Twice I managed to signal to Roy that he must keep quiet. He was enough in control of himself to do so, though he was affected by the sight of another unhappy man. For Winslow was worried by his son’s examination, which had just finished. As soon as the party began, Brown asked him how the boy had got on, and Winslow snubbed him: ‘My dear Tutor, I cannot answer for the prospects of the semi-illiterate. I hope the wretched youth managed to read the questions.’
Roy heard the sadness in that answer, and it nearly touched the trigger of his own. But, to my momentary relief, we settled down to wine. It was ten o’clock, but the sun had only just set, and over the roof opposite Brown’s window there was a brilliant afterglow. From one of the May week balls, we could just hear the throbbing of a band. There was the slightest of breezes stirring, and on it came the scent of acacia from the court beneath.
Pilbrow took charge of the party. He was an authority on wine, and had been Brown’s master. His bald head gleamed in the fading light, shone when, towards midnight, Brown switched on the lamps; the ruddy cheeks flushed, but otherwise Pilbrow did not change at all as one decanter after another was left empty. He fixed one of us with a lively brown eye and asked what we noticed at each sip — at the beginning, middle, and end of each sip. The old man rang all the changes possible with ten bottles of claret. When we were halfway through, he said with extreme firmness: ‘I don’t think any of you would ever be quite first-class. I give our host the benefit of the doubt—’
‘I don’t claim it,’ said Brown. ‘I shall never be anything like as good as you.’
Meanwhile, Roy had been drinking faster than the rest of us. The dangerous glint had come into his eyes. He began to talk to Winslow — and it was then I had to signal. Roy’s smile was pathetic as he fell into silence.
Winslow was speaking again about his son, this time in a different tone.
‘I shall be relieved,’ he said with humility, ‘if the examiners let him through.’
‘Oh, they’ll let him through,’ said Brown.
‘I don’t know what will happen to him if they don’t,’ said Winslow. ‘He’s a stupid child. But I believe there’s something in him. He’s a very nice person. If they gave him a chance now, I honestly believe he may surprise you all in ten years’ time.’
No one there had heard Winslow speak so openly. It was some moments before he regained his sardonic tone. Then he made himself say to Brown: ‘My dear Tutor, you’ve had the singular misfortune to teach the foolish creature. I drink to you in commiseration.’
Brown insisted on drinking to young Winslow’s success. ‘Let me fill your glass. Which shall it be? You’ve gone a bit light on the Latour ’24.’
We each had ten glasses in front of us, labelled to match the decanters. Brown selected the right one from Winslow’s set.
‘That will do very nicely. If you please. If you please.’
Crawford surveyed the glasses, the decanters, the gleam of crystal and silver, the faces all flushed, the scene of luxury and ease. Out of the window there was still a faint glow in the west. Girls’ laughter came up from the court, as a party moved out of college to a ball.
‘It’s very hard to realize what the world is really like tonight — when one’s enjoying your hospitality, Brown,’ he announced. ‘Speaking as a scientific observer, I should have to say that the world tonight is more unstable than it’s ever been in human experience. But it’s impossible to believe that, sitting with the present spectacle in front of us.’
‘That’s always so,’ said Pilbrow unexpectedly. ‘I’ve been caught in two revolutions, or not exactly caught, but… One sees a woman in the garden by the railway line, just digging on a sunny morning. One can’t believe that it’s actually begun.’
‘One can’t believe tonight,’ said Crawford, ‘that one ought to be fighting against this mess Brown’s political friends are plunging us into. I expect I shall remember very vividly tomorrow morning.’
‘Yes! Yes!’ cried Pilbrow, his eyes gleaming like buttons. He joined in Crawford’s reflections, as the decanters were put away one by one. He talked about the ‘mess’; he was off to the Balkans in three weeks to see for himself. At the age of seventy-four, he was as excited as a boy about his expedition. Brown had had a moment’s anxiety when he saw how Pilbrow was vigorously applauding Crawford. But now the old man was safely talking of his travels and Brown was rubicund; though Roy was silent, Winslow subdued, Brown felt that this party had been a success.
After the party, Roy and I walked in the garden. The breeze had dropped, and on the great beeches no leaf stirred. The full moon hung like a lantern, and the scent of acacia pierced the air. Roy was very quiet, and we walked round in silence. Then he said, as though it were a consolation: ‘I shall sleep tonight.’
When he was in a phase of depression, I had known him insomniac for four or five nights together. He would lie open-eyed through the minutes of a night, and then another, having to face his own thoughts. Until, his control broken, he would come to my room and wake me up: should we drive over to George Passant and make a night of it? Or to our friends in London? Or should we go for a walk all night?
The melancholy, the melancholy shot through with sinister gaiety, had been creeping upon him during the past few weeks. He could not throw it off, any more than a disease. When it seized him, he felt that it would never go.
We walked round, not talking, in a night so warm that the air seemed palpable. I thought that we had been lucky to escape that party scot-free. I did not know how to stop him damaging himself.
I thought that, so long as I lived, I should be mocked by the scents of that summer. They might have come along with peace of mind, the wisteria, the gilliflower, the lilac, the acacia.
23: Affliction
I had expected an outbreak from Roy at the claret party, but, when it did come, I was not prepared.
It was a fortnight later, a Saturday morning, and I woke early. There was a college meeting that day to consider examination results. Some were already published, sent round to tutors, stuck in the tailors’ windows; most did not come out till this Saturday.
I knew that the envelopes reached the porters’ lodge by a quarter to nine, so I did not wait for Bidwell’s ritual awakening. I walked through the court in the cloudless morning, and found a large packet addressed to me. I was opening it when Brown entered the lodge, panting a little, still wearing trouser clips after cycling in from his house.
‘I hope we haven’t had too many disasters,’ he said. He opened his own envelope, spread the sheets on the counter.
‘Thank God for that!’ he exclaimed in a moment. ‘Thank God for that!’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Young Timberlake’s got through. They’ve given him a third. Which between you and me, is probably slightly more than abstract justice required. Still, I think Sir Horace will be satisfied. If the young man had crashed, it might have been the most expensive failure in the history of the college. I’m breathing a great deal more freely, I can tell you.’
His cleverest pupil had been given a starred first. ‘I always said he was our next real flyer,’ said Brown triumphantly.
He turned back, pencil in hand, to tick off the names on the history sheet. In a moment he gave a shrill whistle.
‘I can’t find Dick Winslow’s name. He seems to have failed absolutely. They don’t seem even to have allowed him the ordinary degree. They don’t seem to have made him any allowance at all. It’s scarcely credible. I think I’d better ring up the examiners straightaway. I did once find a name left off a list by mistake.’