In Their Wisdom

by C. P. Snow

  She must bring him up to scratch. Sitting in her tidy, dusted room, she used that phrase to herself. There was no time to lose. She must get it settled before the appeal: not that she was afraid of the results of losing, but of winning; she couldn’t be certain, but there were recesses of diffidence, pride and even arrogance about Lorimer she understood less than she had thought to begin with. If she became a rich woman, her marriage would be news. He might be frightened off or given an excuse to regress back into solitude – or into himself.

  She must bring him up to scratch. That didn’t mean, as others might have guessed, making him propose. Which wouldn’t have needed persuading, encouraging or evoking. He had been on the edge more times than once these last few months. Because of what? – indecision, even a kind of delicacy? – she had averted it, slipped out of it. Now the indecision was over, she wanted to marry him. But she wasn’t going to marry him, unless she could get some fun in bed and give him some.

  As before, Jenny had the instinct to know what not to think about. It would be wrong to imagine she thought continuously about the erotic chances, as Liz might have done. She just thought enough for practical purposes, and was capable of misty girlish reveries alongside. She wasn’t ready to marry for company: or for someone to go about with: she wasn’t far gone enough for that, she might have limited her expectations, but she hadn’t lost them. She still had plenty of hope.

  So she wasn’t prepared to marry Lorimer until they had got used to each other in bed – and, as she imagined with unusual confidence, had enjoyed it. Here she, so diffident that it had been a lifetime handicap, was, perversely enough, more confident than a good many women would have been. To her, the sexual life wasn’t as difficult as all that. Most men – however much they were what she would have called ‘tied up’ – were capable of enjoying themselves. And she had had, in what had been on the whole an unlucky existence, one piece of luck. She had a temperament which gained pleasure – active, sensual, final pleasure – from helping a man get pleasure. Perhaps it was a greater piece of luck than she recognised. Women whom the world thought beautiful often totally lacked it, and found themselves miserable beyond their comprehension. Anyway, Jenny knew it of herself. She couldn’t help knowing it, and had caught herself giving an inward acceptant grin. After all, if she could work out any plan of action about Lorimer, this would be a help.

  But plans of action didn’t come easy. She didn’t want him to propose, not yet. She didn’t want explanations or arguments, that would only frighten him off. She wasn’t good at seducing. She wasn’t cool-blooded enough. It took two to make a seduction, and he was a non-participant. She couldn’t manage the preliminaries, and until they got through those she couldn’t bring him on.

  In the event, something like a misunderstanding (it wasn’t really that) occurred between them and she took her chance. She had the advantage that she had been waiting for it.

  It happened on an evening about a fortnight after she had paid that visit to Miss Smith. They were still in September. Following a bitter summer, the weather was benign. So much so, that, after Jenny had called at the Lupus Street flat and she had taken him out for a drink at the corner pub, they decided to walk round St George’s Square. There, in the little garden which overlooked the river, they sat, not far from the statue of Huskisson, dressed – rather puzzlingly, since he had been run over by a locomotive – as a Roman senator. The sun was setting, the air still, insects humming, including a mosquito, rare in London at any time. There was the river smell, bringing whiffs of decomposing matter and oil, and yet, to some nostrils, seminal too.

  Jenny noticed that Lorimer was more than usually jerky: and when he was in that state his scraps of talk were all over the place. Suddenly he told her that the smell from the Thames used to be much worse than this. In the middle of the last century, they had to hang towels soaked in chlorine all over the windows of the Houses of Parliament; that didn’t work, and they had to suspend the sittings altogether.

  Jenny was feeling peaceful, enjoying the light which softened their faces, anticipating nothing. She wanted to smooth him down, so that for both of them the moment could take care of itself, as it did for her. She said, cheerfully: ‘Never mind, Jarvey.’

  (The first-born males in his family were given the name of Jervis, pronounced Jarvis, after the eighteenth-century admiral. Hearty acquaintances who called him by his first Christian name Peter might produce an air of cordiality, but got it wrong. Even Hillmorton, usually punctilious, used to make that mistake.)

  ‘That won’t happen again.’

  ‘I suppose it won’t.’

  ‘And if it did, it’d mean you could skip a few more speeches, wouldn’t it?’

  He gave a jagged unwilling grin. In a moment, in the same jerky tone with which he had interjected information about the nineteenth-century river, he said: ‘I’ve been thinking.’

  She was alert by now.

  ‘I’ve been thinking. I was wondering whether you’d consider – joining forces.’

  She gazed at him, for an instant at a loss.

  ‘If you could stand it, or consider it anyway. Joining forces.’

  Her fine eyes were dilated. Impatiently, not indulgently or even lucidly, she felt the prick of a tear and blinked it away. Of course this was how he would manage to propose. Later on she had twinges of guilt, because she was forced to misunderstand. In the existential present, though, it seemed utterly natural, not at all blameworthy, to think of what was needed for them both, or what she had to do. As soon as she heard the first yammering words, she had been engaged in not exactly fast thinking (that had taken place before), but fast feeling.

  ‘It’s a good idea,’ she said, sounding brisk and matter of fact. ‘It’s a very good idea. It’d save us both quite a lot if I moved in with you. The sooner the better.’

  ‘I meant, would you consider joining forces–? You’ll have to think–’

  ‘I’m not going to think too much. Let’s take it easy. Look here, my boy’ (often she said that instead of an endearment, it soothed him more), ‘this is a time to take things easy. We needn’t rush anything at all. Nothing at all. You’re not going to be rushed, are you? Nor am I. I’ll move in as soon as I can. Then we’ll sit back and relax.’

  She was taking a risk, she knew – and knew better when it was over. He was an obstinate man. Despite his muteness, or maybe because of it, he resisted being taken in charge. She couldn’t be sure whether he had any real need of her. Nevertheless, somewhere she had found the tone which, at least for that evening and the next days, established a kind of peace and settled him. Domestic logistics formed a recipe against strain. He came to Barham Gardens, wrote down lists, talked domestically about her ‘bits and pieces’, one or two of which, like some of his, were valuable, helped carry them to a car. She observed, and with approval, that he was surprisingly strong.

  There was one thing which no one knew but herself. She was not an apprehensive woman. Quite unlike Julian and Liz, she didn’t go in for tics or superstitious rituals. She hadn’t once touched wood, in the literal sense, in her life. And yet on this occasion she did the equivalent. The upkeep of this old bedsitting-room of hers wasn’t much, but even that she couldn’t afford. She didn’t want to see the place again. Nevertheless – although this she concealed from everyone – she made no effort to sub-let it. There was the chance that she might have to come back again.

  31

  The Underwoods, mother and son, were in a taxi en route for Skelding’s office – as they had been precisely two years before, to listen to the announcement of the will. The same week in October: the only difference was that it was now the morning, not the afternoon. This reflection of similarity appeared to give Julian esoteric pleasure.

  ‘Two years!’ he cried, as though the stately processes of the English law were something on which he ought to be personally congratulated.

  ‘Could you believe it?’ he went on.

  Much as she loved him, Mrs Und
erwood was sometimes fretted by his impenetrable spirits. Day by day, she watched him for signs of anxiety over the appeal, and had seen none at all. Over his health, or catching a train, he maddened her in the reverse direction. Now, when it mattered, anyone anxious as she was couldn’t help resenting a person who didn’t seem to know the meaning of the state, even if it was her son.

  She was hoping for some news that morning, trivial news was better than nothing. While he had dismissed that possibility, and talked as if he was expecting some new piece of luck, some fresh manifestation that all was more than right with the world.

  ‘You never know,’ he had told her as they started off. ‘We may hear something to our advantage, that’s what old man Skelding would call it, wouldn’t he?’

  He said it with blissful ingenuousness. Those who knew him better than his mother did, such as Liz, could have told her that – when it came to action – he was not distinguished by ingenuousness. Perhaps his mother half realised that, and simultaneously didn’t realise it at all.

  They had each received letters from Skelding, the one to Mrs Underwood longer and more cordial, the other formal, asking if they could make it convenient to call on him. She had duly fixed the appointment, and now they were on their way. When they arrived, whatever information either was looking forward to, they didn’t get it. As soon as they were shown into Skelding’s office – the same room as they had sat in two years before, so much more stately than David March’s in the Inn across the Strand, mouldings above the panelling recently preserved, window seats fresh painted, Mrs Underwood couldn’t resist asking, while they were still shaking hands: ‘Well, have you any news? Is there any news?’

  ‘News?’ said Mr Skelding, pressing her hand in his parsonical manner. ‘No, now you mention it, I don’t think I have any for you. Not that you’d be interested in, I’m afraid.’

  He was confronting her with a smile, such as she had been used to at all their meetings, since the earliest time she had heard his advice – face and lips as rubicund, smile as professional, though it would have been difficult to decide whether the smile or the profession had come first. He was wearing, which wasn’t his invariable custom nowadays, his black coat and striped trousers. The only oddity Mrs Underwood noticed was that, as he invited them to sit round his table, he also invited them to have a glass of madeira. She thought that habit had vanished long ago, and promptly accepted. Julian gave bland open-eyed thanks, and refused.

  ‘Ah well,’ said Mr Skelding, ‘it’s very good of you to put yourself out.’ He was addressing Mrs Underwood, ‘I do apologise for dragging you here.’

  ‘But you really haven’t any news? About the appeal, of course?’ She couldn’t let it go.

  He broke into a smile even wider, even more polite.

  ‘Oh, I’m rather out of things. That’s really what I wanted to tell you about. So I can’t say anything fresh about that matter of yours. It’s expected to be heard before the end of term, I believe, but then you’ve been apprised of that already. Naturally, I wish you every good fortune.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Mrs Underwood.

  ‘I assure you, this is nothing to upset you. Or even to incommode you.’ He was speaking with a curious kindness – blended with orotundities Julian hadn’t heard from him before, though they passed Mrs Underwood by.

  ‘Since I saw you last, though (that meant the conference in March’s chambers) I have been giving a certain amount of thought to my own arrangements. I have decided that it is time I stepped down from the management of this firm. I had slightly hoped to continue in the saddle for another three or four years, but then, you know, there are always younger men knocking at the door. So one oughtn’t to linger on the stage too long. On the other hand, there are a few clients whose business I’ve tried to handle for half a lifetime and I should find it a deprivation, if you’ll let me speak personally, not to continue with them – for at least a little while yet. I need hardy say’ he gave Mrs Underwood another meaningless smile ‘that you are one of those I should most miss working for. My colleagues have very generously considered my feelings in this situation. So if the suggestion is agreeable to you, I am still able to conduct your personal business and there needn’t be any change in our relations.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I should want,’ said Mrs Underwood, immediately, earnest, direct. Then, just as directly: ‘That’s all right, but what are we all talking about then?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr Skelding, ‘there has to be some slight alteration, you see.’ He turned his countenance to Julian, affable, an unmysterious moon: and yet, it was more difficult to read than more romantic faces, and it would have taken an expert in Skeldingesque expressions to detect that it had become a shade more set.

  ‘I am sure you won’t be surprised to hear that our last meeting had certain consequences of a professional nature. As well as the little personal matter of my retirement’ (this to Mrs Underwood), ‘but that of course isn’t material. What is material is that I felt under an obligation to report what transpired at that meeting to my partners. To cut a long story short, the general consensus of us all was that it would be a disadvantage to all parties if this firm withdrew from the case, at the present juncture. It might raise a minor question mark about the firm, but it could raise more serious doubts about you as litigants. Reputable firms don’t throw up cases for nothing, I’m sure you’ve heard the old saying.’ (To Julian.) ‘If I was still acting as your adviser, or even your man of business I should certainly say that in your own best interests you ought to leave well alone.’

  ‘We never thought of anything else,’ said Mrs Underwood.

  ‘Loud applause,’ said Julian.

  ‘I’m glad you agree.’

  Julian’s remark had been cheerful and amiable enough, but the puce in Skelding’s cheeks had deepened. Nevertheless his tone stayed even, his speech measured.

  ‘In those circumstances, I am sure you’ll also agree that I couldn’t possibly continue to handle the case for this firm. I explained the position as carefully as I could to my partners, and I think I can say that they came round to the same point of view. It is neither here nor there, but this was of course a factor pointing towards my retirement. I am sure it is obvious to you that, though this firm will continue to act for you and do what can be done, I could not conceivably remain in charge myself.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t see why not.’

  ‘With respect, but you should see why not. I didn’t give you my advice lightly, as I hope you will appreciate. In my judgement, for what that may be worth, it was the best advice I could give you. You made it clear that you had no confidence in it. On my side, I had no confidence in the course you insisted on. The more I think about it, I have to tell you across this table, the less confidence I have. I have been associated with your family and in particular with your mother altogether too long to assist you towards a disaster. With great respect, you should be able to understand that I can have no part in it.’

  ‘Can’t you think it over?’ Mrs Underwood sounded flat.

  ‘I’m afraid that I’ve done that.’ He spoke to her with the earlier curious stilted kindness.

  ‘Isn’t there anything we can do?’

  ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t be any further use to you in this business unless you had confidence in my advice.’

  ‘Oh look,’ said Julian, ‘we needn’t get weighed down over a thing like this, need we now?’

  ‘I am afraid that there you must speak for yourself.’

  Julian opened his eyes wide, twitched his shoulders, for an instant stopped being casual. There was a silence. Then, old habit prevailing, Skelding mentioned, in an undertone, some minor piece of business of Mrs Underwood’s.

  ‘You may have to draw in your horns,’ he said, liking to be minatory again.

  Julian stirred himself.

  ‘Well, we seem to have come to a dead end, don’t we? Which isn’t a surprise to anyone, I take it.’

  Mr Skelding wa
s expecting him to rise from his chair. As he did so, Mr Skelding said: ‘All that remains for me is to wish you success in the appeal.’ He shook Julian’s hand. This had been done with dignity, the automatic reflex of years in that office. Dignity not so necessary, with no fuss at all, he smiled at Mrs Underwood and said goodbye.

  As they reached the court outside, drops of rain were steadily descending. Equally steadily, Mrs Underwood was not beginning to hurry: but Julian looked at the sky and, not prepared to minimise any attack upon his health, said: ‘Come on, we must get out of this.’ He rushed her into a pub in Chancery Lane and there Mrs Underwood, still disappointed at having received no news, was thinking about the past half hour with Mr Skelding.

  ‘He’s a pompous old boy, isn’t he?’ she said.

  ‘Oh well, he’s had a good deal to be pompous about,’ said Julian.

  ‘Fancy bringing us down here for absolutely nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘He didn’t say anything we didn’t know already.’

  Julian said, off-hand: ‘He happens to be heartbroken, you see.’

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘He’s packed up. He didn’t want to pack up. I don’t expect he has anything else to live for. He’s the sort of man who doesn’t live long after he’s retired.’

  Mrs Underwood gazed at her son. When, which wasn’t often, he talked to her about other people, she was accustomed to believe what he said.

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  ‘That’s what he was telling us. Or telling you, rather.’