Read Online Time of Hope by C. P. Snow - Free Book Online Page A

cried.
    ‘No. Is it–?’
    ‘Then let me be the first to congratulate you,’ she said with a grand gesture. ‘You couldn’t have done better. It’s impossible for you to have done better!’
    It was her way, her romantic and superb way, of saying that my name appeared in the first class. She was exultant. My name was alone! – she was light-headed with triumph. I was recklessly joyful, but each time I caught my mother’s eye I felt I had never seen such triumph. She had none of the depression of anticlimax that chases after a success; she had looked forward to this moment, one of many moments to come, and her spirit was strong enough to exult without a single qualm.
    My mother at once sent my young brother out for foods that we could not usually afford. She intended to have a glorious supper – not that she could eat much nowadays, but for the sake of style and for my sake. My father had, a year past, ceased to be a traveller and had moved back to ‘Mr Stapleton’s’ as a cashier at four pounds a week. He was competent at paperwork, but my mother ground the aching tooth and told herself that it was shameful to return to such a job when he had been second-in-command, that the job was just a bone thrown in contemptuous friendliness and charity. Thus, with the fall in the value of money, our meals were not as lavish as they had been even immediately after my father’s bankruptcy. Even so, my mother never lost her taste for the extravagant. She still paid each bill on Saturday morning; but if luxuries were required for a state occasion, such as that night, luxuries were bought, though it meant going hungry for the rest of the week.
    That night we ate a melon and some boiled salmon and éclairs and meringues and millefeuilles . My mother’s triumph would have been increased if she could have had Aunt Milly there to gloat over; but she could not have Aunt Milly as well as a glass of wine, and my mother’s sense of fitness would not be satisfied without wine on the table; she wanted to fill the wine glasses which she had received as a wedding present and which were not used more than once a year. So young Martin had been sent on another errand to the grocer, and the glasses were filled with tawny port.
    My father, who had changed not at all in the last seven years, kept saying, ‘Well, I didn’t pass the examination. But I can dispose of the supper as well as anyone,’ and ate away with his usual mild but hearty content. My mother was too borne up to say more than, ‘Bertie, don’t be such a donkey’. She took her share of the meal, which nowadays she rarely did, and several glasses of wine. More than once she put up her spectacles to her long-sighted eyes and read the announcement again. ‘No one in the same division!’ she cried. ‘It will give them all something to think about!’ She decided that she must have two dozen copies of the paper to send to friends and relatives, and ordered Martin to make sure and go to the newsagents first thing next morning.
    My mother talked to me across the supper table.
    ‘I always told you to make your way,’ she said. The room was gilded in the sunset, and she raised a hand to shield her eyes. ‘I want you to remember that, No one else told you that, did they?’
    She was illuminated with triumph and her glasses of wine, but she asked insistently.
    ‘No,’ I said.
    ‘No one else at all did they?’
    ‘Of course not, Mother,’ I said.
    ‘I don’t expect you to be satisfied now,’ she said. ‘There’s a lot to do. You’ve got a long way to go. You remember all you’ve promised me, don’t you?’
    It turned out, almost at once, very easy not to be satisfied. For I was faced with the choice of my first job. When the examination result came out, I had actually left school, although we had put off the question of my job. And now my mother and I conferred. What was I to do? We had no one to give us accurate information, let alone advice. No boy at the school had