The Sleep of Reason Read Online Free PDF

which with a flourish Arnold Shaw produced. Then Leonard Getliffe entered, black-haired, white-faced, handsome in a Mediterranean fashion: he couldn’t help his eyes searching for Vicky as he shook hands.
    Arnold Shaw was settling them all down, braced on the balls of his feet: there was a buzz of titular enunciation. The mention of Lord Getliffe – Professor Getliffe’s father, Arnold Shaw found it desirable to explain – was frequent: there was a good deal of Sir Lewis-ing. But he was not only being nervous, active and snobbish, but also peremptory. The party still had the first drinks in hand, Shaw had only just sat down himself at last, when he gave an order.
    “About the Court meeting – discussion tonight forbidden,” he announced.
    His bright hot eyes swept round the room. Some were relieved, one could feel, but not Denis Geary.
    “That’s going a bit far, Vice-Chancellor,” he said. He was hawk-nosed, grizzled, tough as well as harmonious, no man’s pushover. He was also a figure in local progressive politics: he had come prepared to argue, not just to dine out.
    “Absolutely forbidden.”
    “With respect–” Denis began.
    “Host’s privilege,” said Arnold Shaw.
    Denis looked over at me, gave a slight shrug.
    “If you say so,” he said with a good grace. He knew when not to force an issue: recently I had often thought that he could have been a good politician on a bigger scale.
    “Nothing contentious tonight,” said Arnold Shaw, rubbing it in. “We’re going to enjoy ourselves.”
    That was one of the inapposite remarks, I thought, as we went in to dinner, and I sat on Vicky’s right hand. For Denis Geary, at any rate, despite his good manners, the night had become pointless. For his wife also: she spoke in a soft Midland voice like my father’s but was as firm as her husband. As dinner began, at my end of the table I had to exert myself to keep any sort of conversation going. And yet the meal was superb. Arnold Shaw indulged in food and drink; in the Residence both were better than at any private house I knew, out of comparison better than at great houses such as Basset. Dinner that night was as good as ever: borsch, whitebait, tournedos Rossini: while Arnold Shaw was jumping up and down, going round the table with decanters, buttling. There was plenty of buttling to be done: he loved wine, and was more knowledgeable about it than any of my old Cambridge colleagues: wine drinking of that quality didn’t happen nowadays among my friends.
    The food and drink ought to have acted as a social lubricant. But they didn’t. To most of the party they were an embarrassment. The Hargraves were rich, but they went in for austerely simple living. The Gearys weren’t at all austere but didn’t understand fine wine or the wine badinage that Shaw insisted on exchanging with me. I was a light eater, though out of politeness I was doing my best. Leonard was gulping down the drink, hoping to see Vicky before the night was over. As so often, Arnold Shaw could not put a foot right.
    In fact, he was proceeding, I could hear down the table, to put two feet wrong. He at least was enjoying his meal, and even more his wine: he was not a heavy drinker, I had never seen him drunk, but alcohol made him combative. He was choosing the occasion to parade himself as an extreme reactionary; in particular an extreme reactionary about education. He flourished his views, vigorous and bantam-bright, in front of the Gearys, who in the terms of that period believed the exact opposite, and the Hargraves, who spent their money on benefactions. “You’re all wrong about education,” he was saying. “Quite wrong. Education isn’t social welfare. You’re quite wrong about universities. A university isn’t anything like what you think. Or it oughtn’t to be.” He went on, with a kind of ferocious jocularity, temper not far beneath the surface, making himself clear. A university was a place of learning. No more, no less. The