Charles Snow - Time of Hope

I should have wished to be happy for her. But I was not. In the pang with which I heard the news, I learned how infinitely voracious one is. Any love that comes one’s way — it is bitter to let go. I had not seen Marion for eighteen months, all my love was given to another. Yet it was painful to lose her. It was the final weight on that sad homecoming.

But I was soon cheered up by a ridiculous lunch at the Knights’. Sheila and I had gone through no storms that summer; she had been remotely affectionate, and she had not threatened me with the name of any other man. And she was pleased at my success. In front of her parents she teased me about the income I should soon be earning, about the money and honours on which I had my eye. It seemed to her extremely funny.

It did not seem, however, in the least funny to her father and mother. It seemed to them a very serious subject. And at that lunch I found myself being regarded as a distinctly more estimable character.

They were beginning to be worried about Sheila. Mrs Knight was a woman devoid of intuition, and she could not begin to guess what was wrong. All Mrs Knight observed were the rough-and-ready facts of the marriage market. Sheila was already twenty-four and, like me, often passed for thirty. For all her flirtations, she had given no sign of getting married. Lately she had brought no one home, except me for this lunch. To Mrs Knight, those were ominous facts. Whereas her husband had been uneasy about Sheila’s happiness since her adolescence, and had suppressed his uneasiness simply because in his selfish and self-indulgent fashion he did not choose to be disturbed.

Thus they were each prepared, if not to welcome me, at least to modify their discouragement. Mr Knight went further. He took me into the rose garden, lit a cigar, and, as we both sat in deckchairs, talked about the careers of famous counsel. It was all done at two removes from me, with Mr Knight occasionally giving me a sideways glance from under his eyelids. He showed remarkable knowledge, and an almost Getliffian enthusiasm, about the pricing of briefs. I had never met a man with more grasp of the financial details of another profession. Without ever asking a straightforward question he was guessing the probable curve of my own income. He was interested in its distribution — what proportion would one earn in High Court work, in London outside the High Court, on the Midland Circuit? Mr Knight was moving surreptitiously to his point.

‘I suppose you will be appearing now and then on circuit?’

‘If I get some work.’

‘Ah. It will come . It will come. I take it’, said Mr Knight, looking in the opposite direction and thoughtfully studying a rose, ‘that you might conceivably appear some time at the local assizes?’

I agreed that it was possible.

‘If that should happen,’ said Mr Knight casually, ‘and if ever you want a quiet place to run over your documents, it would give no trouble to slip you into this house.’

I supposed that was his point. I hoped it was. But I was left half-mystified, for Mr Knight glanced at me under his eyelids, and went on: ‘You won’t be disturbed. You won’t be. My wife and daughter might be staying with their relations. I shan’t disturb you. I’m always tired. I sleep night and day.’

Whatever did he mean by Sheila and her mother staying with relations, I thought, as we joined them. Was he just taking away with one hand what he gave with the other? Or was there any meaning at all?

I was very happy. Sheila was both lively and docile, and walked along the lanes with me before I left. It was my only taste of respectable courtship.

The Michaelmas Term of 1929 was even more prosperous than I hoped. I lost the case Percy had brought me, but I made them struggle for the verdict, and the damages were low. Percy went so far as to admit that the damages were lower than he expected, and that we could not have done much better in this kind of breach of contract. Henriques’ second case was, like the first, straightforward, and I won it. I earned most money, however, from the case in which I did nothing but paperwork: this was the case which had come from connexions of Charles March just before the vacation. It took some time to settle, and in the end we brought in a KC as a threat. The engineering firm of Howard and Hazlehurst were being sued by one of their agents for commission to which he might be entitled in law though not in common sense. The case never reached the courts, for we made a compromise: the KC’s brief was marked at one hundred and fifty guineas, and according to custom I was paid two-thirds that fee.

After those events, and before the end of term, at last I scored a point in my long struggle of attrition with Getliffe. I kept reminding him of his promise to unload some of his briefs; I kept telling him, firmly, affectionately, reproachfully, in all the tones I could command, that I still had not made a pound through his help. As a rule, I disliked being pertinacious, but with Getliffe it was fun. The struggle swayed to and fro. He promised again; then he was too busy to consider any of his briefs; then he thought, almost tearfully, of his clients; then he offered to pay me a very small fee to devil a very large case. At last, on a December afternoon, his face suddenly became beatific. ‘Old H-J (a solicitor named Hutton-Jones) is coming in soon! That means work for Herbert. Well, L S, I’m going to do something for you. I’m going to say to H-J that there’s a man in these Chambers who’ll do that job as well as I should. L S, I can’t tell you how glad I am to do something for you. You deserve it, L S, you deserve it.’

He looked me firmly in the eyes and warmly clasped my hand.

It happened. A ten-guinea brief in the West London County Court came to me from Hurton-Jones: and it had, unquestionably, been offered to Getliffe. Later on, I became friendly with Hutton-Jones, and his recollection was that the conversation with Getliffe went something like this: ‘H-J, do you really want me to do this? Don’t get me wrong. Don’t think I’m too high-hat to take the county court stuff. It’s all grist that comes to the mill, and you know as well as I do, H-J, that I’m a poor man. But I have got a young chap here — well, I don’t say he could do this job, but he might scrape through. Mind you, I like Eliot. Of course, he hasn’t proved himself. I don’t say that he’s ripe for this job—’

Hutton-Jones knew something of Getliffe, and diverted the brief to me. I argued for a day in court, and then we reached a settlement. I had saved our clients a fair sum of money. Getliffe congratulated me, as man to man.

It was a long time before another of his cases found its way to me, but now, by the spring of 1930, I was well under way. Percy judged that he could back me a little farther; Henriques and the Harts were speaking approvingly of me in March circles; Hurton-Jones was trying me on some criminal work, legally dull but shot through with human interest. I was becoming busy. I even knew what it was, as summer approached, to have to refuse invitations to dinner because I was occupied with my briefs.

Just about that time a letter came from Marion, out of the blue. I had written to congratulate her on her engagement, and I had heard that she was married. Now she said that she would much like to visit me. I had a fleeting notion, flattering to my vanity, that she might be in distress and had turned to me for help. But the first sight of her, as she entered my sitting-room, was enough to sweep that daydream right away. She looked sleek, her eyes were shining, she had become much prettier, and she was expensively dressed: though, just as I remembered, she had managed to leave a patch of white powder or scurf on the shoulder of her jacket.