I observed them as he bustled round with the whisky and the ice jug. She was elated. As for him, his spirits were usually so high that it would be hard to detect a change. Frequently he called her darling, he said that “we” had been to the theatre last night, that “we” were going to a friend’s studio tomorrow. He was using all the emollients of a love affair. She was looking at no one else in the room: while he was sparking with energy to make Margaret like him.
He was sitting between her and Vicky, and I opposite to them, with my back to the light. Eyes acute, he was searching Margaret’s face to see when he drew a response. Her father? Yes, he seemed a little better, said Margaret. “That’s all you can hope for, isn’t it?” said Pat, quick and surgent. Once, when he was brasher, he would have been asking her to let him call on Austin Davidson: but now Pat not only knew her father’s condition, he knew also that she had been exposed all her life to young painters on the climb. With the same caution, he didn’t refer, or pay attention, to the great Rothko, borrowed from her father, on the wall at their back, which from where I sat beamed swathes of colour into the sunset. Pictures, painting, Pat was shutting away: as he leaned towards her, he was leaving himself out of it. He tried another lead. Maurice? Yes, he knew about the hospital. “I’m sorry he missed the Mays” (he was speaking of the examination). “But still, it doesn’t matter all that much, now does it?”
“It’s a nuisance,” said Margaret.
“Aren’t you being old-fashioned, Aunt Meg?” When I heard him call her that, which no one else ever did, I felt he was getting surer. “You all believe in examinations, like my father, don’t you now?”
“Well, he’s got to get through them — if he’s going to do what he wants.”
“But does he want to? Are you sure he does?”
“Don’t you think he wants to be a doctor?” Margaret was asking a question, a genuine question.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure that he does. But I’ll bet you this, he’ll find something, either that or something else, that he really wants to do.”
He looked eagerly at Margaret, and spoke with authority. “I suppose you realise that all the people my age think he’s rather wonderful? I mean, he’s influenced a lot of us. Not only me. You know what I’m like. But if I’d stayed at Cambridge, and it wasn’t a tragedy for anyone that I didn’t, you know, he would have been one of the better things—”
“I know he’s kind—”
“I mean more than that.”
For the moment at least he had melted her. Next day she would have her doubts: she was too self-critical not to: and yet perhaps the effect wouldn’t wear off. I was thinking, you can’t set out to please unless you want to please. He had his skill in finding the vulnerable place, and yet this wasn’t really skill. He couldn’t help finding the way to give her pleasure. Men like Arnold Shaw would view this activity, and the young man himself, with contempt. In most of the moral senses, men like Arnold were beyond comparison more worthy. Nevertheless, they would be despising something they could never do.
I was thinking also, how old should I guess Pat to be, if I didn’t know? Certainly older than he was, older than Vicky: but he had, apart from his mouth, the kind of lined, small-featured face which stays for years in the indeterminate mid-twenties. He was taking two drinks to our one, but there again his physical temperament was odd. He showed the effect of alcohol when he had finished his first glass — and then drank hard, and didn’t show much more effect, for hours to come. He seemed to live, when quite sober, two drinks over par: with alcohol, he climbed rapidly to four over par, and stayed there.
They were talking about doctoring.
“I’ve always thought I should have enjoyed it,” Margaret was saying to Vicky. “I often envy you.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Vicky.
“Oh, you must.”
“No,” Vicky persisted with her stubborn honesty. “I don’t think I had a vocation. It’s a job—”
“It’s a job where you’re doing some good, though.”
“You don’t feel that so much if you’re dealing with outpatients nine to five,” said Vicky. “I might have enjoyed being a children’s doctor. Because they’re going to get better, most of them.”
“Maurice’s father was just that. Is just that. Did you know?” I put in. It was easier for me to say it than for Margaret.
“Yes, I should have liked it too,” Margaret said.
“But you don’t need to be too disappointed if Maurice doesn’t, isn’t that right?” Pat turned to her again. “You’re sure you haven’t been guiding him, without meaning too?”
He told her that might be why Maurice couldn’t — really couldn’t, for all his sweetness and good will — force himself to work. Did Margaret believe it? Perhaps she would have liked to. And, though Pat was continuing to efface himself, he would have liked to believe it too. For in secret, and sometimes not so much in secret, he put the blame for his own academic disasters down to his father’s fault. If Martin hadn’t wanted him to be a scholarly success–
As we sat at the dinner table, Pat continued to talk comfortingly to Margaret. I didn’t interrupt. As Margaret knew, or would remember when the euphoria had dropped, I couldn’t accept those consoling explanations: but I didn’t propose to break the peace of the evening. As for Vicky, it was the peace of the evening that she was basking in. Pat was doing well. He was being listened to. They didn’t go to many dinner parties with middle-aged couples. It was all unexacting and safe. It was like a foretaste of marriage.
Happily, Vicky put in another word about child-doctoring. It had improved, out of comparison, since before the war. Children’s health was better in all classes. It was lucky to have been born in the 1950s. Then she mentioned that people a mile or so from my father’s house would next week be escorting their children back and forth from school. A boy of eight had disappeared a day or two before, there was a wave of anxiety going round. “I hope they find him,” said Vicky.
Margaret remarked that once, when Maurice was a child, she had been beside herself when he was an hour late. Then Pat broke in and told her another story of Maurice at Cambridge.
While Pat and Margaret talked to each other, Vicky was able to pass some information on to me. Her glance sometimes left me and flicked across the table: she wanted a smile, she gave a smile back: but that didn’t prevent her telling me the news. It was worrying news, and she had to tell me before the evening was over. But she didn’t sound worried, her words were responsible while her face was not. Anyway, she had gathered (not, so far as I could learn, from Leonard Getliffe) that there might shortly be another resolution before the Court. The three academics, Leonard and two others, who had kept away from the vote of confidence, were growing more dissatisfied. At the least, they wanted some definition of the Vice-Chancellor’s powers. No, they were being careful, they were hoping to find a technique that didn’t hurt him — but they meant business.
Did Arnold know? I asked. He was quite oblivious, Vicky said. She tried to warn him, but he behaved as though he didn’t want to know.
Would I make sure to come to the next Court? That was on the day of the congregation in October? Yes, I said, I intended to come.
“You might be able to make him understand,” she said.
“I doubt it.”
“You may have to tell him the truth.”
I swore.
“But you will come? You promise me?”
“Of course I’ll come.”