The decent man has opinions of his own, of course. He simply prefers to hear everyone else’s first.
Not because he intends to adopt them. He would never do such a thing. He merely believes in being well informed, understanding the circumstances and establishing which thoughts can safely be expressed in present company. Independent thinking is a fine thing, but one does have to live among other people.
And he really is decent. He returns his shopping trolley, picks up a glove someone has dropped on the pavement and waters the neighbour’s plants when they go on holiday. The world would be a rather unpleasant place without people like him. He simply prefers his decency not to interfere with his relationships.
Especially with people he gets along with.
At a dinner party, for example, an old mutual acquaintance comes up in conversation. The man had raised concerns about some irregularities at work, after which it soon emerged that he was difficult to work with. He has been looking for a job ever since. The decent man has spoken to him, seen the correspondence and knows there is more to the story than wounded pride. He is just about to say so when the host puts down his glass.
“He was never the easiest person, though.”
Undeniably true. He was not an easy person. He forgot birthdays, sometimes talked for far too long and once made a rather unpleasant fuss about getting back a drill he had lent someone. Gradually, the company assembles everything that might have qualified him to be treated unjustly.
The decent man feels relieved. At last, the situation has acquired some nuance. There is no longer any need to mention the correspondence; that would merely drag the conversation back to the one detail on which the absent man had been right.
Instead, he nods. Just enough to be able to describe it later as attentive listening.
Nobody at the table is his employer. Nobody controls his salary, and there are no two grim-looking men waiting in the hallway to check which opinions he takes home. At worst, a coat might fall off its hook. In that respect, the situation is perfectly safe.
Yet a single badly placed sentence can cost a person quite a lot. A smile. The easy warmth with which he has always been welcomed. That comforting certainty that here, at least, he need not explain himself. Perhaps the next invitation would simply fail to arrive. Not as punishment, naturally. Things would just turn out that way.
And surely a dinner-table disagreement is not worth all that.
The decent man likes to believe that he is close to these people because they think alike. For a long time, that may even have been true. Now it is harder to tell who first thought what everyone else finds so reassuringly agreeable. Opinions gradually become communal property, rather like slippers left at a holiday cottage. Nobody quite remembers who brought the first pair, but everyone can find something that fits.
An opinion that does not fit is more troublesome. It has to be carried separately, looked after, and might eventually leave its owner standing alone.
So he learns to pay attention. Not only to what people say, but to how they say it. Which names make them smile. Who is described as “unfortunate” and who is said to have “had it coming”. He can hold entirely different opinions about the same person at two different dinner tables without feeling that he has lied.
He says something different in each company. And each time he sincerely believes he is speaking his own mind.
On the way home, he sometimes feels strangely tired. The evening was pleasant, he argued with nobody, and yet it is as though he has spent the entire time watching his step. At home, he takes off his shoes and remembers the sentence he never quite managed to say.
Perhaps he had been too cautious. But imagine the awkward silence. The host’s wife had spent the entire afternoon cooking, and everyone else had come to relax. One can hardly turn every dinner party into a moral test. He feels a little better at the thought. His silence is no longer a matter of personal comfort, but an act of consideration for his hosts.
The following day, he sends the old acquaintance a message. He asks how things are going and says how sorry he is about what happened. He means it sincerely. But when the man asks whether he would share his public statement, the decent man studies the screen for rather longer.
The substance is not the problem. He agrees with most of it. But the tone is too bitter, certain passages are too sharp, and the whole thing is rather obviously personal. It would be better if the man did not take being ruined quite so personally.
Naturally, he does not put it like that. He writes that it might be wiser to approach the matter more calmly.
He considers calmness particularly important when other people have been wronged. When he is the one wronged, he simply expects everyone to understand his outrage.
No reply arrives. This hurts a little. At least he tried to help. Others have not even done that much.
The next time someone remarks that the old acquaintance seems to have taken offence at the entire world, the decent man finds it easier to nod. By now, he has personal experience.
The acquaintance receives fewer and fewer invitations. At first, the decent man notices. Later, he begins to notice how much more peaceful the evenings have become.
It pleases him when someone says, “At least you’re reasonable.” Especially when he has just avoided saying what he thinks.
In time, he begins to help preserve this pleasant atmosphere himself. When a new guest raises the absent man’s case, he listens patiently. Then he leans forward a little.
“Yes, but you don’t know the whole story.”
He says nothing about the correspondence. He does, however, tell the story of the drill. The story is shorter than when he first heard it, but the absent man’s unreasonable behaviour now comes across much more clearly. Nobody has considered it worth preserving the detail that he had waited six months to get his own drill back.
The new guest gradually falls silent. He has no wish to spend his first evening acting as though he knows their old friend better than they do.
The decent man pours him some wine. The host gives him a grateful look.
He has principles, of course. Firm, clear principles, which he is always prepared to defend in the abstract. He believes in truth, decency and the dignity of other human beings. He is happy to discuss these things, since everyone at the table agrees with them. The difficulty always arises with the particular case. A principle is a lovely thing until one has to write beside it the name of somebody the group has collectively decided not to like.
Shared dislike, incidentally, is reassuring. A man on his own might be unfair. But this many people?
The others are decent people too. They give to charity, raise children and occasionally write moving things about compassion. Surely they cannot all be mistaken in precisely the same way. It is far more likely that the absent acquaintance really has changed. There was a time when one could still laugh with him. Now he is forever insisting on being right.
Occasionally, it still occurs to the decent man that perhaps he ought to say something. It would help if others first indicated that they felt the same way. It would not take many. Two or three would provide sufficient moral support, especially if they were people the group respected.
He never asks whether anyone else is waiting too.
Meanwhile, the whole affair quietly fades away. There are no more questions, nobody mentions the correspondence, and the old acquaintance gets in touch less and less often. The decent man regrets how things have turned out. He certainly never wanted to exclude him. Not once did he suggest that the man should stop being invited.
He simply never asked why he was no longer there.
At the next dinner party, they do not even put a chair in the old acquaintance’s usual place. The decent man notices. Then someone asks him to move over a little so that everyone can sit more comfortably. He shifts his chair, and the conversation continues.
The evening is a success. Safe topics, familiar stories, a few shared laughs. As he leaves, the decent man thanks his hosts for the invitation and adds, with complete sincerity:
“It’s so lovely here. You can finally be yourself.”
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