George Passant (9 page)

Myself, having a taste for these things, I should have liked to hear him out. But people like Mona (with her sly eyes and soft figure and single-minded curiosity about men) listened also: listened, it occurred to me as I walked over the wet fields, because George enjoyed his own interest and took theirs for granted.

When I returned, the room was not so peaceful. I heard Jack’s voice, as I shook out my wet coat in the hall; and as soon as I saw him and Olive sitting together by the table, I felt my attention fix on them just as all the others’ were fixed. George, sunk into the background, watched from his chair. It was like one of those primitive Last Suppers, in which from right hand and left eleven pairs of eyes are converging on one focus.

Yet, so far as I could tell, nothing had happened. Jack, some sheets of paper in front of him, was expanding on his first plans for the business: Olive had joined him at the table to read a draft advertisement. They had disagreed over one of his schemes, but now that was pushed aside, and Olive said: ‘You know, I envy you! I envy you!’

‘So you ought,’ said Jack. ‘But you haven’t so much to grumble at, yourself.’

‘I suppose you mean that I needn’t work for a living. It’s true, I could give up my job tomorrow.’

‘You wouldn’t get so much fun out of that,’ said Jack, ‘as I did out of telling your uncle that I had become increasingly dissatisfied with his firm–’

Olive smiled, but there was something on her mind. Suddenly I guessed (recalling his manner at Martineau’s the night before) that Morcom had proposed to her.

‘It’s true,’ Olive said, ‘that my father wouldn’t throw me out. I could live on him if I wanted. He probably expects me to be at home, now his health’s breaking up. It’s also true, I expect, that I could find someone to marry me. And I could live on him. But I envy you, being forced to look after yourself: do you understand that?’

‘I don’t think you’re being honest,’ said Jack.

‘I tell you, Jack, it’s bad luck to be born a woman. There may be compensations – but I’d change like a shot. Don’t you think I’m honest about that?’

‘I think you ought to get married,’ said Jack.

‘Why?’

‘You wouldn’t have so much time to think.’

Jack then became unexpectedly serious.

‘Also you talk about your father wanting you at home. It would be better for you to get free of him altogether.’

‘That doesn’t matter.’

‘It does.’

‘I tell you I’ve got a lot of respect for him. But I’ve got no love.’ She turned towards Jack: the light from the oil lamp glinted on the brooch on her breast.

‘You understand other people better than you do yourself,’ said Jack.

‘What should you say if I decided – I don’t think I ever should, mind you – that I ought to put off thinking of marriage yet awhile, and stay at home?’

‘I should say that you did it because you wanted to.’

‘You think that I want to stay at home, preserving my virginity and reading the monthly magazines?’ she cried.

Jack shrugged his shoulders, and gave his good-natured, impudent, amorous smile. He said: ‘Well, part of that could be remedied–’

She slapped his face. The noise cracked through the room. Jack’s cheek was crimson. He said: ‘I can’t reply properly here–’ but then Rachel intervened.

‘I’ll knock your heads together if there’s any more of it,’ she said. ‘Olive, you’d better help me lay the supper.’

The meal gleamed in bright colours on the table – the red of tomatoes, russet of apples, green of lettuce, and the red Leicestershire cheese. George, as always at the farm, made Rachel take the head of the table and placed himself at her right hand. Gusts of wind kept beating against the windows and whining round the house. The oil lamp smoked in front of us at table, and candles flickered on the mantelpiece. The steam from our teacups whirled in the lamplight; we all drank tea at those meals, for George, with an old-fashioned formality that amused us, insisted that our drinking and visits to Nottingham should be concealed from the young women – though naturally they knew all the time.

The circle from the lamp just reached the edge of the table. We were all within it, and the shadow outside, the windy night, brought us together like a family in childhood. Olive’s quarrel with Jack lost its sting, and turned into a family quarrel. George basked as contentedly as in the afternoon, and was as much our centre.

With great gusto he brought out ideas for Jack’s business; they were a mixture, one entirely unrealistic and another that seemed ingenious and sound. Then he made a remark about me, assuming casually and affectionately that I was bound to do well in my examination in the summer. He cherished our successes to come – as though he had them under his fingers in the circle of lamplight.

Olive looked at him. She forgot herself, and felt anxious for him. She cried sharply: ‘Don’t forget you can’t just watch these people going ahead.’

‘I don’t think you need worry about that,’ said George.

‘I shall worry, George. You’ll find as they get on’ – she indicated us round the table – ‘that you
need
recognition for yourself. To be practical, you’ll need that partnership in the firm.’

‘Do you think I shall ever fret so much about a piece of respectable promotion?’

‘It’s not just that–’ but, though she stuck to it, she could not explain her intuition. Others of us stepped in to persuade him; no one spoke as strongly as Olive, but we were concerned. George, gratified but curiously embarrassed, tried to pass it off as a joke.

‘As I told you at the café,’ he said to Olive, ‘when we were going into action about Jack – it shouldn’t be so difficult. After all, even if I did perform actions which they don’t entirely approve of, I certainly do most of the work, which they approve of very much: Martineau being given to religious disputation, and Eden preferring pure reflection.’

‘That isn’t good enough,’ said Olive.

‘Very well,’ said George at last. ‘I’ll promise not to let it go by default. It will happen in time, of course.’

‘We want to see it happen,’ said Olive. Her eyes were bright and penetrating while she thought only of George. Now they clouded.

‘George,’ she said, ‘I want you to give me some advice.’

‘Yes.’

‘You heard what I said to Jack. Things at home aren’t getting any easier. Possibly I ought to give up the next two or three years to my father. But you know all about it. I just want an answer to this question – ought I to clear out at any price?’

‘This is a bit complicated,’ said George. ‘You know I don’t approve of your parents. We’ll take that for granted. If you could bring yourself to get away, I think you would be happier. What exactly are you thinking of doing?’

‘I might get a better job,’ she said, ‘and live away from home. Or I might get married soon.’

George stayed silent for a moment. A good-natured smile had settled on his face. He said: ‘Getting a job to make yourself really independent wouldn’t be as easy as you imagine. Everyone knows what I think of your capabilities, but the fact is, girls of your class aren’t trained to be much use in the world.’

‘You’re right,’ said Olive.

‘You’re given less chance than anybody. It’s a scandal, but it’s true. To be honest, I don’t think it would happen if women weren’t in the main destined for their biological purpose. I dare say you could live on your present job. But living in abject poverty isn’t much fun. Anyone who’s ever tried would have to tell you that. I’m afraid you might begin to be willing – to get wrapped in your family again.’

Everyone was struck by the caution and the moderate tone of his advice: in fact, George, who could take up any other free idea under heaven, never had an illusion about the position of women. Olive inclined her head.

‘I’m glad you’re speaking out,’ she said. ‘And marriage?’

George said slowly: ‘Escaping even from a family like yours is no reason for marriage. The only reason for marriage is that you are certain that you’re completely in love.’

‘Perhaps so,’ said Olive, ‘perhaps so. I don’t know.’ She sat silently for an instant. Then she smiled at him. ‘Anyway, it’s more important for you to get established,’ she said, as though there was a link between them.

George did not reply, and Olive fell into silence. The windows rattled in the wind. Rachel sighed opulently, and said: ‘We’ve never had a night here quite like this. George, don’t you think we ought to remember this Saturday? We ought to make it a festival, and come over here to keep it in October every year.’

The sentiment welled from her; and she gave the rest of us an excuse to be sentimental.

A few moments later I said: ‘Some of us are starting. Where we shall have got to, after a few of Rachel’s festivals–’

‘Good God alive,’ George burst into triumphant laughter, ‘you don’t expect me to choose this day of all days to lose faith in the future, do you?’

The next night, after supper, George and I were alone in the room. The others had gone into the town by the last bus: George was staying another night in order to call at the Melton office in the morning, and I could stretch myself in my new liberty.

We made another pot of tea. ‘There’s something I should like to show you,’ George said suddenly, with a friendly but secret smile. ‘I want you to inspect my exhibit. Just to round off the weekend. It is exactly the right night for that.’

He put a small suitcase on the table. This he unlocked and produced a dozen thick folios, held together in a clip-back case.

‘You’ve heard me mention this,’ he said. ‘I’m going to let you read a few entries about Jack Cotery’s affairs. I assume you’ll keep them to yourself, naturally.’

It was his diary, which he had kept for years.

He searched through one of the folios, detached pages and handed them to me. At another, more important, moment in George’s life, I was to read much of the diary. The appearance of the pages, years later, altered little from when he began it at eighteen. They were all in his clerkly and legible hand; in a wide left-hand margin he printed in capitals (sometimes after the entries were made, usually when a folio was completed) a sort of sectional heading, and another at the top of the page.

Thus:

COMFORT WITH THE GROUP

FRIDAY, AUG. 23

‘That entry is just to acclimatise you,’ said George. In fact, there were pages of rhapsody over the group; rhapsody in a florid, elaborate and youthful style, which nevertheless could not keep one from believing his enthusiasm; and mixed with the rhapsody, more self-reproach and doubt than his friends would have expected then.

At first sight much of it seemed unfamiliar; for it was bringing home (what at that age I hadn’t seen directly) some of the ways in which he appeared to himself. I read:

For I feel these people (these protégés of mine, if they will let me call them that) are gradually renewing their grip on my affections, my thought, my visions, although I have only visited them occasionally. The last weekend was full of drunken nights, of decrepit nights. I went to Nottingham, finding money drip away as usual… I was still on the hunt and finished at Connie’s, as in duty bound. Then I realised once again that no other girl of the past year is fit to take her place. I just had time for a huzzlecoo; then I went back on the last train. It left me in a mood of headache and despair…

And another day:

Then there was another entry over which I thought a good deal in the next few months.

MORCOM AND MY WORLD

TUESDAY, SEP. 3

Morcom had criticised, sensibly and much as Olive did later, George’s devotion to our group. He had said, in short, that it was not close enough to the earth to satisfy a man of power for long. On paper George answered the criticisms, so elaborately that he showed his own misgivings: and finished:

And what else lies in my powers? The gift of creation, worse luck, was not bestowed on me: except, I dare sometimes think, in the chance to help my protégés, beside whom all the artistic masterpieces of the world seem like bloodless artifices of men who have never discovered what it is to live. I must concentrate on the little world: I shall not get esteem, except the esteem which I value more than any public praise; I shall get no fame, except some gratitude which will soon be forgotten; I shall get no power at all. But I shall do what with all your gifts, Morcom, you may never do: I shall enjoy every moment of every day, and I shall gain my own soul.