So Well Remembered (19 page)

That sort of thing…

(George reflected afterwards that the old man must like it, or he would
get offended; but then it occurred to him that he would have got offended
already, if he had thought that George really meant what he said, but he
doubtless supposed he didn’t. Yet George DID, in a way, and knowing this,
found himself up against a familiar dilemma: that to say what you mean
without ever offending people is usually to say what you mean without making
them believe you mean what you say—and what was the use of that? Well,
maybe SOME use, sometimes. For, as a victim expressed HIS side of it once:
“George tells you what a bastard you are, and you laugh, and then after he’s
gone you suddenly say to yourself—‘Of course, George was only
joking—it’s a good job he doesn’t really know I AM a bit of a
bastard!’”)

Richard was frank enough also. He once said: “George, I’m sorry for ye,
married to a Channing. Her father was no good, and her mother wasn’t much
better, and the life she lived at Stoneclough that last year before he died
—well, it was no Sunday-school picnic, believe me.”

It was impossible to resent this, in its context, yet George felt impelled
to answer defensively: “Oh, Livia’s all right”—before curiosity made
him add: “She had a bad time, you mean?”

Richard Felsby said impressively: “There’s only one man who could have
told you—and that’s Dr. Whiteside, and he’s dead. He never told me, for
that matter—but I knew how he felt, because I remember what he said
when he got news of her father’s death—‘Thank God,’ he said, ‘for
everybody’s sake.’… Well, well—maybe that’s more than I should have
passed on. But I’ll tell ye this, George—the Channing blood’s had a
streak of moonshine in it lately. That’s what made me leave the firm. I found
I was getting too sensible for it.”

“You’re not as sensible as you think,” retorted George, allowing the
conversation to become bantering again. He guessed it would be good policy
not to press his enquiries at this stage, especially as the old man would
doubtless return to the subject at a later meeting and tell all he knew.
George had had enough experience of wheedling information to know that an air
of not too much concern is the best wheedler. And besides, he must keep in
mind the other object of his wheedling. So he added, still banteringly: “If
ye WERE sensible ye’d give me that land for a park. Think of the taxes ye’d
save.”

At which the old man shook and spluttered with merriment to a degree that
quite possibly imposed a strain on his heart.

Suddenly it all came to an end.

Livia found out about the more or less regular visits and flew into the
kind of tantrum that George had certainly not anticipated; if he had, he
would doubtless not have called on Felsby in the first place. He had been
prepared for her coolness over the association, but he was amazed to discover
how profoundly the whole thing must matter to her. “Oh, George,” she cried,
as if she had discovered him in some mortal sin, “how COULD you do it? I HATE
him—I don’t want to have anything to do with him. You knew that. And to
think that secretly—all the time—so that I only got to hear of it
by accident—”

Perhaps because he did feel a little guilty in that one respect, he was
more than usually ready to defend himself. “Nay, let’s keep a sense of
proportion, Livia. No harm’s been done to anyone just because I’ve had a few
chats with an old man—even if you do count him an enemy for some reason
I’ve never been told about. Besides, I went to him chiefly on business
—I wanted him to give the town a park.”

“Oh, George, what does a park matter?”

“Just what HE said.”

“The main thing is, you must never, NEVER go there again.”

George stared at her, for the first time in his life, with a look of
disenchantment.

“I couldn’t promise that, Livia.”

“WHAT?” And she was facing him, the issue suddenly alive between them.

“I’m sorry, Livia. I don’t like to upset you, but I’ve got to think of the
town’s interests. If you know what I mean.”

“Oh yes, I know. I didn’t know—but that’s unimportant. It makes no
difference.”

(She knew what? What was it she hadn’t known? What was unimportant? What
made no difference? He was by now accustomed to the mental gymnastics that
her talk often demanded; she spoke in a sort of verbal shorthand, so that one
had to grab at the meaning as it flashed by, and even then not be sure of
getting it. Basically, he felt it to be a species of natural arrogance; she
used the dotted line of her own immediate thoughts and expected others to
follow her without that advantage.)

He said again: “I’m sorry.” But in his look there was still the absence of
any surrender.

She returned that look for an instant, then quietly went out of the
room.

Yet left alone, he had no sense of victory—only a feeling of
emptiness that made him wonder if the issue had been worth facing at all.

Would he, despite the stand he had taken, visit Richard Felsby again?

The next morning, after a troubled night of thinking the matter over, he
was still unsure, and to the end of his life he did not know what he would
have done eventually; for on the evening of that next day Richard Felsby died
peacefully in his sleep.

A few weeks later George happened to meet Ferguson, the lawyer who was
settling the estate. “Too bad, George,” he commented. “You nearly pulled it
off.”

“Pulled what off?”

“You nearly got that park.” Then Ferguson explained in confidence that a
few days before he died Felsby had talked about leaving some land as a gift
to the town, but on one condition—“and this’ll make you sit up,
George—on condition that it’s called ‘The Channing Memorial Park’!
You’d have had a fine job persuading Browdley to THAT—some of them have
enough to remember the name Channing by, without a park… Perhaps it’s just
as well he didn’t have time to give me definite instructions.”

“Aye,” said George, “it’d have put me in a tight corner.” But then he
began to laugh. “And that’s just where he wanted me, the old devil…”

Ferguson went on: “As matters stand, his housekeeper gets the lot, and
SHE’S made a will leaving everything to a training college for Methodist
ministers… So there goes the last of the Channing and Felsby fortunes,
George—and you can add that to your lecture on ‘Browdley Past and
Present’!”

The child was called Martin (Livia’s choice) and took after
George, in
appearance at least, enough to have given the old man a measure of sardonic
satisfaction. During the first year of his life Martin grinned far oftener
than he cried, almost as if he knew he had been born on the day his father
only narrowly missed becoming a member of Parliament; and when George grinned
back, it was as if to say: Don’t worry, I’ll manage it next time. But
political affairs are incalculable, and as events developed, it began to seem
highly unlikely that any next time would come soon.

This revived Livia’s plea that George should pack up and leave Browdley.
He tried to avoid serious argument on the issue, yet it was clear his
attitude had not changed, and there grew a hard core of deadlock between
them, always liable to jar nerves and send off sparks if any subordinate
differences occurred. They did occur, as in all married lives; nevertheless,
by and large, Councillor and Mrs. Boswell could have been called a fairly
happy couple—except on those few occasions when they could have been
called Councillor and Mrs. Boswell. For Livia’s dislike of the town made her
scorn the slightest official recognition of her existence. After a few
experiments, she declined to attend civic functions so persistently that
George ceased to ask her, and in the end she was not even invited. This must
have helped rather than hindered him, for Livia was still unpopular in
Browdley, especially when the world-wide post-war depression brought sudden
distress to the town. It was easy to choose a local name as a scapegoat
—easier than to figure what the whole thing was about. And who COULD
figure what the whole thing was about, anyway?

George evidently thought he could, for on a certain day in July, 1920, he
wrote the following in one of his Guardian editorials:

“The signing by Germany of the protocol containing the disarmament terms
of the Allies marks another landmark on the long road towards world recovery.
There are some who profess to be concerned about the future of thousands of
workers in the arms industry if production is cut down to a minimum; but to
that na ve misgiving every economist and social worker has a ready answer.
For the real wealth of the world consists, not merely in things created by
hand or brain, but in things so created THAT ARE WORTH CREATING. For this
reason we may regard yesterday’s event as a step not only towards peace, but
BECAUSE of that, towards PROSPERITY.”

George himself needed a step towards prosperity as much as anyone, for his
paper was losing both circulation and advertising revenue, and he found
himself suddenly on the edge of a precipice which a financially shrewder man
would have foreseen. Everything then happened at once, as it usually does;
people to whom he owed money (the bank, the newsprint company, the income-tax
authorities) demanded payment; those who owed George money, and there were
hundreds of them, made excuses for further delay. In this crisis Livia
stepped into the breach and proved herself, to George’s utter astonishment, a
thoroughly capable business woman. The first thing she did was to produce
some sort of order in the printing-office, where Will Spivey’s slackness had
held sway for years. By making Will’s life a misery she pared expenses to a
minimum and increased the margin of profit on whatever small printing orders
came in. Then she began a campaign to secure at least part payment of what
was owing, while at the same time she made contact with creditors and
persuaded most of them to have patience. Altogether it was an excellent job
of reorganization, carried out so expeditiously that George made the mistake
of supposing that she enjoyed doing it.

“The fact is, I’m not cut out for business,” he admitted, after
congratulating her on having saved the Guardian from bankruptcy.

“And do you think
I
am? Do you think I LIKE asking Browdley people
for favours? Do you really think I’m doing this for your sake or my sake or
for your old Guardian?”

There was another thing that she did. It so happened that Councillor
Whaley carried influence at the bank where the Guardian had an overdraft, and
with this in mind, Livia readily agreed to something she had long balked at,
and that was simply to have Councillor Whaley to tea. She had always said she
knew Whaley disliked her and she had no desire to meet him, and George had
always urged that Whaley was his friend and that she ought at least to give
him the chance to change his mind about her. Her sudden surrender on the
matter brought joy to George that was unmarred by the slightest suspicion of
an ulterior motive, and when the day came and Tom Whaley arrived (for a ‘high
tea’, according to Browdley fashion), George was sheerly delighted by the
result. It was almost ludicrous to see a cynical old chap like Tom falling so
obviously under her spell, yet no wonder, for George thought he had never
seen her in such a fascinating humour—warm, gay, sympathetic. Tom
—it was his weakness as well as George’s—liked to talk, and Livia
not only listened, but gave him continual openings, making his chatter seem
at times even brilliant (which it never was); and as George looked on,
quietly satisfied that all was going so well, he could not help adoring her
with such intensity that he wondered what exactly caused the feeling in him.
Would it have been the same had there been some fractional mathematical
difference in the angle of her nose and forehead? His experience of women
before Livia had been limited, but enough for him to know or think he knew
what sex-attraction was; yet now, honestly though he tried, he could neither
confirm nor deny that what he felt for Livia had anything to do with sex. It
puzzled him enormously and quite happily as he sat there, staring at her face
across the crumpets and cold ham.

When, having stayed much longer than they had expected, Whaley put on his
overcoat to go, he seized a chance to whisper to George at the street door:
“George—she’s a winner—whether she wins elections for ye or not!”
He was in a mellow, sentimental, patriarchal mood—so utterly had Livia
bewitched him.

A moment later George, still beaming from the effect of his friend’s
remark, found Livia on her knees on the hearthrug, warming her hands at the
fire. Her face was turned away from him as he approached; he began
cheerfully: “Ah, that’s been a grand time! You should have heard what Tom
thinks about you—he just told me—”

All at once he stopped, because she had turned round, and the look on her
face was as startling as her first words.

“Oh, George, what a BORE! Such a SILLY old man! How can you possibly
endure him? That awful, high-pitched voice, and the way he talks, talks,
TALKS—”

George gasped incredulously: “You mean you don’t LIKE him? You don’t like
Tom Whaley?”

“What is there to like?”

“But—but—he’s a good fellow—he’s against me on the
Council, I know that—but he’s really all right, Tom is—”

“George, he’s dull and he’s pompous and he loves the sound of his own
voice. And he WILL go on explaining the same thing over and over again. I
thought I should have screamed while he was telling me the difference between
the Local Government Board and the Ministry of Health—”

“He’s one of my best friends, anyhow.”

“Oh, George, I’m sorry… maybe I was in the wrong mood.”

“You didn’t seem to be.”

“Couldn’t you see I was pretending?”

No; he hadn’t seen it. He said, anxious to ease matters: “Well, if you
were, I appreciate that much. It was nice of you to give such a good
impression.”