When I thanked him, he went on: ‘We may not be the best Chambers in London — but we do have fun!’
His face was merry. On the way home, grinning at my own expense, I could not be certain whether his eyes were innocent, or wore their brazen, defiant stare.
In that bitterly cold winter of 1928-9 I reached a depth of discontent. I ached for this suspense to end. In my memory it remained one of the periods I would least have chosen to live through again. And yet there must have been good times. I was being entertained by the Marches, I was making friends in a new society. Long afterwards Charles March told me that I seemed brimming with interest, and even he had not perceived how hungry and despondent I became. That is how I remembered the time, without relief — I remembered myself dark with my love for Sheila, fretting for a sign of recognition in my job, poor, seeing no sign of a break. It was worse because Charles himself, in that December, was given his first important case. It was nothing wonderful — it was marked at twenty-five guineas — but it was a chance to shine, and for such a chance just then I would have begged or stolen.
Charles was working in the Chambers of a relation by marriage, and the case was arranged through other connections of his family. Nothing could be more natural as a start for a favourably born young man. As he told me, I was devoured by envy. Sheer rancorous envy, the envy of the poor for the rich, the unlucky for the lucky, the wallflower for the courted. I tried to rejoice in his luck, and I felt nothing but envy.
I hated feeling so. I had been jealous in love, but this envy was more degrading. In jealousy there was at least the demand for another’s love, the sustenance of passion — while in such envy as I felt for Charles there was nothing but the sick mean stab. I hated that I should be so possessed. But I was hating the human condition. For as I saw more of men in society I thought in the jet-black moments that envy was the most powerful single force in human affairs — that, and the obstinate desire of the flesh to persist. Given just those two components to build with, one could construct too much of the human scene.
I tried to make conscious amends. I offered to help him on the brief; the case was a breach of contract, and I knew the subject well. Charles let me help, and I did a good share of the work. He was himself awkward and conscience-stricken. Once, as we were studying the case, he said ‘I’m just realizing how true it is — that it’s not so easy to forgive someone, when you’re taking a monstrously unfair advantage over him.’
The case was down to be heard in January. I sat by the side of Charles’ father and did not miss a word. The judge had only recently gone to the bench, and was very alert and sharp-witted, sitting alone against the red upholstery of the Lord Chief Justice’s court. Mr March and I placed ourselves for a day and a half near the door, so as not to catch Charles’ eye. Charles’ loud voice resounded in the narrow room; his face looked thinner under his new, immaculate wig. The case was a hopeless one from the start. Yet I thought that he was doing well. He impressed all in court by his cross-examination of an expert witness. In the end he lost the case, but the judge went out of his way to pay a compliment: the losing side might, the judge hoped, take consolation from the fact that their case could not have been more lucidly presented.
It was a handsome compliment. It should have been mine, I felt again. Men stood around Charles, congratulating him, taking his luck for granted. I went to join them, to add my own congratulations. Partly I meant them, partly I was pleased — but I would not have dared to look deep into my heart.
I went back to Chambers and told Getliffe the result. It happened that his half-brother, Francis, had been a contemporary and friend of Charles’ at Cambridge. Getliffe scarcely knew Charles, but he had a healthy respect for the powerful, and he assured me earnestly ‘Mark my words, Eliot, that young friend of ours will go a long way.’
‘Of course he will.’
‘Mind you,’ said Getliffe, ‘he’s got some pull. He is old Philip March’s nephew, isn’t he? It helps in our game, Eliot, one can’t pretend it doesn’t help.’
Getliffe gazed at me, man to man.
‘Don’t you wish you were in that racket, Eliot?’
I explained, clearly and with some force, how the brief had arrived at Charles. As a pupil, he had not done much work for his master, Albert Hart, who stood to Charles as Getliffe did to me; but Hart had used much contrivance to divert this brief to Charles.
‘I’ve been thinking’, said Getliffe, his mood changing like lightning, ‘that you ought to do some shooting yourself before very long. Would you like to, L S?’
‘Wouldn’t you in my place? Wouldn’t you?’
‘Well, one’s roping in quite a bit of paper nowadays. I must look through them and see if there’s one you could tackle. I should advise you not to start if you can help it with anything too ambitious. If you drop too big a brick, it means there’s one firm of solicitors who won’t leave their cards on you again.’
Then he looked at his most worried, and his voice took on a strident edge.
‘I must see if I can find you a snippet for yourself one of these days. The trouble is, one owes a duty to one’s clients. One can’t forget that, much as one would like to.’
He pointed his pipe at me.
‘You see my point, Eliot,’ he said defiantly. ‘One would like to distribute one’s briefs to one’s young friends. Why shouldn’t one? What’s the use of money if one never has time to enjoy it? I’d like to give you a share of my work tomorrow. But one can’t help feeling a responsibility to one’s clients. One can’t help one’s conscience.’
Soon after Charles’ case, the temperature stayed below freezing point for days on end. For the first time since I went to London, I stayed away from Chambers. There was nothing to force me there. During two whole days I only went out into the iron frost for my evening meal, and came back to lie, as I had done all the afternoon, on my sofa in front of the fire.
The cold was at its most intense when Sheila visited me. It was nine o’clock on a bitter February night. She came and sat on the hearth rug, close to the fire; I lay still on the sofa.
We were quiet. For a moment there was noise, as she rattled the shovel in the coal scuttle. ‘Don’t get up. I’ll do it,’ she said, and knelt, shovelling the coals. Then she stared at the fire again, the darkened fire, cherry-red between the bars, with spurts of gas from the new coal.
We were quiet in the room, and outside the street was silent in the extreme cold.
I watched. She was kneeling, sitting back on her heels, her back straight; I could see her face in profile, softer than when she met me with her full gaze. The curve of her cheek was smooth and young, and a smile pulled on the edge of her mouth.
The fire was burning through, tinting her skin. She took the poker, stoked through the bars, then left it there. She studied the cave that formed as the poker began to glow.
‘Queer,’ she said.
The cave enlarged, radiant, like a landscape on the sun.
‘Oh, handsome,’ she said.
She was sitting upright. I saw the swell of her breast, I saw only that.
I gripped her by the shoulders and kissed her on the mouth. She kissed me back. For a moment we pressed together; then, as I became more violent, she struggled and shrank away.
In the firelight she stared up at me.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ she cried. ‘No.’
I said: ‘I want you.’
I seized her, forced her towards me, forced my lips upon her. She fought. She was strong, but I was possessed. ‘I can’t,’ she cried. I tore her dress at the neck. ‘I can’t,’ she cried, and burst into a scream of tears.