George Passant (32 page)

George made for Martineau’s old house. There was a light in what used to be the drawing-room: the housekeeper opened the door.

‘I want to see Mr Martineau,’ said George.

‘He’s not in yet. I’m waiting up for him,’ she said.

‘I’m afraid that it’s essential for us to see him tonight,’ said George. ‘I shall have to wait.’

Then she recognised him. She had not seen him since the morning we came to bid Martineau goodbye.

‘It’s you,’ she said. ‘When I heard of your goings-on, I said that I always knew you’d driven him away.’

‘I shall have to wait,’ said George.

She kept her hand on the latch. She would not ask him into the drawing-room. ‘I’m alone,’ she said, ‘and until he tells me, I can please myself who I let in–’

We argued; I tried to calm her, but she had brooded on losing Martineau all these years; she took her farcical revenge, and we had to wait outside in the raw night.

We walked up and down the end of the New Walk. From the park we could see the gate of Martineau’s and the light in the drawing-room, just as we had done that night of Jack’s confession.

George, his eyes never leaving the path to the house, began to talk. He had heard, not many minutes after Eden, of the intention to dismiss him from the School. It had leaked out through an acquaintance on the staff; his friends at the School already knew. Then I told him what Eden had said about his position in the firm. He hardly listened.

‘You might as well see something. Another sheet of paper,’ he said.

I had to light a match to read it. As the flame smoked, I thought of the other sheet of paper, the bill of the little plays which Jack had produced beside these trees. But he did not mean that. He meant the sheet of paper on which he had written down his statement on the circulation – the sheet of paper which lay before the court.

In the match light, I read some of this letter.

Dear George,

We are writing in the name of twelve people who have known you at the School, and who are indignant at the news tonight. We wish there was something we could do to help, but at least we feel that we cannot let another day go by without saying how much you have meant to us all. Whatever happens or is said, that cannot be taken away. We shall always remember it with gratitude. We shall always think of you as someone we were lucky to know…

There were four signatures, including those of a young man I had met at the farm in September.

‘They meant it,’ I said.

‘It’s too late to be written to now,’ said George. With desperate attention he still watched for Martineau. ‘Though I don’t entirely accept Jack’s remarks on the letter.’

‘What were they?’

‘That the people who wrote it didn’t realise that he and I weren’t so very different nowadays–’

Without interest, George mentioned a quarrel over the letter. Jack had laughed at George’s devotion to his protégés; he took it for granted, he expected George to take it for granted also, that it was just a camouflage to get closer to the women.

George was listening only for footsteps: he had no more thought for Jack’s remark. Yet he had resented it little – suddenly, in this park where he might have finished with Jack, I saw their relation more closely than I had ever done.

Jack’s power over George had grown each year. It was not the result of ordinary affection or admiration. It did not owe much to the charm which Jack exercised over many people. At times, George actively disliked him. But now, in the middle of this night of fear, George submitted to having his aspirations mocked.

The fact was, from the beginning Jack had never believed in George’s altruistic dreams. For a time – until he had been an intimate friend for years – Jack entered into them, and in George’s company talked George’s language. But it was always with a wink to himself; he judged George by the standard of his own pleasures; by instinct and very soon by experience he knew a good deal about the erotic life. He saw the sensual side of George’s devotion long before George would admit it to himself. Jack thought none the worse of George, he took it as completely natural – but he was often irritated, sometimes morbidly provoked, by the barricade of aspirations. He had spoken of them tonight as ‘camouflage’; he had never believed they could be anything else. As soon as George ‘got down to business’ – his affair with Freda – Jack showed that he both knew and had suspected it all along.

From then onwards, in their curious intimacy, George seemed to be almost eager to accept Jack’s valuation – to throw away all ‘pretence’ and to share his pleasures with someone who was a rake, gay, frank, and unashamed.

That mixture of intimacy and profound disbelief was at the root of Jack’s power over George. George was paying a sort of spiritual blackmail. He was, in a fashion, glad to pay it. Very few men, the Georges least of all, are secure in their aspirations; it takes someone both intimate and unsympathetic to touch one’s own doubts – to give one, for part of one’s life at least, the comfort of taking oneself on the lowest terms. At times we all want someone to destroy our own ‘ideals’. We are ready to put ourselves in the power of a destructive, clear-eyed and degrading friend.

The light in the drawing-room went out. Immediately George ran to the house, rang the bell, hammered on the door.

‘Where is Mr Martineau? I’ve got to see him,’ he shouted. His voice echoed round the road.

A light was switched on in the hall. The housekeeper opened a crack of door, and said: ‘He’s not coming home tonight.’

‘Let me in,’ George shouted.

‘He’s rung up to say he’s sleeping somewhere else.’

She did not know where, or would not say. I thought she was speaking the truth, and did not know.

George and I were left outside the dark house.

‘Why didn’t you see Martineau? Why wasn’t I sent for myself?’ George cried.

Afraid also, I tried to give him reasonable answers.

‘Getliffe was absolutely clear on the importance. We were talking about it at dinner.’

‘With Eden?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you think I’m going to be deluded for ever? You can’t expect me to believe that Eden is devoted to my welfare. I tell you, I insist on being certain that Getliffe is aware of the point at issue. And that someone whom I can trust must be present with Getliffe and Martineau when this point is being made. You ought to see that I’m right to insist on that. Are
you
going to desert me now?’

‘You don’t believe we’ve missed anything so obvious,’ I said. ‘I know Getliffe was going to ask Martineau about the figure. He’s very good at persuading people to say what he wants them to say. It’s his chief–’

‘And he doesn’t think that he’s persuaded Martineau?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t you admit he would if there had been any serious attempt on my behalf? You come to me saying he’s so good – and then apparently he wasn’t interested enough to get the one essential piece of information. And then you think I ought not to insist that he’s taken every step to get it.’

‘It’s no use–’

‘You know what depends on it,’ George cried. ‘Do you think I don’t know what depends on it?’

‘We all know that.’

‘But none of you will lift a finger,’ he said. ‘I’m beginning to realise why Eden imported Getliffe–’

‘That’s nonsense.’

‘I’m not going to listen to that sort of defence. There’s one thing more precious than all your feelings,’ he shouted. ‘It’s got to be settled tonight.’

‘What do you want to do?’

‘I want to hear Getliffe and Martineau discuss the figure of the circulation. With you and myself present.’

I repeated the arguments: it had all been done. We did not know where Martineau was. He attacked me with bitterness and violence. At last, he said: ‘I knew you would do nothing. I can’t expect any help.’

We argued again. He began to repeat himself. He accused me of taking everyone’s side against him. Nothing I said could bring him even a moment’s relief.

WHEN I turned out of — Street towards the court next morning, George and Martineau were standing on the pavement, outside a newspaper shop. Martineau cried: ‘Ah, Lewis! You see I’ve come! I ran up against old George two minutes ago!’ His cheeks were sunburnt and half-hidden by a rich brown beard. His skin was wrinkled with laughter, and his eyes looked clear and bright. In George’s presence his gaiety was oppressive; I began a question about his evidence, but he would not reply; I asked quickly about the journey, how did he travel, how was the ‘settlement’?

‘They’re shaking down,’ he said. ‘Soon they will be able to do without me. I might be justified in making a move–’

To my astonishment, George laughed; not easily – by the sound alone, one would have known him to be in distress – and yet with a note of genuine amusement.

‘You don’t mean that you are going to start again?’

‘I’m beginning to feel I ought, after all.’

‘What ought you to do? What more can you do along those lines? There’s simply nothing left for you to give up–’

‘It doesn’t seem to me quite like that–’ Martineau began.

I had to leave them, as I saw Getliffe climbing the hall steps.

The court was not so full as the afternoon before. Getliffe opened, and from his first words everyone felt that he was worried and dispirited. He told the jury more than once that ‘it may be difficult for you to see your way through all the details. We all feel like that. Even if you’ve been forced to learn a bit of law, you often can’t see the wood for the trees. You’ve got to remember that a few pieces of suspicion don’t make a proof.’

Much of his speech was in that dejected tone.

The first witnesses before lunch were customers of the advertising agency. Getliffe’s questions did not go beyond matters of fact; he was untidy and restless; several times he took off his wig and the forelock fell over his brows. Porson, resting back with his eyes half-closed, did not cross-examine.

As I met the three at lunch, Jack said: ‘How was that?’

‘He’s trying to begin quietly, and go all out in the last speech. It’s his common-man technique,’ I said.

Olive looked into my face.

‘Why are you lying?’ she cried. ‘Is it as bad as that?’

Jack said: ‘It’s got no worse. What do you expect him to say?’

‘It’s your own examination that matters most,’ I said. ‘Not anything he says. You’ve got to be at your best tomorrow–’

‘We can put a face on it. If you tell us the truth,’ she said.

‘You’ve got to be at your best,’ I said to George, ‘you above all.’

He had not spoken to the others. Once he looked at a stranger with a flash of last night’s fear. On the outside, his manner had become more indrawn than before. It was seconds before he replied to me: ‘It’s scarcely worthwhile him putting me on view.’

After lunch there was one other witness, and then Martineau was called.

‘Howard Ernest Martineau!’ The call echoed in the court, and was caught up outside: it occurred to me inconsequently that we had never before heard anyone use his second name. When he mounted into the box he apologised with a smile to the judge for being late. He took the oath and stood with his head a little inclined; he was wearing a suit, now creased, dirty, and old-fashioned, that I thought I had seen in the past.

‘Mr Martineau, you are a qualified solicitor?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve practised in this town?’

‘Yes.’

‘How long were you in practice here?’

‘Quite a long time.’ Martineau’s voice made a contrast to the quick, breathless question; he seemed less self-conscious than anyone who had spoken in the court. ‘Let me see, I must think it out. It must have been over twenty – nearly twenty-five years.’

‘And you gave it up a few years ago? How long ago, exactly?’

There was a pause.

‘Just over six years ago.’

‘And you joined Mr Exell in his advertising agency?’

‘Yes.’

‘What were the arrangements, the business arrangements, I mean, you understand, Mr Martineau – when you joined that firm?’

‘I think we worked out the value of the business roughly, and I bought half of it from Mr Exell.’

‘How much did you pay?’

‘Five hundred pounds.’

Getliffe had asked the question at random. The answer went directly against us: George and Jack had borrowed half as much again.

‘You ran the business yourself for a time?’

‘I helped, I can only say that. I was also interested in – other fields.’

‘You remember the little paper,
The Advertisers’ Arrow
, which the agency used to publish?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Your other interests didn’t leave you much time to keep acquainted with it, I suppose?’

Martineau hesitated for a moment.

‘I think they did, on the whole. I think I knew more about it than anyone else.’

Many people noticed the dejection and carelessness that Getliffe had shown at the beginning of the examination; only a few realised the point at which his manner changed. Actually, it was when he heard this answer. He immediately became nervous but alert, pertinacious, ready to smile at Martineau and the jury. No one understood completely at the time; myself, I suddenly felt that he must be getting a different response from his last night’s talk with Martineau.

‘How long were you busy with the agency?’

‘Not quite a year, not quite a year.’

‘And towards the end of that time you received suggestions that you might sell again?’

‘Not quite, not quite. It was after I had already got on the move once more. We talked over the possibility of other people buying it. You must forgive me if my memory isn’t perfect – but it’s some time ago and my life has changed a little since.’ He turned to the judge, who smiled back. ‘I think that was the first step, though.’

‘Whom did you talk over the matter with?’

‘Mr Passant, chiefly.’

‘What kind of conversation did you have with Mr Passant?’

Martineau laughed.

‘That’s rather a tall order, I’m afraid. I talked to him a great deal then,’ he looked in a friendly way at George, ‘and I have talked a good deal since of different things, you know. I can’t guarantee to remember very exactly. But I think we discussed the natural things – that is, whether Mr Passant ought to try to buy this business, and the state it was in, and its prospects in the future. My impression is, we touched on all those things–’