James Hilton: Collected Novels (19 page)

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 postwar 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 naïve 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 favors? 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 humor—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 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 hearth-rug, 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.”

Not till long afterwards did he guess why she had done so, but Whaley’s visit undoubtedly led to a second social occasion, far less pleasant, that showed how much further she was prepared to go. It began by her asking George if he would meet some friends of hers, Mr. and Mrs. Wallington by name, for dinner one evening in Mulcaster. It seemed she had picked up a chance acquaintance with Mrs. Wallington in a Mulcaster dress shop, and George, who thought it odd that he should be dragged into it, demurred at first, but on being reminded of how hospitably she had behaved towards Tom Whaley consented on one condition—that he himself should be the host. “Then if I don’t like ’em I don’t have to invite ’em back,” he explained, with sturdy if not too flattering independence.

So in due course Livia took him to a Mulcaster restaurant where the appointment had been arranged. There he was presented, not only to the couple, but to an extra man, and also to the revelation that all of them seemed to know Livia far better than he had anticipated. Although he was usually able to get on well with strangers from the outset, he felt curiously ill-at-ease that evening, and as it progressed he became less and less happy for a variety of reasons, one of which was quite humiliating—he didn’t think he would have enough money to pay the bill, especially as they were all ordering expensive drinks. But apart from that, he found none of his previous pleasure in witnessing Livia’s social success; it was one thing to introduce her to a friend of his own and watch the magic begin to operate, but to see the
fait accompli
in the shape of already established friendships with strangers was another matter. He did not think it was jealousy that he felt, but rather a sense of annoyance that, after sneering at Whaley, she should show her preference for men like those two. For they were both of the blustery, aggressive type, especially the one who was not the husband and had not been invited. His name was Mangin, and from certain boastful references George gathered that he had lately made a good deal of money in the advertising business. There was a cold swagger about him that met more than its match in Livia’s repartee, but George himself could not come to terms with it, and was made even less comfortable by his wife’s peculiar ability to do so.

As the dinner went on and more drinks fed the bluster, he fell into a glum silence that became equally a torture to maintain or to try to break. He was relieved when Mangin made a move to leave, mentioning a train he must catch; but then came the problem of the bill; why on earth had Livia chosen such a swank establishment, and would such a place be satisfied with his personal check? He was trying rather clumsily to signal the waiter and learn the worst when Mangin shouted: “What the deuce are you bothering about, Boswell? Everything’s taken care of at source—don’t you know me yet? Anyhow, your wife does—that’s the main thing…” Whereupon, with a lordly gesture amidst ensuing laughter, he intercepted the waiter whom George had summoned and ostentatiously tipped him a pound note, then adding to George: “By the way, Boswell, I’d like a word with you if you can spare a moment.”