Homecomings by C.P. Snow

STILL acting as though uncommitted, I invited Margaret and Gilbert Cooke together, three times that autumn. For me, there was about those evenings the suspense, the inadmissible charm, that abides in a period of waiting for climactic news, as it were an examination result, from which one is safe until the period is up. The meeting in a pub, where Gilbert and I went together from the office and found her waiting: the communiqués in the evening papers: the wartime streets at night: the half-empty restaurants, for London was not crowded that year: the times at dinner when we spoke of ourselves, the questions unspoken: the return alone to Pimlico in the free black night.

One evening in late November Gilbert had accompanied me out of the office for a drink in my club, as he often did. That day, as on most others, we went on discussing our work, for we were engrossed in it. Much of the time since Sheila's death, I had thought of little else: nor had Gilbert, intensely patriotic, caught up in the war. He had by now picked up some of the skills and language of the professional Civil Servants we were working with: our discussion that evening, just as usual, was much like the discussions of two professionals. I valued his advice: he was both tough and shrewd, and tactically his judgement was better than mine.