Time of Hope (32 page)

I watched him walk away between the tramlines, massive under the arc lights, setting down his feet heavily, carefully, and yet still with a precarious steadiness, whistling and swinging his stick.

All the congratulations poured in except the one I wanted. There was no letter from Sheila. Yet, though that made me sad, I knew with perfect certainty what I was going to do.

I went to London to arrange my new existence. I arranged my interview with Herbert Getliffe, whose Chambers I was entering, on Eden’s advice; I found a couple of rooms in Conway Street, near the Tottenham Court Road. The rooms were only a little less bleak than my attic, for I was still cripplingly short of money, and might be so for years.

In something of the same spirit in which I had abandoned Aunt Milly’s and spent money living on my own, I treated myself to a week in a South Kensington hotel. Then, since it was the long vacation, I should return to the attic for my last weeks in the town – and in October I was ready for another test of frugality in Conway Street. But in this visit, when I was arranging the new life, I deserted Mrs Reed’s and indulged myself in comfort – just to prove that I was not frightened, that I was not always touching wood.

It was from that hotel that I wrote to Sheila, asking her to meet me.

I wrote to Sheila. Since the examination I had known that if she did not break the silence, I should. Despite the rebellion of my pride. Despite Jack Cotery’s cautionary voice, saying: ‘Why must you fall in love with someone who can only make you miserable? She’ll do you harm. She can only do you harm.’ Despite my sense of self-preservation. Despite any part of me that was sensible and controlled. Prom within myself and without, I was told the consequences. Yet, as I took a sheet of the hotel notepaper and began to write, I felt as though I were coming home.

It was surrender to her, unconditional surrender. I had sent her away, and now I was crawling back. She would be certain in the future that I could not live without her. She would have nothing to restrain her. She would have me on her own terms. That I knew with absolute lucidity.

Was it also another surrender, a surrender within myself? I was writing that letter as a man in love. That was the imperative I should have found, however thoroughly I searched my heart. I should have declared myself ready to take the chances of unrequited love. And all that was passionately true. Yet was it a surrender within myself?

I did not hear that question. If I had heard it, writing to Sheila when I was not yet twenty-two, I should have laughed it away. I had tasted the promise of success. I was carving my destiny for myself. Compared with the ordinary run of men, I felt so free. I was ardent and sanguine and certain of happiness. It would have seemed incredible to hear that, in the deepest recess of my nature, I was my own prisoner.

I wrote the letter. I addressed it to the vicarage. There was a moment, looking down at it upon the writing table, when I revolted. I was on the point of tearing it up. Then I was swept on another surge, rushed outside the hotel, found a pillar box, heard the flop of the letter as it dropped.

I had written the first night of that week in London, asking Sheila to meet me in five days’ time at Stewart’s in Piccadilly. I was not anxious whether she would come. Of that, as though with a telepathic certainty, I had no doubt. I arrived at the café before four, and captured window seats which gave on to Piccadilly. I had scarcely looked out before I saw her striding with her poised, arrogant step, on the other side of the road. She too had time to spare; she glanced at the windows of Hatchard’s before she crossed. Waiting for her, I was alight with hope.

The Hard Way

I was early for my first interview with Herbert Getliffe. It was raining, and so I could not spin out the minutes in the Temple gardens; I arrived at the foot of the staircase, and it was still too wet to stay there studying the names. Yet I gave them a glance.

Lord Waterfield

Mr H Getliffe

Mr W Allen

and then a column of names, meaningless to me, some faded, some with the paint shining and black. As I rushed into the shelter of the staircase, I wondered how they would find room for my name at the bottom, and whether Waterfield ever visited the Chambers, now that he had been in the cabinet for years.

The rain pelted down outside, and my feet clanged on the stone stairs. The set of Chambers was three flights up, there was no one on the staircase, the doors were shut, there was no noise except the sound of rain. On the third floor the door was open, a light shone in the little ball; even there, though, there was no one moving, I could hear no voices from the rooms around.

Then I did hear a voice, a voice outwardly deferential, firm, smooth, but neither gentle nor genteel.

‘Can I help you, sir?’

I said that I had an appointment with Getliffe.

‘I’m the clerk here. Percy Hall.’ He was looking at me with an appraising eye, but in the dim hall, preoccupied with the meeting to come, I did not notice much about him.

‘I suppose’, he said, ‘you wouldn’t happen to be the young gentleman who wants to come here as a pupil, would you?’

I said that I was.

‘I thought as much,’ said Percy. He told me that Getliffe was expecting me, but was not yet back from lunch; meanwhile I had better wait in Getliffe’s room. Percy led the way to the door at the end of the hall. As he left me, he said ‘When you’ve finished with Mr Getliffe, sir, I hope you’ll call in for a word with me.’

It sounded like an order.

I looked round the room. It was high, with panelled walls, and it had, so Percy had told me, been Waterfield’s. When Waterfield went into politics, so Percy again had told me, Getliffe had moved into the room with extreme alacrity. It smelt strongly that afternoon of a peculiar brand of tobacco. I was not specially nervous, but that smell made me more alert; this meeting mattered; I had to get on with Getliffe. I thought of the photograph that Eden had shown me, of himself and Getliffe, after a successful case. Getliffe had appeared large, impassive, and stern.

I was impatient now. It was a quarter of an hour past the time he had given me. I got up from the chair, looked at the briefs on the table and the picture over the fireplace, the books on the shelves. I stared out of the windows, high and wide and with their shutters folded back. Alert, I stared down at the gardens, empty in the dark, rainy, summer afternoon. And beyond was the river.

As I was standing by the window, there was a bustle outside the room, and Getliffe came in. My first sight of him was a surprise. In the photograph he had appeared large, impassive, and stern. In the flesh, as he came bustling in, late and flustered, he was only of middle height, and seemed scarcely that because of the way he dragged his feet. He had his underlip thrust out in an affable grin, so that there was something at the same time gay and shamefaced about his expression. He suddenly confronted me with a fixed gaze from brown opaque and lively eyes.

‘Don’t tell me your name,’ he began, in a slightly strident, breathless voice. ‘You’re Ellis–’

I corrected him.

With almost instantaneous quickness, he was saying: ‘You’re Eliot.’ He repeated: ‘You’re Eliot,’ with an intonation of reproof, as though the mistake had been my fault.

He sat down, lit his pipe, grinned, and puffed out smoke. He talked matily, perfunctorily, about Eden. Then he switched on his fixed gaze. His eyes confronted me. He said: ‘So you want to come in here, do you?’

I said that I did.

‘I needn’t tell you, Eliot, that I have to refuse more pupils than I can take. It’s one of the penalties of being on the way up. Not that one wants to boast. This isn’t a very steady trade that you and I have chosen, Eliot. Sometimes I think we should have done better to go into the Civil Service and become deputy-under-principal secretaries and get two thousand pounds a year at fifty-five and our YMCA or XYZ some bright new year.’

At this time I was not familiar with Getliffe’s allusive style, and I was slow to realize that he was referring to the orders of knighthood.

‘Still one might be doing worse. And people seem to pass the word round that the briefs are coming in. I want to impress on you, Eliot, that I’ve turned down ten young men who wanted to be pupils – and that’s only in the last year. It’s not fair to take them unless one has the time to look after them and bring them up in the way they should go. I hope you’ll always remember that.’

Getliffe was full of responsibility, statesmanship, and moral weight. His face was as stern as in the photograph. He was enjoying his own seriousness and uprightness, even though he had grossly exaggerated the number of pupils he refused. Then he said: ‘Well, Eliot, I wanted you to understand that it’s not easy for me to take you. But I shall. I make it a matter of principle to take people like you, who’ve started with nothing but their brains. I make it a matter of principle.’

Then he gave his shamefaced, affable chuckle. ‘Also,’ he said, ‘it keeps the others up to it.’ He grinned at me: his mood had changed, his face was transformed, he was guying all serious persons.

‘So I shall take you,’ said Getliffe, serious and responsible again, fixing me with his gaze. ‘If our clerk can fit you in. I’m going to stretch a point and take you.’

‘I’m very grateful,’ I said. I knew that, as soon as the examination result was published, he had insisted to Eden that I was to be steered towards his Chambers.

‘I’m very grateful,’ I said, and he had the power of making me feel so.

‘We’ve got a duty towards you,’ said Getliffe, shaking me by the hand. ‘One’s got to look at it like that.’ His eyes stared steadily into mine.

Just then there was a knock on the door, and Percy entered. He came across the room and laid papers in front of Getliffe.

‘I shouldn’t have interrupted you, sir,’ said Percy. ‘But I’ve promised to give an answer. Whether you’ll take this. They’re pressing me about it.’

Getliffe looked even more responsible and grave.

‘Is one justified in accepting any more work?’ he said. ‘I’d like to see my wife and family one of these evenings. And some day I shall begin neglecting one of these jobs.’ He tapped the brief with the bowl of his pipe and looked from Percy to me. ‘If ever you think that is beginning to happen, I want you to tell me straight. I’m glad to think that I’ve never neglected one yet.’ He gazed at me. ‘I shouldn’t be so happy if I didn’t think so.

‘Shall I do it?’ Getliffe asked us loudly.

‘It’s heavily marked,’ said Percy.

‘What’s money?’ said Getliffe.

‘They think you’re the only man for it,’ said Percy.

‘That’s more like talking,’ said Getliffe. ‘Perhaps it is one’s duty. Perhaps I ought to do it. Perhaps you’d better tell them that I will do it – just as a matter of duty.’

When Percy had gone out, Getliffe regarded me.

‘I’m not sorry you heard that,’ he said. ‘You can see why one has to turn away so many pupils? They follow the work, you know. It’s no credit to me, of course, but you’re lucky to come here, Eliot. I should like you to tell yourself that.’

What I should have liked to tell myself was whether or not that scene with Percy was rehearsed.

Then Getliffe began to exhort me: his voice became brisk and strident, he took the pipe out of his mouth and waved the stem at me.

‘Well, Eliot,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a year here as a pupil. After that we can see whether you’re ever going to earn your bread and butter. Not to speak of a little piece of cake. Mind you, we may have to tell you that it’s not your vocation. One mustn’t shirk one’s responsibilities. Not even the painful ones. One may have to tell you to move a bit farther up the street.’

‘Of course,’ I said, in anger and pride.

‘Still,’ said Getliffe, ‘you’re not going to sink if you can help it. You needn’t tell me that. You’ve got a year as a pupil. And a year’s a long time. Your job is to be as useful as you can to both of us. Start whenever you like. The sooner the better. Start tomorrow.’

Breathlessly, with immense zest, Getliffe produced a list of cases and references, happy with all the paraphernalia of the law, reeling out the names of cases very quickly, waving his pipe as I copied them out.

‘As for the root of all evil,’ said Getliffe, ‘I shall have to charge you the ordinary pupil’s fees. You see, Eliot, one’s obliged to think of the others. Hundred guineas for the year. October to October. If you start early, you don’t have to pay extra,’ said Getliffe with a chuckle. ‘That’s thrown in with the service. Like plain vans. A hundred guineas is your contribution to the collection plate. You can pay in quarters. The advantage of the instalment system’, he added, ‘is that we can reconsider the arrangement for the third and fourth quarters. You may have saved me a little bit of work before then. You may have earned a bit of bread and butter. The labourer is worthy of his hire.’ He smiled, affably, brazenly, and said: ‘Yes! The labourer is worthy of his hire.’

I think I had some idea, even then, of the part Herbert Getliffe was going to play in my career. He warmed me, as he did everyone else. He took me in often, as he did everyone else. He made me feel restrained, by the side of the extravagant and shameless way in which he exhibited his heart. On the way from his room to the clerk’s, I was half aware that this was a tricky character to meet, when one was struggling for a living. I should not have been astonished to be told in advance the part he was going to play. But Percy Hall’s I should not have guessed.

Percy’s room was a box of an office, which had no space for any furniture but a table and a chair; Percy gave me the chair and braced his haunches against the edge of the table. He was, I noticed now, a squat powerful man, with the back of his head rising vertically from his stiff collar. No one ever bore a more incongruous Christian name; and it was perverse that he had a job where, according to custom, everyone called him by it.

‘I want to explain one or two points to you, sir. If you enter these Chambers, there are things I can do for you. I could persuade someone to give you a case before you’ve been here very long. But’ – Percy gave a friendly, brutal, good-natured smile – ‘I’m not going to until I know what you’re like. I’ve got a reputation to lose myself. The sooner we understand each other, the better.’