Charles Snow - Time of Hope

But there were many days in the months ahead when George did not speak or act in the slightest respect like one of nature’s burgesses; and that was the second trouble into which we were plunged. It seemed grave then. In retrospect it seemed more than grave, it seemed to mark the point where the curve of George’s life began to dip. At this point, I need only say a few words about it. The upheaval in our circle began with Martineau. We had always known that he was restless and eccentric; but we expected him to continue his ordinary way of life, entertaining us on Friday nights, and safeguarding George’s future in the firm. Suddenly he went through a kind of religious conversion. That autumn he relinquished his share in the practice. It was a few months later, early in 1927, that he completed his abnegation; then he sold all his remaining possessions, gave the money away, and at fifty-one began to wander round the country, begging his way, penniless and devout.

It was now left to Eden to decide whether George should ever become a partner. We all urged George at least to establish a modus vivendi with Eden. George, dogged by ill fortune and his own temperament, promptly performed a series of actions which made Eden, who already disliked him, rule him out of the running, not only then, but always. And so at twenty-seven George was condemned to be a managing clerk for the rest of his life. There were many consequences that none of us could have foreseen; a practical one was that George began to cooperate in Jack Cotery’s business.

To me, that trouble was light, though, compared to a quarrel with Sheila — a quarrel which I said to myself must be the last. It came with blinding suddenness, after a summer in which most of our meetings had been happy, happier than any since the days of innocence a year before. We amused each other with the same kind of joke, youthful, reckless, and sarcastic. I had discovered that I could often coax and bully her out of her indrawn, icy temper. It was the serene hours that counted. I was not much worried when, in the early autumn, days followed each other when she sat abnormally still, her eyes fixed in a long-sighted stare, when if I took her hand it stayed immobile and I seemed to be kissing a dead cheek. I had been through it before, and that removed the warning. She would emerge. Meanwhile, she was not giving me any excuse for jealousy. For weeks she had not mentioned any other man. And, in those fits of painful stillness, she saw no one but me.

One day in September we had been walking in the country, and were resting on the grass beside the road. She had been quiet, wrapped deep in herself, all afternoon. Suddenly she announced ‘I’m going shooting.’

I laughed aloud, and asked her when and where. She said she was travelling to Scotland, the next week.

‘I’m going shooting,’ she repeated.

Again I laughed.

‘What’s funny about that?’

Her tone was sharp.

‘It is funny,’ I said.

‘You’d better tell me why.’

Her tone was so sharp that I took her shoulders and began to shake her. But she broke loose and said ‘I suppose you mean that I only know these people because my father married for money. I suppose it is a wonderfully good joke that my mother was such a fool.’

With bewilderment I saw that she was crying. She was staring at me in enmity and hate. She turned aside, and dried the tears herself.

On the way back, I made one effort to tell her that nothing had been further from my mind. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, and we went along in silence. Intolerably slowly (and yet I could not bear to part), the miles went by. We came to the suburbs and walked in silence under the chestnut trees.

At the station entrance, she spoke.

‘Don’t see me off.’ She added, as though she was forced to: ‘I shall be away a month. I shan’t write much. I’m too prickly. I’ll tell you when I get back.’

In the days that followed, I was angry as well as wretched. It would be easy to cease to love her, I thought, making myself remember her cold inimical face. Then I cherished those unwilling words at the station. ‘Prickly’ — was she not trying to soften it for me, in the midst of her own bitterness? Why hadn’t I made her speak? This was not a separation, I comforted myself, and wrote to her, as lightly as though that afternoon had not existed. As I wrote, I had the habitual glow, as if she must, through my scribble on the paper, be compelled at that moment to think of me. No answer came.

A fortnight after that walk in the country, I was strolling aimlessly through the market place. I was on edge, and sleeping badly; it was hard to steer myself through a day’s work; I had come out that afternoon, hoping to freshen myself for another two hours later on. It was nearly teatime on a dark autumn day, with the clouds low, but bright and cosy in the streets, the shops already lighted. Smells poured out into the crowded streets, as the shop doors swung open — smells of bacon, ham, cheese, fruit — and, at the end of the market place, the aroma of roast coffee beans, which mastered them all, and for a moment dissolved all my anxiety and took me back to afternoons of childhood. In our less penurious days, before the bankruptcy, my mother used to take me shopping in the town, when I was a small child; and I smelt the coffee then, and watched the grinding machine in the window, and heard my mother assert that this was the only shop she could think of patronizing.

I watched the grinding machine again, sixteen years later (for I could not have been more than five when I accompanied my mother). I would have sworn that she had actually used the word ‘patronizing’; and indeed it gave me a curious pleasure to think of her so — for few women could the word have been more apt, at that period, before she had been cast down.

At last I turned away. On the pavement, walking towards me, was Sheila. She was wearing a fur coat which made her look a matron, and her head was bent, staring at the ground, so that she had not seen me. At that instant it occurred to me we had never met by accident before.

I called her name, She looked up. Her face was cold and set.

‘I didn’t know you were back,’ I said.

‘I am,’ said Sheila.

‘You said you’d be away a month.’

‘I changed my mind,’ she said. She added fiercely: ‘If you want to know, I hated it.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I might have done in time.’

‘I don’t mean in time,’ I said. ‘You ought to have told me before today.’

‘Try to remember this,’ said Sheila. ‘You don’t own me. If I wanted you to own me, I should be glad to tell you everything. I don’t want it.’

‘You let me just run into you like this—’ I cried.

‘I don’t propose to send you word every time I come into the town,’ she said. ‘I’ll let you know when I want to see you.’

‘Will you have some tea?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m going home.’

We moved away from each other. I looked back, but not she.

That was all. That was the end, I thought.

I too was full of anger and hate, as I made my resolve that night. I could have stood jealousy, I could have stood her madnesses and cruelty, but this I could no longer stand. I had had too much. I strengthened myself by the pictures of her indrawn face, in which there was no regard for me. There were hours when I hoped that love itself had died.

I must cut her out of my heart, I thought. Jack was right; Jack had been right all along. I must cut her out of my heart; and I knew by instinct that, to do it, I must not see her again, speak to her, receive a word from her or write to her, even hear of her at second hand. That was my resolve; and this time, unlike Christmas Eve, I felt the wild satisfaction that I could carry it out.