Time of Hope (26 page)

But that evening, as the train rushed through the midland fields and in half an hour I should be home, that mood of peace seemed separated from me by years or an ocean. I was fretted by anxiety, as though my mind were a vacuum, and immediately one ominous thought left it, another bored in. I had an irresistible sense that I was returning into trouble, every kind of trouble. I struggled with each item of anxiety, but the future was full of pain. I was angry with myself for being the prey of nerves. It was time to remember that I was strained by this kind of apprehension whenever I came home from a journey. I had just to accept it, like a minor disease. If I did not, I should become as superstitious as my mother. But as I stepped on to the station platform I was looking round in dread, expecting some news of Sheila that would break my heart. I bought an evening paper, dreading against all reason that she might have chosen this day to become engaged. I rang her up from the station; she sounded surprised, amused, and friendly, and had no news at all.

For a moment I was reassured, as though in a fit of jealousy. Then I felt anxious about George, and went to see him; in his case, there had been some faint cause for worry, though neither he nor I had taken it seriously; that night, it still seemed faint, though he did produce some mystifying information about Martineau.

My nerve-storm dropped away; and for weeks after my examination all was smooth. George had a piece of professional success, the alarm over Martineau began to seem unreal; Jack Cotery had begun, by luck or daring, to make some money. Sheila was uncapricious and gay, and had set herself the task of teaching me to take an interest in painting. My examination result appeared in
The Times
, and had gone according to plan. It reappeared in the local papers, having been sent there by Aunt Milly, who had now finally decided to admit that I was less foolish than most young men. Their curious alliance still operating, George impressed on her that I was fulfilling my share of the bargain. He went on ‘to gain considerable satisfaction’, as he said himself, by ramming the fact of my performance in front of anyone who had ever seemed to doubt me.

I received a few letters of congratulation, a bland one from Eden, an affectionate and generous one from Marion, a fantastically florid one from Mr Vesey – and a note from Tom Devitt. My father professed a comic gratification; and Sheila said: ‘I didn’t expect anything else. But if you make me celebrate, I shall quite like it.’ It was my first taste of success, and it was sweet.

Nevertheless, I had returned into trouble. As the summer went on, some of the ominous thoughts of the journey came back; but this time they were not a trick of the nerves, they were real. The first trouble – the first sign that the luck had changed, I found myself thinking, in the superstitious way of which I was ashamed – was a mild one, but it harassed me. It followed close behind the congratulations, and was a disappointment about my examination. Charles March had kept his word. Somehow or other he had obtained the marks on my individual papers. They were not bad, but I was not high up the list of the first class. They were nothing like good enough if I were to make a hit next year.

There was no option. Next year I had to do spectacularly well. It was an unfair test, I thought, forgetting that I had once faced these brutal facts – when I first made my choice. But it was different facing facts from a long way off: and then meeting them in one’s nerves and flesh. It was very hard to imagine a risk, until one had to live with it.

There was nothing for it. Next year I had to do better. I had to improve half a class.

I consulted George. At first, he was unwilling to accept that anything was wrong. I was exaggerating, as usual, said George stormily; I was losing my sense of proportion just because this man March, whom George had never heard of, reported that I had not done superlatively well in a couple of papers. No one was less ready than George to see the dangerous sign. He had to be persuaded against his will, in the teeth of his violent temper, that a disquieting fact could conceivably exist, particularly in a protégé’s career. He denounced Charles March. ‘I see no reason’, shouted George, ‘why I should be expected to kowtow to the opinions of your fashionable friends.’ He denounced me for being an alarmist. I had to be rough and lose my own temper and tell him that, however much he deceived himself about others, he must not do it about me. These were the official marks, never mind how they were obtained. Brusquely I told him that it was just a problem of cramming; the facts were clear, and I was not going to argue about them: I wanted to know one thing – how could I pull up half a class?

Immediately, without the slightest rancour, George became calm and competent. He proceeded to analyse the marks with his customary pleasure in any kind of puzzle. Neither George nor I had been certain that I should need such a degree of detailed knowledge. ‘Though’, said George, ‘I was under the impression that you had got hold of most of the classic cases. They didn’t ask you much that was really out of the way. I imagined that you’d conquered most of this stuff months ago.’

It was too much of a temptation for George to resist saying tactfully: ‘Of course, I realize there have been certain complications in your private life.’

‘What’s to be done?’ I said.

‘Your memory is first class,’ said George. ‘So you simply can’t have read enough, that’s all. We’d better invent a new reading programme for you. We’d better do it now.’

Without needing to look up a single authority, without asking me one question about the syllabus of the Bar examinations (which he had, of course, never taken himself) or what books I had already read, George drew up a working timetable for me for each week between that day and the date of the finals. ‘Nine months to go,’ said George with bellicose content, and wrote down the first week’s schedule. He forgot nothing; the programme was well-ordered, feasible, allowed time for a fortnight’s revision at the end, and then three days free from work. I preserved that sensible document, so neat and orderly, in George’s tidy legal handwriting. It might have been the work of one of nature’s burgesses.

But there were many days in the months ahead when George did not speak or act in the slightest respect like one of nature’s burgesses; and that was the second trouble into which we were plunged. It seemed grave then. In retrospect it seemed more than grave, it seemed to mark the point where the curve of George’s life began to dip. At this point, I need only say a few words about it. The upheaval in our circle began with Martineau. We had always known that he was restless and eccentric; but we expected him to continue his ordinary way of life, entertaining us on Friday nights, and safeguarding George’s future in the firm. Suddenly he went through a kind of religious conversion. That autumn he relinquished his share in the practice. It was a few months later, early in 1927, that he completed his abnegation; then he sold all his remaining possessions, gave the money away, and at fifty-one began to wander round the country, begging his way, penniless and devout.

It was now left to Eden to decide whether George should ever become a partner. We all urged George at least to establish a
modus vivendi
with Eden. George, dogged by ill fortune and his own temperament, promptly performed a series of actions which made Eden, who already disliked him, rule him out of the running, not only then, but always. And so at twenty-seven George was condemned to be a managing clerk for the rest of his life. There were many consequences that none of us could have foreseen; a practical one was that George began to cooperate in Jack Cotery’s business.

To me, that trouble was light, though, compared to a quarrel with Sheila – a quarrel which I said to myself must be the last. It came with blinding suddenness, after a summer in which most of our meetings had been happy, happier than any since the days of innocence a year before. We amused each other with the same kind of joke, youthful, reckless, and sarcastic. I had discovered that I could often coax and bully her out of her indrawn, icy temper. It was the serene hours that counted. I was not much worried when, in the early autumn, days followed each other when she sat abnormally still, her eyes fixed in a long-sighted stare, when if I took her hand it stayed immobile and I seemed to be kissing a dead cheek. I had been through it before, and that removed the warning. She would emerge. Meanwhile, she was not giving me any excuse for jealousy. For weeks she had not mentioned any other man. And, in those fits of painful stillness, she saw no one but me.

One day in September we had been walking in the country, and were resting on the grass beside the road. She had been quiet, wrapped deep in herself, all afternoon. Suddenly she announced ‘I’m going shooting.’

I laughed aloud, and asked her when and where. She said she was travelling to Scotland, the next week.

‘I’m going shooting,’ she repeated.

Again I laughed.

‘What’s funny about that?’

Her tone was sharp.

‘It is funny,’ I said.

‘You’d better tell me why.’

Her tone was so sharp that I took her shoulders and began to shake her. But she broke loose and said ‘I suppose you mean that I only know these people because my father married for money. I suppose it is a wonderfully good joke that my mother was such a fool.’

With bewilderment I saw that she was crying. She was staring at me in enmity and hate. She turned aside, and dried the tears herself.

On the way back, I made one effort to tell her that nothing had been further from my mind. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, and we went along in silence. Intolerably slowly (and yet I could not bear to part), the miles went by. We came to the suburbs and walked in silence under the chestnut trees.

At the station entrance, she spoke.

‘Don’t see me off.’ She added, as though she was forced to: ‘I shall be away a month. I shan’t write much. I’m too prickly. I’ll tell you when I get back.’

In the days that followed, I was angry as well as wretched. It would be easy to cease to love her, I thought, making myself remember her cold inimical face. Then I cherished those unwilling words at the station. ‘Prickly’ – was she not trying to soften it for me, in the midst of her own bitterness? Why hadn’t I made her speak? This was not a separation, I comforted myself, and wrote to her, as lightly as though that afternoon had not existed. As I wrote, I had the habitual glow, as if she must, through my scribble on the paper, be compelled at that moment to think of me. No answer came.

A fortnight after that walk in the country, I was strolling aimlessly through the market place. I was on edge, and sleeping badly; it was hard to steer myself through a day’s work; I had come out that afternoon, hoping to freshen myself for another two hours later on. It was nearly teatime on a dark autumn day, with the clouds low, but bright and cosy in the streets, the shops already lighted. Smells poured out into the crowded streets, as the shop doors swung open – smells of bacon, ham, cheese, fruit – and, at the end of the market place, the aroma of roast coffee beans, which mastered them all, and for a moment dissolved all my anxiety and took me back to afternoons of childhood. In our less penurious days, before the bankruptcy, my mother used to take me shopping in the town, when I was a small child; and I smelt the coffee then, and watched the grinding machine in the window, and heard my mother assert that this was the only shop she could think of patronizing.

I watched the grinding machine again, sixteen years later (for I could not have been more than five when I accompanied my mother). I would have sworn that she had actually used the word ‘patronizing’; and indeed it gave me a curious pleasure to think of her so – for few women could the word have been more apt, at that period, before she had been cast down.

At last I turned away. On the pavement, walking towards me, was Sheila. She was wearing a fur coat which made her look a matron, and her head was bent, staring at the ground, so that she had not seen me. At that instant it occurred to me we had never met by accident before.

I called her name, She looked up. Her face was cold and set.

‘I didn’t know you were back,’ I said.

‘I am,’ said Sheila.

‘You said you’d be away a month.’

‘I changed my mind,’ she said. She added fiercely: ‘If you want to know, I hated it.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I might have done in time.’

‘I don’t mean in time,’ I said. ‘You ought to have told me before today.’

‘Try to remember this,’ said Sheila. ‘You don’t own me. If I wanted you to own me, I should be glad to tell you everything. I don’t want it.’

‘You let me just run into you like this–’ I cried.

‘I don’t propose to send you word every time I come into the town,’ she said. ‘I’ll let you know when I want to see you.’

‘Will you have some tea?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m going home.’

We moved away from each other. I looked back, but not she.

That was all. That was the end, I thought.

I too was full of anger and hate, as I made my resolve that night. I could have stood jealousy, I could have stood her madnesses and cruelty, but this I could no longer stand. I had had too much. I strengthened myself by the pictures of her indrawn face, in which there was no regard for me. There were hours when I hoped that love itself had died.

I must cut her out of my heart, I thought. Jack was right; Jack had been right all along. I must cut her out of my heart; and I knew by instinct that, to do it, I must not see her again, speak to her, receive a word from her or write to her, even hear of her at second hand. That was my resolve; and this time, unlike Christmas Eve, I felt the wild satisfaction that I could carry it out.

I worked with a harsh gusto, staying in my attic when she might be in the town, going only to the reference library when there was no chance that we could meet. I took precautions to avoid her as elaborate as those I had once used to pin down each minute of her day. And then I wanted to distract myself. Jack was right. She had done me harm; she had left me lonely and unsure. I thought (as I had often done since that night in the café, as I had done after meetings where Sheila did not give an inch and I was humiliated) of the bait Jack had laid for me. I thought of Marion. Would she have me, if I went to her now?