The Conscience of the Rich (26 page)

As we walked down Grosvenor Place, Charles went on: ‘A doctor has his moments, but most of his time it can’t be interesting. It just can’t. The percentage of ordinary workaday tedium is bound to be high. And I suspect that’s true of any job, isn’t it? One always hears them described with their high moments heightened a bit; it’s nice to hear, but it’s quite different when you begin living them. Don’t you agree? Don’t you admit that’s true? Look, Lewis, you possess a great capacity for getting interest out of what you’re doing: I’ve never met anyone with a greater: but tell the truth, isn’t your own job – aren’t the various jobs you’ve tackled – mostly tedious when you come to live them?’

We argued for a time. Charles said: ‘Anyway, doctoring is tedious for nine hours out of every ten. Anyone who tells you it isn’t either doesn’t know what excitement is or suffers from an overdose of romantic imagination. And for me it’s also tedious in rather a different way. I don’t think you’ll sympathize much with this. But I mean that it doesn’t give me anything hard to bite on mentally. I’ve got a taste for thinking: but I shouldn’t be any worse a doctor if I were a much more stupid man.’

Since we began our walk, he had been talking without guard. He was not trying to protect or disguise himself, and at this point he did not attempt to conceal his intellectual arrogance, his certainty of his own intellectual power, his regret as he felt that power rusting.

‘So you see,’ Charles gave a smile. ‘I’m resigned to being distinctly bored for the rest of my life.’

‘But there are compensations,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Charles, ‘there are compensations.’

‘There are compensations,’ he repeated. ‘Each month I count up my earnings very carefully. Last month I made over eighty pounds – if they all pay me. You’ve no idea how pleasant it is to earn your own living. It’s a pleasure you can only really appreciate if you’ve been supported in luxury ever since you were born.’ He smiled broadly, and added:

‘There are other compensations too. People show such confidence in one. It’s nice to be able to justify that sometimes. Once or twice in the last few weeks I’ve felt some use.’

We had crossed in front of Victoria Station and came out into Wilton Road. I asked: ‘Charles, if you had your time again, would you make the same choice?’

‘Without any doubt,’ he said.

I looked at him under the light of a street lamp. He had become older than any of us. He was carrying a mackintosh; he was stooping more than he used to. At that moment – while he was saying, his eyes glinting maliciously at his own expense: ‘If I had my time again, I might not even take quite so long to make up my mind’ – I was moved back to the evening in Regent Street long ago, when we argued about goodness. I felt the shock that assails one as one suddenly sees an intimate in a transfiguring light, the shock of utter familiarity and utter surprise. Here was Charles, whom I knew so well, whom I took for granted with the ease of a long friendship – and at the same time, I was thinking with incredulity, as though I had never met him before, what a curious choice he had made.

In Antrobus Street the light was glowing over the night-bell. We said good-night in front of his house, and I began to walk west along the Embankment. The night was so caressingly warm that I wanted to linger, looking at the river. There was an oily swell on the dark water, and on the swell the bands of reflected light slowly swayed. I could see the red and green eyes of lamps on the bridges up the river. I stayed there, watching the bands of light sway on the water, and, as I watched, among the day-dreams drifting through my mind were memories and thoughts about Charles.

The river smell was carried on a breath of air. Down towards Chelsea the water glistened and a red light flashed. Leaning on the Embankment, I thought that, in a different time, when the conscience of the rich was not so sick, Charles might not have sacrificed himself, at least not so completely. Some of his abnegation one could attribute to his time, just as some of his surface quirks, his outbursts of arrogance and diffidence, one could attribute to his being born a Jew.

But none of that seemed to me to matter very much, compared with what I thought I had seen in him, walking in the Wilton Road half an hour before.

I thought I had seen a nature which, at the deepest, was never sure of love. Never sure of receiving it: perhaps never sure of giving it: vulnerable and at the same time resenting any approach.

It was the kind of nature which could have broken his life – for men with that flaw at the root often spend their lives in pursuing unrequited love, or indulging their cruelty on others, or tormenting themselves with jealousy, or retiring into loneliness and spiritual pride. But in Charles this deepest self was housed in a temperament in all other respects strong, active, healthy, full of vigour. It was that blazing contrast which I had seen, or imagined that I had seen.

Perhaps it was that contrast which made him want to search for the good.

He had always been fascinated by the idea of goodness. Was it because he was living constantly with a part of himself which he hated? To know what goodness means, perhaps one needs to have lain awake at night, hating one’s own nature. The sweet, the harmonious, the untempted, have no reason to hate their natures; it is the others, the guilty or the sadic – it seemed to me most of all the sadic – who are driven to find what goodness is.

But men like Charles did not find it in themselves. It was not as easy as all that. He wanted to be good; so his active nature led him to want to do good. He was living a useful life now – but that was all. No one felt that as a result he had reached a state of goodness: he never felt it for a moment himself. He knew that, with his insight and sarcastic honesty. He would have liked to feel goodness in himself – he would have liked to believe that others felt it. But he knew that in fact others often felt a sense of strain, because he was acting against part of his nature. They did not feel he was apt for a life of abnegation. They distrusted his conscience, and looked back with regret to the days before it dominated him – to the days, indeed, in which they remembered him as gay, malicious, idle, brilliant.

I looked down at the water, not wanting to drag myself away. I had never felt more fond of him, and into my thoughts there flickered and passed scenes in which he had taken part, the night of our examination years before, quarrels in Bryanston Square, a glimpse of him walking with his arm round Ann. I thought I had seen in him that night some of the goodness he admired. But not in the way he had searched for it. Instead, there was a sparkle of good in the irony with which he viewed his own efforts; in the disillusioned certainty with which he knew that he at least was right to be useful, that he could have chosen no other way, even if it now seemed prosaic, lacking in the radiance which others attained by chance.

Most of all there was a sparkle of good in the state to which his struggle with his own nature had brought him. He could still hate himself. Through that hatred, and not through his conscience, through the nights when he had lain awake darkened by remorse, he had taken into his blood the sarcastic astringent experience of life which shone out of him as he comforted another’s self-reproach and lack of self-forgiveness.

I did not see Mr March again before the day I had arranged to meet Herbert Getliffe, but I received an anxious note, saying that he hoped I would persevere with my enquiries and relieve his mind as soon as I had information. The lull of reassurance was over and his worry was nagging at him again. There were few states more infectious than anxiety, I thought, as I walked through the courts to Getliffe’s chambers, with an edge to my own nerves.

Getliffe had taken silk a year before. There he was, sitting at his great desk, where I had sat beside him often enough. Four briefs were untied in front of him; on a side table stood perhaps thirty more, these neatly stacked and the pink ribbons tied. I caught sight of a lavish fee on the top one – it might not have been accidental that it was that fee a visitor could see.

For two or three minutes after I was shown in, Getliffe stared intently at the brief he was studying. His brow was furrowed, his neck stiff with concentration; he was the model of a man absorbed. This was a new mannerism altogether. At last he looked up.

‘Heavens, you’re here, are you, L S?’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I was so completely up to the eyes that I just didn’t realize. Well, it’s good to see you, L S.’

I asked him how his practice was going since he took silk.

‘I mustn’t grumble,’ said Getliffe, sweeping an arm towards the briefs on the side table. ‘No, I mustn’t grumble. It was a grave decision to take; I should like you to remember what a grave decision it was. I could have rubbed on for ever as a junior, and it would have kept me in shoe-leather’ – his dignity cracked for a second – ‘and the occasional nice new hat.’ Then he settled himself even more impressively. ‘But two considerations influenced me, L S. I thought of the increased chances it would give one to give promising young men their first jump on the ladder. One could be more useful to a lot more young men. Young men in the position you were, when you first came looking for a friendly eye. Believe me, I thought of you personally, L S, when I was making the decision. You know how much I like helping brilliant young men. Perhaps that was the most important consideration. The other was that one owes a duty to one’s profession and if one can keep oneself alive as a counsel of His Majesty, one ought not to refuse the responsibility.’

No one could have enjoyed it more, I thought. No one could have more enjoyed throwing himself into this new, serious, senatorial part. He added: ‘Of course, if one keeps one’s head above water, one gets certain consolations for the responsibility. I’m thankful to say that may happen.’ He chuckled. ‘I haven’t had to cut off my evening glass of beer. And it’s fun to take my wife round the town and order a dollop of champagne without doing sums in the head.’ He was in triumphant form. He felt he was going to arrive. He kept giving me heavy homilies, such as were due from a man of weight. He believed them, just as he believed in everything he said while he was saying it.

After a time I said: ‘By the way, I came to ask you something.’

‘If there is any help I can give you, L S,’ said Getliffe, ‘you have only to ask. Ask away.’

‘You remember the trouble that happened just before your brother’s wedding?’

‘What trouble?’

‘Rumours were going round about some investments in Howard & Hazlehurst.’

Getliffe looked at me sternly.

‘Who are Howard & Hazlehurst?’ he said.

He seemed to believe that he had forgotten. I reminded him of our conversation that evening in chambers, when he was frightened that Porson would expose the deal.

‘I remember it vaguely,’ said Getliffe. He went on reprovingly: ‘I always thought that you exaggerated the danger. You’re a bit too highly strung for the rough and tumble, you know. I think you were very wise to remove yourself most of your time to a place with ivy round the walls. One has to be very strong for this kind of life.’ He paused. ‘Yes, I remember it vaguely. I’m sorry to say that poor old Porson has gone right down the hill since then.’

‘I wanted to ask you,’ I said, ‘if you’d heard that some similar rumours were going round now.’

‘I have been told of some nonsense or other,’ said Getliffe in a firm and confident tone. ‘They appear to be saying that I used inside knowledge last year. I’ve ignored it so far: but if they go on I shall have to protect myself. One owes a duty to one’s position.’

‘Have they the slightest excuse to go on?’

‘I shouldn’t let everyone ask me that question, L S,’ said Getliffe reproachfully. ‘But we know each other well enough to pass it. You’ve seen me do things that I hope and believe I couldn’t do nowadays. So I’ll answer you. They haven’t the slightest excuse, either in law or out of it. I’ve never had a cleaner sheet than I’ve had the last two years. And if I can prove these people are throwing mud, they’ll find it a more expensive game than snooker.’ He looked at me steadily with his brown, opaque eyes. He said: ‘I can’t answer for anyone else. I can’t answer for March, Hawtin, or the ministerial bigwigs, but I’m glad to say that my own sheet is absolutely clean. A good deal cleaner, I might tell you, than some of our common acquaintances’ about the time that you were dragging up just now. I suppose you know that old Sir Philip did himself remarkably well out of the Howard & Hazlehurst affair? He was much too slim to have anything to do with Howard & Hazlehurst, of course. No, he just bought a whole great wad in a rocky little company whose shares were down to twopence and a kiss from everyone on the board. Well, Howard & Hazlehurst took over that company six months later. They wanted it for their new contract. Those shares are now 41s. 6d. and as safe as young Aunt Fanny. Our friends in Israel must have made a packet.’

His manner became weighty again, as he went on: ‘I must tell you that I strongly disapprove. I strongly disapproved when it happened, though I was a younger man then and I hadn’t done as well as I have now. I don’t believe anyone in an official position ought to have any dealings, that is, speculative dealings, on the Stock Exchange. And I should like to advise you against it, L S. There must be times in your little consultancy when you gain a bit of inside knowledge that a not-too-scrupulous man could turn into money. I dare say you’d bring it off every now and then. But you’ll be happier if you don’t do it. I don’t know what you collect from your little consultancy and that job of yours with the ivy round the walls. But I advise you to be content with it, whatever it is. I’m content with mine, I don’t mind telling you.’

We went out for lunch. As usual, I paid. When I left him, on my way to find Porson at an address in Notting Hill, two thoughts were chasing each other through my mind. Getliffe was speaking the truth about his ‘clean sheet’ in recent years. His protests were for once innocent, not brazen; it was a luxury for him to have such a clear conscience. The rumours about him seemed to be quite false. That surprised me; but it did not surprise me anything like so much as his revelation about Sir Philip. I did not know how much to believe; remembering Mr March’s report of his visit to Philip’s bedside, I was sure there was something in it.