The Sleep of Reason

by C. P. Snow

  “I think,” put in Muriel, quick, sure-footed, “Daddy said that we’re having dinner with you soon, aren’t we?” (She meant Azik, Rosalind and herself.)

  Yes, I said.

  “That will be nice.”

  Pat looked at me, as though he would have liked to wink. He wasn’t used to anyone as cool as this – who could, so equably, declare his proposition closed.

  As Margaret and I were given a lift home in one of the diplomatic cars, acquaintances beside us, we couldn’t have our after-the-play talk. In the lift, going up to our flat, she was silent, and stayed so until she had switched on the drawing-room lights and poured herself a drink. She asked if I wanted one, but her tone was hard. Sitting in the chair the other side of the fireplace, she said: “So that’s the way it is!”

  Her face was flushed: the adrenalin was pouring through her: she was in a flaming temper.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I haven’t any idea.”

  “You have,” she said. “Your nephew. What does he think he’s up to?”

  “How should I know?”

  “It’s intolerable,” she cried. I was thinking, yes, she was kind, she took to heart what Vicky might go through: but also Margaret was no saint, she was angry because she herself had, at intervals, been taken in by Pat. I was getting provoked, because of the disparity we both knew between Margaret’s kind of temper and my own. I had to make an effort to sound peaceful.

  “Look here, I don’t know much about this girl (Muriel), but if it’s any consolation to you, I fancy that she can look after herself–”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised,” she said. But she said it with edge and meaning.

  We were on the verge of a quarrel. I said: “I don’t understand.”

  “I was thinking of her father.” She went on, with exaggerated reasonableness: “Of course he was in a higher class than your nephew Pat. But shouldn’t you have said that there might be some sort of resemblance–?”

  “Nonsense.” This was an old argument. With the gap in age between us, she had felt shut out from parts of my youth. At times she was jealous of the friends who had known me when I was a young man. Francis Getliffe and Charles March – with those she was on close terms. George Passant, she had worked to understand. But Roy Calvert, who was dead, whom she could never know, she could not help believe that I had inflated, had given a significance or an aura that he could not conceivably, in her eyes, have possessed.

  “Well, Pat does set out to be a miniature Byronic hero, doesn’t he?”

  “Roy Calvert,” I said, “had about as much use for Byronic heroes as I have.”

  “But still,” she said, “you do admit that he succeeded in bringing misery to everyone, literally everyone, so far as I’ve ever heard, who had any relations with him?”

  I sat without speaking.

  “I know you claim that he had a sort of insight. But I can’t convince myself that the spiritual life, or the tragic sense, or whatever they like to call it, is a bit like that.”

  Like her, I spoke with deliberate carefulness, as though determined either to take the bite out of my voice or not to overstate my case.

  “I’m not sure that nowadays I should see him quite in the same way. But of one thing I am perfectly certain. Of all the men and women I’ve ever known, he was the most selfless. He’s the only one, and he suffered for it, who could really throw his own self away.”

  Now we were quarrelling. We had learned, early in our marriage, that it was dangerous to quarrel. If I had been like her, there would have been no danger in it. Her temper was hot: the blood rushed: it was soon over. But with me, usually more controlled, temper, once I had lost it, smouldered on.

  Margaret, watching me, knew this bitter streak in me and knew it more acceptantly than I did myself.

  “If you say that,” she said, “then I’ve got to take it.”

  I accused her of making a concession. I said that neither of us wanted the other to make concessions which were not genuine. Between us there couldn’t be that kind of compromise–

  “Perhaps it was not quite genuine,” she said with a difficult smile. “But – what am I to do?”

  Somewhere, filtering towards my tongue, were words that would make us both angrier. Suddenly, as though by some inexplicable feedback, I said in a mechanical tone: “Pat was sucking up for an invitation to our party. For both of them.”

  Margaret gave a shout of laughter, full-throated, happy laughter.

  “Oh God,” she cried. “What on earth did you say?”

  “Oh, just that we hadn’t decided whether we were going to give one.”

  “It must be wonderful to be tactful, mustn’t it?”

  Margaret went on laughing. We were certainly going to give a party, she said. After all (her mood had changed, she was still flushed, but now with gaiety), we had a lot to be thankful for, this past year. My eye. Young Charles’ successes. Maurice’s survival. Her father better. Various storms come through. It would be faint-hearted not to give a party. But one thing was sure, she said. He was not going to bring that girl. Was that all right? Yes, I said, caught up by her spirits, that was completely all right. Without a pause between thought and action, she went to the study, brought back a sheet of paper, and, although it was late, began writing down a list, a long list, of names.

  17: Evening Before the Party

  FOR the next four days, Margaret enjoyed planning the party. It had become a token of thanksgiving. Every evening we sat in the drawing-room and added some more names. The list grew longer; we knew a good many people, most of them in professional London, but widerspread than that. We had changed the date to Christmas Eve. This was partly because there was another New Year’s party, to which we felt inclined to go: but also because we calculated that Pat would be back with his family in Cambridge, and so we could invite the Schiffs. That calculation, however, went wrong. Martin and Irene decided to come for the night, and, together with their children, to have Christmas dinner with us next day. Margaret swore: would anything get rid of that young man? But she was in high spirits, the party occupying her just as it might have done when she was a girl. There weren’t enough refusals, I complained. The senior Getliffes couldn’t come, but Leonard could. Others accepted from out of London. There’s nothing like an operation to make people anxious to see one, I said.

  Still, it was agreeable, when Maurice had come down from Cambridge and Charles had returned from school, to have the four of us sitting before dinner, talking about this domestic ritual. Maurice had young men and girls he wanted to invite, some of them lame ducks. Charles had school friends who lived in the London area. Throw them all in, we agreed. The age range of the party would be about sixty years. As we sat there in the evening, the week before Christmas, I thought that in contrast to Maurice’s untouched good looks, Charles already appeared the older. He had just won a scholarship, very young: but sometimes, as on the morning he visited me in hospital, he seemed preoccupied. I noticed that, instead of staying in bed late, as he used to do in the holidays, he got up as early as I did, riffling through the letters. I had been older than that, I thought, when I was first menaced by the post. But he was controlled enough to live a kind of triple life: his emotions were his own, but, as the Christmas nights came nearer, curtains not yet drawn at tea-time, black sky over the park, he sat with us teasing Margaret, dark-eyed, ironic, enjoying the preparations as much as she did.

  It was the afternoon of 23rd December, about five o’clock. Margaret had not got back from visiting her father, the boys were out. I was, except for our housekeeper, alone in the flat. I had been reading in the study, the light from the angle-lamp bright across my book. There were piles of papers by the chair, a tray of letters on the room-wide desk, all untidy but findable, at least by the eye of memory; all the grooves of habit there. The telephone rang. I crossed over to the far side of the desk. “This is George.” The strong voice, which had never lost
its Suffolk undertone, came out at me. I exclaimed with pleasure: I had not seen him for months. “I’d rather like to have a word,” the voice went on robustly. “I suppose you’re not free, are you?”

  I replied that I was quite free: when would he like–? “I can come straight round. I shan’t be many minutes.”

  Waiting for him, I fetched the ice and brought in a tray of drinks. I was feeling comfortably pleased. This was a surprise, a good end to the year. I hadn’t seen him for months, I thought again, no, not since the April Court. That hadn’t been my fault, but it was good that he should invite himself. He might come to the party the following night, that would be better still; there was something, not precisely nostalgic but reassuring, in going back right through the years. My brother hadn’t really known me when I was in my teens: but George had, and he was the only one, when I was in the state young Charles was approaching now.

  I let him in, and took him to the study. Would he have a drink? I hadn’t seen him in full light, I had my back towards him as I heard a sturdy yes. I splashed in the soda, saying that it was too long since we had had an evening together.

  Then I sat down opposite him.

  “I ought to explain. This isn’t exactly a social visit,” he said.

  I began to smile at the formality, so like occasions long ago when he wished to discuss my career and behaved as if there were some mysterious etiquette that he, alone among humankind, had never been properly taught. I looked into his face as he lifted the glass, ice tinkling. He was staring past me; his eyes were unfocused, which was nothing new. His hair bushed out over his ears, in blond and whitening quiffs, uncut, unbrushed. The lines on his forehead, the lines under his eyes, made him appear not so much old as dilapidated: but no more old or dilapidated than when I had last seen him in our traditional pub.

  Over the desk, on his right, the window was uncovered, and I caught a glimpse of his great head reflected against the darkness.

  It was all familiar, and I went on smiling.

  “Well, what’s the agenda?” I asked.

  “Something rather unpleasant has happened,” said George.

  “What is it?”

  “Of course,” said George, “it must be some absurd mistake.”

  “What is it?”

  “You know who I mean by my niece and the Pateman girl?”

  “Yes. “

  “They’ve been asking them questions about that boy who disappeared. The one who was done away with.”

  For an instant I was immobilised. I was as incapable of action as when I stood at the bedroom window, blinked my eye, and found the black edge still there. That edge: the noise I had just heard, the words: they were all confused.

  Without being able to control my thoughts, I stared at George, wishing him out of my sight. I heard my voice, hard and pitiless. Who were “they”? What had really happened?

  George, face open but without emotion, said that detectives had been interviewing them: one was a detective-superintendent. “He seems to have been very civil,” said George. Statements had been taken in the Patemans’ house. The young women had been told that they might be questioned again.

  “Of course,” said George, “it’s bound to be a mistake. There’s a ridiculous exaggeration somewhere.”

  I looked at him.

  “There must be,” I said.

  “I’m glad you think that,” said George, almost cheerfully.

  From the instant I had heard the news, and been frozen, I had taken the worst for granted. With a certainty I didn’t try even to rationalise. Yet here I was, giving George false hope. When, thirty years before, he had faced me with his own trouble – trouble bad enough, though not as unimaginable as this – I had been maddened by his optimism and had tried to destroy it. Here I was doing the opposite. But it was not out of kindness or comradeship. Even less out of gratitude. I couldn’t find a thought for what he had once done for me. Forebodings from the past, linked with this new fact, at the same time incredible and existential, drove out everything else. I wanted not to see him, I wanted to agree with him and have him go away.

  I tried to do my duty.

  “I suppose,” I said, “I’ve got to ask, but I know it isn’t necessary, you can’t be touched in any way yourself?”

  “Well–” George’s tone was matter-of-fact – “they’ve been in on the fringe of our crowd. If anyone wanted to rake up stories of some of the crowd, or me as far as that goes, it might be awkward–”

  “No, no, no. Not in this sort of case.” This time my reassurance was honest, impatient.

  “That’s what I thought myself.” He spoke amiably but vaguely; he had once been a good lawyer, but now he seemed to have forgotten all his law. He went on: “I ought to have kept more of an eye on them, I grant you that. But the last two or three years, since my health went wrong, I’ve rather gone to pieces.”

  He said it with acquiescence, without remorse: as though “going to pieces” had been a vocation in itself.

  “What steps have you taken? About those two. What practical steps?”

  I heard my own voice hard again.

  “Oh, I’ve put them in touch with solicitors, naturally.”

  “What solicitors?”

  “Eden & Sharples. I didn’t need to look any further.”

  Just for a moment, I was touched. Eden & Sharples was the present name of the firm of solicitors where George had been employed, as managing clerk, all his working life. When he was a young man of brilliant promise, they hadn’t been generous to him. Sometimes I used to think that, had they treated him better, his life might have been different. Yet even now, made to retire early, pensioned off, he still thought of the firm with something like reverence. In this crisis, he turned to them as though they were the only solicitors extant. It was misfits like George – it was as true now as when I first met him – who had most faith in institutions.

  “Well then,” I said. “There’s nothing else you can do just now, is there?”

  That was a question which was meant to sound like leave-taking. I hadn’t offered him another drink: I wanted him to go.

  He leaned forward. His eyes, sadder than his voice, managed to converge on mine. “I should like to do something,” he said. “I should like to ask you something.”

  “What is it?”

  “I told you, I’ve rather gone to pieces. I can’t look after this business. I’m relying on you.”

  “I don’t see what I can do.”

  “You can make sure – if things get more serious, which is ridiculous, of course – you can make sure that they get the best advice. From the senior branch of the legal profession.” George brought out that bit of solicitor’s venom, just as he used to do as a rebellious young man. But he was more lucid than he seemed. As so often, he both believed and disbelieved in his own optimism. He was anticipating that they would go to trial.

  “I can’t interfere. You’ve got to trust the solicitors–”

  Once more, George had become lucid. He could admit to himself how the legal processes worked. He said: “I just want to be certain that we’re doing everything possible. I just want to be certain–” he looked at me with resignation – “that I’m leaving it in good hands.”

  I had no choice, and in fact I didn’t want any. I said: “All right, I’ll do what I can.”

  “That’s very nice of you,” said George.

  I had to give him his second drink. He did not say another word about the investigation. For a few minutes he chatted amicably, made his formal enquiry about Charles, and then announced, with his old hopeful secretive restlessness, that he must be off.

  When I had seen him to the lift, I went straight into the bedroom, so as to avoid meeting either of the boys. There I sat, neither reading nor thinking, until Margaret returned. She was taking off her hat as she opened the door. At the sight of me she said: “What’s happened?”

  I told her, dry and hard.

  “This is dreadful.” Still wearing her coa
t, she had come and put her arms round me.

  “I’m sorry for George,” she said.

  “I don’t know who I’m sorry for.”

  She was listening to each inflexion. Even she could not totally divine why I was so much upset. George was my oldest friend, but she knew that we met seldom and couldn’t really talk. Even so, even if the relation had been closer, George himself was not in danger or involved. It was all at one remove, startling that it should come so near, perhaps–

  “You won’t tell the boys tonight, will you?”

  “They’ll read it in the papers–”

  “Don’t tell them tonight, though.”

  She meant, she didn’t want their spirits quenched before tomorrow’s party.

  “You’ll find,” I said, “that they can take it. People can take anything. That’s the worst thing about us. Those two will take it. Maurice will take it because he’s naturally good – and Charles because, like us, he isn’t.”

  I had spoken roughly, and she frowned. She frowned out of bafflement and concern. Still she could not divine why I was so much upset. Nor could I. I couldn’t have given a reason, either to her or to myself, why this had struck me like another arrest of life. Not so near the physical roots as the blinded eye – but somehow taking hold of more of my whole self, stopping me dead.

  Maybe (I tried to explain it as I lay awake, later that night) a physical shock, one could domesticate, it was part of the run of this existence, it wasn’t removed from Margaret and my son, it was in the nature of things. But George’s announcement didn’t happen to one, it didn’t happen even when one heard it and, at the same instant, foresaw what was to come. Nevertheless, I couldn’t reach, any more than Margaret, what I really felt.