Джеймс Хилтон - So Well Remembered

There was that Council meeting, for instance, in the spring of 1918, at which he first spoke Livia’s name—and with a ring of challenge as he pitched his voice to the public gallery. “I’ve always held,” he began, “that no accident of birth should ever stand in the way of merit—(Cheers) —in fact it’s one of the few things I’m prepared to be thoroughly consistent about. (Laughter.) Councillor Whaley has just referred to the great injustice done to our fellow-citizens many years ago by one whose name has a certain prominence in the history of this town. I think Councillor Whaley put the matter far too mildly in using the word ‘injustice’. I’d prefer myself to call it the most damnable piece of financial knavery ever perpetrated by a self-acknowledged crook at the expense of thousands of honest hard-working folks. (Loud cheers.) Oh yes, I know the saying ‘De mortuis nil nisi bonum’—if I’ve got the pronunciation wrong perhaps some of the gentlemen on the other side who have had the advantage of a better education than mine will correct me—(Laughter)—at any rate, they’ll agree with me that the Latin words mean that you shall speak no evil of the dead… But may I ask THIS question of Councillor Whaley— suppose the dead reach out from their graves to continue the harm they did during their lives—are we STILL to keep silent about them? (Loud and prolonged cheers). Gentlemen… I wouldn’t have referred to such a matter unless the other side had thought fit to mention it first. But since they did, I’ll say this much—that in my opinion our town is STILL suffering from the effects of the Channing Mill crash and the iniquitous swindle that caused it! Its victims are to be found in every street— nay, almost in every house. Certainly in ONE of our houses—the workhouse. (Cheers.) What shall we say of any man, living or dead, who can be accounted personally responsible for such a thing? To inherit control of an industrial concern and then behave with such callous dishonesty that working people lose jobs and life savings together, so that hundreds of homes are sacrificed and broken up, so that health is imperilled and countless lives are embittered, so that children have their educations interrupted and old folks are hastened to their graves—if one man causes all this havoc, then in God’s name what shall we call him, or the system that gave him such power and opportunity?”

Here the cheers and shouts of the gallery were interrupted by a shabby little man in the back row who yelled out with piercing distinctness: “Don’t matter what you call ‘im now, George. The bugger’s dead.” Whereupon cheers dissolved into laughter, and George, sensing the moment for a change of mood, dropped his voice to a much more prosaic level and continued:

“Aye… let’s cut the cackle and get down to the business in hand. There’s a war still on, and we must save a bit of our bad language for the Germans. (Laughter.) I was just then tempted—as we all are sometimes— to speak my mind. (Laughter.) I couldn’t help it, and I think those who elected me to this Council didn’t really expect me ever to do anything else. (Cheers and laughter.) And that’s why I’m urging you now, as a man still speaking his mind, not to pay off an old score on an innocent person. To begin with, the score’s too big. And then also, though we’re often told that the sins of the fathers get visited on the children, there isn’t one of us who thinks that’s really a fair thing, or ought to be encouraged… Well, now let me really come to the facts of the matter. We have tonight a subordinate municipal post to fill for which we invited public applications. As I see it —and not as some folks here seem to see it—there’s only one thing we ought to do, and that’s what we always have done—choose the best person for the job and let no other consideration matter. It’s a simple method, and I’m all against changing it.” And then, dropping his voice to a monotone as he consulted a sheet of paper: “I have here the list of applicants for the position of junior library assistant, together with their qualifications. On the basis of these facts, and these alone, I move that the application of Miss Olivia Channing be accepted.” (Cheers and some cries of dissent.)

The foregoing has been worth quoting verbatim, not only because it was one of the events that shaped George’s destiny, but as a sample of his speech-making in those days. He always said he was no orator, and sincerely believed it, but his opponents though reluctant to use the complimentary term, were not so sure; at any rate they could call him a rabble-rouser. The speech is typical in its astute and somewhat excessive preliminary agreement with the other side (in this case his own side), putting them in a good humour by stating their case better than they could themselves, so that afterwards George’s real point came as an intended anti- climax. He had often by this means won victories almost by default. The jibe about his fellow-members’ superior education was also typical; it was true that many of them had been to better schools, but extremely unlikely that any could remember as much Latin as George had recently learned.

But most typical of all was his quixotic impulse to be fair; it was as if, having called the father a crook, he felt in duty bound to find the daughter a job.

On this occasion victory was anything but by default. His speech failed to silence objectors, and there was further argument, some of it rancorous. But the motion was eventually passed by a narrow margin, with much cross-voting; so that in due course Miss Olivia Channing did indeed become junior assistant in the Browdley Public Library at a commencing salary of forty-five shillings a week.

“And a nice problem you’ve handed me,” Dick Jordan remarked, meeting George a few days later in Shawgate. The Librarian was one of George’s closest friends and political supporters.

“Why, Dick, isn’t she any good?”

“She does the work all right, but—well, when you remember her father there’s a lot of things you can’t feel sure of.”

“Aye, and one of them’s heredity,” declared George, advancing stoutly to a favourite topic. “Thank goodness it’s not as important as environment, because environment’s something you can change.”

“Not when you’ve already had it. What d’you think HER environment was like at Stoneclough—up there with a man who’d done a stretch in prison and drank heavily and was so impossible to live with that… oh, well, you’ve heard some of the rumours, I daresay.”

“I’ve heard ‘em, but I don’t see why they should make us condemn the girl. Seems to me it’s more a case for sympathy.”

“She’ll not find much of that in Browdley, George. It’s one thing to swing the Council by a speech, but when it comes to changing the minds of ordinary folks who’ve lost their hard cash—”

“But SHE didn’t steal it—”

“No, but she lived at Stoneclough, and for years that’s been the symbol in this town of being luckier than you deserve. And it’s still the symbol, George, in spite of all the mortgages on the place and no matter what the girl herself had to put up with there…”

George did not meet her till some weeks after she had begun work. He was then studying hard for the final examination that might earn him a university degree, and it was this that occupied his mind when he entered the Reference Department of the Library on a sunny April afternoon. But when he left, a couple of hours later, he could only think of the girl who had brought him Volume Four of the Cambridge Modern History.

He always remembered her first words to him as she took his slip of paper, scanned it, then him, then stepped back a pace. “COUNCILLOR Boswell?”