by C. P. Snow
‘I was too shy and anxious’ – he had taken himself for granted and lived unrestrainedly according to his own comfort. Like many people who are obsessed by every detail in the world outside, he was driven to simplify his life. Business was unbearable with a real anxiety every day, and instead he let himself loose on anxieties such as locking the door at night. Like many people sensitized to others’ feelings, he was driven to escape more and more from company – except of those he had known so long that they did not count. More than any other March, he came to live entirely inside the family. He retired from any competition (Charles had said the same of himself the night be announced he was abandoning the law), met few new faces, and enjoyed himself as he felt inclined.
His happiness grew as he lived at the centre of his family, and his own most extravagant stories began with his marriage. It was a good start, as he stood with his bride on Victoria Station, to arrange for a cab to meet their train on Monday afternoon exactly one month later. After they had been a week at Mentone, another thought occurred to him of a contingency left unprovided for. He walked alone to the post office and sent off a telegram, reserving for his wife a place next to himself in the Jewish Cemetery at Golders Green.
Thus he plunged among twenty-five years of marriage – not at all tranquil years, because he could not be tranquil anywhere, but full of the life he wanted and in which he breathed his native air. He was passionately fond of his wife, and he was occupied with plenty of excitements, major and minor; the major excitements about his children as they grew up, and the minor ones of his fortune, Bryanston Square, Haslingfield, the servants, the whole economico-personal system of which he was the core.
He had not been bored. He had enjoyed his life. He still enjoyed it. He would have taken it over again on the same terms, and gone through it with as much zest.
And yet, it was foreign to his nature not to be frank with himself, and he felt that he had paid a price. Underneath this life which suited him, which soaked up the violence underneath and let him become luxuriantly himself, he knew that he had lost some self-respect. He had been happier than most men, but it meant that he chose to run away from the contest.
Even Mr March, the most realistic of men, could not always forgive himself for his own nature. He could not quite forget the illusion, which we all have, most strongly when we are young, that every kind of action is possible to us if only we use our will. He felt as we all do, when we have slowly come to terms with our temperament and no longer try to be different from ourselves; we may be happier now, but we cannot help looking back to the days when we struggled against the sight of our limitations, when, miserable and conflict-ridden perhaps, we still in flashes of hope held the whole world in our hands. For the loss, as we come to know ourselves, is that now we know what we can never do.
Mr March felt envious of himself as a young man, not yet reconciled, not yet abdicating from his hopes of success. There were times when he called himself a failure. It was then that he invested all those rejected hopes in Charles; for everything that one aspired to, and had to dismiss as one discovered one’s weakness, could be built up again in a son. Could be built up more extravagantly, as a matter of fact; because, even in youth, the frailties of one’s own temperament were always liable to bring one back to realism, while the frailties of a son’s could be laughed off.
For a long time Mr March secretly expected a great deal from Charles’ gifts, more than he expressed during any of their arguments when Charles gave up the law. I remembered the end of that evening, after their quarrel, when suddenly he said ‘I have always wanted something for you’ and broke off the conversation, as though he were ashamed.
This afternoon at Haslingfield he was speaking in the same tone, concerned, simple, and with no trace of reproach. Months had passed. So far as he knew, Charles was still idle and ready to follow his own escape; Mr March could see his son also driven to waste himself. As he told us of his career at the bank, Mr March was speaking of his fears for Charles. When he let us see his own regret, he was desperately anxious that he and his son should not be too much alike. He looked at Charles as he told his stories, in a voice more subdued than I had heard it. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘I didn’t do much. I wasn’t the man to make much of my opportunities.’
12: First and Second Sight
After lunch Mr March left us, and Charles and I went out to the deck-chairs in the garden. It was glaring and hot out of doors, by contrast with the shaded dining-room. Charles, affected by his father’s self-description, sat by me without speaking.
I heard a car run up the drive. A quarter of an hour later, Ann and Katherine came down from the house towards us. I noticed that Ann’s walk had the kind of stiff-legged grace one sometimes saw in actresses, as though it had been studied and controlled. By Katherine’s side, it made her look a fashionable woman: she was wearing a yellow summer frock, and carrying a parasol: she was still too far off for us to see her face.
When they came up to us, and she was introduced to Charles, it was a surprise, just as it had been on the night of Getliffe’s party, to see her smile, natural, direct, and shy. In the same manner, both direct and shy, she said to him: ‘We’ve met before, haven’t we?’
Charles, standing up, her hand in his, said: ‘I believe we have.’
He added: ‘Yes, I remember the evening.’
She had spoken to him with friendliness. Although he was polite, I did not hear the same tone in his voice. He looked at Katherine. There was a glint in his eye I did not understand.
Ann lay back in her deckchair, and for an instant closed her eyes, basking in the heat. With her face on one side, the line between dark hair and temple was sharp, the skin paper-white under the bright sun. She looked prettier than I had seen her. Charles was glancing at her: I could not tell whether he was attracted: the moment we began to talk, he was provoked.
Sitting up, she asked me a question about Herbert Getliffe, going back to our conversation at the party.
‘I’ve heard a bit more about him since then,’ she said.
‘What have you heard?’
She hesitated; she seemed both interested and uneasy. ‘I couldn’t help wondering–’
‘What about?’
‘Well, why you ever chose to work with him.’
Charles interrupted: ‘You’d better tell us why you think he shouldn’t.’
‘I warn you that you’re going to meet his brother soon,’ said Katherine.
‘Look, I’m sorry,’ Ann said to her, ‘if Herbert Getliffe is a friend of yours.’
‘No. I’ve never met the man,’ said Katherine, who was nevertheless blushing.
‘You’ve gone too far to back out, you know,’ Charles broke in again. ‘What have you really got against Herbert Getliffe?’
Ann looked straight at him.
‘I don’t want to overdo it,’ she said uncomfortably and steadily. ‘I can only go on what I’ve been told – but isn’t he the worst lawyer who’s ever earned £4,000 a year?’
‘Where did you hear that?’ asked Charles.
‘I was told by a man I know.’
Charles’ eyes were bright, he was ready (I found the irony agreeable) to defend Getliffe with spirit. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘your friend isn’t by any chance a less successful rival at the Bar?’
‘His name is Ronald Porson. He happens to have been practising out in Singapore,’ said Ann.
‘He’s really a very unsuccessful rival, isn’t he?’
‘He’s a far more intelligent person than Getliffe,’ she said. With Charles getting at her, her diffidence had not become greater, but much less. Just as his voice had an edge to it, so had hers.
‘Even if that’s so,’ Charles teased her, ‘for success, you know, intelligence is a very minor gift.’
‘I should like to know what you do claim for Getliffe.’
‘He’s got intuition,’ said Charles.
‘What do you really mean by that?’
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��Why,’ said Charles, with his sharpest smile, ‘you must know what intuition is. At any rate, you must have read about it in books.’
Ann gazed at him without expression, her eyes clear blue. For a second it seemed that she was going to make it a quarrel. She shrugged her shoulders, laughed, and lay back again in the sun.
Soon Katherine asked her to play a game of tennis. Ann tried to get out of it, saying how bad she was. I imagined that it was her normal shyness, until we saw her play. Katherine, who had a useful forehand drive, banged the ball past her. By the end of the fourth game, we realized that Ann was not only outclassed but already tired.
‘Are you sure that you ought to be doing this?’ called Charles.
‘It’s all right.’ She was panting.
‘Are you sure that you’re quite fit?’
‘Not perfectly. But I want to go on.’
‘We’d better stop,’ said Katherine.
‘If you do, I shall claim the game.’ She was still short of breath, but her face was set in an obstinate, headstrong smile.
She served. They played another game. Charles was watching her with a frown. At the end of the set he went on to the court. She was giddy, and clutched his arm; he took her to her chair. Soon she was moving her head from side to side, as though making sure that the giddiness had passed. She smiled at Charles. He said in relief: ‘Why didn’t you behave reasonably?’
‘This is ridiculous,’ said Ann.
He scolded her: ‘Why did you insist on playing on after you’d tired yourself out?’
‘I was ill in the spring, you see.’ She was explaining her collapse.
‘Would it upset you,’ said Charles, ‘if I sent for a doctor?’
‘I’d ask you to if I needed one, I promise you I would.’
‘Just to relieve my own mind?’
‘I’d ask you to, if there was the slightest need.’
‘There really isn’t any?’
‘You’ll only irritate one if you fetch him.’
‘I don’t mind that–’
‘You haven’t had a doctor as a father, have you?’
‘You really don’t think there’s any need? You know enough about yourself to be sure?’ Charles reiterated.
Their sparring had vanished. They were speaking with confidence in each other.
‘You see,’ said Ann, ‘I used to have these bouts before. They’re passing off now.’
Just then Mr March walked down after his afternoon sleep. Before he reached us, he was watching Ann and his son. Then he looked only at Ann, and his manner to her, from the moment Katherine introduced them, impressed us all.
‘I am delighted to have you adorning my house,’ said Mr March. ‘It isn’t often that my house has been so charmingly adorned.’
It was a speech of deliberate gallantry. It was so emphatic that Ann became flustered; she smiled back, but she could not make much of a reply.
Mr March went on: ‘I hope my son has not been excessively negligent in entertaining you until I arrived.’
‘Not at all,’ said Ann, still at a loss.
‘I am relieved to hear it,’ said Mr March.
‘But I didn’t give Katherine much of a game at tennis,’ she said over-brightly, casting round for words.
‘You shouldn’t let them inveigle you into action too soon after your arrival. I might remark that you’re paler than you ought to be, no doubt as a result of their lack of consideration.’
‘I’ve been looked after very nicely, Mr March–’
‘It’s extremely polite of you to say so,’ he said.
‘Really I have.’ She was getting over the first impact, and she answered without constraint, smiling both at him and Charles.
Soon afterwards Francis arrived, and I watched Katherine’s eyes as his plunging stride brought him through the drawing-room, over the terrace, down to the lawn. Tea was brought out to us, and we ate raspberries and cream in the sunshine.
After tea we played tennis; then, when Mr March went in to dress, Katherine took Francis for a walk round the rose garden, and I left the other two together. I strolled down the drive before going to my room; the stocks were beginning to smell, now the heat of the day was passing, and the scent came to me as though to heighten, and at the same time to touch with languor, the emotions I had been living among that afternoon.
When I left Ann and Charles, their faces had been softened and glowing. No one would say that either was in love, but each was in the state when they knew at least that love was possible. They were still safe; they need not meet again; he could still choose not to ask her, she could still refuse; and yet, while they did not know each other, while they were still free, there was a promise of joy.
It seemed a long time since I had known that state, I thought, as the smell of the stocks set me indulging my own mood. It had gone too soon, and I had discovered other meanings in love. I wondered how long it would last for them.
Evening was falling, and as I turned back towards the house its upper windows shone like blazing shields in the last of the sunlight. Looking up, I felt a trace of worry about Francis and Katherine; I felt a trace of self-pity because Charles and Ann might be lucky; but really, walking back to the house through the warm air, I was enjoying being a spectator, I was excited about it all.
13: Gamble
At dinner Mr March was not subdued and acceptant, as he had been at that table a few hours before. Instead, he intervened in each conversation and produced some of his more unpredictable retorts. So far as I could notice, his glance did not stay too long on Katherine, whose face was fresh with happiness as she talked to Francis. He interrupted her, but only as he interrupted the rest of us, in order to stay the centre of attention. It was hard to be sure whether his high spirits were genuine or not.
Once or twice Mr March waited for a response from Ann, who sat, dressed all in black except for an aquamarine brooch on her breast, at his right hand. She was quiet, she was deferential, she laughed at his stories, but it was not until after dinner that Mr March forced her into an argument.
We had moved into the drawing-room, and Mr March sent for the footman to open more windows. There we sat, the lights on, the curtains undrawn and the windows open, while Mr March proceeded by way of the day’s temperature to talk to Francis, who was going to Corsica for a month’s holiday before the October term.
‘I hope you will insist on ignoring any salad they may be misguided enough to offer you. My daughter last year failed to show competent discretion in that respect. Caroline made a similar frightful ass of herself just before the earthquake at Messina. The disaster might have been avoided if she had possessed the gumption to keep sufficiently suspicious of all foreigners–’
‘If you mean me, Mr L,’ Katherine said, ‘I’ve proved to you that being ill in Venice can’t have had anything to do with what I ate abroad.’
‘I refuse to accept your assurances,’ said Mr March. ‘I hope you too will refuse to accept my daughter’s assurances,’ he said to Francis. In each remark he made to Francis, Katherine was listening for an undertone: but she heard none, and protested loudly because she was relieved. Mr March shouted her down, and went on talking to Francis: ‘I should be sorry if my daughter’s example lured you into risks that would probably be fatal to your health.’
‘As I’ve spent an hour before dinner trying to persuade him not to climb mountains without a guide,’ said Katherine, ‘I call that rather hard.’
‘She definitely disapproves of the trip,’ said Francis. ‘She can’t be blamed for not discouraging me enough.’
‘I should advise you to ignore any of her suggestions for your welfare,’ said Mr March.
It sounded no more than genial back-chat. Katherine kept showing her concern for Francis. She could not resist showing it: to do so was a delight. Yet Mr March gave no sign that he saw him as a menace.
Mr March left off talking to Francis, and addressed us all: ‘My experience is that foreigners can always tempt one t
o abandon any sensible habit. I have never been able to understand why it is considered necessary to intrude oneself among them on the pretext of obtaining pleasure. Hannah always said that she came to life abroad, but I don’t believe that she was competent to judge. Since I married my wife I have preferred to live in my own houses where foreigners are unlikely to penetrate. The more I am compelled to hear of foreign countries, the less I like them. I am sure that my charming guest will agree with me,’ he said confidentially to Ann.
Ann was embarrassed. ‘I don’t think I should go quite as far as that, Mr March,’ she said.
‘You’ll come to it in time, you’ll come to it in time,’ cried Mr March. ‘Why, you must be too young to remember the catastrophe foreigners involved us in fifteen years ago.’
‘I was nine,’ she said.
‘I am surprised to hear that you weren’t even more of an infant. I should be prepared to guarantee that you will keep your present youth and beauty until you are superannuated. But still you can’t conceivably remember the origins of that unfortunate catastrophe. You can’t remember how we were bamboozled by foreigners and entangled in continental concerns that were no affair of ours–’
Mr March went on to develop a commentary, jingoistic and reactionary, on the circumstances of the 1914–18 war. He had the habit of pretending to be at the extreme limit of reaction, just because he knew that Charles’ friends were nearly all of them on the left. But we did not argue with him; when politics came up among the senior Marches, we usually avoided trouble and kept our mouths shut,
As she listened, Ann was frowning. She glanced at Charles, then at me, as though expecting us to contradict. When Mr March paused for a breathing space, she hesitated; she started to talk and checked herself. But the next time he stopped, she did not hesitate. In a tone timid, gentle but determined, she said: ‘I’m sorry, Mr March, but I’m afraid I can’t believe it.’
‘I should be glad to be enlightened on what you do believe,’ said Mr March, preserving his gallant manner.
