by C. P. Snow
The last hearing of George’s case took up a July afternoon. I sat in the old Assize Hall, where the Quarter Sessions had been transferred this year. The hall was small, intimate, and oppressive in the summer heat. Thunder rolled intermittently as George made his last speech, aggressive, closely packed with an overwhelming argument. He was more nervous than in his attack on the School committee.
The judge had been a little short with him, provoked by his manner. Eden, who allowed George complete charge in the later stages, sat with his lips in a permanent but uneasy smile. When George was given the case, in words slightly peremptory and uncordial, Eden shook his hand: ‘That was an able piece of work, Passant. I must say you’ve done very well.’ Then Martineau, who had not attended a hearing throughout the case, entered, was told the news, and laughed. ‘You’ll go from strength to strength, won’t you, George? You’ll be ashamed of being seen with your old friends–’
When they had gone, I stayed alone with George while he packed his papers: he bent his head over the desk and made a neat tick on the final page; he was smiling to himself. We went together to a café by the river; when we sat down at the little table by the window, he said, with an exultant sigh: ‘Well, we’ve pulled that off.’ A happy smile spread over his face. ‘This is one of the best occasions there have ever been,’ he said.
‘I’ve never seen anyone look quite so jubilant,’ I said, ‘as when you got the verdict.’
George shook with laughter.
‘I don’t see why anyone shouldn’t look pleased,’ he said, ‘when you damned well know you’ve done something in a different class from the people round you.’ His voice calmed down. ‘Not that I ever had any serious doubts about it.’
‘Not last week?’ I said. ‘Walking round the park?’
‘You can’t expect me not to have bad moments,’ George said. ‘I didn’t get a reasonable chance to have any faith in myself until – not long ago. Being as shy as I am in any respectable society doesn’t help. I’ve never got over my social handicaps. And you realise that I went through my childhood without anyone impressing on me that I had ability – considerable ability, in fact.’ He chuckled. ‘So you can’t expect me not to have bad moments. But they’re not very serious. Fortunately, I’ve managed to convince myself–’
‘What of?’
‘That I’m capable of doing something useful in the world and that I’ve found the way of doing it.’
Contentedly he leaned back against the wall, and looked beyond me through the window. It was a cloudy evening, but the sky was bright towards the west; so that in the stream that ran by the café garden the clouds were reflected, dark and sharply cut.
‘It was extremely important that I should be a success in the firm,’ George went on. ‘I regard that as settled now. They couldn’t do without me.’
‘Do they realise that?’
‘Of course.’
‘Are you sure?’
George flushed. ‘Of course I am. I’m not dealing with cretins. You heard yourself what Martineau said an hour ago.’
‘You can’t rely on Martineau.’
‘Why not?’
‘In his present state, he might do anything. Sell his partnership and go into the Church,’ I smiled, stretching my invention for something more fantastic than the future could possibly hold.
‘Nonsense,’ said George. ‘He’s a bit unsettled. People of imagination often have these bouts. But he’s perfectly stable, of course.’
‘You’ve forgotten what Morcom said the other night?’
‘I’ve got it in its right proportion.’
‘You were desperately anxious about him. A few days ago. You were more anxious than I’ve seen you about anything else.’
‘You can exaggerate that.’
‘So you expect everything to be always the same?’
‘As far as the progress of my affairs goes,’ said George, ‘yes.’
I burst out: ‘I must say it seems to me optimism gone mad.’
But actually, when George was shelving or assimilating the past, or doing what was in effect the same, comfortably forecasting his own future, I was profoundly moved by a difference of temperament: far more than by a disinterested anxiety. At that age, to be honest, I resented George being self-sufficient, as it seemed to me, able to soften any facts into his own optimistic world. He seemed to have a shield, an unfair shield, against the realities and anxieties that I already felt.
Also, for weeks I had been working with him, sympathising with his strain during the case, arguing against the qualms which oddly seemed to afflict him more than they would a less hopeful man. It had been easier to encourage him over the doubtful nights than to sit isolated from him by this acceptance of success, so blandly complete that the case might have been over a year ago and not that afternoon. And so, guiltily aware of the relief it gave me, I heard my voice grow rancorous. ‘You’re making a dream of it,’ I said, ‘just to indulge yourself. Like too many of your plans. Do you really think it’s obvious that Martineau will stay here for the rest of his life?’
‘I don’t see what else he’s going to do,’ said George, smiling. But I could detect, as often when he was argued against, a change in tone. ‘In any case,’ he said, with his elaborate reasonableness, ‘I don’t propose to worry about that. He’s done almost everything I required of him. He’s stayed in the firm long enough for me to establish my position. He’s given me the chance, and I’ve taken advantage of it. It doesn’t matter particularly what happens now.’
George’s face suddenly became eager and happy.
‘You see,’ he said, ‘I have the right to stay here now. I could always have stayed before. Even Eden would never have seriously tried to get rid of me, whether Martineau was there or not. But I couldn’t really be entirely satisfied until I’d established to myself the right to go on as I am. I’ve never had much confidence, and I knew it would take a triumph to prove to myself that I’ve a right to do as I please. That’s why this is so splendid. I’m perfectly justified in staying, now.’
In my resentful state, I nearly pretended to be mystified. But I thought of Olive’s premonition; and I was captured by his pleasure in his own picture of himself. One could not resist his fresh and ebullient happiness.
‘The people at the School?’ I said.
‘Obviously,’ said George. ‘What would happen to everyone if I went away?’
I replied, as he wanted: ‘One or two of us you’ve affected permanently,’ I said. ‘But the others – in time they’d become what they would have been – if you’d never come.’
‘I won’t have it,’ said George. ‘Good God above, I won’t have it.’ He laughed wholeheartedly. ‘Do you think I’m going to waste my time like that? You’re right, it’s exactly what would happen. And it’s simply inconceivable that it should. I refuse to contemplate it,’ he said. ‘We must go on as we are. God knows, there isn’t much freedom in the world, and I’m damned if we lose what little there is. I’ve started here, and now after this I can go on. I tell you, that’s why this mattered so much to me.’
I looked across the table; his eyes were shining in the twilight, and I was startled by the passionate exultation in his voice. ‘You’ve understood before, I’ve found the only people to whom my existence is important. How can you expect anything else to count beside that fact?’
His voice quietened, he was smiling; the evening light falling from the window at my back showed his face glowing and at rest.
13: An Unnecessary Confession
WITH the success behind him, George remarked more often about a partnership ‘being not too far away’. For the first time, he showed some impatience about his own future: but he was no longer worried over Martineau. Both Morcom and I began to think he was right; during July and August, I almost abandoned my fear that Martineau might leave
and so endanger George’s prospects in the firm.
Martineau’s behaviour seemed no more eccentric than we were used to. He was still doing everything we wanted of him; we went to Friday nights, we saw him walking backwards and forwards between the sofa and the window, his shadow leaping jerkily into the summer darkness. It was all as it had been last year; just as with any present reality, it was hard to imagine that it would ever cease.
We smiled as we heard him use a mysterious phrase – ‘the little plays’.
‘Of course, the man’s religion is at the bottom of it all,’ said George, back into boisterous spirits which were not damped even when Olive had to leave the town; her father’s health had worsened, and she took him to live by the sea. George compensated himself for that gap by his enormous pride in Jack’s and my performances; for my examination result was a good one, and Jack at last had achieved a business coup.
It added to Jack’s own liveliness. He was warmed by having made a little money and by feeling sure of his flair. And it was like him to signalise it by taking Mrs Passant to the pictures – her who was suspicious of all her son’s friends, who had denounced Jack in particular as an unscrupulous sponger. Yet he became the only one of us she liked.
It was also Jack who brought the next news of Martineau. One evening in September, George and I were walking by the station when we saw Jack hurrying in. He seemed embarrassed to meet us.
‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I can’t wait a minute. I’m staying at Chiswick for the weekend – my mother’s brother, you know.’
‘There’s no train to London for an hour, surely,’ said George. Jack shook his head, smiled, and ran into the booking hall.
‘Of course there’s no train at this time.’ George chuckled to me. ‘He must be after a woman. I wonder who he’s picked up now.’
The following day was a Saturday; at eight George and I were sitting in the Victoria; I mentioned that at exactly this time last year, within three days, Jack had been presented with a cigarette case. George was still smiling over the story when Jack himself came in.
‘I was looking for you,’ he said.
‘I thought you were staying with your prosperous uncle,’ said George.
Jack did not answer. Instead, he said: ‘I’ve something important to show you.’
He made us leave the public house, and walk up the street; it was a warm September night, and we were glad to. He took us into the park at the end of the New Walk. We sat on a bench under one of the chestnut trees and looked at the lights of the houses across the grass. The moon was not yet up; and the sky, over the cluster of lights, was so dense and blue that it seemed one could handle it. Jack pointed to the lights of Martineau’s. ‘Yes, it’s about him,’ he said.
He added: ‘George, I want to borrow your knife for a minute.’
With a puzzled look, George brought out the heavy pocket knife which he always carried. Jack opened it; then took a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and pinned it to the tree by the knife blade.
‘There,’ he said. ‘You’d have seen plenty of those last night–’ if we had gone with him to a neighbouring village.
It was too dark to read the poster in comfort. George struck a match, and peered in the flickering light.
The sheet was headed ‘Players of the Market Place’ and then, in smaller letters, ‘will be with you on Thursday night to give their LITTLE PLAYS. Titles for this evening, The Shirt, Circe. Written by us all. Played by us all. There is no collection,’ and in very large letters ‘WE WOULD RATHER HAVE YOUR CRITICISM THAN YOUR ABSENCE.’
It was a printed poster, and the proofs had been read with typical Martineau carelessness: so that, for instance, ‘evening’ appeared as ‘evenini’, like an odd word from one of the lesser-known Latin tongues, Romanian or Provençal.
The match burnt down to George’s fingers. He threw it away with a curse.
Jack explained that the ‘little plays’ purported to carry a religious moral: that they were presumably written by Martineau himself. Jack had watched part of one – ‘painfully bad’, he said.
George was embarrassed and distressed.
‘We can’t let him make a fool of himself in public. We must calm him down,’ he said. ‘He can’t have lost all sense of responsibility.’
‘He’s just kept enough to hide these antics from us,’ said Jack. ‘Still, I found him out.’ Then he laughed, and to my astonishment added: ‘Though in the process, of course, I managed to let you find me out.’
‘What do you mean now?’ said George, uninterested by the side of his concern for Martineau.
‘I made that slip about the train.’
‘Oh,’ said George.
‘And, of course, I remembered as soon as I spoke to you last night. I’ve always told you that my father’s brother lived in Chiswick. Last night I said it was my mother’s. After you’d noticed that, I may as well say that I’ve got no prosperous uncles living in Chiswick at all. I’m afraid that one night – it just seemed necessary to invent them.’
Jack spoke fast, smiling freshly in the dusk. Neither George nor I had noticed the slip: but that did not matter; he wanted to confess. He went on to confess some more romances; how he had wrapped his family in mystery, when really they were poor people living obscurely in the town. I was not much surprised. He was so fluid, I had watched him living one or two lies; and I had guessed about his family since he took pains to keep any of us from going near their house. I still was not sure where he lived.
He went on to tell us that one of his stories of an admiring woman had been imaginary. That seemed strange; for, more than most young men, he had enough conquests that were indisputably real. Perhaps he felt himself that this was an inexplicable invention – for he looked at George. The moon was just rising, and George’s face was lit up, but lit up to show a frown of anger and incomprehension.
‘I suppose it must seem slightly peculiar to you, George,’ said Jack. ‘But you don’t know what it is to be obliged to make the world a trifle more picturesque. I’m not defending myself, mind. I often wish I were a solid person like you. Still, don’t we all lie in our own fashion? You hear Martineau say, “George, I’m sure the firm’s always going to need you”. You’d never think of departing from the literal truth when you told us the words he’d said. But you’re quite capable, aren’t you, of interpreting the words in your own mind, and convincing yourself that he’s really promised you a partnership? While I’m afraid that I might be obliged to invent an offer, with chapter and verse. Lewis knows what I mean better than you do. But I know it makes life too difficult if one goes on after my fashion.’
He was repentant, but he was high-spirited, exalted. ‘Did you know,’ he went on, ‘that old Calvert told the truth at that committee of yours? He had warned me a month or two before that there wasn’t an opening for me in the firm.’
‘I didn’t know,’ said George. ‘Otherwise, I shouldn’t have acted.’
‘I can say this for myself,’ said Jack, ‘that the Roy affair brought him to the point.’
‘But you let me carry through the whole business under false pretences,’ George cried. ‘You represented it simply to get an advantage for yourself – and make sure that I should win it for you under false pretences?’
‘Yes,’ said Jack.
‘No,’ I said. ‘That was one motive, of course. But you’d have done it if there’d been nothing George could bring off for you. You’d have done it – because you couldn’t help wanting to heighten life.’
‘Perhaps so,’ said Jack.
‘I should never have acted,’ said George. He was shocked. He was shocked so much that he spoke quietly and with no outburst of anger. I thought that he sounded, more than anything, desperately lonely.
He stared at Jack in the moonlight. At that moment, their relation could
have ended. Jack had been carried away by the need to reveal himself; he knew that many men – I myself, for example – would accept it easily; he had not realised the effect it would have on George. Yet, his intuition must have told him that, whatever happened, they would not part now.
George was seeing someone as different from himself as he would ever see. Here was Jack, who took on the colour of any world he lived in, who, if he remembered his home and felt the prick of a social shame, just invented a new home and believed in it, for the moment with his whole existence.
While George, remembering his home, would have thrust it in the world’s face: ‘I’m afraid I’m no good in any respectable society. You can’t expect me to be, starting where I did.’
That was his excuse for his diffidence’s and some of his violence, for his constant expectation of patronising treatment and hostility. In that strange instant, as he looked at Jack, I felt that for once he saw that it was only an excuse. Here was someone who ‘started’ where George did, and who threw it off, with a lie, as lightly as a girl he had picked up for an hour: who never expected to find enemies and felt men easy to get on with and easier to outwit.
George knew then that his ‘You can’t expect me to, starting where I did’ was an excuse. It was an excuse for something which any man finds difficult to recognise in himself: that is, he was by nature uneasy and on the defensive with most of his fellow men. He was only fully assured and comfortable with one or two intimate friends on whose admiration he could count; with his protégés, when he was himself in power: with women when he was making love. His shame at social barriers was an excuse for the hostility he felt in other people; an excuse for remaining where he could be certain that he was liked, and admired, and secure. If there had not been that excuse, there would have been another; the innate uneasiness would have come out in some other kind of shame.
