Джеймс Хилтон - Time And Time Again

‘No one should put happiness first, Charles. One doesn’t die without it. From my own experience I can assure you of that.’

‘But wouldn’t you have PREFERRED to be happy?’

‘Yes—if it could have come from achievement—from triumph. But not from mere BEING. Not just bliss. The Orientals believe in bliss —and look at them. Whereas, to take an opposite example, the Americans PURSUE happiness—it’s the pursuit they stress, not the happiness itself. The phrase is even written into their Declaration of Independence —and look at THEM. They count.’

‘Because they’ve pursued happiness without finding it?’

‘Yes—rather than finding it and languishing with it.’

‘I don’t much care for pursuing things. I suppose that’s why I’m no good at games.’

‘But you haven’t the blood in you to languish. Or if you have, I don’t know where it comes from.’

‘From my mother, perhaps. I hope so.’

‘You mean you wish you were not my son?’

‘I don’t think that follows… but haven’t you wished it too— sometimes?’

They faced each other, as near to the core of some central issue as they had ever been, and aware of it. At that moment, if the message in Havelock’s eyes had persisted, Charles might have decided to leave Beeching and his father and never see either again. But it changed, and Havelock further eased the tension by a slow smile. ‘I don’t see any reason to bicker, Charles. I just wanted you to know I liked Lily.’

‘That’s fine. I liked her too. In fact I still like her. And if I had the chance, now that I’m of age, I’d marry her. But you’ve seen to it that I haven’t the chance.’

‘You can still have it if you want it enough.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Didn’t Mansfield tell you ANYTHING?’

‘He said nothing about…’ Then Charles saw he had fallen into the oldest trap in the cross-examiner’s repertoire. ‘Oh, well,’ he added, transferring some of his anger to himself, ‘you evidently know it all, so what’s the difference? Mansfield told me nothing except that he’d given you his word, he’d given you his word—he repeated that like a litany.’

‘Then he kept his word too. Quite a fellow.’ Havelock paused. ‘Share another bottle of claret?… No?… Just the ordinary claret they have here, but not bad, I think… Sure you won’t?… Charles, let me be frank about all this. No father nowadays can put a final veto on a son’s marriage—and that’s as it should be. But when the girl’s still so young—younger than you ever thought she was, younger than she told you she was… surely there’s a case for delay—or at least no need for any special hurry? Mansfield and I agreed that if, at the end of a year, you and Lily both wished, you could begin meeting again… and later still—say in eighteen months or two years—and she’d only be nineteen then, remember—’

‘And in the meantime?’

‘No meetings—no letters, communications of any kind—for a year—on either side.’

‘And what did SHE say to that?’

‘Very little, as I remember. She didn’t make a scene, though. Bless her.’

‘But she agreed to the separation?’

‘In all fairness, Charles, I must point out there was nothing else she could do. After all, a father does have some control over a seventeen-year-old—’

‘Did she know it was only to be for a year?’

‘We didn’t go into that with her. I didn’t intend to with you, either, but I was tempted just now—I wanted to make your birthday a more cheerful one. Don’t be distressed. If, after a year, as I said—’

‘I know what YOU said—what I want to know is what SHE said. What were the words she used? How did she take it? I can’t believe—’

‘As I told you before, she was perfectly charming—both to her father and me. Other girls might have been sulky or hysterical or hostile —instead of which—well, I couldn’t help admiring her attitude. And perhaps in her heart she felt the reasonableness of ours.’

‘Damn the reasonableness.’

‘A year isn’t much, Charles. You once said that yourself.’

Charles remembered and it made him bitter. ‘Yes, I suppose as a test of true love it’s romantic as well as reasonable.’

‘I’ve weakened it, though, by letting you know it exists. I’ve given you that much advantage.’

‘Like throwing a dog a small bone.’

‘No… like revising—slightly—the handicap in a race.’

‘To make it more exciting for the spectator.’

Havelock chuckled. ‘Your brain works rather well when you’re excited.’

‘I’m not excited—not in the way you are, anyhow. And whether it’s a week or a month or a year, as far as I’m concerned, I promise nothing, I’ve agreed to nothing. Let’s end the argument on that.’

‘Yes—gladly. I was equally glad to end my argument with Mansfield, in which—I think you tend to overlook this—I really succeeded in getting you out of serious trouble… Tell me, incidentally—this isn’t arguing, I’m just curious—what would be your rating of Mansfield?’

‘Rating? I don’t know that I rate people at all. I thought him decent and honest, simple and—and—in a sort of way—sweet. Like a good apple. I’d trust him. He’d keep his word—even if he ought never to have given it.’

‘So it puzzles you a little—why he did give it?’

‘Not when I think of you in action against him. You have a persuasive manner.’

‘And you think that was all? I’m really flattered, Charles.’ Havelock poured himself more claret and again Charles saw, as in his dreams, the pose of one about to strike, even at the risk of unwisdom; grim glee infesting the eyes, a euphoria that ran riot in the bloodstream, so that the cheeks reddened and shone with what, in an athlete, would have suited the moment of passing the tape or vaulting the bar. ‘Charles, my experience in the courts taught me many things. One of them is the meaning of the word “corruptible”. It means “more corruptible than the person using the word”. Take plain bribery, for instance. With some people—those we call honest— a bribe has first to be explained as something else—something reasonable and fair and legitimate. Then cupidity must be aroused—a universal attribute—after which the payment offered must be large enough to administer a slight shock, so that the honest payee will wonder if it IS a bribe, and—out of a mixture of doubt and guilt and gratitude —will wish to treat the payer with the utmost fidelity. It’s a very interesting process.’

He paused, aware that he was losing Charles’s attention, then retrieved it by a fast grab. ‘How do the Mansfields come into all this? I’ll tell you. They’re quite hard pressed financially—buying their house through a building society and a radio-gramophone on the instalment plan—all that sort of thing. He has steady employment, but poorly paid—only about five pounds a week, so the three girls and the boy have to help to support the family from their own small earnings. Clearly, then, Lily couldn’t give up her job and live in the country for a year at their expense… so the fair thing to do was quite obvious. But—and this really IS the point at last—how much do you think it costs a girl to live with her relatives in the country for a year?’

Havelock took out his wallet and pushed a folded paper across the table to Charles. It was a cancelled cheque made out to and endorsed by Frederick Mansfield for two thousand pounds.

Charles felt rather sick. ‘All right… so you pulled it off. You’ve been clever, I admit that. It’s an odd thing to prove to me on the day I’m supposed to become a man—that life’s full of wormholes and that you know how to find them… never mind, though, I’ll admit that also. But now I’ve got a disillusionment for you. This career of mine you talk of— this career—this—this…’