George Passant (35 page)

He left no time to begin George’s examination before lunch. Irritating the judge, he involved Olive’s relations with Jack into his questions over the farm. He brought in a suggestion, so over-elaborate that it was commonly misunderstood, about her raising money in secret, without Jack’s knowledge; Porson’s insinuation being that she was trying to win Jack back from other women, and using her money as the bait.

But, though he had confused everyone by his legal argument and annoyed the judge, Porson had not entirely wasted his time. Olive was often admired at first sight, but seldom liked: and it had been so in court. Porson had been able to whip up this animosity.

As we went out for lunch, the crowd was full of murmurs about her evidence. Rachel met me, her face full of pity. She said several times – ‘If only she’d thrown herself on their mercy.’ Her pride had made many people glad to hear Porson’s attack. And the impassiveness with which she had received the questions about ‘running after a man who didn’t want her’ had added to their resentment.

Olive and Jack walked slowly together into lunch; they were not speaking when they arrived. George stared at her.

‘What did you think of that?’

‘Not much. They’re waiting for you now.’

We tried to keep up a conversation, but no one made the effort for long. About us all, there hung the minute restlessness of extreme fatigue. Before the meal was finished Jack pushed his chair back.

‘I want some air before this afternoon. I’m going for a walk,’ he said to Olive. She replied: ‘It’ll be better if I stay here.’

Without smiling, they looked at each other. Their faces were harassed and grave, but full of intimacy.

‘You’d better stay too,’ Jack said to George. ‘You’ll want to get ready.’ George inclined his head, and Jack asked me to go with him into the street.

We found people already on the pavements, waiting for the afternoon’s sitting to begin. Jack walked past them, his head back. He was wearing neither overcoat nor hat, and many of them recognised him.

‘We gave them something to listen to,’ he said.

‘You did pretty well.’

‘You would expect me to, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes, I should.’

‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘when I was in the box and saw them looking at me – I felt they were
envying
me, just like these people who’re staring now?’

Even then, he was drawing some enjoyment from the eyes of the crowd. But a little later he said: ‘There isn’t so much to envy, is there? I still don’t know why I have never pulled things off. I ought to have done. A good many others would have done in my place. I might have done, of course I might–’ He began speaking very fast, as though he were puzzled and astonished.

‘Lewis, if I’d been the man everyone thinks, this would never have happened. Do you realise that? I know that I’ve done things most men wouldn’t, clearly I have. But I could have saved myself the trouble if I had lived on Olive from the start. She would have kept me if I’d let her. The man Porson struck something there. But I just couldn’t. Why, Lewis, a man like you would have found it infinitely easier to let her than I did!’

‘Yes, I should have taken her help,’ I said.

‘I couldn’t,’ said Jack. ‘I suppose I was too proud. Have you ever known me to be too proud in any other conceivable circumstances before? It’s incredible: but I couldn’t take the help she wanted to give.’

Jack was reflecting. I recalled how Olive knew that he was struggling against being dependent on her – when we were afraid that he might run. We turned back towards the steps. He again felt curious eyes watching him, and casually smoothed back his hair.

‘They think I’m a man who lives on women,’ he said. ‘It’s true that I haven’t lost by their company, in my time. The curious thing is – the one occasion when I ought to have let a woman help me, I couldn’t manage it.

‘I’m not the man they think,’ said Jack. ‘I’ve always envied people who’ve got the power of going straight ahead. I don’t think there’s much chance I shall learn it now.’

WHEN George walked from the dock to the witness box, the court was full. There were acquaintances whom he had made at the School and through Eden’s firm; as well as close friends, there were several present whom he had quarrelled with and denounced. Canon Martineau, who had not attended to hear his brother, was in court this afternoon, by the Principal’s side; Beddow and Miss Geary were also there, of that committee which George once attacked. Roy’s father was the only one of the five who had not come to watch. Roy himself stood at the back of the court, making a policeman fetch chairs for Mr and Mrs Passant. Daphne and Rachel stood near to Roy. Eden sat in the place he had occupied throughout the trial. And there were others who had come under George’s influence – many of them not ready to believe what they heard against him.

As he waited in the box, the court was strained to a pitch it had not reached before. There was dislike, envy and contempt ready for him; others listened apprehensively for each word, and were moved for him so that their nerves were tense.

At that moment, just as Getliffe was beginning his first question, the judge intervened with a businesslike discussion of the timetable of the case. ‘Unless you finish by tomorrow lunchtime,’ (Saturday) he said to Porson, ‘I shall have to leave it over until Monday. I particularly want to have next week clear for other work. If you could cut anything superfluous out of your cross-examination this afternoon – then perhaps you’ (he turned to Getliffe) ‘could begin your final speech today.’

Getliffe agreed in a word; he felt the suspense in the court, tightened by this unexpected delay. But Porson argued for some minutes, and said that he could not offer to omit essential questions. In fact, George’s evidence took up the whole afternoon.

Throughout the hours in the box George was nervous in a way which altered very little, whether it was Getliffe who questioned him or Porson. Yet he was, in many ways, the best witness the trial had seen. His hands strained at the lapels of his coat and his voice kept breaking out in anger; but even here, the rapidity and coherence of his mind, the ease with which his thoughts formed themselves into words, made the answers come clear, definite and undelayed.

In the examination, George gave a more elaborate account of their businesses, and one far more self-consistent and complete than either of the others or Getliffe himself in the opening speech. The answers explained that he and Jack heard of Martineau’s leaving the town and wanting to sell the agency. He, as an old friend, undertook the task of asking Martineau about it, in particular whether it was an investment they would be justified in inviting others to join. Martineau told him the agency was in a particularly healthy state – and that the
Arrow
had a circulation of about five thousand. His memory was absolutely precise. There were no vague impressions. He had not thought of any misrepresentation (‘It would have been fantastic,’ George broke out, ‘to inquire further’). Jack and Olive had approached Attock and the others; the firm was bought; it had brought in a reasonable profit, not as large as they expected. He had been puzzled for some months at the small circulation of the
Arrow
after they took it over. They had not been able to repay more than a fraction of the loan, but had regularly raised the interest. The disorganisation of industry in the town during the economic crisis had also diminished the business, just as it was becoming established. But still, they had maintained some profit and paid the interest regularly. The agency would still have been flourishing, if, in George’s words, ‘I had not been attacked’.

After the steady results of the agency, they had thought of other ventures. The farm, which he knew through visits with his friends from the School, struck him as a possibility, and he examined its finances together with Jack. They decided that, running it with one or two smaller hostels, and finally a chain, they could make it give profits on a scale different from their first attempt with the agency. They were anxious to make money, George said vehemently, in answer to Getliffe’s question: it was also a convenience to manage the farm, as he and a group of friends spent much of their time there. Essentially, however, it was a business step. He gave a precise account of the meeting with Miss Geary and others.

In the middle of the afternoon, when the windows were already becoming dark, Porson rose for the last cross-examination of the trial. He wrapped his fingers in his gown and waited a moment. Then he said: ‘In your professional career, haven’t you done a good deal of work on financial transactions, Mr Passant?’

‘Yes.’

‘You would consider yourself less likely than most to make a mistake through ignorance – or vagueness – or any incompetence that a man can fall into out of inexperience?’

‘I should.’

‘Thank you for admitting that. I don’t want to take up the court’s time questioning you about the financial cases – very much more complicated than the ones you engaged in yourself – which you handled for Mr Eden during the last five or six years. So, with your knowledge of financial matters, what was your first impression when Mr Martineau described the state of the agency?’

‘I accepted it as the truth.’

‘You didn’t think it remarkable that an agency of that kind – at that time – should be flourishing so excessively?’

‘I was interested that it should be doing well.’

‘With your experience and knowledge, it didn’t occur to you that it might be said to be doing too well?’

‘I was told it on the best of authority.’

‘I suggest to you, Mr Passant, that if you had been told anything so remarkable, even by Mr Martineau, you would naturally, as a result of your knowledge of these matters, immediately have investigated the facts?’

‘I might have done if I hadn’t known Mr Martineau well.’

Porson continued with questions on George’s knowledge of the agency. He kept emphasising George’s competence; several times he seemed deliberately to invite one of the methodical and lucid explanations. Many, however, were now noticing the contrast between the words and the defensive, bitter note in George’s voice.

‘Obviously, Mr Passant,’ Porson said, ‘you would never have believed such a story. Whoever told it to you. I put it to you that this tale of Mr Martineau telling you the circulation as a large figure – actually never took place?’

‘You’ve no grounds for suggesting that.’

At last, as George’s tired and angry answer was still echoing in the court, Porson left the agency and said: ‘Well, I’ll put that aside for the present. Now about your other speculation. You gave some explanation of why you embarked on that. Will you repeat it?’

‘I wanted money. This looked a safe and convenient method.’

‘That’s what you said. You also admitted it had some connection with your work at the Technical College and School of Art’ – he gave the full title, and then added – ‘the institution that seems to be referred to as the School? You admitted this speculation had some connection with your work there?’

‘It had.’

‘Let us see what your work at the School really amounted to. You are not a regular member of the staff, of course?’

‘I’ve been a part-time lecturer–’

‘For the last nine years your status, such as it is, hasn’t altered? You’ve given occasional classes in law which amount to two a week?’ By chance, he exactly repeated the Principal’s phrase of over seven years before.

‘That is true.’

‘That is, you’ve just been a casual visitor at the School. Now can you explain your statement that one reason for buying the farm was this – itinerant connection?’

‘I have made many friends among pupils there. I wanted to be useful to them. It was an advantage to have a place to entertain them – entirely at my disposal.’

‘Surely that isn’t a very important advantage?’

‘It’s a considerable one.’

‘I suggest there were others a good deal more urgent, Mr Passant. Wasn’t it more important to keep the activities of your friends secret at this time?’

‘It was not important in the sense you appear to be insinuating.’

‘Do you deny,’ Porson asked, ‘after all that’s been said – that you wanted to keep your activities secret?’

‘I saw no reason to welcome intrusion.’

‘Exactly. That is, you admit you had a particularly urgent reason for buying the farm at this time?’

‘It was no more urgent than – since I really became interested in a group of people from the School.’

‘You know – you’ve just admitted that you were afraid of intrusion?’

‘I knew that if strangers got inside the group, then I should run a risk of being attacked. That was also true since the first days that I began to take them up.’

‘You are trying to maintain that that was the same several years ago as in the summer when you bought the farm?’

‘Naturally.’

‘There is no “naturally”, Mr Passant. Haven’t you heard something of these scares among your friends – the fear of a scandal just at the psychological moment?’

‘I’ve heard it. Of course. I believe they’ve all missed something essential out of the idea of that danger.’

Porson laughed.

‘So you admit there was a danger, do you?’

‘I never had any intention of pretending there wasn’t.’

‘But you’re pretending it was no greater the summer when you wanted very urgently to buy the farm than it was years before?’

‘It was very little greater.’

‘Mr Passant: the jury has already heard something of the scandals your friends were afraid of when you were buying the farm. What do you expect us to believe, when you say there was no greater danger then?’

George cried loudly: ‘I said the danger was very little greater. And the reason for it was that the scandals were only the excuse to destroy everything I had tried to do. Some excuse could easily have been found at any time.’ His outburst seemed for a moment to exhaust and satisfy him. He was left spent and listless, while Porson asked his next question.

‘I shall have to ask you to explain what you mean by that. Do you really believe anyone threatened your safety for any length of time?’