That Hideous Strength. C. S. Lewis

at home.’

      For Mark a good deal hung on the answer to this. He might find out whether he were actually under orders from Cosser. If Cosser said, ‘You can’t do that,’ he would at least know where he stood. If Cosser said that Mark couldn’t be spared, that would be better still. Or Cosser might reply that he’d better consult the DD. That also would have made Mark feel surer of his position. But Cosser merely said ‘Oh,’ leaving Mark in doubt whether no one needed leave of absence or whether Mark was not sufficiently established as a member of the Institute for his absence to be of any consequence. Then they went to work on their report.

      It took them the rest of the day, so that Cosser and he came in to dinner late and without dressing. This gave Mark a most agreeable sensation. And he enjoyed the meal too. Although he was among men he had not met before, he seemed to know everyone within the first five minutes and to be joining naturally in the conversation. He was learning how to talk their shop.

      ‘How nice it is!’ said Mark to himself next morning as the car left the main road at Duke’s Eaton and began descending the bumpy little lane into the long valley where Cure Hardy lay. Mark was not as a rule very sensitive to beauty, but Jane and his love for Jane had already awakened him a little in this respect. Perhaps the winter morning sunlight affected him all the more because he had never been taught to regard it as specially beautiful and it therefore worked on his senses without interference. The earth and sky had the look of things recently washed. The brown fields looked as if they would be good to eat, and those in grass set off the curves of the little hills as close-clipped hair sets off the body of a horse. The sky looked further away than usual, but also clearer, so that the long slender streaks of cloud (dark slate colour against the pale blue) had edges as clear as if they were cut out of cardboard. Every little copse was black and bristling as a hairbrush, and when the car stopped in Cure Hardy itself the silence that followed the turning off of the engine was filled with the noise of rooks that seemed to be calling, ‘Wake! Wake!’

      ‘Bloody awful noise those birds make,’ said Cosser. ‘Got your map? Now…’ He plunged at once into business.

      They walked about that village for two hours and saw with their own eyes all the abuses and anachronisms they came to destroy. They saw the recalcitrant and backward labourer and heard his views on the weather. They met the wastefully supported pauper in the person of an old man shuffling across the courtyard of the almshouses to fill a kettle, and the elderly rentier (to make matters worse, she had a fat old dog with her) in earnest conversation with the postman. It made Mark feel as he were on a holiday, for it was only on holidays that he had ever wandered about an English village. For that reason he felt pleasure in it. It did not quite escape him that the face of the backward labourer was rather more interesting than Cosser’s and his voice a great deal more pleasing to the ear. The resemblance between the elderly rentier and Aunt Gilly (When had he last thought of her? Good Lord, that took one back.) did make him understand how it was possible to like that kind of person. All this did not in the least influence his sociological convictions. Even if he had been free from Belbury and wholly unambitious, it could not have done so, for his education had had the curious effect of making things that he read and wrote more real to him than things he saw. Statistics about agricultural labourers were the substance; any real ditcher, ploughman or farmer’s boy, was the shadow. Though he had never noticed it himself, he had a great reluctance, in his work, ever to use such words as ‘man’ or ‘woman’. He preferred to write about ‘vocational groups’, ‘elements’, ‘classes’ and ‘populations’: for, in his own way, he believed as firmly as any mystic in the superior reality of the things that are not seen.

      And yet, he could not help rather liking this village. When, at one o’clock, he persuaded Cosser to turn into the Two Bells, he even said so. They had both brought sandwiches with them, but Mark felt he would like a pint of beer. In the Two Bells it was very warm and dark, for the window was small. Two labourers (no doubt recalcitrant and backward) were sitting with earthenware mugs at their elbows, munching very thick sandwiches, and a third was standing up at the counter conducting a conversation with the landlord.

      ‘No beer for me, thanks,’ said Cosser, ‘and we don’t want to muck about here too long. What were you saying?’

      ‘I was saying that on a fine morning there is something rather attractive about a place like this, in spite of all its obvious absurdities.’

      ‘Yes, it is a fine morning. Makes a real difference to one’s health, a bit of sunlight.’

      ‘I was thinking of the place.’

      ‘You mean this?’ said Cosser glancing round the room. ‘I should have thought it was just the sort of thing we wanted to get rid of. No sunlight, no ventilation. Haven’t much use for alcohol myself (read the Miller Report) but if people have got to have their stimulants, I’d like to see them administered in a more hygienic way.’

      ‘I don’t know that the stimulant is quite the whole point,’ said Mark, looking at his beer. The whole scene was reminding him of drinks and talks long ago–of laughter and arguments in undergraduate days. Somehow one had made friends more easily then. He wondered what had become of all that set–of Carey and Wadsden and Denniston, who had so nearly got his own Fellowship.

      ‘Don’t know, I’m sure,’ said Cosser, in answer to his last remark. ‘Nutrition isn’t my subject. You’d want to ask Stock about that.’

      ‘What I’m really thinking about,’ said Mark, ‘is not this pub, but the whole village. Of course, you’re quite right: that sort of thing has to go. But it had its pleasant side. We’ll have to be careful that whatever we’re building up in its place will really be able to beat it on all levels–not merely in efficiency.’

      ‘Oh, architecture and all that,’ said Cosser. ‘Well, that’s hardly my line, you know. That’s more for someone like Wither. Have you nearly finished?’

      All at once it came over Mark what a terrible bore this little man was, and in the same moment he felt utterly sick of the NICE. But he reminded himself that one could not expect to be in the interesting set at once; there would be better things later on. Anyway, he had not burnt his boats. Perhaps he would chuck up the whole thing and go back to Bracton in a day or two. But not at once. It would be only sensible to hang on for a bit and see how things shaped.

      On their way back Cosser dropped him near Edgestow station, and as he walked home Mark began to think of what he would say to Jane about Belbury. You will quite misunderstand him if you think he was consciously inventing a lie. Almost involuntarily, as the picture of himself entering the flat, and of Jane’s questioning face, arose in his mind, there arose also the imagination of his own voice answering her, hitting off the salient features of Belbury in amusing, confident phrases. This imaginary speech of his own gradually drove out of his mind the real experiences he had undergone. Those real experiences of misgivings and of uneasiness, indeed, quickened his desire to cut a good figure in the eyes of his wife. Almost without noticing it, he had decided not to mention the affair of Cure Hardy; Jane cared for old buildings and all that sort of thing. As a result, when Jane, who was at that moment drawing the curtains, heard the door opening and looked round and saw Mark, she saw a rather breezy and buoyant Mark. Yes, he was almost sure he’d got the job. The salary wasn’t absolutely fixed, but he’d be going into that tomorrow. It was a very funny place: he’d explain all that later. But he had already got onto the real people there. Wither and Miss Hardcastle were the ones that mattered. ‘I must tell you about the Hardcastle woman,’ he said. ‘She’s quite incredible.’

      Jane had to decide what she would say to Mark much more quickly than he had decided what he would say to her. And she decided to tell him nothing about the dreams or St Anne’s. Men hated women who had things wrong with them, specially queer, unusual things. Her resolution was easily kept for Mark, full of his own story, asked her no questions. She was not, perhaps, entirely convinced by what he said. There was a vagueness about all the details. Very early in the conversation she said in a sharp, frightened voice (she had no idea how he disliked that voice), ‘Mark, you haven’t given up your fellowship at Bracton?’ He said, No, of course not, and went on. She listened