that he could get no inkling either of my humiliation or my aching emptiness as each day passed. Even so, I got some relief, perhaps more than if I had exposed the truth.

‘We all have lovers’ quarrels,’ said Jack.

‘I suppose so,’ I said.

‘It’s sweet when you make it up,’ said Jack.

He smiled at me.

‘You’ve got to be a bit firm,’ he said. ‘See that she apologizes. Box her ears and make her feel a little girl. Then be specially nice to her.’ He went on: ‘It’s all right as long as you don’t take it too tragically. You watch yourself, Lewis. Mind you don’t get all the anguish and none of the fun. You’d better get her where you want her this time. I’ll tell you how I managed it last week—’

Thus I spent the last hours of 1925 listening to Jack Cotery on the predicaments and tactics of a love affair; of how he had changed a reverse into a victory; of comic misfortune, of tears that were part of the game, of tears that turned into luxurious sighs. And, listening to his eloquence, I was solaced, I half believed that things would go that way for me.

The first days of January. Not a word. The voice of sense gave way, and I began to write a letter. Then my pride held me on the edge, and I tore it up. When I could not sleep, I dragged myself out of bed to work. I did not know how long such a state could last. I had nothing to compare it with. I went on — with ‘automatic competence’, a clear high voice taunted me, more piercing than any voice of those I met. I worked to tire myself, so that I should sleep late into the morning. I was living always for the next day.

Before Christmas the group had arranged to go out to the farm for the first weekend of the year. I had promised to join the party. But now I recoiled from company, I told George that I could not go. ‘You’re forgetting your responsibilities,’ he said stiffly. There were other times when I craved for any kind of human touch. I went the round of pubs, talking to barmaids and prostitutes, anything for a smile. It was in one of those storms that I changed my mind again. On the Friday night I sought George out, and told him that I should like to come after all. ‘I’m glad to see you’re back in your right mind,’ said George. Then he asked formally: ‘Nothing seriously wrong with your private affairs, I hope?’

For George, it was a great weekend. Everyone was there, and he could bask right in the heart of his ‘little world’, surrounded by people whom he loved and looked after, where all his diffidence, prickles, suspiciousness, and angry defiance were swept away, where he felt utterly serene. At the farm, surrounded by his group, one saw George at his best. He was a natural leader, though, because of the quirks of his nature, it had to be a leader in obscurity, a leader of a revolt that never came off. He was a strange character — many people thought him so bizarre as to be almost mad: yet no one ever met him, however much they suppressed their own respect, without thinking that he was built on the lines of a great man.

Seated at the supper table, outside the golden circle of the oil lamp, George was at his best. Each word he spoke was listened to, even in the gossip, chatter, and argument of the group. That night he talked to us of freedom — how, if we had the will (and that it would never have occurred to him to doubt), we could make our children’s lives the best there had ever been in the world. Not only by making a better society, in which they would stand a fair chance, but also by bringing them up free and happy. ‘The good in men is incomparably more important than the evil,’ said George. ‘Whatever happens, we’ve always got to remember that.’

The whole group was moved, for he had spoken from a great depth. That was his message, and it came from a man who struggled with himself. When Jack, the most impudent person there, twitted him and said the evil could be very delectable, George shouted: ‘I don’t call that evil. It’s half the trouble that for hundreds of years all the priests and parents and pundits have tried to make us miserable by a load of guilt.’

I had not said much that supper time, for my mind was absent, thinking of a recent supper at that table, when I came in wet, alight with a secret happiness. For a moment I shook off my preoccupation, my own load, and looked at George. For I knew that he, more than most of us, was burdened by a sense of guilt — and so he demanded that we should all be free.

After supper, we broke into twos and threes, and Marion and I began to talk out in the window bay. She had just returned from her Christmas holidays, and it was three weeks since we had met.

‘I need your help,’ she said at once.

‘What about?’

‘I’ve got a problem for you.’ Then she added: ‘What were you thinking about just now?’