In the same way, I heard occasional tones in his speech that seemed to come from different levels from the rest. I listened with all my attention, as I was to go on listening for a good many years. He was more articulate than anyone I had heard, the words often a little stiff and formal, his turns of phrase rigid by contrast to the loud hearty voice with its undertone of a Suffolk accent. He described his career to me in that articulate fashion, each bit of explanation organized and clear. He was the son of a small town postmaster, had been articled to an Ipswich firm, had done well in his solicitors’ examinations. George did not conceal his satisfaction; everything he said of his training was cheerful, abounding in force, rational, full of his own brimming optimism. Then he came to the end of his articles, and there was a change in tone that I was to hear so often. ‘I hadn’t any influence, of course,’ said George Passant, his voice still firm, articulate, but sharp with shrinking diffidence. I recognized that trick in the first hour we talked, but there were others that puzzled me for years, to which I listened often enough but never found the key.
At Eden and Martineau’s, George was called the assistant solicitor, but this meant no more than that he was qualified. He was in fact a qualified managing clerk on a regular salary. I could not be sure how much he earned, but I guessed about three hundred pounds a year. Yet he thought himself lucky to get the job. He still seemed a little incredulous that they should have appointed him, though it had happened nearly a year before. He told me how he had expected them to reject him after the interview. He believed robustly enough that he was a competent lawyer, but that was something apart. ‘I couldn’t expect to be much good at an interview, of course,’ said George. He was naïf, strangely naïf, in speculating as to why they had chosen him. He fancied that Martineau, the junior partner, must have ‘worked it’. George had complete faith and trust in Martineau.
‘He’s the one real spot of light’, cried George, ramming down his tankard, ‘among the Babbitts and bell-wethers in this wretched town!’
But we did not talk for long that night of our own stories. We wanted to argue. We had come together, struck fire, and there was no time to lose. We were at an age when ideas were precious, and we started with different casts of mind and different counters to throw into the pool. Such knowledge as I had picked up was human and literary; George’s was legal and political. But it was not just knowledge with which he bore me down; his way of thinking might be abstract, but it was full of passion, and he made tremendous ardent plans for the betterment of man. ‘I’m a socialist, of course,’ he said vehemently. ‘What else could I be?’ I burst in that so was I. ‘I assumed that,’ said George, with finality. He added, still more loudly: ‘I should like someone to suggest an alternative for a reasonable man today. I should welcome the opportunity of asking some of our confounded clients how I could reconcile it with my conscience if I wasn’t a socialist. God love me, there are only two defensible positions for a reasonable man. One is to be a philosophical anarchist — and I’m not prepared to indulge in that kind of frivolity; the other’, said George, with crushing and conclusive violence, ‘is to be exactly what I am.’
As the evening passed he assaulted me with constitutional law, political history, how the common man had won his political freedom, how it was for us and our contemporaries to take the next step. He made my politics look childish. George had bills for nationalization ready in his head, clear, systematic, detailed, thought out with the concentration and mental horsepower that I had admired from a distance. ‘The next few years’, said George, having sandbagged all of my criticisms, ‘are going to be a wonderful time to be alive. Eliot, my boy, have you ever thought how lucky you and I are — to be our age at this time of all conceivable times?’
Giddy with drink, with the argument and comradeship, I walked with him through the town. We had not finished talking for the night. We ate some sandwiches in a frowsty café by the station, and then strolled, still arguing, down the streets near our offices, deserted now until next morning, the streets that had once been the centre of the old market town — Horsefair Street, Millstone Lane, Pocklington’s Walk. George’s voice rang thunderously in the deserted streets, echoed between the offices and the dark warehouses. At the corner of Pocklington’s Walk there shone the lighted windows of a club. We stood beneath them, on the dark and empty pavement. George’s hat was tilted back, and I saw his face, which had been open and happy in the heat of argument all night long, turn rebellious, angry, and defiant. The curtains were not drawn, and we watched a few elderly men, prosperously dressed, sitting with glasses at their side in the comfortable room. It was a scene of somnolent and well-to-do repose.
‘The sunkets!’ cried George fiercely. ‘The sunkets!’ He added: ‘What right do they think they’ve got to sit there as though they owned the world?’
In the next days I thought over that first meeting. From the beginning, I believed that I could enlist George’s help. His fellow feeling was so strong, one could not doubt it, and he knew much more than I. Yet I found it painfully hard to explain my position outright and put the question in his hands. Not from scruple, but from pride. I was seeing George regularly now. He took me as an equaclass="underline" I was more direct than he, I could meet him on something like equal terms; it was wounding to upset the companionship in its first days and confess that I was lost.
While George, for all his good will, made it more awkward because of his own heavy-footed delicacy. He was not the man to take a hint or breathe in a situation through his pores. He needed an explicit statement. But he was too deliberately delicate to ask. It was not for a fortnight that he discovered exactly what I did for a living. Even then, his approach was elaborate and oblique, and he seemed to disbelieve my answers.
It happened, George’s first attempt to help me, on a Saturday afternoon, on our way to a league football match. George had a hearty taste for the mass pastimes, chiefly because he enjoyed them, and a little out of defiance. We were jostling among the crowd, the cloth-capped crowd that hustled down the back streets towards the ground; and George, looking straight in front of him, asked a labyrinthine question.
‘I take it that when you’ve got to the top in the education office — which I assume will be in about ten years’ time — you won’t find it necessary to make the schools in this town change over to the more gentlemanly sport of rugger?’
I was already accustomed to George’s outbursts of anti-snobbery, of social hatred. I grinned, and assured him that he could sleep easy; but I knew that I was evading the real question.
‘By the way,’ George persisted, ‘I take it that my assumption is correct?’
‘What assumption, George?’
‘You will be properly recognized at the education office in ten years’ time?’
I made myself speak plainly.
‘In ten years’ time,’ I said, ‘if I stay there — I might have gone up a step or two. As a clerk.’
‘I’m not prepared to accept that,’ said George. ‘You’re underestimating yourself.’
We came to the ground. As we passed through the turnstiles, I asked: ‘Do you realize what my job is?’
‘I’ve got a general impression,’ said George uncomfortably, ‘but I’m not entirely clear.’
We clambered up the terrace, and there I began to tell him. But George was not inclined to believe it. He proceeded to speak as though my job were considerably grander and had more future than I had ever, in all my wishes, dared to imagine.
‘It may be difficult now,’ said George, ‘but it’s obvious that you’re marked down for promotion. It’s perfectly clear that they must have some machinery for pulling people like you to the top. Otherwise, I don’t see how local government is going to function.’
That was a typical piece of George’s optimism. I was tempted to leave him with it. Like my mother, I had to struggle to admit the humble truth — even though I managed to keep a hold on it, sometimes a precarious one. It was bitter. Yet, again like my mother, I felt that I must swallow the bitterness in order not to miss a chance — to impress on George that I was nothing but a clerk.
‘I’m a very junior clerk, George. I’m getting twenty-five shillings a week. I shall be ticking off names for the next five years. Just as I’m doing now.’
George was both angry and abashed. He swore, and the violence of his curse made some youths in white mufflers turn and gape at him. He hesitated to ask me more, and then did so. Awkwardly he tried to pretend that things were not as bad as I painted them. Then he swore again, and he was near one of his storms of rage.
He said brusquely: ‘Something will have to be done about it.’
He was brusque with embarrassment. I too was speaking harshly.
‘That’s easy to say,’ I replied.
‘I shall have to take a hand myself,’ said George, still in a rough and offhand tone.
Now I had only to ask for help. I wanted it acutely; I had been playing for it; now it was mine for the asking, I was too proud to move. I turned as awkward as George.
‘I expect I shall be able to manage,’ I said.
George was abashed again. He stared fixedly at the empty field, where the turf gleamed brilliantly under the sullen sky.
‘It’s time these teams came out,’ he said.