by C. P. Snow
I knew that she was fond of me, but there my imagination stopped. It was still so when I received this letter. I replied by return, saying that of course I should be glad to see her. That was true; but it was also true that I was full of chagrin at finding her letter instead of another, and that made me hasten to reply.
The other arrived, by a coincidence, on the day that Marion was due. It did not say much, it was like Sheila’s speech, shut in, capricious, gnomic. But she referred, with a curious kind of intimacy, brittle and yet trusting, to one or two of our private jokes. That was enough to irradiate the dark hall. That was enough to make me happy all day, to keep the stylised phrases running through my mind, to give me delight abounding and overflowing, so that when Marion arrived I lavished some of it on her.
She told me how well and gay I looked. I smiled and said that I was both those things. She took it as a welcome. Her eyes were bright and I suddenly thought how pretty she could be.
She gave the impression, as usual, of being sloppily dressed. Quite why I could not decide, for she was now spending much attention on her appearance. That afternoon she was wearing the Russian boots fashionable that winter, and a long blue coat. She looked fresh, but nothing could stop her looking also eager and in a hurry. No one had less trace of the remote and arctic.
Practically, competently, she had discovered some hat shops in and near the Brompton Road – they were recommended as smart, she said, and not too dear.
Along we went. Neither she nor I knew much of London, and we traipsed up and down Kensington High Street before we found the first of her addresses. There was a slight fog, enough to aureole the lights and make the streets seem cosier; the shops were decked for Christmas, and inside them one felt nothing but the presence of furs, warm air, and women’s scent. I was half irked, because I hated shopping, half glad to be among the lights and the crowds – cheerful because of the secret pleasure which she did not know, and also cheerful because of her enjoyment. I did not know it then, but I should have felt that second pleasure if I had been a more experienced man and deceiving her less innocently.
Marion tried on hat after hat, while I watched her.
‘You must say what you think,’ she said. ‘My taste is very vulgar. I’m a bit of a slut, you know.’
There was one that I liked.
‘I’m afraid it will show up my complexion,’ she said. ‘My skin isn’t too good, is it?’
She was so straightforward. If Sheila had made that remark, I was thinking, I should have seen her skin as strange, transcendentally different from all others. While Marion’s, when she drew my eyes to it, I saw just as skin, with a friendly familiar indifference, with the observant eye untouched by magic, just as I might have viewed my own.
I told her, as was true, that most women would envy her complexion. At last the hat was bought. It was expensive, and Marion grimaced. ‘Still,’ she said philosophically, ‘a good hat ought to take a girl a bit farther. A bit farther than a deep interest in the arts. I always have had a deep interest in the arts, haven’t I? and look what it’s done for me.’
Over tea she tried to find out whether I had been seeing Sheila. But she soon stopped – for she had discovered that I became claustrophobic when she showed a possessive interest in my life. I shied from her just as – I did not realize it then – I shied from the possessive invasion of my mother. That afternoon, she was satisfied that I seemed untroubled and relaxed.
She did not ask a straight question or inquire too hard. We were still natural with each other. She told me stories of an inspector’s visit to her school, and how he was terrified that she was chasing him. Marion had developed a self-depreciating mode of humour, and I found it very funny. The earnestness of manner was disappearing fast, now that she had discovered that she could amuse.
We laughed together, until it became time for me to go to my Inn. I had to score my dinner there, or otherwise I should need to stay an extra night; I left straight after and joined Marion at the theatre. She might be losing her earnestness, but she was still in the avant garde of the twenties and she had chosen to see a Pirandello. I bought the tickets. I was cross at her letting me do so; for she had a regular salary, and she knew that each shilling mattered to me. But when I saw her sitting by me, waiting for the curtain to go up, I could not grudge her the treat. She was as naïvely expectant, as blissful to be there, as a child at a pantomime. It was not that she was ungenerous with money, or unthoughtful, but that she consumedly loved being given a treat, being taken out. She was never disappointed. Every treat was always a success. She was disappointed if, immediately afterwards, one said it was a hopeless play. She did not like the gilt taken away at once, though a week later she would be as critical as any of us. That night, on our way to St Pancras by the tube, she was a little tender-minded because I made fun of Pirandello.
I desisted. I did not want to spoil her pleasure. And, on the foggy platform, I was warmed by affection for her – affection the more glowing (it did not seem shameful as I laughed at her) because of a letter in my pocket whose words I carried before my eyes. At St Pancras we coughed in the sulphurous fog.
‘Fancy having to go back tonight,’ said Marion. ‘I shall be hours late. I pity the children tomorrow. I shall smack them and shout at them.’
‘Poor dear, you’ll be tired,’ I said.
‘I shan’t get home till four,’ she said. ‘And I don’t mind a bit. And that’s as much in the way of thanks as is good for you.’
Instead of going straight from the station to Judd Street, I found a coffee stall along the Euston Road. The fog, thickening every minute, swirled in front of the lamp, and one inhaled it together with the naphtha fumes and the steam. As I drank a cup of tea, I felt the glow of affection with me still. Then I took out Sheila’s letter and read it, though I knew it by heart and word for word, in the foggy lamplight. I felt giddy with miraculous content. The name stood out in the dim light, like no other name. I felt giddy, as though the perfection of the miracle would happen now, and I should have her by my side, and we should walk together through the swirling fog.
22: Christmas Eve
When I next met Sheila she was strangely excited. I saw it before she spoke to me, saw it while she made her way through the café towards our table. She was electric with excitement; yet what she had to say, though it filled me with pleasure, did not explain why. Without any preliminary she broke out: ‘You know the Edens, don’t you?’
‘I know him, of course. I’ve never been to the house.’
‘We drink punch there every Christmas Eve,’ she said, and added: ‘I love punch,’ with that narcissistic indrawn satisfaction which took her far away. Then, electric-bright again, she said: ‘I can take anyone I like. ‘Will you come with me?’
I was open in my pleasure.
‘I want you to,’ she said, and I still noticed the intensity of her excitement. ‘Make a note of it. I shan’t let you forget.’
I could not understand, in the days between, why she laid so much stress on it, but I looked forward happily to Christmas Eve. The more happily, perhaps, because it was like an anticipation in childhood; it was like waiting for a present that one knew all the time one was safely going to receive. I imagined beforehand the warmth of a party, Harry Eden’s surprise, the flattery of being taken there by the most beautiful young woman in the room – but above all the warmth of a party and the certain joy of her presence by my side among the drinks and laughter.
On the day before Christmas Eve I was having a cup of tea alone in our habitual café. A waitress came up and asked if I was Mr Eliot: a lady wanted me on the telephone.
‘Is that you?’ It was Sheila’s voice, though I had never heard it before at the other end of a wire. It sounded higher than in life, and remote, as though it came from the far side of a river.
‘I didn’t think they’d recognize you from my description. I didn’t think I should find you.’
She sounded strung up but exhilarated, laughing
to herself.
‘It’s me all right,’ I said.
‘Of course it’s you.’ She laughed. ‘Who else could it be?’ I grumbled that this was like a conversation in a fairy tale. ‘Right. Business. About tomorrow night.’ Her voice was sharp. My heart dropped.
‘You’re corning, darling?’ I pleaded. I could not keep the longing back: she had to hear it. ‘You must come. I’ve been counting on it–’
‘I’ll come.’
I exclaimed with relief and delight.
‘I’ll come. But I shall be late. Go to the party by yourself. I’ll see you there.’
I was so much relieved that I would have made any concession. As a matter of form, I protested that it would have been nice to go together.
‘I can’t. I can’t manage it. You can make yourself at home. You won’t mind. You can make yourself at home anywhere.’ She laughed again.
‘But you will come?’
‘I’ll come.’
I was vaguely upset. Why was she keyed up to a pitch of excitement even higher than when she first invited me? I felt for a moment that she was a stranger. But she had never failed me. I knew that she would come. The promise of love, of romantic love, of love where one’s imagination makes the beloved fit all one’s hope, enveloped me again. Once more I longed for tomorrow night, the party, for her joining me as I sat among the rest.
The Edens lived outside the middle of the town, in the fashionable suburb. I strolled slowly across the park on Christmas Eve, up the London Road; I heard a clock strike; the party began at nine o’clock, and I was deliberately a little late. A church stood open, light streaming through the doors. Cars rushed by, away from the town, but the pavement was almost empty, apart from an occasional couple standing beneath the trees in the mild night.
I came to where the comfortable middle-class houses stood back from the main road, with their hedges, their lawns, their gravel drives. Through the curtains of the drawing-rooms the lights glowed warm, and I felt curious; as I often did, walking any street at night, about what was going on behind the blinds. That Christmas Eve, the sight of those glowing rooms made me half-envious, even then, going to a rendezvous in my limitless expectancy; here seemed comfort, here seemed repose and a safe resting place; I envied all behind the blinds, even while, in the flush of youth and drunkenness of love, I despised them also, all those who stayed in the safe places and were not going out that night; I envied them behind the glowing curtains, and I despised them for not being on their way to a beloved.
The Edens’ drawing-room was cheerful with noise when I entered. There was a great fire, and the party sitting round. On the hearth stood an enormous bowl, with bottles beside it, glinting in the firelight. All over the drawing-room there wafted a scent of rum, oranges, and lemons. Under the holly and mistletoe and tinsel drifted that rich odour.
Eden was sitting, with an air of extreme permanence, in an armchair by the fireplace. He greeted me warmly. ‘I’m very glad to see you, Eliot. This is the young man I told you about–’ He introduced me to his wife. ‘He’s a friend of Sheila Knight’s – but I’ve known him on my own account for, let me see, it must be well over a year. When you get to my age, Eliot, you’ll find time goes uncomfortably fast.’ He went on explaining me to his wife. ‘Yes, I gave him some excellent advice which he was much too enterprising to take. Still, there’s nothing like being a young man in a hurry.’
Mrs Eden was kneeling on the hearthrug, busy with hieratic earnestness at the mixing of the punch. The liquid itself was steaming in the hearth; she had come to the point of slicing oranges and throwing in the pieces. She was pale-faced, with an immensely energetic, jerky, and concentrated manner. She had bright, brown eyes, opaque as a bird’s. She fixed them on me as she went on slicing.
‘How long have you known Sheila, Mr Eliot?’ she asked, as though the period were of the most critical importance.
I told her.
‘She has such style,’ said Mrs Eden with concentration.
Mrs Eden was enthusiastic about most things, but especially so about Sheila. She was quite unembarrassed by her admiration; it was easy to think of her as a girl, concentrated and intent, unrestrained in a schwärmerei, bringing some mistress flowers and gifts. At any rate, I wondered (I might be distorting her remarks through my own emotion) whether she too was not impatient for Sheila’s arrival. With hieratic seriousness she went on cutting the oranges, dropping in the peel. It was luxuriously warm by the fire, the punch was smoking, Eden lay back with a sigh of reminiscent well-being, and began to talk to us – in those days,’ he said, meaning the days of his youth, the turn of the century. I looked at the clock. It was nine-twenty. The others were listening to Eden, watching his wife prepare the punch. They were jolly and relaxed. I could scarcely wait for the minutes to pass and my heart was pounding.
To all of them except to Eden I was someone who Sheila Knight had picked up, how they did not know. They were a different circle from ours, more prosperous and more comfortably middle class. The Edens liked entertaining, and they had a weakness for youth, so nearly all the people round the fire were young, the sons and daughters of some of Eden’s clients. The young men were beginning in their professions and in the local firms. Eden had once, with his fair-minded sense of etiquette, invited George to join one of the parties, but George, horrified at the prospect, had made a stiff excuse and kept away. So there were no links between us – they had never heard my name. Sheila, however, had visited the house quite often, possibly owing to the enthusiasm of Mrs Eden, and everyone there had either met her or knew her family – for Mrs Knight was prepared to include the prosperous town families in her ambit, as well as her county friends.
One or two of them inspected me inquisitively. I was quiet, apart from keeping Eden’s reminiscences going. I was watching the clock. I did not take much part in the circle; the voices round were loud and careless, but as the minutes passed I was not listening to them, only for a ring at the bell outside.
‘Punch is ready,’ said Mrs Eden, suddenly and with energy.
‘Ah well,’ said Eden, ‘I like the sound of that.’
‘Shall we wait for Sheila?’ Mrs Eden’s eyes darted round the circle.
Cheerily, the circle voted against.
‘I really don’t see why we should,’ said Eden. ‘Last come, last served. What do you think, Eliot? I fancy your friend Sheila won’t mind if we proceed to the business of the meeting. You can explain to her afterwards that it’s what happens to young women when they’re late.’
The seconds were pounding on, but under Eden’s affable badinage I felt proprietorial. I answered that I was sure she would not mind. The circle cheered. Mrs Eden dipped a ladle in the bowl and intently filled each glass but one.
The punch was hot, spiced, and strong. After the first round the circle became noisier, Eden’s reminiscences had to give way, someone suggested a game. All the time I was listening. It was past ten o’clock. At last I heard, I heard unmistakably after the false hopes, the sound of a car in the drive. On the instant, I felt superlative content.
‘Sheila,’ said Mrs Eden with bright eyes.
For minutes I basked in well-being. I could sit back now she would soon be here, and not stare each moment at the door. I did not even need to listen too hard to the sounds outside.
The door opened. Sheila came in, radiant. Behind her followed a man.
Sheila came up to Mrs Eden, her voice sharp with excitement. ‘I’m being extremely rude,’ she said. ‘Will you let me stay if I bring someone else? We’ve been having dinner, and I thought you wouldn’t mind giving him some punch too. This is Doctor Devitt. He works at the infirmary.’
I heard Mrs Eden saying ‘We need another glass. That’s all. Sit down, Dr Devitt. I’ll get a glass for you.’
Her first response was always action. Perhaps she had not given a thought to what was happening. In any case, she could not resist Sheila, who only had to ask.
Through the haze I watched Ede
n smile politely, not his full, bland, melon-lipped smile, at Sheila and the other man. Eden looked at me. Was he puzzled? Did he understand? Was he looking at me with pity?
I had known, from the instant I saw her enter. It was not chance. It was deliberate. It was planned.
The room swam, faces came larger than life out of the mist, receded, voices were far away, then crashingly near. Somehow I managed to speak to Eden, to ask him some meaningless question.
The circle was being expanded, to bring in two more chairs. Sheila and Devitt sat down, Sheila between him and me. As Mrs Eden filled two glasses, Sheila said: ‘Can Lewis have another one? Let me pass it.’ She took my tumbler without a word between us. Intently, Mrs Eden filled it and gave it back to Sheila, who turned and put it into my hand. ‘There,’ she said.
Her face was smoother than I had ever seen it. It was open before me, and there seemed no trace or warning of her lines. Until her eyes swept up from the glass, which she watched into my fingers as though anxious not to spill a drop, until her eyes swept up and I could see nothing else, I watched (as if it had nothing to do with the mounting tides of pain, the sickness of misery, the rage of desire) her face – open, grave, pure and illuminated.
The circle went on with a game. It was a game in which one had to guess words. The minutes went by, they might have been hours, while I heard Sheila shouting her guesses from my side. Sometimes I shouted myself. And afterwards I remembered Eden, sitting quietly in his armchair, a little put out because the party chose to play this game instead of listening to him; Eden sitting quietly because he was not quick at guessing and so withdrew.