George Passant (27 page)

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.