I said that I could see certain advantages in a change.
‘I must say,’ replied Rose, ‘that I should like to be assured of that.’
‘It would do Cooke good to get a wider experience—’
‘We can’t afford to regard ourselves as a training establishment just at present. My humble interest is to see that your singular and admirable activities don’t suffer.’ He gave his polite, confident smile. ‘And forgive me if I’m wrong, but I have a feeling that they will suffer if you let Master Cooke go.’
‘In many ways that’s true,’ I had to say in fairness.
‘I shouldn’t like us to forget that he showed a certain amount of moral courage, possibly a slightly embarrassing moral courage, over that Lufkin complication last year. I scored a point to his credit over that. And I have an impression that he’s been improving. He’s certainly been improving appreciably on paper, and I’ve come to respect his minutes.’
As usual, Hector Rose was just. He was also irritated that I would not let him persuade me. He was even more irritated when he learned how I proposed to fill Gilbert’s place. For, finding me obstinate, and cutting the argument short, he admitted that they could probably give me an ‘adequate replacement’; it was the end of 1943, there were plenty of youngish officers invalided out, or a few capable young women ‘coming loose’.
No, I said, I would not take a chance with anyone I did not know through and through; the job was going to get more tangled, and parts of it were secret; I wanted someone near me whom I could trust as I did myself.
‘I take it that this specification is not completely in the air, and you have some valuable suggestion up your sleeve?’
I gave the name: George Passant. The man who had most befriended me in my youth, although I did not tell Rose that. He had been working as a solicitor’s managing clerk in a provincial town for twenty years. The only point in his favour in Rose’s eyes was that his examination record was of the highest class.
Further, I had to tell Rose that George had once got into legal trouble, but had been found innocent.
‘In that case we can’t count it against him.’ Rose was showing his most frigid fairness, as well as irritation. He dismissed that subject, it was not to be raised again. But sharply he asked what proofs ‘this man’ had given of high ability. His lids heavy, his face expressionless, Rose listened.
‘It isn’t an entirely convincing case, my dear Lewis, don’t you feel that? It would be much easier for me if you would reconsider the whole idea. Will you think it over and give me the benefit of another word tomorrow?’
‘I have thought it over for a long time,’ I replied. ‘If this job’ — I meant, as Rose understood, the projects such as the headquarters administration of Barford which came in my domain — ‘is done as it needs to be done, I can’t think of anyone else who’d bring as much to it.’
‘Very well, let me see this man as soon as you can.’
Just for that instant, Hector Rose was as near being rude as I had heard him, but when, three days later, we were waiting to interview George Passant, he had recovered himself and, the moment George was brought in, Rose reached heights of politeness exalted even for him.
‘My dear Mr Passant, it is really extremely good of you, putting yourself to this inconvenience just to give us the pleasure of a talk. I have heard a little about you from my colleague Eliot, whom I’m sure you remember, but it is a real privilege to have the opportunity of meeting you in person.’
To my surprise George, who had entered sheepishly, his head thrust forward, concealing the power of his chest and shoulders, gave a smile of delight at Rose’s welcome, immediately reassured by a display of warmth about as heartfelt as a bus conductor’s thanks.
‘I don’t get to London very often,’ said George, ‘but it’s always a treat.’
It was a curious start. His voice, which still retained the Suffolk undertone, rolled out, and, as he sat down, he smiled shyly at Rose but also man-to-man. They were both fair, they were both of middle height, strongly built, with massive heads; yet, inside that kind of structural resemblance, it would have been hard to find two men more different.
Even spruced up for the interview, George looked not so much untidy as dowdy, in a blue suit with the trouser legs too tight. His shoes, his tie, separated him from Rose as much as his accent did, and there was not only class, there was success dividing them. George, never at his ease except with protégés or women, was more than ever fiddling for the right etiquette in front of this smooth youngish man, more successful than anyone he had met.
Sitting down, he smiled shyly at Rose, and of all the contrasts between them that in their faces was the sharpest. At forty-six Rose’s was blankly youthful, the untouched front of a single-minded man, with eyes heavy and hard. George, three years younger, looked no more than his age; he was going neither grey nor bald; but there were written on him the signs of one who has found his temperament often too much to manage; his forehead was bland and noble, his nose and mouth and whole expression had a cheerful sensual liveliness — except for his eyes, which, light blue in their deep orbits, were abstracted, often lost and occasionally sad.
With the practised and temperate flow of a Civil Service interview, Rose questioned him.
‘I wonder if you would mind, Mr Passant, just helping us by taking us through your career?’
George did so. He might be shy, but he was lucid as always. His school career: his articles with a Woodbridge solicitor –
‘Forgive me interrupting, Mr Passant, but with a school record like yours I’m puzzled why you didn’t try for a university scholarship?’
‘If I’d known what they were like I might have got one,’ said George robustly.
‘Leaving most of us at the post,’ said Rose with a polite bow.
‘I think I should have got one,’ said George, and then suddenly one of his fits of abject diffidence took him over, the diffidence of class. ‘But of course I had no one to advise me, starting where I did.’
‘I should hope that we’re not wasting material like you nowadays, if you will let me say so.’
‘More than you think.’ George was comfortable again. He went on about his articles: the Law Society examinations; the prizes; the job at Eden and Martineau’s, a firm of solicitors in a midland town, as a qualified clerk.
‘Where you’ve been ever since. That is, since October 1924,’ put in Rose smoothly.
‘I’m afraid so,’ said George.
‘Why haven’t you moved?’
‘You ought to be told,’ said George, without any embarrassment, ‘that I had an unpleasant piece of difficulty ten years ago.’
‘I have been told,’ said Rose, also without fuss. ‘I can perfectly well understand that trouble getting in your way since — but what about the years before?’
George answered: ‘I’ve often asked myself. Of course I didn’t have any influence behind me.’
Rose regarded him as though he wanted to examine his lack of initiative. But he thought better of it, and dexterously switched him on to legal points. Like many high-class Civil Servants, Rose had a competent amateur knowledge of law; I sat by, without any need to intervene, while George replied with his old confidence.
Then Rose said: most countries recruit their bureaucracy almost exclusively from lawyers: our bureaucracy is not fond of them: who is right? It was a topic which Rose knew backwards, but George, quite undeterred, argued as though he had been in Permanent Secretaries’ offices for years: I found myself listening, not to the interview, but to the argument for its own sake: I found also that Rose, who usually timed interviews to the nearest two minutes, was letting this over-run by nearly ten. At last he said, bowing from the waist, as ceremonious as though he were saying goodbye to Lufkin or an even greater boss: ‘I think perhaps we might leave it for the moment, don’t you agree, Mr Passant? It has been a most delightful occasion and I shall see that we let you know whether we can possibly justify ourselves in temporarily uprooting you—’