The Sleep of Reason

by C. P. Snow

  Back in our bedroom – hours before the time I lay awake – Margaret was still asking me to keep the news from the boys, at least for a couple of days. Of course I would, I promised. She searched my face, wondering what that would give away. Then I snapped back to this home of ours, and told her she ought to know me better: didn’t she remember times, nearer the bone than this, when I had been able to pretend?

  18: The Christmas Greeting

  JUST before nine on Christmas Eve, as we sat round waiting, Charles wanted to arrange a sweepstake on the first guest to arrive. Martin, Irene and Pat had been dining with us: Pat, to whom parties were like native air, was making sure that the hired waiters knew their job. Standing in the drawing-room, decorous, empty, expectant, paintings throwing back the light, Margaret, Irene and Martin were taking their first drinks. As for me, I should have to be on my feet for the next few hours: anyway, it was better not to drink that night.

  If Charles’ sweep had been arranged, no one would have won it. The bell rang on the stroke of nine: the first guest entered: it was Herbert Getliffe, whom only I knew and whom most of the others had scarcely heard of. He entered, a little dishevelled, his glance at the same time bold and furtive. He was in his mid-seventies by now, years older than his half-brother Francis. When I first entered his chambers (and found myself exploited until I learned the tricks of one of the trickiest of men), most people prophesied that he would be a judge before he finished. Herbert would have prophesied that himself: it was his ambition. But it hadn’t happened. He had, fairly late in life, got on to the snakes instead of the ladders. He might pour out his emotions, but he was pathologically tight with money. That put him on the final snake. For, although it was hushed up, he had been over-ingenious with his income tax returns. After that, no judgeship. He had carried on with his practice until a few years before. He made more money, and, when his wife died, saved it by living in a tiny Kensington flat and inviting himself out to meals with his friends. They did not mind having him, for, though his ambition had failed him, his ebullience hadn’t. As he grew old, most of us – even while we remembered being done down – became fond of him.

  With great confidence, he called my wife Marjorie. He seemed under the impression that she was an American. Breathlessly, with extreme gusto, he told her a story of his daughter, who was living “in a place called Philadelphia”. His style of conversation had become more mysteriously allusive: Margaret, who had met him just once before, looked puzzled. Helpfully he explained: “Pa. USA.”

  In the morphology of such a party, four people had come in by ten past nine, and then something like fifty in the next few minutes. Expectancy left the rooms, the noise level climbed. I had to walk round, looking after the strangers. An African friend of Maurice’s, lost among the crowd. As I talked about his work, I saw Douglas Osbaldiston, fresh-faced, still young-looking, standing among a group of young women. There were long tables, laid with food and glasses, in each of the bigger rooms: but within half-an-hour a hundred bodies stood round them, more were coming, one had to push one’s way. I couldn’t spend time with my own friends. Lester Ince, who had been drinking before he arrived, introduced me to his new wife, ornamental, a couturier’s triumph. She was full of enthusiasm for any of Lester’s acquaintances, but he was chiefly occupied with hilarity because I was going about with a glass of tomato juice.

  In the crowd, the noise, trying to spot the lonely, I put last night’s news out of mind. Yet once – as though it were unconnected – I was thinking, as I introduced Vicky to Charles March, that Christmas Eve was an unlucky night. Why had we fixed on it? There had been one Christmas Eve, at another party, which even now I couldn’t forgive.

  I shook hands with Douglas Osbaldiston in the press. Friendly, kind, competent, he asked about an acquaintance: could he help? Was any night a lucky night for Douglas? He was at the top of the Treasury by now, as had been predictable long before. Some of the young people in these rooms thought about him as the high priest – unassuming, yes, but stuffy and complacent – of what they still called “the Establishment”. Early next morning, as on every morning, he would go to his wife’s bedside. The paralysis had, after six years, crept so far that she could not light a cigarette or turn the pages of a book. He had loved her as much as anyone there would ever love.

  In the innermost room, one of the opposition front bench, who had attended the scientists’ dinner, was holding court. No, not holding court, for he was as matey and unassuming as Douglas himself. Standing there, listening to the young, chatting, tucking away names in a computer memory.

  In another room Monty Cave, who had in July become a Secretary of State, held his own court. It had needed staff-work by Martin, assisted by Pat – who had been amiable to Vicky but became over-conscientious in his party duties – to keep the front benches apart. Not because the two of them were political opponents, but because they were personal enemies. We didn’t want a battle of practised distaste, even though Monty, who was not a favourite with many, would come off worst.

  Gilbert Cooke, plethoric, hot-eyed, like a great ship in sail, burst through to me. He was in search of my son Charles, intent on talking about the old school. But when I saw them together, Charles was politely slipping away. Their school was for Gilbert the most delectable of topics of conversation, but Charles did not share that view, especially if there were comely girls close by. For Charles, whatever letter he was waiting for in the mornings, was on the lookout that night. There was a daughter of Charles March’s, shy and pretty, whom he knew I should have liked him to take out. Instead I kept noticing his head close to that of Naomi Rubin, David Rubin’s youngest, who was working in London and who was years older than Charles. She looked bright, nothing like so pretty as the March girl: but she was listening, and I didn’t doubt that he was dissimulating his age.

  There were swirls through the rooms as a few people left or others came in late. Caro, who used to be Roger Quaife’s wife, made an entrance with her new husband. It was surprising that she came, for normally she moved entirely in a smart circle with which Margaret and I had only a flickering acquaintance. Her second husband, unlike Roger, came from an ambience as rich and rarefied as her own – though to some that was concealed under the name of Smith. He was cultivated, much more so than Caro, and, of all those I had talked to that night, he was the only one who could identify our paintings.

  We were standing in the dining-room, which had at that stage of the party become the central lobby, so congested that I found it hard to direct Smith’s Hanoverian head to a newly-acquired Chinnery, when I heard scraps of a conversation, loud and alcoholic, nearer the middle of the room.

  “That’s all we need to say,” Edgar Hankins was declaiming, in the elegiac tone he used for his literary radio talks. His rubbery, blunt-featured face was running with sweat. “That’s all we need to say. Birth, copulation, and death. That’s all there is.”

  He was declaiming to, or at least in the company of, Irene. Once, and it had overlapped the first years of her marriage to Martin, she had been in love with him. All that was long since over. She gave a cheerful malicious yelp (was there, out of past history, just the extra edge?), and replied: “‘He talks to me that never had a son’.”

  It was true (aside, someone was complaining about quotations from the best authors) that Hankins, who had married after their love affair, had no children. Hankins, with elevated reiteration, answered: “Birth, copulation and death.”

  “If you must have it,” cried Irene triumphantly, “birth, copulation, children and death! That’s a bit nearer.”

  Hankins went on with his slogan – as though he had reached one of the drinking stages where the truth is ultimately clear and only needs to be pronounced. As I pushed away, seeing someone alone, I heard Irene’s antiphon.

  “Birth, copulation, children and death! If anyone leaves out the children, he doesn’t begin to know what it’s all about.”

  Quite late, about a quarter to twelve, when the ro
oms were beginning to thin, Sammikins, in a dinner jacket with a carnation in his buttonhole, walked in. He asked loudly after his sister Caro, who had already left. Their father had died a couple of years before, and Sammikins had come into the title. So he had had to give up his seat in the Commons, which to him, though to no one else, appeared his proper occupation. He told me – or rather he told the room – that he had lost “a packet” at poker an hour or two before. I hadn’t seen him for months: I thought he looked drawn and that the flesh had fallen in below his cheekbones. When I got him to myself, I asked how he was.

  “Just a touch of alcoholic fatigue, dear boy,” he said in his brazen voice. But he was quite sober. Apart from me and some of the very young, he seemed the only person present who had not had a drink that night.

  Many people in the swirl were well and happy. Some, I knew, were heartsick. With Douglas, from a cause that couldn’t be cured. Others, like Vicky, who couldn’t restrain herself from begging ten minutes alone with Pat, might some day look on at this kind of party, just as the content now looked at her. Leonard Getliffe had been and gone. There must have been others there, not only among the young, who – without the rest of us knowing – were putting a face on things. It was part of the flux. Just as it was part of the flux that, in the public eye, some were having the luck and some the opposite. Douglas, in spite of his organic grief, had reached the peak in his job. The master politician was confident that, before this time next year, he would have reached the peak in his. An American playwright, who had been modestly drinking in a corner, had just had a spectacular success. And there was another success, the most bizarre of all. Gilbert Cooke, who had been fortunate to be kept in the civil service after the war, had managed to become deputy head of one of the security branches. It couldn’t have been a more esoteric triumph: except to Douglas, one dared not mention the name of the post, much less of its occupant. I had not the slightest conception of how Gilbert had made it. For him, who was not able even to suggest that he had been promoted, it was his crowning glory.

  Whereas Herbert Getliffe was not the only one for whom the snakes had been stronger than the ladders. Edgar Hankins’ brand of literary criticism, which had been rooted in the twenties, had gone out of fashion. He could still earn a living, one saw his name each week, he still wrote with elegiac eloquence: but the younger academics sneered at him, and in the weeklies he was being referred to as though he were a dead Georgian poet. There was another turn-up for the book (Sammikins, in another context, had just been blaring out those words), the most unjust of all – as though anything could happen either way. Walter Luke had stepped in for half-an-hour, grizzled, crisp. Yes, he had got honours, but what did they mean? Apart from Leonard Getliffe, he had a greater talent than anyone there. But for years past he had thrown up everything to lead the project on plasma physics. Now, so all the scientists said, it was certain that the problem would not be solved for a generation. Walter Luke knew it, and knew – making jaunty cracks at his own expense – that he had wasted his creative life.

  At midnight, as I was saying some goodbyes at the hall door, another guest, the last of all, emerged from the lift. It was Ronald Porson. He hadn’t been invited by me – but he was one of those, living alone in bedsitters in the neighbourhood, whom Maurice and the local parson went to visit. The parson had been at the party, but had left some time before to celebrate Christmas mass. I guessed, from the first sight, that I should need some help with Porson, but Maurice was nowhere near.

  He came lurching up. In the passage light there was the gleam of an MCC tie.

  “Good evening, Lewis,” he said in a domineering tone. I asked him to come in. As we walked into the dining-room, he said: “I was told you had a champagne party on.”

  Not quite, I said. But there was the bar over there –

  “I insist,” said Porson, “I was told it was a champagne party.”

  As a matter of fact, I said, there were lots of other liquids, but not champagne.

  “I insist,” began Porson, and I told him that, if he wanted champagne, I would find a bottle. He had come to pick a quarrel: I didn’t mind his doing so with me, but there were others he might upset. Immediately he refused champagne, and demanded gin.

  “I don’t like large parties,” said Porson, looking round the room.

  “Can’t be helped,” I replied.

  He took a gulp. “You’ve got too many Jews here,” he announced.

  “Be careful.”

  “Why should I be?”

  Martin, who had been watching, whispered, “You may need a strong man or two.” He beckoned Sammikins, and they both stood near. Porson was in his seventies, but he could be violent. None of us, not even the clergyman, knew how he survived. He came from a professional family; he had eked out his bit of capital, but it had gone long since. He had once been convicted of importuning. But all that happened to him made him fight off pity and become either aggressive or patronising or both.

  “Who is he?” He pointed to Sammikins.

  I said, Mr Porson, Lord Edgeworth.

  “Why don’t you do something about it?” Porson asked him.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Why don’t you do something about this country? That’s what you’re supposed to sit there for, isn’t it?” Porson put out his underlip. “I’ve got no use for the lot of you.”

  “You’d better calm down,” said Sammikins, getting hot-eyed himself.

  “Why the hell should I? I had an invitation, didn’t I? I suppose you had an invitation–”

  Then Maurice came up, and greeted him amicably. “Hallo, young man,” said Porson.

  “I expected you’d be in church,” said Maurice.

  “Well, I thought about it–”

  “You promised Godfrey” (the parson) “you would, didn’t you?”

  “To tell you the bloody truth,” said Porson, “it’s a bit too spike for me.” He began, self-propelled onto another grievance, on what “they” were doing to the Church of England, but Maurice (the other’s rage dripped off him), said he would drive him round, they would still arrive in time for the Christmas greetings. Gentle, unworried, Maurice led him out: although the last I saw, looking through the hall towards the lift, were Porson’s arms raised above his head, as though he were inspired into a final denunciation of the whole house.

  About an hour later, the crowd had gone, Pat and the waiters had cleared the glasses from the drawing-room, the windows were open to the cold air. Again in the morphology of parties, there was still the last residue remaining, not only remaining but settling down. Edgar Hankins reposed on cushions on the drawing-room floor: so did the playwright: Margaret and I sat back in our habitual chairs. Martin and Irene, since they were staying with us, remained too. Their daughter had gone to bed, Pat had disappeared, but Charles wanted to look as though the night were just beginning. Also fixtures, unpredictable fixtures, were Gilbert and Betty Cooke.

  Martin, cheerful, said to me: “Look, you’re about eighteen drinks behind the rest of us. Won’t you have one now?”

  I hadn’t been able to tell him about George Passant’s news. It would have been a relief to do so. But now I was tired, sedated by the to-and-fro of people, not caring: yes, I said, I might as well have a drink. When he brought it to me, it was very strong. That was deliberate, for Martin was a vigilant man.

  Someone cried “Happy Christmas!”

  From the floor Edgar Hankins, who was far gone, raised a dormouse-like head.

  “Not the English greeting,” he muttered, fluffing the words.

  “What’s the matter?” said Irene.

  “Not Happy Christmas. Insipid modernism. Vulgar. Genteel taste. Merry Christmas – that’s the proper way. Merry Christmas.”

  Hankins subsided. Gilbert Cooke, with Charles sitting beside him, could at last indulge his insatiable passion for talking about their school. Charles wanted to hold inquiries about people at the party, but was trapped.

 
For a few minutes Betty and I were in conversation, quietly, with talk all round us. We were fond of each other, we had been for years. In bad times for us both, we had tried to help each other. Her love affairs had gone wrong: she was diffident but passionate, she hadn’t the nerve to grab. We had thought, certainly I had, that she deserved a better man than Gilbert, or at least a different one. Yet somehow the marriage had worked.

  That night, as we whispered, she was watching me with her acute, splendid eyes, the feature which, more in middle age than youth, gave her a touch of beauty.

  “You’ve had enough,” she said.

  I protested.

  “Now, now, now,” she said. “I used to notice one or two things, didn’t I?”

  I had to give a smile.

  “I’ll get rid of them,” she said, glancing round the room. It was the sort of practical good turn which, even in her bleakest times, she had often done for me.

  Next morning I woke up early. Through the window came the sound, very faint, of church bells. I stretched myself, feeling well, with the vague sense, perhaps some shadow of a memory from childhood, of a pleasing day ahead. Then, edging into consciousness, suddenly shutting out all else – as sharp, as absolute as when, a few weeks before, I had awakened in well-being and then seen the veil over my eye – was the brute fact. There was nothing to keep away or soften what George had told me; and what I felt as I listened, I felt waking up that morning, as though the passage of hours hadn’t happened, or couldn’t do its work.

  Part Three

  Questions Without Answers

  19: A Fair Question

  A milky blue sky, a bland and sunny afternoon, very mild for the second week in January. There was a blazing fire in the Residence drawing-room, and I was sitting on the window seat. Neither Vicky nor Arnold Shaw had been in the house when I arrived an hour before, but all the matter-of-fact comforts had been arranged, and, looking out at the bright daylight, I did not want to leave them. In fact, I had an appointment with Eden & Sharples, George’s old firm, at half past three.