That sounded like a firm professional judgment. When I asked about other parts of Howard’s life, Leonard had picked up or remembered little. He didn’t know — as I had heard and believed to be true — that Howard had ceased to be a fellow traveller. He hadn’t gone through a dramatic conversion, he had just moved without explaining himself into the centre of the Labour party. About his marriage — yes, Leonard did know, coolness breaking, showing the tentative nervous interest of a man who should be married himself that Howard had divorced his wife. She had gone off with Eric Sawbridge, who, unlike Howard, had stayed a communist, pure and unbudgeable, and wouldn’t budge until he died. He had served nine years in jail, after passing on some of the early atomic information, and had come out unchanged.
“One of the bravest men I ever knew,” I said to Leonard.
“Francis says the same,” Leonard replied. But to him all this, all those crises of conscience which had riven his scientific predecessors, all the struggles, secret and public, in which his father and I had spent years of our lives, seemed like history. If he had been our age, he would have felt, and done, the same as we did. As it was, he signed the “liberal” letters, but otherwise behaved as though there were nothing else that a man of goodwill could do.
It was getting on for three, and I got up.
“I still can’t persuade you to come?” I said.
“I’m afraid not, Lewis,” he answered, with an unyielding but gentle smile.
In the Court room, one side wide open to the afternoon sun, in fact so open that curtains had to be drawn to avoid half the table being blistered, the first item on the agenda took three minutes. And those three minutes were the stately minuet. Resolution of confidence in Disciplinary Committee. The secretary reported that three of the students had found accommodation elsewhere: Miss Bolt had announced her engagement, and did not wish to undertake further study. “Any discussion?” said Arnold Shaw, sharp eyes executing a traverse. Not a word. “May I ask for a motion?” This had been prearranged: resolution of confidence, moved by a civic dignitary, seconded by an academic. “Any further discussion?” Not a word. “Those in favour?” Denis Geary looked across at me while hands were going up. No, there was no point in indulging oneself, though he, unlike me, wasn’t interested in guarding Arnold Shaw. His hand went up, so did mine. “Unanimous,” said Shaw, giving a pursed smile, with a satisfaction as great as Metternich’s after one of his less commonplace manoeuvres.
The whole of the rest of the proceedings was dedicated to the October congregation. Flummery, of course; but then people, even serious people like Denis Geary, enjoyed flummery: there were wafts of pleasure, as well as mildly dotty practical suggestions, in the air. Lord Getliffe would preside. Honorary degrees would be presented. The Court had already approved the names of the honorary graduands. Dinner. Speeches. Who should speak? That particular topic took up a long time. I sat absent-minded, while the general enjoyment went on. At last (though it was actually only about half past four) I got out into the summer air. Would I have tea? Shaw was pressing me. No, I had an engagement soon. That was embroidering the truth. For the first time on any of my visits to the town, George Passant had sent me a note — like all the letters I had ever received from him, as short and neat as a military despatch — saying that he was otherwise occupied and couldn’t meet me for our usual drink. All I had to do was call on the Patemans, when the father was home from work, and settle my account. Then I could go to the Residence, obligations fulfilled, though (I was still thinking of Leonard) not in a fashion anyone could congratulate himself upon.
Still, it was pleasant to walk by myself round the campus (that word also had swept eastward) in the still sunshine. The students were dressed differently from those I used to know: young men and girls in jeans, long hair, the girls’ faces unpainted and pale. Transistor radios hung from a good many wrists. Pairs were lolling along, arms round each others’ waists: that too wouldn’t have happened in my college before the war. I stretched myself on the grass, not far from such a group. The conversation, however, as much as I could catch, was not amorous but anxious. They nearly all carried examination papers with them. This was the time of their finals: they had just been let out of a three-hour session: they were holding inquests. Dress changed: social manners changed: sexual manners changed: but examinations did not change. These boys and girls — they must have been round twenty-one, but they were so hirsute that they looked younger — were at least as obsessed as any of us used to be. They had another paper next morning. One girl was saying that she must shut herself up that night, she needed to put in hours and hours of work. Wrong, I wanted to say: real examinees didn’t behave like that: don’t look at a book, don’t even talk about it. But I kept quiet. Whoever listened to that kind of advice? Or to any other kind of advice, except that which they were already determined to take?
It was pleasant in the sun. I was timing myself to arrive at the Patemans’ house at six. Now that I knew the way, I managed it to the minute. But Mr Pateman was not there. His wife let me in, the passage dark and odorous as I entered from the bright afternoon. From the front room the record player was, just as last time, at work. In the parlour high tea was laid. The room was empty except for Kitty, who, cutting a slice of bread, gave a little beck of recognition.
“He’s not in yet, I’m afraid,” said Mrs Pateman again.
“I told him the time I should be coming.” She was the only woman of the household whom I liked: I couldn’t let myself be rough with her.
“The doctor doesn’t have his surgery till six, you see,” Mrs Pateman began a flustered explanation.
“I’m sorry,” I had to say. “I hope there’s nothing much the matter?”
“Of course there isn’t.” Kitty gave a fleering smile. “There’s never anything the matter with him—”
“You didn’t ought to say that about your father.” Mrs Pateman seemed overwhelmed in this house, this “simple home” which even to me was uncomfortably full of egos. Kitty shrugged, looked at me under her eyebrows, and informed me that Dick was camping, and wouldn’t be back for a week. She said it in a manner which was little-me-ish and at the same time hostile, no, not so much hostile as remote from all of them. She might be resenting his having a higher education, while she, appreciably cleverer, had been kept out of one. I found her expression, partly because of its mobility, abnormally difficult to read. I guessed that she might, despite the fluttering, be as hard as the others. That was as far — and perhaps even this I imagined or exaggerated — as I could see that night.
Taking her slice of bread, she went back with light scampering steps to the front room, where I assumed that Cora Ross was waiting. Mrs Pateman, naturally polite, embarrassed, continued to explain about her husband. He was always one for going to the doctor in good time. He had a stiffness in his throat which he thought might be associated with a backache (a combination, I couldn’t help thinking to myself unknown to medical science). He was always careful about what she, echoing him, called “germs”. That accounted, I realised, for the disinfectant smell which hung about this room, even in his absence. He must add, to his other unwelcoming characteristics, a chronic hypochondria.
At last he came in, head thrown back, hand outstretched. He gave me a stately good evening, and sat down to his corned beef and tomato ketchup. Meanwhile his wife was saying: “He didn’t find anything, did he, Percy?”
“Nothing serious,” he said with a condescending smile. “I’m a great believer,” he turned to me, “in taking precautions. I don’t mind telling you, I should recommend anyone of your age to be run over by his doctor once a month.”