As we walked along, solitary figures passing us in the empty streets, lighted windows in the houses, I was thinking, he had been behind some of those windows. They weren’t as taunting when one got inside as when one gazed at them from the street as a young man. For an instant, I was, not precisely remembering, but touched by a residual longing from, other Christmas days long past, when I had also gone out for walks on deserted pavements, just to kill time, just to get through the day. That had been so in the provincial town, after my mother died: slipping out after Christmas dinner, necessarily teetotal, at Aunt Milly’s, I used to tramp the streets as the afternoon darkened, gazing up garden paths at bright and curtained sitting-rooms, feeling a kind of arrogant envy. That had been so again, my first year in London: my friends all at home, no George Passant to pass the evening with, and I with nothing to do. The streets must have looked much as they did that day with Maurice, but that I had forgotten or repressed, and where I finished up the night.
‘Not exactly cheerful,’ I said, as though commenting on the present situation, indicating a young man who was dawdling past us.
‘Poor old thing,’ said Maurice, who really was commenting on the present situation. ‘He doesn’t look as if he’s got anywhere to go–’
For any connoisseur of townscapes, that afternoon’s had its own merit. The unvaried sky lay a thousand feet above the houses: the great city stretched all round one, but there was no sense of space: sky, houses, fairy lights on Christmas trees all pressed upon the lost pedestrians in the streets. Yes, the townscape had its own singular merit, but it was good to be back (did Maurice feel this too?) among the lights of our own drawing-room, able to find our own enclave.
To be realistic, it was not quite such a well-constructed enclave as it might have been. At least, not when we sat down to dinner. Physically all was well. The food was good, there was plenty to drink. But in Margaret, and in me watching her, the nerves were pricking beneath the skin. One reason everyone round the table knew. That was the first Christina. Charles had not been at home. Shortly he would be celebrating his seventeenth birthday in Karachi; for the time being he was static and safe. Then he would start his journey home, all over-land, travelling alone, picking up rides. The whole Eliot family was there, eating the Christmas dinner, except the youngest.
The whole Eliot family, though, that was a second reason for constraint, which perhaps, I couldn’t be certain, Martin and his wife didn’t realise. They had duly arrived, with their daughter Nina, while Maurice and I were out on our afternoon walk. We hadn’t seen any of them since the summer, at Pat’s wedding, but this family party had been planned long since. So, as a matter of course, Pat and Muriel had been invited. After Muriel’s disclosures, Margaret had asked her if she still wanted the pair of them to come. Yes, Muriel replied, without expression. There they were at dinner, Muriel on my left, by this time heavily pregnant, hazel eyes sharp, face tranquil, Pat on Margaret’s left, working hard to be a social stimulant.
It was difficult to know whether anything was being given away. Once Pat tried his brand of deferential cheek on Margaret: she was polite, but didn’t play. Pat, whose antennae, always active, were specially so that night, must have known what that meant. But his father and mother did not seem to notice. Maurice tried, like a quiet impresario, to make the best of Pat’s gambits. Margaret didn’t like dissimulating, but when she was keeping a secret she was as disciplined as I was. From the other end of the table, all I could have told – if she hadn’t warned me – was that she laughed very little, and that her laughter didn’t sound free. While Pat, whose brashness was subdued, kept exerting himself to make the party bubble, Martin was attending to him, with a faint amused incredulous smile which I had seen creep on him before in his son’s company – as though astonished that anyone so unguarded could be a son of his.
By my side, Irene didn’t often meet Pat’s quick frenetic brown-eyed glance, so like her own, but instead kept me engaged with Cambridge gossip. As she did so, I heard Muriel, voice clear and precise, taking part in repartee with Pat: no sign of strain, no disquiet that I could pick up. Later, I observed her talking to Nina, her sister-in-law, inconspicuous in her parents’ presence, more so in Pat’s. She might be inconspicuous, but she was a very pretty girl, so far as one could see her face, for she had hair, in the fashion of her contemporaries, which trailed over one eye. Also in the fashion, her voice was something like a whisper, and I couldn’t hear any of her replies to Muriel. Of the two, I was judging, most men would think her the prettier: but perhaps most men would think that Muriel provoked them more.
In the drawing-room after dinner, Muriel announced that, as this was a family Christmas party, she proposed to put off her bedtime. Very dutifully, Pat argued with her – ‘Darling, you know what — (her doctor) said?’
‘He’s not here, is he?’ said Muriel, and got her way. They didn’t leave until half past eleven: it was midnight before Martin and I sat by ourselves in my study, having a final drink.
Now at last it seemed to me like an ordinary family evening, peace descending upon the room. We hadn’t talked, except with others present, all that night: nor in fact since the summer, the day of our father’s funeral. Martin proceeded to interrogate me, in the way that had become common form since we grew older. Nowadays his workaday existence didn’t change from one term to another, while mine was still open to luck, either good or bad. So that our roles had switched, and he talked to me like a concerned older brother. How was the new book going? I was well into it, I said, but it would take another year. Was there anything in this rumour about my being called into the Government? He was referring to a piece of kite-flying by one of the parliamentary correspondents – New Recruits?
I knew no more about it than he did, I told him, and mentioned the conversation with Francis Getliffe in the Lords’ bar. This correspondent wrote as though he had been listening, or alternatively as though the House of Lords was bugged. As had happened often during my time in Whitehall, I had the paranoid feeling that about half the population of Parliament were in newspaper pay.
I had heard nothing more, I repeated to Martin. I supposed it was possible. They knew me pretty well. But it would be a damned silly thing for me to do. ‘Oh, if they do ask you, don’t turn it down out of hand,’ said Martin, watchful, tutorial, as cautious as old Arthur Brown. He went on, he could see certain advantages, and I said with fraternal sarcasm, that it was a pity he ever withdrew from the great world. Great World, I rubbed it in. We both know enough about it, partly by experience, partly by nature. Martin gave his pulled-down grin.
He would like just one more drink, he said, and went over to the sideboard. Then, as he settled back in his chair, glance turned towards his glass, he said, in a casual tone: ‘I don’t think Irene knows anything about these goings-on.’
‘What do you mean?’ It was a mechanical question. I had understood.
‘That young man of ours playing round.’ Pat’s Christian name was actually Lewis, after me, and Martin seldom referred to him by his self-given name. Suddenly Martin looked full at me with hard blue eyes.
‘I gathered you had heard,’ he said.