The Masters by C. P. Snow

Author:C. P. Snow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Masters
ISBN: 9780755120048
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 2012-05-09T04:00:00+00:00

I went straight from Winslow to Roy’s room. Roy was lying on his sofa, peaceful and relaxed.

‘Have I dished everything?’ he asked.

He was happy. I had seen the course of his affliction often enough to know it by heart. It was, in fact, curiously mechanical. There was first the phase of darkness, the monotonous depression which might last for weeks or months: then that phase passed into another, where the darkness was lit up by flashes of ‘gaiety’ – gaiety which nearly overcame him at Brown’s party, and which we both dreaded so much. The phase of gaiety never lasted very long, and nearly always broke into one frantic act, such as he had just committed. Then he felt a complete release.

For months, perhaps for longer, he knew that he was safe. When I first knew him well, in his early twenties, the melancholy had taken hold of him more often. But for two or three years past the calm and beautiful intervals had been winning over the despair. That afternoon he knew that he would be tranquil for months to come.

I was tired and weighed down. Sometimes I felt that the burden on me was unfair, that I got the worst of it. I told him that I should not always be there to pick up the pieces.

He was anxious to make amends. Soon he asked: ‘I haven’t dished Jago, have I?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘How did you work it? You’re pretty competent, aren’t you?’

I shook my head.

‘It didn’t need much working,’ I said. ‘Winslow may like to think of himself as stark, but he isn’t.’

‘Just so,’ said Roy.

‘I had to hit below the belt, and it wasn’t pretty,’ I said. ‘He hates Jago. But it isn’t the sort of hate that takes up much of one’s life. All his real emotions go into his son.’

‘Just so,’ said Roy again. ‘I think I’m lucky.’

‘You are.’

‘I couldn’t have borne putting paid to Jago’s chances.’ said Roy. ‘I’ll do what I can to make up for it, old boy. I shall be all right now.’

That evening in hall Roy presented a bottle in order to drink Jago’s health. When he was asked the occasion, so that Luke could enter it in the wine book, Roy smiled and said precisely: ‘In order to atone for nearly doing him a disservice.’

‘My dear Roy,’ cried Jago, ‘you couldn’t possibly do me a disservice. You’ve always been too kind to me. It even makes me forgive you your imitations.’

It was not only at the claret party that Roy mimicked Jago; he could not resist the sound of that muffled, sententious, emphatic voice; most of those round the table that night had heard him, and even Despard-Smith grinned.

As we went out that night, Arthur Brown reflected: ‘You heard the reason Roy Calvert gave for presenting a bottle? Now I wonder exactly what he meant by it. Put it another way: a few years ago, whenever he said anything that wasn’t straightforward, I used to expect one of his queer tricks.

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