by C. P. Snow
On the plane of reason, of course, every criticism he made was accurate. It was only years later, after the gamble was decided, that I admitted how reasonable his objections were. But no one, not even George, could become so beside himself because of a disagreement on the plane of reason. He had been affected almost as though I had performed an act of treachery. Perhaps that was it. In his heart, I think, I seemed like a deserter.
In his urge to befriend, George was stronger than any man. But he needed something back. On his side he would give money, time, thought, all the energy of his nature, all more than he could afford or anyone else could have imagined giving: in return he needed an ally. He needed an ally close beside him, in the familiar places. I should have been a good ally, working at his side in the office, continuing to be his right-hand man in the group, sharing his pleasures and enough of his utopian hopes. In fact, if I had accepted his plan, become articled to Eden and Martineau’s, and stayed in the town, it might have made a difference to George’s life. As it was, I went off on my own. And, from the beginning, from that violent altercation in the picture-house café, George felt in his heart that I had, without caring, left him isolated to carry on alone.
But that evening, as I told Marion, I could not see my way through. I could not understand George’s violence; I was wrapped in my own anxiety. As soon as I went into her sitting-room, Marion had looked at me, first with a smile, then with eyes sharp in concern.
‘What’s the matter, Lewis?’ she said abruptly.
‘I’ve run into some trouble,’ I said.
‘Serious?’
‘I expect I’ll get out of it.’
‘You’re looking drawn,’ said Marion. ‘Sit down and I’ll make you some tea.’
She lodged in the front room of a semi-detached house, in a neat privet-hedged street just at the beginning of the suburbs. The hedge was fresh clipped, the patch of grass carefully mown. She was only just returned from her holidays, and on her sofa there was a notebook open, in which she was preparing her lessons for the term. Outside in the sun, a butterfly was flitting over the privet hedge.
‘Why haven’t I seen you before?’ said Marion, kneeling by the gas ring. ‘Oh, never mind. I know you’re worried. Tell me what the trouble is.’
I did not need to explain it all, for she had written to me during her holiday and I had replied. On paper she was less brisk and nervous, much softer and more articulate. She had asked when I was going to ‘take the plunge’, assuming like everyone else that I was following George’s plan. In my reply I had told her, with jauntiness and confidence, that I had made up my mind to do something more difficult. She was the first person to whom I told as much. Even so, she complained in another letter about ‘your cryptic hints’, and as she gave me my cup of tea, and I was at last explicit about my intention, she complained again.
‘Why do you keep things to yourself?’ she cried. ‘You might have known that you could trust me, mightn’t you?’
‘Of course I trust you.’
‘I hope you do.’ She was sitting on the sofa, with the light from the window falling on her face, so that her eyes shone excessively bright. Her hair had fallen untidily over her forehead; she pushed it back impatiently, and impatiently said: ‘Never mind me. Is it a good idea?’ (She meant my reading for the Bar.)
‘Yes.’
‘No one else thinks so – is that the trouble?’ she said with startling speed.
‘Not quite.’ I would not admit my inner hesitations, the times that afternoon when my doubts were set vibrating by the others. Instead, I told her of the scene with George. I described it as objectively as I could, telling her of George’s shouts which still rang word for word in my ears. I left out nothing of his fury and distress, speculated about it, asked Marion if she could understand it.
‘That doesn’t matter,’ said Marion shortly. ‘George will get over it. I want to know about you. How much does it mean to you?’
Though she was devoted to George, she would not let me talk about him. Single-mindedly, with an intense single-mindedness that invaded my thoughts, she demanded to know how much I was dependent on George’s help. I answered that, without his coaching, I should find the work much more difficult, but not impossible; without a loan from him, I did not see how I could raise money even for my pupil’s year.
Marion was frowning.
‘I think you’ll get his help,’ she said.
She looked at me.
‘And if you don’t,’ she said, ‘shall you have to call it off?’
‘I shan’t do that.’
Still frowning, Marion inquired about George’s objections. How much was there in them? A great deal, I told her. She insisted that I should explain them; she knew so little of a career at the Bar. I did so, dispassionately and sensibly enough. It was easy at times to face objection after objection, to lay them down in public view like so many playing cards upon the table. It was some kind of comfort to put them down and inspect them, as though they were not part of oneself.
Marion asked sharply how I expected to manage. I said that there were one or two studentships and prizes, though very few, if I came out high in the Bar Finals. ‘Of course, you’re clever,’ said Marion dubiously. ‘But there must be lots of competition. From men who’ve had every advantage that you haven’t, Lewis.’
I said that I knew it. I mentioned Aunt Milly: with luck, I could conceivably borrow a hundred or two from her. That was all.
From across the little room, Marion was looking at me – not at my face, but looking me up and down, from head to foot.
‘How strong are you, Lewis?’ she said suddenly.
‘I shall survive,’ I said.
‘I’m sure you’re highly strung.’
‘I’m tougher than you think.’
‘You’re packed full of vitality, I’ve told you that. But, unless you’re careful, aren’t you going to burn yourself out?’
She got up from the sofa and sat on a chair near mine.
‘Listen to me,’ she said urgently, gazing into my eyes. ‘I wish you well. I wish you very well. Is it worth it? It’s no use killing yourself. Why not swallow your pride and do what they want you to do? It’s the sensible thing to do after all, And it isn’t such a bad alternative, Lewis. It will give you a comfortable life – you might even make another start from there. It won’t take anything like so much out of you. You’ll have time for everything else you like.’
My hand was resting on the arm of my chair. She pressed hers upon it: her palm was very warm.
I met her gaze, and said: ‘Do you think that I’m cut out to be a lawyer in a provincial town?’
She left her hand on mine, but her eyes shrank away.
‘All I meant was – you mustn’t damage yourself.’
Wretched after my day, I wanted to leave her. But before I went she made me promise that I would report what Eden said next, whether George came round. ‘You must tell me,’ said Marion. ‘I want to know. You mustn’t let me think I shouldn’t have spoken. I couldn’t help it – but I want everything you want, you know that, don’t you?’
17: The Letter on the Chest of Drawers
In fact, I soon had good news to tell Marion – and I did so at once, to make amends for having been angry with her. This time she did not stop me describing both George’s words and Eden’s.
George had spoken to me, only three or four days after our quarrel, stiffly, still half-furiously, in great embarrassment. He could not withdraw any single part of his criticisms. He regarded me as lost to reason; but, having once encouraged me to choose a career and offered his help, he felt obliged to honour his word. He would be behind me, so far as lay in his power. If I wanted money, he would do his best, though I must not count on much. He would, naturally, coach me in private for the Bar examinations. ‘I refuse to listen to any suggestion that you won’t find the blasted examinations child’s play,’ said George robustly. ‘That’s the one item in the whole insane project that I’m not w
orrying about. As for the rest, you’ve heard my opinions. I propose from now on to keep them to myself.’
He spoke with a curious mixture of stubborn irritation, diffidence, rancour, magnanimity, and warmth. I was disarmed and overjoyed.
As for Eden, when I told him that I had not changed my mind, he shook his head, and said: ‘Well, I suppose young men must have their fling. If you are absolutely determined to run your head against a brick wall, I shan’t be able to stop you.’ That did not prevent him from giving me a series of leisurely sensible homilies; but he was willing to sign my certificates of character and to introduce me to a barrister. He wrote the letter of introduction on the spot (there were one or two technical difficulties about my getting admitted to an Inn). The name on the envelope was Herbert Getliffe.
All that was left, I said to Marion, was to pay my fee.
It was a few days later, in the October of 1924, on a beautiful day of Indian summer – I was just nineteen – that I announced that my admission was settled and the fee paid. Now it was irrevocable. I went to Aunt Milly’s house on Friday evening, and proclaimed it first to Aunt Milly and my father. On recent visits there for tea, I had hinted that I might spend the legacy to train myself for a profession. Aunt Milly had vigorously remonstrated; but now I told them that I had paid two hundred pounds in order to start reading for the Bar, she showed, to my complete surprise, something that bore a faint resemblance to approval.
‘Well, I declare,’ said my father, equably, on hearing the news.
Aunt Milly rounded on him. ‘Is that all you’ve got to say, Bertie?’ she said. Having dismissed him, she turned to me with a glimmer of welcome. ‘I shan’t be surprised if it’s just throwing good money after bad,’ said Aunt Milly, automatically choosing to begin with her less encouraging reflections. ‘It’s your mother’s fault that you want a job where you won’t dirty your hands. Still, I’d rather you threw away your money failing in those examinations than see you putting it in the tills of the public houses.’
‘I don’t put it in the tills, Aunt Milly,’ I said. ‘Only the barman does that. I’ve never thought of being a barman, you know.’
Aunt Milly was not diverted.
‘I’d rather you threw your money away failing in those examinations’, she repeated, ‘than see you do several things that I won’t mention. I suppose I oughtn’t to say so, but I always thought your mother might get above herself and put you in to be a parson.’
Aunt Milly seemed to be experiencing what for her was the unfamiliar emotion of relief.
I had arranged to meet George in the town that evening; he liked to have a snack before we made our usual Friday night call at Martineau’s. ‘Drop in for coffee –or whatever’s going,’ George remarked, chuckling, munching a sandwich. He was repeating Martineau’s phrase of invitation, which never varied. ‘I’d been to half a dozen Friday nights before it dawned on me that coffee was always going – by itself.’
I broke in ‘This is a special occasion. The deed’s done.’
‘What deed?’
‘I sent off the money this afternoon.’
‘Did you, by God?’ said George. He gazed at me with a heavy preoccupied stare, and then said ‘Good luck to you. You’ll manage it, of course. I refuse to admit any other possibility.’
The street lamps shimmered through the blue autumnal haze. As we strolled up the New Walk George said, in a tone that was firm, resigned, and yet curiously sad ‘I accept the fact that you’ll manage it. But don’t expect me to forget that you’ve been as big a firebrand as I ever have. Some of the entries in my diary may embarrass you later – when you get out of my sight.’
Very rarely – but they stood out stark against his blazing hopes – George had moments of foresight, bleak and without comfort. In the midst of all his hope, he never pictured any concrete success for himself.
Then he went on heartily: ‘It’s essential to have a drink on it tonight. This calls for a celebration.’
We left Martineau’s before the public houses closed. George, as always, was glad of the excuse to escape a ‘social occasion’: even in that familiar drawing-room, he felt that there were certain rules of behaviour which had paralysingly been withheld from him; even that night, when I was proclaiming my news to Martineau, I noticed George making a conscious decision before he felt able to sit down. But once outside the house, he drank to my action with everyone we met. There was nothing he liked more than a ‘celebration’, and he stood me a great and noisy one.
Arriving at my room after midnight, I saw something on the chest of drawers which I knew to be there, which I had remembered intermittently several times that evening, but which would have astonished all those who had greeted my ‘drastic’ step, George most of all. It was a letter addressed in my own handwriting. After midnight, I was still drunk enough from the celebration, despite our noisy procession through the streets, to find the envelope glaring under the light. I saw it with guilt. It was a letter addressed in my own handwriting to my prospective Inn. Inside was the money. It was the letter, which, for all my boasts, I had not yet screwed up my courage to send off. I had been lying. There was still time to back out.
They thought of me as confident. Perhaps they were right in a sense, and I had a confidence of the fibres. In the very long run, I did not doubt that I should struggle through. But they, who heard me boast, were taken in when they thought I took this risk as lightly as I pretended. They did not see the interminable waverings, the attacks of nerves, the withdrawals, the evenings staring out in nervous despondency over the roofs, the dread of tomorrow so strong that I wished time would stand still. They did not detect the lies which I told myself as well as them. They did not know that I changed my mind from mood to mood; I used an uprush of confidence to hearten myself on to impress Eden that I was absolutely firm. But a few hours later that mood had seeped away and I was left with another night of procrastination. That had gone on for weeks. My natural spirits were high, and my tongue very quick, or else the others would have known. But in fact I concealed from them the humiliating anxieties, the subterfuges, the desperate attempts to find an excuse, and then another, for not committing myself without any chance of return. They could not guess how many times I had shrunk back from paying the fee, so that I could still feel safe till another day. At last, that Friday, I had brought myself to sign the letter and the cheque; in ebullient spirits I had told them all, Aunt Milly, my father, George, Martineau, all the rest, that the plunge was taken, and that I was looking ahead without a qualm; but in the small hours of Saturday the letter was still glaring under the light, on the top of the chest of drawers.
It was Monday before I posted it.
Part Three
The End of Innocence
18: Walking Alone
My first meeting with Sheila became blotted from my memory. The first sight of her, as Jack and I walked up the London Road and she walked from her car, stayed clear always; so did the sound of her name, echoing in my mind before I had so much as seen her face. But there was a time when we first spoke, and that became buried or lost, irretrievably lost, so that I was never able to recapture it.
It must have been in the summer of 1925, when we were each nearly twenty. During the winter I had heard a rumour that she was abroad – being finished, said someone, for her health, said another. Her name dropped out of the gossip of the group; Jack forgot all about her and talked with his salesman’s pleasure, persuading himself as well as his audience of the charms of other girls. It was the winter after I had taken the plunge, when I was trying to assuage my doubts by long nights of work: days at the office, evenings with George and the group, then nights in my cold room, working like a medieval student with blankets round my knees, in order to save shillings in the gas fire. There were times when, at two or three o’clock, I went for a walk to get my feet warm before I went to bed.
Sheila and I must have met a few months later, in the summer. I did not remember our first calling each other by
name. But, with extreme distinctness, a few words came back whenever I tried to force my memory. They had been spoken not at our first meeting, but on an occasion soon after, probably the first or second time I took her out. They were entirely trivial, and concerned who should pay the bill.
We were sitting in a kind of cubicle in an old-fashioned café. From the next cubicle to ours sounded the slide and patter of draughts, for this was a room where boxes of chessmen and draughts stood on a table, and people came in for a late tea and stayed several hours.
Through the tobacco smoke, Sheila was staring at me. Her eyes were large and disconcertingly steady. At the corner of her mouth, there was a twitch that looked like a secret smile, that was in fact a nervous tic.
‘I want to pay my share,’ she said.
‘No, you can’t. I asked you to come out.’
‘I can. I shall.’
I said no. I was insecure, not knowing how far to insist.
‘Look. I’ve got some. You need it more than I do.’
We stared at each other across the table.
‘You’re here. In this town. I’m not far away.’ Her voice was high, and sometimes had a brittle tone. ‘We want to see each other, don’t we?’
‘Of course,’ I said in sudden joy.
‘I can’t unless I pay for myself. I shouldn’t mind you paying – but you can’t afford it. Can you?’
‘I can manage.’
‘You can’t. You know you can’t. I’ve got some money.’
I was still insecure. Our wills had crossed. Already I was enraptured by her.
‘Unless you let me pay for myself each time I shan’t come again.’ She added: ‘I want to.’
