Charles Snow - George Passant

This afternoon he was filled with a happiness so complete, so unashamedly present in his face, that it seemed a provocation to less contented men. He lay back in his chair, smoking a pipe, being attended to; these were his friends and protégés, in each of us he had complete trust; all the bristles and guards of his defences had dropped away.

Cheerfully he did one of his parlour tricks for me. I had been invited for tea in a neighbouring village; I had lived in the county twenty years to George’s two, but it was to him I applied for the shortest cut. He had a singular memory for anything that could be put on paper, so singular that he took it for granted; he proceeded to draw a sketch map of the countryside. We assumed that each detail was exact, for no one was less capable of bluffing. He finished, with immense roars of laughter, by drawing a neat survey sign, a circle surmounted by a cross, to represent my destination; for I was visiting Sheila’s home for the first time, and George could not recover from the joke that she was the daughter of a country clergyman.

Then, just as I was going out, a thought struck him. Among this group, he was always prepared to think aloud. ‘I’m only just beginning to realise,’ said George, ‘what a wonderful invention a map is. Geography would be incomprehensible without maps. They’ve reduced a tremendous muddle of facts into something you can read at a glance. Now I suspect economics is fundamentally no more difficult than geography. Except that it’s about things in motion. If only somebody could invent a dynamic map—’

Myself, having a taste for these things, I should have liked to hear him out. But people like Mona (with her sly eyes and soft figure and single-minded curiosity about men) listened also: listened, it occurred to me as I walked over the wet fields, because George enjoyed his own interest and took theirs for granted.

When I returned, the room was not so peaceful. I heard Jack’s voice, as I shook out my wet coat in the hall; and as soon as I saw him and Olive sitting together by the table, I felt my attention fix on them just as all the others’ were fixed. George, sunk into the background, watched from his chair. It was like one of those primitive Last Suppers, in which from right hand and left eleven pairs of eyes are converging on one focus.

Yet, so far as I could tell, nothing had happened. Jack, some sheets of paper in front of him, was expanding on his first plans for the business: Olive had joined him at the table to read a draft advertisement. They had disagreed over one of his schemes, but now that was pushed aside, and Olive said: ‘You know, I envy you! I envy you!’

‘So you ought,’ said Jack. ‘But you haven’t so much to grumble at, yourself.’

‘I suppose you mean that I needn’t work for a living. It’s true, I could give up my job tomorrow.’

‘You wouldn’t get so much fun out of that,’ said Jack, ‘as I did out of telling your uncle that I had become increasingly dissatisfied with his firm—’

Olive smiled, but there was something on her mind. Suddenly I guessed (recalling his manner at Martineau’s the night before) that Morcom had proposed to her.

‘It’s true,’ Olive said, ‘that my father wouldn’t throw me out. I could live on him if I wanted. He probably expects me to be at home, now his health’s breaking up. It’s also true, I expect, that I could find someone to marry me. And I could live on him. But I envy you, being forced to look after yourself: do you understand that?’

‘I don’t think you’re being honest,’ said Jack.

‘I tell you, Jack, it’s bad luck to be born a woman. There may be compensations — but I’d change like a shot. Don’t you think I’m honest about that?’

‘I think you ought to get married,’ said Jack.

‘Why?’

‘You wouldn’t have so much time to think.’

Jack then became unexpectedly serious.

‘Also you talk about your father wanting you at home. It would be better for you to get free of him altogether.’

‘That doesn’t matter.’

‘It does.’

‘I tell you I’ve got a lot of respect for him. But I’ve got no love.’ She turned towards Jack: the light from the oil lamp glinted on the brooch on her breast.

‘You understand other people better than you do yourself,’ said Jack.

‘What should you say if I decided — I don’t think I ever should, mind you — that I ought to put off thinking of marriage yet awhile, and stay at home?’

‘I should say that you did it because you wanted to.’

‘You think that I want to stay at home, preserving my virginity and reading the monthly magazines?’ she cried.

Jack shrugged his shoulders, and gave his good-natured, impudent, amorous smile. He said: ‘Well, part of that could be remedied—’

She slapped his face. The noise cracked through the room. Jack’s cheek was crimson. He said: ‘I can’t reply properly here—’ but then Rachel intervened.

‘I’ll knock your heads together if there’s any more of it,’ she said. ‘Olive, you’d better help me lay the supper.’

The meal gleamed in bright colours on the table — the red of tomatoes, russet of apples, green of lettuce, and the red Leicestershire cheese. George, as always at the farm, made Rachel take the head of the table and placed himself at her right hand. Gusts of wind kept beating against the windows and whining round the house. The oil lamp smoked in front of us at table, and candles flickered on the mantelpiece. The steam from our teacups whirled in the lamplight; we all drank tea at those meals, for George, with an old-fashioned formality that amused us, insisted that our drinking and visits to Nottingham should be concealed from the young women — though naturally they knew all the time.

The circle from the lamp just reached the edge of the table. We were all within it, and the shadow outside, the windy night, brought us together like a family in childhood. Olive’s quarrel with Jack lost its sting, and turned into a family quarrel. George basked as contentedly as in the afternoon, and was as much our centre.

With great gusto he brought out ideas for Jack’s business; they were a mixture, one entirely unrealistic and another that seemed ingenious and sound. Then he made a remark about me, assuming casually and affectionately that I was bound to do well in my examination in the summer. He cherished our successes to come — as though he had them under his fingers in the circle of lamplight.

Olive looked at him. She forgot herself, and felt anxious for him. She cried sharply: ‘Don’t forget you can’t just watch these people going ahead.’

‘I don’t think you need worry about that,’ said George.

‘I shall worry, George. You’ll find as they get on’ — she indicated us round the table — ‘that you need recognition for yourself. To be practical, you’ll need that partnership in the firm.’

‘Do you think I shall ever fret so much about a piece of respectable promotion?’

‘It’s not just that—’ but, though she stuck to it, she could not explain her intuition. Others of us stepped in to persuade him; no one spoke as strongly as Olive, but we were concerned. George, gratified but curiously embarrassed, tried to pass it off as a joke.

‘As I told you at the café,’ he said to Olive, ‘when we were going into action about Jack — it shouldn’t be so difficult. After all, even if I did perform actions which they don’t entirely approve of, I certainly do most of the work, which they approve of very much: Martineau being given to religious disputation, and Eden preferring pure reflection.’

‘That isn’t good enough,’ said Olive.

‘Very well,’ said George at last. ‘I’ll promise not to let it go by default. It will happen in time, of course.’