‘One is glad to pull off something for the clients’ sakes,’ he said. ‘It’s the easiest fault to forget that they’re the people most concerned. One has to be careful.’
‘Still, it’s very nice to win,’ I said.
Getliffe’s face broke into a grin.
‘Of course it’s nice,’ he said. ‘It gives me a bigger kick than anything in the world.’
‘I expect I shall find it the same,’ I said. ‘If ever I manage it.’
Getliffe laughed merrily.
‘You will, my boy, you will. You’ve got to remember that this ancient Inn wasn’t born yesterday. It was born before HM Edward Three. No one’s ever been in a hurry since. You’ve just got to kick your heels and look as though you like it. We’ve all been through it. It’s good for us in the end. But I’ll tell you this, Eliot’ — he said confidentially — ‘though I don’t often tell it to people in your position, that I don’t see why next year you shouldn’t be able to keep yourself in cigarettes. And even a very very occasional cigar.’ He smiled happily at me. ‘When all’s said and done, it’s a good life,’ he said.
Years afterwards, I realized that, when I was his pupil, I crassly underestimated Getliffe as a lawyer. It was natural for me and Charles March to hold our indignation meetings in the Temple gardens; but, though it was hard for young men to accept, some of Getliffe’s gifts were far more viable than ours. We overvalued power and clarity of mind, of which we both had a share, and we dismissed Getliffe because of his muddiness. We had not seen enough to know that, for most kinds of success, intelligence is a very minor gift. Getliffe’s mind was muddy, but he was a more effective lawyer than men far cleverer, because he was tricky and resilient, because he was expansive with all men, because nothing restrained his emotions, and because he had a simple, humble, tenacious love for his job.
It was too difficult, however, for Charles March and me, in the intellectual arrogance of our youth, to see that truth, much less accept it. And I had a good deal to put up with. I had just discovered Getliffe’s comic and pathological meanness with money. He had a physical aversion from signing a cheque or parting with a coin. In the evening, after a case, we occasionally went to the Feathers for a pint of beer. His income was at least four thousand a year, and mine two hundred, but somehow I always paid.
My pupil’s year was a harassing one. I was restless. Often I was unhappy. Those nights with Charles March were my only respite from anxiety. They were also much more. Charles became one of the closest friends of my life, and he introduced me into a society opulent, settled, different from anything I had ever known. His story, like George Passant’s, took such a hold on my imagination that I have chosen to tell it in full, separated from my own. All that I need say here is that, during my first year in London, I began to dine with Charles’ family in Bryanston Square and his relatives in great houses near. It seemed my one piece of luck in all those months.
I had to return from those dinner parties to my bleak flat. Apart from the evenings with Charles, I had no comfort at all. On other nights I used to stay late in Chambers, and then walk up Kingsway and across Bloomsbury, round Bedford Square under the peeling plane trees, past the restaurants of Charlotte Street, up Conway Street to number thirty-seven, where there was a barber’s shop on the ground floor and my flat on the third. Whenever I threw open the door, I looked at the table. The light from the landing fell across it, before I could reach the switch. There might be a letter or telegram from Sheila.
The sitting-room struck cold each night when I returned. I could not afford to have a fire all day, and my landlady, amiable but scatter-brained, could never remember which nights I was coming home. Most evenings the table was empty, there was no letter, my hopes dropped, and the room turned darker. I knelt on the hearth and lit a firelighter, before going out to make my supper off a sandwich at the nearest bar. Even when the fire had caught, it was a desolate room. There were two high-backed armchairs, covered with satin which was wearing through; an old hard sofa which stood just off the hearthrug and on which I kept papers and books; the table, with two chairs beside it; and an empty sideboard. My bedroom attained the same standard of discomfort, and to reach it I had to walk across the landing. The tenants of the fourth floor also walked across the same landing on their way upstairs.
I need not have lived so harshly. For an extra twenty pounds a year, I could have softened things for myself; and, by the scale of my debts, another twenty pounds paid out meant nothing at all, as I well knew. But, as though compelled by a profound instinct, I paid no attention to the voice of sense. Somehow I must live so as constantly to remind myself that I had nowhere near arrived. The more uncomfortable I was, the more will I could bend to my career. This was no resting place. When I had satisfied myself, it would be time to indulge.
I sat by the fire on winter nights, working on one of Getliffe’s ‘points’, forcing back the daydreams, forcing back the anxious hope that tomorrow there would be a letter from Sheila. For I was waiting for letters more abjectly than for briefs. When I asked her to come back, I had surrendered. I had asked for her on her own terms, which were no terms at all. I had no power over her. I could only wait for what she did and gave.
It suited her. She came to see me quite often, at least once a month. With her nostalgia for the dingy, she used to take a room at a shabby Greek hotel a couple of streets away. And she came, out of her own caprices and because of her own needs. Her caprices had her usual acid tone, which I could not help but like. A telegram arrived: CANNOT BEAR MY FATHER’S VOICE PREFER YOURS FOR TWO DAYS SHALL APPEAR THIS EVENING. Once, without any warning, I found her sitting in my room when I got back late at night.
Occasionally we were happy, as though she were on the edge of falling in love with me. But she was flirting with man after man, lit up each time with the familiar hope that here at last was someone who could hypnotize her into complete love. I had to listen to that string of adventures, for she used her power over me to compel me into the role of confidant. She trusted me, she thought I understood her better than the others, she found me soothing. Sometimes I could smooth her forehead and lift the dread away. In part she relished playing on my jealousy, hearing me in torment as I questioned her, seeing me driven to another masochistic search.
One morning in February there was a postcard on my breakfast tray. At the sight of the handwriting my heart leaped. Then I read: ‘I want you to dine with me at the Mars tomorrow (Tuesday). I may have a man with me I should like you to meet.’
I went as though I had no will.
The glass of the restaurant door was steamed over in the cold. Inside, I stared frenziedly round. She was sitting alone, her face pallid and scornful.
Still in my hat and coat, I went to her.
‘Where is this man?’ I said.
She said: ‘He was useless.’
We talked little over the meal. But I could not rest without asking some questions. He was another of her lame dogs: she thought he was deep and mysterious, and then that he was empty. She was dejected. I tried to console her. I was stifling the rest, and fell silent.
Afterwards we walked into Soho Square, on the way home. Abruptly she said: ‘Why don’t you get rid of me?’
‘It’s too late.’
‘You’d like to, wouldn’t you?’
‘Don’t you think I should?’ I said flatly, in utter tiredness. She pressed my fingers, and there was no more to say.
All through those months when I was struggling to get started, I could not talk to her about my worries. It was to Charles March that I had to trace and retrace the problems, boring to anyone else, acutely real to me. Was Percy giving me my share of the guinea and two-guinea briefs? Would Getliffe let me off the last instalments of my pupil’s fees? Had I won any kind of backing yet? Would Getliffe give me a hand, if it cost him nothing, or would he stand in my way?