MARGINAL COMMENT
B HAROLD NICOISON IT must be dull, if one Is a theologian or otherwise preoccupied by the eternal verities, not to have time to enjoy, or even to notice, the lesser movements of human character. I should feel sad indeed were I denied the pastime of observing my fellow beings when they move their heads and eyes and hands ; of deducing from these movements, or the differences between them, to what category of mortals any given individual may belong. The varied manifestations of shyness or social embarrassment would not, to the theologian, appear subjects for serious enquiry or attention, but to the curious person they furnish ever renewed occasions for com- parison and analysis. To mention only one sub-branch or twig of the great tree of shyness, it is instructive to observe the embarrass- ment caused to many people when, at the end of a chance encounter, they have to break off a conversation and go on their way. Walking down Pall Mall, for instance, one observes coming towards one from the opposite direction a friend whom one has not seen for several years. The actual moment of encounter is not so very difficult. Having adjusted one's consciousness to the theme " old friend approaching " ; having verified the fact that it really is an old friend and not merely a stranger to whom he bears a close resemblance ; having calculated almost automatically the correct distance at which the realisation of his approach and the ensuing encounter must express itself in a smile of delighted surprise ; one can begin with radiant amity and with the words "Halloa! Halloa! " or "Whom have we here ? ". The second stage, the stage of pause and con- versation, provides no serious obstacle, even to a very shy man, if lie has some training in social contacts. But how is one to break off the conversation ? And how is the moment of parting to be rendered natural rather than abrupt ?
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I recall with gratitude the advice given me many years ago by one of my early mentors. Discussing such encounters, he asserted that the correct technique was to disassociate the physical act of parting, the business about going on one's way, from the rupture of the conversation. If one concludes one's words of greeting and pleasure while still standing in the posture adopted when the con- versation began, then inevitably an impression of abruptness is conveyed when one begins suddenly to walk onwards and away. The correct thing to do is to allow the words of amity to coincide with, and indeed overlap, the physical severance, or, more precisely, to go on talking while one moves away. If the encountered. friend, before the junction occurred, was evidently walking in the opposite direction, then the moment of severance, if gracefully prolonged, need not lead to any extreme awkwardness. Even then there will come a difficult instant, as one passes out of earshot, when the con- versation is broken off (sometimes with a fine gesture of the arm and hand, indicating farewell) and when one has simply got to turn the back upon the encountered friend and walk onwards along Pall Mall. I have noticed sometimes that the smile of comradeship, which has been assumed for the occasion, remains for some moments on the face and only fades when one has walked away some twenty yards. The difficulty is rendered more intense when the encountered friend is going in the same direction as oneself. Taxi-drivers, for instance, are often exposed to the acute embarrassment of finding that their cab is checked by a traffic light alongside the cab of a friend. The first phase of delighted surprise may well spend itself before the amber comes. How are they to continue their conversa- tion and how above all are they to conclude it ? I admire the delicacy with which taxi-drivers manage these situations, which would fill me with awkward shame.
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Life would indeed lose many of its gentler shades were I deprived suddenly of the faculty of taking interest in these little things. It is entertaining also to observe the little twitches of pleasure or pain which, on the vast switch-board of one's own nervous system, flicker or glow in response to passing associations. 'I have already remarked upon the curious fact that the little red light of pain is illuminated
more often in one's memory than the golden light of pleasure. It is strange, as I have said before, that, whereas those moments in my life when I have displayed resource or deftness arc blotted by oblivion, all the occasions when I have made a fool of myself stand stark in my memory, like a row of Martello towers beside the grey sea of time. The most incidental association will revive the memory of some past idiocy and the red lamp will stab the switch-board. I cannot, for instance, hear or read the word " audacity " without a spasm of sudden pain, since that word is associated with an incident too awkward for me to relate. It is fascinating also to observe how these tiny associations of pain or pleasure lose their efficacy as the years pass by. The wound of memory is healed, or become callous, and the little red light ceases to stab the switch-board suddenly, but flickers slightly, or turns pink, or even (and these occasions are rare and welcome) turns to gold. This happy permutation surprises one and causes delight. Last week, for instance, I was driving past Buckingham Palace after dark. As my taxi circled the Victoria Memorial, I saw suddenly, above the dim trees of the park, the beacon light which glows above Big Ben. For the first time since 1945 this signal that the House was sitting caused me a sensation of pleasure and not of pain. In place of the red light which that beacon had for so long lit within me, I was conscious of the golden lamp of elation.
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"This," I said to myself, "is a strange experience. It must be examined." It was quite explicable, of course, that in the years which have passed since 1945 the thought of the House of Commons in session should have filled me with pain and not with pleasure. For ten years had I been a Member of the House of Commons and they were ten years of continuous excitement and not unuseful activity. It was quite natural that I should have felt distressed when the electors in my constituency turned me out. It was natural also that the beacon on the top of Big Ben, the watchful eye of the House, should have become thereafter the symbol and the reminder of all that I had missed. It was not strange at all that in the after years the sudden sight of that beacon shining over the trees should have lit the quick red lamp of pain. What was so odd was that suddenly, on that September evening, the sight of the beacon should have produced, not distress, but elation ; that the red should have turned to gold. It was not that I had that afternoon been offered a safe seat at the next General Election or that I imagined that easily and within a few short months I should again become a member of that illustrious and delectable assembly. Such ideas, I realise, are little more than the ground-whirl of the perished leaves of hope. It was simply that the wound, healing silently within me, had become callous, and that I could now face the eye of the House with the elation which any liberal-minded man must feel when he contemplates the Mother of Parliaments knitting away majestically above the park. The exile banished from the promised land had, by the ministration of gentle time, become the simple citizen who experiences exultation at the thought that there, at this moment, Mr. Aneurin Bevan is speaking about devaluation. My pang had found a voice.
* * * * The theologian, I suppose, would not have noticed this happy transmutation or have ascribed it to some beneficent intercession rather than to the secret workings of an endocrine gland. Yet I was elated by the experience. Elated, because it is disagreeable, if one lives much in London, to be constantly faced with a bright white light set on a pinnacle above the trees and houses which stabs when seen. Elated, because it is agreeable that an object which for four years has suggested mortification should §uddenly, on a gentle September evening, suggest delight. Elated, because it is a fine thing to believe, as I believe, in the power and the decency of our Parliamentary institutions. Elated, because in this world of violence and untruthfulness it is exhilarating to cherish the illusion of freedom of speech.
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