Time of Hope (16 page)

Just before my appointment with Eden I looked into George’s office and told him what I was going to say. I saw his face become heavy. He said nothing. There was no time for either of us to argue, for we could hear Eden’s deliberate footsteps outside the open door.

Eden settled himself in his armchair. Now that the hesitation was over, now that I was actually in the room to make the best of it, I plunged into placating him. I told him how his support had stimulated and encouraged me. If I was attempting too much, I said with the mixture of deference and cheek that I knew would please him, it was really his fault – for giving me too much support. I liked him more, because I was seeing him with all my nerves alive with excitement – with the excitement that, when plunged into it, I really loved. I saw him with great clarity, from the pleased, reluctant, admonishing smile to the peel of sunburn on the top of his bald head.

He was pleased. There was no doubt about that. But he was too solid a man to have his judgements shaken, to give way all at once, just because he was pleased. He was severe, reflective, minatory, shocked, and yet touched with a sneaking respect. ‘These things will happen,’ he said, putting his fingertips together. ‘Young men will take the bit between their teeth. But I shouldn’t be doing my duty, Eliot, if I didn’t tell you that you were being extremely foolish. I thought you were a bit more level-headed. I’m afraid you’ve been listening to some of your rackety friends.’

I told him that it was my own free choice. He shook his head. He had obstinately decided that it must be Passant’s fault, and the more I protested, the more obstinate he became.

‘Remember that some of your friends have got through their own examinations,’ he said. ‘They may not be the best company for you, even if they seem about the same age. Still, you’ve got to make your own mistakes. I know how you feel about things, Eliot. We’ve all been young once, you know. I can remember when I wanted to throw my cap over the windmill. Nothing venture, nothing win, that’s how you feel, isn’t it? We’ve all felt it, Eliot, we’ve all felt it. But you’ve got to have a bit of sense.’

He was certain that I must have made up my mind in a hurry, and he asked me to promise that I would do nothing irrevocable without thinking it over for another fortnight. If I did not consent to that delay, he would not be prepared to introduce me to an acquaintance at the Bar, whose signature I needed to support me in some of the formalities of getting admitted to an Inn.

‘I’m not sure, young man,’ said Eden, ‘that I oughtn’t to refuse straight out – in your own best interests. In your own best interests, perhaps I should put a spoke in your wheel. But I expect you’ll think better of it anyway, after you’ve cooled your heels for another fortnight.’

In one’s ‘own best interests’ – this was the first time I heard that ominous phrase, which later I heard roll sonorously and self-righteously round college meetings, round committees in Whitehall, round the most eminent of boards, and which meant inevitably that some unfortunate person was to be dished. But Eden had not said it with full conviction. Underneath his admonishing tone, he was still pleased. He felt for me a warm and comfortable patronage, which was not going to be weakened. I left his room, gay, relieved, with my spirits at their highest.

Then, along the corridor, I saw George standing outside his own room, waiting for me.

‘You’d better come out for a cup of tea,’ he said in a tone full of rage and hurt.

The rage I could stand, and in the picture-house café I was denounced as a fool, an incompetent, a half-baked dilettante, an airy-fairy muddler who was too arrogant to keep his feet on the ground. But I was used to his temper, and could let it slide by. That afternoon I was prepared for some hot words, for I had behaved without manners and without consideration, in not disclosing my plans to him until so late.

I had imagined vividly enough for myself what he was shouting in the café, oblivious of the customers sitting by, shouting with the rage I had bargained on and a distress which I had not for a minute expected. The figures of ‘this egregious nonsense’ went exploding all over the café, as George became more outraged. He extracted them from me by angry questions and then crashed them out in his tremendous voice. Two hundred and eight pounds down! At the best, even if I stayed at that ‘wretched boy’s job’ (cried George, rubbing it in brutally), which was ridiculous if I were to stand any chance in the whole insane venture – even if nothing unexpected happened and my luck was perfect, I should be left with eighty pounds. ‘What about your fees as a pupil? In this blasted gentlemanly profession in which you’re so anxious to be a hanger-on, isn’t it obligatory to be rooked and go and sit in some nitwit’s Chambers and pay some sunket a handsome packet for the privilege?’ George, as usual, had his facts right. I wanted another hundred pounds for my pupil’s fees, and support for whatever time it was, a time which would certainly be measured in years, before I began earning. Against that I had my contemptible eighty pounds, and any money I could win in studentships. ‘Which you can’t count on, if you retain any shred of sanity at all, which I’m beginning to doubt. What other possible source of money have you got in the whole wide world?’

‘Only what I can borrow.’

‘How in God’s name do you expect anyone to lend you money? For a piece of sheer fantastic criminal lunacy–’

He and Aunt Milly were, in fact, the only living persons from whom I had any serious hope of borrowing money. When he was first persuading me to become articled as a solicitor, George had, of course, specifically offered to be my ‘banker’. How he thought of managing it, I could not imagine; for his total income, as I now knew, was under three hundred pounds a year, he had no capital at all, and made an allowance to his parents. Yet he had promised to find a hundred pounds for me and, even that afternoon, he was conscience-stricken at having to take the offer back, As well as being a generous man, George had the strictest regard for his word. That afternoon he was abandoned to anger and distress. He washed his hands of my future, as though he were dismissing it once for all. But even then he felt obliged to say ‘I am sorry that any promise of mine may have helped to encourage you in this piece of lunacy. I took it for granted that you’d realize it was only intended for purposes within the confines of reason. I’m sorry.’

He went away from the café abruptly. I sat alone, troubled, guilty, anxious. I needed someone to confide in. There was a pall of trouble between me and the faces in the streets, as I walked up the London Road, my steps leading me, almost like a sleepwalker, to Marion. I sometimes talked to her about my plans, and she scolded me for not telling her more. Now I found myself walking towards her lodgings. I was voraciously anxious for myself; and mixed with the anxiety (how could I set it right?) I felt sheer guilt – guilt at causing George a disappointment I could not comprehend. I had been to blame; I had been secretive, my secrecy seemed like a denial of friendship and affection. But secrecy could not have wounded George so bitterly.

His emotion had been far more violent than disappointment, it had been furious distress, coming from a depth that I found bafflingly hard to understand. Very few people, it did not need George’s response to teach me, could give one absolutely selfless help. They were obliged to help on their own terms, and were pained when one struggled free. That was the pattern, the eternally unsatisfactory pattern, of help and gratitude. But George’s distress was far more mysterious than that.

On the plane of reason, of course, every criticism he made was accurate. It was only years later, after the gamble was decided, that I admitted how reasonable his objections were. But no one, not even George, could become so beside himself because of a disagreement on the plane of reason. He had been affected almost as though I had performed an act of treachery. Perhaps that was it. In his heart, I think, I seemed like a deserter.

In his urge to befriend, George was stronger than any man. But he needed something back. On his side he would give money, time, thought, all the energy of his nature, all more than he could afford or anyone else could have imagined giving: in return he needed an ally. He needed an ally close beside him, in the familiar places. I should have been a good ally, working at his side in the office, continuing to be his right-hand man in the group, sharing his pleasures and enough of his utopian hopes. In fact, if I had accepted his plan, become articled to Eden and Martineau’s, and stayed in the town, it might have made a difference to George’s life. As it was, I went off on my own. And, from the beginning, from that violent altercation in the picture-house café, George felt in his heart that I had, without caring, left him isolated to carry on alone.

But that evening, as I told Marion, I could not see my way through. I could not understand George’s violence; I was wrapped in my own anxiety. As soon as I went into her sitting-room, Marion had looked at me, first with a smile, then with eyes sharp in concern.

‘What’s the matter, Lewis?’ she said abruptly.

‘I’ve run into some trouble,’ I said.

‘Serious?’

‘I expect I’ll get out of it.’

‘You’re looking drawn,’ said Marion. ‘Sit down and I’ll make you some tea.’

She lodged in the front room of a semi-detached house, in a neat privet-hedged street just at the beginning of the suburbs. The hedge was fresh clipped, the patch of grass carefully mown. She was only just returned from her holidays, and on her sofa there was a notebook open, in which she was preparing her lessons for the term. Outside in the sun, a butterfly was flitting over the privet hedge.

‘Why haven’t I seen you before?’ said Marion, kneeling by the gas ring. ‘Oh, never mind. I know you’re worried. Tell me what the trouble is.’

I did not need to explain it all, for she had written to me during her holiday and I had replied. On paper she was less brisk and nervous, much softer and more articulate. She had asked when I was going to ‘take the plunge’, assuming like everyone else that I was following George’s plan. In my reply I had told her, with jauntiness and confidence, that I had made up my mind to do something more difficult. She was the first person to whom I told as much. Even so, she complained in another letter about ‘your cryptic hints’, and as she gave me my cup of tea, and I was at last explicit about my intention, she complained again.

‘Why do you keep things to yourself?’ she cried. ‘You might have known that you could trust me, mightn’t you?’

‘Of course I trust you.’

‘I hope you do.’ She was sitting on the sofa, with the light from the window falling on her face, so that her eyes shone excessively bright. Her hair had fallen untidily over her forehead; she pushed it back impatiently, and impatiently said: ‘Never mind me. Is it a good idea?’ (She meant my reading for the Bar.)

‘Yes.’

‘No one else thinks so – is that the trouble?’ she said with startling speed.

‘Not quite.’ I would not admit my inner hesitations, the times that afternoon when my doubts were set vibrating by the others. Instead, I told her of the scene with George. I described it as objectively as I could, telling her of George’s shouts which still rang word for word in my ears. I left out nothing of his fury and distress, speculated about it, asked Marion if she could understand it.

‘That doesn’t matter,’ said Marion shortly. ‘George will get over it. I want to know about you. How much does it mean to you?’

Though she was devoted to George, she would not let me talk about him. Single-mindedly, with an intense single-mindedness that invaded my thoughts, she demanded to know how much I was dependent on George’s help. I answered that, without his coaching, I should find the work much more difficult, but not impossible; without a loan from him, I did not see how I could raise money even for my pupil’s year.

Marion was frowning.

‘I think you’ll get his help,’ she said.

She looked at me.

‘And if you don’t,’ she said, ‘shall you have to call it off?’

‘I shan’t do that.’

Still frowning, Marion inquired about George’s objections. How much was there in them? A great deal, I told her. She insisted that I should explain them; she knew so little of a career at the Bar. I did so, dispassionately and sensibly enough. It was easy at times to face objection after objection, to lay them down in public view like so many playing cards upon the table. It was some kind of comfort to put them down and inspect them, as though they were not part of oneself.

Marion asked sharply how I expected to manage. I said that there were one or two studentships and prizes, though very few, if I came out high in the Bar Finals. ‘Of course, you’re clever,’ said Marion dubiously. ‘But there must be lots of competition. From men who’ve had every advantage that you haven’t, Lewis.’

I said that I knew it. I mentioned Aunt Milly: with luck, I could conceivably borrow a hundred or two from her. That was all.

From across the little room, Marion was looking at me – not at my face, but looking me up and down, from head to foot.

‘How strong are you, Lewis?’ she said suddenly.

‘I shall survive,’ I said.

‘I’m sure you’re highly strung.’

‘I’m tougher than you think.’

‘You’re packed full of vitality, I’ve told you that. But, unless you’re careful, aren’t you going to burn yourself out?’

She got up from the sofa and sat on a chair near mine.

‘Listen to me,’ she said urgently, gazing into my eyes. ‘I wish you well. I wish you very well. Is it worth it? It’s no use killing yourself. Why not swallow your pride and do what they want you to do? It’s the sensible thing to do after all, And it isn’t such a bad alternative, Lewis. It will give you a comfortable life – you might even make another start from there. It won’t take anything like so much out of you. You’ll have time for everything else you like.’

My hand was resting on the arm of my chair. She pressed hers upon it: her palm was very warm.

I met her gaze, and said: ‘Do you think that I’m cut out to be a lawyer in a provincial town?’

She left her hand on mine, but her eyes shrank away.