The Conscience of the Rich (3 page)

At the time, Charles was so distressed that I hurried to accept and then turn the conversation away. It was later before I could think over my surprise. For I had been surprised: although as soon as I heard him speak, I thought myself a fool for not having guessed months before.

I remembered hearing Getliffe chat about ‘the real Jewish upper deck. They’re too aristocratic for the likes of us, Eliot’ – and now I realized that he was referring to Charles. As it happened, however, I had known scarcely a single Jew up to the time I came to London. In the midland town where I was born, there had been a few shops with Jewish names over them; but I could not remember my parents and their friends even so much as mention a Jewish person. There were none living in the suburban backstreets: nor, when I got my first invitations from professional families, were there any there.

I could think of just one exception. It was a boy in my form at the grammar school. He stayed at the school only a year or two: he was not clever, and left early: but for the first term, before we were arranged in order of examination results, we shared the same desk because our names came next to each other in the list.

He was a knowing, cheerful little boy who brought large packets of curious boiled sweets to school every Monday morning and gave me a share in the midday break. In Scripture lessons he retired to the back of the class, and studied a primer on Hebrew. He assumed sometimes an air of mystery about the secrets written in the Hebrew tongue; it was only as a great treat, and under solemn promises never to divulge it, that I gained permission to borrow the primer in order to learn the alphabet.

I remembered him with affection. He was small, dark, hook-nosed, his face already set in more adult lines than most of ours in the form. It was an ugly, amiable, precocious face; and on that one acquaintance, so it seemed, I had built up in my mind a standard of Jewish looks.

When I met Charles, it never occurred to me to compare him. He was tall and fair; his face was thin, with strong cheekbones; many people thought him handsome. After one knew that he was a Jew, it became not too difficult to pick out features that might conceivably be ‘typical’. For a face so fine-drawn his nostrils spread a little more than one would expect, and his under-lip stood out more fully. But that was like water-divining, I thought, the difficulties of which were substantially reduced if one knew where the water was. After mixing with the Marches and their friends and knowing them for years, I still sometimes wondered whether I should recognize Charles as a Jew if I now saw him for the first time.

I paid my first visit to Bryanston Square on a clear cold February night. I walked the mile and a half from my lodgings: along Wigmore Street the shops were locked, their windows shining: in the side-streets, the great houses stood dark, unlived-in now. Then streets and squares, cars by the kerb, lighted windows: at last I was walking round the square, staring up at numbers, working out how many houses before the Marches’.

I arrived at the corner house; over the portico there was engraved the inscription, in large plain letters, 17 BRYANSTON SQUARE.

A footman opened the door, and the butler took my overcoat. With a twinge of self-consciousness, I thought it was probably the cheapest he had received for years. He led the way to the drawing-room, and Charles was at once introducing me to his sister Katherine, who was about four years younger than himself. As she looked at me, her eyes were as bright as his; in both of them, they were the feature one noticed first. Her expression was eager, her skin fresh. At a first sight, it looked as though Charles’ good looks had been transferred to a fuller, more placid face.

‘I’ve been trying to bully Charles into taking me out to meet you,’ she said after a few moments. ‘You were becoming rather a legend, you know.’

‘You’re underestimating your own powers,’ Charles said to her.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’ve cross-questioned me about Lewis. You’ve done everything but track me. I never realized you had so much character.’

‘It was the same with his Cambridge friends,’ said Katherine. ‘He was just as secretive. It’s absolutely monstrous having him for a brother – if one happens to be an inquisitive person.’

She had picked up some of his tricks of speech. One could not miss the play of sympathy and affection between them. Charles was laughing, although he stood about restlessly waiting for their father to come in.

Katherine answered questions before I had asked them, as she saw my eyes looking curiously round the room. It was large and dazzlingly bright, very full of furniture, the side-tables and the far wall cluttered with photographs; opposite the window stood a full-length painting of Charles as a small boy. He was dressed for riding, and was standing against a background of the Row. The colouring was the reverse of timid – the hair bright gold, cheeks pink and white, eyes grey.

‘He was rather a beautiful little boy, wasn’t he?’ she said. ‘No one ever thought of painting me at that age. Or at any other, as far as that goes. I was a useful sensible shape from the start.’

Charles said: ‘The reason they didn’t paint you was that ‘Mr L’ – (their father’s first name was Leonard and I had already heard them call him by his nickname) – ‘decided that there wasn’t much chance of your surviving childhood anyway. And if he tempted fortune by having you painted, he was certain that you’d be absolutely condemned to death.’

I inspected the photographs on the far wall. They were mostly nineteenth-century, some going back to daguerreotype days.

‘I can’t help about those,’ said Katherine. ‘I don’t know anything about them. I’m no good at ancestor worship.’ She said it sharply, decisively.

Then she returned, with the repetitiveness that I was used to in Charles, to the reasons why she had not been painted – anxious to leave nothing to doubt, anxious not to be misunderstood.

It was now about a minute to eight, and Mr March came in. He came in very quickly, his arms swinging and his head lowered. As we shook hands, he smiled at me shyly and with warmth. He was bald, but the hair over his ears was much darker than his children’s; his features were not so clear cut as theirs. His nose was larger, spread-out, snub, with a thick black moustache under it. When he spoke, he produced gestures that were lively, active, and peculiarly clumsy. They helped make his whole manner simple and direct – to my surprise, for I had expected him to seem formidable at once. But I had only to watch his eyes, even though the skin round them was reddened and wrinkled, to see they had once looked like Charles’ and Katherine’s and were still as sharp.

He was wearing a dinner jacket, though none of the rest of us had dressed. Charles had several times told me not to. Mr March noticed my glance.

‘You mustn’t mind my appearance,’ he said. ‘I’m too old to change my ways. You’re all too bohemian for me. But when my children refuse to bring any of their friends to see their aged parent if they have to make themselves uncomfortable, I’m compelled to stretch a point. I’d rather have you not looking like a penguin than not at all.’

The butler opened the door; we followed Katherine in to dinner. After blinking under the mass of candelabras in the drawing-room, I blinked again, for the opposite reason: for we might have been going into the shadows of a billiard-hall. The entire room, bigger even than the one we had just left, was lit only at the table and by a few wall-lights. On the walls I dimly saw paintings of generations of the family; later I discovered that the earliest, a picture of a dark full-bearded man, was finished in the 1730s, just after the family settled in England.

I sat on Mr March’s left opposite Katherine, with Charles at my side; we took up only a segment of the table. A menu card lay by Mr March’s place; he read it out to us with gusto and satisfaction:
‘clear
soup, fillets of sole, lamb cutlets, caramel mousse, mushrooms on toast.’

The food was very good. Mr March began talking to me about Herbert Getliffe and the Bar; he already knew something of my career.

‘My nephew Robert used to be extremely miserable when he was in your position,’ said Mr March. ‘My brother-in-law warned him he’d got to wait for his briefs, but Robert always was impatient, and I used to see him being disgorged from theatres every time I took my wife out for a spree. One night I met him on the steps of the St James’s–’

‘What’s going to theatres got to do with his being impatient, Mr L?’ Katherine was beginning to laugh.

Mr March, getting into his stride, charged into a kind of anecdote that I was not ready for. I had read descriptions of total recall: Mr March got nearer to it than anyone I had heard. Each incident that he remembered seemed as important as any other incident (this meeting with his nephew Robert was completely casual and happened over twenty years before): and he remembered them all with extravagant vividness. Time did not matter; something which happened fifty years ago suggested something which happened yesterday.

I was not ready for that kind of anecdote, but his children were. They set him after false hares, they interrupted, sometimes all three were talking at once. I found myself infected with Mr March’s excitement, even anxious in case he should not get back to his starting-point.

Listening to the three of them for the first time, I felt dazed. Mr March’s anecdotes were packed with references to his relatives and members of their large inter-married families. Occasionally these were explained, but usually taken for granted. He and his children had naturally loud voices, and in each other’s presence they became louder still. Between Mr March and Charles I could feel a current of strain; perhaps between Mr March and Katherine also, I did not know; but the relations of all three were very close.

I kept looking from one to another of the clever, energetic, mobile faces. I knew that Charles had regretted inviting me; that, as we waited for his father to come in, he wished the evening were already over; yet now he was more alive than I had ever seen him.

‘Yes, what was going to theatres to do with Robert being impatient?’ asked Charles.

‘If he hadn’t been impatient, he wouldn’t have gone to theatres,’ said Mr March. ‘You know he doesn’t go now. And if his uncle Philip hadn’t been so impatient, he wouldn’t have made such a frightful ass of himself last Tuesday. That’s my eldest brother, Philip’ – he suddenly turned to me – ‘I’ve never known him make such a frightful ass of himself since that night in 1899. The key was lost–’

‘When, Mr L? In 1899?’ asked Katherine.

‘What key?’

‘Last Tuesday, of course. The key of my confounded case. I didn’t possess a case in 1899. I used the bag that Hannah gave me. She never liked me passing it on to my then butler. So I told Philip the key was lost when I saw him in my club. They’d just made us trustees of this so-called charity, though why they want to add to my labours and give me enormous worry and shorten my life, I’ve never been able to understand.’ (At that time Mr March was nearly sixty-three. He had retired thirty years before, when the family bank was sold.) ‘Philip ought to expect it. They used to call him the longest-headed man on the Stock Exchange. Though since he levelled up on those Brazilian Railways, I have always doubted it.’

‘Didn’t you level up yourself, Mr L?’ said Katherine. ‘Wasn’t that the excuse you gave for not buying a car when they first came out?’

‘While really he’s always been terrified of them. You’ve never bought a car yet, have you?’ said Charles.

‘It depends what you mean by buying,’ Mr March said hurriedly.

‘That’s trying to hedge,’ said Charles. ‘He can’t escape, though. He’s always hired them from year to year–’ he explained to me. ‘It must have cost ten times as much, but he felt that if he never really committed himself, he might find some excuse to stop. Incidentally, Mr L, it’s exactly your idea of economy.’

‘No! No!’ Mr March was roaring with laughter, shouting, pointing his finger. ‘I refuse to accept responsibility for moving vehicles, that’s all. I also told Philip that I refused to accept responsibility if he took action before we considered the documents–’

‘The documents in the case?’

‘He stood me some tea – extremely bad teas they’ve taken to giving you in the club: they didn’t even provide my special buns that afternoon – and I said we ought to consider the documents and then call at the banks. “When are you going to meet me at these various banks?” I said. He said I was worrying unnecessarily. My married daughter said exactly the same thing before her children went down with chicken-pox. So I told Philip that if he took action without sleeping on it, I refused to be a party to any foolishness that might ensue. I splashed off negotiations.’

‘What did you do?’ said Katherine.

‘I
splashed
off negotiations,’ said Mr March, as though it was the obvious, indeed the only word.

‘Did Uncle Philip mind?’

‘He was enormously relieved. Wasn’t he enormously relieved?’ Charles asked.

Mr March went on: ‘Apart from his initial madheadedness, he took it very well. So I departed from the club. Owing to all these controversies, I was five minutes later than usual passing the clock at the corner; or it may have been fast, you can’t trust the authorities to keep them properly. Then I got engaged in another controversy with the newsboy under the clock. I took a paper and he insisted I’d paid, but I told him I hadn’t. I thought he was a stupid fellow. He must have mixed me up with a parson who was buying a paper at the same time. I tossed him double or quits, and I unfortunately lost. Then I arrived outside the house, and, just as I was thinking of a letter to Philip dissociating myself from his impulsive methods – I saw a light on in my dressing-room. So I ascended the stairs and found no one present in the room. John – that is my butler,’ he remarked to me – ‘came with me and I asked for an explanation. No one could offer anything satisfactory. We went into my bedroom and I asked the footman. Not that I’ve ever known him explain anything. He was under the window on all fours–’