The Light and the Dark Page 8

  Roy and I had not long left the Lodge and were sitting in his rooms, when we heard a woman’s footsteps on the stairs.

  “What’s this?” said Roy wearily.

  It was Joan. She hesitated when she saw me, but then spoke direct to Roy.

  “I’m sorry. But I had to come. At dinner you looked so – ill.”

  “It’s nice of you, Joan,” he said, but I felt he was put out. “I’m pretty well.”

  She looked at him with steady, intelligent, dark blue eyes.

  “In all ways?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Joan.

  Roy made a grimace, and leant back.

  “Look,” she said, her expression fierce, warm-hearted, painfully diffident, and full of power, “you don’t think I like intruding, do you? But I want to ask something. Is it this wretched fellowship? We’re bound to hear things we shouldn’t, you must know that.”

  “It would be extremely surprising if you didn’t,” said Roy with a faint smile.

  “We do,” said Joan, transformed by her rich laugh. “Well, I’ve heard about this wretched business. Is it that?”

  “Of course not,” said Roy impatiently.

  “I should like to ask Lewis Eliot,” she said, and turned to me. “Has that business got on his nerves?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “It would be better if it were settled, of course.” I was actually anxious that his election should come through quickly, so as to divert his mind (Brown had been satisfied with the results of Lyall’s and Foulkes’ visit, so much so that he was pressing to have a vacancy declared at the next college meeting).

  “Are you sure?” Joan looked stubborn and doubtful. She spoke to Roy again: “You must see that it doesn’t matter. Whatever they do, it can’t really matter to you.”

  “Just so,” said Roy. “You need to tell your father that. It would please him if I got in.”

  “He worries too much about these people,” said Joan, speaking of her father with scorn and love. “You say you don’t. I hope it’s true.”

  She gazed at him steadily.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “I was trying to imagine why you were looking as you did.”

  “I can’t suggest anything,” said Roy. He had been restless all the time she was questioning him: had he not noticed the physical nervousness which had made her tremble as she entered, the utter diffidence which lay behind her fierce direct attack? He felt invaded, and though his words were light they held a sting.

  “Some of your young women at Girton might give you some tips. Or you might get an idea if you read enough novels.”

  “I’m not so young as you think,” said Joan, and a blush climbed up her strong neck, reddened her cheeks, left her bright-eyed, ashamed, angry and defenceless.

  I went away from Roy’s rooms as the clocks were chiming midnight, and was in the depth of sleep when softly, persistently, a hand on my shoulder pulled me half-awake.

  “Do you mind very much?” Roy was speaking. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Put the light on,” I said crossly.

  His face was haggard, and my ill-temper could not survive.

  “It’s nothing original,” he said. “I can’t sleep, that’s all. It must be a very useful accomplishment, being able to sleep.”

  He had not been to bed, he was still wearing a dinner jacket.

  “What do you want to do?”

  He shook his head. Then suddenly, almost eagerly, he said: “I think I need to go for a walk. Will you come?” He caught, with poignant, evanescent hope, at anything which would pass the night. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said.

  I got up and dressed. It was just after three when we walked through the silent courts towards the back gate of the college. The roofs gleamed like silver under the harvest moon, and the shadows were dense, black, and sharply edged.

  A light shone in an attic window; we knew the room, it was a scholar working late.

  “Poor fool,” Roy whispered, as I was unlocking the small back door. “He doesn’t realise where that may lead.”

  “Where?”

  “It might even keep him here,” said Roy with a faint smile. “If he does too well. So that he’s woken up in the middle of the night and taken out for walks.”

  We walked along Regent Street and Hills Road, straight out of the town. It was all quiet under the moon. It was brilliantly quiet. The road spread wide in the moonlight, dominating the houses as on a bright day; the houses stood blank-faced. Roy walked by my side with quick, light, easy steps. He was soothed by the sheer activity, by being able to move without thought, by the beautiful night. He talked, with a trace of his good-natured malice, about some of our friends. We had a good many in common, both men and women, and we talked scandal and Roy imitated them as we made our way along the gleaming, empty road.

  But when we turned left at the Strangeways and crossed the fields, he fell more silent. For a quarter of a mile along the Roman road neither of us spoke. Then Roy said, quietly and clearly: “Old boy, I need some rest.”

  “Yes,” I said. He did not mean sleep or bodily rest.

  “Shall I ever get it?”

  I could not answer that.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “I think I was born out of my time. I should have been happier when it was easier to believe. Wouldn’t you have been happier? Wouldn’t you?”

  He wanted me to agree. I was tempted to fall in, to muffle my answer, to give him a little comfort. Yet he was speaking with absolute nakedness. I could not escape the moment in which we stood.

  I hesitated. Then I told the truth.

  “I don’t think so.”

  He walked on a few yards in silence, then looked me in the face.

  “Lewis, have you never longed to believe in God?”

  “No,” I said. I added: “Not in any sense which has much meaning. Not in any sense which would mean anything to you.”

  “You don’t long to believe in God?” he insisted.

  “No.”

  “Yet you’re not stuffed.” His smile was intimate, mischievous, sad. “No man is less stuffed. In spite of your business manner. You even feel a good deal, don’t you? Not only about love. That’s the trouble with all those others” – he was dismissing some of our contemporaries – “they can only feel about love. They’re hollow, aren’t they? But I can’t accuse you of that. Yet you don’t long to believe–”

  His eyes searched me, bright, puzzled, almost humorous. He had been mystified about it since he first knew me well. So much of our sense of life we felt in common: he could not easily or willingly accept that it led me to different fulfilments, even to different despairs. Most of all, he could not accept that I could get along, with fairly even spirits, and not be driven by the desperate needs that took hold of him in their ineluctable clarity.

  He was quiet again. Then he said: “Lewis, I’ve prayed that I might believe in God.”

  He looked away from me, down from the ridge; there was a veil of mist on the lower fields.

  “I knew,” I said.

  “It’s no good,” he said, as though off-handedly. “One can’t make oneself believe. One can’t believe to order.”

  “That must be so,” I said.

  “Either it comes or it doesn’t. For me it doesn’t. For some – it is as easy as breathing. How lucky they are,” he said softly. “Think of the Master. He’s not a very good scholar, you know, but he’s an extremely clever man. But he believes exactly as he did when he was a child. After reading about all the religions in the world. He’s very lucky.”

  He was still looking over the fields.

  “Then there’s Ralph Udal.” Suddenly he gave me a glance acute and piercing. “By the way, why do you dislike him so much?”

  “I don’t dislike him–”

  “Come off it.” Roy smiled. “I’ve not seen you do it with anyone else – but when you meet him you bristle like a cat.”

  I had not wante
d to recognise it, but it was true. I could not explain it.

  “Anyway,” said Roy, “he’s not an empty man. You’d give him that, wouldn’t you? And he believes without a moment’s trouble.”

  Slowly we began to walk back along the path. Roy was still thinking of those who did not need to struggle in order to believe in God. He spoke of old Martineau, whose story had caught his imagination. Martineau was a solicitor who had kept open house for me and my friends when I was a very young man. He was cultivated, lively, given to all kinds of interests, and in those days only mildly eccentric. Suddenly, at the age of fifty, he had given away his practice and all his possessions; he joined several quaint religious settlements in turn, and then became a tramp preacher; at that moment he was a pavement artist on the streets of Leeds, drawing pictures with a religious message. I had seen him fairly recently: he was very happy, and surprisingly unchanged.

  “He must have been certain of God,” said Roy.

  “I’m not at all sure,” I said. “He was never able to explain what he really believed. That was always the hardest thing to understand.”

  “Well, I hope he’s certain now,” said Roy. “If anyone deserves to be, he does.”

  Then he spoke with intense feeling: “I can’t think what it’s like to be certain. I’m afraid that it’s impossible for me. There isn’t a place for me.”

  His voice was tense, excited, full of passion. As he went on, it became louder, louder than the voice I was used to, but still very clear: “Listen, Lewis. I could believe in all the rest. I could believe in the catholic church. I could believe in miracles. I could believe in the inquisition. I could believe in eternal damnation. If only I could believe in God.”

  “And yet you can’t,” I said, with his cry still in my ears.

  “I can’t begin to,” he said, his tone quiet once more. “I can’t get as far as ‘help Thou mine unbelief’.”

  We left the ridge of the Roman road, and began to cross the shining fields.

  “The nearest I’ve got is this,” he said. “It has happened twice. It’s completely clear – and terrible. Each time has been on a night when I couldn’t sleep. I’ve had the absolute conviction – it’s much more real than anything one can see or touch – that God and His world exist. And everyone can enter and find their rest. Except me. I’m infinitely far away for ever. I am alone and apart and infinitesimally small – and I can’t come near.”

  I looked at his face in the moonlight. It was pale, but less haunted, and seemed to be relaxed into a kind of exhausted peace. Soon he began to sing, very quietly, in a light, true, reedy voice. Quiet though it was, it became the only sound under the sky. There was a slight ironic smile on his face; for he was singing a child’s prayer to be guarded while asleep.

  8: Election of a Fellow

  For once in his life, Arthur Brown considered that he had been guilty of “premature action”. After the visit of Lyall and Foulkes, he had considered Roy as good as elected, although as a matter of form he warned me against excessive optimism. Getliffe had told him, in his honest fashion, that he had been deeply impressed by the expert evidence. Even Winslow had remarked that, though the case for Calvert rested mainly on nepotism, there did appear to be a trace of merit there. Brown went steadily ahead, persuaded the college to create a vacancy and to perform the statutory rites so that there could be an election on the first Monday in November.

  So far, so good. But it happened that young Luke, a scientist two years Roy’s junior, finished a research sooner than anyone expected. Francis Getliffe came in with the news one night. The work was completely sound and definite, he said, though some loose ends needed tying up; it was an important advance in nuclear physics. Getliffe had been intending to bring Luke’s name up the following year, but now he wanted him discussed at the fellowship meeting.

  “That puts everything back in the melting pot,” said Arthur Brown. “I don’t wish Luke any harm, but it’s a pity his confounded apparatus didn’t blow up a fortnight ago. Just to give us time to squeeze our young friend in. I daresay Luke is pretty good, I know Getliffe has always thought the world of him. But there’s plenty of time to give him a run next year. Well, Eliot, it’s a great lesson to me never to count my chickens before they’re hatched. I shan’t take anything for granted next time I’m backing someone until I actually see him admitted in the Chapel. I don’t mind telling you that I shall be relieved if we ever see Calvert there. Well, we’ve got to make as good a showing as we can. I’m rather inclined to think this is the time to dig in our heels.”

  Brown’s reflection did not prevent him from letting Francis Getliffe know that his “present intention” would be to support Luke next year. I did the same. Francis Getliffe was not the man who would “do a deal”, but he was practical and sensible. He would get Luke in anyway, if he waited a few months: we made sure he knew it, before he went to extravagant lengths to fight an election now.

  That was all we could do. Roy was still depressed, though not so acutely as on the night of our walk. About his election, I was far more anxious than he.

  The day of the election was damp and dark, with low clouds, and a drizzle of rain. In the courts, red and copper leaves of creepers slithered underfoot; umbrellas glistened in the streets as they passed the lighted shops. The meeting was called for the traditional hour of half-past four, with tea beforehand; to quieten my nerves, I spent the middle of the afternoon walking in the town, looking at bookshops, greeting acquaintances; the streets were busy, the window lights shone under the dark sky. There was the wistful smell of the Cambridge autumn, and in the tailors’ shops gleamed the little handbills, blue letters on white with the names of the week’s university teams.

  At four o’clock I entered the college by the great gate. The bell was tolling for the meeting, the curtains of the combination room were already drawn. Through the curtains, the lights of the room glowed orange and drew my eyes from the dark court; like any lighted room on a dusky evening, it tempted me with domestic comfort, even though I was wishing that the meeting were all over or that I need not go.

  As soon as I got inside, I knew so much of it by heart – the burnished table reflecting, not wineglasses and decanters, but inkpots and neat piles of paper in front of each of our chairs – old Gay, the senior fellow, aged seventy-nine, tucking with shameless greed and gusto into an enormous tea, and congratulating everyone on its excellence – the great silver teapots, the muffin covers, the solid fruit cakes, the pastries – the little groups of two or three colloguing in corners, with sometimes a word, louder than the rest of their conversation, causing others to frown and wonder.

  It did not vary meeting by meeting. Nor indeed did the business itself, when the half hour struck, and the Master, brisk, polite, quick-witted, called us to our places, asked for the minutes, said his opening word about the day’s proceedings. For by tradition the day’s proceedings had to begin first with any questions of college livings and second with financial business. That afternoon there was only a report that someone was considering a call to the one vacant living (“he’ll take it,” said Despard-Smith bleakly): but when the Master, so used to these affairs that his courtesy was second nature, his impatience long since dulled, asked: “Bursar, have you any business for us?” Winslow replied: “If you please, Master. If you please.” We listened to a long account of the difficulty of collecting rents from some of the college farms. We then heard the problem of the lease of one of the Cambridge shops, and discussed how to buy a house owned by another college, which was desirable in order to rectify an unstrategic frontier. It was routine, it was quite unselfconscious, it was what we were used to: it only happened that I could have dispensed with it that afternoon, that was all.

  As usual, the financial business tailed away about half-past five. The Master, completely fresh, looked round the table. It was a gift of his to seem formal, and yet natural and relaxed.

  “That seems to bring us to our main business, gentlemen,” he said. “
As will be familiar to you, we have appointed today for the election of a fellow. I suggest we follow the custom that is becoming habitual – though it wasn’t so when I was a junior fellow” – he smiled at some of the older men, as though there was a story to be told later – “and have a straw vote first, to see if we can reach a majority for any candidate. After that, we will proceed to a formal vote, in which we have been known to put on a somewhat greater appearance of agreement.”

  There were a few suppressed smiles.

  “Well,” said the Master, “the college is well aware of my own position. I thought it right and proper – in fact I felt obliged – to bring up the name of Mr R C E Calvert for consideration. I have told the college, no doubt at excessive length, that in my own view Mr Calvert is our strongest candidate for years past. The college will be familiar with the written reports on his work, and I understand that some fellows had the opportunity of meeting Sir Oulstone Lyall and Colonel Foulkes in person, who probably expressed to them, as they have expressed to me, their opinions upon Mr Calvert.” For a second a slight smile crossed the Master’s face. “The whole case has been explored, if I may say so, with praiseworthy thoroughness. I seem to recall certain discussions in this room and elsewhere. I do not know whether the college now feels that it has heard enough to vote straightaway, or whether there are some fellows who would prefer to examine the question further.”

  “If you please, Master,” began Winslow.

  “I am afraid that I should consider it rushing things,” said Despard-Smith, at the same moment.

  “You wish for a discussion, Bursar?” said the Master, his colour a shade higher, but still courteous.