Bevill shouted to his friends through the parlour door. He was too natural to assume that Martin would know them by their Christian names, or alternatively would not be curious about the company he was in. Accordingly, Bevill enunciated a couple of the famous English titles: Martin attended to him. Looking at them, sharing some of the old man’s euphoria (the evening was still early), I thought of the young Proust.
Unlike the young Proust, Martin was drinking pints of bitter. He appeared to be enjoying himself without reserve, without any sign of the journey that had brought him there.
Bevill, who still had a taste for a night’s drinking, was having our tankards filled before we went on to port. For a time, while we sat alone round the table, he became elated with drink and could not resist a bit of philosophy.
‘What do all our concerns matter, you two, when you put them in their proper place? They’re just phenomena, taking place in time — what I call false time — and everything essential exists in a different and more wonderful world, doesn’t it, right outside of space and time? That’s what you ought to think of, Martin, when you’re worried about fellows like Sawbridge, or your project. All our real lives happen out of time.
‘That isn’t to say,’ he said, coming down to earth, ‘that it won’t be nice when you people at Barford give us a good big bang.
‘Fine words butter no parsnips,’ went on Bevill gravely, waving a finger at Martin, who in fact had not spoken. ‘You chaps have got to deliver the goods.’
‘That’s bound to happen. It’s cut and dried, and nothing can stop it now,’ said Martin.
‘I’m glad to hear you say so.’ Bevill looked from Martin to me. ‘You know, you chaps have got something on your hands.’
‘What do you mean?’ I said.
‘It’s not so easy pulling this old country through as it was when I was your age. If chaps like you don’t take over pretty soon, it’s not a very bright lookout.’
Martin and I both replied to him direct, not talking across to each other. But we agreed. Obviously the major power, which he had known, had gone: the country would have to live by its wits: it could be done: better men had known worse fates.
Bevill gave a cherubic, approving nod.
‘You two ought to know, I shouldn’t call myself a socialist,’ he said, as though making an astonishing but necessary revelation, ‘but I don’t care all that much what these fellows (the government) do, as long as we keep going.’
It was spoken in drink, but it happened to be true. Half drunk myself, I loved him for it.
Cheerful, naïf (one could forget that he was a cunning old intriguer), he rambled on ‘philosophizing’ again to his heart’s content, until in the kitchen, with sweat pouring down his face and mine, and beads at the roots of Martin’s hair, he said: ‘I want to say something, Martin, before I get beyond it.’
He said it in a different tone, sharp and businesslike.
Perhaps Martin did not know what I did — that when it came to action, it did not matter what state Bevill was in, or what nonsense he had been talking. On serious matters, like jobs or promises, he would nor say a word out of turn or one he did not mean.
Martin listened as though he knew it too.
‘You’re sitting pretty at Barford, young man,’ said Bevill.
‘I suppose I am,’ said Martin.
‘I’m telling you, you are. We shan’t forget what you’ve done for us, and it’s time we did something for you.’
Bevill went on: ‘There are different views on how to run the place — and who’s to do it, I needn’t tell you that. But I can tell you that whatever arrangement we make, it won’t be to your disadvantage. You can just sit back and wait and see.’
‘I didn’t expect this,’ said Martin.
‘Didn’t you? You must have been working things out,’ said Bevill.
I thought once more, that in such matters he was no man’s fool.
He continued: ‘Now you can forget everything that I’ve told you. But a nod’s as good as a wink to a blind horse.’
Few men who have longed for success can have known the exact minute when it came; but Martin must have known it, sitting at the side of the baking hearth at Pratt’s, with the old man lifting his glass of port, and someone from the foot of the staircase calling out ‘Tommy’, so that Bevill, flushed, still businesslike, said to Martin, ‘That’s tipped you the wink,’ and turned his head and began talking loudly to his acquaintance at the door.
I looked at Martin, leaning back while Bevill talked across him. One side of his face was tinged by the fire: his mouth was tucked in, in a sarcastic smile: his eyes were lit up.
I wished that the party would stretch on. Anyway, why should I ask him anything? It was not like me, or him either, to speak for the sake of speaking; as soon as one admitted out loud a break in the human relation, one made it wider.
I went on drinking, joining in Bevill’s reminiscences of how he saved Barford years before. I told a story of my own which exaggerated Martin’s influence and judgement at that time, giving him credit for remarks which Francis Getliffe made, or that I had made myself.
At last the old man said: ‘Time for bye-byes!’ We helped him up the stairs, found him a taxi, received triumphant goodbyes, and watched as the rear lamp climbed the slope of St James’s Street up to Piccadilly. Martin and I exchanged a smile, and I said something to the effect that the old man’s ancestors must have gone up this street many times, often drunker than that.
‘Occasionally soberer,’ said Martin.
We looked across the road, where the lights of Boodle’s shone on to the moist pavement. After the room we had left, the humid night was sweet. We stood together, and I thought for an instant that Martin expected me to speak.
‘Well, then, good night,’ he said, and began walking down the street towards the palace. He was staying in Chelsea; I hesitated, before turning in the opposite direction, on my way north of the park.
Martin had gone ten paces along the pavement. I called out: ‘No, I want a word with you.’
He turned, not jerkily, and walked with slow steps back. He did not pretend to be puzzled, but said, with an expression open, concerned, as intimate as in the past: ‘Don’t you think it would be better not to?’
‘It’s too late for that.’
‘I am sure that we shall both regret it.’
Mechanically, for no reason, we dawdled side by side along the pavement, while I waited to reply. We had gone past Brooks’ before I said: ‘I can’t help it.’
It was true, though neither of us at that moment could have defined what drove us on. Yes, I was half sad because of what he had done; but there was hypocrisy in the sadness. In warm blood, listening to Bevill, I should not have repined because a brother had stamped down his finer feelings and done himself well out of it. Success did not come often enough to those one was fond of that one’s responses could be so delicate.
It would have been pleasant to have been walking that night as allies, with his name made.
We were further from allies than we had ever been. I was bitter, the bitterness was too strong for me. As we walked by the club windows I could think of nothing else.
Nevertheless, the habits of the human bond stayed deeper than the words one spoke. I was not attempting — as I had attempted on New Year’s Day — to end the difference between us. Yet the habit endured, and as I said ‘I can’t help it’ under the St James’s Street lights, I had a flash of realization that I was still longing for his success even then. And, looking into his face, less closed that it had been for months, I realized with the same certainty that he was still longing for my approval even then.