George Passant (7 page)

We had a drink in a public house at the top of Parliament Street, and crossed over to another on the other side; it was a windy night, and the wind seemed very loud and the lights spectacularly bright. Jack, though he drank less than George and I, began demanding bowls of burning gold and going behind bars to help the maids: George kept greeting acquaintances, various men, whores, and girls from the factories out for a good time. He had met them on other night visits to Nottingham: for he went often, though he concealed it from Jack and me until we discovered by accident.

He knew the back streets better than those of our own town. He led us to the club by short cuts between high, ramshackle houses, and through ‘entries’, partly covered over, where George’s voice echoed crashingly. One such entry led to a narrow street, lit only by a single street lamp at the mouth. At the door of a tall house at the end remote from the light, George rapped three times with the brass knocker.

A woman climbed up from the area and recognised George. She told him to take us upstairs, the top door was unlocked. We went up the four flights of creaking wooden stairs, and met a new, bright blue door which cut off the attic storey from the landing.

A gramophone was wailing inside. George marched in before us: the room was half-full, mainly of women; as soon as he entered, a group of them gathered round him. He was popular there; they laughed at him, they were after the money which he threw away carelessly at all times, fantastically so when drunk; but they genuinely liked him. They did him good turns, and took their troubles to him for advice. With them, he showed none of the diffidence of a visit to Martineau’s respectable drawing-room; he was cheerfully, heartily enjoying himself, he liked being with them, he felt at home.

Tonight he burst into extravagance from the start. He saw Connie sitting with Thelma, her regular older friend; George put an arm round each of them, and shouted, ‘Thelma’s here! Of course, I insist that everyone must have a drink – because Thelma’s here!’

Connie told him that he was silly, then whispered in his ear; his eyes brightened, and he took out a couple of notes for Thelma to buy drinks round. George shouted to some women across the room, and in the same breath talked in soft chuckles to Connie. She was fair and quite young, with a pretty, impassive face and a nice body. She pretended to escape from his arm: at once he clutched her, and she came towards him: the contact went through George like an electric current, and he shouted jubilantly: ‘Make them have another drink, Thelma. Why shouldn’t everyone have two drinks at once?’

Soon George and Connie had gone away. The rest of us drank and danced. The floor was rough; there was nothing polished about the ‘club’ except the bright blue door on the landing. The furniture was mixed, but all old; the red velvet sofas seemed like the relics of a gay house of the nineties; so did the long mirror with the battered gilding. But there were also some marble-topped tables, picked up in a café, several wicker chairs and even two or three soap boxes. One of the bulbs was draped in frilly pink, and one was naked. Women giggled and shrilled; and among it all, the ‘manager’ (whose precise function none of us knew) sat in the corner of the room, reading a racing paper with a cloth cap on the back of his head.

Now and then a pair went out. The gramophone wailed on, like all the homesick, lust-sweet longing in the world. The thudding beat got hold of one, it got mixed with the smell of scent. After one dance, Jack spoke to me for a moment.

‘Jesus love me, I can’t help it, Lewis,’ he said with his fresh open smile. ‘I’m going all randy sad.’

It was after one o’clock when the three of us gathered round one of the marble-topped tables. The room was nearly empty by then, though the gramophone still played. We should have liked to go, but there was over an hour before the last train home. So we sat there, sobered and quiet, ordering a last glass of gin to mollify the manager: and, of course, we talked of women.

‘The first I ever had,’ said George, ‘happened on the night before my eighteenth birthday. She told me that she did it for a hobby. Afterwards, when I was walking home, it seemed necessary to shout, “Why don’t they all take up a hobby? Why don’t they
all
take up a hobby?”’ The words would have resounded boisterously three hours ago, when we entered that room; but now they were subdued. He was not randy sad, as Jack and I had been; this was a different, a deeper sadness. He knew the pleasure he had gained; and turning from it, he – whose pictures of the future usually glowed like a sunrise – felt all that he might miss.

‘I should have wanted something better before now,’ said Jack, ‘if I’d been you.’

‘It serves my purpose,’ said George. ‘I don’t know about yours.’

Jack smiled. ‘Why don’t you try nearer home?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that some of the young women in our group would be open to persuasion. You’d get more happiness from one of them, George. Clearly you would.’

‘That would destroy everything I want to do,’ George said. ‘You realise that’s what you’re suggesting? You’d put me into a position where people like Morcom could say that I was building up an impressive façade of looking after our group at the School. That I was building up an impressive façade – and that my real motive was to cuddle the girls on the quiet.’

Jack looked at George in consternation. For once in a quarrel, he had not raised his voice; yet his face bore all the signs of pain. Affectionately, Jack said: ‘I want you to be happy, that’s all.’

‘I shouldn’t be happy that way,’ said George. ‘I can look after my own happiness.’

‘Anyway, for my happiness, I’m afraid I shall need love,’ said Jack. ‘Love with all the romantic accompaniments, George. The sort of love that makes the air seem a remarkable medium to be moving through. I’m afraid I need it.’

‘I don’t know whether I need it,’ I said. ‘But I’m afraid that I’ve got it.’

‘Don’t you ever want it, George?’ Jack asked.

‘Of course I want it,’ said George. ‘Though I shouldn’t be prepared to sacrifice everything for it. But of course I want it: what do you think I am? As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking tonight that I’m not very likely to find it.’ He looked at me with a sympathetic smile. ‘I don’t know that I’ve ever been in love – at least not what you’d call love. I’ve made myself ridiculous once or twice, but it didn’t amount to much. I dare say that it never will.’

It seemed strange that George, not as a rule curious about his friends’ feelings, should have recognised from the start that my love for Sheila (which had begun that summer) would hag-ride me for years of my life. Yet that night he envied me. George was a sensual man, often struggling against his senses; Jack an amorous one, revelling in the whole atmosphere of love. In their different ways, they both that night wanted what they had not tasted. Saddened by pleasure, they thought longingly of love.

I said to Jack: ‘I think that Roy would have understood what we’ve been saying. It would have been beyond us at fifteen.’

‘I suppose he would,’ said Jack doubtfully.

‘He’s been in love,’ I said.

‘I still find it a bit hard to credit that,’ said Jack.

‘No one would believe me,’ I said, ‘if I told them that you were a very humble creature, would they?’

At the mention of Roy’s name, George had become preoccupied; his eyes, heavy-lidded after the evening, looked over the now empty room; but that abstracted gaze saw nothing, it was turned into himself. Jack and I talked on; George sat silently by; until he said suddenly, unexpectedly, as though he was in the middle of a conversation: ‘I accept some of the criticisms that were made before we started out.’

I found myself seized by excitement. I knew from his tone that he was going to bring out a surprise.

‘I scored a point or two,’ George said to Jack. ‘But I haven’t done much for you.’

‘Of course you have,’ said Jack. ‘Anyway, let’s postpone it. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘There’s no point in postponing it,’ said George. ‘I haven’t done much for you, as Lewis said before ever Morcom did. And it’s got to be attended to. Mind you, I don’t accept completely the pessimistic account of the situation. But we ought to be prepared to face it.’

Clearly, rationally, half-angrily, George explained to Jack (as Jack knew, as Morcom and I had already said, though not so precisely) how the committee’s decision gave him no future. ‘That being so,’ said George, ‘I suppose you ought to leave Calvert’s wretched place.’

‘I’ve got to live,’ said Jack.

‘Is it possible to go to another printer’s?’

‘I could get an identical job, George. With identical absence of future.’

‘Well, I can’t have any more of this fatalistic nonsense,’ said George, irascibly, and yet with a disarming kindness. ‘What would you do – if we could provide you with a free choice?’

‘I could do several things, George. But they’re all ruled out. They all depend on having some money – now.’

‘Do you agree?’ George asked me. ‘I expect you know Jack’s position better than I do. Do you agree?’

I had to, though I could foresee what was coming. If Jack’s fortunes were to be changed immediately, he must have a loan. My little legacy had given me a chance: each pound at our age was worth ten to a man whose life was fixed. Jack was young enough to get into a profession – or ‘to have a shot at that business we heard about the other day,’ as he said himself.

‘Yes,’ said George. ‘So in fact with a little money now, you’re confident that you could laugh at Calvert and his friends?’

‘With luck, I should make a job of it,’ said Jack. ‘But–’

‘Then the money will have to be produced. I shall want you to let me contribute.’ George’s manner became, to stop Jack speaking, bleak and businesslike. ‘Mind you, I shall want a certain number of guarantees. I shall want to be certain that I’m making a good investment. And also I ought to warn you straightaway that I may not be able to raise much money myself.’ He went on very fast. ‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t put my financial position on the table. It’s all a matter of pure business. And I’ve never been able to understand how people manage to be proud about their finances. Anyway, even people who are proud about their finances couldn’t be if they had mine. I collect exactly £285 per year. (Such incomes, because of the fall in the value of money, were to seem tiny within thirty years.) Of that I allow £55 to my father and mother. I’m also insured in their interest. I think if I decreased the £55 a bit, and added to the insurance, they oughtn’t to be much upset. And then I could probably raise a fair sum from the bank on the policy – but I warn you, it’s a matter of pure business. There may be difficulties.’

Neither Jack nor I fully understood the strange nature of George’s ‘finances’. But Jack was moved so that he did not recover his ready, flattering tongue until we got up to catch our train. Then he said: ‘George, I thought we set out tonight to celebrate a triumph.’

‘It was a triumph,’ said George. ‘I shall always insist that we won at that meeting.’

IT took some days for Jack to settle what he wanted to do (from that night at Nottingham, he never doubted that George would find the money): and it took a little longer to persuade George of it.

Those were still the days of the small-scale wireless business. An acquaintance of ours had just started one; Jack had his imagination caught. He expounded what he could make of it – and I thought how much he liked the touch of anything modern. He would have been a
contemporary
man in any age. But he was inventive, he was shrewd, he had a flair for advertisement; he persuaded us all except George.

George did not like it. He would have preferred to try to article Jack to Eden & Martineau. He asked Morcom and me for our opinions. We gave practically the same answer. Making Jack a solicitor would mean a crippling expense for George; and we could not see Jack settling down to a profession if he started unwillingly. His choice was far more likely to come off.

At last George gave way. Then, though Jack, as I say, never doubted that the money would be found, George faced a last obstacle; he had to tell his father and mother that he was lessening his immediate help to them.

For many men, it would have been easy. He could have equivocated; after all, the insurance provided for their future, and he had been making an extravagantly large contribution. But he never thought of evading the truth. He dreaded telling it, for he knew how it would be taken; their family relations were passionately close. But tell it he did, without any cover, three days after our visit to Nottingham.

A week later, when he took me to supper with them, they were still not reconciled to it. It was only Mr Passant’s natural courtesy, his anxiety to make me feel at home, that kept them from an argument the moment we arrived.

Actually, I was not a stranger in their house. Until two years before, Mr Passant had been assistant postmaster at Wickham; then, when George got his job at Eden & Martineau’s, Mr Passant transferred to the general post office in the town. For fear of their family ties George insisted on going into lodgings, while they lived in this little house, one of a row of identical little houses, each with a tiny front garden and iron railings, on the other side of the town. But George visited them two or three times every week; he took his friends to spend whole evenings with them; tonight we arrived early and George and his mother kissed each other with an affection open and yet suddenly released. She was a stocky, big-breasted woman, wearing an apron over a greyish dress.

‘It’s half the week since I saw you, old George,’ she said: it was the overtones of her racy Suffolk accent that we noticed in George’s speech.

She wanted to talk at once about the question of money. Mr Passant managed to stop her, however, his face lined with concern. In a huff, as hot-tempered as George, she went into the back kitchen, though supper would not be ready for an hour.

Mr Passant sat with us round the table in the kitchen. It was hot from a heaped-up fire, and gave out the rich smell of small living-rooms. Under the gaslight, Mr Passant burst into a breathless, friendly, excited account of how, that morning at the post office, a money order had nearly gone astray. He spoke in a kindly hurry, his voice husky and high-pitched. He said: ‘Do you play cards, Mr – er – Lewis? Of course you must play cards. George, we ought to play something with him now.’