Conscious of Margaret’s silence, I expressed surprise. Geoffrey’s tone changed, and as he spoke to me again I thought I heard something hard, jaunty, almost vindictive: ‘You’d better come and see him for yourself.’
‘No, he wouldn’t enjoy it,’ said Margaret quickly.
‘Why shouldn’t he come for lunch, then he can inspect the boy?’
‘It would be very inconvenient for you.’ Margaret spoke straight to me.
I replied to Geoffrey: ‘I’d like to come.’
Soon afterwards, sharply, Margaret said again that they must be going home. I walked with them out of the room, into the hall, where, through the open door, we could hear the rain pelting down. Geoffrey ran out to bring the car round, and Margaret and I stood side by side staring out into the dark terrace, seeing the rain shafts cut through the beam of light from the doorway. On the pavement the rain hissed and bounced; the night had gone cool; a clean smell came off the trees, making me feel for an instant calm when, knowing nothing else for certain, I knew I was not that.
Neither of us turned towards the other. The car came along the kerb, veils of rain shimmering across the headlights.
‘I shall see you then,’ she said, in a flat, low voice.
‘Yes,’ I said.
38: Significance of a Quarrel
AS I sat between Margaret and Geoffrey Hollis at their dining-table, I wanted to speak amiably to him.
Outside the sun was shining, it was a sleepy middle-of-the-day; no one was to be seen in the Summer Place gardens; the only sound, through the open windows, was the soporific sweep of buses along the Fulham Road. I had only arrived a quarter of an hour before, and we spoke, all three of us, as though we were subdued by the heat. Geoffrey was sitting in a shirt open at the neck, and Margaret in a cotton frock; we ate boiled eggs and salad and drank nothing but iced water. In between times Geoffrey and I exchanged polite curiosity about our working days.
In the dining-room, which was like a pool of coolness after the streets, all we said sounded civil. I was hearing what it meant to be a children’s doctor, the surgery hours, the hospital rounds, the proportion of nights he could expect a call. It was useful, it was devoted, it was no more self-indulgent than the meal he ate. Nor was the way he talked about it. He had admitted that in some respects he was lucky. ‘Compared with other doctors anyway,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Any other sort of doctor is dealing with patients who by and large are going to get worse. With children most of them are going to get better. It gives it quite a different flavour, you see, and that’s a compensation.’
He was provoking me: it was enviable, it was admirable: I wanted to prove it wasn’t.
Suspicious of myself, I changed the subject. Just to keep the conversation easy, I asked him what he thought of some news from the morning’s paper.
‘Oh yes,’ he said indifferently, ‘a parent who came in mentioned it.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I haven’t any idea.’
‘It’s pretty plain, isn’t it?’
‘Maybe,’ he replied. ‘But, you see, I haven’t read a morning paper.’
‘Are you as busy as all that?’ I tried to be companionable.
‘No,’ he said, with pleasure, tilting his head back like someone who had taken a finesse. ‘It’s a matter of general policy. Twelve months ago we decided not to take a daily paper. It seemed to me that far more days than not, it was going to make me slightly miserable without any gain to anyone, and with just conceivably a fractional loss of efficiency to myself. In any case I don’t believe in adding to the world’s stock of misery, even if it’s through my own. So we decided the sensible course was to stop the paper.’
‘I couldn’t do that,’ I broke out.
‘Quite seriously,’ said Geoffrey, ‘if a lot of us only bit off what we could chew, and simply concentrated on the things we can affect, there’d be less tension all round, and the forces of sweetness and light would stand more chance.’
‘I believe you’re dangerously wrong,’ I said.
Again he was provoking me; the irritation, which would not leave me alone at that table, was jagging my voice; this time I felt I had an excuse. Partly it was that this kind of quietism was becoming common among those I knew and I distrusted it. Partly Geoffrey himself seemed to me complacent, speaking from high above the battle; and, like many people who led useful and good lives, even like many who had a purity of nature, he seemed insulated by his self-regard.
Suddenly Margaret spoke to me.
‘He’s absolutely right,’ she said.
She was smiling, she was trying to speak easily, as I tried to speak to Geoffrey, but she was worried and angry.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘We’ve got to deal with things that are close enough to handle,’ she said.
‘I don’t believe,’ I said, getting angrier, ‘that you can cut yourself off from the common experience around you. And if you do, I am sure you lose by it.’
‘Lose by it how?’
‘Lose by it as a person. Just like very optimistic people who shut off anything that is painful to see. I should have thought you’d diminish yourself unless you suffer your sufferings as well as enjoy your joys.’
Margaret gave a smile half malicious, as though gratified that my temper had gone higher than hers.
‘The trouble,’ she said, ‘with the very realistic men who live in this world, like you, is that they’re so hopelessly unpractical when it comes to the point. You don’t think Geoffrey’s realistic, but he’s so much more practical than you are that you don’t begin to start. He likes dealing with children and he likes being happy. Hasn’t it occurred to you that no one except you worries whether they’re “diminishing themselves” or not?’
I was getting the worst of it; I could not overbear her — I was hurt because she had taken his side with such an edge.
In return, I found myself talking to hurt.
I reminded her that I had never been comfortable about recipes for the good life — like those of her father’s friends twenty years before — which depended on one’s being an abnormally privileged person.
‘To be honest,’ I looked at Geoffrey and then at her, ‘yours doesn’t seem to me a great improvement. Your whole attitude would be unthinkable unless you happened to have one of the very few jobs which is obviously benevolent, and unless both of you happened to come from families who were used to doing good rather than having good done to them.’
‘Lewis,’ she called out my name for the first time for three years, but furiously, ‘that’s quite unfair!’
‘Is it?’ I asked her, watching the flush mount from her neck.
‘Well, I wouldn’t deny,’ said Geoffrey, with exasperating fairness and a contented, judicious smile, ‘that there may be something in it.’
‘Do you really say that I patronize anyone?’ she cried.
‘With individuals, no, I shouldn’t say so. But when you think about social things, of course you do.’
Her eyes were dark and snapping; her cheeks were flushed; it was as I remembered her when angry, the adrenalin was pumping through her, all pallor had left her and she looked spectacularly well.
‘I must say,’ Geoffrey remarked pacifically, ‘I’m inclined to think he’s right.’
‘I suppose you’ll say I’m a snob next?’ Her eyes, still snapping, were fixed on me.
‘In a rarefied sense, yes.’
Geoffrey reminded her that it was half past one, time to give Maurice his meal. Without speaking, her shoulders set with energy, with anger against me, she took the tray and led us to the nursery.
‘There he is,’ said Geoffrey, as I got my first glance at the child.