Free The Sleep of Reason by C. P. Snow

packed with people. I had another thought, or half-memory, from something I had heard not long before. Wasn’t this Cora the niece of George Passant, the daughter of one of his sisters who had died young? I asked Kitty: she looked away, gave a sidelong glance, as though she wanted to resist answering me straight.
    “I think she is,” she said, with what seemed a meaningless edge of doubt.
    Could I have a word with her? George was a lifelong friend; by a coincidence, I should be meeting him in half-an-hour. It was not such a coincidence, though I didn’t tell her so.
    Kitty did some more shuffling, then said: “I’ll see if she can come.”
    In the time Kitty was out of the room, Mr Pateman had returned to the “diabolical” results of administrative decisions. Then the two young women returned, Cora first. She was tallish, with blunt heavy features, short straight hair; under a plain straight-hanging dress, she was strong-shouldered and stoutly built. I couldn’t see much look of the Passant family, except perhaps a general thick-boned Nordic air. I said that I knew her uncle. She gave an abrupt yes. I said I owed him a lot. She said: “I like George.”
    There were a few more words spoken, not many. She volunteered that she didn’t see George much, nowadays. She said to Kitty: “We ought to go and clear things up. The room’s in a mess.”
    As they went out, I did not anticipate seeing them again. More people evanescing: it had been the condition of that day. By the side of the two Pateman males, those self-bound men, the girls didn’t make demands on one, not even on one’s attention. True, I felt cold and shut in: but then, the little room was cold and shut in. It was a relief that it was not now so full of people. This “simple home”, as Mr Pateman called it, in one of his protests about Dick’s contribution, pressed upon me. I was growing to dislike the sharp and inescapable smell, strong in the little room, strongest near to Mr Pateman himself. I had now isolated it in my nostrils, though I did not know the explanation, as a brand of disinfectant.
    Mrs Pateman was clearing away the tea, Dick – whose manners could not have been regarded as over-elaborate – had gone out, shortly after the girls, and without a word. It was still early, but I could decently leave; I was anticipating the free air outside, when Mr Pateman confronted me with a satisfied smile and said: “Now, we can talk a little business, can’t we?”
    Immediately I took it for granted that he was, at last, going to speak seriously about his son. That made me more friendly: I settled in my chair, ready to respond.
    “I’m not very happy about things,” he said.
    I began to reply, the best practical step was to find Dick a place elsewhere–
    He stopped me. “Oh no. I wasn’t thinking about him.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “He’ll be all right,” said Mr Pateman. “I’ve done my best for my family and I don’t mind saying, no one could have done more.”
    He looked at me, as usual so straight in the eye that I wanted to duck. He wasn’t challenging me, he was too confident for that.
    “No,” he went on, “I’m not very happy about my position.”
    So that was it. That was why I had been invited, or enticed, to the house that evening.
    “Do you realise,” he asked, “that those two young people in the next room are both bringing in more than I am?”
    I asked what he was doing. Cashier, he said, in one of the hosiery firms, a small one. Curiously enough, that was a similar job to my father’s, years before. The young women? Secretaries. Fifteen or sixteen pounds a week each, I guessed?
    “You’re not far off. It’s a lot of money at twenty-two or three.”
    Mr Pateman did not appear to have the same appreciation of the falling value of money as my father, that unexpected financial adviser. But I happened to know the economics of this kind of household, through a wartime personal assistant of mine and her