George Passant Page 3

  I walked to Morcom’s flat in the early evening. The way led from the centre of the town, and suddenly took one between box hedges and five-storey, gabled, Victorian houses, whose red brick flared in the sunset with a grotesque and Gothic cosiness. But the cosiness vanished, when one saw their dark windows: once, when the town was smaller, they had been real houses: now they were offices, shut for the night. Only Martineau’s, at the end of the New Walk, remained a solid private house. The one next door, which he also owned, had been turned into flats: and there Morcom lived, on the top floor.

  When I went into his sitting room, Olive and Roy had just arrived. Olive had brought Morcom a great bunch of deep red dahlias, and she was arranging them on a table by the window. The red blazed as one looked down over the park, where the New Walk came to an end.

  Olive put a flower into place: then, turning away from the bowl, she asked Morcom, ‘Will they do?’

  Morcom smiled at her. And he, the secretive and restrained, could not prevent the smile giving him completely away – more than a smile by Jack would ever do.

  As though recovering himself, Morcom turned to Roy, who had stood quietly by, watching the interplay over the flowers. Morcom at once got him into conversation.

  Happy because of Olive, Morcom was more than ever careful and considerate. They talked about books, and Roy’s future; he was just beginning to specialise at school. They got on very well. As it happened, Morcom need not have been so careful; for Roy surprised us both by being entirely self-possessed, and himself opened the real topic.

  ‘I’m sorry to give you all so much trouble, Mr Morcom,’ he said. ‘But I did think someone should know what they’re doing about Mr Passant.’

  He spoke politely, formally, in a light, musical voice: so politely that sometimes there sounded a ripple of mischief. His face was good-looking, highly-strung, and very sad for a boy’s: but sad, I felt, as much by nature as by his present trouble. Once or twice he broke into a gay, charming smile.

  ‘I’ve told Olive already – but last night someone visited my father unexpectedly. I got Mother to tell me about it this morning. It was the Principal of – what Jack used to call the School. He had come to tell Father that a Mr Passant might be trying to make a fuss. Mother didn’t mention it, of course, but I guessed it was about Jack. And it was all connected with a committee, which I didn’t understand at the time. But Olive explained it this afternoon.’

  ‘I had to tell him what George decided to do on Wednesday,’ said Olive.

  ‘I shan’t let it out,’ said Roy. ‘I shouldn’t have told Olive what I found out this morning – if these things weren’t happening because of me.’

  I tried to reassure him, but he shook his head.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ he said. ‘They wouldn’t have been talking about Mr Passant last night if it hadn’t been for me.’

  ‘Do you know anything they said?’ I asked.

  ‘I think the Principal offered to deal with Mr Passant himself. He was sure that he could be stopped from going any further.’

  ‘How.’

  ‘By dropping a hint to Mr Eden and Mr Martineau,’ said Roy.

  I looked at Morcom: we were both disturbed.

  ‘You think that will soon happen?’ I said.

  ‘Mother expected the Principal to see them this morning. You see,’ said Roy, ‘they all seem more angry with Mr Passant than they were with Jack.’

  He saw that our expressions had become grave.

  ‘Is this very serious?’ he said.

  ‘It might be a little uncomfortable, that’s all,’ said Morcom lightly, to ease Roy’s mind. But he was still watching us, and said: ‘Do you mind if I ask another question, Mr Morcom?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Are you thinking that it has ruined Jack’s chances for good?’

  ‘This can’t affect them,’ I said quickly, and Morcom agreed.

  ‘You mustn’t worry about that, Roy,’ Olive said.

  Roy half-believed her; her tone was kind, she cared for him more than she had admitted on Wednesday night. He was still doubtful, however, until she added: ‘If you want to know, we were thinking whether they can do any harm to George Passant.’

  The boy’s fears lifted; for a few moments his precocity seemed to leave him, and he teased Olive as though the other three of us were not still harassed.

  ‘Are you fond of Mr Passant, Olive?’ he asked, with his lively smile.

  ‘In a way,’ she said.

  ‘Are you sweet on him?’

  ‘Not in the least,’ she replied. She paused, then said vehemently: ‘But I can tell you this: he’s worth twenty Jack Coterys.’

  A little later, they went away. Before they left, Roy shook hands with us both; and, as Morcom and Olive were talking together, Roy said quietly to me: ‘I’m being whisked off tomorrow. I don’t suppose I shall see you again for a long time, Mr Eliot. But could you spare a minute to send me word how things turn out?’

  From the window, Morcom and I watched them walk across the gardens.

  ‘I wonder what sort of life he’ll have,’ said Morcom. But he was thinking, hopefully that night, of himself and Olive.

  We stayed by the window, eating bread and cheese from his pantry, and keeping a watch on the road below; for we had to warn George before he arrived next door, on his visit to Martineau’s at home.

  4: A Cup of Coffee Spilt in a Drawing-Room

  THE lamplighter passed up the road; under the lamp by Martineau’s gate, the hedge top suddenly shone out of the dusk. Looking down over the gardens, Morcom was content to be quiet.

  Just then, thinking how much I liked him, I felt too how he could never have blown so many of us into more richly coloured lives, as George had done. Where should we have been, if George had not come to Eden & Martineau’s?

  Where should we have been? We were poor and young. By birth we fell into the ragtag and bobtail of the lower middle classes. Then we fell into our jobs in offices and shops. We lived in our bed-sitting rooms, as I did since my mother’s death, or with our families, lost among the fifty thousand houses in the town. The world seemed on the march, we wanted to join in, but we felt caught.

  Myself, but for George, I might still have been earning my two pounds a week as a clerk in the education department, and wondering what to do with a legacy of £300 from an aunt. I should have acted in the end, perhaps, but nineteen is a misty age: while George gave me no rest, bullied and denounced me until I started studying law and reading for the Bar examinations. A month before Jack’s crisis I had at last stopped procrastinating, and arranged to leave the office at the end of this September.

  And so with the others in George’s group – except Jack, who had been the unlucky one. George had set us moving, lent us money: he never seemed to think twice about lending us money, out of his income of £250 from the firm, together with an extra £30 from the School. It was the first time we had been so near to a generous-hearted man.

  We became excited over the books he told us to read and the views he stood by, violent, argumentative, four square. We were carried away by his belief in human beings and ourselves. And we speculated, we could not help but speculate, about George himself. Olive certainly soon knew, and Jack and I not long afterwards, that he was not a simple character, unmixed, all of a piece. We felt, though, and nothing could shake us, that he was a man warm with broad, living nature; not good nature or bad nature, but simple nature; he was a man of flesh and bone.

  I thought this, as I saw him at last walking in the lamplight, whistling, swinging his stick, his bowler hat (which he punctiliously wore when on professional business) pushed on to the back of his head.

  I shouted down. George met us on the stairs: it did not take long to explain the news. He swore.

  We went back to Morcom’s flat to let h
im think it out. For minutes he sat, silent and preoccupied. Then he declared, with his extraordinary, combative optimism: ‘I expect Martineau will get me to stay behind after we’ve finished the social flummeries. It will give me a perfect opportunity to provide him with the whole truth. They’ve probably presented us with the best possible way of getting it home to the Canon.’

  But George was nervous as we entered Martineau’s drawing room – though perhaps no more nervous than he always felt when forced to go through the ‘social flummeries’, even the mild parties of Martineau’s Friday nights. He only faced this one tonight because of Olive’s nagging; while the rest of us went regularly, enjoyed them, and prized Martineau’s traditional form of invitation to ‘drop in for coffee, or whatever’s going’ – though after a few visits, we learned that coffee was going by itself.

  ‘Glad to see you all,’ cried Martineau. ‘It’s not a full night tonight.’ There were, in fact, only a handful of people in the room; he never knew what numbers to expect, and on the table by the fireplace stood files of shining empty cups and saucers; while in front of the fire two canisters with long handles were keeping warm, still nearly full of coffee and milk, more than we should ever want tonight.

  Morcom and I sat down. George walked awkwardly towards the cups and saucers; he felt there was something he should do; he felt there was some mysterious etiquette he had never been taught. He stood by the table and changed his weight from foot to foot: his cheeks were pink.

  Then Martineau said: ‘It’s a long time since you dropped in, George, isn’t it? Don’t you think it’s a bit hard if I only catch sight of my friends in the office? You know it’s good to have you here.’

  George smiled. In Martineau’s company he could not remain uncomfortable for long. Even when Martineau went on: ‘Talking of my friends in the office, I think Harry Eden is going to give us a look in tonight.’

  George’s expression became clouded, stayed clouded until Martineau baited him in his friendly manner. The remark about Eden had revived our warning: more, it made George think of a man with whom he was ill-at-ease; but no one responded to affection more quickly, and, as Martineau talked, George could put away unpleasant thoughts, and be happy with someone he liked.

  We all enjoyed listening to Martineau. His conversation was gay, unpredictable and eccentric; he had a passion, an almost mischievous passion, for religious controversies, and he loved to tell us on Friday nights that he had been accused of yet another heresy. It did not matter to him in the slightest that none of us was religious, even in any of his senses; he was a spontaneous person, and his ‘scrapes’, as he called them, had to be told to someone. So he described his latest letter in an obscure theological journal, and the irritated replies. ‘They say I’m getting dangerously near Manichaeism now,’ he announced cheerfully tonight.

  George chuckled. He had accepted all Martineau’s oddities: and it seemed in order that Martineau should stand in front of his fire, in his morning coat with the carnation in the buttonhole, and tell us of some plan for puzzling the orthodox. It did not occur to any of us that he was fifty and going through the climacteric which makes some men restless at that age. His wife had died two years before; we did not notice that, in the last twelve months, the eccentricities had been brimming over.

  Like George, we expected that he would stay as he was this Friday night, standing on his hearthrug, pulling his black tie into place over his wing collar. I persuaded him to read a letter from a choleric country parson; Martineau smiled over the abusive references to himself, and read them in a lilting voice with his head on one side and his long nose tip-tilted into the air.

  Then George teased him affectionately about his religious observances; which seemed, indeed, as eccentric as his beliefs. He had long ago left the Church of England, and still carried on a running controversy with his brother, the Canon; he now acted as steward in the town’s most respectable Methodist congregation. There he went with regularity, with enjoyment, twice each Sunday; but he confessed, with laughter and almost with pride, that he reckoned to ‘get off’ to sleep before any sermon was under weigh.

  ‘Did you manage to get off last Sunday, Mr Martineau?’ said George.

  ‘I did in the morning, George. But at night we had a stranger preaching – and there was something disturbing about his tone of voice.’

  George beamed with laughter; he sank back into his armchair, and surveyed the room; it was a pleasant room, lofty, painted cream, with a print of Ingres’ Source on the wall opposite the fireplace. For once, he did not want his evening in respectable society to end.

  And Jack, who came in for half an hour, guessed that all was well. He had been warned by Olive that pressure might be used upon George; but George was so surprisingly at home that Jack’s own spirits became high. He left early: soon afterwards the room thinned out, and only George, Morcom and I stayed with Martineau.

  Then Eden came in. He walked across the room to the fireplace.

  George had half-risen from his chair as soon as he saw Eden: and now stayed in suspense, his hands on the arms of his chair, uncertain whether to offer it. But Eden, who was apologising to Martineau, did not notice him.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m so late, Howard,’ Eden said affably to Martineau. ‘My wife has some people in, and I couldn’t escape a hand of cards.’

  The dome of his head was bald; his face was broad and open, and his lips easily flew up at the corners into an amiable smile. He was a few years older than his partner, and looked more their profession by all signs but one: he dressed in a more modern, informal mode. Tonight he was wearing a comfortable grey lounge suit which rode easily on his substantial figure. Talking to Martineau, he warmed a substantial seat before the fire.

  George made a false start, and then said: ‘Wouldn’t you like to sit down, Mr Eden?’

  At last Eden attended.

  ‘I don’t see why I should turn you out, Passant,’ he said. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t really want to leave the fire.’

  But George was still half-standing, and Eden went on: ‘Still, if you insist on making yourself uncomfortable–’

  Eden settled into George’s chair. Martineau said: ‘Will you be kind, George, and give Harry Eden a cup of coffee?’

  Busily George set about the task. He lifted the big canister and filled a cup. The cup in hand, he turned to Eden: ‘Will that be all right, Mr Eden?’

  ‘Well, do you know, I think I’d like it white.’

  George was in a hurry to apologise. He went to put the cup down on the table: Eden, thinking George was giving him the cup, held out a hand: George could not miss the inside of Eden’s forearm, and the coffee flew over Eden’s coat and the thigh of his trousers.

  For an instant George stood immobile. He blushed from forehead to neck.

  When he managed to say that he was sorry, Eden replied in an annoyed tone: ‘It was entirely my fault.’ He was vigorously rubbing himself with his handkerchief. Breaking out of his stupor, George tried to help, but Eden said: ‘I can look after it, Passant, I can look after it perfectly well.’

  George went on his knees, and attempted to mop up the pool of coffee on the carpet: then Martineau made him sit down, and gave him a cigarette.

  Actually, if it was anyone’s fault, it was Eden’s. But I knew that George could not believe it.

  Martineau set us in conversation again. Eden joined in. After a few minutes, however, I noticed a glance pass between them: and it was Martineau who said to George: ‘I was very glad to see your friend Cotery tonight. How is he getting on, by the way, George?’

  George had not spoken since he tried to dry Eden down. He hesitated, and said: ‘In many ways, he’s doing remarkably well. He’s just having to get over a certain amount of trouble in his firm. But–’

  Eden looked at Martineau, and said: ‘Why, do you know, Passant, I meant to hav
e a word with Howard about that very thing tonight. I didn’t expect to see you here, of course, but perhaps I might mention it now. We’re all friends within these four walls, aren’t we? As a matter of fact, Howard and I happened to be told that you were trying to steer this young man through some difficulties.’

  Eden was trying to sound casual and friendly: he had taken the chance of speaking in front of Morcom and myself, who had originally been asked to Friday nights as friends of George’s. But George’s reply was edged with suspicion: I felt sure that he was more suspicious, more ready to be angry, because of the spilt cup.

  ‘I should like to know who happened to tell you, Mr Eden.’

  ‘I scarcely think we’re free to disclose that,’ said Eden.

  ‘If that is the case,’ said George, ‘at least I should like to be certain that you were given the correct version.’

  ‘Tell us, George, tell us,’ Martineau put in. Eden nodded his head. Hotly, succinctly, George told the story that I had heard several times by now: the story of the gift, the victimisation of Jack.

  Martineau looked upset at the account of the boy’s infatuation, but Eden leant back in his chair with an acquiescent smile.

  ‘These things will happen,’ he said. ‘These things will happen.’

  George finished by describing the penalties to Jack. ‘They are too serious for no one to raise a finger,’ said George.

  ‘So you are thinking of protesting on his behalf, are you?’

  ‘I am,’ said George.

  ‘As a matter of fact, we heard that you intended to take up the matter – through a committee at the School, is that right?’

  ‘Quite right.’

  ‘I don’t want to interfere, Passant.’ Eden gave a short smile, and brought his fingertips together. ‘But do you think that this is the most judicious way of going about it? You know, it might still be possible to patch up something behind the scenes.’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s no chance of that. It’s important to realise, Mr Eden,’ George said, ‘that Cotery has no influence whatever. I don’t mean that he hasn’t much influence: I mean that he has no single person to speak for him in the world.’