The Malcontents (5 page)

‘No, everyone’s got to hear it all,’ Stephen replied, without expression. ‘You tell him,’ Stephen looked up at Neil. That was deliberate management, for Stephen knew that there was no sympathy between those two, and that Neil felt something like suspicion, or at any rate resentment, for the other man.

There had to be reiteration. Impersonally, competently, Neil rapped out a précis of what had been said in the pub and outside the cathedral the night before. Bernard, who had heard much less of it than the others, listened with attention. Lance swayed back and fro on heels and buttocks.

‘That’s about the size of it,’ Neil finished, not wasting words.

‘Well, you can’t say life’s entirely uneventful, can you?’ said Lance, gazing round sidelong, looking for an audience.

No, Neil wasn’t easy with him. Neil had a grudge against people so well-off that they could waste their time; here was a man whose father had made money out of London property and who himself had a grudge because he hadn’t got into Oxford; in this university, though nearly all the core took him to be intelligent, he was failing examinations. While Stephen wondered whether he was really only a façade. Stephen, as much as most, tolerated the way any of them elected to behave. Lance wanted girls: that was in the natural run of things: he had certainly tried to make it with Emma, with what success only she and he were certain. There were plenty of other girls calling at Lance’s own rooms, much more luxurious than this, where the core sometimes, but not often, met. Partly because Lance, in spite of his air of conviviality, was curiously mean when it came to entertaining: but more because he was the only one of them who took to drugs. Not continuously, nor perhaps seriously: but Stephen had seen him in a state which he explained as ‘over-liberated,’ the connections disjointed in his talk, much more boring than being with a drunk. That too they would all have tolerated, but for their purposes, so Stephen thought, it wasn’t safe. That might have been a rationalization, for Stephen, unwilling to admit it and shaking it off in some of his personal life, was not free from a strain of puritanism or reserve.

Why, Mark had once asked, understanding his friend well, interested at seeing him for once so undecided, hadn’t Stephen got rid of him? The truth was, he had an influence over them. He had daring, and they needed daring. Neil might have passion: ‘little Bernie’ devotion: the girls were brave and so was Mark: Stephen had control: but this man, who looked older than the rest though he was actually Tess’ age, had, and gave out, the confidence of strong nerves.

It was not he who laughed first when Stephen, following after the exposition, made the formal offer. He was speaking directly to the three who had not been present the previous night. There was still time to draw out. Everyone was still bound by secrecy, that went without saying. But if anyone decided that they were better out of it, that would be accepted. No one but themselves could possibly know who had been involved. This might be the last chance to go. It had to be done that afternoon.

Emma did not wait until the speech was over.

‘What in sweet Jesus’ name do you take us for?’ she cried. Then Lance joined in: ‘Or just tell us, will you, what you expect us to say?’

Those two were laughing, Emma out loud, Lance with comradely sarcasm. Bernard did not join in the laughter and did not even speak, but simply shook his head.

Upon the whole group there seemed to have descended the air that they were used to. Likings, loves, antagonisms were all damped down; what they felt for each other didn’t matter, nor did their egos; though they didn’t know it, or might have been too embarrassed to admit it, that had been one of the rewards throughout the planning. They were being (the phrase of simpler people would have made them wince) taken out of themselves: the Bishop would have recognized what they were feeling, and how good it seemed.

It took an effort for Stephen to disturb that spirit. But as he had lain in bed in the morning, he had made up his mind what he ought to say, and he had to say it now. He began: ‘This may not be the same for all of us. I don’t know whether were going to hear any more of this business. Quite likely it’s a false alarm. The more I’ve thought about it, I can’t for the life of me see how they’ve got anything on us. When we know a bit more, everything may have smoothed over–’

‘Or it may get worse.’ That was Bernard, very quietly, chin resting on his hands.

‘What are you knocking at?’ said Neil, bursting out in anger.

‘Just that. We can’t tell. It may get worse.’

‘No one else thinks so.’ Neil, turning in his chair, was threatening the other young man as though he was the bearer of bad news. But Bernard, not overawed, still quiet, raised clear eyes and said: ‘We’d better remember, they’re not fools.’

‘True enough,’ said Stephen. ‘But I still don’t see how they can have got much on us. Security’s been as good as we could make it. I was going to say myself, though, we can’t rule out the other possibilities. They’re not probable, but it isn’t sensible to assume they don’t exist. Model A is that they can’t touch us. But imagine Bernard is right. Model B is that they’re able to. And that they feel inclined to play it rough. Well, in that case, and they go in for sanctions, they’re going to penalize some of us a lot more than others. In practical terms we can’t run away from that.’

‘What do you mean by sanctions?’ Emma asked.

‘I should have thought it was obvious. They could get some grants stopped, just to begin with. And that’s only the first step.’

‘That’s the sort of fucking dishonest thing the buggers would do,’ Neil shouted, and Lance grinned at him:

‘Do you think we’ve been the absolute prime specimens of honesty ourselves?’

‘Stuff that,’ Neil rapped back at him.

‘No, I’m interested, anything we do is honest by definition and anything the others do we’re right to get het up about–’

Lance wasn’t ruffled, but Tess put in: ‘Please, Lance!’ Her face was clouded, as was Mark’s: that was something they didn’t want to hear.

‘Never mind that.’ As the others had seen him do before, Neil had sunk his temper down, and was speaking to Stephen like a firm operator. ‘What you’re getting at is, isn’t it, that Bernard and me, we’re bloody paupers, and if they cut off our grants they can get rid of us for good. And some of you are stinking rich, and it couldn’t matter less. That’s it, isn’t it?’

‘We can manage–’ Emma was saying, but Neil went on talking to Stephen: ‘Forget it. I didn’t come into this for my health. Nor did Bernie.’

‘As far as that goes,’ said Bernard, ‘there are other things besides money. If this comes out. And they’ll effect most of us, won’t they? What about your family, Tess? They’re not going to like it much, are they?’

Tess said steadily: ‘No. It would be difficult for them.’

‘So it would for mine,’ said Bernard with a sudden surprising smile. ‘I think we can forget about class, don’t you?’

‘Good Lord, this is all in the game.’ Lance gave a hard smile.

‘They’ll have to wear it,’ said Emma. Stephen did not comment.

Neil said: ‘The first thing is, you’ve got to forget about your families. If you’re going to do any good, you’ve got to travel light.’

None of the others, not even Emma, had met his family or had heard him mention them, except for their religion and his father’s job. So far as was known inside the group, what he had just said applied most to Mark, whose mother was dead and whose father, now retired, lived months of the year abroad.

Soon afterwards, Neil put a kettle on the gas-ring and brought out a teapot, a loaf of bread, and a large salami sausage. As the water boiled, he was talking briskly of their ‘presentation’ in a fortnight’s time, betting that the trouble would fizzle out, detailing the pieces of organization still in front of them. He poured out cups of tea, passed round the plate with the bread, salami and knife. It couldn’t have looked more homely and prosaic, and so it was taken, for it happened each time they met in that room. Only Mark had guessed that it was the least prosaic thing about him, a piece of romanticizing which no one would have suspected in that harsh and bristling soul. For this was a ritual in which Neil was, perhaps concealing it from himself, repeating what occurred at another meeting – a meeting which had as it happened powerful consequences – in a menshevik apartment in Petrograd nearly fifty-three years before.

Arrangements for tomorrow. None of them were to make dates, Stephen said, they were to keep within reach of their telephones. If he received news from his father which made it necessary for them to meet, he would pass the word along. It might be – all he said was guarded, but he was suppressing his own hopes – that he would get ‘positive’ news. That would mean that they were ‘in the clear’. In that case, the code phrase would be
no meeting until further notice
.

‘It’ll be nice, when we hear that,’ said Tess.

‘That’s an original thought!’ Lance was jeering at her.

She smiled at him. She didn’t mind a sharp tongue, though her own wasn’t, and she was fonder of Lance than the others were. Also she was thinking of next weekend in Cambridge, which she and Stephen had already planned.

The following morning, Monday, was cloudless after the mist had cleared. It was one of those January days, not uncommon in an English winter, when there seems already to be the lift of spring. When Stephen took a stroll round the cathedral precincts, not wanting to be far from his own house, and at the same time trying to cheat expectations (if he were not present, then good news could have arrived), bells clanged indifferently into the warmish sunlight.

Back in his room, he tried to do some work. More than tried, for thoughts came to mind as indifferently, as naturally, as the noise of bells. One of the equations he had constructed appeared to make some sort of sense.

He wanted to telephone Tess, and shied away. He was being superstitious that day, more than he cared for. If he put off ringing,
then the news could come.
He had lunch alone with his mother, who inspected him with friendly curiosity and said nothing to disturb him. In the afternoon he took another walk, and then did more work on his equations.

It was after tea, he had returned to his room, when there was a tap on the door. His mother was standing there.

‘I rather think,’ she said, ‘you ought to go and talk to your father.’

She was wearing a slight twitching smile. That told him nothing. He had seen that smile, and sometimes had tried to read its meaning, all his life.

‘What is it?’

‘I haven’t the slightest idea. He’s just come in.’ The smile deepened. It might have expressed irritation, or concern, or even genuine amusement. ‘I expect you’ll find out what he wants.’ She added: ‘At least, I hope you will.’

Stephen went down one flight of stairs to his father’s study. There, on the desk, the familiar green-shaded lamp. The smell of books. Leather-bound books all round the walls. In his childhood, not recalled now, Stephen had dipped among them. Biographies of nineteenth-century worthies, Lockhart’s Scott, Forster’s Dickens, Morley’s Gladstone. Local histories. Thomas Freer’s bookplate inside each of them.

Out of the window, which had the same view as from Stephen’s bedroom, the sky was darkening. Thomas Freer was sitting, not at the desk but in an armchair on one side of the disused fireplace. He was sitting back, fingertips together, face in shadow, expression shuttered or obscured.

‘Ah, do come in. That is, if you can spare a little time. Or would you rather wait an hour or two?’

‘Have you anything to tell me?’

Getting no reply, Stephen sat down opposite his father, whose gaze, eyelids drawn down, was fixed obliquely on a corner of the room.

‘I’m inclined to think that it’s slightly too early for a drink, or perhaps you don’t agree?’ Thomas Freer spoke, not casually, but like an earnest seeker after truth, to whom the exact time of the first evening drink, or of the beginning of the interview, was of extreme significance: more significant, his tone suggested, than anything likely to be said. As a rule, Stephen, used to his father’s cat’s play, in which there was an element of the defensive, as though he were distancing himself from the present moment, would have been prepared to wait. Now he broke out: ‘No, I don’t want a drink. Has anything happened?’

Thomas Freer’s gaze remained oblique. After a pause, he said: ‘I think one has to say that. One has to say that.’

‘Well then?’

Another pause.

‘I should be the last person to want to worry you. It is always very difficult to judge when it’s right to worry anyone. Sometimes it turns out to be unnecessary, and then one has done more harm than good. Sometimes one has given warnings which no one is prepared to accept. And then one has been crying wolf possibly in a useless fashion. Yes, wouldn’t you say, it’s very hard to know when to worry anyone–’

‘You’d better let me decide that.’

Suddenly the circuitousness stopped. For an instant, Thomas Freer’s glance, baleful and unhappy, flashed full upon his son. Then he looked away again, eyes once more hooded, and said: ‘I should never have expected this to happen to you.’ He added, voice strained and loud: ‘
I’m getting old
.’

That was a cry of self-pity, and also a cry for love. Stephen scarcely heard it, or else ignored it. For him, in the past few minutes, slightly before his father had finished being lanthanine, the day, his own state, had been utterly transformed. Up to then, he had been hoping, more than he realized – feeling, not that the trouble would be over, but that in reality it was. He had let himself be deceived by hope. Now all that was wiped out as though it were years in the past and as though he had known all along the news he was about to hear.

‘You’ve got to tell me.’ His voice matched his father’s. ‘What do they know?’

‘I’ll tell you. What appears to be known is this.’

Thomas Freer gave a summary, entirely accurate and in intimate detail, of the core’s operations and plans. It was even known that they called themselves the core. Their names were known, including those of St John, Kelshall and Forrester, whom Thomas Freer had never met. So were the names of their contacts outside. Their manoeuvres with Finlayson were known, down to their fine structure.