Time of Hope (20 page)

The knife of jealousy twisted. Then I felt a flood of absolute relief, for Sheila said clearly: ‘He’s dense.’

‘I don’t think you can say that, Sheila.’

‘I can.’

‘You mustn’t be too hard on your friends,’ said Mrs Knight busily. ‘You’ll be telling me next that Tom Devitt isn’t interesting. He’s a specialist at the infirmary,’ said Mrs Knight to me, and continued with enthusiasm, ‘and they say he’s the coming man. Sheila will be telling us that he’s dense too. Or–’

The involuntary smile had come to Sheila’s mouth, and on her forehead I could see the lines. The jealous spasm had returned, with Tom Devitt’s name, with the others’ (for Mrs Knight had by no means finished), but it merged, as I watched Sheila, into a storm of something that had no place in romantic love, something so unfamiliar in my feeling for her that I did not recognize it then. It only lasted for a moment, but it left me off my balance for Mrs Knight’s next charge.

‘I think I remember Sheila saying that you were kept very busy,’ she remarked. ‘Of course, I know we can’t all choose exactly what we want, can we? Some of us have got to be content–’

‘I’ve chosen what I want, Mrs Knight,’ I said, a little too firmly.

‘Have you?’ She seemed puzzled.

‘I’m a law student. That’s what I’ve chosen to do.’

‘In your spare time, I suppose?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m reading for the Bar. Full-time. I shan’t do anything else until I’m called.’ It was technically true. It had been true since one o’clock that day. ‘I shan’t earn a penny till I’m called.’

Mrs Knight was not specially quick in the uptake. She had to pause, so as to readjust her ideas.

‘I do my reading in the town,’ I said. ‘Then I go up to my Inn once a term, and get through my dinners in a row. It saves money – and I shall need it until I get a practice going, you know.’

It was the kind of career talk she was used to hearing; but she was baffled at hearing it from me.

‘All the barristers I’ve known’, she said, ‘have eaten their dinners while they were at college. I remember my cousin used to go up when he was at Trinity–’

‘Did he ever get through an examination?’ asked Sheila.

‘Perhaps he wasn’t clever at his books,’ said Mrs Knight, becoming more cross, ‘but he was a good man, and everyone respected him in the county.’

‘My friends at the Inn’, I put in, ‘nearly all come from Cambridge.’ Here I was stretching the truth. I had made one or two friendly acquaintances there, such as Charles March, who were undergraduates, but I often dined with excessively argumentative Indians.

Mrs Knight was very cross. She did not like being baffled and confused – yet somehow I had automatically to be promoted a step. She had to say, as though Sheila had met me at the house of one of their friends ‘I’ve always heard that a barrister has to wait years for his briefs. Of course, I suppose you don’t mind waiting–’

I admitted that it would take time. Mrs Knight gave an appeased and comforted sigh, happy to be back on firm ground.

Soon after, there was a footfall outside the room, a slow footfall. Mrs Knight’s eyes widened. ‘He’s coming!’ she said. ‘He must have finished!’

Mr Knight entered with an exaggeratedly drooping, an exaggeratedly languid step. He was tall, massive, with a bay window of a stomach that began as far up as his lower chest. He was wearing a lounge suit without a dog collar, and he carried a sheaf of manuscript in his hand. His voice was exaggeratedly faint. He was, at first glance, a good deal of an actor, and he was indicating that the virtue had gone out of him.

He said faintly to his wife: ‘I’m sorry I had to be late, darling,’ sat in the armchair which had been preserved for him, and half closed his eyes.

Mrs Knight asked with quacking concern whether he would like a cup of tea. It was plain that she adored him.

‘Perhaps a cup,’ he whispered. ‘Perhaps just a cup.’

The toast had been kept warm on the hotplate, she said anxiously. Or she could have some fresh made in three minutes.

‘I
can’t
eat it, darling,’ he said. ‘I can’
eat
it, I can’t eat
anything
.’

The faintness with which he spoke was bogus, Actually his voice was rich, and very flexible in its range of tone. He had a curious trick of repeating a phrase, and at the second turn completely altering the stress. Throughout his entry, which he enjoyed to the full, he had paid no attention to me, had not thrown me an open glance, but as he lay back with heavy lids drawn down he was observing me from the corner of an eye that was disturbingly sly and shrewd.

When at last he admitted to a partial recovery, Mrs Knight introduced me. She explained volubly the reason for my eccentric attire, taking credit for her speed of action. Then, since they seemed still to be worrying her, she repeated my statements about doing nothing but read for the Bar, as though trusting him to solve the problem.

Unlike his wife, Mr Knight was indirect. He gazed at Sheila, not at me.

‘You never tell me anything, do you, my dear girl,’ he said. ‘You never tell me anything.’

Then slyly, still looking at her, he questioned me. His voice stayed carefully fatigued, he appeared to be taking a remote interest in these ephemeral things. In fact, he was astute. If he had been present, I should never have succeeded for a minute in putting up my bluff with Mrs Knight. Without asking me outright, he soon got near the truth. He took a malicious pleasure in talking round the point, letting me see that he had guessed, not giving me away to his wife.

‘Isn’t there a regulation’, he inquired, his voice diminishing softly, ‘by which you can’t read for the Bar if you’re following certain occupations? Does that mean one has to break away? I take it, you may have had to select your time to break away – from some other occupation?’

It was not the reason, but it was a very good shot. We talked for a few minutes about legal careers. He was proud of his ability to ‘place’ people and he was now observing me with attention. Sometimes he asked a question edged with malice. And I was learning something about him.

He and his wife were each snobbish, but in quite different fashions. Mrs Knight had been born into the comfortable moneyed middle class; she was a robust woman without much perception, and accepted those who seemed to arrive at the same level; just as uncritically, she patronized those who did not. Mr Knight’s interest was far more subtle and pervading. To begin with, he was no more gently born than I was. I could hear the remains of a northern dialect in that faint and modulated voice. Mr Knight had met his wife, and captured her for good, when he was a young curate. She had brought him money, he had moved through the social scene, he had dined in the places he had longed for as a young man – in the heart of the county families and the dignitaries of the Church. The odd thing was, that having arrived there, he still retained his romantic regard for those very places. All his shrewdness and suspicion went to examine the channels by which others got there. On that subject he was accurate, penetrating, and merciless.

He was a most interesting man. The time was getting on; I was wondering whether I ought to leave, when I witnessed another scene which, though I did not know it, was a regular feature of the vicarage Saturday teas. Mrs Knight looked busily, lovingly, at her husband.

‘Please, darling, would you mind giving us the sermon?’ she said.

‘I
can’t
do it, darling. I can’t
do
it. I’m too exhausted.’

‘Please. Just give us the beginning. You know Sheila always likes to hear the sermon. I’m sure you’d like to hear the sermon.’ Mrs Knight rallied me. ‘It will give you something to think over on the way home. I’m sure you want to hear it.’

I said that I did.

‘I believe he’s a heathen,’ said Mr Knight maliciously, but his fingers were playing with the manuscript.

‘You heard what he said, darling,’ urged Mrs Knight. ‘He’ll be disappointed if you don’t give us a good long piece.’

‘Oh well.’ Mr Knight sighed. ‘If you insist, If you insist.’

Mrs Knight began to alter the position of the reading lamp. She made her husband impatient. He was eager to get to it.

The faintness disappeared from his voice on the instant. It filled the room more effortlessly than Mrs Knight’s. He read magnificently. I had never heard such command of tone, such control, such loving articulation. And I had never seen anyone enjoy more his own reading; occasionally he peered over the page to make sure that we were not neglecting to enjoy it too. I was so much impressed with the whole performance that I could not spare much notice for the argument.

He gave us a good long piece. In fact, he gave us the whole sermon, twenty-four minutes by the clock. At the end, he leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. Mrs Knight broke into enthusiastic, worshipping praise. I added my bit.

‘Water, please, darling,’ said Mr Knight very faintly, without opening his eyes. ‘I should like a glass of water. Just water.’

As I changed into my own clothes in the bathroom, I was wondering how I could say goodbye to Sheila alone. In the general haze of excitement, I was thinking also of her father. He was vain, preposterously and superlatively vain, and yet astute; at the same time theatrical and shrewd; malicious, hypochondriac, and subtle; easy to laugh at, and yet exuding, through it all, a formidable power. He was a man whom no one would feel negligible. I believed that it was not impossible I could get on with him. I should have to suffer his malice, he would be a more effective enemy than his wife. But I felt one thing for certain, while I hummed tunelessly in the bathroom: he was worried about Sheila, and not because she had brought me there that afternoon; he was worried about her, as she sat silently by the fire; and there had been a spark, not of liking, but of sympathy, between him and me.

On my way downstairs I heard Mrs Knight’s voice raised in indignation.

‘It’s much too wet to think of such a thing,’ came through the drawing-room door. When I opened it, Mrs Knight was continuing: ‘It’s just asking to get yourself laid up. I don’t know when you’ll begin to have a scrap of sense. And even if it were a nice night–’

‘I’m walking back with you,’ said Sheila to me.

‘I want you to tell her that it’s quite out of the question. It’s utterly absurd,’ said Mrs Knight.

‘I don’t know what it’s like outside,’ I said half-heartedly. ‘It does sound rather wild.’

The wind had been howling round the house.

‘If it doesn’t hurt you, it won’t hurt me,’ said Sheila.

Mr Knight was still lying back with his eyes closed.

‘She
oughtn’t
to do it,’ a whisper came across the room. ‘She oughtn’t to
do
it.’

‘Are you ready?’ said Sheila.

Her will was too strong for them. It suddenly flashed across my mind, as she put on a mackintosh in the hall, that I had no idea, no idea in the world, how she felt towards either of them.

The wind blew stormily in our faces; Sheila laughed aloud. It was not raining hard, for the gale was too strong, but one could taste the driven rain. Down the village street we were quiet; I felt rapturously at ease, she had never been so near. As we turned down a lane, our fingers laced, and hers were pressing mine.

We had not spoken since we left the house. Her first words were accusatory, but her tone was soft ‘Why did you play my mother’s game?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Pretending to be better off than you are.’

‘All I said was true.’

‘You gave her a wrong impression,’ she said. ‘You know you did.’

‘I thought it was called for.’ I was smiling.

‘Stupid of you,’ she said. ‘I’d rather you said you were a clerk.’

‘It would have shocked her.’

‘It would have been good for her,’ said Sheila.

The gale was howling, the trees dashed overhead, and we walked on in silence, in silence deep with joy.

‘Lewis,’ she said at last. ‘I want to ask you something.’

‘Darling?’

‘Weren’t you terribly embarrassed–?’

‘Whatever at?’

‘At coming in wet. And meeting strangers for the first time in that fancy dress.’

She laughed.

‘You did look a bit absurd,’ she added.

‘I didn’t think about it,’ I said.

‘Didn’t you really mind?’

‘No.’

‘I can’t understand you,’ she said. ‘I should have curled up inside.’ Then she said: ‘You are rather wonderful.’

I laughed at her. I said that, if she were going to admire me for anything, she might choose something more sensible to admire. But she was utterly serious. To her self-conscious nerves, it was incredible that anyone should be able to master such a farce.

‘I curled up a bit myself this afternoon,’ she said, a little later.

‘When?’

‘When they were making fools of themselves in front of you.’

‘Good God, girl,’ I said roughly, lovingly, ‘they’re human.’

She tightened her grip on my hand.

At the end of a lane we came in sight of the farm. There was one more field to cross, and the lights blazed out in the windy darkness. I asked her to come in.

‘I couldn’t,’ she said. I had an arm round her shoulders as we stood. Suddenly she hid her face against my coat. I asked her again.

‘I must go,’ she said. She looked up at me, and for the first time I kissed her, while the wind and my own blood sang and pounded in my ears. She drew away, then threw her arms round my neck, and I felt her mouth on mine.

‘I must go,’ she said. I touched her cheek, wet in the rain, and she pressed my hand. Then she walked down the lane, dark that night as a tunnel-mouth, her strong, erect stride soon losing her to sight against the black hedges. I waited there until I could hear nothing, no footsteps, nothing but the sound of the wind.

I returned to the group, who were revelling in a celebration. Jack was starting on his new business, and after supper George sat in our midst, predicting success for us all, for me most of all, complacent with hope about all our futures. It was not until the next, Sunday, night I spoke to George alone. The others had gone back by the last bus; I was staying till the morning, in order to have the first comfort of my emancipation. That night, when we were left alone, George confided more of his own strange, violent, inner life than he had ever done before. He gave me part of his diary, and there I sat, reading by the light of the oil lamp, while George smoked his pipe by my side.