The Masters

by C. P. Snow

  The gossip came round to Roy, though we tried to shield him. His spirits had been darker since the day he comforted Lady Muriel, and now, as he heard how he was being traduced, there were nights when he sank into despondency. Usually he would have cared less than most men what others said, but just then the sky had gone black for him. His was a despondency which others either did not notice or passed over; it would have struck no one as specially frightening, except him and me. Often we walked round the streets at night. The whole town smelt of gilliflower and lilac. The skies were luminous, windows were thrown open in the hot May evenings. I tried to lift Roy from sadness, if only for a minute: almost imperceptibly, he shook his head.

  Nightingale was making other attacks, not only those on Roy. One night towards the end of May, Luke asked if he could talk to me. I took him up to my room, and he burst out: ‘I’ve had about as much as I can stand of this man Nightingale. I’m beginning to think I’ve been quiet in this college for almost long enough. One of these days I shall do the talking, and by God they’ll get a surprise.’

  ‘What’s Nightingale done now?’

  ‘He’s as good as told me that unless I switch over to Crawford they’ll see that I’m not made a permanency.’

  ‘I shouldn’t pay too much attention–’

  ‘Do you think I should pay attention? I told him as politely as I could – and I wished I hadn’t got to be so blasted polite – that I’d see him damned first. Do they think I’m the sort of lad they can bully into going through any bloody hoop?’

  ‘They probably do.’ I smiled, though I was angry myself. I was growing very fond of him. When he was angry, he was angry from head to toe, angry in every inch of his tough, square, powerful body. It was the same with every mood – his hopes or disappointments about his work, even his passionate discretion. He threw the whole of his nature into each of them. On this night he was angry as one whole human integer of flesh and bone. ‘They probably do. They’re wrong.’

  ‘They’ll be surprised how wrong they are,’ Luke fumed. ‘I should like to be kept in this college, it’s much nicer than the old dockyard, but do they think they’ve only got to whistle and I’m theirs? They can do their damnedest, and I shan’t starve. A decent scientist will get some sort of job. They’re just trying to blackmail me because I’m afraid to lose my comforts.’

  I told him that ‘they’ could only be Nightingale himself. I could not believe that Francis Getliffe knew anything of this move, and I said that I would confront him with it. Luke, still angry, went off to his laboratory in the summer evening.

  I should have spoken to Francis Getliffe the following night, but found that he had left Cambridge (the examinations had begun, and lectures were over for the year) for some Air Ministry experiments. He was not expected back for a fortnight, and so I told Brown about Luke.

  ‘Confound those people,’ he said. ‘I’m a mild man, but they’re going too far. I’m not prepared to tolerate many more of these outrages. I don’t know about you, but it makes me more determined to stick in my heels against Crawford. I’m damned if I’ll see them get away with it.’

  We each found ourselves holding the other side collectively responsible for Nightingale’s doings. Just as young Luke stormed about what ‘they’ had threatened, so did Arthur Brown: and I felt the same. There were times when we all saw the other side through a film of enmity. We forgot who they were and what they were truly like. We were becoming victims of something like war hysteria. And that happened to Brown, who was as sensible, tolerant, and level-headed as a man can be: it happened to me, who was not a partisan by nature.

  At that time we were a little ashamed of ourselves, and I thought, when I next saw Brown, that he was going a roundabout way to atone. ‘I’m wondering about enlarging the claret party this year.’

  Brown’s claret party took place each year at the beginning of June. ‘I’m inclined to think it would be rather statesmanlike. After all, we’ve got to live with the present society even if we slide Jago in. Mind you, I’m all against trying to make arrangements with the other side over the election. But I should regard it as reasonable to remind them that we’re still capable of enjoying their company. It would be a decent gesture to invite some of them to the party.’

  And so the claret party consisted of Winslow, Crawford, Pilbrow, Roy Calvert, me and Brown himself. Like so much of that summer, it tantalized me. The night was tranquil, the college had never looked more beautiful. I should be lucky if I had the chance to drink wine so good again. But Roy’s melancholy had got worse, and all the time I was fearing one of his outbursts. Most of that night, I could think of nothing else.

  Twice I managed to signal to Roy that he must keep quiet. He was enough in control of himself to do so, though he was affected by the sight of another unhappy man. For Winslow was worried by his son’s examination, which had just finished. As soon as the party began, Brown asked him how the boy had got on, and Winslow snubbed him: ‘My dear Tutor, I cannot answer for the prospects of the semi-illiterate. I hope the wretched youth managed to read the questions.’

  Roy heard the sadness in that answer, and it nearly touched the trigger of his own. But, to my momentary relief, we settled down to wine. It was ten o’clock, but the sun had only just set, and over the roof opposite Brown’s window there was a brilliant afterglow. From one of the May week balls, we could just hear the throbbing of a band. There was the slightest of breezes stirring, and on it came the scent of acacia from the court beneath.

  Pilbrow took charge of the party. He was an authority on wine, and had been Brown’s master. His bald head gleamed in the fading light, shone when, towards midnight, Brown switched on the lamps; the ruddy cheeks flushed, but otherwise Pilbrow did not change at all as one decanter after another was left empty. He fixed one of us with a lively brown eye and asked what we noticed at each sip – at the beginning, middle, and end of each sip. The old man rang all the changes possible with ten bottles of claret. When we were halfway through, he said with extreme firmness: ‘I don’t think any of you would ever be quite first-class. I give our host the benefit of the doubt–’

  ‘I don’t claim it,’ said Brown. ‘I shall never be anything like as good as you.’

  Meanwhile, Roy had been drinking faster than the rest of us. The dangerous glint had come into his eyes. He began to talk to Winslow – and it was then I had to signal. Roy’s smile was pathetic as he fell into silence.

  Winslow was speaking again about his son, this time in a different tone.

  ‘I shall be relieved,’ he said with humility, ‘if the examiners let him through.’

  ‘Oh, they’ll let him through,’ said Brown.

  ‘I don’t know what will happen to him if they don’t,’ said Winslow. ‘He’s a stupid child. But I believe there’s something in him. He’s a very nice person. If they gave him a chance now, I honestly believe he may surprise you all in ten years’ time.’

  No one there had heard Winslow speak so openly. It was some moments before he regained his sardonic tone. Then he made himself say to Brown: ‘My dear Tutor, you’ve had the singular misfortune to teach the foolish creature. I drink to you in commiseration.’

  Brown insisted on drinking to young Winslow’s success. ‘Let me fill your glass. Which shall it be? You’ve gone a bit light on the Latour ’24.’

  We each had ten glasses in front of us, labelled to match the decanters. Brown selected the right one from Winslow’s set.

  ‘That will do very nicely. If you please. If you please.’

  Crawford surveyed the glasses, the decanters, the gleam of crystal and silver, the faces all flushed, the scene of luxury and ease. Out of the window there was still a faint glow in the west. Girls’ laughter came up from the court, as a party moved out of college to a ball.

  ‘It’s very hard to realize what the world is really like tonight – when one’s enjoying your hospitality, Brown,’ he announced. ‘Speaking as a scientific observer, I should have to say that
the world tonight is more unstable than it’s ever been in human experience. But it’s impossible to believe that, sitting with the present spectacle in front of us.’

  ‘That’s always so,’ said Pilbrow unexpectedly. ‘I’ve been caught in two revolutions, or not exactly caught, but… One sees a woman in the garden by the railway line, just digging on a sunny morning. One can’t believe that it’s actually begun.’

  ‘One can’t believe tonight,’ said Crawford, ‘that one ought to be fighting against this mess Brown’s political friends are plunging us into. I expect I shall remember very vividly tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Yes! Yes!’ cried Pilbrow, his eyes gleaming like buttons. He joined in Crawford’s reflections, as the decanters were put away one by one. He talked about the ‘mess’; he was off to the Balkans in three weeks to see for himself. At the age of seventy-four, he was as excited as a boy about his expedition. Brown had had a moment’s anxiety when he saw how Pilbrow was vigorously applauding Crawford. But now the old man was safely talking of his travels and Brown was rubicund; though Roy was silent, Winslow subdued, Brown felt that this party had been a success.

  After the party, Roy and I walked in the garden. The breeze had dropped, and on the great beeches no leaf stirred. The full moon hung like a lantern, and the scent of acacia pierced the air. Roy was very quiet, and we walked round in silence. Then he said, as though it were a consolation: ‘I shall sleep tonight.’

  When he was in a phase of depression, I had known him insomniac for four or five nights together. He would lie open-eyed through the minutes of a night, and then another, having to face his own thoughts. Until, his control broken, he would come to my room and wake me up: should we drive over to George Passant and make a night of it? Or to our friends in London? Or should we go for a walk all night?

  The melancholy, the melancholy shot through with sinister gaiety, had been creeping upon him during the past few weeks. He could not throw it off, any more than a disease. When it seized him, he felt that it would never go.

  We walked round, not talking, in a night so warm that the air seemed palpable. I thought that we had been lucky to escape that party scot-free. I did not know how to stop him damaging himself.

  I thought that, so long as I lived, I should be mocked by the scents of that summer. They might have come along with peace of mind, the wisteria, the gilliflower, the lilac, the acacia.

  23: Affliction

  I had expected an outbreak from Roy at the claret party, but, when it did come, I was not prepared.

  It was a fortnight later, a Saturday morning, and I woke early. There was a college meeting that day to consider examination results. Some were already published, sent round to tutors, stuck in the tailors’ windows; most did not come out till this Saturday.

  I knew that the envelopes reached the porters’ lodge by a quarter to nine, so I did not wait for Bidwell’s ritual awakening. I walked through the court in the cloudless morning, and found a large packet addressed to me. I was opening it when Brown entered the lodge, panting a little, still wearing trouser clips after cycling in from his house.

  ‘I hope we haven’t had too many disasters,’ he said. He opened his own envelope, spread the sheets on the counter.

  ‘Thank God for that!’ he exclaimed in a moment. ‘Thank God for that!’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Young Timberlake’s got through. They’ve given him a third. Which between you and me, is probably slightly more than abstract justice required. Still, I think Sir Horace will be satisfied. If the young man had crashed, it might have been the most expensive failure in the history of the college. I’m breathing a great deal more freely, I can tell you.’

  His cleverest pupil had been given a starred first. ‘I always said he was our next real flyer,’ said Brown triumphantly.

  He turned back, pencil in hand, to tick off the names on the history sheet. In a moment he gave a shrill whistle.

  ‘I can’t find Dick Winslow’s name. He seems to have failed absolutely. They don’t seem even to have allowed him the ordinary degree. They don’t seem to have made him any allowance at all. It’s scarcely credible. I think I’d better ring up the examiners straightaway. I did once find a name left off a list by mistake.’

  He put through his call, and came back shaking his head.

  ‘Absolutely hopeless,’ he said. ‘They say they just couldn’t find any signs of intelligence at all. Well, I knew he was dense, but I shouldn’t have believed that he was as dense as that.’

  The meeting was called for half-past eleven. As the room filled up, one kept hearing whispers about young Winslow. In the midst of the bustle, men asked each other if they had heard. Some were speaking in malice, some in good nature, some in a mixture of the two. At last Winslow himself entered, heavy-footed, carrying his cap but not swinging it in his normal fashion. He was looking down, and went straight to his place.

  ‘Ah, good morning, Winslow,’ cried Gay, who had not grasped the news.

  ‘Good morning to you,’ said Winslow. His voice was deadened. He was immersed in his wretchedness.

  Despard-Smith was just opening the meeting when Gay said: ‘I have a small presentation to make, before we begin our discussion on these excellent agenda. I wish to present to the society, for inclusion in the library, this copy of my latest publication. I hope and expect that most fellows have already bought it. I hope you’ve bought yours, Brown? I hope you have, Crawford?’

  He rose precariously to his feet, and laid a copy in front of Despard-Smith.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I haven’t yet,’ said Crawford. ‘I’ve noticed one or two reviews.’

  ‘Ah. Reviews,’ said Gay. ‘Those first reviews have a lukewarm tendency that I don’t like to see.’

  Suddenly, distracted from Winslow, I saw how nervous the old man was about his book’s reception. Gay, the least diffident of men, had never lost that nervousness. It did not die with age: perhaps it became sharper.

  The meeting began at last. There was only two minutes’ business over livings, but under finance there were several items down. Despard-Smith asked the Bursar if he would ‘take us through’ his business.

  Winslow’s head was sunk down.

  ‘I don’t think it’s necessary,’ he muttered. He did not raise his eyes. Everyone was looking at him.

  Then it came to Jago to describe the examination results. He passed from subject to subject in the traditional Cambridge order, mathematics, classics, natural sciences… Most people at the meeting knew only a handful of the young men he was talking about; but his interest in each was so sharp that he kept a hold upon the meeting. He came to history. The table was very quiet. ‘One brilliant and altogether deserved success,’ he said in his thick voice. ‘Some of us know the struggle that young man had to come here at all. I’m prepared to bet, Mr Deputy, that he’s going to write his name in the story of this college.’ Then with a grin, he said how much the society ought to congratulate Brown on squeezing Timberlake through. Jago then studied his papers, and paused. ‘I think there’s nothing else to report about the historians.’ Very quickly, he turned to the next subject.

  It was intended as chivalry, perhaps as more. I could not tell how Winslow received it. He still sat with his head sunk down. There was no sign that he had heard anything of the meeting. He did not speak himself: even for a formal vote, he had to be asked.

  We broke off at one o’clock for a cold lunch, and most people ate with zest. Winslow stood apart, with his back to the room. I saw Roy’s eyes upon him, glinting with wild pity. Since the party, his depression had grown heavier still, and he had kept himself alone. I was at once anxious as I saw him watching Winslow, but then someone offered him a decanter of wine and he refused. I thought that he was taking care, and I had no sense of danger.

  When we resumed the meeting, Jago dealt with the results of the preliminary examinations. There were enquiries, one or two rotund criticisms, some congratulations.

  ‘Of c
ourse,’ said Despard-Smith, summing up, ‘for a scholar of the college only to get a third class in a university examination is nothing short of s-scandalous. But I think the general feeling of the college is that, taking the rough with the smooth, we can be reasonably satisfied with the achievements of the men. I gather that is your opinion, Senior Tutor?’

  ‘I should go further. We ought to be proud of them.’

  ‘You don’t dissent, Tutor?’ Despard-Smith asked Brown.

  ‘I agree with my senior colleague,’ said Brown. ‘And I should like to draw the college’s attention to the remarkable results that the Dean has once more secured.’

  Before the meeting ended, which was not long after, I was set thinking of Despard-Smith’s use of the phrase ‘the men’. That habit went back to the ‘90s: most of us at this table would say ‘the young men’ or ‘the undergraduates’. But at this time, the late 1930s, the undergraduates themselves would usually say ‘the boys’. It was interesting to hear so many strata of speech round one table. Old Gay, for example, used ‘absolutely’, not only in places where the younger of us might quite naturally still, but also in the sense of ‘actually’ or even ‘naturally’ – exactly as though he were speaking in the 1870s. Pilbrow, always up to the times, used an idiom entirely modern, but Despard-Smith still brought out slang that was fresh at the end of the century – ‘crab’, and ‘josser’, and ‘by Jove’. Crawford said ‘man of science’, keeping to the Edwardian usage which we had abandoned. So, with more patience it would have been possible to construct a whole geological record of idioms, simply by listening word by word to a series of college meetings.

  This one closed. The fellows filed out, and I waited for Roy. Winslow was still sitting at the table, with the order-book and files in front of him; he seemed not to have the spirit to move. The three of us were left alone in the room. Roy did not glance at me or say a word: he went straight to Winslow, and sat down by his side.