George Passant (28 page)

I was forced to compare this silence with the long arguments to himself about the agency; I turned back to those pages which had given Daphne a reason for coming:

16 DECEMBER 1928

Tonight I went over the figures of the first month’s business under the new regime (i.e. of the agency). They are satisfactory, and we shall be able to pay our way – but I still find the difficulty which has puzzled me before.
[2]

16 JANUARY 1929

The agency is going well. Our profits are up by 10 per cent in the first month. At last Jack is justifying my faith in him (how it would have changed things if he had followed my advice four years ago and entered a profession. Even now I still feel I was right. I should not be fretted by this uneasiness which I cannot quite put aside).

17 JANUARY 1929

I cannot bear this difficulty any longer. There is no doubt that Martineau’s statement of the circulation was fantastically exaggerated. On seeing our own figures there is no doubt at all. We are doing better business than they ever did; and we have not disposed of 1,100 copies of the wretched rag. This puts me in a false position. It devolves upon me to consider what is right for the three of us to do.

If I were to be censorious with myself, I should regret not acting on my earlier suspicions. I was amazed by the figure when Martineau first told me. But after all, I had his authority. What reasons could possess him, of all men, to deceive me? There was no justification for inquiring further. I was within every conceivable right in using his statement to help raise our money. There was one period when I came near to investigating the entire matter – that night, a fortnight before we actually completed the purchase, when I mentioned the circulation to Jack and Olive. Jack laughed, and would not explain himself. Olive said nothing. I began to take steps that night; but then it seemed unnecessary, and I decided to go ahead. I can still feel justified that I was right.

After all, what is the present position? We have borrowed money for a business. We have placed information about the business in front of those we persuaded to lend. All that information was given us on the best of authority; we transmitted it, having every rational ground to consider it true. Most of it was true; on one rather inconsiderable fact, it turns out that we were misled ourselves.

It would be an untenable position, of course, if this accidental misrepresentation had been a cause of loss to our creditors. That providentially is the converse of the actual state of affairs. Our creditors are safely receiving their money, more safely than through any similar investment I can imagine. They have done pretty well for themselves.

So what is to be done? There seems only one answer. No one is losing; for everyone’s sake we must go on as we are. I do not consider it necessary to raise the subject with Jack. I have disposed of the moments of uneasiness. My mind is at rest.

18 JANUARY 1929

I am now able to feel that the difficulty is resolved. But there is one problem which I cannot settle. Why ever should Martineau have made a false statement in the first place? Can it have been deliberate? It seems unthinkable. I remember his curious manoeuvres about Morcom’s flat just before he left the firm. But I could not believe that was done from selfish motives; still more I cannot believe anything so ridiculous of him now. After all, he did not touch a penny of the price we paid. He went straight off to his incredible settlement. Since then he has scarcely had a shilling in his pocket.

I suppose he was simply losing his grip on the world, and it is useless to speculate as though he were a rational being.

As soon as I read George’s words, I did not doubt that his account of Martineau’s statement was true. I wondered what Martineau had really meant; whatever underlay it all, his evidence might be essential now. On the whole, though, I was more distressed than before I knew as much.

Two things struck me most. George had certainly suspected the statement while they were still borrowing money; he had managed to shelve his misgivings for a time. Then at last he put his ‘mind at rest’. I was not altogether surprised by his self-explanation; but it became full of meaning when we compared it to his silence over the farm.

He believed himself caught accidentally in a fog of misrepresentation over the agency – what about the other business? I could not help but imagine – was it something he could not reconcile himself to? Something he tried to dismiss from his thoughts?

And I knew what George’s feeling for Jack had now become. The mention of the circulation, and Jack’s laughter; George afraid, when struggling with his doubt, to speak to Jack again – those hints endowed some of George’s words with an ironic, an almost intolerable pathos: ‘It devolves on me to consider what is right for the three of us to do.’

I read the diary all evening. At dinner Eden and I were alone, and he was kindly and cordial. We went into the drawing-room afterwards; he built up the fire as high as it had been the night of Morcom’s slip; he pressed me to a glass of brandy.

Here I have to enter into a conversation which I reported, more subjectively, in a part of my own story.

‘How do you feel about yesterday?’ he said at length.

‘It looks none too good,’ I said.

‘I completely agree,’ he said deliberately, with a friendly smile to mark my judgment and to recognise bad news. ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve been talking to Hotchkinson about it during the afternoon. We both consider we shall be lucky if we can save those young nuisances from what, between ourselves, I’m beginning to think they deserve. But I don’t like to think of their getting it through the lack of any possible effort on our part. Don’t you agree?’

‘Of course,’ I said. He was sitting back comfortably now, his voice smooth and friendly, as though I was a client he liked, but to whom he had to break bad news. He was sorry, and yet buoyed up by the subdued pleasure of his own activity.

‘Well then, that’s what Hotchkinson and I have been considering. And we wondered whether you ought to have a little help. You’re not to misunderstand us, young man. I’d as soon trust a case to you as anyone of your age, and Hotchkinson believes in you as well. Of course, you were a trifle over-optimistic imagining you might get a dismissal in the police court, but we all make our mistakes, you know. This is going to be a very tricky case, though. It’s not going to be just working out the legal defence. If it was only doing that in front of a judge, I’d take the responsibility of leaving you by yourself, if they were my own son and daughter. But this looks like being one of those cases where the legal side isn’t so important–’ he chuckled – ‘and it’ll be a matter of making the best of a bad job with the jury. That’s the snag.’

‘Almost all my work’s been in front of juries.’

‘Of course it has. You’ll have plenty more. But you know, as we all know, that they’re very funny things. And in this case I should say from my experience of them that they’ll be prejudiced against your people – simply because they’re of the younger generation and one or two stories will slip out that they’ve gone the pace at times–’

‘That’s obviously true.’

‘Well, I put it to Hotchkinson that they’d be even more prejudiced, if their counsel was the same kind of age and a brilliant young man. They’d resent all the brilliance right from the start, Eliot. You’d only have to make a clever suggestion, and they’d distrust you. They’d be jibbing from all the good qualities of your generation – as well as the bad, but they’d find the bad all right. The racketiness that’s been the curse of these days – they’d find that and they’d count it against them in spite of anything you said. Anything you could say would only make it worse.’

‘What do you suggest?’ I said.

‘I want you to stay in the case. You know it better than anyone already, and we can’t do without you. But I believe, taking everything into consideration, you ought to have someone to lead you.’

‘Who?’

‘I was thinking of your old chief – Getliffe.’

‘It’s sensible to get someone,’ I broke out, ‘but Getliffe – seriously, he’s a bad lawyer.’

‘No one’s a hero to his pupils, you know,’ said Eden.

I persisted: ‘I dare say I’m unfair. But this is important. There are others who’d do it admirably.’ I gave some names of senior counsel.

‘They’re clever fellows,’ said Eden, smiling as when we argued about George. ‘But I don’t see any reason to go beyond Getliffe. He’s always done well with by cases.’

When I was alone, I was surprised that my disappointment should be so sharp. There was little of my own at stake, a brief in a minor case – for which, of course, I had already refused to be paid. Yet, when it was tested through Eden’s decision, I knew – there is no denying the edge of one’s unhappiness – that I was more wounded by the petty rebuff than by the danger to my friends.

I was ashamed that it should be so. But for some hours I could think of little else. Despite the anxieties of the case, the chances of Jack running, their immediate fate: despite being present at a time when George needed all the strength of a friend. Often, in the last days, I had lain awake, thinking of what would happen to him. But tonight I was preoccupied with my own vanity.

I went to London next morning and saw Getliffe. He said, alert, bright-eyed and glib after skimming through the documents: ‘You worked with Eden once, of course.’

‘I know him well,’ I said.

‘You’ve seen this case he’s sent us?’

‘I’ve watched it through the police court,’ I answered.

‘Well, L S,’ his voice rose, ‘it’ll be good fun working together again. It’s been too long since we had a duet, I’m looking forward to this.’

The preparation of the case gave me a chance to be more thorough than if I had been left alone. For there was the need to sit with Getliffe, to bully him, to ignore his complaints that he would get it up in time, to make him aggrieved and patronising. At any cost, he must not go into court in the way I had seen him so often, flustered, with no more than a skipped reading, a half-memory behind him, relying in a badgered and uncomfortable way on his inventive wits, completely determined to work thoroughly in his next case, fidgeting and yet getting sympathy with the court – somehow, despite the mistakes, harassment, carelessness, sweating forehead and nervous eyes, keeping his spirits and miraculously coming through.

I kept the case before him. He was harder-working than most, but he could not bear any kind of continuity. An afternoon’s work after his own pattern meant going restlessly through several briefs, picking up a recognition-symbol here and there, so that, when a solicitor came in and mentioned a name, Getliffe’s eyes would be bright and intelligent – ‘You mean the man who–’

He left me to collect the witnesses. One of my tasks was to trace Martineau; it took a good deal of time. At last I found a workhouse master in the North Riding, who guffawed as I began to inquire over the telephone.

‘You mean Old Jesus,’ he said. ‘He’s often been in here.’ He added: ‘He doesn’t seem mad. But he must be right off his head.’

He was able to tell me where ‘that crowd’ had settled now.

I returned to the town at the weekend. I had not been back an hour before Roy rang up to say that Jack seemed to have disappeared. For a day or two he had been talking of a ‘temporary expedition’ to Birmingham, to survey the ‘prospects’ for a new business as soon as the trial was over. Today no one could find him.

A few minutes after the call, Roy brought Olive and Rachel to Eden’s house. For the whole afternoon Eden left us to ourselves.

Rachel was desperately worried. Roy also believed that Jack had flown. Of us all, Olive alone was unshaken.

‘If you knew him better,’ she said, ‘you’d know that he fooled himself with his excuses – as well as you. He’s really planning a new business. And he also thinks it’s a good dodge for getting a few miles away.’

‘He needn’t stop there,’ said Roy.

‘I don’t believe he’s gone near Birmingham,’ said Rachel.

‘I think you’ll find he has,’ said Olive.

‘I know I’m thinking of George all the time,’ cried Rachel. ‘We’ve got to sit by and watch Jack ruin him. And Olive, it’s wretched to see you–’

‘Go on.’

‘I must speak now. I know it’s hopeless,’ Rachel went on. ‘But if only you could see Jack for a minute just as we do–’

‘You think he’s a scoundrel. That he doesn’t care a rap for me. And that he’ll marry me because he can’t get money some other way. Is that what you mean?’ Before Rachel replied Olive added: ‘Some of it’s quite true.’

‘You don’t know what a relief it would be – to get you free of him,’ Rachel said. ‘Is there any chance? When this is over?’

‘None,’ said Olive. After a moment, she said: ‘I don’t care what you think of how much he’s attached to me. But I’ll tell you this. He knows he can live on my money. He may be forced to marry me in the end. But I shall be happier about the arrangement than he will. There’ll be times when he’s bound to think that I’m dragging him down. He’s got more illusions than I have. You’ve got to persuade yourselves of that.’

Rachel tried to argue with her. She did not resent the obvious pretences and attempts to console her. She said, with a genuine smile: ‘It’s no use talking. You’ll never believe a word I say.’

Rachel once more begged her to trace Jack – ‘we can’t let George be thrown away,’ she cried.

Then the maid announced another visitor for me and Morcom came in. First he caught sight of Roy, and said: ‘I can’t find any news.’

At that moment, he saw Olive.

‘I’m sorry. They didn’t tell me–’

‘Come and sit by the fire,’ she said.

He sat down and spread out his hands. His face looked ill with care. We all knew that this was the first time they had met for months.

In her presence he would not say what he had come for. Roy talked more easily for a few minutes than anyone there could manage: then he took Rachel away.