Charles Snow - Time of Hope

I made no struggle. I had two weapons to keep me out of danger — pain and pride. But I dismissed the pain, and thought only of my emptiness. As for pride, she had appeased that, for it was she who asked. I was infused by hope so sanguine that I felt the well-being pour through me to the fingertips. I watched motes dancing in the winter sunlight. Just as when I was first in love, it seemed that I had never seen things so fresh before.

The clock was striking four when I went through the café, past a pair of chess players already settled in for the evening, down to the last alcove. She was there, reading an evening paper, holding it as usual a long way from her eyes. She heard my footstep, and watched me as I sat down beside her.

She said: ‘I’ve missed you.’ She added: ‘I’ve brought the book. You won’t like it much.’

She set herself to talk as though there had been no interval. I was irritated, in one of those spells I had previously known. Was this she whose absence made each hour seem pointless? Yes, she was good-looking, but was that hard beauty really in my style? Yes, she was clever enough, but she had no stamina in anything she thought or did.

At the same instant I was chafing with impatience for reassurances and pledges. I did not want to listen to her, but to take her in my arms.

She saw that something was wrong. She frowned, and then tried to make me laugh. We exchanged jokes, and she worked at a curious awkward attempt to coax me. Once or twice the air was electric, but through my fault there were gaps of silence.

‘When shall I see you again?’ said Sheila, and we arranged a meeting.

I went away to drink with George, impatient with her, compelled by the habit of love to count the hours until I saw her next — but incredulous that I had not broken away. Perhaps it would have been like that, I thought, if our roles had been reversed and she had done the loving. There might have been many such teatimes. Perhaps it would have been better for us both. But when I drank with George there was no jubilation in my tone to betray that afternoon, even if he had been a more perceptive man.

By the first post of the day I was expecting her, I received a letter. My heart quickened, but as I read it I chuckled.

‘I can’t appear tomorrow afternoon’, she wrote, ‘because I have a shocking cold. I always get shocking colds. Come and see me, if you’d like to, and can face it. My mother will be out of the way, visiting the sick. If I were a parishioner, she would be visiting me, which would be the last straw.’

When I was shown into the drawing-room, I saw that Sheila was not exaggerating. She was sitting by the fire with her eyes moist, her lids swollen, her nostrils and upper lip all red; on the little table by her side were some books, an inhaler, and half a dozen handkerchiefs. She gave me a weak grin. ‘I told you it was a shocking cold. Every cold I have is like this.’ Her voice was unrecognisably low, as well as thick and muffled.

‘You can laugh if you want to,’ she said. ‘I know it’s comic.’

‘I’m sorry, dear,’ I said, ‘but it is a bit comic.’ I was feeling both affectionate and amused; she was so immaculate that this misadventure seemed like a practical joke.

‘My father doesn’t think so,’ she said with another grin. ‘He’s terrified of catching anything. He refuses to see me. He stays in his study all day.’

We had tea, or rather I ate the food and Sheila thirstily drank several cups. She told the maid that she would not eat anything, and the maid reproached her: ‘Feed a cold and starve a fever, Miss Sheila. You’re hungrier than you think.’

‘That’s all you know,’ Sheila retorted. In her mother’s absence the maid and Sheila were on the most companionable terms.

While I was eating, Sheila watched me closely.

‘You were cross with me the other day.’

‘A little,’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘It doesn’t matter now.’

‘I’m trying to behave,’ she said. ‘What have I done?’

‘Nothing.’ It was true. Not once had she been cruel, or indifferent, or dropped a hint to rouse my jealousy.

‘Wasn’t it a good idea to make it up?’

I smiled.

‘Then what was the matter?’

I told her that I loved her totally, that no one could be more in love than I was, that no one could ever love her more. I had not seen her for three months and I had tried to forget her — three bitter months; then we met, and she expected me to talk amiably over the teacups as though nothing had happened.

Sheila blew her nose, wiped her eyes, and considered.

‘If you want to kiss me now, you can,’ she said. ‘But I warn you, I don’t really feel much like it.’

She pressed my hand. I laughed. Cold or no cold, her spirits were further from the earth than mine could ever be, and I could not resist her.

She was considering again.

‘Come to a ball,’ she said suddenly. She had been searching, I knew, for some way to make amends. With her odd streak of practicality, it had to be a tangible treat.

‘I hate balls,’ she said. ‘But I’ll go to this one if you’ll take me.’

‘This one’ was a charity ball in the town; Mrs Knight was insisting that her husband and Sheila should go; it would annoy Mrs Knight considerably if I made up the party, Sheila said, getting a double-edged pleasure.

‘My mother thinks you’re a fortune hunter,’ said Sheila with a smile. For a moment I was amused. But then I was seized by another thought, and felt ashamed and helpless.

‘I can’t come,’ I said.

‘Why can’t you? You must come. I’m looking forward to it.’

I shook my head. ‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

I was too much ashamed to prevaricate.

‘Why not? It isn’t because of Mother, is it? You never mind what people think.’

‘No, it’s not that,’ I said.

‘I believe my father doesn’t dislike you. He dislikes nearly everyone.’

She unfolded a new handkerchief.

‘I’m getting angry,’ she said nasally, but she was still good-tempered. ‘Why can’t you come?’

‘I haven’t got the clothes,’ I said.

Sheila sneezed several times and then gave a broad smile. ‘Well!’ she said. ‘For you of all men to worry about that. I give up. I just don’t understand it.’

Nor did I; it was years since I had been so preposterously ashamed.

‘It has worried you, hasn’t it?’

‘I don’t know why, but it has,’ I confessed.

Sheila said, with acid gentleness ‘It’s made me remember how young you are.’

Our eyes met. She was in some way moved. After a moment she said, in the same tone ‘Look. I want to go to this ball. They don’t give me much money, but I can always get plenty. Let me give you a present. Let me buy you a suit.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Are you too proud?’

‘I suppose so,’ I said.

She took my hand.

‘If I’d made you happier’, she said, ‘and then asked if I could give you a present — would you still be too proud?’

‘Perhaps not,’ I said.

‘Darling,’ she said. It was rare for her to use the word. ‘I can’t be articulate like you when you let yourself go. But if I ask you to let me do it — because of what’s happened between us?’

In a brand new dinner jacket, I arrived with the Knights at the charity ball. It was held in the large hall, close by the park, a few hundred yards away from where Martineau used to live. Perhaps that induced me at supper to tell the story of Martineau, so far as I then knew it; I had seen him leave the town on foot, with a knapsack on his back, only a few days before.

I told the story because someone had to talk. The supper tables were arranged in the corridors all round the main hall, and the meal was served before the dance began. As a party of four, we were not ideally chosen. Sheila was looking tired; she was boldly made up, much to her mother’s indignation, but the powder did not hide the rings under her eyes, and the painted lips were held in her involuntary smile. She was strained in the presence of her parents, and some of her nervousness infected me, the more so as I was still not well. With her usual directness and simplicity, Mrs Knight resented my presence. She produced a list of young men who, in her view, would have been valuable additions — some of whom Sheila had been seeing in the last few months, though she had resisted the temptation to let fall their names. As for Mr Knight, he was miserable to be there at all, and he was not the man to conceal his misery.