George Passant (2 page)

‘And to make it clear,’ Jack added, ‘he feels obliged to cut off paying my fees at the School.’

The School was our name for the combined Technical College and School of Art which gave at that time, 1925, the only kind of higher education in the town. There Jack had been sent by Calvert to learn printing, and there each week I attended a couple of lectures on law: lectures given by George Passant, whom I kept thinking of as soon as I knew Jack’s trouble to be real.

‘Well, we’ve got a bit of time,’ I said. ‘He can’t get rid of you altogether – it would bring too much attention to his son.’

‘Who’ll worry about me?’ said Jack.

‘He can’t do it,’ I insisted. ‘But what are we to do?’

‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ said Jack.

Then I mentioned George Passant’s name. At once Jack was on his feet. ‘I ought to have gone round hours ago,’ he said.

We walked up the London Road, crossed by the station, took a short cut down an alley towards the noisy street. Fish and chip shops glared and smelt: tramcars rattled past. Jack was more talkative now that he was going into action. ‘What shall I become if Calvert doesn’t let me print?’ he said. ‘I used to have some ideas, I used to be a young man of spirit. But when they threaten to stop you, being a printer seems the only possible job in the whole world. What else could I become, Lewis?’ He saw a policeman shining his lantern into a dark shop window. ‘Yes,’ said Jack, ‘I should like to be a policeman. But then I’m not tall enough. They say you can increase your height if you walk like this–’ he held both arms vertically above his head, like Moses on the hill in Rephidim, and walked by my side down the street saying: ‘I want to be a policeman.’

He stopped short, and looked at me with a rueful, embarrassed smile. I smiled too: more even than he, I was used to the hope and hopelessness, the hopes of twenty, desolately cold half an hour ago, now burning hot. I was used to living on hope. And I too was excited: the Cotery arms on the silver case ceased to be so pathetic, began to go to one’s head; the story drifted like wood smoke through the September evening. It was with expectancy, with elation, that, as we turned down a side street, I saw the light of George Passant’s sitting room shining through an orange blind.

At that time, I had known George for a couple of years. I had met him just through the chance that he gave his law lectures at the School – and that was because he wanted to earn some extra money, since he was only a qualified clerk at Eden & Martineau’s, not a member of their solicitors’ firm. It had been a lucky encounter for me: and George had already exerted himself on my behalf more than anyone I knew.

This was the only house in the town open to us at any hour of night. Jack knocked: George came to the door himself.

‘I’m sorry we’re bothering you, George,’ said Jack. ‘But something’s happened.’

‘Come in,’ said George, ‘come in.’

His voice was loud and emphatic. He stood just over middle height, an inch or two taller than Jack; his shoulders were heavy, he was becoming a little fat, though he was only twenty-six. But it was his head that captured one’s attention, his massive forehead and the powerful structure of chin and cheekbone under his full flesh.

He led the way into his sitting room. He said: ‘Wouldn’t you like a cup of tea? I can easily make a cup of tea. Perhaps you’d prefer a glass of beer? I’m sure there’s some beer somewhere.’

The invitation was affable and diffident. He began to call us Cotery and Eliot, then corrected himself and used our Christian names. He went clumsily round the room, peering into cupboards, dishevelling his fair hair in surprise when he found nothing. The room was littered with papers; papers on the table and on the floor, a briefcase on the hearth, a pile of books beside an armchair. An empty teacup stood on a sheet of paper on the mantelpiece, and had left a trail of dark, moist rings. And yet, apart from his debris of work, George had not touched the room; the furniture was all his landlady’s; on one wall there remained a text ‘The Lord God Watcheth Us’, and over the mantelpiece a picture of the Relief of Ladysmith.

At last George shouted, and carried three bottles of beer to the table.

‘Now,’ said George, sitting back in his armchair, ‘we can get down to it. What is this problem?’

Jack told the story of Roy and the present. As he had done to me, he kept back this morning’s interview with Calvert. He put more colour into the story now that he was telling it to George, though: ‘This boy is Olive’s cousin, you realise, George. And that whole family seems to live on its nerves.’

‘I don’t accept that completely about Olive,’ said George. Olive was one of what we called the ‘group’, the collection of young people who had gathered round George.

‘Still, I’m very much to blame,’ said Jack. ‘I ought to have seen what was happening. It’s serious for Roy too, that I didn’t. I was very blind.’

Then Jack laid the cigarette case on the table.

George smiled, but did not examine it, nor pick it up.

‘Well, I’m sorry for the boy,’ he said. ‘But he doesn’t come inside my province, so there’s no action I can take. It would give me considerable pleasure, however, to tell his father that, if he sends a son to one of those curious institutions called public schools, he has no right to be surprised at the consequences. I should also like to add that people get on best when they’re given freedom – particularly freedom from their damned homes, and their damned parents, and their damned lives.’

He simmered down, and spoke to Jack with a warmth that was transparently genuine, open, and curiously shy. ‘I can’t tell him most of the things I should like to. But no one can stop me from telling him a few remarks about you.’

‘I didn’t intend to involve you, George,’ said Jack.

‘I don’t think you could prevent me,’ said George, ‘if it seemed necessary. But it can’t be necessary, of course.’

With his usual active optimism, George seized on the saving point: it was the point that had puzzled me: Calvert would only raise whispers about his son if he penalised Jack.

‘Unfortunately,’ said Jack, ‘he doesn’t seem to work that way.’

‘What do you mean?’

Jack described his conversation with Calvert that morning. George, flushed and angry, still kept interrupting with his sharp, lawyer’s questions: ‘It’s incredible that he could take that line. Don’t you see that he
couldn’t
let this letter get mixed up with your position in the firm?’

At last Jack complained: ‘I’m not inventing it for fun, George.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said George. ‘Well, what did the sunket tell you in the end?’

George just heard him out: no future in the firm, permission to stay in his present job on sufferance, the School course cut off: then George swore. He swore as though the words were fresh, as though the brute physical facts lay in front of his eyes. It takes a great religion to produce one great oath, in the mouths of most men: but not in George’s, once inflamed to indignation. When the outburst had spent itself, he said: ‘It’s monstrous. It’s so monstrous that even these bellwethers can’t get away with it. I refuse to believe that they can amuse themselves with being unjust and stupid at the same time – and at the expense of people like you.’

‘People like me don’t strike them as quite so important,’ said Jack.

‘You will before long. Good God alive, in ten years’ time you will have made them realise that they’ve been standing in the road of their betters.’ There was a silence, in which George looked at Jack. Then, with an effort, George said: ‘I expect some of your relations are ready to deal with your present situation. But in case you don’t want to call on them, I wonder–’

‘George, as far as help goes just now,’ Jack replied, ‘I can’t call on a soul in the world.’

‘If you feel like that,’ said George, ‘I wonder if you’d mind letting me see what I can do? I know that I’m not a very suitable person for the present circumstances,’ he went on quickly. ‘I haven’t any influence, of course. And Arthur Morcom and Lewis here always say that I’m not specially tactful in dealing with these people. I think perhaps they exaggerate that: anyway, I should try to surmount it in a good cause. But if you can find anyone else more adequate, you obviously ought to rule me out and let them take it up.’

As George stumbled through this awkward speech, Jack was moved; and at the end he looked chastened, almost ashamed of himself.

‘I only came for advice, George,’ he said.

‘I might not be able to do anything effective,’ said George. ‘I don’t pretend it’s easy. But if you feel like letting me–’

‘Well, as long as you don’t waste too much effort–’

‘If I do it,’ said George, returning to his loud, cheerful tone, ‘I shall do it in my own style. All settled?’

‘Thank you, George.’

‘Excellent,’ said George, ‘excellent.’

He refilled our glasses, drank off his own, settled again in his chair, and said: ‘I’m very glad you two came round tonight.’

‘It was Lewis’ idea,’ said Jack.

‘You were waiting for me to suggest it,’ I said.

‘No, no,’ said Jack. ‘I tell you, I never have useful ideas about myself. Perhaps that’s the trouble with me. I don’t possess a project. All you others manage to get projects; and if you don’t George provides one for you. As with you, Lewis, and your examinations. While I’m the only one left–’ he was passing off my gibe, and had got his own back: but even so, he brought off his mock pathos so well that he disarmed me – ‘I’m the only one left, singing in the cold.’

‘We may have to consider that, too.’ George was chuckling at Jack; then the chuckles began to bubble again inside him, at a thought of his own. ‘Yes, I was a year younger than you, and I hadn’t got a project either,’ he said. ‘I had just been articled to my first firm, the one at Wickham. And one morning the junior partner decided to curse me for my manner of life. He kept saying firmly: if ever you want to become a solicitor, you’ve got to behave like one beforehand. At that age, I was always prepared to consider reasonable suggestions from people with inside knowledge: I was pleased that he’d given me something to aim at. Though I wasn’t very clear how a solicitor ought to behave. However, I gave up playing snooker at the pub, and I gave up going in to Ipswich on Saturday nights to inspect the local talent. I put on my best dark suit and I bought a bowler hat and a briefcase. There it is–’ George pointed to the hearth. Tears were being forced to his eyes by inner laughter; he wiped them, and went on: ‘Unfortunately, though I didn’t realise it then, these manoeuvres seem to have irritated the
senior
partner. He stood it for a fortnight, then one day he walked behind me to the office. I was just hanging up my hat when he started to curse me. “I don’t know what you’re playing at,” he said. “It will be time enough to behave like a solicitor if ever you manage to become one.”’

George roared with laughter. It was midnight, and soon afterwards we left. Standing in the door, George said, as Jack began to walk down the dark street: ‘I’ll see you tomorrow night. I shall have thought over your business by then.’

THE next night George was lecturing at the School. I attended, and we went out of the room together; Jack was waiting in the corridor.

‘We go straight to see Olive,’ said George, bustling kindly to the point. ‘I’ve told her to bring news of the Calverts.’

Jack’s face lit up: he seemed more uneasy than the night before.

We went to a café which stayed open all night, chiefly for lorry drivers working between London and the North; it was lit by gas mantles without shades, and smelt of gas, paraffin and the steam of tea. The window was opaque with steam, and we could not see Olive until we got inside: but she was there, sitting with Rachel in the corner of the room, behind a table with a linoleum cover.

‘I’m sorry you’re being got at, Jack,’ Olive said.

‘I expect I shall get used to it,’ said Jack, with the mischievous, ardent smile that was first nature to him when he spoke to a pretty woman.

‘I expect you will,’ said Olive.

‘Come on,’ said George. ‘I want to hear your report about your family. I oughtn’t to raise false hopes’ – he turned to Jack – ‘I can only think of one way of intervening for you. And the only chance of that depends on whether the Calverts have committed themselves.’

We were close together, round the table. George sat at the end; though he was immersed in the struggle, his hearty appetite went mechanically on; and, while he was speaking intently to Jack, he munched a thick sandwich from which the ham stuck out, and stirred a great cup of tea with a lead spoon.

‘Well then,’ George asked Olive, ‘how is your uncle taking it?’

We looked at her; she smiled. She was wearing a brilliant green dress that gleamed incongruously against the peeling wall. Just by her clothes a stranger could have judged that she was the only one of us born in a secure middle-class home. Secure in money, that is: for her father lived on notoriously bad terms with his brother, Jack’s employer; and Olive herself had half-broken away from her own family.

She had taken her hat off, and her fair hair shone against the green. Watching her as she smiled at George’s question, I felt for an instant that there was something assertive in her frank, handsome face.

‘How are they taking it?’ George asked.

‘It’s fluttered the dovecotes,’ she said. ‘I’m not surprised. Father heard about it this morning from one of my aunts. They’ve all done a good deal of talking to Uncle Frank since then.’

‘What’s he doing?’ said George.

‘He’s dithering,’ said Olive. ‘He can’t make up his mind what he ought to do next. All day he’s been saying that it’s a pity the holidays last another week – otherwise the best thing would be to send the boy straight back to school.’

‘Good God alive,’ said George. ‘That’s a singularly penetrating observation.’

‘Anyway,’ said Olive, ‘the rest of the family seem to have worn him down. He’d made a decision of sorts just before I came along here. He’s sending a wire to Roy’s housemaster to ask if he can look after the boy–’