The Light and the Dark (14 page)

For I believed that he would not find peace on this earth. He hoped so calmly that night, with such a calm and beautiful hope, that he could escape the burden of self, struggle from under the weight of life, and so leave melancholy and despair behind for ever; he knew they threatened him, but he could conquer them once he broke loose from the chains of self. He tasted, for the illusory moments that we all know, what it was like to be free – to be free of the confines of one’s personality, through another person, through the enchantments of the many forms of love, through the ecstasy of the flesh (for Roy was freer, less clamped in his own mould, because of the odd secret nights he spent with women he would never see again). He had tasted what it was like to long to believe in God. And that night, while we walked in the winter gale, the Augustinian phrase kept ringing through his mind – “Thou has created us for Thyself and our hearts can never rest until they rest in Thee”.

It sounded not as a threat, but as a promise. Perhaps that was the way he would find rest. That night he felt almost certain that it was the way. But yet, he was so confident and liquid in his hope, if not that way he would find another. There was a state of grace: perhaps it would come to him through God, perhaps in some other fashion. But he would find it, and be safe from the night of despair.

If it could be so, I thought in pain. If it could be so. Yet now I had seen him go through a bout of melancholy to the end, through the desperate sadness to the fantastic release. I believed it was part of his nature to feel that suffering, to undergo that clear-eyed misery, as much a part of him as his mischief, his kindness, his physical elegance, his bone and flesh. It was so deep that nothing could change it. He might think he had escaped, but the melancholy would crush him down once more. It was a curse that no one could take away until he died.

He was teasing me, his laugh was blown away on the wind. I would have given all the future for that moment to stay still. I did not dare to see the future. This was a moment of grace.

If I were right, there must come a time when he would know his nature. Some day his clear eyes would see. When would he know?

The Glimmer of Hope

Roy returned to college for the rest of the Michaelmas term. His reading lamp was alight all day; his window in the turret gleamed above the court through the dark afternoons and the December evenings. He dined regularly at high table; and no one meeting him there, polite, cheerful, teasing with a solemn face, could have guessed what he had just passed through. Though I had seen it, I often forgot. His step on my stairs at night now meant ease, and well-being. He was quite unstrained, as though he had only to wait for good things to happen.

After he had talked to them at dinner, some of his opponents felt he had been misjudged. He sat by Winslow’s side for several nights running. He had a respect for the cross-grained, formidable, unsuccessful man, and he happened to know his son. It was generally thought that Dick Winslow was nothing but a stupid waster, but Roy both liked him and felt his father’s vulnerable, unassuageable love. So they talked about Dick – Winslow pretending to be ironic, realistic, detached. Roy was very gentle, both at the time and afterwards, when he said to me: “It must be dreadful, never being able to give yourself away. He needs to stop keeping his lips so tight, doesn’t he?”

Roy did not, however, make the slightest progress towards melting Despard-Smith. He began by making a genuine attempt, for Ralph Udal’s sake: Despard-Smith was the most influential member of the livings committee, and, if Udal were to have a chance of a college living, the old man had to be placated. But Roy met with a signal failure. He suppressed the glint in his eye that usually visited him in the presence of the self-satisfied and self-important, those who seemed to him invulnerable and whom he called “the stuffed”. Deferentially he discussed the Church of England, college finance, and early heresies. Despard-Smith replied bleakly and with certainty, looking at Roy with uncompromising suspicion. Roy led up to the question of a living for Udal. “I can’t speak for my colleagues, Calvert,” said Despard-Smith, meaning that he could. “But I should personally regard it as nothing short of scandalous to let a man of Udal’s age eat the bread of idleness. It certainly would not be in the man’s own best interests. When he has got down to the c-collar for twenty or thirty years, then perhaps he might come up for consideration.”

“He wants peace to think,” said Roy.

“The time to get peace, as some of us know,” said Despard-Smith, “is when one has borne the heat and burden of the day.”

Roy knew it was no good. But his next question was innocent enough. He asked who would get the vacant living, which was the second best in the college’s gift.

“I’ve told you, I can’t speak for my colleagues,” said Despard-Smith reprovingly. “But I should personally regard Anderson as a very suitable choice. He was slightly junior to me here, so he is no longer in his first youth. But he is a very worthy man.”

“Should you say he was witty?” said Roy, no longer able to repress himself or deciding it was not worth while.

“I don’t know what you mean, Calvert.”

“Worthy people are not witty,” said Roy. “That’s how we can tell they’re worthy.”

He looked at Despard-Smith with steady, serious eyes.

“Isn’t that so, Despard?”

Despard-Smith looked back with mystification, anger and disapproval.

From that time on, Roy selected Despard-Smith for his most demure and preposterous questions – partly because the old man incited him, and partly because, knowing of Despard-Smith’s speeches over the election, Roy had a frail and unsaintly desire for revenge. Whenever he could catch Despard-Smith in the Court or the combination room, Roy advanced on him with a shimmering net of solemn requests for information. Despard-Smith became badgered, increasingly hostile, and yet mystified. He was never sure whether Roy might not be in earnest, at least part of the time. “What an extraordinary young man Calvert is,” he used to grumble in a creaking, angry voice. “He’s just made a most extraordinary remark to me–”

The Boscastles had gone down to the villa at Roquebrune late in November, and the Master and his family followed them a few days before Christmas. Roy spent Christmas with his family, and I with my wife in Chelsea. She asked me to stay a little longer, and so I arrived at Monte Carlo the day after Roy.

I had lain awake all night in the train, and went to bed in the afternoon. When I woke it was early evening, and from my window I could see lights springing out along the coast. Roy was not in his room, was not in the hotel. He had already told me that we were dining that night out at the Boscastles’. It was not time to dress, and I took a walk away from the sea, through the hilly streets at the back of the town.

I was thinking of nothing, it was pleasant to smell the wood smoke and garlic in the narrow streets: then I heard two voices taking an amorous farewell. A woman’s said something in Italian, was saying goodbye: then another, light, reedy, very clear in the crisp, cold air. “Ciao,” he called back to her, and I saw in the light from a window a girl disappearing into the house. “Ciao,” she called, when I could no longer see her: her voice was rough but young. “Ciao,” Roy replied again, softly, and then he saw me.

He was disconcerted, and I extremely amused. I knew as well as he about his minor escapades: some woman would catch his fancy, in a shop, in a theatre, behind the desk in an hotel, and he would pursue her with infinite concentration for a day. He sometimes told me of his rebuffs, but never of his conquests; and he did not like being caught at the end of one.

“Remarkable Italian they speak here,” he said with a somewhat precarious dignity, as we descended into the clean, bright, shop-lined streets. He gave me a pedantic lecture on the Italian of Liguria contrasted with Provençal; it was no doubt correct, his linguistic skill was beyond question, but I was grinning.

We came to the square; the flowers stood out brilliantly under the lights; as though unwillingly, Roy grinned too.

“It’s just my luck,” he said. “Why need you come that way?”

A motor-car drove in to take us to the Villa Prabaous.

“The Boscastles have hired three cars for all the time they’re here,” said Roy. “Plus two which they need occasionally for visitors. There’s nothing like economy. They sweep in and out all day.”

On our way, along the edge of the calm sea, he was speculating with interest, with amusement, over the Boscastle fortune. “Poor as church mice”, “they haven’t two sixpences to rub together”, “it’s really heroic of them to keep up the house” – we had both heard those descriptions from Lady Muriel and her friends. Yet, with occasional economies, such as taking a villa at Roquebrune, the Boscastles lived more grandly than any of the rich people we knew. The problem was complicated by the fact that the estate had, as a device through which they paid less taxes, been made into a company. The long necklace of lights twinkled through the pines on Cap Martin: Roy had just satisfied himself that, if Lord Boscastle died next day, his will would not be proved at less than £200,000.

The Villa Prabaous was rambling, large, very ugly, and, like many houses on the north side of the Mediterranean, seemed designed for a climate much hotter than where it found itself. That night an enormous log fire sputtered and smoked in the big dining-room, and we were all cold, except Lady Muriel. For Lady Muriel it provided an excellent opportunity to compare the degree of discomfort with that of several mansions she had visited in her childhood, and to advise her sister-in-law how, if one’s experience were great enough, these privations could be overcome. Lady Muriel was not a passive guest.

It was exactly the same party as when Roy was first presented to the Boscastles. Mrs Seymour was staying at the villa; I had escaped her for some time past, but now found myself sitting next to her at dinner.

“It must be wonderful to see heaps and heaps of counters being pushed towards you,” she said.

“It must,’’ I said.

“Yes, Doris?” said Lady Muriel loudly. “Have you been playing today?”

Mrs Seymour giggled, and was coy. I was surprised and irritated (uncharitably, but she annoyed me more than was reasonable) to meet her there. One reason, I thought, was that Lord Boscastle should never miss his evening bridge; Mrs Seymour, like Lady Muriel and Joan, was a player of good class.

Sure of his game that night, out of which I had managed to disentangle myself, Lord Boscastle wished to spend dinner talking of Saint-Simon’s memoirs, which he had just been reading. I would willingly have listened, but Roy distracted him by asking his opinion of various fashionable persons staying in Monte Carlo and the villas near. Lord Boscastle, as I now knew for certain, took a perverse pleasure in acting in character. He was always ready, in fact, to caricature himself. And so, as Roy produced name after name with a flicker in his eye, Lord Boscastle was prompt with his comment. “I don’t know him, of course, but I shouldn’t have thought he was anything out of the ordinary, should you have thought so?” “I don’t know whether any of you have met her, but I shouldn’t have expected her to be specially distinguished.”

The Master chuckled. It was hard to guess precisely what he thought of his brother-in-law’s turns; but it was patent that he was delighted to see Roy so manifestly happy and composed. The Master smiled at me with camaraderie, but rather as though I had always exaggerated the fuss. Yet I was sure that he had not shared our knowledge with anyone in the villa that night, certainly not with his wife.

Lady Muriel herself, not perceiving any secrets round her, had been led to mention acquaintances of hers who were wintering in the town. She finished by saying: “Doris tells me the Houston Eggars have arrived. No doubt for a very short holiday. They are not staying at your hotel, I think?”

“No,” said Roy.

“Doris! Where are they staying?”

Mrs Seymour opened her eyes vaguely, then gave the name of an hotel slightly more modest than the Hermitage.

“I’m glad to hear it.” Lady Muriel looked at me accusingly. “I should think it is very suitable to their income.”

After dinner, just before the bridge four broke away, I saw Joan take Roy aside. She was wearing a blue dress, and I thought how much prettier she was becoming. She asked him straight out: “Why do you lead my uncle on? Why don’t you make him talk about something worth while?”

“Too stupid,” said Roy.

“He’s not too stupid.”

“Of course he’s not. I am.”

“You’re impossible.” She had begun to laugh, as she could not help doing whenever the demure and solemn expression came over him. Then she turned fierce again, stayed by him, and went on quarrelling as Lord Boscastle led off Lady Muriel, Mrs Seymour and the Master for their bridge. Meanwhile Lady Boscastle was commanding: “Lewis, bring your chair here, please. I am going to scold you a little.”

She glanced at me sarcastically, affectionately, charmingly, through her lorgnette.

“Yes,” she said, as I came beside her, arranged her table, filled her glass, “I think I must scold you a little.”

“What have I done now?” I said.

“I notice that you are wearing a soft shirt tonight. It looks quite a nice shirt, my dear Lewis, but this is not quite the right time. What have you to say for yourself?”

“I loathe stiff shirts,” I said. “This is very much more comfortable.”

“My dear boy, I should call that excuse rather – untravelled.” It was her final word of blame. “The chief aim of civilised society is not comfort, as you know very well. Otherwise you would not be sitting in a draughty room listening to an old woman–”

She was an invalid, her temples were sunk in, her skin minutely wrinkled; yet she could make me feel that she was twenty years younger, she could still draw out the protests of admiration. And, when I made them, she could still hear them with pleasure.

“Quite nicely said.” She smiled as she spoke. “Perhaps you would always have found some compensations in civilised society. Though we did our best to make you obey the rules.”