So Well Remembered (15 page)

Even after the death of his parents, when he had gone to live with his
uncle in another part of the town, Channing’s merely acquired an extra
attribute, for Uncle Joe called it ‘safe’. George soon learned that it paid
his uncle, who did not work there, just as regularly as it had paid his
father, who HAD worked; though why this should be, he could not imagine. It
was, however, of importance because his uncle had promised to send him to
Browdley Grammar School and pay the fees out of ‘the Channing’s money’. Then
suddenly disaster struck. Even to an intelligent schoolboy it was all rather
incomprehensible, for the mill still stood, not a brick disturbed, not a
cadence lost from the call of its early morning and late afternoon siren; and
yet, in a way that undoubtedly hurried Uncle Joe to his grave, Channing’s
proved no longer ‘safe’.

So George, because of this, had left an elementary school when he was
thirteen, and had taken various jobs that gave him nothing but a series of
pointless and not always pleasant experiences, and then had come the war,
with more pointless and not always pleasant experiences—in France and
elsewhere. During this time, however, his dissatisfactions had acquired a
pattern, and the pattern had acquired a trend; so that on seeing Browdley
again, war-injured but recovering, at the age of thirty, he had known what he
wanted to do and had begun right away to do it. At a Council by-election he
won a victory that surprised even himself, while about the same time he took
over the almost bankrupt Guardian.

And after several months the Guardian was still almost bankrupt. For one
reason, it had no monopoly (the Browdley Advertiser, one of a chain of local
papers, enjoyed a far bigger circulation), and Browdley folk remained
obstinately fixed in their reading habits even when an increasing number of
them favoured George’s political opinions. He would have been badly off
indeed but for the small printing establishment (two hand presses with three
employees), which not only put out the regular weekly edition but also
received official printing jobs from the Browdley municipality. And here, of
course, lay an obvious opening for George’s political opponents, some of whom
whispered “graft” whenever the Council (George scrupulously absenting himself
from the vote) decided to hand him another contract. That they did so at all,
however, testified to his rising popularity as well as to the fact that the
enmities he made were rarely bitter or lasting. The truth was, as an enemy
once remarked, it was damned hard to hate George, and whispers of graft did
not stick very well because, graft or no graft, it really was quite obvious
that he was not lining his pockets with any considerable success. He lived
modestly in the oldish, inconvenient house which, adjoining the printing
works, he had acquired when nobody else wanted either; and he often found it
as hard to pay his newsprint bills as to collect from some of his customers.
He dressed rather shabbily and rode a bicycle except when official business
entitled him to the use of a municipal car. The local bank-manager and
income-tax assessor knew all these and other pertinent details, but as they
belonged to the opposition party they were constrained to attack him in
reverse: if, they argued, George succeeded so meagrely with his own small
business, how could Browdley feel confidence in his capacity to run the town?
But humbler citizens were not much influenced by this. Most of them knew
George personally and felt that his total lack of prosperity made him all the
more human, municipal contracts or not. They LIKED him, in fact, and a great
many fought his battle, and if a few of them fought it bitterly, he would
sometimes reward them with a speech that made them think he was secretly as
bitter as they were. But in that they were wrong, for George was just fiery,
effervescent, genuinely indignant over much that he saw around him, but
incurably romantic about what he saw in his own mind. He was also na ve in
the way he tackled his opponents—first of all overwhelming them with a
sort of Galahad impetuosity, then wondering if perhaps he had been a little
unfair, and later—as often as not—making some quixotic gesture of
retractation or conciliation.

There was that Council meeting, for instance, in the spring of 1918, at
which he first spoke Livia’s name—and with a ring of challenge as he
pitched his voice to the public gallery. “I’ve always held,” he began, “that
no accident of birth should ever stand in the way of merit—(Cheers)
—in fact it’s one of the few things I’m prepared to be thoroughly
consistent about. (Laughter.) Councillor Whaley has just referred to the
great injustice done to our fellow-citizens many years ago by one whose name
has a certain prominence in the history of this town. I think Councillor
Whaley put the matter far too mildly in using the word ‘injustice’. I’d
prefer myself to call it the most damnable piece of financial knavery ever
perpetrated by a self-acknowledged crook at the expense of thousands of
honest hard-working folks. (Loud cheers.) Oh yes, I know the saying ‘De
mortuis nil nisi bonum’—if I’ve got the pronunciation wrong perhaps
some of the gentlemen on the other side who have had the advantage of a
better education than mine will correct me—(Laughter)—at any
rate, they’ll agree with me that the Latin words mean that you shall speak no
evil of the dead… But may I ask THIS question of Councillor Whaley—
suppose the dead reach out from their graves to continue the harm they did
during their lives—are we STILL to keep silent about them? (Loud and
prolonged cheers). Gentlemen… I wouldn’t have referred to such a matter
unless the other side had thought fit to mention it first. But since they
did, I’ll say this much—that in my opinion our town is STILL suffering
from the effects of the Channing Mill crash and the iniquitous swindle that
caused it! Its victims are to be found in every street— nay, almost in
every house. Certainly in ONE of our houses—the workhouse. (Cheers.)
What shall we say of any man, living or dead, who can be accounted personally
responsible for such a thing? To inherit control of an industrial concern and
then behave with such callous dishonesty that working people lose jobs and
life savings together, so that hundreds of homes are sacrificed and broken
up, so that health is imperilled and countless lives are embittered, so that
children have their educations interrupted and old folks are hastened to
their graves—if one man causes all this havoc, then in God’s name what
shall we call him, or the system that gave him such power and
opportunity?”

Here the cheers and shouts of the gallery were interrupted by a shabby
little man in the back row who yelled out with piercing distinctness: “Don’t
matter what you call ‘im now, George. The bugger’s dead.” Whereupon cheers
dissolved into laughter, and George, sensing the moment for a change of mood,
dropped his voice to a much more prosaic level and continued:

“Aye… let’s cut the cackle and get down to the business in hand. There’s
a war still on, and we must save a bit of our bad language for the Germans.
(Laughter.) I was just then tempted—as we all are sometimes— to
speak my mind. (Laughter.) I couldn’t help it, and I think those who elected
me to this Council didn’t really expect me ever to do anything else. (Cheers
and laughter.) And that’s why I’m urging you now, as a man still speaking his
mind, not to pay off an old score on an innocent person. To begin with, the
score’s too big. And then also, though we’re often told that the sins of the
fathers get visited on the children, there isn’t one of us who thinks that’s
really a fair thing, or ought to be encouraged… Well, now let me really
come to the facts of the matter. We have tonight a subordinate municipal post
to fill for which we invited public applications. As I see it —and not
as some folks here seem to see it—there’s only one thing we ought to
do, and that’s what we always have done—choose the best person for the
job and let no other consideration matter. It’s a simple method, and I’m all
against changing it.” And then, dropping his voice to a monotone as he
consulted a sheet of paper: “I have here the list of applicants for the
position of junior library assistant, together with their qualifications. On
the basis of these facts, and these alone, I move that the application of
Miss Olivia Channing be accepted.” (Cheers and some cries of dissent.)

The foregoing has been worth quoting verbatim, not only because it was one
of the events that shaped George’s destiny, but as a sample of his
speech-making in those days. He always said he was no orator, and sincerely
believed it, but his opponents though reluctant to use the complimentary
term, were not so sure; at any rate they could call him a rabble-rouser. The
speech is typical in its astute and somewhat excessive preliminary agreement
with the other side (in this case his own side), putting them in a good
humour by stating their case better than they could themselves, so that
afterwards George’s real point came as an intended anti- climax. He had often
by this means won victories almost by default. The jibe about his
fellow-members’ superior education was also typical; it was true that many of
them had been to better schools, but extremely unlikely that any could
remember as much Latin as George had recently learned.

But most typical of all was his quixotic impulse to be fair; it was as if,
having called the father a crook, he felt in duty bound to find the daughter
a job.

On this occasion victory was anything but by default. His speech failed to
silence objectors, and there was further argument, some of it rancorous. But
the motion was eventually passed by a narrow margin, with much cross-voting;
so that in due course Miss Olivia Channing did indeed become junior assistant
in the Browdley Public Library at a commencing salary of forty-five shillings
a week.

“And a nice problem you’ve handed me,” Dick Jordan remarked, meeting
George a few days later in Shawgate. The Librarian was one of George’s
closest friends and political supporters.

“Why, Dick, isn’t she any good?”

“She does the work all right, but—well, when you remember her father
there’s a lot of things you can’t feel sure of.”

“Aye, and one of them’s heredity,” declared George, advancing stoutly to a
favourite topic. “Thank goodness it’s not as important as environment,
because environment’s something you can change.”

“Not when you’ve already had it. What d’you think HER environment was like
at Stoneclough—up there with a man who’d done a stretch in prison and
drank heavily and was so impossible to live with that… oh, well, you’ve
heard some of the rumours, I daresay.”

“I’ve heard ‘em, but I don’t see why they should make us condemn the girl.
Seems to me it’s more a case for sympathy.”

“She’ll not find much of that in Browdley, George. It’s one thing to swing
the Council by a speech, but when it comes to changing the minds of ordinary
folks who’ve lost their hard cash—”

“But SHE didn’t steal it—”

“No, but she lived at Stoneclough, and for years that’s been the symbol in
this town of being luckier than you deserve. And it’s still the symbol,
George, in spite of all the mortgages on the place and no matter what the
girl herself had to put up with there…”

George did not meet her till some weeks after she had begun
work. He was
then studying hard for the final examination that might earn him a university
degree, and it was this that occupied his mind when he entered the Reference
Department of the Library on a sunny April afternoon. But when he left, a
couple of hours later, he could only think of the girl who had brought him
Volume Four of the Cambridge Modern History.

He always remembered her first words to him as she took his slip of paper,
scanned it, then him, then stepped back a pace. “COUNCILLOR Boswell?”

And his own first words as he stared at her for the first time: “Aye,
that’s me.”

“Then I want to thank you for—for—”

“Oh… so you’re Olivia Channing?”

“Yes, that’s why I want to thank you. It was kind of you to put in a word
for me.”

“I didn’t mean it as kindness—just fairness, that’s all. But I’m
glad it turned out the way it did. How are you managing?”

“You mean the work? Oh, it’s easy.”

“Like it?”

“Pretty well.”

“Only that?”

She smiled—a curious smile, for which George, who saw it often
afterwards, long sought an adjective, and in the end could only use Jordan’s
description of the girl—he had said she looked ‘haunted’.

She said now, with this smile: “People don’t like ME, that’s the
trouble.”

He smiled back, robustly, cheerfully. “Can’t expect them to, yet awhile.
You’ll just have to live things down a bit.”

“Live things down?

“Aye… if you know what I mean.”

He wondered if, or how much, she did, especially as that ended their
conversation rather abruptly. She fetched him his book and did not resume
it.

After that first meeting he began to feel emotionally the
full force of
the argument he had stated in abstract terms at the Council meeting—
that the child should not suffer for the sins of the father. In this case the
sins of the father had been so considerable that the sufferings of the
daughter might well be on the same scale unless someone intervened on her
behalf; and George, having intervened once, could not help the growth of a
feeling of personal responsibility to match his awakening interest. He knew
that John Channing had died practically without means, despite the fact that
he had lived at Stoneclough from the time of his release from prison until
his death; and though the daughter’s need to go out and earn her own living
did not stir George to any particular pity (for, after all, that was what
most Browdley girls had to do), he was nevertheless concerned that she should
be happy in her job, the more so as he had obtained it for her. Not till he
met her for the second time did it occur to him to wonder why on earth she
had applied for any job at all in a place where there was so much local
feeling against her family.