In Their Wisdom Read online

  That wasn’t so far from the truth. In his mind, suspicious, acute, not self-deceiving, Hillmorton hadn’t any doubt. Yet sometimes doubts encouraged him, rosy doubts, the encouragement of mornings when he felt pretty well, mortality far away, still incredible.

  What Dr Pemberton didn’t know, and wouldn’t have been over interested in if he had known, was that Hillmorton was behaving with a special kind of ruthlessness. In his mind he was preparing to die. That led him to display his stoicism, but a stoicism which spared no one round him. At last, he could dispense, after a lifetime of control, with the conventions of affection. He kept hold on his manners, but they were the manners of style, not the manners of the heart.

  When he was not being treated in the hospital, he returned to the little bedroom in his youngest daughter’s house. He made it clear, with detached politeness, whom he wanted to see, and even clearer whom he didn’t want to see. So far as that daughter knew, her mother, his wife, came to visit him precisely once. She went away without tears, her expression unyielding, but her daughter believed – was she being sentimental, herself starting a happy marriage? – that she felt it the final disaster, that of being useless at the end. Another woman, whom the daughter had never seen before, came often, stayed long, and, though she called sometimes in the sitting-room on her way downstairs and asked questions about nursing him, didn’t give, or else concealed, her name. She seemed to be quite broken.

  Hillmorton was as ruthless about which of his friends he chose to see. James Ryle, hearing by casual gossip in the House that he was ill, discovered from Liz (it was his only source of information, he could excuse himself) where her father was staying. Ryle wrote a note, full of hope for a quick recovery (at that time neither he nor Liz nor any of her sisters knew the truth), and offered to talk to him, read to him, do anything to pass the time. In reply, he received a letter in childlike calligraphy which he did not recognise.

  My dear James, How very kind of you! How typically kind! I must apologise for this scrawl, but I’m having to write with my left hand. But no, I cannot think of taking advantage of your good nature. This affliction of mine promises badly, or at least so I infer. I am really rather like a sick animal, and I don’t wish to impose myself on anyone. I am better left alone with my thoughts, such as they are. However, thank you again for your kindness.

  Yours ever,

  Henry Hillmorton.

  Ryle was snubbed and chilled. Even the signature was remote. He was used to Hillmorton signing himself Hal. He was more snubbed (such a wound still rankled, even though he now realised that Hillmorton was very ill) when Adam Sedgwick mentioned that he himself had written a letter, and had been immediately invited to call round. Ryle had to take it as a dismissal after being a friend for nearly twenty years. He believed that he had been a loyal friend. The only explanation he could find agreeable was that he was a man in robust mid-sixties health (anyone would have said the same of Hillmorton the year before). Maybe Hillmorton would be affronted by the sight of a healthy man but could bear that of a sick one. Or maybe Hillmorton had always thought that friendship was a pleasant civility, no more, and Ryle had only imagined that he possessed it.

  Sedgwick had to hire a car to get himself driven to Beryl Road. It was a sunny February afternoon around three o’clock, the red brick houses behind Barons Court glaring in the level light, terraced houses built early in the century for the lower middle class now being smartened, property values rising. The house in Beryl Road was just one such. Sedgwick wasn’t a rich man, he lived in a donnish house in Cambridge, but he had not been inside one like this since his undergraduate lodgings.

  The driver had to help him along the crazy pavement. There was a decoration in coloured glass above the front door. Hillmorton’s daughter let them in. From what Sedgwick recalled of Liz, whom he had met once or twice, this sister wasn’t as pretty, or as strong-featured, but gentler in manner.

  ‘Lord Sedgwick? It’s very good of you. My father is expecting you.’ She looked at him, timid because of his disability. ‘I’m afraid the stairs are rather steep.’

  ‘He’ll get me up somehow.’ This wasn’t a time to be proud: and the driver as good as carried Sedgwick up the flight of stairs. The house had two rooms and a kitchen on the ground floor and a symmetrical set above. Mrs Dennis (Sedgwick had only just learned her married name) led them to the back bedroom, and there Sedgwick was lifted to a chair by the bedside.

  ‘My dear Adam! This is very nice!’ Hillmorton’s voice had lost none of its resonance, but there was a trace of indistinctness in his speech, though not so marked as in Sedgwick’s own.

  The other two left them alone, Hillmorton waving a hand, saying that he would ring when Lord Sedgwick felt inclined to go.

  As Sedgwick watched him – one mustn’t watch too long, the glance was drawn and then turned away – Hillmorton did not appear gravely ill. His cheeks were thinner, perhaps there was a trace of yellow coloration near the bones, difficult to identify in the afternoon light. The flesh under his chin was sagging and the corners of his mouth pulled down: but Sedgwick had often seen them pulled down in detachment or sarcasm. He was lying on his back, impassively still.

  On the bedside table there was a stack of books, the topmost of which was a volume of Greville’s diary. This seemed a curious choice. To break the silence Sedgwick asked: ‘Are you enjoying that?’

  ‘It passes the time.’ Hillmorton added: ‘I shouldn’t have expected it, but the time doesn’t go very fast. Would you have expected that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Not yet.’

  ‘How are you?’ It was a polite question, not interested in the answer.

  Sedgwick said: ‘Much the same.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  In fact Sedgwick felt better, sinfully better, warm with relief, sitting by this bedside: like someone who had been dragged from a car crash, knowing that his companions were still inside.

  So as not to watch too much, he was glancing round the room. It was a neat spare room, something like fourteen feet by ten, a chest of drawers along the far wall, a dressing table parallel with the single bed: above the chest of drawers, a Utrillo reproduction. Through the window, at the fan end, was a placid skyscape, cloudless, beginning to be gilded as the afternoon drew in: one turret was, not reaching into the sky, but standing firm against it.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Sedgwick, making conversation again.

  ‘Hospital. Fulham Hospital. My last stopping point, I think.’

  It was nearer, more convenient than the one where he was being treated, Hillmorton explained. Anyway, what did it matter? He spoke indifferently, not going out of his way to make the other comfortable.

  ‘I suppose,’ he said, indicating the bedroom, ‘this is the last stopping point but one.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I should think so, shouldn’t you?’

  Even then, there was the faintest vestigial searching for reassurance, but Sedgwick couldn’t give it. All he could say was: ‘I hope not.’

  ‘It does seem rather strange, don’t you know.’

  What? Coming towards death in this tidy suburban bedroom? Just dying? It had been said with an edge of incredulity, without fuss.

  Hillmorton said: ‘I can still get about a bit. On good days I can walk to the pillar box. Not far. I might be able to come to the House again.’

  ‘Is that worth the effort?’

  ‘I might manage a speech. Not long. I’d like to do better than last time.’

  Extraordinary, it seemed to Sedgwick, that that thought rankled now.

  In precisely the same tone, level, matter of fact, slightly speculative, Hillmorton said: ‘I don’t want to die.’

  After a pause he went on: ‘Do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you afraid of death?’

  It was some time before Sedgwick answered. He said: ‘I’m certainly afraid of dying.’

  Another interval. Sedgwick went on: ‘And I think, I think, I’m af
raid of annihilation. At least I don’t like the prospect.’

  The thoughts were clear. The speech wasn’t clear. A listener would have found it difficult to pick out what they were saying, either the impassive figure on the bed, or the twitching face above. But each could understand.

  ‘You don’t believe there’s anything to come?’ It was said dispassionately, but again there might be vestigial appeal. If so, Sedgwick was not the man to answer it. Did Hillmorton have any kind of faith?

  Sedgwick said: ‘What can that possibly mean?’

  ‘Most people have believed in an afterlife, haven’t they?’

  ‘I can’t give it any meaning.’

  Hillmorton broke into a smile, a genuine malicious smile.

  ‘You’re not the most cheery companion for this particular occasion, are you?’

  He went on: ‘That’s why it’s rather bracing to have you here, don’t you know. After all, you must have thought about these things.’

  ‘Quite a lot, this last year or two.’ Sedgwick produced an equivalent smile.

  ‘Adam,’ said Hillmorton, and stopped. Then he said: ‘Why do we cling on to life so hard?’

  ‘You’ve enjoyed yours, haven’t you?’

  ‘I’m not so sure.’

  ‘I’ve always thought you had.’

  ‘I suppose it’s been an interesting life. That’s as far as I should go.’ He added: ‘I’ve not done much, you know, I’m not leaving anything behind. That’s why I envy you. You have your kind of immortality.’

  ‘No.’ Sedgwick was as positive as before. ‘I can’t give that any meaning either.’

  He had known, he said, men who had sacrificed much to leave a memorial behind them, scientists, writers, the rest. It was as romantic as the hope of personal immortality. No scientist this century, not even Einstein or Dirac, would be more than a page or so in a textbook in a hundred years. Science was an edifice, people like himself had added a small brick. With luck he might be a footnote in another textbook.

  ‘Call that immortality?’ he said.

  ‘You are pretty bleak with yourself, aren’t you? I wish I’d known you better.’

  Hillmorton went on: ‘And yet a minor politician hasn’t even that. That’s all I was.’

  Each of them would have shrugged off kind words. Sedgwick said that it was unthinkable that anyone they had known would be remembered, genuinely remembered. The world had gone too fast for them. And yet, he confessed – and it was a confession – that he wanted to finish a piece of work before he had a brain operation.

  ‘After what you’ve been saying – why? why?’ Hillmorton was amused.

  ‘Pride, perhaps. Or a silly bit of hope. It would be nice to bring something off to finish with.’

  ‘How long will it take?’

  ‘I’ll give myself till this time next year. I can’t leave the operation any longer. It’s my last chance.’

  ‘I suppose it is.’

  ‘I’m frightened of that too. I’ve been frightened all along.’

  Hillmorton said, looking up at the ceiling: ‘Everything they’ve written about dying is no good. It’s too pretty, it’s nothing like the thing itself.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘Didn’t someone write, “Life to be sure is nothing much to lose”? If he had known about dying he couldn’t have written that. And doesn’t it go on, “But young men think it is, and we were young”? Nonsense. Young men don’t care about dying, they can’t imagine it. I wasn’t very brave when I was young, but I was much braver than I am now. And I expect you were too.’

  ‘Yes, I was.’

  ‘Books have nothing to tell us about dying. That’s why I read Greville. Trivial stuff, but that’s better than being pretty about–’ he didn’t finish.

  ‘Do you have much pain?’ said Sedgwick.

  ‘Not much so far. Plenty of discomfort. General fading out. But if I have more pain, I shall still want to live.’

  ‘I’m frightened of the operation. First of being put out for good. Secondly, being left worse than I am now. That could happen.’

  Hillmorton did not respond. At that point they were speaking without reference to each other, as though each were alone.

  Suddenly Hillmorton had a return, perhaps to politeness, perhaps to companionship.

  ‘Don’t you find you become simpler, the closer it comes? I think one does as one gets older anyway. One hardens, one hasn’t any use for the frills. But certainly I find it now. One doesn’t care about anyone else.’

  Sedgwick was thinking of other persons mortally sick, behaving differently from this.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Hillmorton with a surge of cheerfulness, ‘that’s what we are all really like all the time.’ He relaxed into what could have been either contemplation or hebetude.

  After some moments Sedgwick said: ‘I’m tiring you.’

  ‘No more than I’m tiring you.’

  ‘I’d better go.’

  Hillmorton said: ‘The moral of this is, there’s nothing to look forward to. Have you thought of that?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I’d like a pleasure to look forward to. I can’t find one.’

  Again Sedgwick said: ‘I’d better go.’

  Hillmorton, expansive style resurrecting, pressed him to have a drink before he went. Sedgwick said that it was a peculiar time to drink (it was nearly half past four).

  ‘Oh, time doesn’t mean all that much to us now, should you say?’

  He felt for the invalid’s bell push his daughter had rigged up, using the thumb of his left hand.

  ‘I rather fancy opening a bottle is beyond us, is that right?’

  He was smiling with complicity, open about his incapacity and the other man’s, rubbing it in that they had one working hand between them.

  ‘Alcohol used to be a pleasure,’ he remarked as they were waiting. ‘It isn’t now. I can’t touch spirits. Not at all.’

  His daughter opened the door. His voice rang out, as it used to in the Bishops’ Bar.

  ‘Oh, my dear girl. Will you be very kind and open a bottle of champagne? It would be extremely kind of you. You’re allowed a glass yourself.’

  The cork popped, glasses were filled, Sedgwick asked the young woman to bring up his driver in a quarter of an hour. She went away.

  ‘Good health,’ said Hillmorton, using a greeting entirely out of character, as though deliberately chosen for the occasion.

  Sedgwick managed, with two hands, to get his glass to his lips, spilling some on the way. He took a gulp. He had never drunk as heartily as Hillmorton, but he enjoyed champagne and did so now. Hillmorton sipped as though at a wine tasting, and shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said. He couldn’t keep querulousness out of his tone. ‘I don’t like the stuff. I never have. I can’t find anything I like.’

  As they remained there, not speaking, once more his concept of hospitality took over. He rang for his daughter and asked her to fill Lord Sedgwick’s glass. He said: ‘Come again, Adam. If you can stand it, that is.’ Then he gave a final goodbye smile, half amiable, half sadistic. ‘After all, I’d do the same for you.’

  The night air was cold as Sedgwick, fending off the driver’s arm, made his scurrying run along the strip of pavement to the front garden gate. Back in the car, he felt a kind of relief, but not quite the relief he had known after visits to other sick beds. He was thinking, how was he going to endure it? When he knew – which that night he didn’t for certain, as Hillmorton must – that his term was fixed. Anyone could put on a show in public or with someone to watch. It wouldn’t be difficult for most people to die with spirit on the scaffold, spectators down below. But when one was alone?

  25

  By sheer and meaningless coincidence, on the afternoon when Sedgwick was paying that visit to Hillmorton’s bedside, there was a conversation proceeding in which when healthy Hillmorton might have taken some interest. Symington telephoned Jenny to say that the ‘showdown’ couldn’t be delayed much
longer. He was proposing to have one final frank (not really frank, for he would have to conceal the not irrelevant factor that Swaffield might still veto any settlement whatsoever) exchange with Skelding, to see – when all the palaver was dispensed with and the ceremonies properly performed – what figure, yes, crude figure, the other side would settle for. Of course, Symington and Skelding knew almost exactly, and had known for months, what was in the other’s mind. Symington had told his wife so, in their arguments at Christmas. But there had been no hurry, and a few per cent either way meant thousands of pounds.

  Now Symington was in more of a hurry. He wanted a definite lawyers’ bargain to confront Swaffield with. He and Jenny would struggle to make him give way. If he wouldn’t – but that Symington left in suspense, still not resolved about how he should act himself and believing that Jenny wasn’t either.

  It was a disadvantage, in this kind of bargaining as in most, to be more pressed for time than your opposite number. Symington knew that as clearly as any lawyer practising. He gave a good impersonation of a man without impatience, the exchange with Skelding was unwoolly, succinct and amiable, and they reached an agreement to present to their clients. Maybe – Symington was self-critical about any of his professional jobs – he had given away a shade too much, a shade more than if he had been at leisure. Still, Swaffield apart or forgotten, it was an agreement that he would be happy enough to recommend to Jenny.

  Skelding was happy too. A nice picture, two happy lawyers, one old established, one on the rise. Skelding wanted to make his own recommendation quickly. That meant a meeting with the Underwoods, and Skelding decided to ask Liz along. To give weight to the proceedings he invited their counsel David March to summon a conference. Skelding was proud of the amount he had secured. It satisfied his kindness, his concept of pastoral care, and also his modest self-importance, all at once. He not only wished to have the whole business signed and covenanted, he was not disinclined for a little subdued pomp and fuss. Accordingly they all met in the counsel’s chambers in the Inner Temple, a couple of days after Skelding had agreed on the bargain. March had asked them for five thirty in the evening, and one of his pupils was pouring out drinks, a large one for March himself, substantial ones, not quite so large, for Mrs Underwood, Liz and Skelding, nothing for Julian.