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Authors: C. P. Snow
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the Residence the night before, a light was shining behind the curtains.
When I rang the bell, Dick Pateman opened the door. His greeting was off-hand, but I scarcely noticed that, since I was puzzled by the smell that wafted out, or one component of it. I was used to the musty smell of small old houses, I had known them all my childhood, and that was present here – but there were also something different in kind, not repulsive but discomforting, which I couldn’t place.
Behind the closed door of the front room, pop music was sounding: but Dick Pateman took me to the next, and only other, door. This would be (I knew it all by heart) the living-room or kitchen. As I went in, Dick Pateman was saying: This is my father and mother.
That I hadn’t bargained on. The room was cluttered, and for an instant my only impression was of the idiosyncratic smell, much stronger. I was shaking hands with a man whose head was thrown back, his hand stretched out, in a gesture one sometimes sees displayed by grandiose personages.
My eyes became clearer. Mr Pateman was taller than his son, with high square shoulders and a heavily muscled, athletic body. His grip on my hand was powerful, and his forearms filled his sleeves. His light blue eyes met mine unblinkingly, rather as though he had been taught that, to make a good impression, it was necessary to look your man straight in the eye. He had sandy hair, pale eyebrows, and a sandy moustache. Under the moustache two teeth protruded a little, his underlip pressed in, with the suggestion of a slight, condescending smile.
“I’ve never met you,” he said, “but I’ve heard a great deal about you.”
I said that he was not to believe it. Mr Pateman, humourlessly, without any softening, said that he did.
Then I shook hands with Mrs Pateman, a tiny little woman, a foot shorter than her husband or son, wrinkled and dark-skinned. She gave me a quick, worried, confiding smile.
As we sat down, I didn’t know why I had been enticed like this, how much the parents knew, nor how to talk to them.
The room was crammed with heavy nineteenth-century furniture. There was a bookcase with a glass window in the far corner, and a piano on the other side. A loose slack fire was smouldering in the grate, and the air was chilly. On the table, upon a white openwork cloth spread upon another cloth of dark green plush, with bobbled fringe, stood a teapot, some crockery, and what looked like the preparations for a “high tea”, though – by the standards of my mother’s friends – a meagre one. Everything was clean: and yet, about the whole room, there hung a curiously dusty air, less like the grime of neglect than like some permanent twilight.
Mrs Pateman asked whether she could help me to some food. When I answered her and said no, her husband smiled, as though I were proving satisfactory.
He himself was eating tinned salmon. He said: “Well, we’re giving them something to think about, I’m glad to say.”
I was still at a disadvantage. This was obviously a reference to the morning’s meeting, and he seemed as invulnerable as his son. If he had been a softer man, worried or even inconsolable because his son’s future was in danger, I should have been more at home. I should have been more at home with Mrs Pateman, who was watching the two of them with shrewd, puzzled anxiety. But, in the presence of the father, it wasn’t in the least like that.
“The best we can do now” – I was feeling my way, speaking to Dick Pateman – “is to try and get you fixed up elsewhere. As soon as we can.”
“That’s not very satisfactory,” said Dick Pateman.
“No,” said Mr Pateman.
“It’s a bad second best,” said Dick – as though he were arguing with me at the end of the long table.
“Some of us,” said Mr Pateman, “aren’t prepared to see our children get the second best.”
I didn’t want to show impatience, though it was displeasingly near. Above all, I didn’t want to give
When I rang the bell, Dick Pateman opened the door. His greeting was off-hand, but I scarcely noticed that, since I was puzzled by the smell that wafted out, or one component of it. I was used to the musty smell of small old houses, I had known them all my childhood, and that was present here – but there were also something different in kind, not repulsive but discomforting, which I couldn’t place.
Behind the closed door of the front room, pop music was sounding: but Dick Pateman took me to the next, and only other, door. This would be (I knew it all by heart) the living-room or kitchen. As I went in, Dick Pateman was saying: This is my father and mother.
That I hadn’t bargained on. The room was cluttered, and for an instant my only impression was of the idiosyncratic smell, much stronger. I was shaking hands with a man whose head was thrown back, his hand stretched out, in a gesture one sometimes sees displayed by grandiose personages.
My eyes became clearer. Mr Pateman was taller than his son, with high square shoulders and a heavily muscled, athletic body. His grip on my hand was powerful, and his forearms filled his sleeves. His light blue eyes met mine unblinkingly, rather as though he had been taught that, to make a good impression, it was necessary to look your man straight in the eye. He had sandy hair, pale eyebrows, and a sandy moustache. Under the moustache two teeth protruded a little, his underlip pressed in, with the suggestion of a slight, condescending smile.
“I’ve never met you,” he said, “but I’ve heard a great deal about you.”
I said that he was not to believe it. Mr Pateman, humourlessly, without any softening, said that he did.
Then I shook hands with Mrs Pateman, a tiny little woman, a foot shorter than her husband or son, wrinkled and dark-skinned. She gave me a quick, worried, confiding smile.
As we sat down, I didn’t know why I had been enticed like this, how much the parents knew, nor how to talk to them.
The room was crammed with heavy nineteenth-century furniture. There was a bookcase with a glass window in the far corner, and a piano on the other side. A loose slack fire was smouldering in the grate, and the air was chilly. On the table, upon a white openwork cloth spread upon another cloth of dark green plush, with bobbled fringe, stood a teapot, some crockery, and what looked like the preparations for a “high tea”, though – by the standards of my mother’s friends – a meagre one. Everything was clean: and yet, about the whole room, there hung a curiously dusty air, less like the grime of neglect than like some permanent twilight.
Mrs Pateman asked whether she could help me to some food. When I answered her and said no, her husband smiled, as though I were proving satisfactory.
He himself was eating tinned salmon. He said: “Well, we’re giving them something to think about, I’m glad to say.”
I was still at a disadvantage. This was obviously a reference to the morning’s meeting, and he seemed as invulnerable as his son. If he had been a softer man, worried or even inconsolable because his son’s future was in danger, I should have been more at home. I should have been more at home with Mrs Pateman, who was watching the two of them with shrewd, puzzled anxiety. But, in the presence of the father, it wasn’t in the least like that.
“The best we can do now” – I was feeling my way, speaking to Dick Pateman – “is to try and get you fixed up elsewhere. As soon as we can.”
“That’s not very satisfactory,” said Dick Pateman.
“No,” said Mr Pateman.
“It’s a bad second best,” said Dick – as though he were arguing with me at the end of the long table.
“Some of us,” said Mr Pateman, “aren’t prepared to see our children get the second best.”
I didn’t want to show impatience, though it was displeasingly near. Above all, I didn’t want to give
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