Charles Snow - Time of Hope

‘No one bothers to see me,’ he said. ‘No one bothers to see me. I’m not worth the trouble. I’m not worth the trouble.’

He only broke his dignified silence because his inquisitiveness became too strong. No one loved a scandal, or had a shrewder eye for one, than Mr Knight. Despite being affronted, he could not rest when he had the chief source of secret information at his dinner table.

I drank a good deal that night, enough to put me to sleep as soon as we went to bed. When I woke, Sheila was regarding me with a quizzical smile.

‘The light’s rather strong isn’t it?’ she said.

She made me a cup of tea. There were occasions when she enjoyed nursing me. She said ‘You got drunk. You got drunk on purpose.’ She stared at me, and said: ‘You’ll get over it.’

As I kissed her goodbye, I reminded her that the case came up on the 29th. In a tone flatter and more expressionless than she had used that morning, she wished me luck.

In the police court, I had not listened to the prosecutor’s speech for half an hour before I knew that Eden and Hotchkinson had been right. There was no chance of an acquittal that day. There never had been a chance. I should have to reserve our defence until the assizes. At the lunch break I said so, curtly because it was bitter to wound him more, to George.

When I told Eden, he remarked: ‘I always thought you’d take the sensible view before it was too late.’

The next night Eden and I had dinner together in his house. He was at his most considerate. He said that I had been ‘rushing about’ too much; it was true that I was worn by some harrowing scenes in the last twenty-four hours. He took me into the drawing-room, and stoked the fire high in the grate. He gave me a substantial glass of brandy. He warmed his own in his hands, swirled the brandy round, smelt and tasted, with a comfortable, unhurried content. Just as unhurriedly, he said ‘How do you feel about yesterday?’

‘It looks none too good.’

‘I completely agree. As a matter of fact,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘I’ve been talking to Hotchkinson about it during the afternoon. We both consider that 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?’

I knew what was coming.

Eden’s voice was grave and cordial. He did not like distressing me, and yet he was enjoying the exercise of his responsibility.

‘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—’

Eden entered on a disquisition about the unpredictable behaviour of juries, their quirks and obstinacies and prejudices. I wanted to be spared that, in my impatience, in my wounded vanity. Soon I broke in ‘What do you suggest?’

‘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.’

Now I was savage.

‘It’s sensible to get someone,’ I said with violence, ‘but Getliffe — seriously, he’s a bad lawyer.’

‘No one’s a hero to his pupils, you know,’ said Eden. He pointed out, as was true, that Getliffe was already successful as a silk.

‘I dare say I’m unfair. But this is important. There are others who’d do it admirably.’ I rapped out several names.

‘They’re clever fellows.’ Eden gave a smile, obstinate, displeased, unconvinced. ‘But I don’t see any reason to go beyond Getliffe. He’s always done well with my briefs.’

I was ashamed that the disappointment swamped me. I had believed that I was entirely immersed in the danger to my friends. I had lain awake at night, thinking of George’s suffering, of how he could be rescued, of plans for his life afterwards. I believed that those cares had driven all others from my mind. And in fact they were not false.

Yet, when I heard Eden’s decision, I could think of nothing but the setback to myself. It was no use pretending. No one can hide from himself which wound makes him flinch more. This petty setback overwhelmed their disaster. It was a wound in my vanity, it was a wound in my ambition. By its side, my concern for George had been only the vague shadow of an ache.

It lay bare the nerve both of my vanity and of my ambition. Much had happened to me since first in this town they had begun to drive me on; sometimes I had forgotten them; now they were quiveringly alive. They were, of course, inseparable; while one burned, so must the other. In all ambitions, even those much loftier than mine, there lives the nerve of vanity. That I should be thought not fit to handle a second-rate case! That I should be relegated in favour of a man whom I despised! I stood by the fire in Eden’s drawing-room after he had gone to bed. If I had gone further, I thought, they would not have considered giving me a leader. I knew, better than anyone, that I had stood still this last year, and longer than that. They had not realized it, they could not have heard the whiffs of depreciation that were beginning to go round. But if I had indisputably arrived, they would not have passed me over.

There was one reason, and one reason only, I told myself that night, why I had not indisputably arrived. It was she. The best of my life I had poured out upon her. I had lived for two. I had not been left enough power to throw into my ambition. She not only did not help; she was the greatest weight I carried. She alone could have kept me back. ‘Without her, I should have been invulnerable now. It was she who was to blame.

In the assize court, Getliffe began badly. He took nearly all the examinations himself, he did not allow me much part. Once, when he was leading me, he had said with childlike earnestness: ‘It’s one of my principles, L S — if one wants anything done well, one must do it oneself.’ The case went dead against us. Getliffe became careless, and in his usual fashion got a name or figure wrong. It did us harm. At those moments — though once in court I was passing him a junior’s correcting notes, I was carried along by my anxiety about George’s fate — I felt a dart of degrading satisfaction. They might think twice before they passed me over for an inferior again.

But then Getliffe stumbled on to a piece of luck. Martineau was still wandering on his religious tramps, but he had been tracked down, and he attended to give evidence about the advertising agency. In the box he allowed Getliffe to draw from him an explanation of the most damning fact against George — for Martineau took the fault upon himself. It was he who had misled George.

From that point, Getliffe believed that he could win the case. Despite the farm evidence which he could not shift; in fact, he worried less about that evidence than about the revelations of the group’s secret lives. The scandals came out, and George’s cross-examination was a bitter hour. They had raised much prejudice, as Getliffe said. Nevertheless, he thought he could ‘pull something out of the bag’ in his final speech. If he could smooth the prejudice down, Martineau’s appearance ought to have settled it. It was the one thing the jury were bound to remember, said Getliffe with an impish grin.