The Malcontents (26 page)

‘You’ll have that on your conscience for the rest of your life.’

Mark said: ‘You have a lot of conscience, you know. I don’t think I have that much.’

At that, Stephen, whose tone had become even more bitter, because he seemed to be suffering the more and couldn’t shake the other, was more angry and bewildered. When the Bishop had said that he, Stephen, was a good man, he hadn’t tolerated it: he knew, as well as he knew anything, that it was false. But in secret, all through their friendship, he had thought Mark was good. Different from the rest of them, in some way set apart. He had sometimes wished, for Mark’s sake, that he was nearer ordinary human earth. He could be a bit of a saint. It made him seem more fragile. Even now, that evening in the drawing-room, after Mark’s confession, Stephen couldn’t help still thinking of him like that. The aura hung about him. And yet he said he had no conscience, and behaved like it. It was a contradiction that men like Stephen had met before, and never understood. Did conscience, as Stephen had to face it, and the constraints he felt upon himself, belong alone to ordinary sinful men? With their share, like his own, of sensual treachery, venality, cowardice, cruelty?

‘There’s something I should be sorry for,’ said Mark. His tone was friendly, but Stephen’s cry in return was harsh.

‘What’s that?’

‘If you let anything I’ve done, or anything I’ve said tonight, get in your way. Remember what I told you in that caff the other night. I meant every word of it. Don’t let anything I’ve done upset it. You need that kind of hope, don’t you?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘Nothing like so much.’ Mark went on: ‘I should be sorry, you know that, if I’d made life darker for you.’

‘This is rather late in the day.’

‘Never mind that. Listen to me. That’s the only thing I ask you.’ He added: ‘You see, I shan’t be with you much longer.’

‘What do you mean now?’

‘Oh, I’ve been making some decisions too. What you’re doing is right for you and Tess, I’m sure it is. I don’t mean just getting married. You want a different world here and now, or anyway before you’re too old, don’t you?’

Stephen couldn’t have said that without embarrassment, but it was true. ‘And you’ll try and plug away somewhere,’ said Mark. ‘I used to think I wanted that too. Perhaps I do. But I haven’t the patience to stick at it. So I’m getting out.’

‘Where to?’

‘I shan’t go back to Cambridge. This time last week I expected to be there, by now. It seems strange. I shan’t go back. I’ll take myself somewhere among the really poor. Somewhere like Calcutta. Where things can’t be worse. I’ll find a job in a hospital. I can’t do much, of course, but I expect I can do something. Anyway, I think it will suit me.’

He said it, just as casually, as though it were automatically obvious, as when, a year before at Cambridge, he announced that he was taking a weekend off.

Stephen, now distressed as well as angry, began to argue – began with a flat platitudinous argument. Just as he wanted Tess to finish her course, so he urged Mark. Only two terms to go. Bad to leave loose ends. Mark would get a certain First. For the first time that night, Mark showed a trace of malice, when he laughed at him. ‘You’re as hidebound as they come, aren’t you? You like people keeping on the rails, in the long run, don’t you? What the hell does a First matter?’

‘You never know.’

‘I do know.’

If he had been tranquil, Stephen realized, he wouldn’t have made that mistake: this made him more furious still. He uttered a curt remark about individual salvation. That was the phrase Neil had used the afternoon before. In the past, they had all agreed, no decent men went in search of that. It couldn’t be justified, either in morals or intellect. Now Mark was falling into that trap, that tinselly romantic trap.

‘Not a bit of it, ‘said Mark.

‘What else is it?’

‘No, I’m not saving myself. I’m not interested in that.’

‘Then whatever are you doing?’

‘Just getting on the move.’

‘I suppose you might be trying to be happy–’

‘Wrong again. I think I should be about as happy wherever I was.’

Stephen gave a bitter shout. ‘This is as irresponsible as it comes. You’re more irresponsible than anyone I’ve ever met.’

Later, there were times when Stephen and Tess speculated to each other about Mark’s self-exile. It could have been, they wanted to think, the sign of remorse breaking through: the kind of remorse that he wouldn’t admit, but showed itself in action. They wanted to believe it, but yet they couldn’t quite. It was too tidy, too schematic, too much of a solution. They had had to learn that anyone’s motives, their own, Mark’s least of all, weren’t as linear as that, and were left more mystified, less positive, than when they first met him and loved him.

Listening to Stephen’s reproaches, Mark simply said: ‘I don’t think this is the right time to quarrel, do you?’ He went on: ‘You know, I don’t think this is the right time for you to quarrel with anyone. I should like you to have a drink with Neil tonight. Us two and Tess. It would be a good thing to do.’

‘Are you suggesting we ought to have a celebration?’

Mark disregarded him.

‘He’s done you no wrong,’ said Mark. ‘You know it all now. He’s been absolutely loyal. You ought to count the good things. I’d like you to be reconciled wherever you can.’

Stephen didn’t speak, and Mark pressed on.

‘Tess would like it. I’m sure of that. She’s got to live with you, you know.’

Just then, Mark had the stronger will.

‘I’ll organize it,’ he said, in his freshest, most eager tone. ‘We’ll pick you up after dinner.’

Within a few minutes, Kate Freer, not having taken off her fur coat, entered the drawing-room. Mark sprang up and kissed her.

‘What have you been doing?’ he cried.

‘Bridge,’ she said. ‘Nothing interesting. Just bridge.’

‘You must be tired. I’ll get you a drink.’

He knew his way about the house, he was as familiar there as Stephen was. He didn’t need to ask what was her evening drink. He brought her a tumbler of whisky, tinkling with ice, and settled her in her habitual chair. ‘There,’ he cried. ‘Now I must go. I’ll see you later,’ he called to Stephen, as with light steps he walked out of the room.

‘He’s so kind,’ she said. ‘He has such style.’ She was looking, not at Stephen, but at the door through which Mark had departed, as though this were the son whom she would have liked.

Before Mark’s visit, Stephen had wanted to come out with his decisions, and get the evening over. He had felt controlled and able to do it cleanly. Now he sat with his mother in the drawing-room, not willing (or more unable than that) to stir from his chair, on his face an absent expression which she misread. If he had been in a state to notice, he would have realized that she and his father had been preparing themselves all day: they had foreseen, or discovered, some of what he had to tell them: she took it for granted that this mood of his was because of that.

‘Come on,’ she said, awkwardly, as though trying to sound like a companion. ‘I suggest you have a drink.’

‘No,’ said Stephen, from among his thoughts, and had to make an effort to thank her.

It wasn’t that Mark’s confession, by distracting him from what he had to say, made that easier. In some fashion, the stresses added to each other. He felt drained of energy. He didn’t even want to stand up. He scarcely spoke. When Thomas Freer came down from his study, a few minutes before dinner, he glanced curiously at his son.

Still nothing was said. The dinner table was quiet, the other two making a little conversation, Stephen silent. They had their soup and their chicken pancakes, a dish which Thomas Freer requested once a week. Then, all of a sudden, pushing aside his pudding, Stephen began to talk. He said it in rough harsh bursts, without any of the civility, or the touches of affection, which he had resolved to use.

There was anticlimax. He was going on, when he had to accept that they knew: certainly they knew that he was in no legal danger: they seemed to know most of the detail of the proceedings, and that he had undertaken to appear for Neil. What added to the anticlimax, they had made themselves ready to deal with him. Resignation, no anger, recrimination all brushed aside without hard words, everything civilized.

‘I take it,’ said Thomas Freer, fingers together, even now revealing the gratified smile of inside knowledge, ‘that one is right in assuming that once this unfortunate accident had given – what should one call them? – given your opponents a handle, they didn’t want to proceed to extremities. In fact, they would have been very foolish to do so, from their own point of view.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Stephen.

‘Minimum force,’ Thomas Freer murmured. ‘It’s usually a good maxim. They have those two young men, that’s quite enough. I take it one wasn’t too far out in judging that you yourself would probably be left alone. If you didn’t insist on getting into the public eye.’

‘Yes.’

‘I think I remember telling you. I
think
I remember.’ Thomas Freer spoke with subfusc satisfaction. ‘However. Things might be worse. Yes, they might be worse.’

‘You are getting into the public eye, though, aren’t you?’ Kate Freer’s glance turned to Stephen, then passed him. Her voice wasn’t full: she could keep out excitement or hysteria, but it sounded thin.

‘To an extent. To an extent,’ her husband intervened.

Stephen said: ‘I’ve told you just how much.’

‘It may develop.’

‘That’s a possibility.’ Stephen’s tone was as restrained as hers.

‘I wish you’d explain why you’re doing this.’

‘It’s not easy.’

‘You look as though you know it’s wrong yourself.’ Once more she had misread him. Now he had made the announcement, his thoughts had left the three of them, were casting back, not giving him peace, to what he had heard from Mark. Again he had to make an effort to answer her.

‘I don’t know it’s wrong. If I did, I shouldn’t do it.’

‘You’re only making a gesture. Gestures are stupid.’

‘Sometimes,’ said Thomas Freer, ‘we all have to make them, don’t we?’

Neither his wife nor son had attention to spare, or they would have been startled to see him trying to be so unapprehensive, or even to forget himself. At another time, his wife might have wondered when she had ever seen him make a gesture.

‘I don’t like them,’ she said. ‘They always do harm to other people.’

‘Perhaps some good.’

‘Perhaps some harm to people nearest to you.’

Stephen did not reply.

Thomas Freer said: ‘Don’t you see, my love, he believes that it’s his duty?’

‘Duty’s usually an excuse.’

‘What for?’ said Stephen.

‘For doing what you want to do. Especially if it does harm.’

All their voices had remained quiet. An onlooker might have imagined that no voice had ever been raised in that house, and no emotion uttered in the open.

There was a long silence, in which it seemed there was more to be said, but as though everyone was holding back. But once they had held back, no one chose to speak again.

With an appearance of relief, Thomas Freer concentrated on his cheese. They hadn’t drunk wine at dinner, but with elaborate, emollient indifference, he mused aloud: ‘I don’t know about you two, but I’m rather inclined to fancy a glass of port.’

‘I might as well join you,’ said his wife.

Stephen said: ‘Not for me, thank you.’

‘Oh, I do wish you would,’ said Thomas Freer. Just in time, Stephen recognized that this once more was a kind of plea. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ll change my mind, may I?’

The decanter went round. There was another silence, except for Thomas Freer murmuring, as he tasted: ‘Reasonably good.
Reasonably
good.’

Stephen sipped, and said: ‘I may as well tell you the rest. I’ve proposed to Tess Boltwood. And she’s said yes.’

There were two kinds of astonishment. For both the Freers, this news was an absolute surprise. The other they had been expecting, and had rehearsed how to meet it – though his self-discipline had (and it would have seemed strange to anyone who knew them) proved stronger than hers. But about this they had no warning at all: Stephen had had other girls: they had often imagined him making what they still called ‘a good marriage’, and had considered Sylvia, and had speculated as to whether that was good enough.

The other astonishment was Stephen’s. For whatever response he had expected from his mother, it was different in kind from this. She gave a loud, hearty, almost raucous laugh, and broke out: ‘Well, I must say, you haven’t been exactly idle recently, have you?’

She asked, practical, participating as she used to when he first went away to school, about the date of the wedding, where they intended to live.

‘Wherever I get a job,’ said Stephen.

‘Not Cambridge?’

He shook his head.

‘You’ll have children?’

‘I dare say.’

‘I wonder how you’ll like that.’ There was a flash of remote sardonic amusement (absent from her since Tuesday night), half sarcastic, half detached. ‘Anyway,’ she remarked, ‘we shan’t be seeing so much of you, shall we?’

‘No, not so much.’

‘We shall all have to get used to that, shan’t we?’ she said. ‘It was bound to come, of course.’

She was looking happy, much younger, more than that, liberated, free from care. Maybe – long before the danger – this was a relation which (to herself, in privacy) she couldn’t sustain. She was one of those who weren’t independent in action but in privacy answered only to themselves. But also, there was something healthier, or at least more commonplace, than that. Marriage was something to cling on to. Marriage would make him safer. Marriage had both confined her, and made her safer. Perhaps it would do the same for him.

She enjoyed meeting him when there was no open feeling between them. She had often asked herself what her true feeling for him was. There might be an animal tie. She had been vain, because he was clever: she respected him, because he was on his own: otherwise, in the past years, she had often been afraid of him. In time, as he became more like the rest of them (this was what his marriage promised her), all that would be easier. She couldn’t resist the thought – malicious, cheerful, like a young woman’s teasing – that his children, her grandchildren, might cost him the embarrassment that he had cost her.