George Passant

by C. P. Snow

  ‘Were you out on the spree last night, Mr Morcom?’

  Then, as he took me into his office, his expression changed.

  ‘Were you with them last night?’

  I nodded.

  ‘What do they think?’

  ‘They’ve a good idea what the chances are.’

  ‘Has George?’ asked Morcom.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You talked of Jack escaping, the first night this began. Why don’t you suggest it to George?’

  I hesitated.

  ‘It wouldn’t be easy,’ I said.

  ‘Easy! You of all people talk of it not being easy – when you know what the alternative is.’

  ‘I know–’

  ‘But you won’t go to George.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said.

  ‘It’s his fault,’ said Morcom. ‘It’s that madman’s fault.’

  ‘It’s no use blaming anyone now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s too late to talk about George’s fault. Or yours. Or mine for not stopping it,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Morcom.

  ‘If you had gone back that night and taken care of them, this might never have happened. That night you warned me, and I begged you to go back. If you had only been able to forget your self-respect,’ I said.

  My voice had gone harsh like his; he heard me say what he was continually thinking; he was relieved. His face became softened. He said, in a casual, almost light-hearted tone: ‘That wouldn’t have been so easy, either.’ He paused, then said: ‘The only thing is, what’s to be done? There’s still some time.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s anything you can do,’ I said. ‘They will have to wait for the trial.’

  ‘You’ll be busy with the case?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re lucky.’ Then he said: ‘I’ve not asked you before. But are you as likely to get them off – as anyone we could find?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘If we could afford to pay.’

  ‘I ought to have been told that. I’ll give the money–’

  ‘I’ve thought it out – as dispassionately as I can,’ I said. ‘I don’t think the difference is worth the money. For one reason. Money may be more important afterwards. If we’ve spent every penny–’

  ‘You mean, if they’re convicted–’

  ‘We’ve got to be ready,’ I said.

  That afternoon, when I was sitting alone in the drawing-room at Eden’s, Daphne visited me. She talked of the previous night.

  ‘It was rather an orgy, wasn’t it?’ she said. ‘Of course, you didn’t see it after it really began–’ She mentioned a common acquaintance, and said: ‘Of course, it would have sent her away for good, wouldn’t it? But then she’s “upright”. I can’t help respecting her, you know, when I’m not relapsing like last night.’ Then she said: ‘But I’m being silly, wasting your time. In the middle of this horror. It’s as bad as going mad last night. But that happened because we were in this mess, didn’t it?’

  The shrewdness shot through the prattle of her talk, and her eyes, often flirtatious, were steady and sensible. ‘That’s just why I’ve come up to see you now. I’m getting a bit worked up.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘You’re easy to talk to, aren’t you?’ she said (coquettishness returned for a second; her upper lip puckered). ‘I shan’t be terribly helpful, you know. It’s just to get it off my chest. But anyway, it’s like this. When George first thought of making passes at me he wanted me to know the awful secrets of his life. He was certain that I should be shocked,’ she went on. ‘I oughtn’t to laugh at him, poor dear. He was serious about it. It must have been a struggle. When he decided it was the right thing to do, he went ahead – though he fancied he was taking a risk. He really believed he might lose me.’ She smiled.

  ‘Well, do you know what he did?’ she said. ‘He insisted on giving me his diary. It’s a staggering document. I expect I enjoyed the pieces he thought I’d mind. But there are some I can’t always laugh away. I’ve brought it along.’ (She had placed a small despatch case on the floor.) ‘I want you to look at it for me–’ She sat on the arm of my chair; the arrangement of the first page, as her finger pointed out an entry, seemed identical with those George himself showed me years ago.

  First she made me read a series of passages about the agency; quite soon after they bought it, it seemed that George was troubled about the circulation of the Arrow – ‘it cannot conceivably have reached the figure that Martineau gave me in good faith’. The set of entries went on for several pages: neither of us spoke as I read it.

  ‘That’s all about that business,’ said Daphne. ‘I don’t know what it means. But I couldn’t rest till you’d seen it. I thought you might need it for the case–’ then she broke off. ‘Will you read some more? While I’m here?’

  There was little else directly bearing on the case in the entries Daphne selected. I saw only a few perfunctory references to his job at Eden’s, and little more about the ‘enterprises’ with Jack and Olive. On the whole, I was surprised that they had seemed to matter so little.

  Daphne, in fact, had not brought the diary only to ask about the case. I was not even certain what she inferred from the first entries she had pointed out. Sensibly, she had determined to reveal them to me as his lawyer. Whether she thought George guilty, I did not know. But she was obviously affected by other parts of his confessions.

  She was deeply fond of him, and in a youthful, shrewd and managing way she was trying to plan their future life. She felt lost, as she read some passages which a more completely experienced woman might have found alien. Actually Daphne, though lively and sensual, was also sentimental and full of conventional dreams. In imagination, she was contriving a happy marriage with George.

  I hesitated. Then I thought she had enough natural insight to stand something of the truth. I tried to explain some of the contradictions in his life as honestly as I could. I regretted it, for I hurt her; and she said goodbye, still convinced that she knew him better than I.

  She left the entire diary with me, from 1922 to the month before the preliminary inquiries. I went on reading it for hours. To any intimate of George’s, who accepted by habit the strange appearance of his life, it would have been moving. To me, it carried the irretrievability of the past, along with a life close to one’s own in affection and pity – and so far away that it brought a desolation of loneliness.

  I looked back for the first reference to the group, and read again the early ‘justification’ which he had shown me that night at the farm, in 1925. There was much more about the School and his friends in that tone, for years afterwards. In 1927, soon after his disappointment in the firm, he was writing:

  The family have at last partially got rid of their conception of me as selfish – and he in particular appreciates my care and devotion, in his eagerness to give the world its due. Olive has gone, Mona has just become engaged, many of them have gone: but there are others, there are some closer to me than there have ever been. I find I have been writing of them all this holiday. If anything can be inferred from these expressions of my feelings, I have been useful to these people at the School. There are signs that freedom is life. And three years ago I was groaning inwardly at my distance from my friends. I was watching them from afar.

  Then, still explaining to himself the divisions of his emotional life, he returned to the town, and for several weekends in Nottingham and London passed an ‘equinox’ of sensuality.

  This randy fit is going on too long. Last night I could not resist taking the train to London. I was inflamed by the vision of one of our prettiest s—f—s, I found my little girl of 1921, older and more dilapidated, but with the same touching curve of the lips.

  Tonight it was still on me. I took the familiar train t
o Nottingham. I found a pair of old friends in the first pub and spent a half-hour of pleasure looking at Pauline’s face; but they were booked, and I was not in a mood to award free sherry for ever, so I moved on. I have hazy recollections of hordes of women that I kissed. I finished up drunk in the train three or four hours ago. And as we came to the scattered lights outside the town, I thought that everything worthwhile in my life I had invested in this place.

  It was in the following autumn that they bought the agency. George’s references to the group in the next two years became far more varied: at times impatient, moved by Jack, ‘urging me on to his own freedom. Wanting me to destroy the only thing I have ever made. Yet he is a lover of life, he has given me his warm companionship for years, he looks into the odd corners of living’ (17 November 1928).

  During that autumn, also, a girl called Katherine Faulkner entered the society – usually referred to in the diary as K. For some time she was only mentioned casually.

  A NEW VENTURE

  16 OCTOBER 1928

  CONTRACT SIGNED Today Jack, Olive and I took over the agency, that curious stage in Martineau’s mad progress. It is to be hoped it does well. Money is a perpetual nuisance: why should I, who care so little for it, have it always dragging round my neck? I have hopes that Jack will win us new comforts. Of course, I am not as optimistic as they all think. I remember his bad luck and bad management with that absurd first attempt of his. But he is still capable of success: it is time we had the luck on our side.

  2 DECEMBER 1928

  JACK AGAIN Jack is busy and active and full of ideas. A little money has come in already. Today it struck me as strange that Jack, of all my friends, should have been close at my side for the longest time. He was indulging in one of his new attacks on the group. ‘Why don’t you see what people really want?’

  He does not trouble to conceal that he includes me among them. He does not pretend to share my hopes nowadays: he would like me to follow him with his suburban girls. Yet all this sadistic nonsense of his does not seem to interrupt our alliance.

  4 DECEMBER 1928

  ARGUMENT Jack brought in a friend tonight who made a fierce emotional case for immortality. Lewis, in the old days, would have shrugged his shoulders, but I enjoyed the talk. On the train afterwards, going to this petty little case – I’m tired of being foisted off with Eden’s drudgery – I remember that it was the first argument with a stranger for many months.

  The group is taking up all my energy – more even than it did in the first flush of youthful zeal, religious years that are not quite repeated now. If Jack were not obsessed with his own pleasures, he would see how that answers his attacks.

  6 DECEMBER 1928

  A FEW HOURS SNATCHED FOR MYSELF I thought it was perhaps a mistake not to keep a tiny fraction of my interests away from the ‘little world’. I sometimes wish that Lewis were here for a day of two. So on the train I read some calculus with immense excitement. Why wasn’t I told about these things at school? Also ‘Clissold’; Wells is childish in politics, but there are moments when he feels for the whole common soul of man.

  Yet I have found little time for anything outside the group now.

  During the next few weeks, he wrote those entries about the circulation which Daphne had showed me at first. I put them aside to think over again.

  22 FEBRUARY 1929

  COLLAPSE I appeared before the School Committee, asking for money for the brightest man since Lewis’ day. It was a horrible fiasco. Cameron was unnecessarily offensive. The cleric Martineau scored at my expense. I am not so effective as I used to be. I can still hear that grotesque display, and I feel like blinding all the damned night through.

  1 MARCH 1929

  I COME TO GRIPS AGAIN

  TOO EASILY DOWNCAST Things have not been perfect. I have not quite the usual satisfaction of work well done. The débâcle of my appearance before the committee, another storm of lust, Jack’s contempt for the ‘hole-and-corner’ way in which I indulge my passions, have all played their part. Jack hints also that Olive has begun an affair with Morcom of all people, to whom I have scarcely spoken a private word for months. It may take her away from our little business venture, and it’s a piece of wanton irritation. However, I ought to be able to ignore it.

  The sight of K, smiling at the farm, a different person from what she was three months ago, is enough to remove any memories of Olive as anything more than a friendly, competent person, who is some help to Jack and myself.

  After a walk in the beautiful rain-sodden evening, I have felt again the essential urge to live among these people. My course is set and my mind made up. Jack’s friendship is valuable, but his influence must be despised. I see it clearly now.

  2 MARCH 1929

  K and the others made this the most perfect weekend I have ever known. They were alive, we were all on terms of absolute confidence. I was overwhelmed with happiness, unqualified happiness, such happiness as comes unawares and only in rare moments. I was bathed in the warmth of joyous living, so that any trouble seemed incredible.

  18 APRIL 1929

  Next weekend, so I have just heard, some clod has rented the farm and we cannot be accommodated. Why in heaven should I be denied what is my food and life by the sheer inconsequent whim of some unknown fool?

  Although he did not admit it for some months, it was probably about this time that he became engrossed in Katherine – in love with her, perhaps. Never before, at any rate, had any girl in the group meant as much: Mona, now married to an acquaintance of Jack’s, had only been one of many ‘fancies’. In the diary about this date he dismissed her: ‘She was a bright little thing. I could have slept with her if my theory had permitted it – I suppose Jack did not feel any scruples’. There had been another girl, Phyllis, who had by this time finished her training as an elementary schoolmistress, and taken a job in the county; George had toyed half-heartedly with the idea of marrying her, a couple of years back.

  But Katherine moved him far more deeply: she came upon him when he was trying to maintain all his ideals over the ‘little world’.

  I never met her, or knew much of her, except that she was very poor and possessed the delicate and virginal beauty which most excited George. He struggled against recognising the passion. After that outburst over the farm, he tried to miss the group’s meetings there. He found himself in one of his whirls of womanising, unusually long drawn out.

  RELAPSES

  7 MAY

  FACES IN LONDON Somehow I have not got the School and the group in my bones as I used to have. This is strange after the promise of a month ago. I am in a tangle of desires, scattering money more frantically in than ever did. I met Winnie in Oxford Street: she is one of the nicest girls I have managed to know. Curious – her face comes and goes. Why? (Peggy’s went long since. Dorothy’s went, also the Cambridge girl, and the Bear Street one. It needs some effort to recall Hilda.)

  (The names were all of women he had picked up on the streets.)

  21 MAY

  I am still a libido, though I get some joy from life. No moralising; things happen well when they do happen. Last night it was the old crowd in Nottingham. Some of the old hands are in trouble. Connie owes to a moneylender, poor soul. Thelma sees financial ruin coming. I told her that the ‘good wife and mother stunt’ is off. Why am I so attracted by prostitutes? I finished up with Pat, Connie’s successor and the best of all.

  3 JUNE

  RETURN TO THE GROUP I have wrestled with repentance. Late though it be, I am wholly in love with the group again. I came back to a weekend at the farm – my first for a month – with extraordinary gratitude that they should receive me with a show of happiness and admiration. Jack was not there, and I am ashamed to say that made me easier in mind. They seem to respect me. Little do they know that I am really the prodigal son.

  4 JUNE

  I think I am in l
ove with K. I cannot write until I have thought it out.

  6 JUNE

  I still cannot see my way clear. For hours I have rehearsed renunciatory speeches to myself. Yet I know I shall never make them. About one thing I must be certain, now and whatever happens in the future; nothing must impair any single person near me. I am beginning to think I have never been in love before – in my purely selfish life, it is the greatest thing that has happened. But that is a trifle beside the people I can still look after. If I neglect that work, there is nothing left of me except an ordinary man and a handful of sensations.

  10 JUNE

  I met K by accident tonight. She shook hands as we parted. Her touch is like no other touch. In the whispering air I rode home to a quiet house.

  From the diary one gained no clear impression of K. She was probably a complex and sensitive person, easily hurt and full of self-distrust. Her relation with George was strained and unhappy, almost from the beginning: ‘the only time I have been utterly miserable over a woman,’ he wrote. With the odd humour that came less often in his diary than in speech, he added on 24 July: ‘K let me hold her hand: but that may have been because there was no feeling in her arm’.

  His distress and ‘longing’ (a word which entered frequently that summer) drove him more completely into the group. He resigned from the one or two organisations in the town to which he still belonged – five years before, he had taken part in many. He kept protesting against ‘extra work for Eden’. ‘I am a solicitor’s clerk. I do not consider I am under any obligation to do more than a competent solicitor’s clerk usually does. He has no call on me outside office hours.’