So Well Remembered (17 page)

George took his ‘no’ for an answer exactly as he had begun to do on the
Council whenever he brought up his housing scheme—that is to say, he
seemed to accept it good-humouredly and as final while all the time he was
planning how he could best bring the matter up again. Besides which, in this
case, he was in love. He had supposed he had been in love before, on several
occasions, but the difference in what he felt for Livia convinced him that
THIS was love—because why else should he begin to neglect his Council
work—not much, not even in a way that could be noticed by anyone else,
but enough to give him qualms of conscience only to be stifled by reflecting
that as soon as he had won her he would make up for lost time? He gave
himself the same consolation over similar neglect of his examination studies.
After all, even in battles, the first must come first. He had confidence that
he would win her eventually, not only because he had confidence about most
things in those days, but because—as he saw it —there was no
considerable rival in the field—only Stoneclough, and he felt himself
more than a match for bricks and mortar, however darkly consecrated. How
could she long hesitate between the past and the future, especially as there
were moments when he felt so sure of her —physical moments when she
seemed to withdraw into a world of her own sensations that offered neither
criticism nor restraint, in contrast to her usual behaviour, which was to
make of most contacts a struggle for mastery? He was a clumsy lover, and
ruefully aware of it; as he said once, when she emerged from her private
world to laugh at him: “Aye, I’m a bit better on committees…”

The fact that she would never say, in words, that she loved him mattered
less after she had said, both doubtfully and hopefully, in reply to his fifth
or sixth proposal: “I MIGHT marry you, George, some day. If I ever marry
anyone at all…”

He never passed beyond the gates of Stoneclough; she never invited him,
and he never suggested it. She told him little about herself, and the promise
he had given not to mention her father set limits to his personal questions
about other matters, though not to his curiosity. He wondered, for instance,
why old Richard Felsby, her father’s former partner, had not helped her
financially, for Richard had dissolved partnership and sold out his interest
in the firm before the crash, so that he was still rich and could well have
afforded some gesture of generosity. But when once George spoke Richard
Felsby’s name he knew he had in some way trespassed on forbidden territory.
“I don’t see him,” was all she said, “and I don’t want to. I NEVER want to
see him.”

She said little, either, about her life at Stoneclough, except to
reiterate, whenever he brought up the matter, that she would rather live
there than anywhere else, despite the inconvenience of the three-mile walk.
He gathered that there was some old woman, a kind of housekeeper, living
there also, and that the two of them shared cooking and other domestic jobs;
but she gave him few details and he did not care to probe. Most of his time
with her was spent along the Stoneclough road, walking evening after evening
during that long fine summer; but as the days shortened and the bad weather
came, they sometimes met in the Library at midday, when she had an hour off
and they could talk in one of the book-lined alcoves of the Reference
Department. They spoke then in whispers, because of the ‘Silence’ notice on
the wall; and there was piquancy in that, because as Chairman of the Public
Library Sub-Committee he had a sort of responsibility for seeing that Library
rules were enforced.

One lunch hour she greeted him in such a distraught way that he knew
immediately something was wrong. Soon she told him, and even in face of her
distress his heart leapt with every word of the revelation. By the time she
had finished he knew that fate had played into his hands, so he proposed
again, with all his quiet triumph hidden behind a veil of sympathy. For
George could not avoid a technique of persuasion that made his last thrust in
battle—the winning one—always the kindest. And by sheer
coincidence, in that odd way in which at important moments of life the eye is
apt to be caught by incongruous things, he noticed while he was talking that
just above her hair, and glinting in the same shaft of sunshine, lay an
imposing edition of Creasy’s Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World. He
couldn’t help smiling and thinking it a good omen.

The news that had so distressed her was that the bank had foreclosed the
mortgages on Stoneclough, so that she would have had to leave the house in
any event. George tried to feel that this did not detract from his triumph,
but merely contributed to it. He assured her that she would find it more fun
living in a small house than in a great barracks of a place like Stoneclough.
“I’d like to know what the bank thinks it can do with it…”

She made no comment, but asked after a pause: “Do you like dogs?”

“Aye, I like ‘em all right. Used to have one when I lived with my Uncle
Joe—a big black retriever.”

“My dog’s small—and white. His name’s Becky.”

He suddenly realized what she was driving at. “You mean you want to bring
your dog to live with us? Why, of course… And I like any dog, for that
matter.”

They were married a few weeks later at Browdley Register Office, with only
a few friends of George’s in attendance. She was nineteen, and the fact that
he was getting on for twice that age was only one of the reasons why the
affair caused a local sensation.

Councillor Whaley, a seventy-year-old confirmed bachelor and one of those
political opponents whom George had converted into a staunch personal friend,
took him aside after the ceremony to say: “Well, George, she’s smart enough,
and ye’ve got her, so God bless ye both… I doubt if it’ll help ye, though,
when ye come up for re-election.”

“And d’you think that worries me?” George retorted, with jovial
indignation. “Would you have me marry for votes?”

Tom Whaley chuckled. “I’ll ask ye ten years hence if ye’d vote for
marriage—that’s the real question.” George then laughed back as he
clapped the old man on the shoulder and reflected privately that Tom Whaley
mightn’t be alive ten years hence, and how lucky he himself was, by contrast,
to have so much time ahead, and to have it all with Livia. For he was still
young enough to think of what he wanted to do as a life-work, the more so as
the world looked as if it would give him a chance to do it.

George, ever ready to be optimistic, was particularly so on that day of
his marriage.

So were millions of others all over the earth—for it was the month
of November, 1918.

The honeymoon, at Bournemouth, was a happy one, and by the
time it was
over George knew a great many things—a few of them disconcerting
—about Livia, but one thing about himself that seemed to matter and was
simple enough, after all: he loved her. He loved her more, even, than he had
thought he would, or could, love any woman. When he woke in the mornings and
saw her still sleeping at his side he had a feeling of tenderness that partly
disappeared as soon as she wakened, but somehow left a fragrance that lasted
through the day, making him tolerant where he might have been unyielding,
amused where he might have been antagonized. For she was, he soon discovered,
a person with a very definite will of her own. He thought she was in some
ways more like an animal than any human being he had ever met; but she was
like a REAL animal, he qualified, not just a human animal. There was intense
physicality about her, but it was unaware of itself and never gross; on the
other hand, she had a quality of fastidiousness that human beings rarely
have, but animals often. He could only modestly wonder how he had ever been
so confident of winning her, because now that he had done so she seemed to
him so much more desirable that it was almost as if he had to keep on
winning, or else, in some incomprehensible way, to risk losing. And when he
returned to Browdley that was still the case. He had hoped, after marriage,
to concentrate more than ever on his Council work and on study for the
university examination—to make up for such splendidly lost time with a
vengeance; yet to his slight dismay there came no relief at all from a
nagging preoccupation that he could not grapple with, much less analyse. He
found it actually harder to concentrate on the Cambridge Modern History,
harder to generate that mixture of indignation and practical energy that had
just barely begun to move the mountains of opposition to everything he wanted
to do as town councillor. It was as if the fire with which she consumed him
were now seeking to consume other fires.

For instance, her sudden change of attitude in regard to Browdley, and her
na ve question, within a few weeks of their return: “George, I’ve been
thinking—couldn’t you do your sort of work somewhere else?”

“Somewhere else? You mean move into a better part of the town?”

“No, I mean move altogether. Out of Browdley.”

He was too astonished to say much at first. “Well, I don’t know…” And
then he smiled. “That’s just what I suggested to you once, and you said you’d
rather stay here.”

“I said I’d rather stay at Stoneclough. But I haven’t got Stoneclough
now.”

“Well, I’ve still got the Guardian and my Council position. Wouldn’t be so
easy for me to give all that up.”

“You think it would be hard to find a newspaper or a Council job in some
other town?”

“Aye, that’s true too. But what I said is just what I meant. It wouldn’t
be easy for me to give up Browdley.”

She was not the sort of woman to say ‘Not even to please ME?’—and
although he did not think it was in her mind, he knew it was rather
uncomfortably in his own.

“It’s probably silly of me, George, even to ask you.”

“No, I wouldn’t call it silly—it’s just not practical. Of course I
can understand how you feel about the place, but surely it’s easier to put up
with now than it used to be when you worked at the Library?”

“Oh, it isn’t a question of that. I can put up with anything. I did,
didn’t I? It’s just that—somehow—I don’t think Browdley will
bring us any luck.”

“Oh, come now—superstitions—”

“I know—I can’t argue it out. It’s just a feeling I have.”

He laughed with relief, for the unreasonable in those days did not seem to
him much of an adversary. “All right, maybe you won’t have to have it long,
because I’ve a bit of news to tell you…”

He told her then what he had known for several days—that the
parliamentary member for Browdley was expected to retire on account of age
within a few months. When this happened there would be a by- election and
George would be a possible candidate; if he won, he would be obliged to live
in London during parliamentary sessions, so Livia would enjoy frequent
escapes from Browdley that way.

She was much happier at the thought of this, and soon also for another
reason: she was going to have a baby.

The member for Browdley duly applied for the Chiltern
Hundreds; the writ
for the by-election was issued; George was selected as his party’s candidate,
and the campaign opened in the summer of the following year. George’s
opponent was a rich local manufacturer who had made a fortune during the war
and declined to entertain the notion that this was in any way less than his
deserts. His party’s majority at the coupon election just after the Armistice
had been large, but already there were signs of a change in the national
mood, especially in the industrial areas, and it was generally agreed that
George had a chance if he would put up a fight for it. And there certainly
seemed no one likelier or better able to do so.

When George looked back on his life from later years, it was this period
—those few weeks and months—that shone conspicuously, because
upon Livia, always unpredictable, pregnancy seemed to confer such deep
contentment. George then realized the power she had over him, for immediately
he felt freed for effort just when effort was most needed. Never did he work
harder than during that election campaign; every morning, after a few
necessary jobs in the newspaper office, he would leave for a whole day of
canvassing, meetings at street corners and factory gates, culminating in some
‘monster rally’ in the evening that would send him home tired but still
exhilarated, long after midnight. Usually Livia would then have a meal
awaiting him, which he would gulp down avidly while he told her of the
manifold triumphs of the day. In her own way she seemed to share his
enthusiasm, if only on account of what could happen after his victory, for it
was already planned that they would rent a house in some inner London suburb
—Chelsea, perhaps—where she could live with her baby while George
made a name for himself in Parliament. Who could set limits to such a future?
Well, the electorate of Browdley could; and that, of course, sent him out in
the morning to work harder than ever, with Livia still in bed and himself
strangely refreshed after no more than a few hours of snatched sleep. He had
never been so happy, had never felt so physically enriched, or so alert
mentally. Things that had seemed a little wrong between him and Livia just
after their marriage had worked themselves right—or something had
happened, anyway; perhaps it was just that they had needed time to get
properly used to each other.

One thing, naturally, had to be postponed for a while—his studies
for the university degree. But of course he could pursue them just as easily
—nay, more so—in London later on. And it would be an added pride
to put B.A. after his name when he could already put M.P.

Gradually during those busy weeks Browdley’s long rows of drab four-
roomed houses took on splashes of colour from election cards in most of the
windows—George’s colours were yellow, his opponent’s blue. The latter’s
slogan was “Put Wetherall In and Keep Higher Taxes Out”. George, however,
struck a less mercenary note. “A Vote for Boswell is a Vote for Your
Children’s Future” proclaimed his cards, banners, and posters.