Charles Snow - George Passant

‘I should like to give it.’

WHEN I arrived at George’s lodgings the next afternoon, I found his father just on the point of leaving. Mr Passant said, with the old mixture of warmth and hesitation: ‘It’s not — Lewis?’ He had aged more than anyone I knew. His breathing was very heavy.

‘I’m glad you’re helping us, Lewis,’ he said. He began to talk hurriedly, about the inquiries. His eyes were full of puzzled indignation against the people who had instigated them. ‘You’ll help us deal with them,’ he said. ‘They’ve got to learn that they suffer if they let their spite run away with them.’ It was not that he did not know’ of the danger of a prosecution. George had been utterly frank. But injured as he was, Mr Passant was driven to attack.

‘At the end, when it’s the proper time, you’ll be able to go for compensation against them,’ he said. ‘The law must provide for that.’

During these outbursts, George was quiet, once augmenting his father’s with an indignation of his own. For a moment they looked at each other, on the same side, the outer anxiety pressing them close. But when Mr Passant said, tired with his anger: ‘It’s a great pity they were ever given the excuse, Lewis—’

George said: ‘We’ve had all this out before.’

‘After it’s over,’ said Mr Passant, ‘I still want to think of you yourself.’

George replied: ‘I can’t alter anything I’ve already said.’

Both their faces were strained as they parted. Without a word upon his father’s visit, George came to the table and brought out his papers. He sat by me through the afternoon and evening, helping me arrange the facts.

The extraordinary precision of his memory might have been laughable in another context. But now I heard his voice on the edge of shouting, when from time to time he burst out: ‘It’s ludicrous for them to try to manufacture a case like this. We’ve got an answer for every single point the swine bring up. Do they think I decided to take over Martineau’s paraphernalia simply for the pleasure of cooking the figures? When it was perfectly easy for him to check them? A man who’d been used to figures all his life. The suggestion’s simply monstrous. If I’d wished to swindle in that particularly fatuous way, I should have chosen someone else—’

‘He’d gone away, though, before you took over—’

‘Nonsense. That is simply untrue. We bought Exell out in November ’28’ — he gave the exact date — ‘Martineau had been in the town all July. He came back for a couple of weeks continuously the next January. Settling up his house and his other affairs. He could have investigated at any time. Do they think that a man in his senses — whatever else I may be, I suppose they’d give me credit for that — would take a risk of that kind?’

Yet several times I returned to Martineau’s statement, in particular the figures of the Arrow .

‘It seems such a tremendous lot,’ I said.

‘I thought it was rather large,’ George said.

There was a silence.

‘I’d have thought if they could reach as wide a public as that,’ I went on, ‘they’d have made more of a show of it themselves.’

‘Jack’s magnificent at making things go,’ said George. ‘He’s full of ideas. I left that side to him. It’s probably the explanation.’ He stared at the paper. ‘In any case, I don’t think we shall get very far by speculating on Exell’s and Martineau’s incompetence.’

We continued through the accounts, on to the other business, the farm and its companions. There was, in fact, little written down. Most of the data were supplied by George, without delay or doubts, almost as though he was reading them from some mental sheet.

When at last I had completed my notes, George said: ‘You may as well look at these. They’re not strictly relevant, but I suppose you’d better see them. I’m sorry I haven’t my proper diary here.’ He gave me a twopenny notebook; it contained, in his neat hand, an account of his income and expenses, recorded in detail for several years. It struck me as strange he should keep this record of his money, over which he was so prodigal (I later found out that it was not complete or accurate, in contrast to the minute thoroughness of his diary). And I was mystified by his giving me the book. For a time, the statements told me nothing — a slight increase in expenditure for the last eighteen months, several entries reading — ‘by cheque from J C, £10’. Then my eyes caught an entry: ‘D at farm £1’; often, most weekends for some time back, the same words recurred.

‘Do you pay for yourself at the farm?’ I asked. ‘I thought—’

‘No.’ He turned round from the bookshelves. ‘I pay for those I take with me.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I ought to have—’

‘Go back a few months.’ His voice was unfriendly. At the beginning of the year, I found, as well as the entries about D (whom I knew to be Daphne), another series with a different letter, occupying other dates, thus:

D at farm £1 Jan. 17.

F at farm £1 Jan. 24.

D at farm £1 Jan. 31.

The two sets D and F ran on together over several months. I looked up. His expression was angry, pained, and yet, in some way, relieved.

‘I don’t expect you to understand,’ he said. ‘I’m not excusing myself, either. I didn’t break the rules I’d constructed for myself until I’d fallen abjectly in love: but I repeat, I’m not making that an excuse. I should have come to it in the end. I should have found my own happiness in my own way. I refuse to be ashamed of it; but there is one impression I shouldn’t like you to get. Particularly you, because you saw me at the start. Now things may conceivably crash round me, I don’t want to let you think that I retract one single word of what the group has meant to me. I don’t want you to think I spoilt it all — because, when the rest of them were enjoying their pleasures, I saw no reason for not taking mine.’

‘I shouldn’t think so,’ I said.

As I spoke, his face lightened and looked grateful. Every word in his self-justification carried its weight of angry shame.

‘Do you remember how we compared notes on being in love — after a celebration in Nottingham?’ said George. ‘I hadn’t fallen in love then, and I envied you the experience. Do you know, I still didn’t fall in love until I was twenty-eight? That must be late for a man who has never been able to put women out of his mind for long. And I suffered for it. She was a girl called Katherine — you never met her — and she was absolutely unsuitable for a man like me. It was trying to find compensation elsewhere that I started with—’ he pointed to the F on the accounts. Both she and Daphne were members of the School and of George’s group. ‘But I insist, I don’t give that as an excuse. I should simply have taken a little longer, but I should have come to the same point in the end. And I don’t expect you to understand, but I’m capable of being fond of two women at once. So I kept on with her after I became attached to Daphne. I expect you to think it sordid — but we’re not made in the same way.

‘As a matter of fact,’ he added, his truculence replaced by an almost timid simplicity, ‘I discovered that I was hurting someone by the arrangement, so I had to give it up.’

So Daphne was too strong-willed for him; I could imagine her pleading in her child’s voice, her upper lip puckered, pleading jealousy, caring nothing for her pride if she could get her own way, older in a fashion at twenty than George would ever be.

Going back through the figures, I found another set which occurred some time after the other began. ‘Not. £1 11 s 6 d .’ The amount was constant, and as I went further back, the entry came frequently, never less often than once a fortnight. The sum baffled me, although I guessed the general meaning. I asked him.