It was not till then that I realised Calvert had already spoken to Jack.
‘What did the letter say?’
‘I don’t know. He’s never written before. But you can guess, Lewis, you can guess. It horrified Calvert, clearly. And there doesn’t seem anything I can do.’
‘Did you manage to tell him,’ I said, ‘that it was an absolute surprise to you, that you knew nothing about it?’
‘Do you think that was easy?’ said Jack. ‘Actually, he didn’t give me much of a chance. He couldn’t keep still for nerves, as a matter of fact. He just said that he’d discovered his son writing me an — indiscreet letter. And he was forced to ask me not to reply and not to see the boy. I didn’t mind promising that. But he didn’t want to listen to anything I said about Roy. He dashed on to my future in the firm. He said that he’d always expected there would be a good vacancy for me on the production side. Now he realised that promotions had gone too fast, and he would be compelled to slow down. So that, though I could stay in my present boy’s job for ever, he would advise me in my own interests to be looking round for some other place.’
Jack’s face was downcast; we were both sunk in the cul-de-sac hopelessness of our age.
‘And to make it clear,’ Jack added, ‘he feels obliged to cut off paying my fees at the School.’
The School was our name for the combined Technical College and School of Art which gave at that time, 1925, the only kind of higher education in the town. There Jack had been sent by Calvert to learn printing, and there each week I attended a couple of lectures on law: lectures given by George Passant, whom I kept thinking of as soon as I knew Jack’s trouble to be real.
‘Well, we’ve got a bit of time,’ I said. ‘He can’t get rid of you altogether — it would bring too much attention to his son.’
‘Who’ll worry about me?’ said Jack.
‘He can’t do it,’ I insisted. ‘But what are we to do?’
‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ said Jack.
Then I mentioned George Passant’s name. At once Jack was on his feet. ‘I ought to have gone round hours ago,’ he said.
We walked up the London Road, crossed by the station, took a short cut down an alley towards the noisy street. Fish and chip shops glared and smelt: tramcars rattled past. Jack was more talkative now that he was going into action. ‘What shall I become if Calvert doesn’t let me print?’ he said. ‘I used to have some ideas, I used to be a young man of spirit. But when they threaten to stop you, being a printer seems the only possible job in the whole world. What else could I become, Lewis?’ He saw a policeman shining his lantern into a dark shop window. ‘Yes,’ said Jack, ‘I should like to be a policeman. But then I’m not tall enough. They say you can increase your height if you walk like this—’ he held both arms vertically above his head, like Moses on the hill in Rephidim, and walked by my side down the street saying: ‘I want to be a policeman.’
He stopped short, and looked at me with a rueful, embarrassed smile. I smiled too: more even than he, I was used to the hope and hopelessness, the hopes of twenty, desolately cold half an hour ago, now burning hot. I was used to living on hope. And I too was excited: the Cotery arms on the silver case ceased to be so pathetic, began to go to one’s head; the story drifted like wood smoke through the September evening. It was with expectancy, with elation, that, as we turned down a side street, I saw the light of George Passant’s sitting room shining through an orange blind.
At that time, I had known George for a couple of years. I had met him just through the chance that he gave his law lectures at the School — and that was because he wanted to earn some extra money, since he was only a qualified clerk at Eden & Martineau’s, not a member of their solicitors’ firm. It had been a lucky encounter for me: and George had already exerted himself on my behalf more than anyone I knew.
This was the only house in the town open to us at any hour of night. Jack knocked: George came to the door himself.
‘I’m sorry we’re bothering you, George,’ said Jack. ‘But something’s happened.’
‘Come in,’ said George, ‘come in.’
His voice was loud and emphatic. He stood just over middle height, an inch or two taller than Jack; his shoulders were heavy, he was becoming a little fat, though he was only twenty-six. But it was his head that captured one’s attention, his massive forehead and the powerful structure of chin and cheekbone under his full flesh.
He led the way into his sitting room. He said: ‘Wouldn’t you like a cup of tea? I can easily make a cup of tea. Perhaps you’d prefer a glass of beer? I’m sure there’s some beer somewhere.’
The invitation was affable and diffident. He began to call us Cotery and Eliot, then corrected himself and used our Christian names. He went clumsily round the room, peering into cupboards, dishevelling his fair hair in surprise when he found nothing. The room was littered with papers; papers on the table and on the floor, a briefcase on the hearth, a pile of books beside an armchair. An empty teacup stood on a sheet of paper on the mantelpiece, and had left a trail of dark, moist rings. And yet, apart from his debris of work, George had not touched the room; the furniture was all his landlady’s; on one wall there remained a text ‘The Lord God Watcheth Us’, and over the mantelpiece a picture of the Relief of Ladysmith.
At last George shouted, and carried three bottles of beer to the table.
‘Now,’ said George, sitting back in his armchair, ‘we can get down to it. What is this problem?’
Jack told the story of Roy and the present. As he had done to me, he kept back this morning’s interview with Calvert. He put more colour into the story now that he was telling it to George, though: ‘This boy is Olive’s cousin, you realise, George. And that whole family seems to live on its nerves.’
‘I don’t accept that completely about Olive,’ said George. Olive was one of what we called the ‘group’, the collection of young people who had gathered round George.
‘Still, I’m very much to blame,’ said Jack. ‘I ought to have seen what was happening. It’s serious for Roy too, that I didn’t. I was very blind.’
Then Jack laid the cigarette case on the table.
George smiled, but did not examine it, nor pick it up.
‘Well, I’m sorry for the boy,’ he said. ‘But he doesn’t come inside my province, so there’s no action I can take. It would give me considerable pleasure, however, to tell his father that, if he sends a son to one of those curious institutions called public schools, he has no right to be surprised at the consequences. I should also like to add that people get on best when they’re given freedom — particularly freedom from their damned homes, and their damned parents, and their damned lives.’
He simmered down, and spoke to Jack with a warmth that was transparently genuine, open, and curiously shy. ‘I can’t tell him most of the things I should like to. But no one can stop me from telling him a few remarks about you.’
‘I didn’t intend to involve you, George,’ said Jack.
‘I don’t think you could prevent me,’ said George, ‘if it seemed necessary. But it can’t be necessary, of course.’
With his usual active optimism, George seized on the saving point: it was the point that had puzzled me: Calvert would only raise whispers about his son if he penalised Jack.
‘Unfortunately,’ said Jack, ‘he doesn’t seem to work that way.’
‘What do you mean?’
Jack described his conversation with Calvert that morning. George, flushed and angry, still kept interrupting with his sharp, lawyer’s questions: ‘It’s incredible that he could take that line. Don’t you see that he couldn’t let this letter get mixed up with your position in the firm?’