Charles Snow - Time of Hope

I knew something else, something so difficult for a lover to accept that I could not face it steadily. Yet I knew that she was going round like a sleepwalker. She was looking for someone with whom to fall in love.

I knew that she was desperately anxious, so anxious that the lines deepened and the skin darkened beneath her eyes, that she would never manage it. She did not love me, but I gave her a kind of hope, an illusory warmth, as though through me she might break out into release — either with me or another, for as to that, in her ruthlessness, innocence, and cruelty, she would not give a second’s thought.

Such was the little power I had over her.

She was afraid that she would never love a man as I loved her. It was from that root that came her acts of Christmas Eve, her deliberate cruelty.

For she was cruel, not only through indifference, but also as though in being cruel she could find release. In such a scene as that on Christmas Eve, she could bring herself to the emotional temperature in which most of us naturally lived.

It was hard to take, at that age. The more so, as she played on a nerve of cruelty within myself — which I had long known, which except with her I could forget. Once or twice she provoked my temper, which nowadays I had as a rule under control. She made me quarrel: quarrels were an excitement to her, a time in which to immerse herself, to swear like a fishwife; to me, except in the height of rage, they were — because I had so little power over her — like death.

It was harder for me, because now I longed for her completely. The time was past when I could be satisfied, thinking of her alone in her room; each scrap of understanding, each wave either of compassion or anger, and the more I wanted her. On that January afternoon, when I had the first sight of her as a living creature, driven by her nature, I felt not only the birth of affection, as something distinct from love — but also I was trembling with desire. And that was the first of many occasions when she felt my hand shake, when she felt in me a passion which left her unmoved, which made her uneasy and cruel. For now I wanted her in the flesh. Although everything I knew made nonsense of the thought, I wanted her as my wife.

I had not enough confidence to tell her so. I had always been afraid that I had no charm for her. Sometimes, now that I wanted her so much, I hoped I had a little; sometimes, I thought, none at all. Occasionally she was warm and active and laughing in my arms; then, at our next meeting, irritated by my need for her, she would smoke cigarette after cigarette in an endless chain so as to give me no excuse to kiss her. I could not face the cold truth she might tell me if I took the cigarette away.

She caused me intense jealousy. Not only with Tom Devitt; in fact she quarrelled with him early in the year. I told her that I was suspicious of her quarrels. ‘You needn’t be this time,’ she said. ‘Poor Tom. It’s a pity. He couldn’t turn me into a doctor’s wife.’ She reflected, with a frown.

‘The more helpless they are, the worse one treats them.’ She looked at me. ‘I know I’m unpleasant. You can tell me so if you like. But I’m telling the truth. It’s also true of less unpleasant women. Isn’t it so?’

‘I expect it’s true of us all,’ I said.

‘I’ve never found a man who made me helpless yet,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what it would be like.’

‘I’ve found you,’ I said.

She shook her head.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re not so helpless. I shouldn’t come to see you if you were.’

I ceased to be jealous of Tom Devitt, but there were others. They were nearly all misfits, waifs and strays, often — like Devitt — much older than she was. For the smart comely young businessmen who pursued her she had no use whatsoever. But she would find some teacher at the School timid with women or unhappily married, and I should hear a threatening, excited ‘we’ again. She had a very alert and hopeful eye for men whom she thought might fascinate her. In getting to know them, she rid herself of her self-consciousness; instead of shrinking into a corner, as she did in company, she was ready to take the initiative herself, exactly as though she were a middle-aged woman on the prowl for lovers. I could see nothing in common between those who pleased her. I knew that she herself imagined some implacably strong character, some Heathcliff of a lover who would break her will — but they were all weaker and gentler than she was.

Each of those sparks of interest guttered away, and she came back, sometimes pallid, ill-tempered, more divided than before, sometimes sarcastic and gay.

I was beyond minding in what state she came back. For each time I was bathed in the overwhelming reassurance of the jealous. After days spent in the degrading detective work of jealousy, I saw her in front of me, and the calculations were washed away. It was only the jealous, I thought later, who could be so ecstatically reassured. She had said that she went home by the eight-ten last night. Where had she been between teatime and the train, with whom had she been? Then she said that her mother had been shopping in the town, and they had gone to the pictures. Only the suspicious could be as simple and wholehearted in delight as I was then.

I did not spend much time with the group during those months. My first Bar examination happened in the summer, and whenever I could not see Sheila I was trying to concentrate upon my work. I went out at night with George and Jack, I still went to Martineau’s on Fridays, but the long weekends at the farm I could no longer spare. There was, I knew, a good deal of gossip; by now it was common knowledge that I was head over heels in love with Sheila. Marion also began to keep away from the group, and we never met at all.

There was one pair of curious, observant eyes that did not let me keep my secrets unperceived. Jack Cotery was interested in me, and love was his special subject. He watched the vicissitudes in my spirits as day followed day. He went out of his way to meet Sheila once or twice. Then, in the summer, not long before I set off to London to take the examination, he exerted himself. He came up one night and said, in his soft voice ‘Lewis, I want to talk to you.’

I tried to put him off, but he shook his head.

‘No. Clearly, it’s time someone gave you a bit of advice.’

He was oddly obstinate. It was the only time I had known him make a determined stand about someone else’s concerns. He insisted on taking me to the picture-house café. ‘I’m more at home there.’ He grinned. ‘I’m tired of your wretched pubs.’ There, under the pink-shaded lights, with girls at the tables close by, whispering, giggling, he was indeed at home. But that night he was keeping his eyes from girls. With his rolling muscular gait he led the way into the corner, where there was a table separate from the rest. The night was warm; we drank tea, and got warmer; Jack Cotery, in complete seriousness, began to talk to me.

Then I realized that this was an act of pure friendliness. It was the more pure, because I had recently been busy trying to stop one of his dubious projects. In the autumn he had borrowed money from George, in order to start a small wireless business. Since then he had launched out on a speculation that was, if one took the most charitable view, somewhere near the edge of the shady. He was pestering George for more money with which to extricate himself. I had used my influence with George to stop it. My motives were not all disinterested; I might still want to borrow from George myself, and so Jack and I were rivals there; but still, I had a keen nose for a rogue, I had no doubt that to Jack commercial honesty was without meaning, and thus early I smelt danger, most of all, of course, for George.