Charles Snow - Time of Hope

Jack was a good deal of a rogue, but he bore no grudges. No doubt he enjoyed advising me, showing off his expertness, parading himself where he was so much more knowledgeable, so much less vulnerable, than I. But he had a genuine wish, earthy and kind, to get me fitted up with a suitable bed-mate, to be sure that I was enjoying myself, with all this nonsensical anguish thrown away. He had taken much trouble to time his advice right. With consideration, with experienced eyes, he had been watching until I seemed temporarily light-hearted. It was then, when he felt sure that I was not worrying about Sheila, that he took me off to the picture-house café. He actually began, over the steaming tea ‘Lewis, things aren’t so bad with your girl just now, are they?’

I said that they were not.

‘That’s the time to give her up,’ said Jack, with emphasis and conviction. ‘When you’re not chasing her. It won’t hurt your pride so much. You can get out of it of your own free will. It’s better for you yourself to have made the break, Lewis, it will hurt you less.’

He spoke so warmly that I had to answer in kind.

‘I can’t give her up,’ I said. ‘I love her.’

‘I’ve noticed that,’ said Jack, smiling good-naturedly. ‘Though why you didn’t tell me earlier I just can’t imagine. We might have dangled a few distractions before your eyes. Why in God’s name should you fall for that — horror?’

‘She’s not a horror.’

‘You know very well she is. In everything that matters. Lewis, you’re healthy enough. Why in God’s name should you choose someone who’ll only bring you misery?’

I shrugged my shoulders.

‘Once or twice’, I said, ‘I’ve been happier with her than I’ve ever imagined being.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Jack. ‘If you didn’t get a spot of happiness when you’re first in love, it’d be a damned poor lookout for all of us. Look here, I know more about women than you do. Or if I don’t’, he grinned, ‘I must have been wasting my time. I tell you, she’s a horror. Perhaps she’s a bit crazy. Anyway, she’ll only bring you misery. Now why did you choose her?’

‘Has one any choice?’ I said.

‘With someone impossible,’ said Jack, ‘you ought to be able to escape.’

‘I don’t think I can,’ I said.

‘You’ve got to,’ said Jack, with more vigorous purpose than I had ever heard from him. ‘She’ll do you harm. She’ll make a mess of your life.’ He added: ‘I believe she’s done you a lot of harm already.’

‘Nonsense,’ I said.

‘I bet you don’t know when to make love to her.’

The hit was so shrewd that I blushed.

‘Damn the bitch,’ said Jack. ‘I’d like to have her in a bedroom with no questions asked. I’d teach her a thing or two.’

He looked at me.

‘Lewis,’ he said, ‘it’s the cold ones who can do you harm. I expect you wonder if any woman will ever want you.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I do.’

‘It’s absurd,’ said Jack, in his flattering, easy, soothing fashion. ‘If you’d run across someone warm, you’d know how absurd it is. Why, with just a bit of difference, you’d have a better time than I do. You’re sympathetic. You’re very clever. You’re going to be a success. And — you’ve got a gleam in your eye… It’s like everything else,’ he went on. ‘You’ve got to believe in yourself. If she’s ruined that for you, I shall never forgive her. I tell you, it’s absurd for you to doubt yourself. There are hundreds of nicer girls than Miss Sheila who’d say yes before you’d had time to ask.’

When he cared, he was more skilful than anyone I knew at binding up the wounds.

Jack looked across the table. I was certain that he had something else to say, and was working his way towards it. He was using all his cunning, as well as his good nature.

‘Now Marion’, he said, as though casually, and I understood, ‘would be a hundred times better — for any purpose that you can possibly imagine. I don’t mind telling you, I’ve thought of her myself. I just can’t understand why you’ve done nothing about it.’

‘I’ve been pretty occupied,’ I said. ‘And I wasn’t—’

‘I should have thought’, said Jack, ‘that you might have found time to think of her. After all, she’s been pining for you long enough.’

I was forced on to the defensive. I said, in confusion, that I knew she was rather fond of me, but he was exaggerating it beyond all reason.

‘You bloody fool,’ said Jack, ‘she worships the ground you walk on.’

I still protested, Jack went on attacking me. If I did not realize it, he said roughly, it must be because I was blinded by Sheila. The sooner I got rid of her the better, if I could not notice what was going on round me. ‘Remember too,’ said Jack, ‘if anyone falls in love with you, it is partly your own fault. It’s not all innocence on your side. It never is. There’s always a bit of encouragement. You’ve smiled at her, you’ve been sympathetic, and you’ve led her on.’

I felt guilty: that was another stab of truth. I argued, I protested again that he was exaggerating. I was confused: I half wanted to credit what he said, just for the sake of my own vanity; I half wanted to be guiltless.

‘I don’t care about the rights and wrongs,’ said Jack. ‘All I care about is that the young woman is aching for you. Just as much as you ache for your girl. And without any nonsense about it. She wants you, she knows she wants you. But remember she can’t wait for ever. If I never advise you again, Lewis, I’m doing so now. Get free — not next week, tonight, go home and write the letter — and take Marion on. It will make all the difference to you… I’m not at all sure’, he said surprisingly, ‘that you wouldn’t be wise to marry her.’

The examination did not trouble me overmuch. It was not a decisive one; my acquaintances who were taking law degrees, like Charles March, were exempt from it; unless I did disgracefully badly, nothing hung upon the result. Once I got started, I felt a cheerful, savage contempt for those who tried to keep me in my proper station. I had only taken one examination in my life, the Oxford, but I found again that, after the first half-hour, I enjoyed the game. In the first lunch interval, certain that I was not going to disgrace myself, I reflected realistically, as I had done before, that my performance this year would be a guide to my chances twelve months hence in the Bar Finals — on which, in my circumstances, all depended.

I stayed at Mrs Reed’s, for no better reason than habit, but this time I did not have to look in entreaty at the hall table each time I entered the house. Sheila’s letter arrived on my second morning, according to her promise. For I had seen her before I left town, not listening to Jack Cotery, despite the comfort he had given me. The letter was in her usual allusive style, but contained a passage which made me smile: ‘My father has lost his voice, which is exceedingly just. He croaks pathetically. I have offered to nurse him — would you expect me to be good at the healing word?’ And, a little farther on, she wrote: ‘Curiously enough, he inquired about you the other day. He is probably thinking you might be useful some time for free legal consultations. My family are remarkably avaricious. I don’t know whether I shall inherit it. Poor Tom used to have to prescribe for my father. But Tom was a moral coward. You are evasive and cagey, but you’re not that.’

Evasive and cagey, I thought, in the luxury of considering a beloved’s judgement, in the conceit of youth. Was it true? No one else had ever said so. So far as I knew, no one had thought so. She had seen me get on, in harmony, with all kinds of people — while she shrank into a corner. And she alone had seen me quite free.