George Passant (23 page)

Yet several times I returned to Martineau’s statement, in particular the figures of the
Arrow
.

‘It seems such a tremendous lot,’ I said.

‘I thought it was rather large,’ George said.

There was a silence.

‘I’d have thought if they could reach as wide a public as that,’ I went on, ‘they’d have made more of a show of it themselves.’

‘Jack’s magnificent at making things go,’ said George. ‘He’s full of ideas. I left that side to him. It’s probably the explanation.’ He stared at the paper. ‘In any case, I don’t think we shall get very far by speculating on Exell’s and Martineau’s incompetence.’

We continued through the accounts, on to the other business, the farm and its companions. There was, in fact, little written down. Most of the data were supplied by George, without delay or doubts, almost as though he was reading them from some mental sheet.

When at last I had completed my notes, George said: ‘You may as well look at these. They’re not strictly relevant, but I suppose you’d better see them. I’m sorry I haven’t my proper diary here.’ He gave me a twopenny notebook; it contained, in his neat hand, an account of his income and expenses, recorded in detail for several years. It struck me as strange he should keep this record of his money, over which he was so prodigal (I later found out that it was not complete or accurate, in contrast to the minute thoroughness of his diary). And I was mystified by his giving me the book. For a time, the statements told me nothing – a slight increase in expenditure for the last eighteen months, several entries reading – ‘by cheque from J C, £10’. Then my eyes caught an entry: ‘D at farm £1’; often, most weekends for some time back, the same words recurred.

‘Do you pay for yourself at the farm?’ I asked. ‘I thought–’

‘No.’ He turned round from the bookshelves. ‘I pay for those I take with me.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I ought to have–’

‘Go back a few months.’ His voice was unfriendly. At the beginning of the year, I found, as well as the entries about D (whom I knew to be Daphne), another series with a different letter, occupying other dates, thus:

D at farm £1 Jan. 17.

F at farm £1 Jan. 24.

D at farm £1 Jan. 31.

The two sets D and F ran on together over several months. I looked up. His expression was angry, pained, and yet, in some way, relieved.

‘I don’t expect you to understand,’ he said. ‘I’m not excusing myself, either. I didn’t break the rules I’d constructed for myself until I’d fallen abjectly in love: but I repeat, I’m not making that an excuse. I should have come to it in the end. I should have found my own happiness in my own way. I refuse to be ashamed of it; but there is one impression I shouldn’t like you to get. Particularly you, because you saw me at the start. Now things may conceivably crash round me, I don’t want to let you think that I retract one single word of what the group has meant to me. I don’t want you to think I spoilt it all – because, when the rest of them were enjoying their pleasures, I saw no reason for not taking mine.’

‘I shouldn’t think so,’ I said.

As I spoke, his face lightened and looked grateful. Every word in his self-justification carried its weight of angry shame.

‘Do you remember how we compared notes on being in love – after a celebration in Nottingham?’ said George. ‘I hadn’t fallen in love then, and I envied you the experience. Do you know, I still didn’t fall in love until I was twenty-eight? That must be late for a man who has never been able to put women out of his mind for long. And I suffered for it. She was a girl called Katherine – you never met her – and she was absolutely unsuitable for a man like me. It was trying to find compensation elsewhere that I started with–’ he pointed to the F on the accounts. Both she and Daphne were members of the School and of George’s group. ‘But I insist, I don’t give that as an excuse. I should simply have taken a little longer, but I should have come to the same point in the end. And I don’t expect you to understand, but I’m capable of being fond of two women at once. So I kept on with her after I became attached to Daphne. I expect you to think it sordid – but we’re not made in the same way.

‘As a matter of fact,’ he added, his truculence replaced by an almost timid simplicity, ‘I discovered that I was hurting someone by the arrangement, so I had to give it up.’

So Daphne was too strong-willed for him; I could imagine her pleading in her child’s voice, her upper lip puckered, pleading jealousy, caring nothing for her pride if she could get her own way, older in a fashion at twenty than George would ever be.

Going back through the figures, I found another set which occurred some time after the other began. ‘Not. £1 11
s
6
d
.’ The amount was constant, and as I went further back, the entry came frequently, never less often than once a fortnight. The sum baffled me, although I guessed the general meaning. I asked him.

‘A return to Nottingham, drinks and a woman,’ George said. ‘I kept to Connie’s crowd for a long time, and it always used to cost the same.’

I laughed.

‘I remember you used to spend twice as much on drinks round the club.’

‘I suppose I did,’ said George. ‘I forgot to put those down.’

Then he said: ‘It was years before I could imagine that I might find something better.’

‘And now?’

‘It may surprise you to know that I’ve been happier with Daphne than I’ve ever been in my life. I am more in love with her than I was with Katherine: I’m not a man who can worship the unattainable for long. This happens to be love for both of us, and it’s the first time I’ve known it. When I realised it properly, I thought it was worth waiting thirty-three years for this.’

His voice became once more angry and defensive. ‘After all that I’ve thought it necessary to show you,’ he said pointing to the pocket-book, ‘I expect you to laugh at what I say – but I can’t believe that I shall know it again. And I’m compelled to think of the position I shall be in when these inquiries are over. I may not be able to inflict myself on her–’

‘I don’t think she’d leave you,’ I said.

‘Perhaps not,’ said George, and fell into silence. At last he said: ‘Just before you arrived, I told my father exactly what I’ve told you.’

‘Why in God’s name?’

‘It might have come out in public. I considered that it was better I should tell him myself.’

‘When I used the same argument about letting Eden know yesterday–’

‘I don’t recognise a connection with Eden,’ said George. ‘This was utterly different. I felt obliged to tell my father two things. He had a right to know that I might be providing malevolent people with a handle against him. I said I found that was the thing I could tolerate least of all.’

‘What else did you say?’

‘I had to say that, apart from the intolerable effect on him, I wasn’t ashamed of anything I’d done. He naturally didn’t believe that I had swindled: but he was hurt about my life with women. I had to tell him that I saw no reason to repent for any of my actions.’

A case, down for the next Tuesday, sent me back to London on Sunday night. For some days I heard nothing from the town; I rang up each night, but there was no news; and then, one morning in chambers, a telegram arrived from Hotchkinson, the solicitor who was managing the case for Eden: ‘Three clients arrested applying for bail this morning.’ It was now the middle of the month. I was not appearing in a London court until January; I decided to stay at Eden’s until the first hearing was over.

When I arrived in the town, I was told they had been arrested late the night before. The warrant was issued on information sworn by someone called Iris Ward. The name meant nothing to me; but it added to Rachel’s misery as soon as she heard it. ‘It will seem to George–’ she said. ‘You see, she was once a member of the group.’

They had spent the night in prison. That morning they had come before a magistrate: the charges were conspiracy to defraud against the three of them on two counts, the agency and the hostels; and also individual charges of obtaining money by false pretences against each on the two counts again. Nothing had been done except hear evidence of arrest and grant bail. The amount was fixed at £250 for each, and independent sureties of £250. This we had provided for in advance. Eden had arranged for two of his friends to transmit money raised by Morcom, Rachel, Roy Calvert and myself. For George and Jack, we had also been compelled to provide their personal surety; for Olive, a friend of her uncle’s had been willing to stand. The next hearing was fixed for 29 December.

I knew it would be good professional judgment to hold our hand in the police court on the twenty-ninth and let the case go for trial. I wanted to persuade them of this course at once; so I arranged to meet them at George’s that same night.

When I got there, George was alone. I was shocked by his manner. He was apathetic and numbed; he stared at the fire with his unseeing, in-turned gaze. I could not stir him into interest over the tactics.

He was in a state that I could not reach. As he stared at the fire I waited for the others to come. I had scarcely noticed anything in the room but his accounts, the last evening I spent there; now I saw that, while everyone else was living more luxuriously, this sitting-room had scarcely altered since I first set foot in it.

Then Olive came in.

She said: ‘I told you not to worry. You see how right I was.’

‘It might have been better if you had told me the truth–’ I was seeing her for the first time since the inquiries, but I was immediately at ease with her.

‘I didn’t know–’ Then she realised that George was sunk into himself, and she tried to restore his defiance.

‘It’s nasty finding a traitor, George.’ With her usual directness, she went straight into his suffering. ‘But a man like you is bound to collect envy. The wonder is, there’s not been more.’

She used also a bullying candour.

‘We may have weeks of this. We mustn’t let each other forget it.’

I felt she had done this before. And, as George was fighting against the despair, her instinct led her to another move.

She said: ‘It’s not going to be pleasant, is it? The twenty-ninth. You know, I simply couldn’t realise what it would be like. Being ashamed and afraid in public. Until this morning. Yet sometimes it seemed perfectly ordinary. I felt that, last night in jail. Of course, it hasn’t properly begun to happen yet. I only hope I get through it when it really comes.’

‘You’ll be better than any of us,’ George said.

‘I hope I shan’t let you down,’ she said. ‘You see’ – she suddenly turned to me–’you can’t believe how childish you find yourself in times like this. This is true, it happened this morning. I could face the thought that the worst might come to the worst. We might get twelve months. Then I felt a lump in my throat. I hadn’t been near crying before, since it all began. Do you know why I was now? It had just occurred to me they might have had the decency to put it off until Christmas was over.’

She achieved her purpose; for George, with the curious rough comradeship that he had always shown towards her, made an effort to encourage her.

As soon as Jack entered, I was able to discuss the tactics. I argued that we must keep our defence back: there was no chance of getting the case dismissed in the police court: we should only give our points away.

In fact there was really no alternative: as a lawyer as able as George would have been the first to see. But tonight George broke out: ‘You’ve got to defend it in the police court. It’s essential to get it dismissed out of hand.’

Several times he made these outbursts, damning the prosecution as ‘ludicrous’, attacking it from all angles – as he had done since the alarm began. Some of his attacks were good law, and I had learned from them in my preparation of our case; some were fantastically unreal, the voices of his persecuted imagination. Tonight, however, there seemed another reason in the heart of his violence.

Jack detected the reason before I did. He interrupted George brusquely; I felt, not knowing whether I was right, that some of their meetings had gone like that, when the three of them were actually conducting their business.

Jack asked a few masterful, businesslike questions: ‘You think there’s no option? We’ve clearly got to let it go for trial?’

‘Yes.’

‘There’s no possible way of arranging it now?’

‘It’s practically certain to be sent on.’

‘Everyone else thinks the same? Eden and the others?’

‘Yes.’

‘I entirely disagree,’ said George.

Jack turned on him.

‘We know what you’re thinking of,’ said Jack. ‘You’re not concerned about getting us off. You just believe that will happen. What you’re frightened of – is that your private life may be dragged out. And your precious group. The whole thing for you is wrapped up with your good intentions. You ought to realise that we haven’t got time for those now.’

Jack had spoken freshly, intimately, brutally; George did not reply, and for minutes sat in silence.

Jack walked up and down the room. He talked a good deal, and assumed that the tactics were settled.

‘If I’d had the slightest idea the hostels would come back on us – I could have worked it out some other way,’ he said. ‘It would have been just as easy. There was no earthly reason for choosing the way I did. If anyone had told me there was the faintest chance that I was letting us in for this –
waiting
–’

‘You needn’t blame yourself. More than us,’ said Olive.

‘I’m not blaming myself. Except for not looking after everything. Next time I do anything, I shall keep it all in my hands.’

‘Next time. We’ve got a long way to go before then,’ said Olive.

‘I’m not so sure,’ said Jack. He sat down by her side.

She looked at him with the first sign of violent strain she had shown that night. I knew she feared that he was thinking of escape: as I had feared the moment he spoke of Morcom’s offer.

‘We can make something of it,’ she said.