Without being able to control my thoughts, I stared at George, wishing him out of my sight. I heard my voice, hard and pitiless. Who were “they”? What had really happened?
George, face open but without emotion, said that detectives had been interviewing them: one was a detective-superintendent. “He seems to have been very civil,” said George. Statements had been taken in the Patemans’ house. The young women had been told that they might be questioned again.
“Of course,” said George, “it’s bound to be a mistake. There’s a ridiculous exaggeration somewhere.”
I looked at him.
“There must be,” I said.
“I’m glad you think that,” said George, almost cheerfully.
From the instant I had heard the news, and been frozen, I had taken the worst for granted. With a certainty I didn’t try even to rationalise. Yet here I was, giving George false hope. When, thirty years before, he had faced me with his own trouble — trouble bad enough, though not as unimaginable as this — I had been maddened by his optimism and had tried to destroy it. Here I was doing the opposite. But it was not out of kindness or comradeship. Even less out of gratitude. I couldn’t find a thought for what he had once done for me. Forebodings from the past, linked with this new fact, at the same time incredible and existential, drove out everything else. I wanted not to see him, I wanted to agree with him and have him go away.
I tried to do my duty.
“I suppose,” I said, “I’ve got to ask, but I know it isn’t necessary, you can’t be touched in any way yourself?”
“Well—” George’s tone was matter-of-fact — “they’ve been in on the fringe of our crowd. If anyone wanted to rake up stories of some of the crowd, or me as far as that goes, it might be awkward—”
“No, no, no. Not in this sort of case.” This time my reassurance was honest, impatient.
“That’s what I thought myself.” He spoke amiably but vaguely; he had once been a good lawyer, but now he seemed to have forgotten all his law. He went on: “I ought to have kept more of an eye on them, I grant you that. But the last two or three years, since my health went wrong, I’ve rather gone to pieces.”
He said it with acquiescence, without remorse: as though “going to pieces” had been a vocation in itself.
“What steps have you taken? About those two. What practical steps?”
I heard my own voice hard again.
“Oh, I’ve put them in touch with solicitors, naturally.”
“What solicitors?”
“Eden & Sharples. I didn’t need to look any further.”
Just for a moment, I was touched. Eden & Sharples was the present name of the firm of solicitors where George had been employed, as managing clerk, all his working life. When he was a young man of brilliant promise, they hadn’t been generous to him. Sometimes I used to think that, had they treated him better, his life might have been different. Yet even now, made to retire early, pensioned off, he still thought of the firm with something like reverence. In this crisis, he turned to them as though they were the only solicitors extant. It was misfits like George — it was as true now as when I first met him — who had most faith in institutions.
“Well then,” I said. “There’s nothing else you can do just now, is there?”
That was a question which was meant to sound like leave-taking. I hadn’t offered him another drink: I wanted him to go.
He leaned forward. His eyes, sadder than his voice, managed to converge on mine. “I should like to do something,” he said. “I should like to ask you something.”
“What is it?”
“I told you, I’ve rather gone to pieces. I can’t look after this business. I’m relying on you.”
“I don’t see what I can do.”
“You can make sure — if things get more serious, which is ridiculous, of course — you can make sure that they get the best advice. From the senior branch of the legal profession.” George brought out that bit of solicitor’s venom, just as he used to do as a rebellious young man. But he was more lucid than he seemed. As so often, he both believed and disbelieved in his own optimism. He was anticipating that they would go to trial.
“I can’t interfere. You’ve got to trust the solicitors—”
Once more, George had become lucid. He could admit to himself how the legal processes worked. He said: “I just want to be certain that we’re doing everything possible. I just want to be certain—” he looked at me with resignation — “that I’m leaving it in good hands.”
I had no choice, and in fact I didn’t want any. I said: “All right, I’ll do what I can.”
“That’s very nice of you,” said George.
I had to give him his second drink. He did not say another word about the investigation. For a few minutes he chatted amicably, made his formal enquiry about Charles, and then announced, with his old hopeful secretive restlessness, that he must be off.
When I had seen him to the lift, I went straight into the bedroom, so as to avoid meeting either of the boys. There I sat, neither reading nor thinking, until Margaret returned. She was taking off her hat as she opened the door. At the sight of me she said: “What’s happened?”
I told her, dry and hard.
“This is dreadful.” Still wearing her coat, she had come and put her arms round me.
“I’m sorry for George,” she said.
“I don’t know who I’m sorry for.”
She was listening to each inflexion. Even she could not totally divine why I was so much upset. George was my oldest friend, but she knew that we met seldom and couldn’t really talk. Even so, even if the relation had been closer, George himself was not in danger or involved. It was all at one remove, startling that it should come so near, perhaps–
“You won’t tell the boys tonight, will you?”
“They’ll read it in the papers—”
“Don’t tell them tonight, though.”
She meant, she didn’t want their spirits quenched before tomorrow’s party.
“You’ll find,” I said, “that they can take it. People can take anything. That’s the worst thing about us. Those two will take it. Maurice will take it because he’s naturally good — and Charles because, like us, he isn’t.”
I had spoken roughly, and she frowned. She frowned out of bafflement and concern. Still she could not divine why I was so much upset. Nor could I. I couldn’t have given a reason, either to her or to myself, why this had struck me like another arrest of life. Not so near the physical roots as the blinded eye — but somehow taking hold of more of my whole self, stopping me dead.
Maybe (I tried to explain it as I lay awake, later that night) a physical shock, one could domesticate, it was part of the run of this existence, it wasn’t removed from Margaret and my son, it was in the nature of things. But George’s announcement didn’t happen to one, it didn’t happen even when one heard it and, at the same instant, foresaw what was to come. Nevertheless, I couldn’t reach, any more than Margaret, what I really felt.
Back in our bedroom — hours before the time I lay awake — Margaret was still asking me to keep the news from the boys, at least for a couple of days. Of course I would, I promised. She searched my face, wondering what that would give away. Then I snapped back to this home of ours, and told her she ought to know me better: didn’t she remember times, nearer the bone than this, when I had been able to pretend?
18: The Christmas Greeting
JUST before nine on Christmas Eve, as we sat round waiting, Charles wanted to arrange a sweepstake on the first guest to arrive. Martin, Irene and Pat had been dining with us: Pat, to whom parties were like native air, was making sure that the hired waiters knew their job. Standing in the drawing-room, decorous, empty, expectant, paintings throwing back the light, Margaret, Irene and Martin were taking their first drinks. As for me, I should have to be on my feet for the next few hours: anyway, it was better not to drink that night.