Charles Snow - The Conscience of the Rich

We sat there in the sun most of that day. In his loud, resonant, angry voice Porson told me of his misfortunes. Three years before, he had lost a case in which Herbert Getliffe was leading for the other side. He had never worked up a steady practice. But he persuaded himself that, until that time, he was just on the point of success. Even now he could not admit that he had mismanaged the case. It was intolerable for him to remember that he had been outmanoeuvred by Getliffe, on the one occasion they had been on opposite sides in court. But he could not help admitting that for three years past the solicitors had fought shy of him. He went out of his way to admit it, pressing on the aching tooth, in a loud, rancorous tone that rang round the top of the stand at Lord’s.

Often his discontent vented itself on the batsmen. A young man was playing a useful, elegant innings. It was pretty cricket, but Porson was not appeased. ‘What does he think he’s playing at?’ he demanded. ‘What does he think he’s doing? I insist these boys ought to be taught to hit the bloody ball.’

At the close of play we walked down to Baker Street, and Porson became quieter in the hot, calm evening, in the light which softened the faces in the streets. He confided the reason he had been away from London. A girl half his age had fallen in love with him, and they had been staying together by the sea. ‘The way it began was the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me,’ he said. ‘She was old —’s secretary, and I used to borrow her sometimes. Not that I need a secretary nowadays. Ah well, she came in one morning, and I hadn’t the least idea, my boy. She just threw her arms round my neck and said she loved me. I couldn’t believe it, I told her that she wanted a nice young man who’d make her a decent husband. She said she wanted me. She thought that I was so clever and so masterful and so kind. And she was sure I ought to have been happy if some woman hadn’t treated me badly. She thought she could make it up for me.’ He looked at me with an expression humble, bewildered, incredulous. ‘I tell you, my boy, I do believe she loved me a little. I’ve chased a few women, but I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before. I’ve been glad if they’ve liked me. I’ve been prepared to pay for my fun and when they got tired I’ve sent them away with a bit of jewellery and a smack on the behind.’

We walked on a few steps. He said: ‘I hope I haven’t done the girl any harm. She wasn’t really my cup of tea. Ah well, she’s not losing much. It can’t matter much to anyone, losing me.’

He insisted on taking me to the Savoy and giving me a lavish dinner. I could not refuse, for fear of reminding him that now I was comfortably off and that he was living on his capital. He exulted in being generous; it gave him an overbearing pleasure to press food and drink on me. ‘You can use another drink,’ he kept on saying. ‘And so can I. By God, we’ll have another bottle of champagne.’

Soon he became drunk, vehemently drunk. He abandoned himself to hates and wishes. He boasted of the things he could still do; there was still time to gain triumphs at the Bar and, he said, ‘show them how wrong they are. Show them just where their bloody intrigues and prejudices have led them. Just because I’m not a pansy or a Jew they’ve preferred to ignore me. I tell you, my lad, you’ve got to be a pansy or a Jew to get a chance in this bloody country.’ Drunkenly he saw lurid, romantic conspiracies directed at himself; drunkenly he talked politics. It was the crudest kind of reactionary politics, inflamed by drink, hate, and failure. He talked of women: he boasted of his conquests now, instead of speaking as he had done on the way to Baker Street. Boastfully he talked of nights in the past. Yet his tongue was far less coarse than when he talked politics, less coarse than most men’s when talking sex. He was a man whom people disliked for being aggressive, boastful, rancorous, and vulgar; he was all those things; but, when he thought of women, he became delicate, diffident, and naïf.

Throughout the day, I had not mentioned why I had written to him. Partly because I had an affection for him, and wanted him to feel I was with him for his own sake: partly because I thought it was not safe to talk while he was in a resentful mood. At last I risked asking when he had last seen Ann. He answered, gently enough, in the spring: he remembered the exact date. I went on to ask whether he knew what she was doing politically nowadays.

He stared at me with an over-intent, over-steady gaze, as though if I moved my head he might fall down. He said: ‘If you want to talk about her, you’d better come to my blasted flat. It’s only a temporary place, of course. I shall insist on somewhere better soon.’

As we got into the taxi, he repeated, with drunken fury: ‘I shall insist on somewhere better soon. It’s not the sort of place most of your friends are living in.’ He went on: ‘I can’t talk about her until I’ve cooled down.’

After he had climbed the shabby stairs of the house in Notting Hill, I looked at his little sitting-room. It was crowded with furniture. There was a glass-fronted bookcase, another glass-fronted case full of china, two tables, a desk, a divan. Yet each piece was dusted and shining: I suddenly realized that he must be obsessively tidy. It might have been the room of a finicky old maid.

On the table by the divan stood a photograph of Ann. She did not photograph well. Her face looked flat, undistinguished, lifeless; there was no sign of the moulding of her cheekbones. Anyone who only knew her from her photograph would not have thought her so much as good-looking. As I turned away, I saw Porson’s face. He was still looking at the picture with eyes clouded and bloodshot with drink, and his expression was rapt.

‘You loved her very much, didn’t you?’ I said.

He did not reply immediately. Then he said: ‘I still do.’

He added: ‘I think I always shall.’

A little later, he said: ‘I should like to tell you something. It may sound incredible to you, but I should like to tell you. I believe she’ll come to me some day. She can’t be happy with her husband. She’s loyal, she’s told me that she is happy, but I’ve never credited it. Anyway, she knows that I’m waiting for her if ever she wants to come. She knows that I’d do anything for her. By God, she knows that will always be true.’

He wanted us both to start drinking again, but I dissuaded him.

We sat on the divan and I led him back to my question about Ann’s political actions. His face became sullen and pained.

‘I never liked them, of course. But I attribute them entirely to her blasted husband. If she were really happy with him, she would have given them up. It stands to reason. If she had married me, I believe I should have made her happy, and these things wouldn’t have interested her any more. I insist on attributing them to that blasted March.’ He told me many facts about her, most of which I knew.

Then he told me something which I did not know — that she was one of the group that produced the Note . The Note was a private news-sheet, cyclostyled like an old-fashioned school magazine, distributed through the post, on the model of one or two others of that time. It was run by an acquaintance of mine called Humphrey Seymour; he was a communist, but he had been born into the ruling world and still moved within it. In fact, the charm of the Note (it was subscribed to by many who had no idea of its politics) was that its news seemed to come from right inside the ruling world. Some of the news, so Porson told me, was provided by Ann.

‘Of course she can go anywhere,’ he said. ‘She was brought up in the right places, and she’s got the entrée wherever she wants. And I don’t put that down to the Jews, I might tell you. It’s just because she makes herself liked wherever she goes.’