Charles Snow - George Passant

‘Still,’ Martineau added inconsequently, ‘my brother said he might drop in tonight. And I’m hoping the others won’t give us the “go-by” for ever.’ He always produced his slang with great gusto; it happened often to be slightly out-moded.

The Canon did not come, but Eden did. He stayed fairly late. George and I left not long afterwards. In the hall George said: ‘That was sheer waste of time.’

As we went down the path, I looked back and saw the chink of light through the curtains, darkened for an instant by Martineau crossing the room. I burst out: ‘What was happening with Martineau before anyone came in? What’s the matter?’

George stared ahead.

‘Nothing particular,’ he said.

‘You’re sure? Come on—’

‘We were talking over a professional problem,’ said George. ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything else.’

Outside the park, under a lamp which gilded the chestnut trees, I saw George’s chin thrust out: he was swinging his stick as he walked. A warm wind, smelling of rain and the spring earth, blew in our faces. I was angry, young enough to be ashamed of the snub, still on edge with curiosity.

We walked on silently down to the road where we usually parted. He stopped at the corner, and I could see, just as I was going to say an ill-tempered ‘Goodnight,’ that his face was anxious and excited. ‘Can’t you come to my place?’ he said abruptly ‘I know it’s a bit late.’

Warmed by the awkward invitation, I crossed the street with him. George broke into a gust of laughter, good-humoured and exuberant. ‘Late be damned!’ he cried. ‘I’ve got a case that’s going to keep me busy, and I want you to help. It’ll be a good deal later before you get home tonight.’

When we arrived in his room, the fire contained only a few dull red embers. George, who was now in the highest of spirits after his truculence at Martineau’s, hummed to himself, as, clumsily, breathing hard, he held a newspaper across the fireplace; then, as the flames began to roar, he turned his head: ‘There’s something I’ve got to impress on you before we begin.’

He was kneeling, he had flung off his overcoat, one or two fair hairs caught the light on the shoulders of his blue jacket; his tone, as whenever he had to go through a formal act, was a trifle sententious and constrained (though he often liked performing one).

‘What are you going to tell me?’ I said, settling myself in the armchair at the other side of the fire. There was a smell of charring; George’s face was tinged with heat as he crumpled the paper in the grate.

‘That I’m relying on you to keep this strictly confidential,’ he said, putting on a kettle. ‘I’m laying you under that definite obligation. It’s a friendly contract and it’s got to be kept. Because I’m being irregular in telling you this at all.’

I nodded. This was not the first of the firm’s cases I had heard discussed, for George was not always rigid on professional etiquette; and indeed his demand for secrecy tonight served as much to show me the magnitude of the case as to make sure that I should not speak. It was their biggest job for some time, apart from the routine of conveyancy and so on in a provincial town. A trade union, through one of its members, was prosecuting an employer under the Truck Act.

Eden had apparently realised that the case would call out all George’s fervour. It was its meaning as well as its intricacy that gave George this rush of enthusiasm. It set his eyes alight and sent him rocking with laughter at the slightest joke.

As he developed the case itself, he was more at home even than among his friends at the Farm. There, an unexplained jarring note could suddenly stab through his amiability; or else he would be hurt and defensive, often by a remark which was not intended to bear the meaning he wove into it. But here for hours, he was completely master of his surroundings, uncriticised and at ease; his exposition was a model, clear and taut, embracing all the facts and shirking none of the problems.

George himself, of course, was led by inclination to mix with human beings and find his chief interest there. There is a superstition that men like most the things they do supremely well; in George’s case and many others, it is quite untrue. George never set much value on these problems of law, which he handled so easily. But, whatever he chose for himself, there was no doubt that, of all the people I knew in my youth, he was the best at this kind of intellectual game; he had the memory, the ingenuity, the stamina and the orderliness which made watching him arrange a case something near an aesthetic pleasure.

As he finished, he smacked his lips and chuckled. He said: ‘Well, that reduces it to three heads. Now let’s have some tea and get to work.’

We sat down at the table as George wrote down the problems to which he had to find an answer; his saucer described the first sodden circle on a sheet of foolscap. I fetched down some books from his shelves and looked up references; but I could not help much — he had really insisted on my coming in order to share the excitement, and perhaps to applaud. On the other side of the table George wrote with scarcely a pause.

‘God love us,’ George burst out. ‘If only’ — he broke into an argument about technical evidence — ‘we should get a perfect case.’

‘It’ll take weeks,’ I said. ‘Still—’ I smiled. I was beginning to feel tired, and George’s eyes were rimmed with red.

‘If it’s going to take weeks,’ said George, ‘the more we do tonight the better. We’ve got to get it perfect. We can’t give Eden a chance to make a mess of it. I refuse to think,’ he cried, ‘that we shan’t win.’

In the excitement of the night, I forgot the beginning of the evening and the signs of a quarrel with Martineau. But, as George gathered up his papers after the night’s work, he said: ‘I can’t afford to lose this. I can’t afford to lose it personally — in the circumstances,’ and then hurried to make the words seem innocuous.

MOST nights in the next week I walked round to George’s after my own work was done. Often it was so late (for my examination was very near, and I was reading for long hours) that George’s was the only lighted window in the street. His voice sounded very loud when he stood in the little hall and greeted me.

‘Isn’t it splendid? I’ve got another argument complete. You’d better read it.’

His anxiety, however, was growing. He did not explain it; I knew that it must be caused by some trouble within the firm. Once, when Martineau was mentioned, he said abruptly: ‘I don’t know what’s come over him. He used to have a sense of proportion.’ It was a contrast to his old extravagant eulogies of Martineau, but he soon protested: ‘Whatever you say, the man’s the only spiritual influence in the whole soulless place.’

Then tired over the case, vexed by this secret worry, he was repeatedly badgered by the crisis in Jack’s business. For a time Jack had taken Morcom’s advice, and managed to put off an urgent creditor. He did not confide the extent of the danger to George until a promise fell through and he was being threatened. George was hot with anger at being told so late.

‘Why am I the last person who hears? I should have assumed I ought to be the first.’

‘I didn’t want to worry you.’

‘I suppose you don’t think it’s worrying me to tell me now in the middle of as many difficulties as anyone ever had?’

‘I couldn’t keep it back any longer,’ said Jack.

‘If you’d come before, I should have stopped you getting into this absurd position.’

‘I’m there now, said Jack. ‘It’s not much comfort holding inquests.’