Time of Hope (15 page)

He might not be worldly, but he was a fine lawyer, whose own record in examinations was of the highest class. Decisions are taken before we realize them ourselves: above all, perhaps, with those that matter to us most. I did not know it, but my mind may have been made up from that moment.

I set out to win the support of Martineau and Eden. Whichever way I moved, I should need them. I could not afford to fail. When George took me, first to Martineau’s house, then to Eden’s office, I was nervous; but it was a pleasurable nervousness that sharpened my attention and my wits. Unlike George, who was embarrassed at any social occasion, I was enjoying myself.

I got airy encouragement from Martineau, but no more. Although none of us realized it then, he was losing all interest in his profession. He welcomed me to his ‘Friday night’ parties; it was the first salon I had ever attended, and knowing no others I did not realize how eccentric it was. I enjoyed being inside a comfortable middle-class house for the first time. I could not persuade him to attend to my career, though he made half-promises, chiefly I thought because he was so fond of George.

It was quite different with Eden. Before ever George introduced me, I knew that the meeting was critical, for Eden was the senior partner. I guessed that I had disadvantages to overcome. Before I had been in Eden’s office three minutes, I felt with an extra tightening of the nerves that I had more than a disadvantage against me: I was struggling with Eden’s unshakeable dislike of George.

The office was warm and comfortable, with a fire in an old-fashioned grate, leather-covered armchairs, sets of heavy volumes round the walls. Eden sat back in his chair, smoking a pipe, when George awkwardly presented me; and then George stood for a time, not knowing whether to leave us or stay, with me still standing also. Eden was just going to speak, but George chose that moment to say that he did not agree with Eden’s general line of instructions about a new case.

Eden was bald and frog-faced, substantial in body, comfortably and pleasantly ugly. His manner was amiable, but he ceased to be so bland when he replied to George. They had a short altercation, each of them trying hard to be courteous, Eden repressing his irritation, George insisting on his opinion and his rights. Soon Eden said ‘Well, well, Passant, this isn’t the best time to discuss it. Perhaps you might leave me with this young man.’

‘If you prefer it, Mr Eden,’ said George, and backed away.

Eden might have been designed to extract the last ounce of misunderstanding out of George. He was a solid, indolent, equable, good-humoured man, modest about everything but his judgement. He was often pleased with his own tolerance and moderation. He respected George’s intellect and professional competence – it was comfortable for him to respect the latter, for Eden was not overfond of work, and, having once assured himself of George’s skill, was content to let that dynamo-like energy dispose of most of the firm’s business. But everything else about George repelled him. George’s ‘wildness’, formality, passion for argument, lack of ease – they infuriated Eden. In his private heart he could not abide George. Before he spoke to me, when George at last left us alone, I knew that I was under the same suspicion. Some of George’s aura surrounded me also, in Eden’s eyes. I had to please right in the teeth of a prejudice.

‘Well, young man,’ said Eden with a stiff, courteous but not over-amiable smile, ‘what can I do for you?’ I replied that above all things I needed the guidance of a man of judgement. And I continued in that vein.

My brashness and spasms of pride with George were not much like me, or at least not like the self that in years to come got on easily with various kinds of men and women. Even in the months between my meetings with George and Eden, I was learning. In casual human contacts, I was already more practised than George, who stayed all his life something like most of us at eighteen. I was much more confident than George that I should get along with Eden or with anyone that I met; and that confidence made me more ready to please, more unashamed about pleasing.

Eden became much less suspicious. He went out of his way to be affable. He did not make up his mind quickly about people, but he was very genial, pleased with himself for being so impartial, satisfied that one of Passant’s friends could – unlike that man Passant – make so favourable an impression. Eden liked being fair. Passant made it so difficult to be fair – it was one of his major sins.

Eden did not promise anything on the spot, as Martineau had done. He told me indulgently enough that I should have to ‘sober down’, whatever career I took up. In a local paper he had noticed a few violent words from a speech of mine. The identical words would have damned George in Eden’s mind, but did not damn me. At first sight he felt he could advise me, as he could never have advised George. ‘Ah well! Young men can’t help making nuisances of themselves,’ he said amiably. ‘As long as you know where to draw the line.’

It would have offended Eden’s sense of decorum to form an impression in haste, or to make a promise without weighing it. He believed in taking his time, in gathering other people’s opinions, in distrusting impulse and first impressions, and in ruminating over his own preliminary judgement. He spoke, so I heard, to Darby and the director. He had a word with my old headmaster. It was a fortnight or more before he sent across to the education office a note asking me if I would make it convenient to call on him.

When I did so, he still took his time. He sat solidly back in his chair. He was satisfied now that the investigation was complete and the ceremony of forming a judgement properly performed. He was satisfied to have me there, on tenterhooks, waiting on his words. ‘I don’t believe in jumping to conclusions, Eliot,’ he said. ‘I’m not clever enough to hurry. But I’ve thought round your position long enough now to feel at home.’ Methodically he filled his pipe. At last he came to the point.

‘Do you know, young man,’ said Eden, ‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t make a job of it.’

Unlike Martineau, he made a definite offer. If I wanted to serve my articles as a solicitor, he would accept me on the usual footing, I paying my fee of two hundred and fifty guineas. It was entirely fair: it was exactly as he had treated any other of the articled clerks who had gone through the firm. He explained that he was not making any concessions to partiality or to the fact that I was so poor. ‘If we started that, young man, we should never know when to stop. Pay your way like everyone else, and we shall all be better friends,’ said Eden, with the broad judgement-exuding smile that lapped up the corners of his mouth. But he knew that, when I had paid the fee, I should not have enough to live on. So he was prepared to allow me thirty shillings a week while I served my time. With his usual temperateness he warned me that, before I took articles in the firm, I ought to be reminded that there was not likely to be a future for me there ‘when you become qualified, all being well’. For George Passant was not, so far as Eden knew, likely to move, and the firm did not need another qualified assistant.

I thanked him with triumph, with relief. I said that I ought to think it over, and Eden approved. He had no doubt that I was going to accept. I said that I might have other problems to raise, and Eden again approved. He still had no doubt that I was going to accept.

How much doubt had I myself, that day in Eden’s room? Or back at my desk, under Mr Vesey’s enormous and persecuted eyes, on those spring afternoons, waiting for the day’s release at half past five? There is no doubt that, on the days after Eden’s offer, I often steadied myself with the thought that I need not stand it. I had a safe escape now. I could end the servitude tomorrow. If I did not, it was of my own volition.

I assuaged each morning’s heaviness with the prospect of that escape. Yet I had a subterranean knowledge that I should never take it. The nerves flutter and dither, and make us delay recognizing a choice to ourselves; we honour that process by the title of ‘making up our minds’. But the will knows.

I had rejected George’s proposition the minute it was uttered – and before I set out to work for Martineau’s and for Eden’s help. I wanted that help, but for another reason. I was going – there was at bottom no residue of doubt, however much I might waver on the surface – to choose the wilder gamble, and read for the Bar.

I had not yet admitted the intention to the naked light, even in secret; but it was forcing its way through, flooding me with a sense of champagne-like risk and power. It was hard to defend, which I knew better than all those I should have to argue with, for I felt the prickle of anxiety even before I admitted the intention to myself. If all went perfectly, I should have spent my ‘basic sum’ by the time I took Bar Finals. There was no living to look forward to immediately, nor probably for several years; it meant borrowing money or winning a studentship. It left no margin for any kind of illness or failure. I should have to spend two thirds of the three hundred pounds on becoming admitted to an Inn. If anything went wrong, I had lost that stake altogether, and so had no second chance.

I did not even escape the office. For I should leave myself so little money, after the fees were paid, that my office wages would be needed to pay for food and board. Instead of crossing Bowling Green Street and working alongside of George, I should have to discipline myself to endure the tedium, the hours without end of clerking, Mr Vesey. All my study for the Bar examinations I should have to do at night; and on those examinations my whole future rested.

In favour of the gamble, there was just one thing to say. If my luck held at every point and I came through, there were rewards, not only money, though I wanted that. It gave me a chance, so I thought then, of the paraphernalia of success, luxury and a name and, yes, the admiration of women.

There was nothing more lofty about my ambition at that time, nothing at all. It had none of the complexity or aspiration of a mature man’s ambition – and also none of the moral vanity. Ten years later, and I could not have felt so simply. Yet I made my calculations, I reckoned the odds, I knew they were against me, almost as clear-sightedly as if I had been grown-up.

When I knew, with full lucidity, that the decision was irrevocably taken, I still cherished it to myself for days and weeks.

I was intensely happy, in that spring and summer of my nineteenth year. The days were wet; rain streamed down the office window; I was full of well-being, of a joyful expectancy, now that I knew what I had to do. I was anxious and had some of my first sleepless nights. But it was a happy sleeplessness, so that I looked with expectation on the first light of a summer dawn. Once I got up with the sun and walked the streets that were so familiar to George and me at the beginning of the night. Now in the dawn the road was pallid, the houses smaller, all blank and washed after the enchantment of the dark. I thought of what lay just ahead. There would be some trouble with Eden, which I must surmount, for it was imperative to keep his backing. Perhaps George might not be altogether pleased. I should have to persuade them. That would be the first step.

It was in those happy days that, attuned so that my imagination stirred to the sound of a girl’s name, I first heard the name of Sheila Knight. I was attuned so that an unknown name invited me, as I had never been invited before, attuned because of my own gamble and the well-being which made the blood course through my veins, attuned too because of the amorous climate which lapped round our whole group on those summer evenings. For George’s pleasures could not be long concealed from us at our age, thinking of love, talking of love, swept off our feet by imagined joys. In Jack’s soft voice there came stories of delight, his conquests and adventures and the whispered words of girls. We were at an age when we were deafened by the pounding of our blood. We began to flirt, and that was the first fashion. Jack’s voice murmured the names of girls, girls he had known or whom he was pursuing. I flirted a little with Marion, but it was the unknown that invited me. Sheila’s name was not the first nor only one that plucked at my imagination. But each word about her gave her name a clearer note.

‘She goes about by herself, looking exceedingly glum,’ said Jack. ‘She’s rather beautiful, in a chiselled, soulful way,’ said Jack. ‘She’d be too much trouble for me. It isn’t the pretty ones who are most fun,’ said Jack. ‘I advise you to keep off. She’ll only make you miserable,’ said Jack.

None of the group knew her, though Jack claimed to have spoken to her at the School. It was said that she lived in the country, and came to an art class one night a week.

One warm and cloudy midsummer evening, I had met Jack out of the newspaper office, and we were walking slowly up the London Road. A car drove by close to the pavement, and I had a moment’s sight, blurred and confused, of a young woman’s face, a smile, a wave. The car passed us, and I turned my head, but could see no more. Jack was smiling. He said: ‘Sheila Knight.’

For weeks no one knew that, instead of taking articles, I was determined to try reading for the Bar. I delayed breaking the news longer than was decent, even to George, most of all to George. I was apprehensive of his criticisms; I did not want my resolution shaken too early. The facts were harsh: I could face them realistically in secret, but it was different to hear them from another. Also I was uneasy. Could I still keep Eden’s goodwill? Could I secure my own way without loss? I screwed myself up to breaking the news one afternoon in September. I thought I would get it over quickly, tell them all within an hour.

I took the half-day off, incidentally raising Mr Vesey’s suspicions to fever point. I went into the reference library, so as to pass the time before Eden returned from lunch. I meant to tell George first, but not to give myself long. The library was cool, aquarium-like after the bright day outside. Instead of bringing calm, the chill, the smell of books, the familiar smell of that room only made me more uneasy, and I wished more than ever that I had this afternoon behind me.