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  George Passant

  First published in 1940

  © Philip Snow; House of Stratus 1940-2010

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of C.P. Snow to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2010 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  ISBN: 0755120108 EAN 9780755120109

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  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

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  About the Author

  Charles Percy Snow was born in Leicester, on 15 October 1905. He was educated from age eleven at Alderman Newton’s School for boys where he excelled in most subjects, enjoying a reputation for an astounding memory and also developed a lifelong love of cricket. In 1923 he became an external student in science of London University, as the local college he attended in Leicester had no science department. At the same time he read widely and gained practical experience by working as a laboratory assistant at Newton’s to gain the necessary practical experience needed.

  Having achieved a first class degree, followed by a Master of Science he won a studentship in 1928 which he used to research at the famous Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. There, he went on to become a Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1930 where he also served as a tutor, but his position became increasingly titular as he branched into other areas of activity. In 1934, he began to publish scientific articles in Nature, and then The Spectator before becoming editor of the journal Discovery in 1937. However, he was also writing fiction during this period, with his first novel Death Under Sail published in 1932, and in 1940 ’Strangers and Brothers’ was published. This was the first of eleven novels in the series and was later renamed ’George Passant’ when ’Strangers and Brothers’ was used to denote the series itself.

  Discovery became a casualty of the war, closing in 1940. However, by this time Snow was already involved with the Royal Society, who had organised a group to specifically use British scientific talent operating under the auspices of the Ministry of Labour. He served as the Ministry’s technical director from 1940 to 1944. After the war, he became a civil service commissioner responsible for recruiting scientists to work for the government. He also returned to writing, continuing the Strangers and Brothers series of novels. ’The Light and the Dark’ was published in 1947, followed by ’Time of Hope’ in 1949, and perhaps the most famous and popular of them all, ‘The Masters’, in 1951. He planned to finish the cycle within five years, but the final novel ’Last Things’ wasn’t published until 1970.

  He married the novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson in 1950 and they had one son, Philip, in 1952. Snow was knighted in 1957 and became a life peer in 1964, taking the title Baron Snow of the City Leicester. He also joined Harold Wilson’s first government as Parliamentary Secretary to the new Minister of Technology. When the department ceased to exist in 1966 he became a vociferous back-bencher in the House of Lords.

  After finishing the Strangers and Brothers series, Snow continued writing both fiction and non-fiction. His last work of fiction was ‘A Coat of Vanish’, published in 1978. His non-fiction included a short life of Trollope published in 1974 and another, published posthumously in 1981, ‘The Physicists: a Generation that Changed the World’. He was also inundated with lecturing requests and offers of honorary doctorates. In 1961, he became Rector of St. Andrews University and for ten years also wrote influential weekly reviews for the Financial Times.

  In these later years, Snow suffered from poor health although he continued to travel and lecture. He also remained active as a writer and critic until hospitalized on 1 July 1980. He died later that day of a perforated ulcer.

  ’Mr Snow has established himself, on his own chosen ground, in an eminent and conspicuous position among contemporary English novelists’ - New Statesman

  Part One

  The Triumph of George Passant

  1: Firelight on a Silver Cigarette Case

  THE fire in our habitual public house spurted and fell. It was a comfortable fire of early autumn, and I basked beside it, not caring how long I waited. At last Jack came in, bustled by the other tables, sat down at mine, and said: ‘I’m in trouble, Lewis.’

  For an instant I thought he was acting; as he went on, I believed him.

  ‘I’m finished as far as Calvert goes,’ he said. ‘And I can’t see my way out.’

  ‘What have you done?’

  ‘I’ve done nothing,’ said Jack. ‘But this morning I received a gift–’

  ‘Who from? Who from?’

  ‘From young Roy.’

  I had heard Roy’s name often in the past two months. He was a boy of fifteen, the son of the Calvert whom Jack had just mentioned and who owned the local evening paper; Jack worked as a clerk in the newspaper office, and during the school holidays, which had not yet ended, the boy had contrived to get to know him. Jack, in his easy-natured fashion, had lent him books, been ready to talk; and had not discovered until the last few days that the boy was letting himself be carried in a dream, a romantic dream.

  With a quick gesture Jack felt in his coat pocket and held a cigarette case in front of the fire. ‘Here we are,’ he said.

  The firelight shone on the new, polished silver. I held out my hand, took the case, looked at the initials J C (Jack Cotery) in elaborate Gothic letters, felt the solid weight. Though Jack and I were each five years older than the boy who had given it, it had cost three times as much as we had ever earned in a week.

  ‘I wonder how he managed to buy it,’ I said.

  ‘His father is pretty lavish with him,’ said Jack. ‘But he must have thrown away every penny–’

  He was holding the case again, watching the reflected beam of firelight with a worried smile. I looked at him: of all our friends, he was the one to whom these things happened. I had noticed often enough how women’s eyes followed him. He was ready to return their interest, it is true; yet sometimes he captured it, from women as from Roy, without taking a step himself. He was not handsome; he was not even specially good looking, in a man’s eyes; he was ruddy-faced, wit
h smooth black hair, shortish and powerfully built. His face, his eyes, his whole expression, changed like quicksilver whenever he talked.

  ‘You haven’t seen it all,’ said Jack, and turned the case over. On this side there was enamelled a brilliant crest, in gold, red, blue and green; the only quarter I could make out contained a pattern of azure waves. ‘He put a chart inside the case to prove these were the arms of the Coterys,’ Jack went on, and showed me a piece of foolscap, covered with writing in a neat, firm, boyish hand. One paragraph explained that the azure waves ‘are a punning device, Côte for Cotery, used by a family of Dorset Coterys when given arms in 1607 by James I.’ I was surprised at the detail, the thoroughness, the genealogical references, the devotion to heraldry as well as to Jack; it must have taken weeks of research.

  ‘It’s quite possibly genuine,’ said Jack. ‘The family must have come down in the world, you know. There’s still my father’s brother, the Chiswick one–’

  I laughed, and he let the fancy drop. He glanced at the chart, folded it, put it carefully away; then he rubbed mist from the case and studied the arms, his eyes harassed and half-smiling.

  ‘You’d better send it back tonight,’ I said.

  ‘It’s too late,’ said Jack. ‘Didn’t you hear what I said – that I’m finished as far as old Calvert goes?’

  ‘Does he know that Roy’s given you a present?’

  ‘He knows more than that. He happened to get hold of a letter that was coming with it.’

  It was not till then that I realised Calvert had already spoken to Jack.

  ‘What did the letter say?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s never written before. But you can guess, Lewis, you can guess. It horrified Calvert, clearly. And there doesn’t seem anything I can do.’

  ‘Did you manage to tell him,’ I said, ‘that it was an absolute surprise to you, that you knew nothing about it?’

  ‘Do you think that was easy?’ said Jack. ‘Actually, he didn’t give me much of a chance. He couldn’t keep still for nerves, as a matter of fact. He just said that he’d discovered his son writing me an – indiscreet letter. And he was forced to ask me not to reply and not to see the boy. I didn’t mind promising that. But he didn’t want to listen to anything I said about Roy. He dashed on to my future in the firm. He said that he’d always expected there would be a good vacancy for me on the production side. Now he realised that promotions had gone too fast, and he would be compelled to slow down. So that, though I could stay in my present boy’s job for ever, he would advise me in my own interests to be looking round for some other place.’

  Jack’s face was downcast; we were both sunk in the cul-de-sac hopelessness of our age.

  ‘And to make it clear,’ Jack added, ‘he feels obliged to cut off paying my fees at the School.’

  The School was our name for the combined Technical College and School of Art which gave at that time, 1925, the only kind of higher education in the town. There Jack had been sent by Calvert to learn printing, and there each week I attended a couple of lectures on law: lectures given by George Passant, whom I kept thinking of as soon as I knew Jack’s trouble to be real.

  ‘Well, we’ve got a bit of time,’ I said. ‘He can’t get rid of you altogether – it would bring too much attention to his son.’

  ‘Who’ll worry about me?’ said Jack.

  ‘He can’t do it,’ I insisted. ‘But what are we to do?’

  ‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ said Jack.

  Then I mentioned George Passant’s name. At once Jack was on his feet. ‘I ought to have gone round hours ago,’ he said.

  We walked up the London Road, crossed by the station, took a short cut down an alley towards the noisy street. Fish and chip shops glared and smelt: tramcars rattled past. Jack was more talkative now that he was going into action. ‘What shall I become if Calvert doesn’t let me print?’ he said. ‘I used to have some ideas, I used to be a young man of spirit. But when they threaten to stop you, being a printer seems the only possible job in the whole world. What else could I become, Lewis?’ He saw a policeman shining his lantern into a dark shop window. ‘Yes,’ said Jack, ‘I should like to be a policeman. But then I’m not tall enough. They say you can increase your height if you walk like this–’ he held both arms vertically above his head, like Moses on the hill in Rephidim, and walked by my side down the street saying: ‘I want to be a policeman.’

  He stopped short, and looked at me with a rueful, embarrassed smile. I smiled too: more even than he, I was used to the hope and hopelessness, the hopes of twenty, desolately cold half an hour ago, now burning hot. I was used to living on hope. And I too was excited: the Cotery arms on the silver case ceased to be so pathetic, began to go to one’s head; the story drifted like wood smoke through the September evening. It was with expectancy, with elation, that, as we turned down a side street, I saw the light of George Passant’s sitting room shining through an orange blind.

  At that time, I had known George for a couple of years. I had met him just through the chance that he gave his law lectures at the School – and that was because he wanted to earn some extra money, since he was only a qualified clerk at Eden & Martineau’s, not a member of their solicitors’ firm. It had been a lucky encounter for me: and George had already exerted himself on my behalf more than anyone I knew.

  This was the only house in the town open to us at any hour of night. Jack knocked: George came to the door himself.

  ‘I’m sorry we’re bothering you, George,’ said Jack. ‘But something’s happened.’

  ‘Come in,’ said George, ‘come in.’

  His voice was loud and emphatic. He stood just over middle height, an inch or two taller than Jack; his shoulders were heavy, he was becoming a little fat, though he was only twenty-six. But it was his head that captured one’s attention, his massive forehead and the powerful structure of chin and cheekbone under his full flesh.

  He led the way into his sitting room. He said: ‘Wouldn’t you like a cup of tea? I can easily make a cup of tea. Perhaps you’d prefer a glass of beer? I’m sure there’s some beer somewhere.’

  The invitation was affable and diffident. He began to call us Cotery and Eliot, then corrected himself and used our Christian names. He went clumsily round the room, peering into cupboards, dishevelling his fair hair in surprise when he found nothing. The room was littered with papers; papers on the table and on the floor, a briefcase on the hearth, a pile of books beside an armchair. An empty teacup stood on a sheet of paper on the mantelpiece, and had left a trail of dark, moist rings. And yet, apart from his debris of work, George had not touched the room; the furniture was all his landlady’s; on one wall there remained a text ‘The Lord God Watcheth Us’, and over the mantelpiece a picture of the Relief of Ladysmith.

  At last George shouted, and carried three bottles of beer to the table.

  ‘Now,’ said George, sitting back in his armchair, ‘we can get down to it. What is this problem?’

  Jack told the story of Roy and the present. As he had done to me, he kept back this morning’s interview with Calvert. He put more colour into the story now that he was telling it to George, though: ‘This boy is Olive’s cousin, you realise, George. And that whole family seems to live on its nerves.’

  ‘I don’t accept that completely about Olive,’ said George. Olive was one of what we called the ‘group’, the collection of young people who had gathered round George.

  ‘Still, I’m very much to blame,’ said Jack. ‘I ought to have seen what was happening. It’s serious for Roy too, that I didn’t. I was very blind.’

  Then Jack laid the cigarette case on the table.

  George smiled, but did not examine it, nor pick it up.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry for the boy,’ he said. ‘But he doesn’t come inside my province, so there’s no action I can take. It w
ould give me considerable pleasure, however, to tell his father that, if he sends a son to one of those curious institutions called public schools, he has no right to be surprised at the consequences. I should also like to add that people get on best when they’re given freedom – particularly freedom from their damned homes, and their damned parents, and their damned lives.’

  He simmered down, and spoke to Jack with a warmth that was transparently genuine, open, and curiously shy. ‘I can’t tell him most of the things I should like to. But no one can stop me from telling him a few remarks about you.’

  ‘I didn’t intend to involve you, George,’ said Jack.

  ‘I don’t think you could prevent me,’ said George, ‘if it seemed necessary. But it can’t be necessary, of course.’

  With his usual active optimism, George seized on the saving point: it was the point that had puzzled me: Calvert would only raise whispers about his son if he penalised Jack.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ said Jack, ‘he doesn’t seem to work that way.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Jack described his conversation with Calvert that morning. George, flushed and angry, still kept interrupting with his sharp, lawyer’s questions: ‘It’s incredible that he could take that line. Don’t you see that he couldn’t let this letter get mixed up with your position in the firm?’

  At last Jack complained: ‘I’m not inventing it for fun, George.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said George. ‘Well, what did the sunket tell you in the end?’

  George just heard him out: no future in the firm, permission to stay in his present job on sufferance, the School course cut off: then George swore. He swore as though the words were fresh, as though the brute physical facts lay in front of his eyes. It takes a great religion to produce one great oath, in the mouths of most men: but not in George’s, once inflamed to indignation. When the outburst had spent itself, he said: ‘It’s monstrous. It’s so monstrous that even these bellwethers can’t get away with it. I refuse to believe that they can amuse themselves with being unjust and stupid at the same time – and at the expense of people like you.’