Charles Snow - Time of Hope

‘Don’t tell me your name,’ he began, in a slightly strident, breathless voice. ‘You’re Ellis—’

I corrected him.

With almost instantaneous quickness, he was saying: ‘You’re Eliot.’ He repeated: ‘You’re Eliot,’ with an intonation of reproof, as though the mistake had been my fault.

He sat down, lit his pipe, grinned, and puffed out smoke. He talked matily, perfunctorily, about Eden. Then he switched on his fixed gaze. His eyes confronted me. He said: ‘So you want to come in here, do you?’

I said that I did.

‘I needn’t tell you, Eliot, that I have to refuse more pupils than I can take. It’s one of the penalties of being on the way up. Not that one wants to boast. This isn’t a very steady trade that you and I have chosen, Eliot. Sometimes I think we should have done better to go into the Civil Service and become deputy-under-principal secretaries and get two thousand pounds a year at fifty-five and our YMCA or XYZ some bright new year.’

At this time I was not familiar with Getliffe’s allusive style, and I was slow to realize that he was referring to the orders of knighthood.

‘Still one might be doing worse. And people seem to pass the word round that the briefs are coming in. I want to impress on you, Eliot, that I’ve turned down ten young men who wanted to be pupils — and that’s only in the last year. It’s not fair to take them unless one has the time to look after them and bring them up in the way they should go. I hope you’ll always remember that.’

Getliffe was full of responsibility, statesmanship, and moral weight. His face was as stern as in the photograph. He was enjoying his own seriousness and uprightness, even though he had grossly exaggerated the number of pupils he refused. Then he said: ‘Well, Eliot, I wanted you to understand that it’s not easy for me to take you. But I shall. I make it a matter of principle to take people like you, who’ve started with nothing but their brains. I make it a matter of principle.’

Then he gave his shamefaced, affable chuckle. ‘Also,’ he said, ‘it keeps the others up to it.’ He grinned at me: his mood had changed, his face was transformed, he was guying all serious persons.

‘So I shall take you,’ said Getliffe, serious and responsible again, fixing me with his gaze. ‘If our clerk can fit you in. I’m going to stretch a point and take you.’

‘I’m very grateful,’ I said. I knew that, as soon as the examination result was published, he had insisted to Eden that I was to be steered towards his Chambers.

‘I’m very grateful,’ I said, and he had the power of making me feel so.

‘We’ve got a duty towards you,’ said Getliffe, shaking me by the hand. ‘One’s got to look at it like that.’ His eyes stared steadily into mine.

Just then there was a knock on the door, and Percy entered. He came across the room and laid papers in front of Getliffe.

‘I shouldn’t have interrupted you, sir,’ said Percy. ‘But I’ve promised to give an answer. Whether you’ll take this. They’re pressing me about it.’

Getliffe looked even more responsible and grave.

‘Is one justified in accepting any more work?’ he said. ‘I’d like to see my wife and family one of these evenings. And some day I shall begin neglecting one of these jobs.’ He tapped the brief with the bowl of his pipe and looked from Percy to me. ‘If ever you think that is beginning to happen, I want you to tell me straight. I’m glad to think that I’ve never neglected one yet.’ He gazed at me. ‘I shouldn’t be so happy if I didn’t think so.

‘Shall I do it?’ Getliffe asked us loudly.

‘It’s heavily marked,’ said Percy.

‘What’s money?’ said Getliffe.

‘They think you’re the only man for it,’ said Percy.

‘That’s more like talking,’ said Getliffe. ‘Perhaps it is one’s duty. Perhaps I ought to do it. Perhaps you’d better tell them that I will do it — just as a matter of duty.’

When Percy had gone out, Getliffe regarded me.

‘I’m not sorry you heard that,’ he said. ‘You can see why one has to turn away so many pupils? They follow the work, you know. It’s no credit to me, of course, but you’re lucky to come here, Eliot. I should like you to tell yourself that.’

What I should have liked to tell myself was whether or not that scene with Percy was rehearsed.

Then Getliffe began to exhort me: his voice became brisk and strident, he took the pipe out of his mouth and waved the stem at me.

‘Well, Eliot,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a year here as a pupil. After that we can see whether you’re ever going to earn your bread and butter. Not to speak of a little piece of cake. Mind you, we may have to tell you that it’s not your vocation. One mustn’t shirk one’s responsibilities. Not even the painful ones. One may have to tell you to move a bit farther up the street.’

‘Of course,’ I said, in anger and pride.

‘Still,’ said Getliffe, ‘you’re not going to sink if you can help it. You needn’t tell me that. You’ve got a year as a pupil. And a year’s a long time. Your job is to be as useful as you can to both of us. Start whenever you like. The sooner the better. Start tomorrow.’

Breathlessly, with immense zest, Getliffe produced a list of cases and references, happy with all the paraphernalia of the law, reeling out the names of cases very quickly, waving his pipe as I copied them out.

‘As for the root of all evil,’ said Getliffe, ‘I shall have to charge you the ordinary pupil’s fees. You see, Eliot, one’s obliged to think of the others. Hundred guineas for the year. October to October. If you start early, you don’t have to pay extra,’ said Getliffe with a chuckle. ‘That’s thrown in with the service. Like plain vans. A hundred guineas is your contribution to the collection plate. You can pay in quarters. The advantage of the instalment system’, he added, ‘is that we can reconsider the arrangement for the third and fourth quarters. You may have saved me a little bit of work before then. You may have earned a bit of bread and butter. The labourer is worthy of his hire.’ He smiled, affably, brazenly, and said: ‘Yes! The labourer is worthy of his hire.’

I think I had some idea, even then, of the part Herbert Getliffe was going to play in my career. He warmed me, as he did everyone else. He took me in often, as he did everyone else. He made me feel restrained, by the side of the extravagant and shameless way in which he exhibited his heart. On the way from his room to the clerk’s, I was half aware that this was a tricky character to meet, when one was struggling for a living. I should not have been astonished to be told in advance the part he was going to play. But Percy Hall’s I should not have guessed.

Percy’s room was a box of an office, which had no space for any furniture but a table and a chair; Percy gave me the chair and braced his haunches against the edge of the table. He was, I noticed now, a squat powerful man, with the back of his head rising vertically from his stiff collar. No one ever bore a more incongruous Christian name; and it was perverse that he had a job where, according to custom, everyone called him by it.

‘I want to explain one or two points to you, sir. If you enter these Chambers, there are things I can do for you. I could persuade someone to give you a case before you’ve been here very long. But’ — Percy gave a friendly, brutal, good-natured smile — ‘I’m not going to until I know what you’re like. I’ve got a reputation to lose myself. The sooner we understand each other, the better.’

With a craftsman’s satisfaction, Percy described how he kept the trust of the solicitors; how he never overpraised a young man, but how he reminded them of a minor success; how he watched over a man who looked like training into a winner, and how gradually he fed him with work; how it was no use being sentimental and finding cases for someone who was not fitted to survive.