Charles Snow - George Passant

‘You’ve done very well,’ he said. ‘You’ve done very well, of course. But I heard you were off colour last year. You must take care of that,’ he said. ‘You won’t get anywhere without your health. And unless you learn to be your own doctor by the time you’re thirty, you never will afterwards.’

I had always enjoyed his company; he was hospitable and considerate.

‘If you want to talk to your friends while you’re staying here, just consider the study upstairs as your private property.’ He got talking about ‘those days’, his formula of invocation of his youth; and it was later after dinner than I intended when I caught the bus to the farm.

As I walked across the fields, lights were shining from several of the farm windows. George came to the door.

‘Splendid,’ he said, with his hand outstretched. ‘I was wondering whether you’d lost your way.’ In his busy, elaborate fashion he took my coat. ‘I knew you wouldn’t stay any longer at Eden’s than decency compelled you.’ The door of one room was open, and there was a hubbub of voices: a smell of fresh paint hung in the hall, and I noticed that the stand and chairs were new.

George whispered: ‘There are one or two people here you don’t know. They’ll be a bit awkward, of course. You’ll be prepared to make allowances.’ He led the way, and, as soon as we were inside the room, shouted in his loud voice, full of friendly showmanship: ‘I don’t think you’ve all met our guest. He used to come here a few years ago. You’ve all heard of him—’

The room was fogged with smoke and on the air there floated the smell of spirits; some bottles glistened on the table in the light of the two oil lamps, and others lay in the cushions near the radio set. There was the first dazzling impression of a group of unknown faces, flat like a picture without perspective. I recognised Rachel in one of the window-seats, sitting by Roy Calvert, and a girl whom I remembered meeting once.

‘You’ll have to be introduced all round,’ said George from behind, as I went to talk to Rachel. She had aged more than any of us, I was thinking; lines had become marked under her eyes, in the full pale cheeks. Her voice as she said: ‘Well, Lewis!’ was still zestfully and theatrically rich.

As George took me round the room, Roy caught my eye for a moment. I wondered what he was doing there.

I was introduced to a couple of youths on the sofa, both under twenty: a girl and young man in the opposite window-seat to Roy.

‘Then here’s Daphne,’ said George. ‘Miss Daphne Jordan—’ he added a little stiffly; she was quite young, full-breasted, with a shrill and childish voice. George’s manner bore out the rumours that she was his present preoccupation. Her face was plump, square at the cheekbones; her upper lip very short, and eyes an intense brown, sharp and ready to stare up at mine.

‘What are you doing, George?’ she said. ‘Why don’t you give the poor man a drink?’

‘I’m sorry, won’t you have something?’ George said to me, and with a gust of laughter for the girl: ‘I’m always being nagged,’ he said.

I went back to the window, near Roy and Rachel. Roy whispered: ‘Don’t you think Daphne is rather a gem?’ He was a little drunk, in the state when he wanted to exaggerate anyone’s beauty. ‘She is quite a gem,’ he said.

With a deep, cheerful sigh, George sank into the chair opposite the fire. Under the heavy lids, his eyes roamed round, paternal, possessive, happy; Daphne curled up on a hassock by his chair, one of her hands staying on the arm.

‘What were you saying about Stephen Dedalus—’ George said loudly to the young man in the window, ‘before’ — he paused — ‘Eliot came in?’

George was not concealing his pride, his paternal responsibility, in being able to ask the question. It was his creation, he was saying almost explicitly, that these people had interests of this pattern. Half-smiling, he looked at me as the conversation began; he laughed uproariously at a tiny joke.

Then my attention caught a private phrase that was being thrown across the argument, one of the new private phrases, that, more than anything, made me feel the lapse of time. ‘Inside the ring’ — it bore no deep significance that I could see, but somehow it set alight again the anxieties and suspicions which had, in the freshness of arrival, vanished altogether. What had been happening? Nothing pointed to any dealings with money — except the actual material changes in the house. The demeanour of the party had changed from my time; then George, with the odd stiffness at which we had always laughed, was worried if the women drank with us. There was a quality of sexual feeling in the atmosphere, between many of the pairs and also, in the diffuse polyvalent way of such a society, between people who would never have any kind of relation; just as Rachel years ago had not loved, but been ready to love George, so I saw some other flashes of desire through the idealist argument. But that too, as it must be in any close society, was always present; I remembered evenings, four or five years ago, with Olive, Jack, George, Rachel and some others, when the air was electric with longing.

Daphne was laughing into George’s face, after he finished one of his tirades. Clumsily he ran his fingers through her hair. Of all George’s fancies this was the most undisguised. One could not see them without knowing that Roy was right.

I had been there about an hour when there was a noise of feet in the hall, and Olive came in, with Jack Cotery behind her.

At once she came across to my chair and took my hands.

‘It must be years since I saw you,’ she said. Her eyes were full and excited; she was over twenty-eight now, it crossed my mind. Her face had thinned a little into an expression which I could not define at that first glance. As she turned to bring Jack towards me, the strong curve of her hips was more pronounced than when I last met her, the summer she left the town.

‘We didn’t think you’d be here so early,’ she cried. Then, catching someone’s smile, her eyes flew to the clock on the mantelpiece: it was after eleven, and she looked at me before breaking into laughter.

‘Good to see you,’ Jack began, a little breathless and embarrassed in the greeting, until, in a moment, his old ease returned. He took me to one side, and began chatting humorously, confidentially, as though to emphasise that he had a special claim upon my attention. ‘Life’s rather crowded,’ he chuckled when I asked him about himself. ‘I’ve always got something going to happen, you know. I’m just getting on top of it, though. Clearly I am.’

The room had become noisy again. The others were drinking and talking, leaving us in our corner. Over Jack’s shoulder, I saw Olive watching us with a frown as she talked to George. Jack was inquisitive about one of my cases. ‘If I’d been on the jury, you’d never have got him off—’

Olive came and took us each by the arm.

‘A few of us are going into the other room,’ she said. ‘We can’t talk with everyone about.’

They had been quarrelling. Jack looked displeased, as she led us into the other sitting-room. It struck cold as we entered; she lit the lamp and knelt down to put a match to the fire.

‘It won’t be warm enough,’ said Jack. ‘We’d better go back.’

Olive looked up.

‘No,’ she said violently. Jack turned aside; his cheeks reddened.

George came in, bottles clinking in his hands, and Daphne carried the glasses. Rachel followed them.

‘Oh, isn’t the fire going?’ she said. ‘I thought you two had been here all night—’ then she broke off abruptly.

George’s attention at last became diverted. He gazed at her from the tumblers into which he had been pouring gin.