Another home, another marriage. A settled marriage, but one which had arrived there by a different route from the Getliffes’. She had been a reckless, amorous young woman: in their first years she had had lovers, had cost him humiliation and, because he had married for love, much misery. But he was the stronger of the two. It was his will which had worn her down. It was possible — I was not certain — that as she grew to depend upon him utterly, she in her turn had been through some misery. I was not certain, because, though he trusted me more than anyone else and occasionally asked me to store away some documents, he preserved a kind of whiggish decorum. If there had been love affairs, they had been kept hidden. Anyway, their marriage had been settled for a long time past, and Martin’s anxiety had its roots in another place.
On my way down to Cambridge, I hadn’t been confident that I should get him to talk. As soon as I entered his study we were easy together, with the ease of habit, and something stronger too. But he had been controlled and secretive all his life, and in middle age he was letting secretiveness possess him. I still didn’t know whether I should get an answer, or even be able to talk at all.
By accident, or perhaps not entirely by accident, for she understood him well, it was Irene who gave me the chance.
We had begun by gossiping. Nowadays the college changed more rapidly than it used to in my time. There were twice as many fellows, they came and went. Many of my old acquaintances were dead. Of those who had voted in the 1937 election, only Arthur Brown, Francis and Nightingale were still fellows. Some I had known since hadn’t stayed for long. One who hadn’t stayed — it was he that Irene was gossiping about — was a man called Lester Ince. He had recently run off with an American woman: an American woman, so it turned out, of enormous wealth. They had each got divorces and then married. The present rumour was that they were looking round for a historic country house.
“A very suitable end for an angry young man,” said Martin, with a tart smile. I was amused. I had a soft spot for Lester Ince. It was true that, since he had started his academic career by being remarkably rude, he had gained a reputation for holding advanced opinions. This had infuriated both Francis and Martin, who believed in codes of manners, and who had also remained seriously radical and had each paid a certain price.
“He’s quite a good chap,” I said.
“He hasn’t got the political intelligence of a newt,” said Martin.
“He’s really very amiable,” I said.
“If it hadn’t been for that damned fool,” Martin was not placated, “we shouldn’t have been in this intolerable mess.”
That also was true. Before Crawford, the last Master, retired, it had been assumed that Francis Getliffe would stand and get the job. That would presumably have happened — but Francis had suddenly said no. The college had dissolved into a collective hubbub. Lester Ince had trumpeted that what they needed was an independent man. The independent man was G S Clark. Half the college saw the beauty of the idea: G S Clark was an obsessed reactionary in all senses, but that didn’t matter. Martin, who was an accomplished college politician, did his best for Arthur Brown, but the Clark faction won by a couple of votes. It had been one of the bitter elections.
“It’s got to the point,” Martin was saying, “that when the Master puts his name down to dine, half-a-dozen people take theirs off.”
“What about you?”
“As a rule,” said Martin, without expression, “I dine at home.”
That had its own eloquence. He was both patient and polite: and once he had been on neighbourly terms with Clark. Yes, he replied to my question, they were saddled with him for another seven years.
Irene was more interested in Lester Ince’s future.
“Think of all that lovely money,” she said.
She told me about the heiress. It appeared that Lester Ince had at his disposal more money than any fellow (or ex-fellow, for he had just resigned) of the college in five hundred years.
“Money. We could do with a bit of that,” she said.
She said it brightly, but suddenly I felt there was strain, or meaning, underneath. To test her, I replied: “Couldn’t we all?”
“You can’t say that to us, you really can’t.” Her eyes were darting, but not just with fun.
“Is anything the matter?” I wasn’t looking at Martin, but speaking straight to her.
“Oh, no. Well, the children cost a lot, of course they do.”
Their daughter Nina, who was seventeen that year, went to a local schooclass="underline" she was a gentle girl, with a musical flair which her brother might have envied, and had cost them nothing. It was Pat on whom they had spent the money — and, I guessed, more than they could spare, although Martin was financially a prudent man. It was Pat about whom she was showing the strain. She had to risk offending Martin, who sat there in hard silence.
I risked it too.
“I suppose it’ll be some time before he’s self-supporting, won’t it?” I asked.
“Good God,” she cried. “We shouldn’t mind so much if we were sure that he would ever be.”
She went on talking to me, Martin still silent. I must have known young men like this, mustn’t I? What could one do? She wasn’t asking much: all she asked was that he should come to terms, and begin to behave like everyone else.
This was the strangest game that time had played with my sister-in-law. It had played a game with her physically, but that I was used to: she had been a thin, active young woman, and then in her thirties became the victim of a pyknic practical joke: so that, although her face kept an avid girlish prettiness, she had, as it were, blown up like a Michelin tyre man. But that was a joke of the flesh, and this was odder. For only a few years before, as she contemplated her son, she was delighted that he seemed “as wild as a hawk”. She had enjoyed the prospect of a son as “dashing” as the young men with whom she had herself racketed round. Now she had it. And she was less comfortable with it than respectable parents like the Getliffes might have been.
She seemed specially horrified about his debts, though, again oddly, she had no idea how big they were.
“Don’t worry too much about that,” I said. “Perhaps I can help.”
“That isn’t necessary.” For the first time since his son was hinted at, Martin spoke.
Irene looked at him: either she did not choose, or did not dare, to talk any further. In a moment, with a bright yelping cry, she announced that she was tired. “You boys can sit up if you want, don’t mind me,” she said, on her way to the door.
Martin was sitting with his shoulders hunched, his fingers laced together on one knee. His scalp showed where the hair was thinning: between us, in the old grate, gleamed one bar of the electric fire. Behind Martin was a bookcase full of bound scientific journals, photographs of teams he had played for in his athletic days: as I glanced round, in the constrained and creaking quiet, on his desk I noticed the big leather-covered tutors’ register which Arthur Brown used to keep.
Then he began to talk, in the tone of a realistic and experienced man, as though we were talking, not having to explain ourselves, about an acquaintance. He interrupted himself, seeming more deliberate, to light a pipe. It was easy to exaggerate these things, wasn’t it? (He might have been echoing my talk with Vicky.) People grew up at different rates, didn’t they? Young men who were sexually mature often weren’t mature in other ways. And young men who were sexually mature found plenty of opportunities to spend their time. “Most of us,” said Martin, in a matter-of-fact, ironic fashion, “would have welcomed a few more such opportunities, wouldn’t we?”