Part Five
The Hard Way
I was early for my first interview with Herbert Getliffe. It was raining, and so I could not spin out the minutes in the Temple gardens; I arrived at the foot of the staircase, and it was still too wet to stay there studying the names. Yet I gave them a glance.
Lord Waterfield
Mr H Getliffe
Mr W Allen
and then a column of names, meaningless to me, some faded, some with the paint shining and black. As I rushed into the shelter of the staircase, I wondered how they would find room for my name at the bottom, and whether Waterfield ever visited the Chambers, now that he had been in the cabinet for years.
The rain pelted down outside, and my feet clanged on the stone stairs. The set of Chambers was three flights up, there was no one on the staircase, the doors were shut, there was no noise except the sound of rain. On the third floor the door was open, a light shone in the little ball; even there, though, there was no one moving, I could hear no voices from the rooms around.
Then I did hear a voice, a voice outwardly deferential, firm, smooth, but neither gentle nor genteel.
‘Can I help you, sir?’
I said that I had an appointment with Getliffe.
‘I’m the clerk here. Percy Hall.’ He was looking at me with an appraising eye, but in the dim hall, preoccupied with the meeting to come, I did not notice much about him.
‘I suppose’, he said, ‘you wouldn’t happen to be the young gentleman who wants to come here as a pupil, would you?’
I said that I was.
‘I thought as much,’ said Percy. He told me that Getliffe was expecting me, but was not yet back from lunch; meanwhile I had better wait in Getliffe’s room. Percy led the way to the door at the end of the hall. As he left me, he said ‘When you’ve finished with Mr Getliffe, sir, I hope you’ll call in for a word with me.’
It sounded like an order.
I looked round the room. It was high, with panelled walls, and it had, so Percy had told me, been Waterfield’s. When Waterfield went into politics, so Percy again had told me, Getliffe had moved into the room with extreme alacrity. It smelt strongly that afternoon of a peculiar brand of tobacco. I was not specially nervous, but that smell made me more alert; this meeting mattered; I had to get on with Getliffe. I thought of the photograph that Eden had shown me, of himself and Getliffe, after a successful case. Getliffe had appeared large, impassive, and stern.
I was impatient now. It was a quarter of an hour past the time he had given me. I got up from the chair, looked at the briefs on the table and the picture over the fireplace, the books on the shelves. I stared out of the windows, high and wide and with their shutters folded back. Alert, I stared down at the gardens, empty in the dark, rainy, summer afternoon. And beyond was the river.
As I was standing by the window, there was a bustle outside the room, and Getliffe came in. My first sight of him was a surprise. In the photograph he had appeared large, impassive, and stern. In the flesh, as he came bustling in, late and flustered, he was only of middle height, and seemed scarcely that because of the way he dragged his feet. He had his underlip thrust out in an affable grin, so that there was something at the same time gay and shamefaced about his expression. He suddenly confronted me with a fixed gaze from brown opaque and lively eyes.
‘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.