She was content. After that, we returned to the drawing-room, and were chatting like a family circle when, towards ten o’clock, Maurice came in. He kissed his mother, kissed Vicky, then sank down into an armchair with a tired easygoing sigh. When Margaret asked him, he said that he had been sitting with a schizophrenic patient all afternoon. It took a bit of effort, he said: until this holiday he hadn’t known what schizophrenia could mean. He was wearing a shabby suit, his face — unlined in spite of his fatigue — pallid by the side of Pat’s doggy vigour. Margaret had a plate of sandwiches ready for him, and he began to scoff them. He glanced at Pat, who was by this time at least his customary four drinks over par. “I’m a long way behind, aren’t I?” said Maurice, with his objective smile. Margaret gave him a stiff whisky, which he put down at speed.
“Better,” he said. It surprised some people, but he wasn’t at all ascetic about alcohol. Whether he was ascetic about sex, I couldn’t (it was strange to be so baffled with someone one had watched since infancy) have sworn.
Before long, he and Pat and Vicky were talking together. Any one of them was easy with Margaret or me, didn’t feel, or let us feel, the gap of a generation: but together they were drawn by a gravitational pull. Curiously, their voices got softer, even Pat’s, which could be strident when he was confronting his elders. Was it fancy, or did they and their friends whisper to each other more than we used to do?
Yes, Maurice said to them, he would be going back to Cambridge in a fortnight to “have another bash”. A singular phrase, I thought, for that gentle young man, not one which the professionals in the family would find encouraging. Vicky was giving him some advice about medical examinations. Maurice listened acceptantly and patiently. Soon he switched off: what were they going to do? Well, Vicky said, her holiday would be over in a few days, she’d be returning to the hospital. Pat said that he’d be staying in London: he’d got some sort of job (it sounded as though he had collected a little money too), he’d be able to paint at nights and weekends.
“You’ll be separated again, won’t you?” said Maurice.
“It can’t be helped,” said Vicky.
“How do you manage?”
“Oh, we have to manage,” she said.
“I suppose,” said Maurice, “you get on the phone and tell each other when you’re free.”
He meant — so I thought — that it was Pat who told her when he was free.
“It’s nice when we do see each other,” said Pat, just as evenly as Maurice was speaking.
“I should have thought,” said Maurice, “that it was an awful strain.”
“We’re getting used to it,” she said.
“Are you?”
“Are you worried about me, Maurice?” Vicky asked.
“Yes, I am.” He answered with absolute naturalness.
“Oh, look, I’m pretty tough.”
“I don’t think you ought to rely on that for ever. Either of you.”
He spoke to Pat. “What do you think?”
Pat replied, with no edge in his voice: “Perhaps you’re right.”
At dinner there hadn’t been a word about their plans, partly because Pat was repressing all his own concerns, partly because neither Margaret nor I felt we could intrude. But Maurice hadn’t been so delicate, and no one was upset. It might be a happy love affair, but he had picked up (as, in fact, we had also, in the midst of happiness and peace) that there was something inconclusive in the air. As for their plans, they seemed that night to have none at all. So Maurice, less involved in this world than any of us, told them that it was time they got married.
To me, as I listened to the quiet voices, the odd thing was how they took it. Pat: with no sign of resentment, as though it were a perfectly reasonable conversation about how they were going to get back to Islington when they left the flat. Well, Pat wasn’t touchy. But Vicky? She too wasn’t resentful, or even apprehensive. She seemed to take it as a token of kindness, but not really relevant to her and Pat. She might have been nervous about this intervention, if she hadn’t been so certain that, just because she and Pat were themselves, in due course he would marry her. She had, I thought, a kind of obstinacy which no one outside could budge — obstinacy or else a faith (it was here, and nowhere else, that she showed something like conceit) in her own judgment.
Anyway, the three of them remained on the best of terms, and Maurice and Pat had another drink or two before the end of the evening.
When Maurice had gone back to Cambridge and Margaret and I were alone, she reminded me more than once of that initiative of his. She was proud of how uninhibited he was, particularly when she was worrying about him again. And also she thought he had been right. She was a little ashamed of herself, of course, for having been softened by Pat’s blarney. She was, like Maurice, altogether on Vicky’s side. It would be bad for her if the affair dragged on like this.
So we talked, on pleasant October evenings. There wasn’t much on our minds. I was working hard, but not obsessively. On a Friday night Charles rang up, according to habit, from school. All well. I told him that, the following Wednesday, I had to go to the University Court and Congregation. “Multiplying mummery,” came the deep mocking voice over the wire. Politics too, I said. That’s more like it, said Charles.
The next morning I woke up, drowsy with well-being, looking forward as I came to consciousness to a leisurely weekend alone with Margaret. I was lying on my right, and through a gap in the curtains the misty morning light came in over the Tyburn gardens. As I looked at the gap, I noticed — no, I didn’t notice, it hit me like a jolt in a jet plane 30,000 feet up, the passage up to that instant purring with calm — a veil over the corner of my left eye. A black veil, sharp-edged. I blinked. The veil disappeared: I felt a flood of reassurance. I looked again. The veil was there, covering perhaps a quarter of the eye, not more.
Margaret was sleeping like a child. I got out of bed and went to the window, pulling a little of one curtain back. Outside was a tranquil autumn haze. It was the kind of morning in which, years before, it had been good to be back in England after a holiday abroad. On my left side, the black edge cut out the haze. I blinked. I went on testing one eye, then the other. It was like pressing on a tooth to make sure it is still aching. The veil remained. Now that I was looking out into the full light, there was a penumbra, orange-brown, along its edge, through which I had some sort of swirling half-vision, as through blurred smoked glass. The veil itself was impenetrable. No pain.
I tiptoed out to the bathroom, and looked at myself in the glass. A familiar eye looked back. There wasn’t a mark on it, the iris was bright, the white wasn’t bloodshot. The lines in my face had deepened, that was all.
I went back to bed, trying to steady myself. I was more frightened, or not so much frightened as nervously exposed, than I liked being. Later on, people made excuses for me, told me it wasn’t so unnaturaclass="underline" the eye is close to the central nervous system, and so, they said cheeringly, eye afflictions often have their psychological effects. But I wasn’t thinking of explanations or excuses then. All I wanted was to talk sensibly to Margaret.
She was still sleeping. As a rule, she slept heavily in the early morning, and woke confused. Again I left the bed, found our housekeeper already stirring, and asked for breakfast as soon as she could bring it. Then I sat looking down at my wife. I said, “I’m sorry, but I should like you to wake up now.”
11: Objectivity?
AS I put my hand on her shoulder, she struggled through a dream, through layers of sleep. She managed to say, is anything the matter? I replied that a cup of tea would be arriving soon. She asked the time, and when I told her, said that it was too early. I said that I was just a little worried. What about, she said, still not awake, then suddenly she caught my tone of voice. What about? she said, only to act, slipping out of bed into her dressing gown, watching me, her face wide open.