George Passant

21: News at Second Hand

I took my final examination in May 1927, two months after Martineau’s departure; and went into chambers in London in the following September. For several years it was only at odd times that I saw George and my other friends in the town.

Some of that separation was inevitable, of course. I was making my way; it was then that I entered the chambers of Herbert Getliffe, who turned out to be as lively, complex and tricky as Jack himself; there was the long struggle with him (amusing to look back upon) before I emerged to make a decent living at the Bar. And in the process I formed new friendships, and got to know new worlds. That occupied me for a great part of those years; but still I need not have seen so little of George. It was natural for people as shrewd as Rachel to think that I was forsaking my benefactor and close friend of the past.

It was natural; but it was the opposite of the truth. Not by virtue, but by temperament, I was at that age, when I was still childless, bound by chains to anyone who had ever really touched my life; once they had taken hold of me, they had taken hold for good. While to George, though he enjoyed paying me a visit, I became incidental as soon as I vanished from the group. And before long he was keeping from me any news that mattered deeply to him. Yet I could feel that he was going through the most important time of his life.

From various people I heard gossip, rumours, genuine news of his behaviour. Olive sometimes wrote to me; and she was intimate with George again, when, after her father’s death in 1930, she came into some money and returned to live in the town. Her letters were full of her own affairs: how she finally decided not to marry Morcom, though for a few months they lived together; how his old jealousy at last justified itself, for she had fallen in love with Jack and hoped to marry him. In the middle of these pages on herself, frequently muddled and self-deceiving, there occurred every now and then one of her keen, dispassionate observations upon George.

Materially, he was not much better off. Eden paid him £325 a year now; he still lectured at the School. But there was one surprising change — so surprising to me that I disbelieved it long after I ought to have been convinced. He had joined, as a concealed partner, in some of Jack’s money-making schemes.

They had actually bought the agency and the advertising paper from Martineau and his partner Exell, a year or so after Martineau joined his brotherhood. When Olive returned, the three of them had invented more ambitious plans, and in 1931 raised money to buy the farm and run it as a youth hostel.

These stories were true enough, I found: and they appeared to be making some money. As Olive wrote: ‘Of course, with Jack and me, we’re just keen on the money for its own sake. But I still don’t think anyone can say that of George. He gets some fun out of working up the schemes — but really all he wants money for is to leave him freer with his group.’

George had come, more thoroughly as each year passed, to live entirely within his group of protégés. He still carried young people off their feet; he still gave them faith in themselves; he was still eager with cheerful, abundant help, thoughtless of the effect on himself. Jack was only one out of many who would still have been clerks if they had not come under his influence. And there were others whom he could not help practically, but who were grateful. Olive quoted Rachel as saying: ‘Whatever they say, he showed us what it’s like to be alive.’

That went on: but there was a change. This was a change, though, that did not surprise me. It had been foreshadowed by Jack years ago, that night of our celebration in Nottingham. When I heard of it, I knew that it had always been likely; and I was curiously sad.

I heard of it, as it happened, from Roy Calvert, whom I met at a dinner-party in Cambridge. He was then twenty-one, polished and elegantly dressed. He talked of his cousin Olive. He was acute, he already knew his way about the world, he had become fond of women and attractive to them. He mentioned that George was attracting some gossip. George was, in fact, believed to be making love to girls within the group.

Roy had no doubt. Nor had I. As I say, it made me curiously sad. For I knew what, in earlier days, it would have meant to George.

I thought of him often after that piece of news. I had no premonition of danger; that did not reach me until a year later, until Morcom’s call in the summer of 1932. But I often wished that George’s life had taken a different curve.

During one case which regularly kept me late in chambers, so that I walked home through a succession of moonlit nights, those thoughts of George would not leave me alone. He was a man of more power than any of us: he seemed, as he used to seem, built on the lines of a great man. So I thought with regret, almost with remorse, walking in London under the moon.

I wished that I had been nearer his own age: I might have been more use to him: or that I had met him for the first time now.

Time and time again, I thought of him as I had first known him.

22: Return from a Holiday

IT was one of the last days of the Trinity term of 1932 when Morcom visited me. I had just arrived in my chambers, after an afternoon in court.

‘I was passing through on my way back,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d call—’

He had been sailing, he was tanned from the sea; but his face was thinner, and a suspense seemed to tighten his voice.

We had dinner, and then I asked if anything was wrong.

‘Nothing much,’ said Morcom. He paused. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I’m worried about the people at—’ He used the name of the town.

‘Is there any news?’ I asked.

‘No news,’ he replied. ‘I’ve been away from them. I’ve been able to think. They’ll finish themselves with a scandal,’ he said, ‘unless something is done.’

‘What sort of scandal?’

‘Money,’ he said. ‘At least, that seems to be the dangerous part.’

‘What do you mean?’ I said.

‘Rumours have been going round for months,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t help hearing them. As well as — private knowledge. When I got away, I realised what they meant.’

‘Well?’

‘There’s no doubt they’ve been working up some frauds. I’ve known that for some time. At least I knew they were pretty near the wind. I’ve only just begun to think that they’ve gone outside the law.’ He paused again. ‘That’s why I came in tonight.’

‘Tell me what you’re going on.’

‘I don’t think I’m wrong,’ said Morcom. ‘It’s all sordid. They’ve been spending money. They’ve invented one or two schemes and persuaded people to invest in them. On a smallish scale, I expect. Nothing very brilliant or impressive. They’ve done the usual tricks — falsified their expectations and got their capital from a few fools in the town.’

I was invaded by a strange ‘professional’ anxiety; for, although exact knowledge of a danger removes some fears, it can also sharpen others. A doctor will laugh, when another young man comes to him fearing heart disease — but the same doctor takes an excessive care over the milk his children drink. So I remembered other frauds: quickly I pressed Morcom for the facts.

What had happened? What were their schemes? What had been falsified? What was his evidence? Some of his answers were vague, vague perhaps through lack of knowledge, but I could not be sure. At times he spoke with certainty.

He told me, what I had already heard from Olive, of the purchase of Martineau’s advertising agency, and the organisation of the farm and another hostel. But he knew much more; for instance, that Miss Geary — who had taken George’s part in the committee meeting years ago — was one of the people who had advanced money.

‘You may still be wrong,’ I said, as I thought over his news. ‘Stupidity’s commoner than dishonesty. The number of ways people choose to lose their money is remarkable — when everyone’s behaving with perfect honesty.’

Morcom hesitated.

‘I can’t tell you why I’m certain. But I am certain that they have not behaved with perfect honesty.’

‘If you’re right — does anyone else know this?’

‘Not for certain. As far as I know.’ He added: ‘You may have gathered that I see very little of any of them — nowadays.’

His manner throughout had been full of insistence and conviction; but it was something else which impressed me. He was angry, scornful, and distressed; that I should have expected: but, more disquieting even than his story, was the extraordinary strain which he could not conceal. At moments — more obvious in him than anyone, because of his usual control — he had been talking with hysterical intensity. At other moments he became placid, serene, even humorous. I felt that state was equally aberrant.

‘You haven’t told me,’ I said, ‘who “they” are? Who is mixed up in this?’

‘Jack,’ he began. I smiled, not in amusement but in recognition, for about the whole story there was a flavour of Jack Cotery — ‘and George,’ Morcom went on.

I said: ‘That’s very difficult to believe. I can imagine George being drawn to a good many things — but fraud’s about the last of them.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Morcom indifferently. ‘He may have wanted the money more than usually himself—’

‘He’s a man of conscience,’ I said.

‘He’s also loose and self-indulgent,’ said Morcom.

I began to protest, that we were both using labels, that we knew George and it was useless to argue as though he could be defined in three words; but then I saw Morcom ready to speak again.

‘And there’s Olive Calvert,’ said Morcom.

I did not reply for a second. The use of her surname (for as long as I remembered, she had been ‘Olive’ to all our friends) made me want to comfort him.

‘I should have thought she was too sensible to be let in.’ I made an attempt to be casual. ‘She’s always had a sturdy business sense.’

Morcom’s answer was so quiet that I did not hear the words for certain, and, despite my anxiety, I could not ask him to repeat it.

As we walked away from the restaurant, Morcom tried to talk of indifferent things. I looked at him, when we had gone past the lamp in a narrow street. In the uneven light, faint but full of contrast as a room lit by one high window, his face was over-tired. Yet tonight, just as years before, he would take no pity on his physical state; he insisted on walking the miles back to my flat. I had to invent a pretext to stop on the way, at a nightclub; where, after we had drunk some whisky, I asked: ‘What’s to be done?’

‘You’ve got to come in — and help,’ said Morcom.

I paused. ‘That’s not too easy. I’m very much out of touch,’ I said. ‘And I don’t suppose they’d like to tell me this for themselves. I can’t say you’ve spoken to us—’

‘Naturally you can’t,’ said Morcom. ‘It mustn’t be known that I’ve said a word. I don’t want that known.’

‘In that case,’ I said, ‘it’s difficult for me to act.’

‘You understand that anything I’ve said is completely secret. Whatever happens. You understand that.’

I nodded.

‘You’ve got to stop them yourself. You’ve done more difficult things,’ he said. ‘Without as much necessity. You’ve never had as much necessity. It comes before anything else, you must see that.’

‘You’re sure you can’t take control yourself?’

‘I can only sit by,’ he said.

He meant, he could do nothing for her now. But I felt that he was shutting himself away from release. With a strain that was growing as acute as his own, I begged him to act.

‘It’s the natural thing,’ I said. ‘It would settle it — best. You’ve every reason to do it—’

He did not move.

‘See her when you go back. You can still make yourself do that.’

‘No.’

‘See George, then. It wouldn’t be difficult. You could finish it all in a day or two—’

‘I can’t. There’s no use talking any further. I can’t.’

He suddenly controlled his voice, and added in a tone light and half rueful: ‘If I did interfere, it would only make things worse. George and I have been nominally reconciled for years, of course. But he would never believe I wasn’t acting out of enmity.’ He was smiling good-naturedly and mockingly. Then his manner changed again.

‘If anything’s to be done, you’ve got to do it,’ he said. ‘They’re going to be ruined unless you come in.’

‘I can’t help thinking you’re being too pessimistic,’ I said, after a moment. ‘I don’t believe it’s as inevitable as all that.’

‘They’ve gone a long way,’ said Morcom.

‘It’s possible to go a long way in making dishonest money,’ I said, ‘without being any the worse for it. Still, if I can be any use—’

Then I made one last effort to persuade him to act himself. I looked into his face, and began to talk in a matter-of-fact, callous manner: ‘But I shall be surprised if you’re not taking it too tragically. First of all, they probably haven’t managed anything criminal. Even if they have, we can either finish it or get them off. It’s a hundred to one against anything disastrous happening. And if the hundredth chance came off, which I don’t believe for a moment, you’d be taking it too tragically, even then. I mean, it would be disastrous, but it wouldn’t be death.’

‘That’s no comfort.’

‘I don’t mean it wouldn’t be unpleasant. I was thinking of something else. I don’t believe that being convicted of swindling would be the end of the world for either of us. It’s only ruin — when people crumble up inside, when they’re punishing themselves. Don’t you agree? You ought to know through yourself just now — in a different way. If you went back and protected them — if you weren’t forcing yourself to keep away — you would be happier than you are tonight.’

There was a silence.

‘You know perfectly well,’ he said, ‘that everything you’ve said applies to George. It would be ruin for him. In his own eyes, I mean, just as you’ve been saying. And the others — she’s not a simple person—’ He paused. ‘And there’s more to it than the offence. You’ve got to realise that. It means the break-up of George’s little world. It also means that the inside of the little world isn’t going to be private any longer. You know — that isn’t all high thinking nowadays.’

I remembered what Roy had told me, and what I had gathered for myself.

‘Yes,’ I said.

For a few moments he broke into a bitter outburst unlike anything I had heard from him — against idealists who got tangled up with sensuality in the end. His words became full of the savage obscenity of a reticent man. Then he stopped suddenly.

‘I’m never fair to that kind of indulgence,’ he said, in his ordinary restrained tone. ‘They seem to me to win both ways. They get the best of both worlds.’

Then he said: ‘That isn’t a reason for leaving them alone.’ But he would not let himself help them. I accepted that now, and we discussed the inquiries that I might make. Soon he insisted that he must return to the town by the last train; I remembered that, not long after his arrival, he had agreed to stay the night.

The morning after that visit, I wrote to George, asking if he could stay with me in London: I was too busy to leave. I had no reply for several days: then a letter said that he and ‘the usual party’ were on holiday in the North. I could do nothing more for the time being, and in August, a fortnight after Morcom called, went with Sheila, now my wife, to our own holiday in France.

There I thought over Morcom’s story in cold blood. He had heard something from Olive — that was clear. And still loving her, he could make a trivial fact serve as a flare-up for his own unspent emotion. He wanted to worry about her — and had seized a chance to do it on the grand scale.

That must be true: but I was not satisfied. Then often I consoled myself, as one always would at such a time, by thinking ‘these things don’t happen’. Often I thought, with genuine composure, ‘these things don’t happen’.

In the end I cut our holiday short by a few days, telling myself I would go to the town and set my mind at rest. Across the sea, in the mist of the September evening, I felt the slight anxious ache that comes, lightly and remorselessly — as I noticed after an examination — no, earlier than that, when I was a child — whenever one has been away and is returning home. I was no more depressed than that, no more than if I had been away for a few days and was now (on a cool evening, the coast in sight) on my way home.

23: Sight of Old Friends

GEORGE wrote, when I suggested paying him a visit: ‘We shall be out at the farm that weekend. If you can come over, I’ll organise it immediately. You can meet some of the original party and some of the new blood that we’ve brought on—’

Neither there nor in the rest of the letter was there any symptom of uneasiness. It sounded like George for so long, absorbed and contented in the little world.

On the Saturday afternoon a week after my return, I arrived at Eden’s house. About a year previously, just as I was beginning to earn a living at the Bar, he had sent me a couple of cases, and since then several invitations to ‘stay in your old haunts’. In the drawing-room, where we had argued over Martineau’s renunciation, Eden received me cordially and comfortably. He was in his armchair, lying back in golf suit and slippers after an afternoon walk.

‘You’ve done very well,’ he said. ‘You’ve done very well, of course. But I heard you were off colour last year. You must take care of that,’ he said. ‘You won’t get anywhere without your health. And unless you learn to be your own doctor by the time you’re thirty, you never will afterwards.’

I had always enjoyed his company; he was hospitable and considerate.

‘If you want to talk to your friends while you’re staying here, just consider the study upstairs as your private property.’ He got talking about ‘those days’, his formula of invocation of his youth; and it was later after dinner than I intended when I caught the bus to the farm.

As I walked across the fields, lights were shining from several of the farm windows. George came to the door.

‘Splendid,’ he said, with his hand outstretched. ‘I was wondering whether you’d lost your way.’ In his busy, elaborate fashion he took my coat. ‘I knew you wouldn’t stay any longer at Eden’s than decency compelled you.’ The door of one room was open, and there was a hubbub of voices: a smell of fresh paint hung in the hall, and I noticed that the stand and chairs were new.

George whispered: ‘There are one or two people here you don’t know. They’ll be a bit awkward, of course. You’ll be prepared to make allowances.’ He led the way, and, as soon as we were inside the room, shouted in his loud voice, full of friendly showmanship: ‘I don’t think you’ve all met our guest. He used to come here a few years ago. You’ve all heard of him—’

The room was fogged with smoke and on the air there floated the smell of spirits; some bottles glistened on the table in the light of the two oil lamps, and others lay in the cushions near the radio set. There was the first dazzling impression of a group of unknown faces, flat like a picture without perspective. I recognised Rachel in one of the window-seats, sitting by Roy Calvert, and a girl whom I remembered meeting once.

‘You’ll have to be introduced all round,’ said George from behind, as I went to talk to Rachel. She had aged more than any of us, I was thinking; lines had become marked under her eyes, in the full pale cheeks. Her voice as she said: ‘Well, Lewis!’ was still zestfully and theatrically rich.

As George took me round the room, Roy caught my eye for a moment. I wondered what he was doing there.

I was introduced to a couple of youths on the sofa, both under twenty: a girl and young man in the opposite window-seat to Roy.

‘Then here’s Daphne,’ said George. ‘Miss Daphne Jordan—’ he added a little stiffly; she was quite young, full-breasted, with a shrill and childish voice. George’s manner bore out the rumours that she was his present preoccupation. Her face was plump, square at the cheekbones; her upper lip very short, and eyes an intense brown, sharp and ready to stare up at mine.

‘What are you doing, George?’ she said. ‘Why don’t you give the poor man a drink?’

‘I’m sorry, won’t you have something?’ George said to me, and with a gust of laughter for the girl: ‘I’m always being nagged,’ he said.

I went back to the window, near Roy and Rachel. Roy whispered: ‘Don’t you think Daphne is rather a gem?’ He was a little drunk, in the state when he wanted to exaggerate anyone’s beauty. ‘She is quite a gem,’ he said.

With a deep, cheerful sigh, George sank into the chair opposite the fire. Under the heavy lids, his eyes roamed round, paternal, possessive, happy; Daphne curled up on a hassock by his chair, one of her hands staying on the arm.

‘What were you saying about Stephen Dedalus—’ George said loudly to the young man in the window, ‘before’ — he paused — ‘Eliot came in?’

George was not concealing his pride, his paternal responsibility, in being able to ask the question. It was his creation, he was saying almost explicitly, that these people had interests of this pattern. Half-smiling, he looked at me as the conversation began; he laughed uproariously at a tiny joke.

Then my attention caught a private phrase that was being thrown across the argument, one of the new private phrases, that, more than anything, made me feel the lapse of time. ‘Inside the ring’ — it bore no deep significance that I could see, but somehow it set alight again the anxieties and suspicions which had, in the freshness of arrival, vanished altogether. What had been happening? Nothing pointed to any dealings with money — except the actual material changes in the house. The demeanour of the party had changed from my time; then George, with the odd stiffness at which we had always laughed, was worried if the women drank with us. There was a quality of sexual feeling in the atmosphere, between many of the pairs and also, in the diffuse polyvalent way of such a society, between people who would never have any kind of relation; just as Rachel years ago had not loved, but been ready to love George, so I saw some other flashes of desire through the idealist argument. But that too, as it must be in any close society, was always present; I remembered evenings, four or five years ago, with Olive, Jack, George, Rachel and some others, when the air was electric with longing.

Daphne was laughing into George’s face, after he finished one of his tirades. Clumsily he ran his fingers through her hair. Of all George’s fancies this was the most undisguised. One could not see them without knowing that Roy was right.

I had been there about an hour when there was a noise of feet in the hall, and Olive came in, with Jack Cotery behind her.

At once she came across to my chair and took my hands.

‘It must be years since I saw you,’ she said. Her eyes were full and excited; she was over twenty-eight now, it crossed my mind. Her face had thinned a little into an expression which I could not define at that first glance. As she turned to bring Jack towards me, the strong curve of her hips was more pronounced than when I last met her, the summer she left the town.

‘We didn’t think you’d be here so early,’ she cried. Then, catching someone’s smile, her eyes flew to the clock on the mantelpiece: it was after eleven, and she looked at me before breaking into laughter.

‘Good to see you,’ Jack began, a little breathless and embarrassed in the greeting, until, in a moment, his old ease returned. He took me to one side, and began chatting humorously, confidentially, as though to emphasise that he had a special claim upon my attention. ‘Life’s rather crowded,’ he chuckled when I asked him about himself. ‘I’ve always got something going to happen, you know. I’m just getting on top of it, though. Clearly I am.’

The room had become noisy again. The others were drinking and talking, leaving us in our corner. Over Jack’s shoulder, I saw Olive watching us with a frown as she talked to George. Jack was inquisitive about one of my cases. ‘If I’d been on the jury, you’d never have got him off—’

Olive came and took us each by the arm.

‘A few of us are going into the other room,’ she said. ‘We can’t talk with everyone about.’

They had been quarrelling. Jack looked displeased, as she led us into the other sitting-room. It struck cold as we entered; she lit the lamp and knelt down to put a match to the fire.

‘It won’t be warm enough,’ said Jack. ‘We’d better go back.’

Olive looked up.

‘No,’ she said violently. Jack turned aside; his cheeks reddened.

George came in, bottles clinking in his hands, and Daphne carried the glasses. Rachel followed them.

‘Oh, isn’t the fire going?’ she said. ‘I thought you two had been here all night—’ then she broke off abruptly.

George’s attention at last became diverted. He gazed at her from the tumblers into which he had been pouring gin.

‘It isn’t cold,’ he said. ‘The fire will soon be through.’ He was placating the inanimate world, as he always had done, never willing to admit the worst of his surroundings.

Olive stood by the fire. The rest of us brought up chairs, and she whispered a word to Jack. She was restless with excitement; a tension had grown up in the room, a foot tapping on the floor sounded very loud. She broke out, inclining her face to me with a quick smile: ‘What are you here for, anyway?’

‘To have a look at you.’

‘Lewis, is that true?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I had a feeling,’ she said, ‘when I saw you tonight — that there was something else behind it. I don’t believe it’s just a casual visit, is it now?’

I did not speak for a moment. In the presence of Rachel and Daphne I could not be frank.

‘As a matter of fact,’ I said, ‘I was a little worried about some of you.’

‘What about us?’

‘I heard something — by accident — that made me think you might be taking some silly risks.’ I paused. ‘Some silly financial risks.’

I expected George to interpose, but it was Olive who answered. She exclaimed: ‘Who told you that?’

‘No one,’ I said. ‘I only had the faintest suspicion. I worked it out from something your cousin Roy happened to say. He said it quite innocently, you realise.’

‘He says a good deal that isn’t innocent.’ Olive laughed, frankly and good-naturedly.

I said: ‘Look here, I want you to tell me if there’s anything in it. I’ve seen enough money lost, you know.’

Again it was Olive who answered. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you. There’s nothing to tell.’

Jack began to talk of my practice, but in a moment Olive interrupted.

‘You’re not to worry about us,’ she said. ‘You understand? You can worry about our souls if you like.’

Suddenly she ceased to be competent and masterful, and her voice went hysterically high.

‘We’ve changed since your time,’ she said to me. ‘Haven’t we changed?’

‘We all have,’ I said.

‘That’s no good. That’s just playing with me,’ she said. ‘We’ve changed, I tell you. We’re not the same people. Don’t you see that?’

George shifted in his chair.

‘There’s something in it, but it’s an exaggeration put like that,’ he said. ‘You’ve all developed—’

‘We’ve all developed!’ Olive cried. ‘As though you’d nothing to do with it. As though you haven’t been more responsible than any of us.’

‘I accept that,’ said George loudly. ‘You don’t think I should pretend not to accept it. I’m proud of it. I’m prouder of it than anything else in my life.’

‘You mean to say you’re proud of having us—’

‘I’m proud that you’re the human being you are. And the same of Jack. And all the others. As well,’ said George, ‘as of Lewis, here.’

‘I’ve had more to do with myself than you have, George,’ Olive broke out, ‘and I should laugh at the idea of being proud.

‘Yet I’ve been complacent enough,’ she went on. ‘God knows how I found any reason for it. I’ve never done an unselfish action in my life without feeling complacent for being such a whirl of compassion. Oh, I know I looked after my father for years — don’t you think I was smug with myself for doing it?’

‘If you’re going down to that level,’ I said, ‘we are all the same. You oughtn’t to be savage with yourself — just with all people.’

‘Just with life,’ said Rachel. ‘Good God, girl, you’ve done more than most. You’ve had a man madly in love with you.’

‘Do you think,’ she cried, ‘I ought to be glad of that?’ She hesitated. ‘That was the one time,’ she said, ‘when I thought I might do something unselfish.’

‘When?’ cried Rachel.

‘When I lived with him,’ said Olive.

‘Why, you were in love with him,’ Daphne said, after a moment’s silence.

‘I never was,’ said Olive. She swept an arm round. ‘They know I never was.’

‘Why then?’ George leaned forward. ‘For all those months—’

Olive said: ‘I did it out of pity.’

Everyone was quiet; I looked into her eyes, and saw her glance fall away. Suddenly George laughed.

The strain had broken down: Jack was whispering to Olive, his eyes and hands eloquent and humorous; Daphne was sitting on the arm of George’s chair. I could feel that only my presence was keeping them from a wilder eirenicon; friend as I was, I was also a foreign influence, unfamiliar enough to keep the balance between decorum and release. My own nerves frayed (for I too had been played on by the undersweep of passion), I was glad when Olive rose to go to bed. Soon George and I were left alone.

We filled our glasses, settled into the easy chairs by the fire, and talked casually for a few minutes.

‘It’s a long while,’ said George comfortably, ‘since we came down here together.’ I was touched by the sentimentality, unselfconscious and unashamed; perhaps, I thought, it came the easier to George, for, in spite of all his emotional warmth, he was less bound to the past than any of us, far less than Morcom or myself. Perhaps to those like him, solid in the core of their personalities, four-square in themselves, feeling intensely within the core but not stretching out tentacles to any other life, it is easier to admit the past — because it does not matter much, as he showed in our separation. While to Morcom, tied inseparably to a thousand moments of the past, it came too near the truth to acknowledge its softening hand, except by a smile of pretended sarcasm.

After that remark, we argued amiably; George had lost little of his buoyant appetite for ideas. I enjoyed his mental gusto for its own sake, and also because it was impeding the purpose which brought me there.

‘We had some rather good talk tonight,’ he said, after a time, with the change of his manner to an elated but uneasy defence that still covered him when he talked of the group: ‘Didn’t you think so?’

‘Yes. I confess—’

‘Of course you’ve got to remember the relevant circumstances,’ said George hurriedly. ‘The kind of people they would have been if they had been left to their own devices. You’ve got to remember that. Not that they’re not an extremely good collection. They’re better than they’ve ever been, of course. We’ve had some reorientations. I’ve reconsidered some of my opinions.’

‘Still,’ I said, ‘I was glad to see some of the old gang. Particularly Olive. Though I thought she was too much upset—’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ George replied. ‘She’s had something to put up with, you know. You can’t deny that she was magnificently frank about it — she got the whole affair in its right proportion. There aren’t many people who’d do that.’

Obstinately he repeated: ‘She was magnificently frank.’

‘I could find another name for it,’ I said. ‘But still, I wasn’t thinking of her being upset by a love affair. I thought there might possibly be some other cause.’

A frown, or something less (the fixity with which he would at any time have heard a criticism), came into his face.

‘What else could be the matter with her?’

‘I didn’t know her circumstances, since her father died. I thought — perhaps — money—’

‘Ridiculous,’ George interrupted. ‘Completely ridiculous. Her father left her a hundred and fifty a year of her own — and the reversion of the rest of the money when her mother dies.’

‘It can’t be that, then,’ I said. ‘I just felt there might be trouble.’

‘With no justification at all.’

‘Everything is all right?’

‘As a matter of fact,’ said George, ‘I wondered why you were asking about our affairs.’

‘I was worried.’

‘I think I should have been approached first.’

I half-expected a burst of anger; but instead his manner was more formal than exasperated.

‘If I could have got you alone before she spoke—’

‘I was prepared to believe that might be the reason.’

‘You understood what I meant to ask?’

‘I gathered it.’

‘George, I can speak out with you. I meant — it’s easy to get into financial tangles that are dangerous. If so, you could trust me to help, couldn’t you?’

‘I know exactly what you meant.’

‘Will you let me ask the same question — now?’

‘I’ve got nothing to add.’ Each reply had been stiff and distant.

‘I can’t do this again, you know.’

‘Naturally.’

‘Everything’s completely well with them? With yourself?’

‘I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life,’ George raised his voice. I put in a question about his position in the firm.

‘I’ve dismissed that business for the time being. I had to make a deliberate choice between the successes I considered important — and the successes’ — he laughed — ‘that an ordinary man with his little house and his little motor car would consider important. I decided that I couldn’t achieve them both, and so I was prepared to sacrifice the trivial ones. Just as you — have sacrificed some successes that I should consider essential. You’ve repressed all your social sense — well, I should simply have found it impossible to make a spiritual hermit of myself. Even — if it does give the Edens of this world a chance to humiliate me for ever.’

As I had often done when George was talking, I listened to the different levels of self-explanation. I heard nothing that bore on the apprehension. After we had talked on for a few moments, I said: ‘The trouble about these choices — I’m not saying that you oughtn’t to have made this one — is that you couldn’t help yourself.’

‘I could certainly help myself—’

‘Anyway it does mean a certain practical inconvenience. Money and so on. How’s that treating you?’

George’s face opened in a chuckle. ‘I’m harassed sometimes, as you might expect. I haven’t borrowed from you recently, but you mustn’t imagine you’re completely immune.’ He passed on to stories of the group in the last years. He got up to close the windows for the night: he said in a quiet voice: ‘I’ve gained more from the last year or two than all the rest of my life. I know you all think I’m incapable of any sort of change. You haven’t noticed that I’m more suggestible than any of you.’ He looked over the fields, in the darkness. ‘I’ve had my effect on these people — and they don’t think it, but they’ve had an effect on me. And I’m better and happier because it’s happened that way.’

24: The First Inquiries

MORCOM was away that weekend. I asked Roy to tell him that I had been in the town, and had called on George and Olive.

Through the autumn, a busy time for me, I was often uneasy. The visit had not brought anything like reassurance; but there seemed nothing I could do. As the months passed, though, I began to feel that my anxieties had run away with me. I heard nothing more until a Friday night in December.

I was tired after a day’s work, lying on my sofa with a novel, which, when those moments came to have a significance they did not then possess (through the memory of action, so to speak, which is halfway between involuntary memory — recalled for instance by a smell — and that which we force back), I remembered as Thomas Wolfe’s first book. The telephone bell rang. It was a trunk call, and among the murmurs, clangings, and whispers of the operation, I had the meaningless apprehension that sometimes catches hold as one listens and waits.

Then I heard Roy’s voice: ‘Is that, you, Lewis?’

The words were precise and clear, isolated in sound.

‘Yes.’

‘You should come down tonight. There’s a train in half an hour. It would be good if you caught that.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘You should come at once. Morcom and I are certain you should come at once. Can you?’

‘Can’t you tell me? Is it necessary?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can’t you tell—?’

‘I’ll meet you at the station.’

Through the carriage window the lights of villages moved past. As my anger with Roy for leaving me uncertain became sharper, the lights became circled in mist and passed increasingly slow. We stopped at a station; the fog whirled under its lamps. At last the platform. The red-brick walls shone in the translucency; as I got out, the raw air caught at the throat.

Roy went quickly by, missing me in the crowd. I caught him by the arm. He turned and his face was serious and excited.

‘Well?’ I said.

‘They’re inquiring into some of George’s and Jack’s business. They questioned them this afternoon — and took away the accounts and books.’

It sounded inevitable as I heard it. It sounded unlike news, it seemed something I had known for a long time.

‘I couldn’t say it on the telephone,’ Roy was talking fast, ‘my parents were too near.’

We went into the refreshment-room on the platform. Roy’s tumbler of whisky rattled in his fingers on the marble table, as he described the last few hours. Morcom heard from Jack, saw Roy immediately and insisted that he let me know. Then Roy called at George’s office, a few minutes before he telephoned to me. George had said: ‘Yes, they’ve had the effrontery to ask me questions,’ and stormed.

‘He was afraid though,’ said Roy. ‘He was anxious to prove that they parted on civil terms.’

‘Morcom didn’t know the best thing to do,’ he said. ‘He had no idea of the legal side. So you had to be fetched.’

‘I’d better see George at once,’ I said.

‘I’ve arranged for him to meet you in my study,’ said Roy. ‘It’s quicker than his lodgings.’

Actually, George’s rooms were nearer. It was a strange trick for Roy to fix this meeting in his father’s house. Yet he was as concerned as I.

His study reminded me that he was the only son of a prosperous family. It was a room more luxurious than one expected to find in the town: and then, again unexpectedly, the bookshelves of this spoilt young man were packed with school and college prizes. I was looking at them when George entered. He came from the door and shook hands with a smile that, on the moment, surprised me with its cordiality, its show of pleasure.

When the smile faded, however, the corners of his mouth were pulled down. Our range of expression is small, so that a smile in genuine pleasure photographs indistinguishably from a grimace of pain; they are the same unless we know their history and their future.

‘This is an unpleasant business,’ he said.

‘Yes. But still—’

‘One’s got to expect attacks. Of course,’ George said, ‘this happens to be particularly monstrous.’

Roy made an excuse, and left us.

‘We ought to go into it,’ I said. I added: ‘We don’t want to leave anything to chance. Don’t you think?’

‘It’s got to be stopped.’

‘Yes. Can’t you tell me what they wanted? It’d be useful to both of us.’

George sat down by the writing-desk. His fingers pushed tobacco into his pipe, and his eyes gazed across the room.

‘It’s absurd we should have to waste our time,’ he said in an angry tone. ‘Well, we may as well get it over. I’ll organise the facts as we go along.’ He began to speak more slowly than usual, emphasising the words, his tone matter-of-fact and yet deliberate with care.

‘Jack Cotery made a suggestion over four years ago—’ George thought for a second and produced the year and then the month. ‘He’d been considering the advertising firm that Martineau went into. He produced some evidence that if it were run more efficiently it could be made to pay. There was a minor advertising paper attached, you remember, called the Arrow. I talked to Martineau when he came back to clear up his affairs. That was the summer of 1928. The paper reached a fairly wide public; some thousands, he convinced me of that. Jack’s case was — that if we could raise the money and buy Exell out, we could pay interest on the loan and make an adequate profit. I saw nothing against it — I see nothing to make me change my view’ — George suddenly burst out — ‘I can’t be expected to live on a few pounds a week and not look round for money if I can get it without sacrificing important things. You know well enough that nothing’s ever made me take money seriously. I’ve never given much attention to it. I’ve never made any concessions for the sake of money. But I’m not an anchorite, there are things I could buy if I had money, and I’m not going to apologise for taking chances when they meant no effort and no interruption to my real activities.’

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘I’m glad you accept that,’ George said as his voice quietened. I knew that, at moments, I or anyone must be numbered with the accusers now; it was strange to feel how he was obliged to justify the most ordinary contact with the earth. ‘So on that basis I was ready to co-operate. Naturally, I hadn’t any capital of my own. I was able to contribute about fifty pounds, chiefly by readjusting all my debts. Anyway, my function was to audit the accountancy side, and see how good a property it was—’

‘You did that?’ I said.

‘There wasn’t much evidence, which isn’t surprising when you think of the two partners. There were a few books kept incompetently by Exell and the statement by Martineau. The statement was pretty definite, and so we considered it and proceeded to action. Olive raised a little. Her father wasn’t dead then, so she couldn’t do much. By the way, you might as well understand that this business has been consistently profitable. On a small scale naturally, but still it’s brought in a pleasant addition to my income. And we met all our obligations. Even in the worst weeks when our patriotic or national government was doing its best to safeguard the liberties of the British people.’

The habitual sarcasm left him, after months of use, as easily and unthinkingly as a ‘Good morning’.

‘I had very little to do with the financial backing. Jack undertook the whole responsibility for raising that. I should have been completely useless at getting businessmen to part with their money, of course—’ He gave a quick, slightly abject smile. ‘On the other hand, I can produce their names and the details of the contracts that Jack made with them. We didn’t consider it necessary to form a company; he simply borrowed a number of separate sums from various people, and made definite terms about paying them for the risk.’

‘They lent it on the security of the firm, I suppose,’ I said.

‘Yes. It was a series of private loans for a purpose which everyone understood. It’s the sort of arrangement which is made every day. The man who was here this afternoon,’ he said, ‘pestered me for an hour about the details. Incidentally he was unnecessarily offensive to me. That was before he came to the other scheme. It was a long time before I could make him understand they were slightly different. The position was’ — he shifted in his chair — ‘that Jack produced another idea when Olive’s father died. That meant she had a little surplus capital — I mentioned it to you when I saw you last — and it was easy to see modifications in the technique. We’d acquired a little money and a certain amount of experience. So it was possible to think of something on a larger scale. Particularly in the special circumstances of my having a crowd of people that needed to be together. The idea was to buy the farm and one or two other places; then we could use the farm itself for our own purposes. There was no reason why the money we spent shouldn’t come back to ourselves in part — and when we weren’t using the place, we could let it out as a youth hostel or whatever people call them who haven’t the faintest idea of helping people to enjoy their youth.’

‘So you did it?’

‘Yes. Jack and Olive were in it. I couldn’t appear — but it was understood that I was to advise.’

‘Jack brought in the money again?’

‘Naturally,’ said George. ‘He collected some fairly large sums from various quarters. I’ll make you a list. He’s incredibly good at persuading them to part. He’s so good that once I found it inconvenient—’

‘How was that?’

‘Actually,’ George hesitated, ‘I had to stop him taking it from some of my people.’

‘Some of the group? Rachel and the—’

‘Jack tried with this young man — Roy.’ George looked round the study. ‘But he was too cautious. Jack had persuaded Rachel, though; and someone else.’

I said: ‘Why did you stop him?’

‘I should have thought it was obvious enough. There’s bound to be a certain amount of risk in this sort of project. I wasn’t going to have it fall on people I was responsible for and who couldn’t afford it.’

‘One could bring out the fact — significantly.’

‘I’m prepared to account for it.’

His voice was harsh and combative: I paused.

‘How’s this scheme going?’ I asked.

‘Not as well as the first,’ George said slowly. ‘It’s not had long yet. It’s perfectly healthy.’

‘What has started the inquiries, then?’ I said.

‘It’s impossible to say. I’ve been active enough in this place to make a good many people willing to see me disgraced.’

I wondered: was that true or the voice of the persecuted self? the self that was the other side, the complement, of his devotion and unselfseekingness.

‘But did they know of these dealings?’

‘We tried to keep them secret,’ George said. ‘None of the initial arrangements can possibly have got out.’

‘What were the police looking for?’

‘As far as I gathered from the lout who came this afternoon — the obvious thing for them to imagine. Misleading the people who supplied the money. The charge they’re trying for is money by false pretences or conspiracy, I suppose. They might put in conspiracy so as to use all their evidence against each of us.’ Though he was wincing as he spoke, I could not help noticing that his thought was clear and competent, as it had been all that night; his summary of their ventures could hardly have been better done; he was not detached at any time, there was no man less detached, he was in distress, afraid and resentful, and yet anyone — without my affection and concern — would have admired the stamina and precision of his mind.

Then to my amazement his face cleared and he laughed, shortly, not from his full heart, but still as though the distress had abated.

‘It’s scarcely likely they’ll ever have the opportunity to make a charge.’ It came to me like the fantastic optimism with which he sustained himself years ago, during Martineau’s departure. I replied: ‘So you’re completely confident? You don’t think it’ll go any further?’

Remorsefully, I saw the half-laugh drain away; his voice was flat, with no pretence or anger left: ‘If it does, I don’t know how I’m going to face it.’

I said: ‘As a matter of fact, have you done it?’

For an instant he sat without moving. Then slowly he shook his head.

25: Conversations at Night

Roy, quiet and self-effacing, brought in a tray of drinks and again left us alone.

‘By the way,’ I said, ‘does Eden know about these — inquiries?’

‘I’ve not told him.’

‘Oughtn’t you to?’

‘It’s obviously quite unnecessary,’ George said. ‘If these policemen have the sense to keep quiet, there’s no reason why he should know. And if — we have to take other circumstances into account, Eden can be told quickly enough. I see no reason to give him the pleasure until it’s compulsory.’

‘I think he ought to be told,’ I said. ‘This isn’t too large a town, you know. Eden comes across people in the Chief Constable’s office every day.’

‘That would be a breach of privilege.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But it happens — and it would be wiser for you to tell Eden than for someone who doesn’t know you.’

His face was heavy and indrawn.

‘You see,’ I tried to persuade him, ‘there’s a good deal that can be done, if they want to inquire any further. You know that as well as I do. If Eden gives me authority, I could stop quite a few of their tricks. If you heard of anyone in your present position — the first advice you’d give, of course, would be for them to arrange with a solicitor—’

George said: ‘I don’t propose to discuss the matter with Eden.’ He added: ‘You can tell him yourself if you’re so anxious.’

‘You give me permission?’ I said.

‘I suppose so.’

When Roy rejoined us, I left them talking and telephoned Eden. He said he would expect me before eleven, and pressed me to stay in the ‘usual room’.

George showed no curiosity when I said that I should not see him again until the morning.

Sitting in Eden’s drawing-room, stretching my hands to the fire, I told him the events of the afternoon. He had begun by saying amiably: ‘We had another conference about some of your friends here before.’

Eden nodded his head, his lips together, as I told him of their speculations. I finished by saying: ‘It may not come to it, I don’t know. But we ought to be prepared for a charge.’

‘These things will happen,’ he said. ‘Ah well! these things will happen.’

‘What do you think?’ I said.

‘You’re right, of course we’ve got to be prepared,’ he was speaking without heat, with a slight irritability. ‘I must say they’ve been very foolish. They’ve been foolish whatever they’ve been doing. They oughtn’t to try these things without experience. It’s the sort of foolishness that Passant would go in for. I’ve told you that before—’

‘He’s one of the biggest men I’ve met. That still holds after meeting a few more. He’s also one of the ablest,’ I said in the only harsh words that had passed between Eden and myself, making a protest wrung from me years too late.

His deliberation broken for a moment, Eden said: ‘We won’t argue about that. It isn’t the time to argue now. I must consider what ought to be done.’ He laughed without any warmth. ‘I can’t instruct you myself,’ he said slowly, going back to a leisurely professional manner. ‘But I can arrange with someone else to act for Passant. And I shall give instructions that you’re to be used from the beginning. That is, if this business develops as we all hope it won’t—’

The phrase rolled off smooth with use, as he addressed me with the practised cordiality — different from his ordinary familiar manner — into which the disagreement had driven him. It was not until I spoke of visiting Jack Cotery before I went to bed, that he became fully at ease again.

‘I’m sorry he’s mixed up in this,’ Eden said. ‘He ought to have gone a long way. I haven’t seen much of him the last few years.’ He was genuinely distressed. He went on: ‘And you want to find out what’s been happening to him? I expect you do.’ He gave me a latchkey. ‘You can keep it until this is all over. You’ll have to be down here pretty frequently, you know.’ Then I said goodnight and he smiled. ‘Mind you don’t wear yourself out before it properly begins.’

The streets were clearer, but still dank with fog. A tram-car came down the lonely road, going on its last journey to the centre of the town; its light was reddened in the mist. What had happened? Through these stories and suspicions, what had happened? If George was lying (I could not be certain. He might be bound to the others — he might be masking some private guilt) how had he found himself in that kind of dishonesty? — which of all of us, careless as he was of money, self-deceiving as he could be in thought, I should have considered him the least likely to commit. And as well as these doubts, there was a sense, not flickering in questions in the mind, of conflict and fatality; of these lives, the people I had once known best, going as they had to go, each life alone, as it were, walking the dark streets. So, in loneliness, they had come to this.

For a time I could not find the street in which Jack lived. He had given up his flat, George said; he had returned to his parents’ house. I had never been there in the past. When I first knew him, it was one of his mysteries to mention that he could not invite us to his house — and then, after his self-revelation that night in the park years ago, I had not expected to be asked.

Now, when at last I discovered it, I smiled, in spite of my errand. For the street, as I made my way down the faces of the houses, peering at the numbers in the diffused lamplight, seemed the perfect jumping-off place for daydreams of magniloquence: and, on the rebound, when he repented of those, just as good a place to let him imagine himself among the oppressed and squalid.

The houses were a neat row from the beginning of the century. Their front doors gave onto the street and the paint on most smelt fresh as I went close; it was a row of houses such as artisans lived in by thousands throughout the town; it was a frontier line of society, the representative street of the highest of the working class and the lowest of the middle. Few windows were lighted at this time of night.

I came to Jack’s number. There was a light in the window, shining thin slats of gold between the Venetian blinds. I knocked softly on the door; a movement came from inside. The door opened slowly. A voice, light, querulous, said: ‘Who’s there?’

I answered, and he flung the door open.

‘What on earth are you doing here?’

‘I’m afraid I’ve come to worry you,’ I said. ‘I expect you’ve had enough for one day.’

‘I was just going to bed.’

‘I’m sorry, Jack. I’d better come in.’

Then my eyes, dazzled after the darkness, gradually took in a room full of furniture. A tablecloth, carrying some used plates and a dish, lay half over the table. A saucepan of milk was boiling on the hob.

‘I have to live here occasionally. It gives them a bit of pleasure.’ Jack pointed upstairs. He was wearing a new, well-cut suit. His eyes were excessively bright. I nodded, then threw my overcoat on a chair, and sat down by the fire.

‘And so you’re after my blood as well.’ A smile, mischievous and wistful, shot through his sullenness. As I replied, telling him I had been with George, it was replaced by an injured frown.

‘He must have told you everything,’ said Jack. ‘It’s no use me going over it all again.’

‘It may be the greatest use.’

‘Then you’ll have to wait. I’m tired to death.’ He poured out the boiling milk into a tumbler. This, ignoring me, he placed on the hearth. I remembered once laughing at him at the farm, when he went through this ritual of drinking milk last thing at night; he had produced pseudoscientific reasons for it. He had always shown intense concern for his health. It was strange to see it now.

I pressed him to talk, but for a long time he was obstinate. I told him that I should be George’s lawyer, if it came to a trial — and his, if he would have me. He accepted that, but still would not describe his interview in the afternoon. I said once again: ‘Look, Jack. I tell you we’ve got to be ready.’

‘There’s plenty of time.’

‘As I say, they’ll be making inquiries while we do nothing.’

Suddenly he looked up.

‘Will they have gone to Olive yet?’

‘Probably,’ I said.

‘She was visiting a cousin. She won’t get back to the town today. I suppose I ought to see her before they do. Clearly,’ said Jack.

Then, for the first time, he was willing to talk of their businesses. He did it sketchily, without George’s command. He finished up: ‘I can’t imagine why they expect to find anything shady. It’s — it’s quite unreasonable.’ Then he said: ‘Incidentally, I told the chap this afternoon, and I don’t mind telling you, that if you search any business you’ll find something that’s perfectly legal but doesn’t look too sweet. He took the point.’ Jack looked at me. ‘I’ll show you what I mean, sometime, Lewis. It’s all legal, but you’d expect me to try a piece of sharp practice occasionally, wouldn’t you? I’ve never been able to resist it, you know. And it’s never worth the trouble. One’s always jumpy when one’s doing it, and it never comes to anything worthwhile.’

I was certain that the ‘sharp practice’ had nothing to do with the suspicions: I did not follow it up. We were both silent for a moment: Jack pulled out a case and offered me a cigarette. I thought I recognised the case, and Jack said, with his first smile since I tried to question him: ‘Yes. It’s the famous present.’ His smile stayed as he ran a finger along the initials. ‘I like having something permanent to remind me exactly who I am. It gives me a sort of solidity that I’ve always lacked.’

We both laughed. Then Jack said quietly: ‘I simply cannot understand what these people expect to find. It’s simply unreasonable for them to think they might pull out a piece of dishonesty. Why, if there’d been anything of the kind, I could have covered it up ten times over. If I’d had to meet every penny a month ago, I could have covered it completely. I happened to have an extra offer of money to tide me over any difficulty just about that time.’

‘Who from?’

‘Arthur Morcom.’

I exclaimed.

‘Why ever not? Oh, you were thinking of his keeping away because of Olive. I don’t see why he should.’ He hesitated. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘he made the same offer this afternoon.’

‘It’s not useful now,’ I said.

‘It might be extremely useful,’ said Jack. Then he took back the words, and said: ‘Of course you’re right. I can’t use money until they give up these inquiries.’ He broke off: ‘You know’ — he showed, instead of the fear and resentment I had seen so often in his face that night, a frank, surprised and completely candid look — ‘these inquiries seem fantastic. They ask me about something I’ve said years ago — what I told people about the profits of the agency and so on. I just can’t believe that what I said then might ruin everything now. Even if I’d done the dishonest things they believe I’ve done — which I’ve not — I’m certain that I still couldn’t believe it. All those actions of mine they ask about — they’re so remote.’

Yes, that was honest. On a different occasion, I had been through the same myself.

When I left, I walked straight to Morcom’s. It was after one o’clock, but I had to speak to him that night. As it happened, he was still up. From the first word, his manner was constrained. He asked me to have a drink without any welcome or smile. I said straight away: ‘I’ve just come from Jack’s. He tells me that you offered him money this afternoon.’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t you see it might be dangerous?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If Jack skips now, they’ll take George for certain. For him, it’s inevitable disaster. If you make it possible for Jack to go — and, well, it’s crossed his mind. He’s no hero.’

‘That is true,’ said Morcom, still in a cold, disinterested tone.

‘I had to warn you tonight,’ I said.

‘Yes.’

After a silence, I said: ‘I’m not too happy about them.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Morcom. ‘I told you this was likely to happen. I thought you wouldn’t be able to stop it. I might as well say, though, that I rather resent you considered it necessary to tell people that I was paralysed with worry. I dislike being made to look like a nervous busybody. Even when it turns out to be justified.’

‘I said nothing.’

‘Jack said that he heard I was very worried. I mentioned it to no one but you.’

Casting back in my mind, I was beginning to reassure myself: then, suddenly I remembered asking Roy to send word at any sign of trouble — because of Morcom’s anxiety.

Morcom said: ‘You know?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I mentioned it to Roy Calvert. It was my last chance of getting the whole truth. I made it clear—’

‘I told you in confidence,’ said Morcom.

I took refuge in being angry with Roy. I knew that he was subtle and astute about human feelings — yet he had been so clumsily indiscreet. But I ought to have known that he, like many others, was in fact, subtle, astute — and indiscreet. The same sensitiveness which made him subtle, which gave him antennae to reach another’s feelings, also caused this outburst of indiscretion. For it was from the desire to please in another’s company, Jack’s or George’s, that he produced the news of Morcom’s concern — from the same desire to share an emotion with another which is the root of all the deepest subtlety, the subtlety, which, whatever it is used for ultimately, arises from a spontaneous realisation and knowledge of another.

Just as, ironically, Morcom himself had once broken into a graver indiscretion in Eden’s drawing-room.

It is one of the myths of character that subtlety and astuteness and discretion go hand in hand by nature — without bleak experience and the caution of age, which takes the edge both from one’s sensitiveness and the blunders one used to make. The truth is, if one is impelled to share people’s hearts, the person to whom one is speaking, must seem, must be, more vivid for the moment than anyone in the world. And so, even if he is irrelevant to one’s serious purpose, if indeed he is the enemy against whom one is working, one still has the temptation to be in a moment’s conspiracy with him, for his happiness and one’s own against the rest. It is a temptation which would have seemed, even if he troubled to understand it, a frivolous instability to George Passant. But, for many, it is a cause of the petty treasons to which they cannot look back without shame.

Morcom was speaking with a restrained distress. Some of it I should have expected, whatever the circumstances, if he heard that he was being discussed in a way he felt ‘undignified’. But tonight that was only the excuse for his anger. He was suffering as obviously as George. His cold manner was held by an effort of self-control; he was trying to shelve the anxiety in a justified outburst. Yet his anxiety was physically patent. With a mannerism that I had never seen him use before, he kept stroking his forehead as though the skin were tight.

We talked over the inquiries. Information must have been laid, I said, a week or two ago. I went on: ‘Jack told me that he could easily have raised money just before that time. If there had been any call. He said you made your first offer then — is that true, by the way?’

‘I ought to have done it in the summer,’ said Morcom. ‘I suppose it came too late. But I couldn’t resist doing it at last. I’ve always had a soft spot for Cotery, you know.’

That was true: it had been true in the days of his bitterest jealousy. It was true now. He was filled with remorse for not having tried to help them until too late.

In a moment he asked me: ‘What are the chances in this case?’

‘It’s impossible to say. We don’t even know they’ve got enough to prosecute on.’

‘What’s your opinion?’

I paused: ‘I think they’ll prosecute.’

‘And then?’

‘Again I don’t know.’

‘I’d like to have your view.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘if you remember it’s worth very little at this stage — I think the chances are against us.’

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I can’t do anything in the open. I’ve got to tell you that again. I insist that nothing I’ve said shall be repeated to anyone else. For any reason whatever. That’s got to be respected.’

‘Yes.’

‘But if I can help in private—’ he said. ‘You’ve got to ask. Whatever it is. Remember, whatever it is. You aren’t to be prevented by any sort of delicacy about dragging up my past.’

He had spoken very fast. I answered: ‘I shall ask. If there’s any possible thing you can do.’

‘Good.’

‘There may be — practical things. We shall probably want money.’

‘I should like to give it.’

26: A Guilty Story

WHEN I arrived at George’s lodgings the next afternoon, I found his father just on the point of leaving. Mr Passant said, with the old mixture of warmth and hesitation: ‘It’s not — Lewis?’ He had aged more than anyone I knew. His breathing was very heavy.

‘I’m glad you’re helping us, Lewis,’ he said. He began to talk hurriedly, about the inquiries. His eyes were full of puzzled indignation against the people who had instigated them. ‘You’ll help us deal with them,’ he said. ‘They’ve got to learn that they suffer if they let their spite run away with them.’ It was not that he did not know’ of the danger of a prosecution. George had been utterly frank. But injured as he was, Mr Passant was driven to attack.

‘At the end, when it’s the proper time, you’ll be able to go for compensation against them,’ he said. ‘The law must provide for that.’

During these outbursts, George was quiet, once augmenting his father’s with an indignation of his own. For a moment they looked at each other, on the same side, the outer anxiety pressing them close. But when Mr Passant said, tired with his anger: ‘It’s a great pity they were ever given the excuse, Lewis—’

George said: ‘We’ve had all this out before.’

‘After it’s over,’ said Mr Passant, ‘I still want to think of you yourself.’

George replied: ‘I can’t alter anything I’ve already said.’

Both their faces were strained as they parted. Without a word upon his father’s visit, George came to the table and brought out his papers. He sat by me through the afternoon and evening, helping me arrange the facts.

The extraordinary precision of his memory might have been laughable in another context. But now I heard his voice on the edge of shouting, when from time to time he burst out: ‘It’s ludicrous for them to try to manufacture a case like this. We’ve got an answer for every single point the swine bring up. Do they think I decided to take over Martineau’s paraphernalia simply for the pleasure of cooking the figures? When it was perfectly easy for him to check them? A man who’d been used to figures all his life. The suggestion’s simply monstrous. If I’d wished to swindle in that particularly fatuous way, I should have chosen someone else—’

‘He’d gone away, though, before you took over—’

‘Nonsense. That is simply untrue. We bought Exell out in November ’28’ — he gave the exact date — ‘Martineau had been in the town all July. He came back for a couple of weeks continuously the next January. Settling up his house and his other affairs. He could have investigated at any time. Do they think that a man in his senses — whatever else I may be, I suppose they’d give me credit for that — would take a risk of that kind?’

Yet several times I returned to Martineau’s statement, in particular the figures of the Arrow.

‘It seems such a tremendous lot,’ I said.

‘I thought it was rather large,’ George said.

There was a silence.

‘I’d have thought if they could reach as wide a public as that,’ I went on, ‘they’d have made more of a show of it themselves.’

‘Jack’s magnificent at making things go,’ said George. ‘He’s full of ideas. I left that side to him. It’s probably the explanation.’ He stared at the paper. ‘In any case, I don’t think we shall get very far by speculating on Exell’s and Martineau’s incompetence.’

We continued through the accounts, on to the other business, the farm and its companions. There was, in fact, little written down. Most of the data were supplied by George, without delay or doubts, almost as though he was reading them from some mental sheet.

When at last I had completed my notes, George said: ‘You may as well look at these. They’re not strictly relevant, but I suppose you’d better see them. I’m sorry I haven’t my proper diary here.’ He gave me a twopenny notebook; it contained, in his neat hand, an account of his income and expenses, recorded in detail for several years. It struck me as strange he should keep this record of his money, over which he was so prodigal (I later found out that it was not complete or accurate, in contrast to the minute thoroughness of his diary). And I was mystified by his giving me the book. For a time, the statements told me nothing — a slight increase in expenditure for the last eighteen months, several entries reading — ‘by cheque from J C, £10’. Then my eyes caught an entry: ‘D at farm £1’; often, most weekends for some time back, the same words recurred.

‘Do you pay for yourself at the farm?’ I asked. ‘I thought—’

‘No.’ He turned round from the bookshelves. ‘I pay for those I take with me.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I ought to have—’

‘Go back a few months.’ His voice was unfriendly. At the beginning of the year, I found, as well as the entries about D (whom I knew to be Daphne), another series with a different letter, occupying other dates, thus:

D at farm £1 Jan. 17.

F at farm £1 Jan. 24.

D at farm £1 Jan. 31.

The two sets D and F ran on together over several months. I looked up. His expression was angry, pained, and yet, in some way, relieved.

‘I don’t expect you to understand,’ he said. ‘I’m not excusing myself, either. I didn’t break the rules I’d constructed for myself until I’d fallen abjectly in love: but I repeat, I’m not making that an excuse. I should have come to it in the end. I should have found my own happiness in my own way. I refuse to be ashamed of it; but there is one impression I shouldn’t like you to get. Particularly you, because you saw me at the start. Now things may conceivably crash round me, I don’t want to let you think that I retract one single word of what the group has meant to me. I don’t want you to think I spoilt it all — because, when the rest of them were enjoying their pleasures, I saw no reason for not taking mine.’

‘I shouldn’t think so,’ I said.

As I spoke, his face lightened and looked grateful. Every word in his self-justification carried its weight of angry shame.

‘Do you remember how we compared notes on being in love — after a celebration in Nottingham?’ said George. ‘I hadn’t fallen in love then, and I envied you the experience. Do you know, I still didn’t fall in love until I was twenty-eight? That must be late for a man who has never been able to put women out of his mind for long. And I suffered for it. She was a girl called Katherine — you never met her — and she was absolutely unsuitable for a man like me. It was trying to find compensation elsewhere that I started with—’ he pointed to the F on the accounts. Both she and Daphne were members of the School and of George’s group. ‘But I insist, I don’t give that as an excuse. I should simply have taken a little longer, but I should have come to the same point in the end. And I don’t expect you to understand, but I’m capable of being fond of two women at once. So I kept on with her after I became attached to Daphne. I expect you to think it sordid — but we’re not made in the same way.

‘As a matter of fact,’ he added, his truculence replaced by an almost timid simplicity, ‘I discovered that I was hurting someone by the arrangement, so I had to give it up.’

So Daphne was too strong-willed for him; I could imagine her pleading in her child’s voice, her upper lip puckered, pleading jealousy, caring nothing for her pride if she could get her own way, older in a fashion at twenty than George would ever be.

Going back through the figures, I found another set which occurred some time after the other began. ‘Not. £1 11s 6d.’ The amount was constant, and as I went further back, the entry came frequently, never less often than once a fortnight. The sum baffled me, although I guessed the general meaning. I asked him.

‘A return to Nottingham, drinks and a woman,’ George said. ‘I kept to Connie’s crowd for a long time, and it always used to cost the same.’

I laughed.

‘I remember you used to spend twice as much on drinks round the club.’

‘I suppose I did,’ said George. ‘I forgot to put those down.’

Then he said: ‘It was years before I could imagine that I might find something better.’

‘And now?’

‘It may surprise you to know that I’ve been happier with Daphne than I’ve ever been in my life. I am more in love with her than I was with Katherine: I’m not a man who can worship the unattainable for long. This happens to be love for both of us, and it’s the first time I’ve known it. When I realised it properly, I thought it was worth waiting thirty-three years for this.’

His voice became once more angry and defensive. ‘After all that I’ve thought it necessary to show you,’ he said pointing to the pocket-book, ‘I expect you to laugh at what I say — but I can’t believe that I shall know it again. And I’m compelled to think of the position I shall be in when these inquiries are over. I may not be able to inflict myself on her—’

‘I don’t think she’d leave you,’ I said.

‘Perhaps not,’ said George, and fell into silence. At last he said: ‘Just before you arrived, I told my father exactly what I’ve told you.’

‘Why in God’s name?’

‘It might have come out in public. I considered that it was better I should tell him myself.’

‘When I used the same argument about letting Eden know yesterday—’

‘I don’t recognise a connection with Eden,’ said George. ‘This was utterly different. I felt obliged to tell my father two things. He had a right to know that I might be providing malevolent people with a handle against him. I said I found that was the thing I could tolerate least of all.’

‘What else did you say?’

‘I had to say that, apart from the intolerable effect on him, I wasn’t ashamed of anything I’d done. He naturally didn’t believe that I had swindled: but he was hurt about my life with women. I had to tell him that I saw no reason to repent for any of my actions.’

27: Conflict on Tactics

A case, down for the next Tuesday, sent me back to London on Sunday night. For some days I heard nothing from the town; I rang up each night, but there was no news; and then, one morning in chambers, a telegram arrived from Hotchkinson, the solicitor who was managing the case for Eden: ‘Three clients arrested applying for bail this morning.’ It was now the middle of the month. I was not appearing in a London court until January; I decided to stay at Eden’s until the first hearing was over.

When I arrived in the town, I was told they had been arrested late the night before. The warrant was issued on information sworn by someone called Iris Ward. The name meant nothing to me; but it added to Rachel’s misery as soon as she heard it. ‘It will seem to George—’ she said. ‘You see, she was once a member of the group.’

They had spent the night in prison. That morning they had come before a magistrate: the charges were conspiracy to defraud against the three of them on two counts, the agency and the hostels; and also individual charges of obtaining money by false pretences against each on the two counts again. Nothing had been done except hear evidence of arrest and grant bail. The amount was fixed at £250 for each, and independent sureties of £250. This we had provided for in advance. Eden had arranged for two of his friends to transmit money raised by Morcom, Rachel, Roy Calvert and myself. For George and Jack, we had also been compelled to provide their personal surety; for Olive, a friend of her uncle’s had been willing to stand. The next hearing was fixed for 29 December.

I knew it would be good professional judgment to hold our hand in the police court on the twenty-ninth and let the case go for trial. I wanted to persuade them of this course at once; so I arranged to meet them at George’s that same night.

When I got there, George was alone. I was shocked by his manner. He was apathetic and numbed; he stared at the fire with his unseeing, in-turned gaze. I could not stir him into interest over the tactics.

He was in a state that I could not reach. As he stared at the fire I waited for the others to come. I had scarcely noticed anything in the room but his accounts, the last evening I spent there; now I saw that, while everyone else was living more luxuriously, this sitting-room had scarcely altered since I first set foot in it.

Then Olive came in.

She said: ‘I told you not to worry. You see how right I was.’

‘It might have been better if you had told me the truth—’ I was seeing her for the first time since the inquiries, but I was immediately at ease with her.

‘I didn’t know—’ Then she realised that George was sunk into himself, and she tried to restore his defiance.

‘It’s nasty finding a traitor, George.’ With her usual directness, she went straight into his suffering. ‘But a man like you is bound to collect envy. The wonder is, there’s not been more.’

She used also a bullying candour.

‘We may have weeks of this. We mustn’t let each other forget it.’

I felt she had done this before. And, as George was fighting against the despair, her instinct led her to another move.

She said: ‘It’s not going to be pleasant, is it? The twenty-ninth. You know, I simply couldn’t realise what it would be like. Being ashamed and afraid in public. Until this morning. Yet sometimes it seemed perfectly ordinary. I felt that, last night in jail. Of course, it hasn’t properly begun to happen yet. I only hope I get through it when it really comes.’

‘You’ll be better than any of us,’ George said.

‘I hope I shan’t let you down,’ she said. ‘You see’ — she suddenly turned to me—’you can’t believe how childish you find yourself in times like this. This is true, it happened this morning. I could face the thought that the worst might come to the worst. We might get twelve months. Then I felt a lump in my throat. I hadn’t been near crying before, since it all began. Do you know why I was now? It had just occurred to me they might have had the decency to put it off until Christmas was over.’

She achieved her purpose; for George, with the curious rough comradeship that he had always shown towards her, made an effort to encourage her.

As soon as Jack entered, I was able to discuss the tactics. I argued that we must keep our defence back: there was no chance of getting the case dismissed in the police court: we should only give our points away.

In fact there was really no alternative: as a lawyer as able as George would have been the first to see. But tonight George broke out: ‘You’ve got to defend it in the police court. It’s essential to get it dismissed out of hand.’

Several times he made these outbursts, damning the prosecution as ‘ludicrous’, attacking it from all angles — as he had done since the alarm began. Some of his attacks were good law, and I had learned from them in my preparation of our case; some were fantastically unreal, the voices of his persecuted imagination. Tonight, however, there seemed another reason in the heart of his violence.

Jack detected the reason before I did. He interrupted George brusquely; I felt, not knowing whether I was right, that some of their meetings had gone like that, when the three of them were actually conducting their business.

Jack asked a few masterful, businesslike questions: ‘You think there’s no option? We’ve clearly got to let it go for trial?’

‘Yes.’

‘There’s no possible way of arranging it now?’

‘It’s practically certain to be sent on.’

‘Everyone else thinks the same? Eden and the others?’

‘Yes.’

‘I entirely disagree,’ said George.

Jack turned on him.

‘We know what you’re thinking of,’ said Jack. ‘You’re not concerned about getting us off. You just believe that will happen. What you’re frightened of — is that your private life may be dragged out. And your precious group. The whole thing for you is wrapped up with your good intentions. You ought to realise that we haven’t got time for those now.’

Jack had spoken freshly, intimately, brutally; George did not reply, and for minutes sat in silence.

Jack walked up and down the room. He talked a good deal, and assumed that the tactics were settled.

‘If I’d had the slightest idea the hostels would come back on us — I could have worked it out some other way,’ he said. ‘It would have been just as easy. There was no earthly reason for choosing the way I did. If anyone had told me there was the faintest chance that I was letting us in for this — waiting—’

‘You needn’t blame yourself. More than us,’ said Olive.

‘I’m not blaming myself. Except for not looking after everything. Next time I do anything, I shall keep it all in my hands.’

‘Next time. We’ve got a long way to go before then,’ said Olive.

‘I’m not so sure,’ said Jack. He sat down by her side.

She looked at him with the first sign of violent strain she had shown that night. I knew she feared that he was thinking of escape: as I had feared the moment he spoke of Morcom’s offer.

‘We can make something of it,’ she said.

‘I suppose we can.’

‘You’re afraid there’s a bad patch to go through first?’

‘I shan’t be sorry when it’s over.’ He laid a hand on her knee, with a gesture for him clumsy and grateful. He was dominating the room no longer. He said: ‘I always told you I should get into the public eye. But I didn’t imagine it on such a grand scale.’

It surprised me that he, as much as George, was full of the fear of disgrace. Often of disgrace in its most limited sense — the questions, the appearance in the dock, the hours of being exposed to the public view. They would be open to all eyes in court. Jack could imagine himself cutting a dash — and yet he showed as great a revulsion as George himself.

‘Anyway, we’ve got some time,’ said Jack. ‘When are the assizes, actually?’

Then George spoke: ‘I can’t accept the view that this is bound to go beyond the police court. I have thought over your objections, and I refuse to believe that they hold water.’

‘We’ve told you why you refuse to believe it,’ said Jack casually. But there came an unexpected flash of the George of years before. He said loudly: ‘I don’t regard you as qualified to hold an opinion. This is a point of legal machinery, and Lewis and I are the only people here capable of discussing it. I don’t propose to give you the responsibility.’

‘Jack is right,’ said Olive. ‘You’re thinking of nothing but the group.’

‘I’m thinking of ending this affair with as little danger as possible to all concerned,’ said George. ‘It’s true that I have to take other people into account. But, from every point of view, this ought to be settled in the police court. Of course, wherever it’s tried, if they understood the law of evidence, our private lives are utterly irrelevant. But in certain circumstances they might find an excuse to drag them into the court. In the police court they can’t go so far. Lewis can make them keep their malice to themselves.’

‘Is that true?’ said Olive.

I hesitated.

‘I don’t think they will bring it up there. They will be too busy with the real evidence.’

‘You’re still quite certain that, even if we show our defence, they’ll clearly send us for trial?’ said Jack.

‘You’re exaggerating the case against us,’ said George. ‘And even if you weren’t, it’s worth the risk. I admit that I want to save other people from unpleasantness as well as myself. But since you’re so concentrated on practical results’ — he said to Jack — ‘I might remind you that our chances are considerably better if that unpleasantness is never raised.’

Olive asked: ‘Do you agree?’

‘If there were a decent chance of finishing it in the police court,’ I said, ‘of course George would be right. But I can’t believe—’

‘You can’t pretend there’s no chance of finishing it,’ George said. ‘I want you to give a categorical answer.’

The others looked at me. I said: ‘I can’t say there’s no chance. There may be one in ten. We can’t rule it out for certain.’

‘Then I insist that we leave the possibility open. I reject the suggestion that we automatically let it go for trial. If you see a chance, even if it’s not absolutely watertight, we shall want you to take it.’ George raised his voice, and spoke to the other two in the assertive, protective tone of former days: ‘You’ve got to understand it’s important for both of you. As well as myself. You realise that the prejudice against us might decide the case.’

‘So long as they get us off the fraud—’ Jack said.

‘I’ve got to impress on you that the sort of prejudice they may raise is going to be the greatest obstacle to getting us off the fraud,’ George said. ‘You can’t separate them. That’s why I insist on every conceivable step being taken to finish it before they can insult us in the open.’

Olive said to me: ‘George is convincing me.’

I said: ‘I can’t go any further than this: if there’s any sign of a chance on the twenty-ninth, I’ll go for it. But I warn you, there’s not the slightest sign so far.’

Jack said: ‘If we let you do that, it isn’t for George’s reasons. You realise that?’ he said to George. ‘You can’t expect—’

George said: ‘I intend to be listened to. I’ve let you override me too easily before. This time it’s too important to allow myself to be treated as you want.’

28: The Twenty-Ninth of December

THEY appeared before the magistrates’ court in the town hall on 29 December 1932.

In the week before, I had gone over the whole case with Eden and Hotchkinson. I explained to them that, if the unlikely happened and a chance opened, I might risk going for an acquittal on the spot. They both disagreed; I knew that they were right and that they thought I was losing my judgment; for I could not give them the real reason. I was contemplating a risk which, on the legal merits of the case, I should never have taken.

Eden was puzzled, for he knew that I had the case analysed and mastered. It was not an intricate one, but slightly untidy in a legal sense. It depended on a few points of fact, not at all on points of law.

The substance of the case was this: the evidence of fraud over the agency was slight, apart from one definite fact, the discordant information upon the circulation of the Arrow. The evidence over the farm and hostels was much stronger, but with no such definite fact. There were several suspicious indications, but the transactions had been friendly, with no written documents except the receipts. (The largest loans were two sums of £750 each from acquaintances of Jack’s, and £500 from Miss Geary.)

There existed no record of the information which was supposed to have been given. This was, so the prosecution were to claim, deliberately untrue in two ways: (1) by the receipts of the hostels being falsely quoted — those of the farm itself, by manipulating the figures of the money spent there by George and his friends from ’24 to ’31; (2) by Jack pretending to have managed such hostels himself and giving details on that authority.

The prosecution could produce, over the farm business, several consistent and interrelated stories. The total effect was bound to be strong. But they did not possess an indisputable concrete piece of evidence.

It was that singularly which threw the story of the Arrow into relief. When Jack had approached people to borrow money to buy the agency, George had proved its soundness by showing them a definite figure for the circulation. He had put this figure on paper; and his statement had come into the hands of the prosecution. They were out to show that it was deliberately false.

That figure was the most concrete fact they held. Apart from it, they might have omitted the count of the agency altogether.

I have anticipated a little here. We did not possess the structure of the case so completely when we went into the police court on the twenty-ninth.

Before we had been there an hour, I knew, as any lawyer must have known, that we had no choice. It would go for trial; we were compelled to reserve our defence.

The man opposite built up a case that, although we could have delayed it, was not going to be dismissed. During the morning, everyone began to realise that nothing could be settled; Olive told me later that she felt a release from anxiety — as soon as she was certain that this could not be a decisive day.

The prosecution ran through their witnesses. The first was one of the four whom Jack had induced to lend money to buy the advertising firm, a slow-voiced man with kindly and stupid brown eyes.

‘Mr Cotery made a definite statement about the firm’s customers?’ asked T—, the prosecutor.

‘Yes.’

‘He mentioned the previous year’s turnover?’

‘Yes.’

‘Also the number of advertisers the firm were agents for?’

‘Yes.’

After other questions, he asked whether Jack referred to the circulation of Martineau’s advertising paper.

‘Yes.’

‘Can you reproduce that statement?’

‘I made a note of it at the time.’

‘Will you give me the figures?’

He read them out. The figure of the circulation sounded unfamiliar: I remembered it in George’s account as 5300; now it appeared as 6000. I looked up my own papers and found that I was right.

‘Didn’t those figures strike you as large?’

‘They did.’

‘What did Mr Cotery say?’

‘He said they’d be larger still now Mr Martineau had disappeared and his religious articles would be pushed out of the paper.’ There were some chuckles.

‘Did you ask for some guarantees?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will you tell us exactly what you did?’

‘I asked Mr Cotery if he could show me what these figures were based on. So he introduced me to Mr Passant, who told me that he was a solicitor and had a good deal to do with figures and had known the former owner of the agency, Mr Martineau. He said he had received a statement from Mr Martineau giving the actual circulation. It was not 6000. Mr Cotery had been a little too optimistic, it was just over 5000. He offered to show me his notes of this statement. And if I were doubtful he promised to trace Mr Martineau, who had gone away, and get him to write to me.’

‘Did you take advantage of that offer?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I didn’t see any reason to. I had known Mr Cotery for some time, I felt sure it was all above board. I could see Mr Passant knew what he was talking about.’

The other witnesses followed with the information that T— had foretold in his speech; similar stories to the first, some including Olive. Then an accountant brought out some figures of the agency’s business, in particular those of the Arrow: ‘What was the average circulation in the year 1927?’

‘Eleven hundred per week. So far as I can tell. The books are not very complete.’

‘What would you say was the maximum possible for that year? Making every allowance you can?’

‘Perhaps fifteen hundred.’ This had been threatened in the speech.

They brought up witnesses against the farm. It was at this stage we realised for certain the legal structure of the case. Essentially the story was the same. George had taken a less prominent part, Olive substantially more. The information which Jack had given his investors was more complicated, not easy to contradict by a single fact; but several men attacked it piece by piece. Jack had asked advice about the business from a man who ran a hostel himself in another part of the country; the accounts he had given second-hand of this interview were different from the other’s remembrance of it. The statistics of visitors to the farm before 1929 were compared — though here there were some uncertainties — with those given by George and Jack to several witnesses.

At lunch time I said to George: ‘If we defend it today — it is bound to go for trial.’

He argued bitterly, but his reason was too strong in the end.

‘You’d better play for safety,’ he said. ‘Though I still insist there are overwhelming advantages in getting it wiped off now.’

‘If we try that,’ I said, ‘there’ll be a remand for a week or two. We shall have to show our hand. And they’ll still send the case on.’

‘If these magistrates were trained as they ought to be,’ said George, ‘instead of amateurs who are feeling proud of themselves for doing their civic duty, we could fight it out.’

He turned away. ‘As it is, you’d better play for safety.’

I told Eden and Hotchkinson. Eden said: ‘I always thought you’d take the sensible view before it was too late.’

When the prosecution’s case was finished I made the formal statement that there was no case to go before the jury, but that the nature of the defence could not be disclosed.

The three were committed for trial at the next assizes; bail was renewed for each of them in the same amounts.

29: Newspapers Under a Reading Lamp

THE local papers were lying on a chair in Eden’s dining-room when I got back from the court. Under the bright reading lamp, their difference of colour disappeared — though I remembered from childhood the faint grey sheen of one, the yellow tinge in the other. On both of the front pages, the police court charge flared up.

There was a photograph of Olive. ‘Miss Calvert, a well-known figure in town social circles, the daughter of the late James Calvert, J P’… ‘Mr Passant, a qualified solicitor and a lecturer in the Technical College and School of Art’…a paragraph about myself. The reports were fair enough.

Everything in them would inevitably have been recorded in any newspaper of a scandal in any town. They were a highest common factor of interest; they were what any acquaintance, not particularly friendly or malign, would tell his friends, when he heard of the event. But it was because of that, because I could find nothing in the reports themselves to expend my anger on, that they brought a more hopeless sense of loneliness and enmity.

‘Allegations against Solicitor.’ The pitiful inadequacy of it all! The timorous way in which the news, the reporters, the people round us, we ourselves (for the news is merely our own voice) need to make shapes and counters out of human beings in order not to endanger anything in ourselves. George Passant is not George Passant; he is not the man rooted in as many complexities as we are ourselves, as bewildering in action and yet taking himself as much for granted as we do ourselves; he is not the man with his own private history, desires, mannerisms, perversities like our own, cowardice and braveries, odd habits of mind different from ours but of the same family, delights and, like us all, private oddities in love — a man of flesh and bone, as real as ourselves. He is not that; if he were, our own identity and uniqueness would have gone.

To most of the town tonight George is ‘a solicitor accused of fraud’. ‘I hope they get him’; a good many men, as kind-hearted as any of us can ever be, said at the time that I was reading. We are none of us men of flesh and bone except to ourselves.

Should I have had that reflection later in my life? Maybe I should have thought it over-indulgent. For in time behaviour took on a significance to me at least as great as inner nature. It was a change in me: not necessarily an increase in wisdom, but certainly in severity: a hardening: not a justification, but a change.

Excusing myself from dinner, I went to George’s. He was alone listening to the wireless by the fire. ‘Hallo,’ he said. His cheeks were pale, and the day’s beard was showing. He seemed tired and lifeless.

‘I didn’t know whether anyone would come round,’ he said.

Jack and Olive entered as we were sitting in silence. Although there was a strained note in his laugh, Jack came as a relief.

‘We’d better do something,’ he said. ‘It isn’t every day one’s sent for trial—’

‘You fool,’ cried Olive and put her arm round his waist.

Soon the room was crowded. Roy came in, Daphne, several of those I had seen at the farm in September. They had made a point of collecting here tonight. George whispered to Daphne for a while, and then, as the others addressed him with a pretence of casualness, he said: ‘I didn’t expect you all.’ He was embarrassed, uncontrollably grateful for the show of loyalty.

Jack laughed at him. ‘Never mind that. We’ve got to amuse them now they’re here. This has got to be a night.’

A girl replied with a sly, hungry joke. There was a thundery uneasiness. The air was full of the hysteria of respite from strain, friendliness mixed with the fear of persecution and the sting of desire. We left the room, and packed into Olive’s car and Roy’s and another young man’s. In the early days none of us thought of owning a car. We were poorer then; but now even the younger members of the group were not willing to take their poverty so cheerfully for granted.

We drove to a public house outside the town. The streets were still shining with the lights of Christmas week; a bitterly cold wind blew clouds across the sky; the stars were pale. As Olive drove us past the last tramlines, she took a corner very fast, swerved across the road, so that for a second we were blinded in a headlight, and then brought us away by a foot — a flash of light and the road again.

‘Silly,’ Olive cried.

In this mood, I thought, she could kill herself without it being an accident. Once or twice in our lives, we all know times when some part of ourselves desires to turn the wheel into a crash; just as we shiver on a height, feel the deathwish, force ourselves from the edge.

At the public house they were quickly drunk, helped by their excitement; Olive and Jack danced on the bar floor, a rough whirling apache dance. Everyone was restless. As the night passed, some of them drove to another town, but before midnight almost the entire party had gathered in Rachel’s flat.

‘They can’t do much harm now,’ said Rachel. ‘It’s a good job there’s somewhere safe for them to come.’ The flat took up the top storey of an unoccupied house near the station. Rachel had become secretary of her firm, and it was her luxury to entertain George’s friends, while she watched them with good-natured self-indulgence.

Olive and I stayed in the inner room. Through the half-open sliding doors we saw some of the girls and heard George’s voice throwing out drunken and passionate praise. Jack came to Olive.

‘When are we going home?’

‘Not yet,’ she said. She was smiling at him. Her words were as full of excitement as George’s. ‘You want to stay, don’t you?’

He laughed — but suddenly I felt that he had become dependent on her. He went back, and from our sofa she could see him caressing a girl, and at the same time attracting the attention of the room.

Olive’s eyes followed him.

‘I don’t mind that as much as I did once,’ she said to me. She added: ‘He isn’t as drunk as the rest of us. He never has liked drinking, you know. He’s as — temperate as Arthur. It’s queer they both should be.’ She went on talking quickly about Morcom, among the noise of the other room.

‘You know,’ she went on, ‘I never felt he was such a strong man as the others did. I liked him, of course.’ Then she said: ‘He wasn’t my first lover, perhaps you don’t know that. You knew me best when I was still frightened of my virginity, didn’t you? Strange how strong that was. But it wasn’t strong enough—’ She looked into the room with a half-smile. ‘Jack seduced me one night—’

‘When?’ I had not known.

‘Before my father died.’

‘Were you attached to Jack, then? I didn’t think—’

‘I was always fond of him, of course. But not in the way that’s got hold of me since,’ she said. ‘No, it just happened — we met in London somehow. He never was a man to fail for want of trying. I had one or two weekends with him, afterwards. At odd times. You know how erratic he used to be. It didn’t matter much, just for once he’d think it might be a good idea.’

‘And you?’

‘Sometimes I refused. In the end, I was driven back, though. I suppose one’s always driven back. Then I didn’t see him for a long time.’

‘What about Arthur, then?’

‘I’d thought a lot of him. I’d heard from him all the time we were away. Then when I came back, he wanted me more than ever. Just then I didn’t see why not.’

‘She paused. ‘You’ve no idea how hard a time it was. He was jealous, madly jealous at times. Of anyone I seemed to like. And I couldn’t help it, I kept playing on it. There were times when he was so jealous that he only got any rest when we were sleeping together. I drove him to that. He wanted me not really to make love — just to be sure of me. And I couldn’t help the little hints, that would set him off tearing himself with suspicion—’

I know,’ I said.

She said: ‘He used to treat me rough now and then. I didn’t mind that, sometimes I want it. You’ve guessed that, haven’t you? But even then I couldn’t believe the will was there.’ She went on: ‘We didn’t reach happiness. We both deteriorated, we were both worse people. Counting it all up, I don’t know who got hurt more. I can’t bear to think of his life just then; jealousy going on and on. It was like that in the old days, of course. Funny that he was always more jealous of Jack than anyone else. Even when there was no reason for it in the world.’

And so you left him and went to Jack?’ I said.

It was bound to hurt him — more than if I had gone to anyone else,’ she said. ‘But that had nothing to do with it. I tell you, I was really in love for the first time in my life.’ She added: ‘You’ve seen me with Jack. I want you to tell me that I’m not deceiving myself.’

I know you love him—’

But you think it isn’t simple — even now?’ She broke out. ‘I’ll confess something. When I went to Jack — I was certain that I belonged to him — I still wondered whether it was because of Arthur. That kept coming back. You imagine, it came back when Jack was after a new girl, when I wanted him and felt ashamed of myself. But I’m certain that I belong to him more than ever. It would have happened, if I’d never let Arthur come near me. I know it isn’t simple, it isn’t just a love affair. I expect he would prefer to have picked up one of those girls in there. I’ve had too many nights when I’ve wanted to break it off — and still been making plans for keeping him. But neither of us had any choice—’

Olive’s nerves were tightened with fatigue, fear, the laughs of hysterical enjoyment from the outer room. But she was exhilarated by putting Jack off, sitting within a few yards of his drunken party, and then confiding how much she needed him. She had thrown off any covering of self-pity, however. She seemed stronger than any of us. She was still cherishing some petty sufferings, as she had always done. Her longing for humility was real, but it sprang from the depth of her intense spiritual pride. No one could have mistaken — under the surface of her restless nervousness, full of the day’s degradation — still warmed and roused by Jack’s voice, tired as she was — that she was speaking from an inner certainty of herself.

If he quits before the trial, mind you, Lewis—’ she began.

I exclaimed.

You know that he’s thought of that?’

Of course I know,’ said Olive. ‘I’m not blind when I love. He’s thought of getting abroad. On the whole, I don’t think he’ll try.’

If he did?’

I should run after him. As soon as he cricked his finger. Whether he cricked his finger or not.’

I thought of George’s safety: when she asked, ‘How easy is it — for us to get abroad?’ I kept the details out of my answer.

Just then I heard George’s voice above the rest. The partition had slid further back, and from our room we could see him; he was half-lying on a sofa with Daphne on his knee, one arm round her; in the other hand he held a glass. He had begun to sing at the top of his voice, so violently his hand shook and the spirit kept spurting out.

Daphne jumped from his knee, and stood behind the sofa, trying to quieten him. He sang on: the words were so loud that I could not disentangle them, but it sounded like one of his father’s hymns.

There’s George,’ said Olive.

She watched him.

Some people once thought there might be something between us. They were stupid. We’ve never had the slightest feeling for each other.’ She went on: ‘I know what you were afraid of a minute ago. If Jack flew, I should be ready to desert George. That’s true. Yet he’s been close to me — in a way I’ve never understood.’

She got up, and walked into the other room. Some of them looked in Jack’s direction, expecting her to go there. But she went and stood by George. I had not seen her touch him, not once in those years.Now she dropped on her knees by the sofa, and took his hand in hers.

30: George’s Diary

I left them at three o’clock. Some hours later, when I was still in bed, a telephone message came from the hospital: would I go to the children’s clinic at once? Morcom was on duty there, he urgently wanted to see me. The streets were filling up as I went out; out of the shops, women bustled by, their cheeks pink in the frost. The indifference of the scene, the comfort, like a Breughel picture, only brought out my anxiety. It was an actual relief to see Morcom’s face, meeting me with a look of question and acute strain.

He could ask nothing; a nurse was in the room, and a batch of boys, round the age of twelve or so. As I watched, it was his gentleness which fascinated me. They responded to him immediately, with shrill, high, squealing laughs. With the nurse he was sharply efficient: but, as he talked to the boys, his manner became natural and self-effacing, so that they gathered round him, their nervousness gone, chaffing him. Some of them had noticed his pallor: ‘Have you got a headache, Mr Morcom?’

‘Were you out on the spree last night, Mr Morcom?’

Then, as he took me into his office, his expression changed.

‘Were you with them last night?’

I nodded.

‘What do they think?’

‘They’ve a good idea what the chances are.’

‘Has George?’ asked Morcom.

‘Yes.’

‘You talked of Jack escaping, the first night this began. Why don’t you suggest it to George?’

I hesitated.

‘It wouldn’t be easy,’ I said.

‘Easy! You of all people talk of it not being easy — when you know what the alternative is.’

‘I know—’

‘But you won’t go to George.’

‘I can’t,’ I said.

‘It’s his fault,’ said Morcom. ‘It’s that madman’s fault.’

‘It’s no use blaming anyone now.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s too late to talk about George’s fault. Or yours. Or mine for not stopping it,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Morcom.

‘If you had gone back that night and taken care of them, this might never have happened. That night you warned me, and I begged you to go back. If you had only been able to forget your self-respect,’ I said.

My voice had gone harsh like his; he heard me say what he was continually thinking; he was relieved. His face became softened. He said, in a casual, almost light-hearted tone: ‘That wouldn’t have been so easy, either.’ He paused, then said: ‘The only thing is, what’s to be done? There’s still some time.’

‘I don’t think there’s anything you can do,’ I said. ‘They will have to wait for the trial.’

‘You’ll be busy with the case?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re lucky.’ Then he said: ‘I’ve not asked you before. But are you as likely to get them off — as anyone we could find?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘If we could afford to pay.’

‘I ought to have been told that. I’ll give the money—’

‘I’ve thought it out — as dispassionately as I can,’ I said. ‘I don’t think the difference is worth the money. For one reason. Money may be more important afterwards. If we’ve spent every penny—’

‘You mean, if they’re convicted—’

‘We’ve got to be ready,’ I said.

That afternoon, when I was sitting alone in the drawing-room at Eden’s, Daphne visited me. She talked of the previous night.

‘It was rather an orgy, wasn’t it?’ she said. ‘Of course, you didn’t see it after it really began—’ She mentioned a common acquaintance, and said: ‘Of course, it would have sent her away for good, wouldn’t it? But then she’s “upright”. I can’t help respecting her, you know, when I’m not relapsing like last night.’ Then she said: ‘But I’m being silly, wasting your time. In the middle of this horror. It’s as bad as going mad last night. But that happened because we were in this mess, didn’t it?’

The shrewdness shot through the prattle of her talk, and her eyes, often flirtatious, were steady and sensible. ‘That’s just why I’ve come up to see you now. I’m getting a bit worked up.’

‘Go on.’

‘You’re easy to talk to, aren’t you?’ she said (coquettishness returned for a second; her upper lip puckered). ‘I shan’t be terribly helpful, you know. It’s just to get it off my chest. But anyway, it’s like this. When George first thought of making passes at me he wanted me to know the awful secrets of his life. He was certain that I should be shocked,’ she went on. ‘I oughtn’t to laugh at him, poor dear. He was serious about it. It must have been a struggle. When he decided it was the right thing to do, he went ahead — though he fancied he was taking a risk. He really believed he might lose me.’ She smiled.

‘Well, do you know what he did?’ she said. ‘He insisted on giving me his diary. It’s a staggering document. I expect I enjoyed the pieces he thought I’d mind. But there are some I can’t always laugh away. I’ve brought it along.’ (She had placed a small despatch case on the floor.) ‘I want you to look at it for me—’ She sat on the arm of my chair; the arrangement of the first page, as her finger pointed out an entry, seemed identical with those George himself showed me years ago.

First she made me read a series of passages about the agency; quite soon after they bought it, it seemed that George was troubled about the circulation of the Arrow — ‘it cannot conceivably have reached the figure that Martineau gave me in good faith’. The set of entries went on for several pages: neither of us spoke as I read it.

‘That’s all about that business,’ said Daphne. ‘I don’t know what it means. But I couldn’t rest till you’d seen it. I thought you might need it for the case—’ then she broke off. ‘Will you read some more? While I’m here?’

There was little else directly bearing on the case in the entries Daphne selected. I saw only a few perfunctory references to his job at Eden’s, and little more about the ‘enterprises’ with Jack and Olive. On the whole, I was surprised that they had seemed to matter so little.

Daphne, in fact, had not brought the diary only to ask about the case. I was not even certain what she inferred from the first entries she had pointed out. Sensibly, she had determined to reveal them to me as his lawyer. Whether she thought George guilty, I did not know. But she was obviously affected by other parts of his confessions.

She was deeply fond of him, and in a youthful, shrewd and managing way she was trying to plan their future life. She felt lost, as she read some passages which a more completely experienced woman might have found alien. Actually Daphne, though lively and sensual, was also sentimental and full of conventional dreams. In imagination, she was contriving a happy marriage with George.

I hesitated. Then I thought she had enough natural insight to stand something of the truth. I tried to explain some of the contradictions in his life as honestly as I could. I regretted it, for I hurt her; and she said goodbye, still convinced that she knew him better than I.

She left the entire diary with me, from 1922 to the month before the preliminary inquiries. I went on reading it for hours. To any intimate of George’s, who accepted by habit the strange appearance of his life, it would have been moving. To me, it carried the irretrievability of the past, along with a life close to one’s own in affection and pity — and so far away that it brought a desolation of loneliness.

I looked back for the first reference to the group, and read again the early ‘justification’ which he had shown me that night at the farm, in 1925. There was much more about the School and his friends in that tone, for years afterwards. In 1927, soon after his disappointment in the firm, he was writing:

The family have at last partially got rid of their conception of me as selfish — and he in particular appreciates my care and devotion, in his eagerness to give the world its due. Olive has gone, Mona has just become engaged, many of them have gone: but there are others, there are some closer to me than there have ever been. I find I have been writing of them all this holiday. If anything can be inferred from these expressions of my feelings, I have been useful to these people at the School. There are signs that freedom is life. And three years ago I was groaning inwardly at my distance from my friends. I was watching them from afar.

Then, still explaining to himself the divisions of his emotional life, he returned to the town, and for several weekends in Nottingham and London passed an ‘equinox’ of sensuality.

This randy fit is going on too long. Last night I could not resist taking the train to London. I was inflamed by the vision of one of our prettiest s — f—s, I found my little girl of 1921, older and more dilapidated, but with the same touching curve of the lips.

Tonight it was still on me. I took the familiar train to Nottingham. I found a pair of old friends in the first pub and spent a half-hour of pleasure looking at Pauline’s face; but they were booked, and I was not in a mood to award free sherry for ever, so I moved on. I have hazy recollections of hordes of women that I kissed. I finished up drunk in the train three or four hours ago. And as we came to the scattered lights outside the town, I thought that everything worthwhile in my life I had invested in this place.

It was in the following autumn that they bought the agency. George’s references to the group in the next two years became far more varied: at times impatient, moved by Jack, ‘urging me on to his own freedom. Wanting me to destroy the only thing I have ever made. Yet he is a lover of life, he has given me his warm companionship for years, he looks into the odd corners of living’ (17 November 1928).

During that autumn, also, a girl called Katherine Faulkner entered the society — usually referred to in the diary as K. For some time she was only mentioned casually.

A NEW VENTURE

16 OCTOBER 1928

CONTRACT SIGNED

Today Jack, Olive and I took over the agency, that curious stage in Martineau’s mad progress. It is to be hoped it does well. Money is a perpetual nuisance: why should I, who care so little for it, have it always dragging round my neck? I have hopes that Jack will win us new comforts. Of course, I am not as optimistic as they all think. I remember his bad luck and bad management with that absurd first attempt of his. But he is still capable of success: it is time we had the luck on our side.

2 DECEMBER 1928

JACK AGAIN

Jack is busy and active and full of ideas. A little money has come in already. Today it struck me as strange that Jack, of all my friends, should have been close at my side for the longest time. He was indulging in one of his new attacks on the group. ‘Why don’t you see what people really want?’

He does not trouble to conceal that he includes me among them. He does not pretend to share my hopes nowadays: he would like me to follow him with his suburban girls. Yet all this sadistic nonsense of his does not seem to interrupt our alliance.

4 DECEMBER 1928

ARGUMENT

Jack brought in a friend tonight who made a fierce emotional case for immortality. Lewis, in the old days, would have shrugged his shoulders, but I enjoyed the talk. On the train afterwards, going to this petty little case — I’m tired of being foisted off with Eden’s drudgery — I remember that it was the first argument with a stranger for many months.

The group is taking up all my energy — more even than it did in the first flush of youthful zeal, religious years that are not quite repeated now. If Jack were not obsessed with his own pleasures, he would see how that answers his attacks.

6 DECEMBER 1928

A FEW HOURS SNATCHED FOR MYSELF

I thought it was perhaps a mistake not to keep a tiny fraction of my interests away from the ‘little world’. I sometimes wish that Lewis were here for a day of two. So on the train I read some calculus with immense excitement. Why wasn’t I told about these things at school? Also ‘Clissold’; Wells is childish in politics, but there are moments when he feels for the whole common soul of man.

Yet I have found little time for anything outside the group now.

During the next few weeks, he wrote those entries about the circulation which Daphne had showed me at first. I put them aside to think over again.

22 FEBRUARY 1929

COLLAPSE

I appeared before the School Committee, asking for money for the brightest man since Lewis’ day. It was a horrible fiasco. Cameron was unnecessarily offensive. The cleric Martineau scored at my expense. I am not so effective as I used to be. I can still hear that grotesque display, and I feel like blinding all the damned night through.

1 MARCH 1929

I COME TO GRIPS AGAIN

TOO EASILY DOWNCAST

Things have not been perfect. I have not quite the usual satisfaction of work well done. The débâcle of my appearance before the committee, another storm of lust, Jack’s contempt for the ‘hole-and-corner’ way in which I indulge my passions, have all played their part. Jack hints also that Olive has begun an affair with Morcom of all people, to whom I have scarcely spoken a private word for months. It may take her away from our little business venture, and it’s a piece of wanton irritation. However, I ought to be able to ignore it.

The sight of K, smiling at the farm, a different person from what she was three months ago, is enough to remove any memories of Olive as anything more than a friendly, competent person, who is some help to Jack and myself.

After a walk in the beautiful rain-sodden evening, I have felt again the essential urge to live among these people. My course is set and my mind made up. Jack’s friendship is valuable, but his influence must be despised. I see it clearly now.

2 MARCH 1929

K and the others made this the most perfect weekend I have ever known. They were alive, we were all on terms of absolute confidence. I was overwhelmed with happiness, unqualified happiness, such happiness as comes unawares and only in rare moments. I was bathed in the warmth of joyous living, so that any trouble seemed incredible.

18 APRIL 1929

Next weekend, so I have just heard, some clod has rented the farm and we cannot be accommodated. Why in heaven should I be denied what is my food and life by the sheer inconsequent whim of some unknown fool?

Although he did not admit it for some months, it was probably about this time that he became engrossed in Katherine — in love with her, perhaps. Never before, at any rate, had any girl in the group meant as much: Mona, now married to an acquaintance of Jack’s, had only been one of many ‘fancies’. In the diary about this date he dismissed her: ‘She was a bright little thing. I could have slept with her if my theory had permitted it — I suppose Jack did not feel any scruples’. There had been another girl, Phyllis, who had by this time finished her training as an elementary schoolmistress, and taken a job in the county; George had toyed half-heartedly with the idea of marrying her, a couple of years back.

But Katherine moved him far more deeply: she came upon him when he was trying to maintain all his ideals over the ‘little world’.

I never met her, or knew much of her, except that she was very poor and possessed the delicate and virginal beauty which most excited George. He struggled against recognising the passion. After that outburst over the farm, he tried to miss the group’s meetings there. He found himself in one of his whirls of womanising, unusually long drawn out.

RELAPSES

7 MAY

FACES IN LONDON

Somehow I have not got the School and the group in my bones as I used to have. This is strange after the promise of a month ago. I am in a tangle of desires, scattering money more frantically in than ever did. I met Winnie in Oxford Street: she is one of the nicest girls I have managed to know. Curious — her face comes and goes. Why? (Peggy’s went long since. Dorothy’s went, also the Cambridge girl, and the Bear Street one. It needs some effort to recall Hilda.)

(The names were all of women he had picked up on the streets.)

21 MAY

I am still a libido, though I get some joy from life. No moralising; things happen well when they do happen. Last night it was the old crowd in Nottingham. Some of the old hands are in trouble. Connie owes to a moneylender, poor soul. Thelma sees financial ruin coming. I told her that the ‘good wife and mother stunt’ is off. Why am I so attracted by prostitutes? I finished up with Pat, Connie’s successor and the best of all.

3 JUNE

RETURN TO THE GROUP

I have wrestled with repentance. Late though it be, I am wholly in love with the group again. I came back to a weekend at the farm — my first for a month — with extraordinary gratitude that they should receive me with a show of happiness and admiration. Jack was not there, and I am ashamed to say that made me easier in mind. They seem to respect me. Little do they know that I am really the prodigal son.

4 JUNE

I think I am in love with K. I cannot write until I have thought it out.

6 JUNE

I still cannot see my way clear. For hours I have rehearsed renunciatory speeches to myself. Yet I know I shall never make them. About one thing I must be certain, now and whatever happens in the future; nothing must impair any single person near me. I am beginning to think I have never been in love before — in my purely selfish life, it is the greatest thing that has happened. But that is a trifle beside the people I can still look after. If I neglect that work, there is nothing left of me except an ordinary man and a handful of sensations.

10 JUNE

I met K by accident tonight. She shook hands as we parted. Her touch is like no other touch. In the whispering air I rode home to a quiet house.

From the diary one gained no clear impression of K. She was probably a complex and sensitive person, easily hurt and full of self-distrust. Her relation with George was strained and unhappy, almost from the beginning: ‘the only time I have been utterly miserable over a woman,’ he wrote. With the odd humour that came less often in his diary than in speech, he added on 24 July: ‘K let me hold her hand: but that may have been because there was no feeling in her arm’.

His distress and ‘longing’ (a word which entered frequently that summer) drove him more completely into the group. He resigned from the one or two organisations in the town to which he still belonged — five years before, he had taken part in many. He kept protesting against ‘extra work for Eden’. ‘I am a solicitor’s clerk. I do not consider I am under any obligation to do more than a competent solicitor’s clerk usually does. He has no call on me outside office hours.’

He ceased to mention his law lectures, in which he used to take so great a pride.

The same summer — Daphne, who was then nineteen, and Freda (the F of the accounts which George showed me early in the investigation) joined the group.

8 SEPTEMBER 1929

Last night saw what may be — what ought to be — the concluding stage in the K business. She let everyone see what she thought of me. Perhaps she will not come near us again. Jack, Rachel and Olive came to see me tonight. Rachel was all sympathy, and Olive did not disguise her own affair. When Rachel had gone, however, Olive got down to some of the agency’s accounts. They are rather good, though the trickle of money does not relieve my financial doldrums. It gives Jack a living, though. He was fine and high-handed about K. Either I ought to make love to her, he insisted, or she ought to be thrown out. I think that he was being genuinely warm-hearted, he was thinking only of my peace of mind.

But it is all very well for them to brandish their freedom. They have got to realise that I am in a different position. They say I have created the position and difficulty for myself. That makes it all the more essential.

14 SEPTEMBER

The meek don’t want the earth. Yet I have thought of her all day. Is it possible that she is anxious not to give herself away too cheaply? Or does she simply hate and despise me?

If I am not to have her, let me clear the lumber out of my heart and regain the old freedom. If I could only fall in love with Rachel — but this K business spoils every other relation.

17 SEPTEMBER

Martineau called in for an hour or two. He still wanders on his lonely, meaningless crusade, and remains his gentle self. I told him the agency was going adequately on. He did not seem interested. In the circumstances, I thought it unnecessary to say more. The family this evening asked me for more money: finance will soon be disastrous again.

28 SEPTEMBER

Perhaps K has gone for good. I have never been in so many troubles. I am baying at the moon. Sometimes the group itself seems like a futile little invention of my own. I am thoroughly despondent. The root of the trouble is a discontent which is not confined to me. There is money, which still harasses me. Apart from K, I begin to think the major cause of my present discontent lies in ambition. It will not be so easy to die in obscurity as I once thought.

3 OCTOBER

K is in a state of semi-return. Last night was the second weekend running in Nottingham, but if K comes back I need not go again. Pat’s face is too often a disembodied smile, wickedly turned up, saying ‘all right’ or ‘whisky’.

11 OCTOBER

We have had a good weekend at the farm. The people there were all living more abundantly than if I had never happened. I have despaired too easily. I still believe in them and myself, in spite of occasional tremors. In any case, what else could there be in life?

13 OCTOBER

K’s essence still comes between me and everything. Yet tonight I was infuriated by a blasted business acquaintance of Olive’s disregarding my presence and ignoring my intelligence. I cannot admit inferiority. It is an essential to my present poise that I should be supreme in intellect over anyone I meet.

17 OCTOBER

K is hardly apologetic over her refusal to attend another farm party. She would not explain, and now avoids me. I transferred a little of my affection to Freda, whose smile is sometimes like a faint reflection.

23 OCTOBER

K looked through me with cold eyes. I can’t pretend that I still have any hope.

(later the same night)

I shook myself out of this absurd and humiliating affair and took the train to Nottingham. Pat was as delightful as ever a girl of this kind could be — and, damn it, I like these girls better than any others.

30 OCTOBER

One of the best parties we have had, and sometimes I have managed to put K out of mind. The group is far better, I am afraid, with Jack not present.

Freda told me that my ‘half-closed’ eyes were (a) concerning K and Jack[1], and (b) to Rachel’s feeling about me. As for Rachel, she chose her way and I am sure she likes it best.

3 NOVEMBER

I find myself longing, as I never longed before. For all my fantasies, I do not suppose I should take her as a mistress, even if she would let me near her. I could not help walking the streets round her house, in the hope of seeing her by accident. I walked through a gathering fog, getting for a moment a feeling of exultation as I sped through the mist, weaving my dreams. Of course I did not see her: I went back to the old café, played four games of draughts, then came home and raved.

That was a couple of hours ago. Since then I have been reading some of the diaries of recent years. It has brought back some of the pleasure and hope I have gathered from these people. Some of them have gone before now, without being helped. But others are free people, a nucleus of friends, thinking and acting and living as no other group I am likely to know again.

That is my achievement, and nothing can take it from me. Jack and Olive, for all their faults and defections: Lewis Eliot, away in London — Phyllis and — and — and —: they’re all different for having known me and from my being able to spend my devotion. Well, that must go on — whatever distracts me by the way. Are there many men who have twenty better lives to their credit?

So let us not be sad. Personal misery is grotesque: and who am I to complain of losing one when there are so many to occupy my life? Really, I do not often worry about myself at all.

But the passion lasted — different from any in his life, and nearer to others’ experience. The same pattern of unhappiness, desire for freedom and return to K, ran through the diary for months.

13 DECEMBER

I take too little notice of people about me. By this wretched affair, I have hurt Rachel. Apart from business I scarcely ever see Olive. I am vexed with ever-absent money, tension about K, no fame. But K seems to have hinted to Jack that she would like to be reconciled: which news filled me with wild joy, though I was intensely annoyed by Jack’s remark — ‘She may think you too mad and dangerous.’

I am a little afraid of Jack at times.

This afternoon Freda said of K and me: ‘When you take a dislike to a person, imagination does the rest.’

5 JANUARY 1930

I wish I could feel for Freda instead of K. Sometimes I think I could: at least I could get comfort from her. But there again I should have other problems to face. I cannot control myself all these years, resist being laughed at by Jack, only to crash all my aspirations by my own deliberate action.

Anyway the question does not arise. With K it is an ache, a slow corroding pain.

I went off to see Pat, sick at heart. I had quite a pleasant time with her.

14 JANUARY

Tonight K broke her silence. I saw her quite by chance in Rachel’s flat — who, good soul, made a sarcastic remark and then went out. K began to talk. She did not apologise. After making myself incredibly late for everything else that evening, I went. But not before I had seen her smile, and felt a happiness that seemed unsensuous and perfect.

At times, by the way, she was wearisome and showed signs of being shallow — but I could hardly think of that.

The after effect has been to make me dream of Freda.

MY HAPPIEST DAY

15 JANUARY

Realising it It is very difficult to think of her as tangible.

The reconciliation and their ‘ethereal’ relations continued all that spring. It occupied much of the diary; for the rest he wrote far less of the constructive side of the group — with occasional reiterations that it was still ‘my major interest’.

Instead, he became more explicit about his ‘sensations’ — to begin with, the nights in Nottingham and London were minutely described. Then: ‘Jack and I are narrowing our attention to the libido. It is a long time since we talked of our friends in any other way. For myself, I still cannot limit my interest as he does in his frank fashion. Yet no man has lived more freely than Jack. I know they have often thought him a superficial person by the side of some of us. Perhaps that is not just.’

24 MARCH

Tonight Jack told me some of the stories of his conquests. Some I knew, of course; Mona, in the old days, and —. But Olive! I was astonished at that — though now it makes her Morcom adventure (which is probably ending) more explicable. And he made other hints — I was angry, I told him he had betrayed any decent code of friendship. But I cannot only be jealous. Haven’t I inveighed, time after time, against irrational conventions? I must think of his behaviour in the light of reason.

4 APRIL

Last night at the farm I arranged that Freda and I be left alone. And, of course, I made love to her. I felt an altogether marvellous delight — more of the mind than the flesh perhaps, but that was to be expected.

Today I am still in a state of joy — but sometimes now quite easy. I must reassure myself once for all. No one is a penny the worse. It will not interfere with my influence with them, for none of them will know. I am prepared to believe that I could not bring them on as in the past, if this were common property. For many of them, the news would be altogether bad. But for Freda, by herself, it can have done nothing but good. She was longing for the substance of freedom, not only the words. She is older than twenty, in everything that matters: she wanted to begin a life that will be different from all that I have tried to rescue her out of. I am now a completer means of escape. That is all.

Yet tonight I am not altogether tranquil. The years of the group, the continual presence of K — it all seems strange and not entirely real. I used to think I should not stay in this town for long. Now I am past thirty. I have been at Eden’s nearly nine years. Sometimes it seems too long a time.

1 JUNE

It has proved unnecessary to keep my change of attitude secret from the group. I must readjust some of my old values — founded probably on the family and my early upbringing. I am now convinced that it is easy to combine the greatest mental activity with a general view more like Jack’s than mine. We are all the better for real freedom. No unnecessary internal restraints — and one has more appetite for constructive good. Of course there are times when I cannot always live up to what seems intellectually established: then I have hankerings after the old days.

4 JUNE

Daphne was at a Whitsun party at the farm, which was remarkable for the afterglow it left.

30 JUNE

Money is desperately short again. The trickle from the agency is lessening. I shall have to borrow. What does that matter in this fin-de-siècle time?

15 JULY

The high meridian of freedom is on us now. In our nucleus of free people, anyway — and sometimes I think on the world.

7 AUGUST

I tried uselessly to explain to the family some indication of my changed views. With no result, except great fatigue and bitter distress — though they could not understand all my statements. I am more worn than I have been for years. Old habits are the strongest: and still, at my age, nothing tires me to the heart so much as a family quarrel.

2 SEPTEMBER

K came unexpected to the farm this Saturday. After tea — Daphne, Iris R (Mona’s half-sister, who used to be a ‘regular’ and has now come back) and several others were there — K began to talk to me, then stopped. Suddenly I saw tears running down her face. It upset me a little, though not as much as a possible absence of Daphne or Freda.

DAPHNE ALONE

9 SEPTEMBER

This makes a pale shadow of all the others. Words are too soft for some delights…coloured seas and ten million gramophones.

23 SEPTEMBER

There is sometimes too much indiscretion. In a hostile world, a scandal would be dangerous. We cannot ignore it. The raking danger I can sometimes forget, but it returned with an unpleasant scare last week. A fool of a girl thought she might be pregnant. Fortunately it has passed over, but we cannot be too careful.

On the practical issue, Jack insisted that we think of buying the farm. There would be great advantages from every point of view. Jack is certain it could be made to pay. It would make discretion easier. And I insist we have a right to our own world, unspied on and in peace of mind.

Also we must have money. Perhaps I have neglected it too long.

1 OCTOBER

Last night I crawled the pubs in the town. I don’t remember ever doing this before. I have always kept these steam-blowing episodes for Nottingham. But what obligations do I owe Eden, after all? After my nine years’ servitude.

Anyway, Roy Calvert and I and — (a young man in the group) got drunk and started home. By the post office we saw K. She hurried cringing down a side street. I stopped her. ‘Yes — I know, you’re drunk,’ she said. The vision passed; and I was walking wildly, yelling with Roy, cheering — as we ran round the lamp-posts and crossed the streets.

Through 1931 the diary showed him more and more engrossed with Daphne, although it was not till the middle of the year that he broke off finally from Freda. The references to the purchase of the farm were continued: ‘We have to go ahead. I have no alternative.’… ‘I propose to leave the whole business in Jack’s charge, far more than I did the agency. There is no reason to occupy myself unnecessarily with it, now it is started, I have better things to do.’ These entries both occurred in the autumn of 1931; after that time, during the nine months down to the last entry in my hands, he did not mention the farm business again.

I was forced to compare this silence with the long arguments to himself about the agency; I turned back to those pages which had given Daphne a reason for coming:

16 DECEMBER 1928

Tonight I went over the figures of the first month’s business under the new regime (i.e. of the agency). They are satisfactory, and we shall be able to pay our way — but I still find the difficulty which has puzzled me before.[2]

16 JANUARY 1929

The agency is going well. Our profits are up by 10 per cent in the first month. At last Jack is justifying my faith in him (how it would have changed things if he had followed my advice four years ago and entered a profession. Even now I still feel I was right. I should not be fretted by this uneasiness which I cannot quite put aside).

17 JANUARY 1929

I cannot bear this difficulty any longer. There is no doubt that Martineau’s statement of the circulation was fantastically exaggerated. On seeing our own figures there is no doubt at all. We are doing better business than they ever did; and we have not disposed of 1,100 copies of the wretched rag. This puts me in a false position. It devolves upon me to consider what is right for the three of us to do.

If I were to be censorious with myself, I should regret not acting on my earlier suspicions. I was amazed by the figure when Martineau first told me. But after all, I had his authority. What reasons could possess him, of all men, to deceive me? There was no justification for inquiring further. I was within every conceivable right in using his statement to help raise our money. There was one period when I came near to investigating the entire matter — that night, a fortnight before we actually completed the purchase, when I mentioned the circulation to Jack and Olive. Jack laughed, and would not explain himself. Olive said nothing. I began to take steps that night; but then it seemed unnecessary, and I decided to go ahead. I can still feel justified that I was right.

After all, what is the present position? We have borrowed money for a business. We have placed information about the business in front of those we persuaded to lend. All that information was given us on the best of authority; we transmitted it, having every rational ground to consider it true. Most of it was true; on one rather inconsiderable fact, it turns out that we were misled ourselves.

It would be an untenable position, of course, if this accidental misrepresentation had been a cause of loss to our creditors. That providentially is the converse of the actual state of affairs. Our creditors are safely receiving their money, more safely than through any similar investment I can imagine. They have done pretty well for themselves.

So what is to be done? There seems only one answer. No one is losing; for everyone’s sake we must go on as we are. I do not consider it necessary to raise the subject with Jack. I have disposed of the moments of uneasiness. My mind is at rest.

18 JANUARY 1929

I am now able to feel that the difficulty is resolved. But there is one problem which I cannot settle. Why ever should Martineau have made a false statement in the first place? Can it have been deliberate? It seems unthinkable. I remember his curious manoeuvres about Morcom’s flat just before he left the firm. But I could not believe that was done from selfish motives; still more I cannot believe anything so ridiculous of him now. After all, he did not touch a penny of the price we paid. He went straight off to his incredible settlement. Since then he has scarcely had a shilling in his pocket.

I suppose he was simply losing his grip on the world, and it is useless to speculate as though he were a rational being.

As soon as I read George’s words, I did not doubt that his account of Martineau’s statement was true. I wondered what Martineau had really meant; whatever underlay it all, his evidence might be essential now. On the whole, though, I was more distressed than before I knew as much.

Two things struck me most. George had certainly suspected the statement while they were still borrowing money; he had managed to shelve his misgivings for a time. Then at last he put his ‘mind at rest’. I was not altogether surprised by his self-explanation; but it became full of meaning when we compared it to his silence over the farm.

He believed himself caught accidentally in a fog of misrepresentation over the agency — what about the other business? I could not help but imagine — was it something he could not reconcile himself to? Something he tried to dismiss from his thoughts?

And I knew what George’s feeling for Jack had now become. The mention of the circulation, and Jack’s laughter; George afraid, when struggling with his doubt, to speak to Jack again — those hints endowed some of George’s words with an ironic, an almost intolerable pathos: ‘It devolves on me to consider what is right for the three of us to do.’

31: Confidential Talk in Eden’s Drawing-Room

I read the diary all evening. At dinner Eden and I were alone, and he was kindly and cordial. We went into the drawing-room afterwards; he built up the fire as high as it had been the night of Morcom’s slip; he pressed me to a glass of brandy.

Here I have to enter into a conversation which I reported, more subjectively, in a part of my own story.

‘How do you feel about yesterday?’ he said at length.

‘It looks none too good,’ I said.

‘I completely agree,’ he said deliberately, with a friendly smile to mark my judgment and to recognise bad news. ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve been talking to Hotchkinson about it during the afternoon. We both consider we shall be lucky if we can save those young nuisances from what, between ourselves, I’m beginning to think they deserve. But I don’t like to think of their getting it through the lack of any possible effort on our part. Don’t you agree?’

‘Of course,’ I said. He was sitting back comfortably now, his voice smooth and friendly, as though I was a client he liked, but to whom he had to break bad news. He was sorry, and yet buoyed up by the subdued pleasure of his own activity.

‘Well then, that’s what Hotchkinson and I have been considering. And we wondered whether you ought to have a little help. You’re not to misunderstand us, young man. I’d as soon trust a case to you as anyone of your age, and Hotchkinson believes in you as well. Of course, you were a trifle over-optimistic imagining you might get a dismissal in the police court, but we all make our mistakes, you know. This is going to be a very tricky case, though. It’s not going to be just working out the legal defence. If it was only doing that in front of a judge, I’d take the responsibility of leaving you by yourself, if they were my own son and daughter. But this looks like being one of those cases where the legal side isn’t so important—’ he chuckled — ‘and it’ll be a matter of making the best of a bad job with the jury. That’s the snag.’

‘Almost all my work’s been in front of juries.’

‘Of course it has. You’ll have plenty more. But you know, as we all know, that they’re very funny things. And in this case I should say from my experience of them that they’ll be prejudiced against your people — simply because they’re of the younger generation and one or two stories will slip out that they’ve gone the pace at times—’

‘That’s obviously true.’

‘Well, I put it to Hotchkinson that they’d be even more prejudiced, if their counsel was the same kind of age and a brilliant young man. They’d resent all the brilliance right from the start, Eliot. You’d only have to make a clever suggestion, and they’d distrust you. They’d be jibbing from all the good qualities of your generation — as well as the bad, but they’d find the bad all right. The racketiness that’s been the curse of these days — they’d find that and they’d count it against them in spite of anything you said. Anything you could say would only make it worse.’

‘What do you suggest?’ I said.

‘I want you to stay in the case. You know it better than anyone already, and we can’t do without you. But I believe, taking everything into consideration, you ought to have someone to lead you.’

‘Who?’

‘I was thinking of your old chief — Getliffe.’

‘It’s sensible to get someone,’ I broke out, ‘but Getliffe — seriously, he’s a bad lawyer.’

‘No one’s a hero to his pupils, you know,’ said Eden.

I persisted: ‘I dare say I’m unfair. But this is important. There are others who’d do it admirably.’ I gave some names of senior counsel.

‘They’re clever fellows,’ said Eden, smiling as when we argued about George. ‘But I don’t see any reason to go beyond Getliffe. He’s always done well with by cases.’

When I was alone, I was surprised that my disappointment should be so sharp. There was little of my own at stake, a brief in a minor case — for which, of course, I had already refused to be paid. Yet, when it was tested through Eden’s decision, I knew — there is no denying the edge of one’s unhappiness — that I was more wounded by the petty rebuff than by the danger to my friends.

I was ashamed that it should be so. But for some hours I could think of little else. Despite the anxieties of the case, the chances of Jack running, their immediate fate: despite being present at a time when George needed all the strength of a friend. Often, in the last days, I had lain awake, thinking of what would happen to him. But tonight I was preoccupied with my own vanity.

I went to London next morning and saw Getliffe. He said, alert, bright-eyed and glib after skimming through the documents: ‘You worked with Eden once, of course.’

‘I know him well,’ I said.

‘You’ve seen this case he’s sent us?’

‘I’ve watched it through the police court,’ I answered.

‘Well, L S,’ his voice rose, ‘it’ll be good fun working together again. It’s been too long since we had a duet, I’m looking forward to this.’

The preparation of the case gave me a chance to be more thorough than if I had been left alone. For there was the need to sit with Getliffe, to bully him, to ignore his complaints that he would get it up in time, to make him aggrieved and patronising. At any cost, he must not go into court in the way I had seen him so often, flustered, with no more than a skipped reading, a half-memory behind him, relying in a badgered and uncomfortable way on his inventive wits, completely determined to work thoroughly in his next case, fidgeting and yet getting sympathy with the court — somehow, despite the mistakes, harassment, carelessness, sweating forehead and nervous eyes, keeping his spirits and miraculously coming through.

I kept the case before him. He was harder-working than most, but he could not bear any kind of continuity. An afternoon’s work after his own pattern meant going restlessly through several briefs, picking up a recognition-symbol here and there, so that, when a solicitor came in and mentioned a name, Getliffe’s eyes would be bright and intelligent — ‘You mean the man who—’

He left me to collect the witnesses. One of my tasks was to trace Martineau; it took a good deal of time. At last I found a workhouse master in the North Riding, who guffawed as I began to inquire over the telephone.

‘You mean Old Jesus,’ he said. ‘He’s often been in here.’ He added: ‘He doesn’t seem mad. But he must be right off his head.’

He was able to tell me where ‘that crowd’ had settled now.

I returned to the town at the weekend. I had not been back an hour before Roy rang up to say that Jack seemed to have disappeared. For a day or two he had been talking of a ‘temporary expedition’ to Birmingham, to survey the ‘prospects’ for a new business as soon as the trial was over. Today no one could find him.

A few minutes after the call, Roy brought Olive and Rachel to Eden’s house. For the whole afternoon Eden left us to ourselves.

Rachel was desperately worried. Roy also believed that Jack had flown. Of us all, Olive alone was unshaken.

‘If you knew him better,’ she said, ‘you’d know that he fooled himself with his excuses — as well as you. He’s really planning a new business. And he also thinks it’s a good dodge for getting a few miles away.’

‘He needn’t stop there,’ said Roy.

‘I don’t believe he’s gone near Birmingham,’ said Rachel.

‘I think you’ll find he has,’ said Olive.

‘I know I’m thinking of George all the time,’ cried Rachel. ‘We’ve got to sit by and watch Jack ruin him. And Olive, it’s wretched to see you—’

‘Go on.’

‘I must speak now. I know it’s hopeless,’ Rachel went on. ‘But if only you could see Jack for a minute just as we do—’

‘You think he’s a scoundrel. That he doesn’t care a rap for me. And that he’ll marry me because he can’t get money some other way. Is that what you mean?’ Before Rachel replied Olive added: ‘Some of it’s quite true.’

‘You don’t know what a relief it would be — to get you free of him,’ Rachel said. ‘Is there any chance? When this is over?’

‘None,’ said Olive. After a moment, she said: ‘I don’t care what you think of how much he’s attached to me. But I’ll tell you this. He knows he can live on my money. He may be forced to marry me in the end. But I shall be happier about the arrangement than he will. There’ll be times when he’s bound to think that I’m dragging him down. He’s got more illusions than I have. You’ve got to persuade yourselves of that.’

Rachel tried to argue with her. She did not resent the obvious pretences and attempts to console her. She said, with a genuine smile: ‘It’s no use talking. You’ll never believe a word I say.’

Rachel once more begged her to trace Jack — ‘we can’t let George be thrown away,’ she cried.

Then the maid announced another visitor for me and Morcom came in. First he caught sight of Roy, and said: ‘I can’t find any news.’

At that moment, he saw Olive.

‘I’m sorry. They didn’t tell me—’

‘Come and sit by the fire,’ she said.

He sat down and spread out his hands. His face looked ill with care. We all knew that this was the first time they had met for months.

In her presence he would not say what he had come for. Roy talked more easily for a few minutes than anyone there could manage: then he took Rachel away.

Olive said to Morcom: ‘You’re not looking well, Arthur. You must take care of yourself.’

‘I’m all right.’

‘Promise me you’ll look after yourself.’

‘If I can,’ said Morcom. Their manner to each other was still sometimes tender. Some casual remark made them smile together, and their faces, in that moment, rested in peace.

Soon Olive could not control her restlessness. She crossed to the window, and looked out into the dark; she returned to her chair again, and then got up to go. Her eyes caught the brief lying on the writing desk. She pointed to the words on the first page — Rex v. Passant and Ors.

‘Is that us?’ She was laughing without any pretence. ‘I’ve never seen anything that looked — so far away.’

She stood still for a moment, and said goodbye. She put her hand on the back of Morcom’s chair: ‘Goodbye,’ she said again.

As soon as the door closed, Morcom said: ‘I came to say — you must force George to escape.’

‘You think Jack has really gone?’

‘I don’t know. I advised him to.’

I broke out in angry recriminations, though as he spoke his face was torn with pain. I reminded him of my warning the night of the first inquiries: and how, after the police court, we agreed that I could not tell George to go.

‘It’s criminal to take the responsibility of persuading Jack — unless George was ready too,’ I said.

‘I had to speak,’ said Morcom.

‘You could not face telling me first.’

‘Don’t you understand that I was bound to speak to Jack?’ Morcom said. ‘You said I ought to have taken care of them before it happened. Do you think this was any more bearable? It means they will marry. They will stay abroad for years. They will be left with nothing but their own resources. That’s what she longs for, isn’t it? I’ve had to try to help it on.’

I looked at him.

‘Will you tell George to go now?’ he said at last.

‘I shall have to try,’ I said.

32: Visit to George

I took a taxi to George’s lodgings. He was alone, sitting in the same chair, the same position, as in the evening after the police court. He must have heard the taxi drive up outside, but he did not inquire why I had hurried.

He tried to stir himself for my benefit, however. Though his voice was flat, he asked after Sheila with his old friendly diffident politeness; he talked a little of a case that I had just finished in London.

Then I said: ‘What do you think of our case, George?’

‘It’s gone more or less as I expected.’

‘Has it?’

George nodded without any protest.

I hesitated.

‘Look, George,’ I said. ‘I’m going to offend you. You’ll have to forgive me. I don’t care what has actually happened in this business. You know that perfectly well. I can’t imagine any action you could do which would make the slightest difference to me. It wouldn’t either make me think worse of you or better — it works both ways. Well, I don’t know what’s happened, you may be technically guilty or you may not, I don’t know and, apart from curiosity, I don’t care. You’ve told me you’re not.’ I met his eyes. ‘I know you tell the literal truth more than most of us — but even so, I can imagine all sorts of reasons why you should lie here.’

He gave a resentful, awkward laugh.

‘So I’ve got nothing to do with what really happened,’ I said. ‘The essential thing is what other people will think happened. That’s all. I’m just talking as a lawyer about the probabilities in this case. You know them, you’re a better lawyer than I am, of course, whenever you care. What should you say the probabilities are?’

‘So far, they’re not much in our favour.’

‘If you came to me as a client,’ I said, ‘I shouldn’t be as optimistic as that.’

I went on: ‘Anyway, supposing you’re right, supposing the chances were even or a bit better — ought you to risk it? If it comes down the wrong side—’

‘We get a few months. And the consequences—’

‘Is the risk worth taking?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Jump your bail. I’ve spoken to the others who put up money. We all want you to please yourself.’

‘What should I do?’

‘You could be in South America in a fortnight. Nothing will touch you there, in this sort of case.’

There was a silence.

‘I don’t see how I’m going to live.’

‘We can provide a bit. It won’t be much, God knows — but it’d help you in a place where living’s cheap. And in time it would be possible to make a little money.’

‘It would be difficult.’

‘Not impossible. You could get qualified there — if there’s nothing else.’

‘I should never have any security.’

‘Think of the alternative.’

‘No,’ George burst out, in a loud, harsh, emphatic tone. ‘I’m afraid it’s completely impracticable. I appreciate the offer, of course.’ (That ‘of course’ of George’s which, as so often, was loaded with resentment.)

‘But it’s ludicrous to consider it. Apart from the practical obstacles — I should have to live in discomfort all my life, it isn’t pleasant to condemn oneself to squalid exile.’

He added: ‘And there’s the question of the others.’

‘I was coming to that.’

‘Well?’

‘Olive could go with a clear conscience. Her uncle’s wealthy, she has enough to live on.’

He did not reply.

‘I’ll promise to readjust things with the others so that you won’t have any responsibility,’ I said. ‘You come first. It’s more serious for you. You stand to lose most. For me — I needn’t tell you — you count very much the most.’

There was a silence before George replied: ‘I appreciate the offer. But I can’t take it.’

‘There is one other thing,’ I said.

‘What?’ His voice had returned to the lifeless tone with which he welcomed me.

‘Jack may have gone already.’

‘Are you inventing that to get rid of me?’

‘I didn’t want to tell you,’ I said. ‘But you’ve seen some indications, surely?’

‘I didn’t take them seriously.’

‘This you must,’ I said.

‘I want to know exactly what basis you’re going on.’

I told him the facts — that Olive believed Jack would return to stand his trial: that no one else did.

‘If he doesn’t,’ I said, ‘you recognise what your chances are?’

‘Yes,’ said George.

His face was heavy as he thought.

‘I don’t necessarily accept the view that he won’t come back,’ he said. ‘But if he doesn’t — I can’t alter my position. I shan’t go.’

‘For God’s sake think it over,’ I said. ‘We’ll make it as easy for you as we humanly can.’

He was silent.

‘I’ve a right to ask you to think it over tonight,’ I said. ‘I beg you to.’

‘I’m sorry. There is no point in that,’ George said. ‘I shall stay here and let them try me.’