So Well Remembered (20 page)

Not till long afterwards did he guess why she had done so, but Whaley’s
visit undoubtedly led to a second social occasion, far less pleasant, that
showed how much further she was prepared to go. It began by her asking George
if he would meet some friends of hers, Mr. and Mrs. Wallington by name, for
dinner one evening in Mulcaster. It seemed she had picked up a chance
acquaintance with Mrs. Wallington in a Mulcaster dress shop, and George, who
thought it odd that he should be dragged into it, demurred at first, but on
being reminded of how hospitably she had behaved towards Tom Whaley,
consented on one condition—that he himself should be the host. “Then if
I don’t like ‘em I don’t have to invite ‘em back,” he explained, with sturdy
if not too flattering independence.

So in due course Livia took him to a Mulcaster restaurant where the
appointment had been arranged. There he was presented, not only to the
couple, but to an extra man, and also to the revelation that all of them
seemed to know Livia far better than he had anticipated. Although he was
usually able to get on well with strangers from the outset, he felt curiously
ill at ease that evening, and as it progressed he became less and less happy
for a variety of reasons, one of which was quite humiliating—he didn’t
think he would have enough money to pay the bill, especially as they were all
ordering expensive drinks. But apart from that, he found none of his previous
pleasure in witnessing Livia’s social success; it was one thing to introduce
her to a friend of his own and watch the magic begin to operate, but to see
the fait accompli in the shape of already established friendships with
strangers was another matter. He did not think it was jealousy that he felt,
but rather a sense of annoyance that, after sneering at Whaley, she should
show her preference for men like those two. For they were both of the
blustery, aggressive type, especially the one who was not the husband and had
not been invited. His name was Mangin, and from certain boastful references
George gathered that he had lately made a good deal of money in the
advertising business. There was a cold swagger about him that met more than
its match in Livia’s repartee, but George himself could not come to terms
with it, and was made even less comfortable by his wife’s peculiar ability to
do so.

As the dinner went on and more drinks fed the bluster, he fell into a glum
silence that became equally a torture to maintain or to try to break. He was
relieved when Mangin made a move to leave, mentioning a train he must catch;
but then came the problem of the bill; why on earth had Livia chosen such a
swank establishment, and would such a place be satisfied with his personal
cheque? He was trying rather clumsily to signal the waiter and learn the
worst when Mangin shouted: “What the deuce are you bothering about, Boswell?
Everything’s taken care of at source—don’t you know me yet? Anyhow,
your wife does—that’s the main thing…” Whereupon, with a lordly
gesture amidst ensuing laughter, he intercepted the waiter whom George had
summoned and ostentatiously tipped him a pound note, then adding to George:
“By the way, Boswell, I’d like a word with you if you can spare a
moment.”

George could say nothing; to argue without enough in his pocket to pay the
bill would have been even more humiliating. In his confusion he somehow found
himself leaving the table and being piloted by Mangin into the restaurant
lobby.

“So you’re a newspaper man, Boswell?”

George nodded, still inclined to be speechless.

“Know much about advertising?”

“Advertising?… Er… Well, I take in advertising, naturally.”

“Ever WRITTEN ads?”

“Oh yes, my customers often ask me to help them—”

“I mean big stuff—campaign advertising—things like patent
medicines—”

“No, I can’t say I—”

Mangin threw a half-crown into the plate on the cloakroom counter and
began putting on his overcoat.

“Well, I’ll tell you what… You don’t seem to have had any experience,
but I’ll give you a chance… start at six pounds a week for the first three
months and we’ll see what happens… But you’ll have to LEARN, Boswell, and
learn plenty if you want to stay in the game.”

“But—but—” George was slowly recovering his voice. “But I
don’t understand—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m offering you a job, that’s all. In my London office.”

“But I don’t want a job. I’ve got a job already—”

“You mean that newspaper—in—what’s the name of the place
—in—”

“Aye, in Browdley. I’m owner and editor of the Browdley Guardian.”

“But I thought you wanted to give it up! Wasn’t that the idea… to try
somewhere else?”

George suddenly flushed. “There must have been a mistake.”

“MISTAKE, eh? Looks like it…” Mangin smirked as he signalled the doorman
for a taxi. “Better have that out with Livia… I’ve got to rush for my
train… G’bye.”

George did not go back to the table immediately; he calmed himself first,
then discovered (as he had hoped) that the rest of the party was breaking up.
He murmured his goodbyes, and could not find words to address Livia during
the first few hundred yards of their walk together along the pavement from
the restaurant. Eventually she broke the silence herself. “Don’t be so angry,
George, just because Mr. Mangin paid for the dinner. You know you only asked
the other two—and then all those drinks… they wouldn’t have felt free
to have what they wanted if they’d thought you were paying for
everything.”

“Why not? How do they know what I earn? I’m not poor just because I can’t
afford to buy champagne cocktails.”

“That’s it, George, you can’t afford them and Mr. Mangin can—and
besides that, you don’t drink yourself—that’s another thing.”

He said, half to himself: “Seems to me there’s a more important matter
than the one we’re discussing.”

She answered eagerly: “I hope so. I don’t know what Mr. Mangin said to you
outside. I was afraid you hadn’t given him much of an impression of how
clever you are—because you ARE clever, George—I know you are
—in your own way.”

“Thanks,” he retorted. “And perhaps you’ll tell me why in God’s name you
should care WHAT impression I make on a man like that?”

“Only because he might find you some work. I thought it was a stroke of
luck when I met somebody who knew him—he’s very influential in the
newspaper world, so Mrs. Wallington told me. And it would get us out of
Browdley—that is, if he DID say he could find you something.”

George gritted his teeth and replied: “Aye, he said he could. He offered
me six pounds a week in his London office—provided I learned
enough.”

“Oh, but George, that’s—that’s WONDERFUL! You don’t make nearly so
much out of the Guardian—not lately, anyhow.”

“Livia…” He stopped suddenly in the street and faced her. “Do you really
mean you’d have me give up my own paper and all the work I do on the Council
—just to have a job under a man like that? And WHAT a job—
writing patent-medicine ads… Livia, would you REALLY have me do that?”

He knew what her answer would have been but for the look on his face,
which made her temporize: “Maybe it isn’t exactly the life you’d choose. But
I
don’t choose the life I have, either… And why keep on saying ‘a
man like that’? They can’t all be men like you.”

He began walking again. “Livia, let’s not quarrel. You did a silly thing,
but I daresay you meant well. You asked this man to find me a job—you
made yourself agreeable to him—you were pretending just as you were
with Tom Whaley, weren’t you?” His eagerness to think so fanned a warmth
between them. “I believe you really thought you were doing the best for
me.”

“No… I was thinking about Martin more than you. That was the real
reason.”

Then she told him the bare economic facts of his own household (which he
had hardly guessed, so preoccupied had he been with the bare economic facts
of the whole town)—the fact, for instance, that sometimes lately she
hadn’t been able to afford the kind of food and clothing the child most
needed, and had to make do with the second best. Though this was a condition
common all over Browdley, and formed the subject-matter of countless speeches
he made, he was nevertheless shocked to find it so close to his own personal
affairs—not because he thought he ought to have been exempt from what
afflicted others, but simply because it had never occurred to him. And once
it did, OF COURSE, something must be done about it. But what COULD be done?
—persisted Livia, coolly stemming his indignation. It was no use her
asking for more money because she knew, and none better, that the Guardian
didn’t make it; she knew also there were no more business economies possible.
Nor were there domestic ones; she herself did all the house-work, and some of
the office-work too, now that she knew how careless Will Spivey was. As she
very calmly explained, it had become her honest opinion after George’s
electoral defeat that it would be a wise thing to leave Browdley, even apart
from her own desire to do so.

“But—my Council work, Livia—”

“Where’s it getting you?”

“I don’t know, but I’ve not been defeated in THAT… YET. I don’t have all
my own way—after all, who does?—but I am ON the Council, pretty
safely on too, judging by my last majority. And the job’s worth doing. I know
you’re not interested in it—I don’t ask you to be, but do believe me
when I say this—IT’S WORTH DOING… Livia, don’t hinder me in
it—even if you can’t help me… And as for the extra things you need
for Martin, you shall have them. Of course you shall—I had no idea you
were doing without… I’d rather go without everything myself—”

“But you can’t, George. You don’t drink or smoke—there’s nothing you
could give up… except Browdley. THAT’S your hobby, or your luxury
—whatever you’d rather call it. And I don’t say you’re not entitled to
it—you personally, that is—everyone has his own tastes. But what
sort of a place is it for a child to grow up in?”

But that only gave him his own private cue for optimism, as she would have
known if she had attended more of his meetings. For he answered, beginning
quietly but with rising confidence as he proceeded: “Not such a bad place as
it used to be… and I’ll make it better. You wait. You don’t know all the
plans I have. And they’re not just dreams—they’re practical. I don’t
tell you much—because I know you don’t want to hear about it— I
WISH you did… but never mind that. Mark my words, though, I’ll DO things
with this town. I’ll get the slums off the map. I’ll build schools… and a
new hospital… I’ll… well, laugh at me if you like—I don’t
care.”

She did not laugh, but she smiled as she took his arm. “I wouldn’t care
either, but for Martin. You’d do anything for Browdley—I’d do anything
for him.”

“So would I too—I just don’t see any conflict between them. Don’t
you think I’m as devoted to the kid as you are?”

He was; but nevertheless in his heart he looked forward to the time when
Martin would be a little older—old enough for the friendly
father-and-son relationship to develop, old enough also to start the kind of
education on which George set so much store. Whereas for Livia every tomorrow
seemed a future far enough ahead and complete in itself; it was almost as if
she hoarded the days of babyhood, unwilling to lose the separate richness of
each one.

She was wrong, though, in saying there was nothing he could
give up. There
was, and he gave it up. She never knew, because she had never known anything
about it at all. The fact was, after his electoral defeat George had gone
back to his earlier ambition, the university degree. The long interval he had
let pass meant digging over a good deal of old as well as new ground, but he
tackled the job, as he did all his chosen jobs, with enthusiasm. Most of the
necessary time he put in late at nights, in the room which he had now begun
to call his ‘study’; and without actually telling Livia a direct lie, he
allowed her to think he was busy preparing material for the Guardian. As she
was generally asleep when he came up to bed she did not know how long he
worked; sometimes it was half the night. He had a curious unwillingness to
let her know what he still hankered after, partly because he was not sure he
would ever succeed in winning it, but chiefly out of a sort of embarrassment;
he was sure she would smile as at a grown man caught playing with a toy, for
book-learning to her was something you had forced on you during youth and
then were mercifully released from ever afterwards. She might also (a more
valid attitude) feel that if he had such time to spare it would be better
spent in trying to sustain his own precarious livelihood. Anyhow, he did not
tell her, and having not done so, it was easy to give the whole thing up
without a word to anyone in the world. There were the examination fees he
would now avoid, and he could also sell some of the expensive text-books he
had had to purchase. He did this and gave her everything thus saved,
spreading it over a period so that she needed no explanation.

But the habit of reading in his study at nights continued—in fact,
the whole habit of study continued, for it was something bigger than a mere
competitive examination that had inspired George. The fringe of scholarship
he had touched had left him with an admiration for learned men all the more
passionate because he almost never met them either in business or politics;
and there came to him, a constant vision, the memory of the dome-headed
spectacled examining professor who had been so indulgent to him about the
Pathetic Fallacy.

Perhaps Martin would grow up into a learned man—which was another
reason for not discussing the matter with Livia.

One thing, however, became both an immediate and a practical ambition
—that the boy should have a vastly different childhood from his own.
Not that his own had been cruel or vicious; merely that, in recollecting it,
he was aware of how far it had been from the ideal. Perhaps equally far from
the worst that it might have been, in Browdley, for George’s father had
always had regular employment in a job that set him among the aristocracy of
cotton- mill labour—a spinner’s wage being at that time more than twice
that of the lowest-paid. And though Mill Street became a byword later, it was
no worse during George’s childhood than nine-tenths of Browdley; for the
Boswells, like many other families, had lived in a four-roomed bathroomless
house more because there were no others available than because they could not
have afforded better. Anyhow, Number Twenty-Four, in which George was born,
had been clean and decently furnished, and its occupants, though overcrowded,
were never without enough plain food and strong soap and good winter fuel;
they were “respectable chapel folk”, moreover, which meant that their
children were nagged at without the use of technical bad language; and if the
young Boswells feared their father too much, and their father feared his
Heavenly Father, it was doubtless on general principles rather than for any
more definite reason.