“I was afraid so,” I said.
“That’s why I hid things from you.” He paused, and then went on: “I don’t see it as you do. But I see that I can’t change myself. One must be very fond of oneself not to want to change. I can’t believe that anyone would willingly stay as I am. Well, I suppose I must try to get used to the prospect.”
He did not smile. There was a humorous flick to the words, but the humour was jet-black.
“Shall I go mad?” he asked quietly.
I said: “I don’t know enough.”
“Somehow I don’t think so,” said Roy with utter naturalness. “I believe that I shall go through the old hoops. I shall have these stretches of abject misery. And I shall have fits when I feel larger than life and can’t help bursting out. And the rest of the time—”
“For the rest of the time you’ll get more out of life than anyone. Just as you always have done. You’ve got the vitality of three men.”
“Except when—”
I interrupted him again.
“That’s the price you’ve got to pay. You’ve felt more deeply than any of us. You’ve learned far more of life. In a way, believe this, you’ve known more richness. For all that — you’ve got to pay a price.”
“Just so,” said Roy, who did not want to argue. “But no one would choose to live such a life.”
“There is no choice,” I said.
“I’ve told you before, you’re more robust than I am. You were made to endure.”
“So will you endure.”
He gazed at me. He did not reply for a moment. Then he said, as though casually: “I shall always think it might have been different. I shall think it might have been different — if I could have believed in God. Or even if I could throw myself into a revolution. Even the one that you don’t like. Our friends don’t like it much either.”
The thought diverted him, and he said in a light tone: “If I told them all I’d done — some of our friends would have some remarkable points to make. Fancy telling Francis Getliffe the whole story. He would look like a judge and say I must have manic-depressive tendencies.”
For the first time that morning, Roy gave a smile. “Very wise,” he said, “I could have told him that when I was at school. If that were all.”
He talked, concealing nothing, about how the realisation had come. It had been in the middle of the night. Rosalind was dancing with an acquaintance. Roy was smoking a cigarette outside the ballroom.
“It had been breaking through for a long time. Some of my escapes were pretty — unconvincing. You would have seen that if I hadn’t kept you away. Perhaps you did. But in the end it seemed to come quite sharply. It was as sharp as when I have to lash out. But it wasn’t such fun. Everything became terribly lucid. It was the most lucid moment I’ve ever had. It was dreadful.”
“Yes,” I said.
“I shall be lucky if I forget it. It was like one of the dreams of God. But I knew that I could not get over this, I had seen how things must come.”
“Lewis,” he said, “if someone gave me a mirror in which I could see myself in ten years’ time — I should not be able to look.”
We had been sitting down; now, without asking each other, we walked round the garden. The scent of syringa was overmastering in that corner of the garden, and it was only close to that one could pick up the perfume of the rose.
“It’s not over,” said Roy. “We’ve got some way to go, haven’t we?”
His step was light and poised on the springy turf. After dancing all night, he was not tired.
“So we can be as close as we used to be,” he said. “I hope you can bear it. You won’t need to look after me now. There will be nothing to look after.”
He was speaking with extreme conviction. He took it for granted that I should understand and believe. He spoke with complete intimacy, but without any trace of mischief. He said gravely: “I should like to be some good to you. I need to make up for lost time.”
Part Four
Clarity
32: A Noisy Winter Evening
I had thought, at the dinner party in the Adlon, how in England it was still natural for men like Roy and me to have our introductions to those in power. I thought it again, at the beginning of the war; for, within a few days, Roy had been asked for by a branch of intelligence, Francis Getliffe had become assistant superintendent of one of the first radar establishments, I was a civil servant in Whitehall. And so with a good many of our Cambridge friends. It was slick, automatic, taken for granted. The links between the universities and “government” were very strong. They happened, of course, as a residue of privilege; the official world in England was still relatively small and compact; when in difficulties it asked who was a useful man, and brought him in.
Of all our friends, I was much the luckiest. Francis Getliffe’s job was more important (he broke his health in getting the warning sets ready in time for the air battle of 1940 — and then went on obstinately to improvise something for the night fighters), Roy’s was more difficult, but mine was the most interesting by far. My luck in practical matters had never deserted me, and I landed on my feet, right in the middle of affairs. I was attached to a small ministry which had, on paper, no particular charge; in fact, it was used as a convenient ground for all kinds of special investigations, interdepartmental committees, secret meetings. These had to be held somewhere, and came to us simply because of the personality of our minister. It was his peculiar talent to be this kind of handy man. I became the assistant to his Permanent Secretary, and so, by sheer chance, gained an insight into government such as I had no right to hope for. In normal times it could not have come my way, since one can only live one life. It was a constant refreshment during the long dark shut-in years.
At times it was the only refreshment. For I went through much trouble at that period. My wife died in the winter of 1939. Everyone but Roy thought it must be a relief and an emancipation, but they did not know the truth. That was a private misery which can be omitted here. But there was another misery which I ought to mention for a moment. I was often distressed about the war, in two quite different ways. And so was Roy, though in his own fashion.
I will speak of myself first, for my distresses were commonplace. I often forgot them in the daytime; for it was fun to go into Whitehall, attend meetings, learn new techniques, observe men pushing for power, building their empires, very much as in the college but with more hanging on the result; it was fun to go with the Minister to see a new weapon being put into production, to stay for days in factories and watch things of which I used to be quite ignorant; it was fun to watch the Minister himself, unassuming, imperturbably discreet, realistic, resilient and eupeptically optimistic.
But away from work I could not sustain that stoical optimism. For the first three years of the war, until the autumn of 1942, I carried a weight of fear. I was simply frightened that we should lose. It was a perfectly straightforward fear, instinctive and direct. The summer of 1940 was an agony for me: I envied — and at times resented — the cheerful thoughtless invincible spirits of people round me, but I thought to myself that the betting was 5–1 against us. I felt that, as long as I lived, I should remember walking along Whitehall in the pitiless and taunting sun.
As long as I lived. I also knew a different fear, one of which I was more ashamed, a fear of being killed. When the bombs began to fall on London, I discovered that I was less brave than the average of men. I was humiliated to find it so. I could just put some sort of face on it, but I dreaded the evening coming, could not sleep, was glad of an excuse to spend a night out of the town. It was not always easy to accept one’s nature. Somehow one expected the elementary human qualities. It was unpleasant to find them lacking. Most people were a good deal less frightened than I was — simple and humble people, like my housekeeper at Chelsea, the clerks in the office, those I met in the pubs of Pimlico. And most of my friends were brave beyond the common, which made me feel worse. Francis Getliffe was a man of cool and disciplined courage. Lady Muriel was unthinkingly gallant, and Joan as staunch in physical danger as in unhappy love. And Roy had always been extremely brave.