by C. P. Snow
It seemed strange that George, not as a rule curious about his friends’ feelings, should have recognised from the start that my love for Sheila (which had begun that summer) would hag-ride me for years of my life. Yet that night he envied me. George was a sensual man, often struggling against his senses; Jack an amorous one, revelling in the whole atmosphere of love. In their different ways, they both that night wanted what they had not tasted. Saddened by pleasure, they thought longingly of love.
I said to Jack: ‘I think that Roy would have understood what we’ve been saying. It would have been beyond us at fifteen.’
‘I suppose he would,’ said Jack doubtfully.
‘He’s been in love,’ I said.
‘I still find it a bit hard to credit that,’ said Jack.
‘No one would believe me,’ I said, ‘if I told them that you were a very humble creature, would they?’
At the mention of Roy’s name, George had become preoccupied; his eyes, heavy-lidded after the evening, looked over the now empty room; but that abstracted gaze saw nothing, it was turned into himself. Jack and I talked on; George sat silently by; until he said suddenly, unexpectedly, as though he was in the middle of a conversation: ‘I accept some of the criticisms that were made before we started out.’
I found myself seized by excitement. I knew from his tone that he was going to bring out a surprise.
‘I scored a point or two,’ George said to Jack. ‘But I haven’t done much for you.’
‘Of course you have,’ said Jack. ‘Anyway, let’s postpone it. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘There’s no point in postponing it,’ said George. ‘I haven’t done much for you, as Lewis said before ever Morcom did. And it’s got to be attended to. Mind you, I don’t accept completely the pessimistic account of the situation. But we ought to be prepared to face it.’
Clearly, rationally, half-angrily, George explained to Jack (as Jack knew, as Morcom and I had already said, though not so precisely) how the committee’s decision gave him no future. ‘That being so,’ said George, ‘I suppose you ought to leave Calvert’s wretched place.’
‘I’ve got to live,’ said Jack.
‘Is it possible to go to another printer’s?’
‘I could get an identical job, George. With identical absence of future.’
‘Well, I can’t have any more of this fatalistic nonsense,’ said George, irascibly, and yet with a disarming kindness. ‘What would you do – if we could provide you with a free choice?’
‘I could do several things, George. But they’re all ruled out. They all depend on having some money – now.’
‘Do you agree?’ George asked me. ‘I expect you know Jack’s position better than I do. Do you agree?’
I had to, though I could foresee what was coming. If Jack’s fortunes were to be changed immediately, he must have a loan. My little legacy had given me a chance: each pound at our age was worth ten to a man whose life was fixed. Jack was young enough to get into a profession – or ‘to have a shot at that business we heard about the other day,’ as he said himself.
‘Yes,’ said George. ‘So in fact with a little money now, you’re confident that you could laugh at Calvert and his friends?’
‘With luck, I should make a job of it,’ said Jack. ‘But–’
‘Then the money will have to be produced. I shall want you to let me contribute.’ George’s manner became, to stop Jack speaking, bleak and businesslike. ‘Mind you, I shall want a certain number of guarantees. I shall want to be certain that I’m making a good investment. And also I ought to warn you straightaway that I may not be able to raise much money myself.’ He went on very fast. ‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t put my financial position on the table. It’s all a matter of pure business. And I’ve never been able to understand how people manage to be proud about their finances. Anyway, even people who are proud about their finances couldn’t be if they had mine. I collect exactly £285 per year. (Such incomes, because of the fall in the value of money, were to seem tiny within thirty years.) Of that I allow £55 to my father and mother. I’m also insured in their interest. I think if I decreased the £55 a bit, and added to the insurance, they oughtn’t to be much upset. And then I could probably raise a fair sum from the bank on the policy – but I warn you, it’s a matter of pure business. There may be difficulties.’
Neither Jack nor I fully understood the strange nature of George’s ‘finances’. But Jack was moved so that he did not recover his ready, flattering tongue until we got up to catch our train. Then he said: ‘George, I thought we set out tonight to celebrate a triumph.’
‘It was a triumph,’ said George. ‘I shall always insist that we won at that meeting.’
7: Argument Under the Gaslight
IT took some days for Jack to settle what he wanted to do (from that night at Nottingham, he never doubted that George would find the money): and it took a little longer to persuade George of it.
Those were still the days of the small-scale wireless business. An acquaintance of ours had just started one; Jack had his imagination caught. He expounded what he could make of it – and I thought how much he liked the touch of anything modern. He would have been a contemporary man in any age. But he was inventive, he was shrewd, he had a flair for advertisement; he persuaded us all except George.
George did not like it. He would have preferred to try to article Jack to Eden & Martineau. He asked Morcom and me for our opinions. We gave practically the same answer. Making Jack a solicitor would mean a crippling expense for George; and we could not see Jack settling down to a profession if he started unwillingly. His choice was far more likely to come off.
At last George gave way. Then, though Jack, as I say, never doubted that the money would be found, George faced a last obstacle; he had to tell his father and mother that he was lessening his immediate help to them.
For many men, it would have been easy. He could have equivocated; after all, the insurance provided for their future, and he had been making an extravagantly large contribution. But he never thought of evading the truth. He dreaded telling it, for he knew how it would be taken; their family relations were passionately close. But tell it he did, without any cover, three days after our visit to Nottingham.
A week later, when he took me to supper with them, they were still not reconciled to it. It was only Mr Passant’s natural courtesy, his anxiety to make me feel at home, that kept them from an argument the moment we arrived.
Actually, I was not a stranger in their house. Until two years before, Mr Passant had been assistant postmaster at Wickham; then, when George got his job at Eden & Martineau’s, Mr Passant transferred to the general post office in the town. For fear of their family ties George insisted on going into lodgings, while they lived in this little house, one of a row of identical little houses, each with a tiny front garden and iron railings, on the other side of the town. But George visited them two or three times every week; he took his friends to spend whole evenings with them; tonight we arrived early and George and his mother kissed each other with an affection open and yet suddenly released. She was a stocky, big-breasted woman, wearing an apron over a greyish dress.
‘It’s half the week since I saw you, old George,’ she said: it was the overtones of her racy Suffolk accent that we noticed in George’s speech.
She wanted to talk at once about the question of money. Mr Passant managed to stop her, however, his face lined with concern. In a huff, as hot-tempered as George, she went into the back kitchen, though supper would not be ready for an hour.
Mr Passant sat with us round the table in the kitchen. It was hot from a heaped-up fire, and gave out the rich smell of small living-rooms. Under the gaslight, Mr Passant burst into a breathless, friendly, excited account of how, that morning at the post office, a money order had nearly gone astray. He spoke in a kindly hurr
y, his voice husky and high-pitched. He said: ‘Do you play cards, Mr – er – Lewis? Of course you must play cards. George, we ought to play something with him now.’
It was impossible to resist Mr Passant’s enormous zest, to prevent him doing a service. He fetched out a pack of cards from the sideboard, and we played three-handed solo. Mr Passant, who had been brought up in the strictest Puritan discipline, was middle-aged before he touched a card; now he played with tremendous enjoyment, with a gusto that was laughable and warmed us all.
When we finished the game, Mr Passant suddenly got up and brought a book to the table.
‘Just a minute, Mr – er – Lewis, there’s something I thought of when I was playing. It won’t take long, but I mustn’t forget.’
The book was a Bible. He moistened a pencil in his lips, drew a circle round a word, and connected it by a long line to another encircled word.
I moved to give him more room at the table, but he protested.
‘No, please, no. I just do a little preparation each night to be ready for Sunday, you know. I’m allowed to tell the good news, I go round the villages, I don’t suppose George has told you.’ (Of course, I knew long since that he devoted his spare hours to local preaching.) ‘And it’s easier if I do a little work every night. I’m only doing it before supper so that afterwards–’
George and I spread out the evening paper and whispered comments to each other. In a few moments Mr Passant sighed and put a marker into the Bible.
‘Ready for Sunday?’ said George.
‘A little more tomorrow.’ Mr Passant smiled.
‘I suppose you won’t have a big congregation,’ George said. His tone was both intimate and constrained. ‘As it’s a slack time of the year.’
Mr Passant said: ‘No, we can’t hope for many, but that’s not the worst thing. What grieves me is that we don’t get as many as we used to. We’re losing, we’ve been losing ever since the war.’
‘So has the Church of England,’ I observed.
‘Yes, you’re losing too,’ Mr Passant smiled at me. ‘It isn’t only one of us. Which way are you going to win them back?’
I gained some amusement from being taken as a spokesman of the Church of England. I did not obtrude my real beliefs: we proceeded to discuss on what basis the Christian Churches could unite. There I soon made a mistake; for I suggested that Mr Passant might not find confirmation an insurmountable obstacle.
Mr Passant pushed his face forward. He looked more like George than I had seen him. ‘That is the mistake you would have to understand before we could come together,’ he said. ‘Can’t I make you see how dangerous a mistake it is, Mr – Lewis? A man is responsible for his own soul. Religion is the choice of a man’s soul before his God. At some time in his life, sooner or later, a man must choose to stay in sin or be converted. That is the most certain fact I know, you see, and I could not bring myself to associate in worship with anyone who doesn’t want to know it as I do.’
‘I understand what you mean by a man being responsible for his soul.’ George rammed tobacco into his pipe. ‘That’s the basis of Protestantism, naturally. And, though you might choose to put it in other words’ – he looked at me – ‘it’s the basis of any human belief that isn’t completely trivial or absurdly fatalistic. But I never have been able to see why you should make conversion so definite an act. It doesn’t happen like that – irrevocably and once for all.’
‘It does,’ said Mr Passant.
‘I challenge it,’ said George.
‘My dear,’ said Mr Passant, ‘you know all sorts of matters that I don’t know, and on every one of these I will defer to your judgment or knowledge, and be glad to. But you see, I have been living amongst people for fifty years, for fifty-three years and a half, within a few days, and as a result of that experience I know that their lives change all of a sudden – like this–’ he took a piece of paper out of his pocket and moistened his pencil against a lip; then he drew a long straight line– ‘a man lives in sin and enjoyment and indulgence for years, until he is brought up against himself; and then, if he chooses right, life changes altogether – so.’ And he drew a line making a sharp re-entrant angle with the first, and coming back to the edge of the paper. ‘That’s what I mean by conversion, and I couldn’t tell you all the lives I’ve seen it in.’
‘I can’t claim the length of your experience,’ George’s tone had suddenly become hard, near anger, ‘but I have been studying people intensively for several years. And all I’ve seen makes me think their lives are more like this–’ he took his father’s paper under the gaslight, his hand casting a blue shadow; he drew a rapid zigzag. ‘A part of the time they don’t trouble to control their baser selves. Then for a while they do and get on with the most valuable task in sight. Then they relax again. And so on another spurt. For some people the down-strokes are longer than the up, and some the reverse. That’s all I’m prepared to admit. That’s all you need to hope, it seems to me. And whatever your hopes are, they’ve got to be founded in something like the truth–’
Mr Passant was breathless and excited: ‘Mine is the truth for every life I’ve seen. It’s the truth for my own life, and no one else can speak for that. When I was a young man I did nothing but run after enjoyments and pleasures.’ He was staring at the paper on the table. It was quiet; a spurt of rain dashed against the window. ‘Sensual pleasures,’ said Mr Passant, ‘that neither of you will ever hear about, perhaps, much less be tempted with. But they were pleasures to me. Until I was a young man about your age, not quite your age exactly.’ He looked at George. ‘Then one night I had a sight of the way to go. I can never forget it, and I can never forget the difference between my state before and since. I can answer for the same change in others also. But chiefly I have to speak for myself.’
‘I have to do the same,’ said George.
They stared at each other, their faces shadowed. George’s lips were pressed tightly together.
Then Margaret, George’s youngest sister, a girl of fourteen, came in to lay the supper. And Mrs Passant, still unappeased, followed with a great metal tray.
Supper was a meal both heavy and perfunctory. There was a leg of cold overdone beef, from which Mr Passant and George ate large slices: after the potatoes were finished, we continued with the meat alone. Mrs Passant herself was eating little – to draw George’s concern, I thought. When her husband tried to persuade her, she merely smiled abruptly. His voice was entreating and anxious; for a moment, the room was pierced by unhappiness, in which, as Mr Passant leaned forward, George and the child suddenly took their share.
Nothing open was said until Margaret had gone to bed. From halfway up the stairs, she called out my Christian name. I went up, leaving the three of them alone; Margaret was explaining in her nervous, high-pitched voice that her candle had gone out and she had no matches. She kept me talking for a few moments, proud of her first timid attempt to flirt. As she cried ‘Goodnight’ down the stairs, I heard the clash of voices from below. The staircase led, through a doorway, directly into the kitchen; past the littered table, George’s face stood out in a frown of anger and pain. Mr Passant was speaking. I went back to my place; no one gave me a glance.
‘You’re putting the wrong meaning on to us,’ the words panted from Mr Passant. ‘Surely you see that isn’t our meaning, or not what we tried to mean.’
‘I can only understand it one way,’ George said. ‘You suspect the use I intend to make of my money. And in any case you claim a right to supervise it, whether you suspect me or not.’
‘We’re trying to help you, that’s all. We must try to help you. You can’t expect us to forget who you are and see you lose or waste everything.’
‘That amounts to claiming a right to interfere in my affairs. I’ve had this out too many times before. I don’t admit it for a single moment. If I make my own judgment and decide to sp
end every penny I receive on my own pleasures, I’m entitled to do so.’
‘We’ve seen some of your judgment,’ said Mrs Passant. George turned to her. His anger grew stronger, but with a new note of pleading: ‘Don’t you understand I can’t give way in this? I can’t give way in the life I lead or the money I spend. In the last resort, I insist of being the judge of my own actions. If that’s accepted, I’m prepared to justify the present case. I warn you that I’ve made up my mind, but I’m prepared to justify it.’
‘You’re prepared to keep other people with your money. That’s what you want to do,’ said Mrs Passant.
‘You must believe what I’ve told you till I’m tired,’ George shouted. ‘We’re only talking about this particular sum of money I propose to use in a particular way. What I’ve done in the past and what I may do in the future are utterly beside the point. This particular sum I’m not going to spend on a woman, if that’s what you’re thinking. If you won’t believe me–’
‘We believe that, we believe that,’ Mr Passant burst out. George stared at his mother.
‘Very well. Then the point is this, and nothing but this; that I’m going to spend the money on someone I’m responsible for. That responsibility is the most decent task I’m ever likely to have. So the only question is whether I can afford it or not. Nothing I’ve ever learned in this house has given me any respect for your opinions on that matter. Your only grumble could be that I shan’t be discharging my duty and making my contribution here. I admit that is a duty. I’m not trying to evade it. Have I ever got out of it except for a day or two? Have I ever got out of it since I was qualified?’