George Passant

by C. P. Snow

‘I know it, you can’t think I don’t know it–’

  ‘It can’t be much of a consolation for you,’ George said.

  He was hoping more from Martineau’s evidence than he could let his father see. During their argument, I felt it was one of the few occasions on I had seen George deliberately dissimulate. Perhaps he had to destroy his own hopes. I wondered if he also consciously wanted to keep up the pretence that there was nothing in the case; and so told Mr Passant that his persecutors would disregard favourable evidence, just as they had invented the whole story of the fraud.

  Yet, listening to him, we had all been brought to a pitch of inordinate strain. He had started out to dissimulate, but his own passion filled the words, and he did not know himself how much was acted. Before he stopped, he could not conceal an emotion as violent as that of the night before.

  We all looked at him. No one spoke for a time. Then George said: ‘Where are you preaching on Sunday?’

  ‘I don’t know for certain.’

  ‘The trial will be over,’ said George. ‘Whatever happens, I want you to preach. Where’s the circuit this week?’

  Mr Passant mentioned the name of a village.

  George said: ‘It’s grotesque that they always give you the furthest places. You’ve got to insist on fair treatment.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, going a few miles more,’ said Mr Passant.

  ‘It matters to them and it ought to matter to you. But anyway, this place is presumably fixed for Sunday. I want you to go.’

  Mrs Passant suddenly tried to stop their pain.

  ‘That’s the place old Mr Martineau started his acting tricks, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I should like to know what culch he’s getting up to now.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said George.

  Mrs Passant said: ‘He ought to have looked after you. He used to think you would do big things. When you went to Mr Eden’s, he used to think you wouldn’t stay there very long.’

  ‘If I had wanted, I could have moved.’

  ‘I never thought you would, somehow,’ she said.

  ‘Because I found something valuable to do,’ George said.

  ‘You found something you liked doing more. I always knew you would. Even when I told people how well you were getting on.’ She spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, with acceptance and without reproach. George looked at her with something like gratitude. At that moment, one felt how close she had been all his life. She understood him in the way Jack did; she, too, did not believe in the purpose and aspirations, she had always seen the weaknesses and self-deceit. Like Jack, she had discounted the other sides of his nature, and possessed a similar power, the greater because of the love between them.

  38: Impressions in the Court

  FOR a time the next morning, the feeling of the court was less hostile. Martineau’s evidence had raised doubts in some onlookers; and they responded to Getliffe’s new zest. Jack’s examination went smoothly and he soon made a good impression. The touch of genuine diffidence in his manner seemed to warm people, even in court, to his frank, spontaneous, fluent words. As he answered Getliffe, I thought again how there was a resemblance between them.

  He gave an account of his positions in the years before they bought the agency – he was twenty-nine, a year older than he used to tell us in the past, a fact which I should have known if I had studied the register of our old school. He said of the transaction over the agency: ‘I wanted money very badly, I’m not going to pretend anything else.’

  ‘About the information you gave to people when you were borrowing money,’ said Getliffe, ‘that was never false?’

  ‘No. I’d got a good thing to sell, and I was selling it for all I was worth.’

  ‘You told them what you believed to be the truth?’

  ‘Yes. Naturally I was as enthusiastic as I could honestly be.’

  ‘You were certain it was a good thing, weren’t you?’

  ‘I put every penny I had got into it, and I spent every working hour of my time improving it for months.’

  ‘You felt like that yourself after you had received Mr Martineau’s information?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jack. ‘If I’d heard – for instance, that the circulation of the Arrow was much smaller – I shouldn’t have become as keen. But even so, I should have known there were possibilities.’

  ‘It was a perfectly ordinary business venture, wasn’t it? That is how you would look at it?’

  ‘It was a good deal sounder than most. It did quite well, of course. There’s a tendency to forget that.’

  Once or twice he drew sympathetic laughter. He kept to the same tone, responsible and yet not overburdened, through most of Porson’s cross-examination. He denied that he had known the real state of the agency.

  ‘I was a bit puzzled later, but all sorts of factors had to be taken into account. I set to work to put it right.’ About the farm he would not admit anything of the stories of Miss Geary and the others. It was noticed on all sides that Porson did not press him. But after several replies from Jack, Porson said: ‘The jury will observe there are two accounts of those interviews. One was given by several witnesses. The other was given by you, Mr Cotery.’ He added: ‘Incidentally, will you tell us why you gave different people so many different accounts of yourself?’

  Getliffe objected. Porson said: ‘I consider it essential to cross-examine this witness as to credit.’

  The judge said: ‘In the circumstances, I must allow the question.’

  Porson asked whether Jack had not invented several fictitious stories of his life – one, that he had been to a good school and university, another that he had been an officer in the army? Jack, shaken for the first time, denied both.

  ‘It will be easy to prove,’ said Porson. He looked at the jury. He had given no warning of this surprise. ‘Do you deny that–’

  ‘Oh, I don’t deny that I’ve sometimes got tired of my ordinary self. But that had nothing to do with raising money.’ Jack had recovered himself. He replied easily to Porson’s questions about his stories: some he just admitted.

  At last Porson said: ‘Well, I put it to you, Mr Cotery, that you’ve been living by your wits for a good many years?’

  ‘I think that’s true.’

  ‘You’ve never settled down to a serious occupation? If you like, I can take you through a list of things you’ve done–’

  ‘You needn’t trouble. It’s perfectly clear.’

  ‘You’ve spent your entire time trying to get rich quick?’

  ‘I’ve spent my time trying to make a living. If I’d been luckier, it wouldn’t have been necessary.’

  Porson asked a number of questions about the ways in which he had made a living. To many, there was something seedy and repellent in those indications of a life continuously wary, looking for a weakness or a generosity – they were identical when one was selling an idea. But most people actually in court still felt some sympathy with Jack; he was self-possessed, after the moment of anger about his romances, and he answered without either assertiveness or apology. Once he said, with his old half-comic ruefulness: ‘It’s harder work living by your wits than you seem to think.’

  Porson said, after a time: ‘You don’t in the least regret anything you’ve done? You don’t regret persuading people to lose their money?’

  ‘I’m sorry they’ve lost it – just as I’m sorry I lost my own. But that’s business. I expect to get mine back some day, and I hope they will.’

  Porson finished by a reference to Olive’s part in the transactions; she had been trying to raise money for the purchase, he suggested, at a time when Jack was taking other women to the farm.

  ‘She was already your mistress as well, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Need I answer that?’

  As Jack asked the question, several peo
ple noticed the distress and anger in his face, but they nearly all thought it was simulated. The general view was that he had chosen his moment to ‘act the gentleman’; curiously enough, some felt it the most unprepossessing thing he had done that morning.

  ‘I don’t think you need,’ said the judge.

  Jack’s reputation with women was well known in the town, and it was expected that Porson would make a good deal of it. To everyone’s surprise, Porson let him go without another question.

  Olive entered the box: Getliffe kept to the same lines as with Jack. All through she was abrupt and matter-of-fact; she made one reply, however, which Porson later taxed her with at length. It happened while Getliffe was rattling through his questions over the agency.

  ‘You had considered buying other businesses?’

  ‘Several.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go further with them?’

  ‘We wanted a run for our money.’

  ‘But you became satisfied that this one was sound?’

  ‘It was a long way the best we had heard of.’

  ‘Can you tell me how you worked out the possibilities?’

  ‘On the result of Mr Passant’s talk with Mr Martineau.’

  ‘You didn’t actually see Mr Martineau yourself, I suppose?’

  ‘I didn’t want to know any more about it.’

  Very quickly, Getliffe asked: ‘You mean, of course, that you were completely satisfied by the accounts Mr Passant brought? Obviously they convinced all three of you?’

  ‘Of course. There seemed no need to ask any further.’

  Many people doubted whether there had been a moment of tension at all. But when Porson cross-examined her, he began on it at once.

  ‘I want to go back to one of your answers. Why did you say that “I didn’t want to know any more about it”?’

  ‘I explained – because I was perfectly well satisfied as it was.’

  ‘Do you think that’s a really satisfactory explanation of your answer?’

  ‘It is the only one.’

  ‘It isn’t, you know. You can think of something very different. Just listen to what you said again: “I didn’t want to know any more about it.” Doesn’t that suggest another phrase to you?’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘Doesn’t it suggest – “I didn’t want to know too much about it”?’

  ‘I should have said that if I meant it.’

  ‘I suggest you meant exactly that, though – before you had your second thoughts?’

  ‘I meant the opposite. I knew enough already.’

  Porson kept her an inordinately long time. His questions had become more slowly and truculently delivered since Martineau’s evidence, his manner more domineering. It was his way of responding to the crisis of the case, of showing how much he needed to win it: but that would have been hard to guess.

  He left no time to begin George’s examination before lunch. Irritating the judge, he involved Olive’s relations with Jack into his questions over the farm. He brought in a suggestion, so over-elaborate that it was commonly misunderstood, about her raising money in secret, without Jack’s knowledge; Porson’s insinuation being that she was trying to win Jack back from other women, and using her money as the bait.

  But, though he had confused everyone by his legal argument and annoyed the judge, Porson had not entirely wasted his time. Olive was often admired at first sight, but seldom liked: and it had been so in court. Porson had been able to whip up this animosity.

  As we went out for lunch, the crowd was full of murmurs about her evidence. Rachel met me, her face full of pity. She said several times – ‘If only she’d thrown herself on their mercy.’ Her pride had made many people glad to hear Porson’s attack. And the impassiveness with which she had received the questions about ‘running after a man who didn’t want her’ had added to their resentment.

  Olive and Jack walked slowly together into lunch; they were not speaking when they arrived. George stared at her.

  ‘What did you think of that?’

  ‘Not much. They’re waiting for you now.’

  We tried to keep up a conversation, but no one made the effort for long. About us all, there hung the minute restlessness of extreme fatigue. Before the meal was finished Jack pushed his chair back.

  ‘I want some air before this afternoon. I’m going for a walk,’ he said to Olive. She replied: ‘It’ll be better if I stay here.’

  Without smiling, they looked at each other. Their faces were harassed and grave, but full of intimacy.

  ‘You’d better stay too,’ Jack said to George. ‘You’ll want to get ready.’ George inclined his head, and Jack asked me to go with him into the street.

  We found people already on the pavements, waiting for the afternoon’s sitting to begin. Jack walked past them, his head back. He was wearing neither overcoat nor hat, and many of them recognised him.

  ‘We gave them something to listen to,’ he said.

  ‘You did pretty well.’

  ‘You would expect me to, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I should.’

  ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘when I was in the box and saw them looking at me – I felt they were envying me, just like these people who’re staring now?’

  Even then, he was drawing some enjoyment from the eyes of the crowd. But a little later he said: ‘There isn’t so much to envy, is there? I still don’t know why I have never pulled things off. I ought to have done. A good many others would have done in my place. I might have done, of course I might–’ He began speaking very fast, as though he were puzzled and astonished.

  ‘Lewis, if I’d been the man everyone thinks, this would never have happened. Do you realise that? I know that I’ve done things most men wouldn’t, clearly I have. But I could have saved myself the trouble if I had lived on Olive from the start. She would have kept me if I’d let her. The man Porson struck something there. But I just couldn’t. Why, Lewis, a man like you would have found it infinitely easier to let her than I did!’

  ‘Yes, I should have taken her help,’ I said.

  ‘I couldn’t,’ said Jack. ‘I suppose I was too proud. Have you ever known me to be too proud in any other conceivable circumstances before? It’s incredible: but I couldn’t take the help she wanted to give.’

  Jack was reflecting. I recalled how Olive knew that he was struggling against being dependent on her – when we were afraid that he might run. We turned back towards the steps. He again felt curious eyes watching him, and casually smoothed back his hair.

  ‘They think I’m a man who lives on women,’ he said. ‘It’s true that I haven’t lost by their company, in my time. The curious thing is – the one occasion when I ought to have let a woman help me, I couldn’t manage it.

  ‘I’m not the man they think,’ said Jack. ‘I’ve always envied people who’ve got the power of going straight ahead. I don’t think there’s much chance I shall learn it now.’

  39: The Last Cross-Examination

  WHEN George walked from the dock to the witness box, the court was full. There were acquaintances whom he had made at the School and through Eden’s firm; as well as close friends, there were several present whom he had quarrelled with and denounced. Canon Martineau, who had not attended to hear his brother, was in court this afternoon, by the Principal’s side; Beddow and Miss Geary were also there, of that committee which George once attacked. Roy’s father was the only one of the five who had not come to watch. Roy himself stood at the back of the court, making a policeman fetch chairs for Mr and Mrs Passant. Daphne and Rachel stood near to Roy. Eden sat in the place he had occupied throughout the trial. And there were others who had come under George’s influence – many of them not ready to believe what they heard against him.

  As he waited in the box, the cour
t was strained to a pitch it had not reached before. There was dislike, envy and contempt ready for him; others listened apprehensively for each word, and were moved for him so that their nerves were tense.

  At that moment, just as Getliffe was beginning his first question, the judge intervened with a businesslike discussion of the timetable of the case. ‘Unless you finish by tomorrow lunchtime,’ (Saturday) he said to Porson, ‘I shall have to leave it over until Monday. I particularly want to have next week clear for other work. If you could cut anything superfluous out of your cross-examination this afternoon – then perhaps you’ (he turned to Getliffe) ‘could begin your final speech today.’

  Getliffe agreed in a word; he felt the suspense in the court, tightened by this unexpected delay. But Porson argued for some minutes, and said that he could not offer to omit essential questions. In fact, George’s evidence took up the whole afternoon.

  Throughout the hours in the box George was nervous in a way which altered very little, whether it was Getliffe who questioned him or Porson. Yet he was, in many ways, the best witness the trial had seen. His hands strained at the lapels of his coat and his voice kept breaking out in anger; but even here, the rapidity and coherence of his mind, the ease with which his thoughts formed themselves into words, made the answers come clear, definite and undelayed.

  In the examination, George gave a more elaborate account of their businesses, and one far more self-consistent and complete than either of the others or Getliffe himself in the opening speech. The answers explained that he and Jack heard of Martineau’s leaving the town and wanting to sell the agency. He, as an old friend, undertook the task of asking Martineau about it, in particular whether it was an investment they would be justified in inviting others to join. Martineau told him the agency was in a particularly healthy state – and that the Arrow had a circulation of about five thousand. His memory was absolutely precise. There were no vague impressions. He had not thought of any misrepresentation (‘It would have been fantastic,’ George broke out, ‘to inquire further’). Jack and Olive had approached Attock and the others; the firm was bought; it had brought in a reasonable profit, not as large as they expected. He had been puzzled for some months at the small circulation of the Arrow after they took it over. They had not been able to repay more than a fraction of the loan, but had regularly raised the interest. The disorganisation of industry in the town during the economic crisis had also diminished the business, just as it was becoming established. But still, they had maintained some profit and paid the interest regularly. The agency would still have been flourishing, if, in George’s words, ‘I had not been attacked’.