Charles Snow - George Passant

George lived through my description of the meeting before he confronted them and after he left. He was furiously indignant with Beddow’s attempt to propitiate Calvert, more than with the Principal’s: ‘I suppose Cameron, to do him justice, is out to get benefactions for the institution. It’s true that he’s quite incapable of administering them, but we can’t reasonably expect him to realise that. But what Beddow, who calls himself a socialist, thinks he’s doing, when he tries to lick the feet of a confounded businessman—’ so George went on, drinking his beer, chuckling with delight at Miss Geary’s interventions, reinterpreting the Canon’s equivocal manoeuvres as directly due to the influence of Howard Martineau. ‘The Canon must have worked out his technique. To come in on our side without letting it seem obvious,’ said George. But he had no explanation of Calvert’s naïve defence that he formed his decision about Jack long before the incident with his son.

‘That’s just incredible,’ said George. ‘If I’d wanted to invent something improbable, I couldn’t have invented anything as improbable as that.’

Morcom said little; but he was amused by the change of sides, the choice of partners, before the vote. As I told the story, Jack illustrated it by moving glasses about the table; two glasses of beer representing the Canon and Beddow, a glass of water the Principal, a small square jug Miss Geary, and for Calvert Jack turned a glass upside down. When he moved them into their final places, George gave a loud satisfied sigh.

‘They couldn’t do anything else,’ he said. ‘They couldn’t do anything else.’

Morcom looked at him with a curious smile.

‘I doubt whether anyone else could have made them do it, George,’ he said.

‘I don’t know about that,’ said George.

‘But, to come back for a minute to what Lewis said, they’ve still left Jack in the air, haven’t they?’

‘They’ve recognised his position. He’s got time to turn round.’

‘He’s really in very much the same position,’ said Morcom. ‘It’s important you should keep that in mind, for Jack’s sake—’

‘Arthur,’ George cried, angrily and triumphantly, ‘you tried to dissuade me from breathing a word to the bellwethers. You don’t deny that, I suppose?’

‘No,’ said Morcom.

‘And now I’ve done it, you’re trying to deprive me of the luxury of having brought it off. I’m not prepared to submit to it. I’ve listened to you on most things, Arthur, but I’m not prepared to submit to it tonight.’

Half-drunk myself, I laughed. This was his night: I was ready, like Jack, to forget tomorrow. Yet, somewhere beneath my surrender to his victory, there crept a chill of disappointment. An hour ago, I had seen George in his full power and totally admired him; but now, knowing that Morcom was right, I was young enough to resent the contradiction between George in his full power and the same man sitting in this chair by the fire, shutting his eyes to the truth. He ought not to be sitting there, flushed, optimistic, triumphant, seeing only what he wanted to see.

‘In fact,’ shouted George, defiantly, ‘you’re not going to argue me out of my celebration. I dare say you don’t want to come. But the others will.’

Jack and I were eager for it. We left Morcom sitting by the fire, and ran across to the station. The eight-forty was a train to Nottingham that we all knew; for half an hour the lights of farms, the villages, the dark fields, rushed by. The carriage was full, but George talked cheerfully of the pleasures to come and how he first met Connie at the ‘club’; he was oblivious, as in all happiness or quarrels, to the presence of strangers; that night none of us cared.

We had a drink in a public house at the top of Parliament Street, and crossed over to another on the other side; it was a windy night, and the wind seemed very loud and the lights spectacularly bright. Jack, though he drank less than George and I, began demanding bowls of burning gold and going behind bars to help the maids: George kept greeting acquaintances, various men, whores, and girls from the factories out for a good time. He had met them on other night visits to Nottingham: for he went often, though he concealed it from Jack and me until we discovered by accident.

He knew the back streets better than those of our own town. He led us to the club by short cuts between high, ramshackle houses, and through ‘entries’, partly covered over, where George’s voice echoed crashingly. One such entry led to a narrow street, lit only by a single street lamp at the mouth. At the door of a tall house at the end remote from the light, George rapped three times with the brass knocker.

A woman climbed up from the area and recognised George. She told him to take us upstairs, the top door was unlocked. We went up the four flights of creaking wooden stairs, and met a new, bright blue door which cut off the attic storey from the landing.

A gramophone was wailing inside. George marched in before us: the room was half-full, mainly of women; as soon as he entered, a group of them gathered round him. He was popular there; they laughed at him, they were after the money which he threw away carelessly at all times, fantastically so when drunk; but they genuinely liked him. They did him good turns, and took their troubles to him for advice. With them, he showed none of the diffidence of a visit to Martineau’s respectable drawing-room; he was cheerfully, heartily enjoying himself, he liked being with them, he felt at home.

Tonight he burst into extravagance from the start. He saw Connie sitting with Thelma, her regular older friend; George put an arm round each of them, and shouted, ‘Thelma’s here! Of course, I insist that everyone must have a drink — because Thelma’s here!’

Connie told him that he was silly, then whispered in his ear; his eyes brightened, and he took out a couple of notes for Thelma to buy drinks round. George shouted to some women across the room, and in the same breath talked in soft chuckles to Connie. She was fair and quite young, with a pretty, impassive face and a nice body. She pretended to escape from his arm: at once he clutched her, and she came towards him: the contact went through George like an electric current, and he shouted jubilantly: ‘Make them have another drink, Thelma. Why shouldn’t everyone have two drinks at once?’

Soon George and Connie had gone away. The rest of us drank and danced. The floor was rough; there was nothing polished about the ‘club’ except the bright blue door on the landing. The furniture was mixed, but all old; the red velvet sofas seemed like the relics of a gay house of the nineties; so did the long mirror with the battered gilding. But there were also some marble-topped tables, picked up in a café, several wicker chairs and even two or three soap boxes. One of the bulbs was draped in frilly pink, and one was naked. Women giggled and shrilled; and among it all, the ‘manager’ (whose precise function none of us knew) sat in the corner of the room, reading a racing paper with a cloth cap on the back of his head.

Now and then a pair went out. The gramophone wailed on, like all the homesick, lust-sweet longing in the world. The thudding beat got hold of one, it got mixed with the smell of scent. After one dance, Jack spoke to me for a moment.

‘Jesus love me, I can’t help it, Lewis,’ he said with his fresh open smile. ‘I’m going all randy sad.’

It was after one o’clock when the three of us gathered round one of the marble-topped tables. The room was nearly empty by then, though the gramophone still played. We should have liked to go, but there was over an hour before the last train home. So we sat there, sobered and quiet, ordering a last glass of gin to mollify the manager: and, of course, we talked of women.