Getliffe looked at me with a sudden, earnest smile.
‘I’m very glad you’ve spoken like that, L S. I believe you’ve spoken like a friend. People sometimes tell me I’m selfish. I get worried. You see, I’m not conscious of it. I should hate to think of myself like that. I want my friends to pull me up if ever they think I’m doing wrong.’
Next day, though, he might think better of it. There was a very strong rumour — I never knew whether it was true — that whenever he took a holiday he tried to divert any cases which might be on the way. He did not divert them to bright young men, but to a middle-aged and indifferently competent figure who came so seldom into Chambers that I scarcely knew him. That rumour might be true, I thought: Getliffe did not welcome the sound of youth knocking at the door. Still, I should make him keep his promise.
As I told Getliffe, I could not afford a holiday, but I spent a week that summer with my old friends in the town. I had been in close touch with them since I came to London, George Passant visited me regularly once a quarter, but I had only returned myself for odd days, when Eden sent me a two-guinea brief on the Midland Circuit. To many people it seemed strange, and they thought me heartless.
That was not accurate. I was an odd fish, but my affections were strong; my friendship with George, like all my others, would only end with death. When I stayed in London and avoided the town, it was for a complex of reasons — partly I had to think of the railway fare, partly I was shy of dogging Sheila’s tracks, partly I had an instinct to hide until I could come back successful. But the strongest reason was also the simplest: George and the group did not particularly want me. They loved me, they were proud of me, they rejoiced in any victory I won — but I had gone from their intense intimate life, I was no longer in the secrets of the circle, and it was an embarrassment, almost an intrusion, when I returned. So, as the train drew into the station on an August evening, I was unreasonably depressed. From the carriage window I had seen the houses gleam under the clear night sky; the sulphurous smell of the station, confined within the red brick walls, was as it used to be, when I returned home from dining at the Inn; my heart sank. George greeted me like a conquering hero, and so did the group. In my mood that night, it made me worse to have others overconfident about my future. I explained sharply that I had made an exceptional start for an unknown young man, but that was all. I had been lucky in my friends, I had the advantage in solicitors’ eyes of looking older than I was — but the testing time was the next two years. It was too early to cheer. George would not listen to my disclaimers. Robustly, obtusely, he shouted them away. He was not going to be deprived of his drinking party. They all drank cheerfully; they were drinking harder than ever, now that they were a little less impoverished; they would rather have been at the farm, without a revenant from earlier days, but nevertheless they were happy to get drunk. But it was sadly that I got drunk that night.
Afterwards, George and I walked by ourselves to his lodgings. I asked about some of our old companions: then I felt the barrier come between us. George was content and comfortable in my presence so long as I left the group alone. I asked about Jack, who had not met me that evening.
‘Doing splendidly, of course,’ said George, and hurried to another subject.
But it was George who volunteered information on one old friend. Marion was engaged to be married. George did not know the man, or the story, and had scarcely seen her, but he had heard that she was overwhelmingly happy.
I should have wished to be happy for her. But I was not. In the pang with which I heard the news, I learned how infinitely voracious one is. Any love that comes one’s way — it is bitter to let go. I had not seen Marion for eighteen months, all my love was given to another. Yet it was painful to lose her. It was the final weight on that sad homecoming.
But I was soon cheered up by a ridiculous lunch at the Knights’. Sheila and I had gone through no storms that summer; she had been remotely affectionate, and she had not threatened me with the name of any other man. And she was pleased at my success. In front of her parents she teased me about the income I should soon be earning, about the money and honours on which I had my eye. It seemed to her extremely funny.
It did not seem, however, in the least funny to her father and mother. It seemed to them a very serious subject. And at that lunch I found myself being regarded as a distinctly more estimable character.
They were beginning to be worried about Sheila. Mrs Knight was a woman devoid of intuition, and she could not begin to guess what was wrong. All Mrs Knight observed were the rough-and-ready facts of the marriage market. Sheila was already twenty-four and, like me, often passed for thirty. For all her flirtations, she had given no sign of getting married. Lately she had brought no one home, except me for this lunch. To Mrs Knight, those were ominous facts. Whereas her husband had been uneasy about Sheila’s happiness since her adolescence, and had suppressed his uneasiness simply because in his selfish and self-indulgent fashion he did not choose to be disturbed.
Thus they were each prepared, if not to welcome me, at least to modify their discouragement. Mr Knight went further. He took me into the rose garden, lit a cigar, and, as we both sat in deckchairs, talked about the careers of famous counsel. It was all done at two removes from me, with Mr Knight occasionally giving me a sideways glance from under his eyelids. He showed remarkable knowledge, and an almost Getliffian enthusiasm, about the pricing of briefs. I had never met a man with more grasp of the financial details of another profession. Without ever asking a straightforward question he was guessing the probable curve of my own income. He was interested in its distribution — what proportion would one earn in High Court work, in London outside the High Court, on the Midland Circuit? Mr Knight was moving surreptitiously to his point.
‘I suppose you will be appearing now and then on circuit?’
‘If I get some work.’
‘Ah. It will come. It will come. I take it’, said Mr Knight, looking in the opposite direction and thoughtfully studying a rose, ‘that you might conceivably appear some time at the local assizes?’
I agreed that it was possible.
‘If that should happen,’ said Mr Knight casually, ‘and if ever you want a quiet place to run over your documents, it would give no trouble to slip you into this house.’
I supposed that was his point. I hoped it was. But I was left half-mystified, for Mr Knight glanced at me under his eyelids, and went on: ‘You won’t be disturbed. You won’t be. My wife and daughter might be staying with their relations. I shan’t disturb you. I’m always tired. I sleep night and day.’
Whatever did he mean by Sheila and her mother staying with relations, I thought, as we joined them. Was he just taking away with one hand what he gave with the other? Or was there any meaning at all?
I was very happy. Sheila was both lively and docile, and walked along the lanes with me before I left. It was my only taste of respectable courtship.
The Michaelmas Term of 1929 was even more prosperous than I hoped. I lost the case Percy had brought me, but I made them struggle for the verdict, and the damages were low. Percy went so far as to admit that the damages were lower than he expected, and that we could not have done much better in this kind of breach of contract. Henriques’ second case was, like the first, straightforward, and I won it. I earned most money, however, from the case in which I did nothing but paperwork: this was the case which had come from connexions of Charles March just before the vacation. It took some time to settle, and in the end we brought in a KC as a threat. The engineering firm of Howard and Hazlehurst were being sued by one of their agents for commission to which he might be entitled in law though not in common sense. The case never reached the courts, for we made a compromise: the KC’s brief was marked at one hundred and fifty guineas, and according to custom I was paid two-thirds that fee.