Last Things by C. P. Snow

fashion of her contemporaries, which trailed over one eye. Also in the fashion, her voice was something like a whisper, and I couldn’t hear any of her replies to Muriel. Of the two, I was judging, most men would think her the prettier: but perhaps most men would think that Muriel provoked them more.
    In the drawing-room after dinner, Muriel announced that, as this was a family Christmas party, she proposed to put off her bedtime. Very dutifully, Pat argued with her – ‘Darling, you know what — (her doctor) said?’
    ‘He’s not here, is he?’ said Muriel, and got her way. They didn’t leave until half past eleven: it was midnight before Martin and I sat by ourselves in my study, having a final drink.
    Now at last it seemed to me like an ordinary family evening, peace descending upon the room. We hadn’t talked, except with others present, all that night: nor in fact since the summer, the day of our father’s funeral. Martin proceeded to interrogate me, in the way that had become common form since we grew older. Nowadays his workaday existence didn’t change from one term to another, while mine was still open to luck, either good or bad. So that our roles had switched, and he talked to me like a concerned older brother. How was the new book going? I was well into it, I said, but it would take another year. Was there anything in this rumour about my being called into the Government? He was referring to a piece of kite-flying by one of the parliamentary correspondents – New Recruits?
    I knew no more about it than he did, I told him, and mentioned the conversation with Francis Getliffe in the Lords’ bar. This correspondent wrote as though he had been listening, or alternatively as though the House of Lords was bugged. As had happened often during my time in Whitehall, I had the paranoid feeling that about half the population of Parliament were in newspaper pay.
    I had heard nothing more, I repeated to Martin. I supposed it was possible. They knew me pretty well. But it would be a damned silly thing for me to do. ‘Oh, if they do ask you, don’t turn it down out of hand,’ said Martin, watchful, tutorial, as cautious as old Arthur Brown. He went on, he could see certain advantages, and I said with fraternal sarcasm, that it was a pity he ever withdrew from the great world. Great World, I rubbed it in. We both know enough about it, partly by experience, partly by nature. Martin gave his pulled-down grin.
    He would like just one more drink, he said, and went over to the sideboard. Then, as he settled back in his chair, glance turned towards his glass, he said, in a casual tone: ‘I don’t think Irene knows anything about these goings-on.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ It was a mechanical question. I had understood.
    ‘That young man of ours playing round.’ Pat’s Christian name was actually Lewis, after me, and Martin seldom referred to him by his self-given name. Suddenly Martin looked full at me with hard blue eyes.
    ‘I gathered you had heard,’ he said.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I’m sure she doesn’t know.’
    That seemed to give him an obscure satisfaction. Irene had never liked the marriage, although it had taken Pat off their hands, providing him with the money he had never earned.
    ‘Did you realise’, I asked, ‘that we knew – before tonight?’
    ‘Never mind that.’ He wouldn’t answer, and left me curious. He might have picked it up in the air, for he was a perceptive man. But I thought it sounded as though he had been told. By whom? He was not intimate with his daughter-in-law. Bizarre as it seemed, it was more likely to be his son. Martin felt for his son the most tenacious kind of parental love. It was, Martin knew it all by heart, so did Margaret, so did Azik Schiff, so did Mr Marsh and old Winslow long before we did, the most one-sided of human affections, the one which lasts longest and for long periods gives more pain than joy. And yet, one-sided though such a relation as Martin’s and