Charles Snow - George Passant

I read the diary all evening. At dinner Eden and I were alone, and he was kindly and cordial. We went into the drawing-room afterwards; he built up the fire as high as it had been the night of Morcom’s slip; he pressed me to a glass of brandy.

Here I have to enter into a conversation which I reported, more subjectively, in a part of my own story.

‘How do you feel about yesterday?’ he said at length.

‘It looks none too good,’ I said.

‘I completely agree,’ he said deliberately, with a friendly smile to mark my judgment and to recognise bad news. ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve been talking to Hotchkinson about it during the afternoon. We both consider we shall be lucky if we can save those young nuisances from what, between ourselves, I’m beginning to think they deserve. But I don’t like to think of their getting it through the lack of any possible effort on our part. Don’t you agree?’

‘Of course,’ I said. He was sitting back comfortably now, his voice smooth and friendly, as though I was a client he liked, but to whom he had to break bad news. He was sorry, and yet buoyed up by the subdued pleasure of his own activity.

‘Well then, that’s what Hotchkinson and I have been considering. And we wondered whether you ought to have a little help. You’re not to misunderstand us, young man. I’d as soon trust a case to you as anyone of your age, and Hotchkinson believes in you as well. Of course, you were a trifle over-optimistic imagining you might get a dismissal in the police court, but we all make our mistakes, you know. This is going to be a very tricky case, though. It’s not going to be just working out the legal defence. If it was only doing that in front of a judge, I’d take the responsibility of leaving you by yourself, if they were my own son and daughter. But this looks like being one of those cases where the legal side isn’t so important—’ he chuckled — ‘and it’ll be a matter of making the best of a bad job with the jury. That’s the snag.’

‘Almost all my work’s been in front of juries.’

‘Of course it has. You’ll have plenty more. But you know, as we all know, that they’re very funny things. And in this case I should say from my experience of them that they’ll be prejudiced against your people — simply because they’re of the younger generation and one or two stories will slip out that they’ve gone the pace at times—’

‘That’s obviously true.’

‘Well, I put it to Hotchkinson that they’d be even more prejudiced, if their counsel was the same kind of age and a brilliant young man. They’d resent all the brilliance right from the start, Eliot. You’d only have to make a clever suggestion, and they’d distrust you. They’d be jibbing from all the good qualities of your generation — as well as the bad, but they’d find the bad all right. The racketiness that’s been the curse of these days — they’d find that and they’d count it against them in spite of anything you said. Anything you could say would only make it worse.’

‘What do you suggest?’ I said.

‘I want you to stay in the case. You know it better than anyone already, and we can’t do without you. But I believe, taking everything into consideration, you ought to have someone to lead you.’

‘Who?’

‘I was thinking of your old chief — Getliffe.’

‘It’s sensible to get someone,’ I broke out, ‘but Getliffe — seriously, he’s a bad lawyer.’

‘No one’s a hero to his pupils, you know,’ said Eden.

I persisted: ‘I dare say I’m unfair. But this is important. There are others who’d do it admirably.’ I gave some names of senior counsel.

‘They’re clever fellows,’ said Eden, smiling as when we argued about George. ‘But I don’t see any reason to go beyond Getliffe. He’s always done well with by cases.’

When I was alone, I was surprised that my disappointment should be so sharp. There was little of my own at stake, a brief in a minor case — for which, of course, I had already refused to be paid. Yet, when it was tested through Eden’s decision, I knew — there is no denying the edge of one’s unhappiness — that I was more wounded by the petty rebuff than by the danger to my friends.

I was ashamed that it should be so. But for some hours I could think of little else. Despite the anxieties of the case, the chances of Jack running, their immediate fate: despite being present at a time when George needed all the strength of a friend. Often, in the last days, I had lain awake, thinking of what would happen to him. But tonight I was preoccupied with my own vanity.

I went to London next morning and saw Getliffe. He said, alert, bright-eyed and glib after skimming through the documents: ‘You worked with Eden once, of course.’

‘I know him well,’ I said.

‘You’ve seen this case he’s sent us?’

‘I’ve watched it through the police court,’ I answered.

‘Well, L S,’ his voice rose, ‘it’ll be good fun working together again. It’s been too long since we had a duet, I’m looking forward to this.’

The preparation of the case gave me a chance to be more thorough than if I had been left alone. For there was the need to sit with Getliffe, to bully him, to ignore his complaints that he would get it up in time, to make him aggrieved and patronising. At any cost, he must not go into court in the way I had seen him so often, flustered, with no more than a skipped reading, a half-memory behind him, relying in a badgered and uncomfortable way on his inventive wits, completely determined to work thoroughly in his next case, fidgeting and yet getting sympathy with the court — somehow, despite the mistakes, harassment, carelessness, sweating forehead and nervous eyes, keeping his spirits and miraculously coming through.

I kept the case before him. He was harder-working than most, but he could not bear any kind of continuity. An afternoon’s work after his own pattern meant going restlessly through several briefs, picking up a recognition-symbol here and there, so that, when a solicitor came in and mentioned a name, Getliffe’s eyes would be bright and intelligent — ‘You mean the man who—’

He left me to collect the witnesses. One of my tasks was to trace Martineau; it took a good deal of time. At last I found a workhouse master in the North Riding, who guffawed as I began to inquire over the telephone.

‘You mean Old Jesus,’ he said. ‘He’s often been in here.’ He added: ‘He doesn’t seem mad. But he must be right off his head.’

He was able to tell me where ‘that crowd’ had settled now.

I returned to the town at the weekend. I had not been back an hour before Roy rang up to say that Jack seemed to have disappeared. For a day or two he had been talking of a ‘temporary expedition’ to Birmingham, to survey the ‘prospects’ for a new business as soon as the trial was over. Today no one could find him.

A few minutes after the call, Roy brought Olive and Rachel to Eden’s house. For the whole afternoon Eden left us to ourselves.

Rachel was desperately worried. Roy also believed that Jack had flown. Of us all, Olive alone was unshaken.

‘If you knew him better,’ she said, ‘you’d know that he fooled himself with his excuses — as well as you. He’s really planning a new business. And he also thinks it’s a good dodge for getting a few miles away.’

‘He needn’t stop there,’ said Roy.

‘I don’t believe he’s gone near Birmingham,’ said Rachel.

‘I think you’ll find he has,’ said Olive.

‘I know I’m thinking of George all the time,’ cried Rachel. ‘We’ve got to sit by and watch Jack ruin him. And Olive, it’s wretched to see you—’