The Otherness of Sneed

By STRIX

T SUPPOSE that in almost every club there is a imember who, though he uses the place a great deal, never really seems to belong. He is not exactly aloof; he is not mysterious; he does not give the impression of being shy. He is rather like the lizard on the wall of your bungalow in the tropics. Spread-eagled, brooding, inscrutable and vaguely proprietorial, liable at any moment to vanish none can say whither, to reappear none can say whence, the lizard produces a disturbing sensation of otherness; and it is rather the same With the type of member I have in mind.

There is one at the Culverin Club. I think his name is Sneed; I have always thought this. But I once heard him addressed as Fortescue by a member whom I do not know. 'Good morning, Fortescue,' said this chap as they passed each other in a doorway. 'Good morning,' replied (as I maintain) Sneed in a flat, ungracious voice; from the quick appraising glance which he gave the other you could deduce nothing. There was perhaps a flicker of surprise in it, but no more than you would expect from a man who, since he never speaks to anybody, is virtually never spoken to himself.

Most of us, if addressed en passant by the wrong name, tend to react in some positive way. We look blank, taken aback. We begin (even if We only begin) to expostulate by saying 'Er' or 'What?' or 'As a matter of fact.' We join a group of acquaintances and ask if anybody knows the tall man in glasses who has just left the room and who appears to believe that our name is Smethurst. We do something about it.

The fact that Sneed did nothing throws, in my View, no light on what his name really is. This aura of otherness, this highly-developed capacity for appearing not to belong, are perfectly com- patible with the acceptance of an alias, for- tuitously bestowed. It is of course possible that Fortescue is Sneed's Christian name; but the in- herent improbability of anybody calling Sneed by his Christian name is so great that I think we can rule out this solution.

It must be five years or more since an incident occurred in which Sneed's behaviour became, for the first and as far as I know the last time, posi- tively rather than negatively enigmatic. The other person involved was Dinmont, the distinguished actor. One morning he and Sneed were sitting opposite each other on either side of the fireplace in the reading room, looking through the illustrated papers. At one o'clock or thereabouts Dinmont got up to go into luncheon. As he did so Sneed put down the Tatier, directed at his fellow-member a searching glance, and spoke.

'I see,' he said, 'that you've put your socks on today, Dinmont.' The words were uttered on a note of grudging approval.

'I'm sorry,' said Dinmont, unable to believe his ears, 'but what did you say?'

Sneed repeated his observation.

Dinmont felt slightly out of his depth. 'Of course I've put my socks on,' he said. 'What do you expect? I always wear socks.' 'You were not wearing socks the other day,' replied Sneed darkly.

'What on earth do you mean?' Dinmont was getting rather annoyed. 'When wasn't I wearing them?'

'Last Tuesday,' said Sneed. 'In here. I saw you.'

'But look here,' said Dinmont, 'a man can't forget to put on his socks.'

'I never said you forgot,' Sneed pointed out. He picked up the Tatter again.

'But damn it all,' cried Dinmont, nettled and bemused, 'are you suggesting that I'm the sort of chap who deliberately goes about London without any socks on?'

'I'm not suggesting anything,' Sneed replied. 'All I said was that you had put your socks on this morning. It's perfectly true. I can't see them now that you are standing up, but I could when you were sitting opposite me. Surely there's no need for you to get cross?'

At this point Dinmont, who is an equable man with a good sense of humour, realised that this insane argument might go on for ever. Muttering something about having to lunch early, he broke contact and made for the dining room.

He happened to sit next to me (this is a true story, by the way) and lost no time in telling me of his experience. He explained that it had already begun to assume a dream-like quality in his mind and that he was anxious to pass on a first-hand account to someone else before his memories of what had passed between him and Sneed dissolved or became distorted.

We agreed that to commend a man for wear- ing socks in his club was a subtler form of character-assassination than asking him if he had stopped beating his wife. Dinmont admitted that he felt seriously disconcerted by the allegation that he had not been wearing socks on the pre- vious Tuesday. He knew it was not true and maintained that it could not be true, being against nature; it was, he reasoned, a physical impossibility to omit a penultimate process when dressing. You could put on a shirt and forget to put on a tie, but you couldn't put on a tie and forget to put on a shirt. By the same token (argued Dinmont, whose whole intellect was by now working on the problem with a feverish vigour) you couldn't, even if you were an absent- minded professor in a back number of Punch, stuff your bare feet into a pair of shoes without noticing that something was wrong.

I said I agreed with all this, but why had Sneed broken his customary silence to make this strange allegation?

'I only wish I knew,' muttered Dinmont, eating smoked salmon with a hunted air. 'It isn't the sort of charge that you'd think a man would fabricate, even if he had a motive for doing so. In a way that's what makes it so disturbing. I can't prove that I was wearing socks last Tues- day. I can't even say that I remember putting my socks on, because one does that sort of thing automatically.' 'You could appeal for witnesses,' I suggested.

'But nobody sees your socks,' said Din:iiont, 'unless you happen to sit down in an armchair, which I hardly ever do, Besides, think what a fool I should look if the secretary put up a notice asking anyone who can vouch for the fact that I was wearing socks last Tuesday to get in touch with him. People would think I was going round the bend.' There was a distraught note in his voice.

'You mustn't let this get you down,' I said. 'The important thing is to watch for Sneed's next move. He's bound to show his hand sooner or later. When he does, we shall know how to act.'

Sneed has not shown his hand. For five years Dinmont and I and one or two others have kept him under observation. When opportunity otters we carry the war into the enemy's country by directing casual but pregnant glances at his socks. But our expectation that he would strike again has proved groundless. He seems to have relapsed into otherness.

Once, about two years ago, a report reached us which seemed to indicate that this front might be reactivated, that the lizard on the wall was about to abandon the couchant regardant for some more positive posture. Sneed, having polished off his Irish stew, was heard to order an ice.

'Certainly, sir,' said the waitress. 'What kind would you like? Chocolate?'

Sneed gave her a furious, affronted look. 'Chocolate!' he barked. 'Certainly not!'

But when they brought him a vanilla ice he ate it up like a lamb. He remains an enigma.