I knew it would be good professional judgment to hold our hand in the police court on the twenty-ninth and let the case go for trial. I wanted to persuade them of this course at once; so I arranged to meet them at George’s that same night.
When I got there, George was alone. I was shocked by his manner. He was apathetic and numbed; he stared at the fire with his unseeing, in-turned gaze. I could not stir him into interest over the tactics.
He was in a state that I could not reach. As he stared at the fire I waited for the others to come. I had scarcely noticed anything in the room but his accounts, the last evening I spent there; now I saw that, while everyone else was living more luxuriously, this sitting-room had scarcely altered since I first set foot in it.
Then Olive came in.
She said: ‘I told you not to worry. You see how right I was.’
‘It might have been better if you had told me the truth—’ I was seeing her for the first time since the inquiries, but I was immediately at ease with her.
‘I didn’t know—’ Then she realised that George was sunk into himself, and she tried to restore his defiance.
‘It’s nasty finding a traitor, George.’ With her usual directness, she went straight into his suffering. ‘But a man like you is bound to collect envy. The wonder is, there’s not been more.’
She used also a bullying candour.
‘We may have weeks of this. We mustn’t let each other forget it.’
I felt she had done this before. And, as George was fighting against the despair, her instinct led her to another move.
She said: ‘It’s not going to be pleasant, is it? The twenty-ninth. You know, I simply couldn’t realise what it would be like. Being ashamed and afraid in public. Until this morning. Yet sometimes it seemed perfectly ordinary. I felt that, last night in jail. Of course, it hasn’t properly begun to happen yet. I only hope I get through it when it really comes.’
‘You’ll be better than any of us,’ George said.
‘I hope I shan’t let you down,’ she said. ‘You see’ — she suddenly turned to me—’you can’t believe how childish you find yourself in times like this. This is true, it happened this morning. I could face the thought that the worst might come to the worst. We might get twelve months. Then I felt a lump in my throat. I hadn’t been near crying before, since it all began. Do you know why I was now? It had just occurred to me they might have had the decency to put it off until Christmas was over.’
She achieved her purpose; for George, with the curious rough comradeship that he had always shown towards her, made an effort to encourage her.
As soon as Jack entered, I was able to discuss the tactics. I argued that we must keep our defence back: there was no chance of getting the case dismissed in the police court: we should only give our points away.
In fact there was really no alternative: as a lawyer as able as George would have been the first to see. But tonight George broke out: ‘You’ve got to defend it in the police court. It’s essential to get it dismissed out of hand.’
Several times he made these outbursts, damning the prosecution as ‘ludicrous’, attacking it from all angles — as he had done since the alarm began. Some of his attacks were good law, and I had learned from them in my preparation of our case; some were fantastically unreal, the voices of his persecuted imagination. Tonight, however, there seemed another reason in the heart of his violence.
Jack detected the reason before I did. He interrupted George brusquely; I felt, not knowing whether I was right, that some of their meetings had gone like that, when the three of them were actually conducting their business.
Jack asked a few masterful, businesslike questions: ‘You think there’s no option? We’ve clearly got to let it go for trial?’
‘Yes.’
‘There’s no possible way of arranging it now?’
‘It’s practically certain to be sent on.’
‘Everyone else thinks the same? Eden and the others?’
‘Yes.’
‘I entirely disagree,’ said George.
Jack turned on him.
‘We know what you’re thinking of,’ said Jack. ‘You’re not concerned about getting us off. You just believe that will happen. What you’re frightened of — is that your private life may be dragged out. And your precious group. The whole thing for you is wrapped up with your good intentions. You ought to realise that we haven’t got time for those now.’
Jack had spoken freshly, intimately, brutally; George did not reply, and for minutes sat in silence.
Jack walked up and down the room. He talked a good deal, and assumed that the tactics were settled.
‘If I’d had the slightest idea the hostels would come back on us — I could have worked it out some other way,’ he said. ‘It would have been just as easy. There was no earthly reason for choosing the way I did. If anyone had told me there was the faintest chance that I was letting us in for this — waiting—’
‘You needn’t blame yourself. More than us,’ said Olive.
‘I’m not blaming myself. Except for not looking after everything. Next time I do anything, I shall keep it all in my hands.’
‘Next time. We’ve got a long way to go before then,’ said Olive.
‘I’m not so sure,’ said Jack. He sat down by her side.
She looked at him with the first sign of violent strain she had shown that night. I knew she feared that he was thinking of escape: as I had feared the moment he spoke of Morcom’s offer.
‘We can make something of it,’ she said.
‘I suppose we can.’
‘You’re afraid there’s a bad patch to go through first?’
‘I shan’t be sorry when it’s over.’ He laid a hand on her knee, with a gesture for him clumsy and grateful. He was dominating the room no longer. He said: ‘I always told you I should get into the public eye. But I didn’t imagine it on such a grand scale.’
It surprised me that he, as much as George, was full of the fear of disgrace. Often of disgrace in its most limited sense — the questions, the appearance in the dock, the hours of being exposed to the public view. They would be open to all eyes in court. Jack could imagine himself cutting a dash — and yet he showed as great a revulsion as George himself.
‘Anyway, we’ve got some time,’ said Jack. ‘When are the assizes, actually?’
Then George spoke: ‘I can’t accept the view that this is bound to go beyond the police court. I have thought over your objections, and I refuse to believe that they hold water.’
‘We’ve told you why you refuse to believe it,’ said Jack casually. But there came an unexpected flash of the George of years before. He said loudly: ‘I don’t regard you as qualified to hold an opinion. This is a point of legal machinery, and Lewis and I are the only people here capable of discussing it. I don’t propose to give you the responsibility.’
‘Jack is right,’ said Olive. ‘You’re thinking of nothing but the group.’
‘I’m thinking of ending this affair with as little danger as possible to all concerned,’ said George. ‘It’s true that I have to take other people into account. But, from every point of view, this ought to be settled in the police court. Of course, wherever it’s tried, if they understood the law of evidence, our private lives are utterly irrelevant. But in certain circumstances they might find an excuse to drag them into the court. In the police court they can’t go so far. Lewis can make them keep their malice to themselves.’