Charles Snow - Time of Hope

That was the maximum I could expect. It would need luck, It would mean that my whole life should change before too late. As it was now, with Sheila unhinging me, I should not come anywhere near. As it was now — steadily I envisaged how I should manage. One could make it too catastrophic, I knew. I should not lose much of my present practice. I might even, as my friends became more influential, increase it here and there. Perhaps, as the years went on, I should harden myself and be able to work at night without caring how she was. At the worst, even if she affected me as in the last months, I could probably earn between one thousand pounds and two thousand pounds a year, and do it for the rest of my life. I should become known as a slightly seedy, mediocre barrister — with the particular seediness of one who has a brilliant future behind him.

Could I leave her? I thought of her more lovingly now than in my anger after Eden’s decision. I remembered how she had charmed me. But the violence of my passion had burned out. Yes, I could leave her — with sorrow and with relief. At the thought, I felt the same emancipation as when, that morning at breakfast, she announced that she might not return. I should be free of the moment-by-moment extortion. I could begin, without George’s bravery but with my own brand of determination, to rebuild my hopes — not the ardent hopes of years before, nothing more than those I could retain, now I had come to terms. They were enough for me, once I was free.

There was nothing against it, I thought. She was doing me harm. I had tried to look after her, and had failed. She would be as well off without me. As for the difference to me — it would seem like being made new.

George and I were still sitting by the café window. Outside, the sky had grown quite dark over the town. More and more as I grew older, I had come to hide my deepest resolves. George was always the most diffident of men at receiving a confidence — and that day of all days, he had enough to occupy him.

Yet suddenly I told him that my only course was to separate from Sheila, and that I should do so soon.

I waited. I told myself that I wished to make the break seem unforced: I was waiting for an occasion when, for her as well as me, it would be natural to part. Perhaps I hoped that she would go off again herself. Nothing was much changed. Week after week I went to Chambers tired and came home heavy-hearted. All the old habits returned, the exhausted pity, the tenderness that was on the fringe of temper, the reminder of passionate and unrequited love. It was a habit also to let it drift. For my own sake, I thought, I had to fix a date.

In the end, it was the early summer before I acted, and the occasion was much slighter than others I had passed by. I had given up any attempt to entertain at our house, or to accept invitations which meant taking her into society. More and more we had come to live in seclusion, as our friends learned to leave us alone. But I had a few acquaintances from my early days in London, who had been kind to me then. Some of them had little money, and had seen me apparently on the way to success, and would be hurt if I seemed to escape them. Theirs were the invitations I had never yet refused, and since our marriage Sheila had made the effort to go with me. Indeed, of all my various friends, these had been the ones with whom she was least ill at ease.

At the beginning of June we were asked to such a party. It meant travelling out to Muswell Hill, just as I used to when I was penniless and glad of a hearty meal in this same house. I mentioned it to Sheila, and as usual we said yes. The day came round; I arrived home in the evening, an hour before we were due to set out. She was sitting in the drawing-room, thrown against the side of an armchair, one hand dangling down. It was a windy evening, the sky dark over the river, so that I did not see her clearly until I went close to. Of late she had been neglecting her looks. That evening her hair was not combed, she was wearing no make-up; on the hand dangling beside her chair, the nails were dirty. Once she had been proud of her beauty. Once she had been the most fastidious of girls.

I knew what I should hear.

‘It’s no use,’ she said. ‘I can’t go tonight. You’d better cry off.’

I had long since ceased to persuade and force her. I said nothing, but went at once to the telephone. I was practised in excuses: how many lies had I told, to save her face and mine? This one, though, was not believed. I could hear the disappointment at the other end. It was an affront. We had outgrown them. They did not believe my story that she was ill. They were no more use or interest to us, and without manners we cancelled a date.

I went back to her. I looked out of the window, over the embankment. It was a grey, warm, summer evening, and the trees were swaying wavelike in the wind.

This was the time.

I drew up a chair beside her.

‘Sheila,’ I said, ‘this is becoming difficult for me.’

‘I know.’

There was a pause. The wind rustled.

I said slowly: ‘I think that we must part.’

She stared at me with her great eyes. Her arm was still hanging down, but inch by inch her fingers clenched.

She replied: ‘If you say so.’

I looked at her. A cherishing word broke out of me, and then I said: ‘We must.’

‘I thought you mightn’t stand it.’ Her voice was high, steady, uninflected. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

‘If I were making you happy, I could stand it,’ I said. ‘But — I’m not. And it’s ruining me. I can’t even work—’

‘I warned you what it would be like,’ she said, implacably and harshly.

‘That is not the same as living it.’ I was harsh in return, for the first time that night.

She said: ‘When do you want me to go?’

No, I said, she should stay in the house and I would find somewhere to live.

‘You’re turning me out,’ she replied. ‘It’s for me to leave.’ Then she asked: ‘Where shall I go?’

Then I knew for certain that she was utterly lost. She had taken it without a blench. She had made none of the appeals that even she, for all her pride, could make in lesser scenes. She had not so much as touched my hand. Her courage was cruel, but she was lost.

I said that she might visit her parents.

‘Do you think I could?’ she flared out with hate. ‘Do you think I could listen to them?’ She said: ‘No, I might as well travel.’ She made strange fantasies of places she would like to see. ‘I might go to Sardinia. I might go to Mentone. You went there when you were ill, didn’t you?’ she asked, as though it were infinitely remote. ‘I made you unhappy there.’ All of a sudden, she said clearly: ‘Is this your revenge?’

I was quiet while the seconds passed. I replied: ‘I think I took my revenge earlier, as you know.’ Curiously, she smiled.

‘You’ve worried about that, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, at times.’

‘You needn’t.’

She looked at me fixedly, with something like pity.

‘I’ve wondered whether that was why you’ve stood me for so long,’ she said. ‘If you hadn’t done that, you might have thrown me out long ago.’

Again I hesitated, and then tried to tell the truth.

‘I don’t think so,’ I said.

Then she said: ‘I shall go tonight.’

I said that it was ridiculous.

She repeated: ‘I shall go tonight.’

I said: ‘I shan’t permit it.’

She said: ‘Now it is not for you to permit.’

I was angry, just as I always had been when she was self-willed to her own hurt. I said that she could not leave the house with nowhere to go. She must stay until I had planned her movements. She said the one word, no. My temper was rising, and I went to take hold of her. She did not flinch away, but said: ‘You cannot do that, now.’