James Hilton: Collected Novels (15 page)

So George, because of this, had left an elementary school when he was thirteen, and had taken various jobs that gave him nothing but a series of pointless and not always pleasant experiences, and then had come the war, with more pointless and not always pleasant experiences—in France and elsewhere. During this time, however, his dissatisfactions had acquired a pattern, and the pattern had acquired a trend; so that on seeing Browdley again, war-injured but recovering, at the age of thirty-one, he had known what he wanted to do and had begun right away to do it. At a Council by-election he won a victory that surprised even himself, while about the same time he took over the almost bankrupt
Guardian.

And after several months the
Guardian
was still almost bankrupt. For one reason, it had no monopoly (the
Browdley Advertiser
, one of a chain of local papers, enjoyed a far bigger circulation), and Browdley folk remained obstinately fixed in their reading habits even when an increasing number of them favored George’s political opinions. He would have been badly off indeed but for the small printing establishment (two hand-presses with three employees), which not only put out the regular weekly edition but also received official printing jobs from the Browdley municipality. And here, of course, lay an obvious opening for George’s political opponents, some of whom whispered “graft” whenever the Council (George scrupulously absenting himself from the vote) decided to hand him another contract. That they did so at all, however, testified to his rising popularity as well as to the fact that the enmities he made were rarely bitter or lasting. The truth was, as an enemy once remarked, it was damned hard to hate George, and whispers of graft did not stick very well because, graft or no graft, it really was quite obvious that he was not lining his pockets with any considerable success. He lived modestly in the oldish, inconvenient house which, adjoining the printing works, he had acquired when nobody else wanted either; and he often found it as hard to pay his newsprint bills as to collect from some of his customers. He dressed rather shabbily and rode a bicycle except when official business entitled him to the use of a municipal car. The local bank manager and income-tax assessor knew all these and other pertinent details, but as they belonged to the opposition party they were constrained to attack him in reverse: if, they argued, George succeeded so meagerly with his own small business, how could Browdley feel confidence in his capacity to run the town? But humbler citizens were not much influenced by this. Most of them knew George personally and felt that his total lack of prosperity made him all the more human, municipal contracts or not. They
liked
him, in fact, and a great many fought his battle, and if a few of them fought it bitterly, he would sometimes reward them with a speech that made them think he was secretly as bitter as they were. But in that they were wrong, for George was just fiery, effervescent, genuinely indignant over much that he saw around him, but incurably romantic about what he saw in his own mind. He was also naïve in the way he tackled his opponents—first of all overwhelming them with a sort of Galahad impetuosity, then wondering if perhaps he had been a little unfair, and later—as often as not—making some quixotic gesture of retraction or conciliation.

There was that Council meeting, for instance, in the spring of 1918, at which he first spoke Livia’s name—and with a ring of challenge as he pitched his voice to the public gallery. “I’ve always held,” he began, “that no accident of birth should ever stand in the way of merit
(cheers)—
in fact it’s one of the few things I’m prepared to be thoroughly consistent about.
(Laughter.)
Councillor Whaley has just referred to the great injustice done to our fellow citizens many years ago by one whose name has a certain prominence in the history of this town. I think Councillor Whaley put the matter far too mildly in using the word ‘injustice.’ I’d prefer myself to call it the most damnable piece of financial knavery ever perpetrated by a self-acknowledged crook at the expense of thousands of honest hard-working folks.
(Loud cheers.)
Oh yes, I know the saying
De mortuis nil nisi bonum
—if I’ve got the pronunciation wrong perhaps some of the gentlemen on the other side who have had the advantage of a better education than mine will correct me
(laughter)—
at any rate, they’ll agree with me that the Latin words mean that you should speak no evil of the dead…But may I ask
this
question of Councillor Whaley—suppose the dead reach out from their graves to continue the harm they did during their lives—are we
still
to keep silent about them?
(Loud and prolonged cheers.)
Gentlemen…I wouldn’t have referred to such a matter unless the other side had thought fit to mention it first. But since they did, I’ll say this much—that in my opinion our town is
still
suffering from the effects of the Channing Mill crash and the iniquitous swindle that caused it! Its victims are to be found in every street—nay, almost in every house. Certainly in
one
of our houses—the workhouse.
(Cheers.)
What shall we say of any man, living or dead, who can be accounted personally responsible for such a thing? To inherit control of an industrial concern and then behave with such callous dishonesty that working people lose jobs and life savings together, so that hundreds of homes are sacrificed and broken up, so that health is imperiled and countless lives are embittered, so that children have their educations interrupted and old folks are hastened to their graves—if one causes all this havoc, then in God’s name what shall we call him, or the system that gave him such power and opportunity?”

Here the cheers and shouts of the gallery were interrupted by a shabby little man in the back row who yelled out with piercing distinctness: “Don’t matter what you call ’im now, George. The bugger’s dead.” Whereupon cheers dissolved into laughter and George sensing the moment for a change of mood, dropped his voice to a much more prosaic level and continued:—

“Aye…let’s cut the cackle and get down to the business in hand. There’s a war still on, and we must save a bit of our bad language for the Germans.
(Laughter.)
I was just then tempted—as we all are sometimes—to speak my mind. (
Laughter.)
I couldn’t help it, and I think those who elected me to this Council didn’t really expect me ever to do anything else.
(Cheers and laughter.)
And that’s why I’m urging you now, as a man still speaking his mind, not to pay off an old score on an innocent person. To begin with, the score’s too big. And then also, though we’re often told that the sins of the fathers get visited on the children, there isn’t one of us who thinks that’s really a fair thing, or ought to be encouraged…Well, now let me really come to the facts of the matter. We have tonight a subordinate municipal post to fill for which we invited public applications. As I see it—and not as some folks here seem to see it—there’s only one thing we ought to do, and that’s what we always have done—choose the best person for the job and let no other consideration matter. It’s a simple method, and I’m all against changing it.” And then, dropping his voice to a monotone as he consulted a sheet of paper: “I have here the list of applicants for the position of junior library assistant, together with their qualifications. On the basis of these facts, and these alone, I move that the application of Miss Olivia Channing be accepted.”
(Cheers and some cries of dissent.)

The foregoing has been worth quoting verbatim, not only because it was one of the events that shaped George’s destiny, but as a sample of his speechmaking in those days. He always said he was no orator, and sincerely believed it, but his opponents, though reluctant to use the complimentary term, were not so sure; at any rate they could call him a rabble-rouser. The speech is typical in its astute and somewhat excessive preliminary agreement with the other side (in this case his own side), putting them in a good humor by stating their case better than they could themselves, so that afterwards George’s real point came as an intended anticlimax. He had often by this means won victories almost by default. The jibe about his fellow members’ superior education was also typical; it was true that many of them had been to better schools, but extremely unlikely that any could remember as much Latin as George had recently learned.

But most typical of all was his quixotic impulse to be fair; it was as if, having called the father a crook, he felt in duty bound to find the daughter a job.

On this occasion victory was anything but by default. His speech failed to silence objectors, and there was further argument, some of it rancorous. But the motion was eventually passed by a narrow margin, with much cross voting; so that in due course Miss Olivia Channing did indeed become junior assistant in the Browdley Public Library at a commencing salary of forty-five shillings a week.

“And a nice problem you’ve handed me,” Dick Jordan remarked, meeting George a few days later in Shawgate. The librarian was one of George’s closest friends and political supporters.

“Why, Dick, isn’t she any good?”

“She does the work all right, but—well, when you remember her father there’s a lot of things you can’t feel sure of.”

“Aye, and one of them’s heredity,” declared George, advancing stoutly to a favorite topic. “Thank goodness it’s not as important as environment, because environment’s something you can change.”

“Not when you’ve already had it. What d’you think
her
environment was like at Stoneclough—up there with a man who’d done a stretch in prison and drank heavily and was so impossible to live with that…oh well, you’ve heard some of the rumors, I daresay.”

“I’ve heard ’em, but I don’t see why they should make us condemn the girl. Seems to me it’s more a case for sympathy.”

“She’ll not find much of that in Browdley, George. It’s one thing to swing the Council by a speech, but when it comes to changing the minds of ordinary folks who’ve lost their hard cash—”

“But
she
didn’t steal it
—
”

“No, but she lived at Stoneclough, and for years that’s been the symbol in this town of being luckier than you deserve. And it’s still the symbol, George, in spite of all the mortgages on the place and no matter what the girl herself had to put up with there…”

George did not meet her till some weeks after she had begun work. He was then studying hard for the final examination that might earn him a university degree, and it was this that occupied his mind when he entered the Reference Department of the library on a sunny April afternoon. But when he left, a couple of hours after, he could only think of the girl who had brought him Volume Four of the
Cambridge Modern History.

He always remembered her first words to him as she took his slip of paper, scanned it, then him, then stepped back a pace. “
Councillor
Boswell?”

And his own first words as he stared at her for the first time: “Aye, that’s me.”

“Then I want to thank you for—for—”

“Oh…so you’re Olivia Channing?”

“Yes, that’s why I want to thank you. It was kind of you to put in a word for me.”

“I didn’t mean it as kindness—just fairness, that’s all. But I’m glad it turned out the way it did. How are you managing?”

“You mean the work? Oh, it’s easy.”

“Like it?”

“Pretty well.”

“Only that?”

She smiled—a curious smile, for which George, who saw it often afterwards, long sought an adjective, and in the end could only use Jordan’s description of the girl—he had said she looked “haunted.”

She said now, with this smile: “People don’t like
me
, that’s the trouble.”

He smiled back, robustly, cheerfully. “Can’t expect them to, yet awhile. You’ll just have to live things down a bit.”

“Live things down?”

“Aye…If you know what I mean.”

He wondered if, or how much she did, especially as that ended their conversation rather abruptly. She fetched him his book and did not resume it.

After that first meeting he began to feel emotionally the full force of the argument he had stated in abstract terms at the Council meeting—that the child should not suffer for the sins of the father. In this case the sins of the father had been so considerable that the sufferings of the daughter might well be on the same scale unless someone intervened on her behalf; and George, having intervened once, could not help the growth of a feeling of personal responsibility to match his awakening interest. He knew that John Channing had died practically without means, despite the fact that he had lived at Stoneclough from the time of his release from prison until his death; and though the daughter’s need to go out and earn her own living did not stir George to any particular pity (for, after all, that was what most Browdley girls had to do), he was nevertheless concerned that she should be happy in her job, the more so as he had obtained it for her. Not till he met her for the second time did it occur to him to wonder why on earth she had applied for any job at all in a place where there was so much local feeling against her family.

He spoke this thought aloud when (on a bus top where he found himself next to her) she admitted having encountered a good deal of coldness and even a few personal insults at the library.

“Then how about giving it up?” he asked, suddenly seeing things from her angle and becoming indignant about them. “Would you be happier?”

“I need the money,” she said simply.

“Aye, but there’d be other jobs in other places—why not try London, for instance?”

“I’d rather stay here.”

“You mean you
like
Browdley?”

She shook her head.

“Then why?”

“It’s my home—Stoneclough.”

“Stoneclough? You mean the actual house? It means so much to you? You still live there?”

“Yes, it’s my home.”

“I should have thought you’d have been glad to leave a place that had such—er—unhappy associations.”

She shook her head again.

After an awkward pause George continued: “Well, don’t worry. Most people have short memories.”