Charles Snow - Time of Hope

I worked with a harsh gusto, staying in my attic when she might be in the town, going only to the reference library when there was no chance that we could meet. I took precautions to avoid her as elaborate as those I had once used to pin down each minute of her day. And then I wanted to distract myself. Jack was right. She had done me harm; she had left me lonely and unsure. I thought (as I had often done since that night in the café, as I had done after meetings where Sheila did not give an inch and I was humiliated) of the bait Jack had laid for me. I thought of Marion. Would she have me, if I went to her now?

I had wondered many times whether Jack was right about her too. Had she really been in love with me? I wanted it to be true. Just then, I was voracious for any kind of woman’s love.

I believed that Marion had been fond of me. I believed that if I had wooed her, I could probably have persuaded her to love me. That was as far as I trusted Jack’s propaganda. Yet now, unsure of myself, I wanted to meet Marion again. I had not seen her, except to wave to in the streets, for months. She was the most active of us, and it would have been right out of character for her to sit and mope. She had gone off and attached herself to the town’s best amateur theatrical company. There she found a new circle: to my surprise, people spoke highly of her as a comic actress. I wished that we could be brought together again, without any contrivance of mine. I had, of course, a furtive, fugitive hope that Jack might not after all have been exaggerating, and that she would fall into my arms.

Strangely enough, it was through Martineau that I caught a glimpse of her at the theatre. It was a Friday night in November. Although we did not know it, Martineau was within a few days of renouncing his share in the firm, and we were to go to the house for only one more Friday night. Unconcerned, amiable, and light hearted, Martineau mentioned that The Way of the World was being acted the following week, and invited me to go with him to see it.

It was a singular choice of entertainment, I thought later, for a man who was on the point of trying to live like St Francis; but Martineau enjoyed every minute of it. He appeared in his wing collar, frock coat, and grey trousers, for, until he actually left the firm, he never relaxed in his dress. We sat near to the stage, and Martineau roared with laughter, more audibly than anyone in the house, at each bawdy joke. And he was particularly taken by Marion. She was playing Millamant, the biggest part she had had with this company, and she won the triumph of the evening. Her bright eyes flashed and cajoled and hinted; on the stage her clumsiness disappeared, she stood up straight, she had presence and a rakish air, and her voice lilted and allured. Despite her reputation, I had not expected anything like it. I felt very proud of her.

Martineau was captivated entirely.

‘She’s a stunner,’ he said, using enthusiastically, as he often did, the slang of years ago. ‘She’s a perfect stunner.’

I told him that I knew her fairly well.

‘Lucky old dog,’ said Martineau. ‘Lucky old dog, Lewis.’ At the end of the play, Martineau was reluctant to leave the theatre. ‘Lewis,’ he said, ‘what do you say to our paying respects to your young friend? Going round to the stage door, we used to call it.’

We had to wait, along with other friends of the cast, for the theatre was a makeshift one, and all the women dressed in one large room. At last we were allowed in. Marion was still shining in her greasepaint, surrounded by people praising her. She was lapping it up, from all quarters, both sexes, from anyone who had a word of praise, whatever its quality. She caught my eye, looked surprised, smiled, cried out ‘Lewis, my dear’, then turned to listen, her whole face open to receive applause, to a man who was telling her how wonderful she had been. The air was humming with endearments and congratulations. I took Martineau to Marion, and he added his share, and it was clear that she could not have enough of it.

A couple of young men were competing for her attention, but Martineau held her for a time. Apart from a smile of recognition, and a question upon how I liked the show, she had been too ecstatic in her triumph to come aside to me. She was glad I was there; but she was glad Martineau was there, she was glad everyone in the room was there; she was ready to embrace us all.

The company were holding a party, and we had to leave. Marion called goodbyes after Martineau, after me, after others who had been praising her.

Martineau and I went out into the cold night air.

‘What a stunning girl,’ said Martineau. ‘I say, Lewis, your friend is something to write home about.’

I agreed. But I was lonely and dispirited. I wished I had not gone.

On winter afternoons, when I could not work any longer, I gazed from my attic window over the roofs. This time last year — the thoughts crept treacherously in — I might have been at tea with Sheila. Now the evening ahead was safe, quite safe. I was keeping my resolve. I had abstained from all the forbidden actions, in order to cut her out of my heart. Yet why — I could not help crying to myself — had she of all women the power to set me free?

I was not well that winter, and for days together slept badly and woke in a mysterious malaise. There was nothing I could be definite about, but I was worried, for the Bar Finals and the future, as I lay awake listening to the thudding of my heart. It was necessary, I knew, to take no notice. And I had to do my best to see that George was not too much damaged, now that Martineau had left the firm in November. Often, when I felt like lying in bed, I had to struggle through some work, and then drag myself off to an argument with George or Eden. There were other lives beside one’s own; it was a discipline hard to learn, when one was young, ill, and empty with unrequited love.

Sometimes those discussions were a relief, simply because they took away from my loneliness. I had not the spirit to seek for Marion, away from her stage properties. That night at the theatre had been a misfire when I did not want another. It was out of loneliness that I returned to the group, for there I could find without effort the company of some young women. They welcomed me back. George began by saying: ‘I take it that you’re slightly reducing the extent of your other commitments.’

‘It’s over,’ I said. I did not wish to speak of it.

‘Thank God for that,’ said George. ‘I’m glad you’ve come to your senses.’ And automatically, from that moment, George demoted Sheila in his speech. After being cloaked in euphemisms for a year, she was referred to once more as ‘that damned countyfied bitch’.

Jack was listening, attentively and shrewdly. ‘Good,’ he said, but he looked troubled. I wondered if he noticed that, when I went out to the farm, I did not stir from the house for fear of the remote chance of meeting Sheila. I wondered too if he would pass any word to Marion.

With a considerateness that touched me, the Edens asked me to their Christmas Eve party, in my own right, asking me to bring a partner if I felt inclined. Eden went out of his way to drop the hint that they had ‘rather lost touch with Sheila Knight’. I went alone. Just as last year, the drawing-room was redolent of rum and spice and orange; most of last year’s party were there; all was safe, I listened to Eden, the fire blazed, Mrs Eden did not mention Sheila. In the early morning, when I left the house, it was colder than that last warm Christmas morning, and no car stood outside.

It was on a January morning, returning home from the reference library (I had changed my routine, so as never to be in the main shopping streets in the afternoon), that I found a telegram waiting at my lodgings. Before I opened it, I knew from whom it came. It read: YOU ONCE WANTED TO BORROW A BOOK FROM ME IT IS NOT A GOOD BOOK I SHALL BRING IT TO THE USUAL CAFÉ TOMORROW AT FOUR. It was signed SHEILA, and, luxuriating in the details, I noticed that it had been dispatched from her village that morning at nine-five. It gave me the pleasure of intimacy, silly and caressing, to think of her going to the post office straight after breakfast.