The Light and the Dark (12 page)

Roy inclined his head.

“If it is agreeable to you,” the Master went on briskly, “I propose to admit you at once.”

“Yes, Master.” They were Roy’s first words.

“Then we will go into chapel this moment,” said the Master. “Those fellows who are free will perhaps follow us.”

The Master and Roy walked together, both slender and upright, out of the combination room into the first court, dark in the November night. We followed them, two by two, along the wet shining path. We carried some wisps of fog in with us, as we passed through the chapel door, and a haze hung over the painted panels. We crowded into the fellows’ stalls, where few of us now attended, except for formal duties such as this – that night Winslow and Francis Getliffe, the doctrinaire unbelievers, did not come.

Roy knelt in the Master’s stall, his palms together, the Master’s hands pressing his. The clear light voice could be heard all over the chapel, as he took the oath. The Master said the final words, and began shaking Roy’s hand. As we moved forward to congratulate him, Brown nudged me and whispered: “Now I really do believe that fate can’t touch us.”

Lady Muriel gave an intimate dinner party in the Lodge: Arthur Brown presented three bottles on the night of the election, and some more in the week that followed: the Master went round, excelling himself in cheerful, familiar whispers: Bidwell greeted Roy with his sly, open, peasant smile, and said: “We’re all very glad about that, sir. Of course we knew something was going on. We like to keep our eye on things in our own way. I’m very glad myself, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

With all of them Roy pretended to be light-hearted: their pleasure would be spoilt unless he were himself delighted. He could not take joy away from those he liked. He even simulated cheerfulness with me, for he knew that I was pleased. But it was no good. The melancholy would not let him go. It was heavier than it had ever been.

He thrashed round like an animal in a cage. He increased his hours of work. Bottles of brandy kept coming into his room, and he began drinking whenever he had to leave his manuscripts. There were evenings when he worked with a tumbler of spirits beside him on the upright desk.

One night I found him in an overall, with pots of paint scattered on the floor.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Brightening things up,” he said. His mockery did not leave him for long, even in this state. “I need things bright round me. Otherwise I might get depressed.”

For days he painted the room from the ceiling to the floor. In the end, the walls gleamed in pink, green and terracotta. The desks, once a shining white, he painted also, the platforms pink and the legs green. It picked out their strange shapes. From then on, the whole room was bright with colour, was covered with the vivid desks in their bizarre lines. It took visitors aback, when they called to inspect his manuscripts.

I felt helpless and utterly useless, though he seemed to like having me with him. I feared, with a growing dread, the lightning flashes of elation. I told myself that perhaps this state would pass, and meanwhile tried to prevent him dining in hall or being seen much in the college. I did not want him to do himself harm there – and also I had the selfish and practical reason that I did not want him to do harm to myself or Arthur Brown. I dined with him in the town, we went to see friends in their colleges and houses, I persuaded him to spend several nights in his London flat. Rosalind, who had written to me often during the past eighteen months and who kept sending me presents, only needed a word by telephone: she followed him there, and for the first day or two gave him release – temporary, perhaps, thoughtless, certainly, not the release he himself looked for, but still release.

It was, of course, noticed by the college that he had not dined often in hall since his election. But they concluded that he was indulging in a wild round of celebration. They minded very little; by the custom of their class, and of this particular academic society, they did not take much notice of drinking. They nodded in a matter-of-fact and cheerful way. The Master met him once in the court when his eyes were bright with drink, and said to me next day: “Roy Calvert seems to be going about with vineleaves in his hair. I suppose it’s only natural.”

I wished it were as natural as that.

I paid very little attention when Roy asked me to the meeting in honour of Lyall. It was on one of my usual evenings in London, during Roy’s stay. I had gone round from my house in Chelsea to his flat in Connaught Street, just behind the Bayswater Road. Rosalind let me in. She was busy trying the effect of some new boxes with bright, painted, porcelain lids.

Roy had taken the flat while he was an undergraduate, but Rosalind was the only woman who had left her stamp on it. Soon after she first stayed there, she set about making it into something more ornate, lush, comfortable, and mondain.

“How do you like them?” she said, viewing the boxes.

“A bit boudoir-ish,” I said.

“Oh dear.” Superficially she was easy to discourage. She and I got on very well in an unexacting fashion.

“How is Roy?”

“The old thing’s dressing. I don’t think there’s much the matter with him.”

“Is he cheerful?”

“He’s as cheerful as you bright people usually manage to be. I don’t take too much notice of his moods, Lewis. I’ve been keeping him in bed. There’s plenty of life in the old thing still,” she said with a dying fall. One of her uses to him, I thought suddenly, was that she treated him as though he were a perfectly ordinary man. She loved what to her meant romance, the pink lamp-shades in the restaurant car, the Italian sky, great restaurants, all the world of chic and style: at a distance Roy was romantic because he gave her those: in the flesh, though she loved him dearly, he was a man like other men, who had better be pampered though “there was not much wrong with him”.

Roy entered in a dressing-gown, shaved and fresh.

“You here?” he said to me in mock surprise. And to Rosalind: “What may you be doing, dear?”

“Flirting with Lewis,” she said immediately.

He smacked her lightly, and they discussed where they should go for dinner, so that he might know what clothes to wear. “We’re not taking you, old boy,” said Roy over her shoulder: he gave her just the choice that made her eyes rounder, Claridge’s, the Canton, Monseigneur’s. He seemed far less depressed than when I last saw him, and I was nothing but amused when he asked me to the Lyall celebration.

“We shan’t take you tonight,” he said. “I’m simply jealous of you with Rosalind. But I’ll take you somewhere else on Thursday. You need to come and hear us honour old Lyall.”

“Oulstone Lyall?”

“Just so. I need you to come. You’ll find it funny. He’ll be remarkably stuffed.”

I soon had reason to try to remember that invitation exactly, for I was compelled to learn this state of his right through; but I was almost certain that there was nothing dionysiac about him at all that evening, no lightning flash of unnatural gaiety. It was probable that his ease and pleasure with Rosalind made his spirits appear higher than they were. In reality, he was still borne down, though he could appear carefree as he entertained Rosalind or laughed at me.

Sir Oulstone Lyall was seventy years of age that autumn, and scholars in all the oriental subjects had arranged this meeting as a compliment. It was arranged for the Thursday afternoon in the rooms of the British Academy. There were to be accounts of the contemporary position in various fields of scholarship – with the intention of bringing out, in a discreet and gentlemanly way, the effect and influence of Lyall’s own work. It was a custom borrowed from German scholars, and the oldfashioned did not like it. Nevertheless, most of the orientalists in the country came to the meeting.

The Master travelled up from Cambridge that morning and lunched with Roy and me. Away from the Lodge, he was in his most lively form, and it was he who first made a light remark about Sir Oulstone.

“Between ourselves,” said the Master, “it’s a vulgar error to suppose that distinguished scholars are modest souls who shrink from the glory. Knighthoods and addresses on vellum – that’s the way to please distinguished scholars. I advise you to study the modesty of our venerable friend this afternoon.”

Roy laughed very loudly. There was something wild in the sound; at once I was worried. I wished I could get him alone.

“And if you want to observe human nature in the raw,” said the Master, jumping into his favourite topic, “it’s a very interesting point whether you ought to go out and find a pogrom or just watch some of our scientific colleagues competing for honours.”

“How did Lyall get there?” said Roy, in a piercing insistent tone.

“Between ourselves,” the Master replied, “I’ve always felt that he was rather an old humbug.”

“I’ve heard a story about Erzberger. Master, do you remember anything?” said Roy, with abnormal concentration.

The Master did remember. He was himself modest and humble, his professional life was blameless. But he was always ready to indulge in a detached, abstract and cheerful cynicism. He did not notice that Roy’s glance was preternaturally attentive and acute – or perhaps he was stimulated by it.

For the rest of our lunch until it was time to walk up to Piccadilly, he told Roy what he knew of Lyall and Erzberger. The Master had actually met Erzberger when they were both young men.

“He was an astonishingly ugly Jew. I thought he was rather pushful and aggressive. He once asked me – ‘What does an outsider like me have to do to get a fellowship?’” But, so we gathered from the Master, he was brilliantly clever, and had a rarer gift than cleverness, a profound sense of reality. He went to work with Lyall, and they published several papers together on the medieval trade routes in Central Asia. “It was generally thought that the real views were Erzberger’s.” Then there was an interval of several years, in which Erzberger told a good many people that he was preparing a major work. “He never believed in underrating himself.” He had never been healthy, and he died in his thirties of consumption. No unfinished work was ever published, but two years after his death Lyall produced his own magnum opus, the foundation of his fame, on the subject on which they had worked together. In the preface he acknowledged his gratitude to his lamented friend Erzberger for some fruitful suggestions, and regretted his untimely death.

“Just so,” said Roy. “Just so.”

It was a dark, foggy afternoon as we walked up Piccadilly. Cars’ headlights were making swathes in the mist, and Roy’s voice sounded more than ever clear as he talked to the Master all the way to Burlington House. He was intensely, brilliantly excited. A laugh kept ringing out. On the Master’s other side, I walked silent and apprehensive in the murk. Could I give him calm, could anyone? Was it sensible or wise to try now? I was tied by doubt and ignorance. I knew he was suffering, but I did not know how justified my apprehensions were.

As we took off our coats, and the Master left us for a moment, I made one attempt.

“Are you desperately anxious to attend this pantomime?” I said.

“Why do you ask?” said Roy sharply.

“There are other things which might amuse us–”

“Oh no,” said Roy. “I need to be here.” Then he smiled at me. “Don’t you stay. It was stupid of me to drag you here. You’re certain to be bored. Let’s meet later.”

I hesitated, and said: “No. I may as well come in.”

The Academy room was quite small and cosy; the lights were thrown back from the fog-darkened windows. There were half a dozen men on the dais, among them Lyall and Colonel Foulkes. The Master was placed among minor dignitaries in the front row beneath. Perhaps sixty or seventy men were sitting in the room, and it struck me that nearly all of them were old. Bald heads shone, white hair gleamed, under the lights. As the world grew more precarious, rich young men did not take to these eccentric subjects with such confidence: amateurs flourished most, as those old men had flourished, in a tranquil and secure age.

Roy found me a chair, and then suddenly went off by himself to sit under the window. My concern flared up: but in a moment the meeting began.

The chairman made a short speech, explaining that we had come to mark Sir Oulstone’s seventieth birthday and express our gratitude for his work. As the speech went on, Sir Oulstone’s head inclined slowly, weightily, with dignity and satisfaction, at each mention of his own name.

Then came three accounts of Central Asian studies. The first, given by an Oxford professor with a high, fluting voice, struck me as straightforward old-fashioned history – the various conquering races that had swept across the plateau, the rise and fall of dynasties, and so on. The second, by Foulkes, dealt with the deciphering of the linguistic records. Foulkes was a rapid, hopping, almost unintelligible speaker, and much of the content was technical and would have been, even if I could have heard what he said, unintelligible to me: yet one could feel that he was a master of his subject. He paid a gabbling, incoherent and enthusiastic compliment to Roy’s work on Soghdian.

The third account I found quite fascinating. It was delivered in broken English by a refugee, and it described how the history of Central Asia between 500 bc and ad 1000 had been studied by applying the methods of archaeology and not relying so much on documentary evidence – by measuring areas of towns at different periods, studying the tools men used and their industrial techniques. It was the history of common men in their workaday lives, and it made sense of some of the glittering, burbling, dynastic records. The pioneer work had been done over forty years before, said the speaker vigorously, in the original articles of Lyall and Erzberger: then the real great step forward had been taken by Lyall himself, in his famous and classical book.

There was steady clapping. Sir Oulstone inclined his head very slowly. The speaker bowed to him, and Sir Oulstone inclined his head again.

The speech came to an end. It had been a masterpiece of exposition, and the room stirred with applause. There followed a few perfunctory questions, more congratulations to Sir Oulstone from elderly scholars in the front row, one or two more questions. The meeting was warm with congratulation and self-congratulation, feet were just beginning to get restless, it was nearly time to go.