George Passant (38 page)

While Getliffe prepared his speech in his room close by, I defended George against her. This night of all nights, I had to defend him, who had lost the most, against those who had helped to bring him where he was. She was not moved by his fall. At last I said, angry and desolated, ‘Whatever happens, Jack won’t be much harmed. But George – he will never be able to endure looking back to what he once was. Do you remember telling Roy one afternoon years ago – “he is worth twenty Jack Coterys”? Even if this was inevitable, I believe what you said then. Do you think that such a man will forget this afternoon?’

‘You’re being sentimental,’ she said, and was not even interested. She now thought only of her future with Jack. She realised that, if they got off, he would not be much scarred. If they could move to another town, he would soon put it all behind him. She knew he would become restless with ideas again. Left to himself, he might in time break the law in some similar fashion. She would keep him from that, now.

He would have to marry her. His gratitude and immediate respect for her – they would soon disappear. She talked about the prospect, forcing herself to sound matter-of-fact. She knew that she desired it. In a way, she believed that the life she wanted was only just beginning.

GETLIFFE’S final speech, which lasted for two hours on Saturday morning, surprised us all. It was in his usual style, spasmodic, still bearing the appearance of nervousness, interjected with jerky asides, ill at ease and yet familiar; he was showing all the touch which made men comfortable with him. He was showing also the fresh enjoyment which seldom left him when he was on his feet in court.

But there was another note which made many of us feel that he was deeply moved. For those, like Eden and myself, who had been close to him through the week, there could be no doubt that something had affected him personally; and as we heard him reiterate a phrase – ‘the way in which Mr Passant’s freedom has worked out’ – we knew at last what it was. He kept using these words, slurring them in his quick voice. Last night, we had heard him promise ‘to pull something out of the bag’. We knew that he had chosen this line to divert the jury’s prejudice. Yet – I was certain – it was not only as an advocate he was speaking. I had never seen him so possessed by seriousness in court.

He began, in his simple, emphatic, salesman’s way, hammering home the division of the case to the jury. The three of them were being tried for a financial offence, and, on the other hand, their manner of life was being used against them. ‘First of all,’ said Getliffe, ‘I’m going to put the financial business out of our way.’ He went over the transactions again, quickly, full of impatient liveliness, once or twice forgetting a figure; he described the agency and came to George’s buying it from Martineau. ‘A lot of this is dull stuff to you and me,’ Getliffe smiled at the jury, ‘but about that incident we had what I at any rate found an unforgettable experience. I mean, the evidence of Mr Martineau. Now we have all knocked about the world. We know that there are reasons why we’re all capable of telling lies and even giving false evidence in a court of law. We all know that, though sometimes we pretend we don’t. I’m going to admit to you now that some of the witnesses for the defence, in this case, have had
reasons
which would explain their telling lies. You would know that even if I hadn’t told you. You’re able to judge for yourselves. But in Mr Martineau we had someone – I think more than any witness I’ve ever had the privilege of calling – who is completely removed from all the pettiness that we are ashamed of and that we never manage to sweep out of our lives. You can’t imagine Mr Martineau lying to us. You heard all about his story, didn’t you? He’s
done
something that most of us, if we are ordinary, decent, sinful men’ – he laughed again – ‘with one foot in the mud and one eye on the stars – have thought of at least once in our lives. That is, just cutting away from it all and trying to live the things we think we believe. Of course, we never manage it, you and I. It isn’t our line of business. I’m not sure it would be a good thing for the world if we could. But that isn’t to prevent us recognising something beyond us when we do see it – in a life like Mr Martineau’s, for instance. I don’t mind saying – whatever you think of me – that there’s something saintly about a life like his. Renouncing, deliberately renouncing, all the things you and I worry about from the time we are young men until we die. I’m not going to persuade you that his evidence is true. It would be insulting you and me and all we hope for if it wasn’t true.’

Some thought that this was an example of the craft, apparently naïve but really subtle, which made him, for all his deficiencies, a success at his profession. But they had not heard his confidence on the night of Martineau’s examination. If this was subtle, it was all instinctive. He believed what he was saying; he did not need to persuade himself.

He spent a long time over the details of the agency and the farm. Martineau’s evidence, he repeated again and again, acquitted them on the first. On the second – this was far vaguer than the agency; if it had not been for ‘that curious definite figure of the circulation’, then the second charge could never have been brought. He dealt with the figures of the farm, sometimes wrapping them round and complicating them.

All this, both the complication and the air of authority, was not much different from an ordinary defence. It was done with greater life and was less well ordered than most speeches at the end of such a case; but, if he had finished at that point, he would have done all that was expected of him. Instead, he began his last appeal, and for a quarter of an hour we listened in astonishment.

‘I submit that you would never think of convicting these three on the evidence that has been put forward, neither you nor I would think they were guilty for a moment – if it were not for something else we have all had in our minds this week. I mean, the way Mr Passant’s freedom has worked out. That is, you’ve heard of some people who have been breaking a good many of the laws that are important to decent men. I don’t mean the laws of this country, I mean the laws which lie behind our ordinary family way of life. I won’t try to conceal it from you. They haven’t shown any shame. I don’t know whether it’s to their credit that they haven’t. They have been living what some would call “a free life”. Well, that’s bound to prejudice them in your eyes, in the eyes of anyone older who doesn’t believe a thing is good just because it is new. I don’t mind confessing that it upset me when I discovered the pleasures they took for granted – as though there was nothing else for them to do. I think – I’m positive we think alike – that they are all three people of gifts. But chiefly I want to say something about Mr Passant, because I think we all realise that he has been the leader. He is the one who set off with this idea of freedom. It’s his influence that I’m going to try to explain.

‘You’ve all seen him. You can’t help recognising that he’s a man who actually made his way up to a point, who might have gone as far as he wanted. He could have done work for the good of the country and his generation – no one has kept him from it but himself. No one but himself and the ideas he has persuaded himself to believe in: because I’m going a bit further. It may surprise you to hear that I do genuinely credit him with setting out to create a better world.

‘I don’t pretend he has, mind you. You’re entitled to think of him as a man who has wasted every gift he possesses. I’m with you. I look on him like that myself. He’s chased his own pleasures. I’ll go as far as any of you in accusing him. I’ll say this: he’s broken every standard of moral conduct we’ve tried to keep up, and he’s put up nothing in their place. He is a man who has wasted himself.

‘I know you’re feeling this, and you know I am. I’m reminding you what one has to remind oneself – that he is not on trial, nor are the others, for having wasted himself. But if he was? But if he was? I should say to you what I have thought on and off since I first took on the case. I should say: he started off with a fatal idea. He wanted to build a better world on the basis of this freedom of his: but it’s fatal to build better worlds until you know what human beings are like and what you’re like yourself. If you don’t, you’re liable to build, not a better world, but a worse one; in fact you’re liable to build a world for one purpose and one only, that is just to suit your own private weaknesses. I’m certain that is exactly what Mr Passant has done. And I’m certain that is exactly what all progressively minded people, if you’ll let me call them that, are always likely to do unless they watch themselves. They usually happen to be much too arrogant to watch themselves. I don’t think we should be far wrong to regard Mr Passant as a representative of people who like to call themselves progressive. He’s been too arrogant to doubt his idea of freedom: or to find out what human beings are really like. He’s never realised – though he’s a clever man – that freedom without faith is fatal for sinful human beings. Freedom without faith means nothing but self-indulgence. Freedom without faith has been fatal for Mr Passant himself. Sometimes it seems to me that it will be fatal to most of his kind in this country and the world. Their idea of progress isn’t just sterile: it carries the seed of its own decay.

‘Well, that’s how I think of Mr Passant and progress or liberalism or anarchy or whatever you like. I believe that’s why he’s wasted himself. But you can say – it’s still his own fault. After all, he chose this fatal idea. He adopted it for himself. To that, I just want to say one thing more.

‘He’s a man on his own. I’ve admitted that. But he’s also a child of his time. And that’s more important for the way in which he has thrown himself into freedom without faith. You see, he represents a time and generation that is wretchedly lost by the side of ours. It was easy to believe in order and decency when we were brought up. We might have been useless and wild and against everything round us – but our world was going on, and it seemed to be going on forever. We had something to take our places in. We had got our bearings, most of us had got some sort of religion, some sort of society to believe in and a decent hope for the future.’ Eagerly, he laughed. ‘We’d got something to stick ourselves on to. It didn’t matter so much to us when the war – and everything the war’s meant since – came along. We had something inside us too solid to shift. But look at Mr Passant, and all the generation who are like him. He was fifteen when the war began. He had four years of chaos round him just at that time in his life, just at the time when we had quietness and discipline and hope all round us. It’s what we used to call “the uncounted cost”. You remember that, don’t you? And I’m not sure those four years were the worst. Think of everything that has happened in the years, it’s nearly nineteen years now, since the war began. Imagine people, alive and full of vitality and impressionable, growing up without control, without anyone believing in control, without any hope for the future except in the violence of extremes. Imagine all that, and think what you would have become yourself if you’d been young during this – I’ve heard men who believe in youth at any price call it an “orchard time”. I should say it was one of the swampy patches. Anyway, imagine you were brought up among these young people wasting themselves. That is, if you’re one of us, if you are a normal person who could go either way, who might go either Martineau’s or Passant’s. Well, if you were young, don’t you think you could have found yourself with Passant?

‘That’s what I should have said. I’ve let it out because it’s something that has been pressing inside me all through this trial, and I couldn’t be fair to Mr Passant and his friends unless I – shared it with you. You see, we’re not trying them for being wasted. Unless we’re careful we shall be. The temptation is to feel they’re pretty cheap specimens anyway, to give the benefit of doubt against them. We’ve got to be careful of our own prejudice. Even when the prejudice happens to be absolutely right, as right as anything we’re likely to meet on this earth. But we’re not trying them for their sins and their waste of themselves. We’re not trying them for a fatal idea of freedom. We’re not trying them for their generation. We are trying them for an offence of which there is scarcely a pennyworth of evidence, and which, if it were not for all this rottenness we have raised, you would have dismissed and we should all have been home long ago. You’ve got to discount the prejudice you and I are bound to feel…’

As soon as Getliffe finished his speech, the court rose for the weekend. He had created an impression upon many there, particularly the strangers and casual spectators. Even some who knew George well were more disturbed than they would admit. Someone told me that he thought the whole speech ‘shoddy to the core’; but by far the greater number were affected by Getliffe’s outburst of feeling. They were not considering whether it was right or wrong; he was reflecting something which had been in the air the whole week, and which they had felt themselves. Whatever words he used, even if they disagreed with his ‘ideas’, they knew that he was moved by the same emotions as themselves. They were certain that he was completely sincere.

I went to George’s house after lunch. We did not mention the speech. For a time, George talked in a manner despondent and yet uncontrollably nervous and agitated. He had received that morning from the Principal the formal notice of dismissal from the School.

He took a piece of paper and began drawing a pattern like a spider’s web with small letters beside each intersection. Some time later, Roy arrived. George did not look up from his paper for a moment. At last he raised his head slowly.

‘What is it now?’ he said.

‘I just called in,’ said Roy. He turned his head away, and hesitated. Then he said: ‘Yes, there is something. It can’t be kept quiet. They’ve gone for Rachel.’

‘What?’

‘They’ve asked her to leave her job.’

‘Because she was connected with me?’