George Passant (16 page)

Hearing George express his want for a respectable position, a comfortable middle-class income, the restraints of a junior partner in a firm of solicitors in a provincial town, I could not help being moved. Knowing the improbability, knowing above all this new suspicious faith in Morcom’s influence, I was afraid. There was only a short time before Eden’s period of grace ran out; it need not be final, but it would deprive George of his hopes.

I heard nothing, until a fortnight later, when Morcom and I were on our way towards Eden’s. Abruptly Morcom said: ‘George thinks Eden will offer him a partnership.’ I exclaimed.

‘He stands exactly as much chance as I do,’ said Morcom. He gave a short laugh, and talked about George’s unrealistic hopes. Then I said: ‘They’re quite fantastic, of course. But that doesn’t prevent him believing in them. It doesn’t prevent him attaching as much importance to them as you might to something reasonable. Surely that’s true.’

‘I expect it is,’ said Morcom. His voice sounded flat, his manner despondent and out of spirits. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I can’t do anything. Eden will settle it completely by himself.’

‘You might sound him,’ I said.

‘It’s a lot of trouble simply because George believes the world revolves round him,’ said Morcom.

‘If he knew it had been mentioned–’ I said. ‘You see,’ I added, filled with an inexplicable shame as well as anxiety, ‘he’s always got a dim feeling that you’re antagonistic. If that grows, it’s going to make life unpleasant.’

Morcom’s face, as we came near a street lamp, looked drawn. I was surprised that the statement should have affected him so much. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’d better try tonight.’

For most of the evening I sat listening to Eden’s anecdotes, laughing more easily to make up for my impatience. The room was warm, there was a fire blazing, stoked high in the chimney: Eden was sitting by its side in his customary armchair, in front of which stood the little table full of books and pipes and a decanter. He wore a velvet smoking jacket. Morcom sat opposite to him. I in the middle: behind Morcom, the light picked out the golden lines in one of the Chinese pictures.

At last there was a lull. Eden filled his glass. Morcom was leaning forward, the fingers of one hand tight over his knee.

‘By the way, the time you gave Martineau to make up his mind – it’ll be over soon, won’t it?’

‘I hadn’t thought of it just lately.’ Eden sipped, and put down his glass. ‘Why, do you know, I suppose it will.’

‘There’s no chance of his coming back,’ said Morcom.

I added: ‘None at all.’

‘I’m afraid you’re right,’ said Eden. It was a comfortable fear, I could not help thinking. ‘It’s a queer business. It’s one of the queerest things I’ve ever struck.’

‘What are you going to do about it? About the firm, I mean?’ The questions were sharp. I could feel Morcom, as I was myself, responding to a slight, an amiable unwillingness in Eden’s manner.

‘I dare say it will go on,’ Eden smiled. ‘When once you’ve really started, it’s not a difficult proposition to keep going, you know.’

‘You’re not thinking of filling – Martineau’s place?’

‘I needn’t make any decision yet,’ Eden said. ‘There isn’t any hurry, of course. But my present belief is that I shan’t take another partner. I’m an old-fashioned democrat in affairs of state’ – he smiled – ‘but the older I get, the more I believe smaller things ought to be controlled by one man.’

‘I can believe that,’ said Morcom. ‘But it’s a lot of work for one man.’

‘There’s plenty of responsibility,’ said Eden. ‘But that’s the penalty of being in control. No one wants it, but it’s got to be shouldered. As for the detailed work, I shan’t do any more than I’m doing now. I can trust the staff for anything in the way of routine. And to some extent I can trust Passant to work on his own.’

‘He is very capable?’ said Morcom.

‘Very capable. Very capable indeed.’ Eden was talking affably, but his lips had no tendency towards their smile. ‘So long as he’s working under someone
level-headed
. I know he’s a friend of you two. I’m speaking as I shouldn’t, you mustn’t let it go beyond these four walls. But Passant’s a man who’d have a future in front of him if only he didn’t spoil himself. He’s got a brilliant scholastic record, and though that isn’t the same as being able to take your coat off in an office, he’s done some good sound work for the firm. An outsider might think that I ought to give him a chance in a year or two to buy a share in the firm. But unless he takes himself in hand I don’t believe I shall be able to do it. I couldn’t feel I was doing the right thing.’

‘Why not?’

‘You’ll be sure not to let this go any further?’ Eden looked at us. ‘Though a hint from you’ – he glanced at Morcom – ‘on your own account wouldn’t be amiss. The trouble about Passant is – he’s rackety. He’s like a tremendous number of young men of your generation. There’s nothing to keep him between the rails.’

I suddenly could hear, among the moderate ordinary words, a dislike as intense as that which George bore him.

‘I know you can say that’s a matter for the man himself. It’s no one else’s business how he lives. He’s a grown man, he’s free to choose his own friends and his own pleasures. If he wants to spend his spare time with these young men and girls he collects together, no one’s going to stop him. But’ – Eden shook his head – ‘it’s got to be remembered when you’re thinking of his position here. I mightn’t mind – except that they take up too much of his time – but the great majority of our clients would. And it’s very hard to blame them. When you see a man night after night sitting in cafés with hordes of young girls, and you haven’t much doubt that he’s pretty loose-living all round; when you hear him laying down the law on every topic under heaven, telling everyone how to run the world: when above all you find him making an officious nuisance of himself in matters that don’t concern him, like that affair of Calvert’s: then you have to be an unusually tolerant man’ – Eden leaned back and smiled – ‘to feel very happy when you pay the firm a visit and find he’s your family solicitor.’

‘Particularly if he insists on telling you that you ought to follow his example,’ Morcom said. ‘And that you ought to bring your daughter just to show there’s no ill-feeling.’

Involuntarily, I smiled myself. Then I stared in dismay at Morcom, while Eden continued to laugh. I was thinking, more bitter in my reproaches because I might have committed it myself, that the gibe was less than deliberate. It was one of those outbursts, triumphantly warm on the tongue, whose echo afterwards makes one wince with remorse. It was one of those outbursts that everyone is impelled to at times, however subtle and astute. In fact, I was to discover, the more subtle and astute one was, the more facilely such indiscretions came. Until, like the politicians I knew later, one disciplined oneself to say nothing spontaneous at all.

But that was not the whole of it, I knew, as I listened to Eden’s slow and pleasant voice again. For while we listen to a friend being attacked, there are moments of sick and painful indignation, however untrue the charge: and, at other moments such as those when we make Morcom’s joke – however untrue the charge – we find ourselves leaping to agree. We find ourselves, ashamed and eager with the laugh, on Eden’s side. Again, until we have hardened our characters, eliminated the trendiness along with the free-flowing.

‘After all,’ Eden was saying, ‘Martineau can’t have done us any good. People might respect him if they understood what he was getting at – but they don’t want a saint, they want a sensible solicitor. We’ve got to win a certain amount of confidence back. We couldn’t afford another Martineau. I’m afraid Passant would cause a bigger hostility even that that.’

‘He’s far more competent,’ Morcom insisted.

‘I suppose he is,’ slowly Eden agreed.

‘He’s in a different class intellectually,’ Morcom leaned forward. ‘He’s got an astounding mental energy. You ought to remember that when you talk of him wasting time. He’s capable of amusing himself till midnight and then concentrating for five or six hours.’

‘And be worn out next day.’ Eden looked a little disturbed.

‘No, he’d be tired. But not too tired to work. He’s got a curious loyalty. Which we should naturally see more of than you would. He’d never do anything deliberately to harm the firm. Even for his beliefs – which are very real. That affair of Calvert’s: he only did it because of his beliefs. He is rather a remarkable man.’

The sentences were rapped out, jerkily and harshly. Eden’s face was calm and kindly as he listened, his head thrown back, his eyes looking down so that one saw a half-closed lid.

‘Perhaps he’s too remarkable,’ Eden said, ‘for a solicitor in a provincial town.’

When we left, it was late, the cars had stopped, we had to walk through the cold still night. We were both silent; I looked at the stars, without finding the moment’s ease they often gave. As we parted, Morcom spoke: ‘It would have done no good, whatever I said.’

I saw none of them for several days. As it happened, I was sleeping badly and in a state of physical malaise. I stayed in my room, goading myself to work with an apprehension never far from my mind.

At last, on an evening in the week that Eden’s period ran out, I was driven to visit Martineau. I had not been out for days.

I had heard that his advertising agency was run under the name of a partner called Exell. It took me some time to find their office; it was a tiny room on the fifth storey of an old block of buildings, at the corner of the market place. Martineau sat there alone, and greeted me with a cheerful cry.

‘So nice to see you,’ he said. ‘This is where we keep body and soul together.’

He was dressed untidily in an old grey suit: but the habitual buttonhole still gleamed white and incongruous on his breast.

‘Can we do anything for you, Lewis? There must be something we can do.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I only came to talk.’

‘Nearly as good,’ said Martineau. ‘Nearly as good. But I must show you one or two of our little schemes–’

He was so full of them that nothing could stop him describing them, fervently and happily. There were several: from one or two he did make a small income for some time: one I had cause to remember afterwards. They had bought a local advertising paper, which appeared weekly. It was sold at a penny, circulated among shopkeepers in the town, and carried some suburban news. Martineau had published some religious articles in it; he read them aloud enthusiastically, before asking me: ‘Have you come for anything special, Lewis?’

‘It’s dull and private,’ I said.

‘Fire away,’ said Martineau.

As it was cold in their room, however, I took him out to a café. When I explained that I was not well, Martineau said: ‘You do look a bit under the weather!’

And when we went into the café lounge, he looked round with his lively curiosity, and said: ‘Do you know, Lewis, I’ve not been in one of these big cafés for years.’

I was too strung up to pay attention then, but later that remark seemed an odd example of the geographical separations of our lives. For nearly two years I had seen Martineau each week. Yet the territory we covered – in a town a few miles square – was utterly different: draw his paths in blue and mine in red, like underground railways, and the only junction would be at his house.

We sat by a window: in the marketplace, as I glanced down, the light of a shop suddenly went out.

‘You remember what Saturday is?’ I said.

‘I don’t think I do,’ Martineau reflected.

‘It’s the day Eden said he’d accept your share in the firm – if you didn’t change your mind.’

‘He’s an obstinate old fellow.’ Martineau smiled. ‘I told him he could have it months ago – and he wouldn’t believe me. Ah well, he’ll have to now.’

‘Yes, I know,’ I said quickly. ‘There’s something important about all this. Which may be a calamity to some of your friends. And you can stop it. Shall I go on?’

‘You’re trying to persuade me to come back?’ He laughed.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not that now. I want to ask – something a good deal less.’

‘Go on, Lewis,’ he said. ‘Go on.’

‘It’s about your partnership,’ I said. ‘George has set his heart on having it himself.’

‘Oh,’ said Martineau. ‘I can see one or two difficulties.’ His tone was curiously businesslike. ‘He didn’t behave very wisely over Calvert, you know.’

‘
You
can’t hold that against him,’ I cried.

‘Of course I don’t,’ said Martineau quickly. ‘But he’s very young yet, of course.’

‘It wouldn’t have mattered about his age,’ I said. ‘If he’d the money to buy a partnership somewhere.’

‘I believe that’s true,’ said Martineau.

‘It’s entirely a matter of money. Of course, he hasn’t any.’

‘You’re sure he really wants to be tied down like that?’

‘More than anything in the world. Just at this minute.’

‘He used to put – first things first,’ said Martineau.

‘He still does, I think,’ I said. ‘But he’s not entirely like you. He wants the second things as well.’

‘Well done, well done,’ he said. Then as he quietened down into a pleased smile, he said: ‘Well, if old George really wants to go in, I do hope Eden asks him. George deserves to be given what he wants – more than most of us.’

The affection was, I had always known, genuine and deeper than for any of us. It was as unquestionable as Eden’s dislike of George.

‘Except,’ said Martineau, ‘that perhaps none of us deserves to be given what we want.’

‘Eden certainly won’t ask him,’ I said. ‘He’s said as much.’

‘Such a pity,’ said Martineau. ‘I’m sorry for George, but it can’t be helped.’

I was as diffident as though I were asking for money for myself. Of all men, he seemed the most impossible to plead with for a favour: for no reason that I could understand, except a paralysis of one’s own will.

‘It can be helped,’ I said. ‘You can help it.’

‘I’m helpless.’ Martineau shook his head. ‘It’s Eden’s firm now.’

‘You needn’t give your share to him. You can give it to George instead.’