The Conscience of the Rich (9 page)

When we arrived in the crowded drawing-room, Charles took me to Hart’s side as soon as my introduction to Lady Holford was over. He reminded Hart about me. He set us talking. Hart was an uneasy nervous man who broke into flashes of speech: he liked Charles, it was clear, and even more he liked having someone he knew at this party, so unfluctuating in its noise-level, so ornate. In a few minutes, we moved out through the great French windows, down the steps, into the sunken garden. A waiter brought us three balloon glasses and put into each a couple of inches of brandy.

‘His lordship’s compliments,’ the waiter said to Charles, ‘and he wishes to say that this is
not
Napoleon brandy. But it is reasonably old.’

As soon as the waiter turned to ascend the steps, Charles looked at Albert Hart and winked. Charles’ face became gay, the more as he saw Hart and me beginning to make contact. Soon Charles left us to ‘do his duty’ in the house, and Hart and I enjoyed comparing the display round us to the subdued opulence of a March Friday night. He was supple, gossipy, devoted to his work and still, at the age of fifty or more, overawed when he went into society. I felt his heart warm to me when I told him that this was the first time I had set foot in a London garden. He was shrewd, he was trying to find out whether there was anything in me: he also had a taste for sly jokes at the Holfords’ expense, he was glad to have someone there to listen.

The garden was filling up. Hart was joined by his friend the solicitor, who at once asked me some leading questions about Herbert Getliffe. I had to try to be both forthcoming and discreet; but Hart was already friendly, and I thought the other man was ready to approve of me. The conversation returned to the Holfords: I began to feel happy as I watched the people round us, the lights at the bottom of the garden, the profound blue of the London evening sky.

Two women, mother and daughter, acquaintances of Hart and the Marches, joined us for a time. The girl was to be presented at Court the next month and the mention of royalty stimulated Albert Hart. He remembered a story of Holford, who was said, in the first hey-day of his success, to have let drop at one of his parties: ‘I suppose my daughter may as well be presented this year. It must be a bore for the monarchs, though, to see faces they know so well.’

That must have happened a few years before the Holfords’ title finally submerged their name. They first appeared in England in 1860, and they were then called Samuel; they hyphenated themselves to Samuel-Wigmore within ten years, and had dropped the Samuel by the end of the century. They had made a fortune out of cigarettes, and the man in whose garden we were standing could have bought up the entire March family. Their entertainments had been flamboyant thirty years before, and had grown steadily grander; although they boasted of their acquaintance with royalty, they genuinely had royal acquaintances to boast of. This ‘little evening party in the garden’ (in the largest garden within a mile of Hyde Park Corner) took place each year in June, just as a sign, so Albert Hart said, that they might do some less simple entertaining later in the year.

Though they had disguised their name and though nine out of ten of their guests were Gentiles, they had remained faithful Jews. And, though their success had been on a different scale, they still looked up to the Marches as one of the senior Jewish families in England, while they were newcomers. Invitations to their parties went to the Marches as a matter of right, but the Marches rarely attended. Charles would not have thought of coming that night, but for me: and yet, when he accepted the invitation and asked if he might bring a friend, the Holfords chose to forget his family’s stiffness. They seemed to feel that Jewish society was still hierarchical, that rank still meant something. It was not by accident that Holford’s message about the brandy had been sent to Charles.

It was curious to see two different social codes collide, I thought, taking my last sip of old, but not Napoleon, brandy. I felt satisfied with the evening. I felt so satisfied that when I caught sight of Charles again I did not care how much deference the Holfords gave him. He was standing at the top of the steps above the garden. A dark-haired girl was looking up at him. The light from an open window picked out the glass in his hand, the gardenia in his buttonhole, and threw his features into relief.

Then he came down the steps, and found our group. His eyes met mine, searching for how things had gone. It was not hard for him to see that I was pleased.

A moment afterwards, the lights round the garden suddenly went out. In the warm darkness we were left mystified; people asked each other what was happening. What was happening was soon known, as three gigantic Catherine wheels spurted out of the distance. Lord Holford was producing a firework display, extravagant, varied and, as we came to realize, inordinately long.

A case came to me not long after that party: not from the man I talked to there, but from another solicitor who sent a considerable amount of work to Hart and whom Charles had arranged for me to meet.

It was not such an important case as Charles’, but far better than anything I could reasonably expect. I had to prosecute in a libel action. It was not difficult, the case was fairly self-evident; but I had not much time, as someone else had thrown up the brief through illness, and with a case so good it would be disastrous not to win.

In fact, I did win, though I stumbled in the last stages. Charles had helped me prepare, and was present all through the hearing. I saw his face, clouded and frowning, as, with the case nearly won, I went off on a side-line that seemed tempting. A witness was obstinate, I knew that I might have done the case harm; but I was able to recover and make some pretence of passing it off.

When I got the verdict, I joined Charles. He congratulated me, and then, his eyes bright, said: ‘I’m glad. But what possessed you to draw that absurd red herring?’

I defended myself. I said it had not been as bad as that.

‘Oh, you did very well. Henriques [the solicitor] is satisfied with you; you’re a good investment.’

His glance kept its glint. ‘But still, you did lose sight of the point for five minutes, didn’t you? It was a classical example of using two arguments where one would do, don’t you agree?’

I felt let down. All in all I had done well: I wanted praise, not his kind of candour. He was fond of telling the truth, I thought with no detachment at all, especially when it was unpleasant.

Herbert Getliffe did just the opposite. He was fond of rejoicing with him who rejoices. He behaved as though he had won the case, instead of me, and immediately set about improvising a celebratory supper (‘each man to pay for himself and partner. I always believe in Dutch treat,’ he told me, with energy and sincerity). Over the telephone, at four hours’ notice, he invited guests, most of whom were only acquaintances of mine. Charles could not come, and Getliffe whistled and clucked his tongue in disapprobation. ‘He ought to have put everything else off, on a night like this! But you’ll find, Eliot, that some people take one view of the responsibilities of friendship, and some take another.’ He added, in his most reflective, earnest, and affectionate tone: ‘Of course some chaps in the position of young March would have done something for you in the way of introductions – instead of letting you sink or swim. I don’t believe in flattering myself, Eliot, but I must say it was a providential thing that you came to my chambers, so that you had one well-wisher at any rate to look after you a bit–’

With genuine feeling he developed the theme. He was so sincere, so full of emotion, that he found it impossible to remember that he had done nothing for me whatsoever; listening, I found it nearly as impossible myself.

At the meal, I began by being jubilant and boastful, trying to impress my neighbour, a cool and handsome girl. Getting nowhere, I went on boasting, still exalted: yet I felt this party was becoming a joke against me, and as we stood about when we had finished eating I was smiling to myself.

It was then that I caught sight of a young woman watching me: she too was smiling, but with what looked like sympathy. All I knew about her was that her name was Ann Simon, and I had met her for the first time that night. I went across to her.

‘You ought to be pleased, oughtn’t you?’ she said. Her tone was kind, a little shy, almost deferential. As I looked at her, I was struck by a contrast. Her face was open and intelligent, with bright-blue eyes folded at the inner corners; under her left eye was a mole. Against her thick dark hair, her temples seemed delicate and white. One could call her pretty, certainly good-looking, but at the first glance one was thinking of the character in her face. That was where the contrast came, for her figure was elegant, soft and supple, more carefully and expensively dressed, so I thought, than any woman in the room. Her manner was at the same time direct and shy, warm but not at all flirtatious. I found myself talking to her as an ally.

Yes, I ought to be pleased, I said, it had been an important day for me. But this celebration wasn’t exactly what I might have imagined. The young woman I was fond of was not there, nor were any of my friends. On the other hand, Getliffe and some of his chums were having a remarkably good time.

‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘you couldn’t have arranged anything in advance, could you? I mean, you couldn’t have got your friends to stand by?’

‘I was touching wood too hard,’ I replied.

She nodded her head in comprehension. It would have been easy to tell her about my love-affair. She asked about my friends: I mentioned Charles March, and asked if she knew the family. Yes, she did, and she had met him once. It was agreeable standing there talking to her, and I thought she felt so too. We were the same age; she was kind and clever and we were not making any demands on each other. Meeting her seemed a good end to that day.

I told Charles about her. He was not sure who she was, but he was interested in her effect on me. Just then we had sharper eyes for each other than for ourselves. He saw that I had fallen deeply in love too early, and that Sheila had already left a mark on my life: he saw also that, too much committed to Sheila as I was, I often felt disproportionate gratitude to women who gave me what she could not. Such as ordinary simple friendliness, which was what I had received from Ann Simon.

With him, I saw just as clearly that he wanted to find someone to love: or rather he wanted to lose himself in someone. It was the opposite of my experience. Why he had missed it, I could not imagine: but now that he was consciously looking for it, I thought his chances were getting less.

That summer he went on living his idle life. He spent days at Lord’s and Wimbledon; took a season-ticket for the ballet; flirted with a young woman he met at a coming-out dance; arrived a good many times at Bryanston Square when the door was already unlocked for the morning.

The mantelpiece in his sitting-room was shining with invitations. Less than half came from Jewish houses. He was a highly eligible match, and hostesses were anxious to secure him. That year, he was eager to accept. His car drove with the others to Grosvenor Square, Knightsbridge, the houses round the Park. It was a hot brilliant summer, and sometimes I used to walk past those houses, whose lights shone out while the sky was still bright. Dance-tunes sounded through the open windows, and girls’ voices as they walked under the awning from the street.

Charles found someone to flirt with; but he did not find what he was looking for. Just before he went down to Mr March’s country house for the summer, he was sharper-tempered than I had known him.

One afternoon in July, as I sat in the drawing-room at Bryanston Square, Mr March entered even more quickly than usual, said: ‘I’m always glad to have your company. But I’ve a great many worries to occupy me now,’ and went out again.

It sounded ominous: but I discovered that he was talking about the yearly move to Haslingfield, his country house in Hampshire. I also discovered that each year this move produced the same state of subdued commotion. Mr March sat in his study for hours every day for a fortnight ‘seeing if it’s possible to get anything safely down to that confounded house’, but what he did no one knew. The elder servants became infected with the atmosphere of imminent catastrophe – all except the butler who, finding me alone on one of these occasions, suddenly said: ‘I shouldn’t take much notice of Mr March, sir. He’d die if he didn’t worry. Believe me he would.’

I was asked down to Haslingfield for the last weekend in August. That year, for the first time, Katherine was acting as hostess, ‘not entirely a job to look for,’ she wrote. ‘Mr L may have intended it as a compliment, or as a sign that I’m getting on in years – but he still regards it as unlikely that any guests will receive or answer my invitations, or, if by any miracle they do come, that they’ll ever go away. However, I’ve invited Ann Simon for the same weekend as you. Mr L resisted having her, apparently on the grounds that she was a bit of a social come-down: actually her father’s a highly successful doctor. Still, it’s better to have Mr L angry about her than about other topics. Anyway, she’s coming. I thought you talked as though you were interested in her, when you met her after your first case…’

Incidentally, that first case was now not my only one. Another small job had come my way in July, and at the end of the month the solicitor whom I met at the Holfords’ sent me a case which any young man at my stage would have thought himself lucky to get. It was to be heard in the autumn, and through August I had been working at it obsessively hard.

Katherine had asked me to come down early, and so I took the train on the Friday afternoon, tired but encouraged. This case would get me known a bit; I had a foot in; the next year looked brighter. The Surrey fields passed by in the sunshine, the carriage cushions smelt stuffy in the heat, and I felt happy, sleepy, and without any premonition at all.

Charles met me with his car at Farnham. He was sunburned, and his hair slightly bleached. For a second, I thought his face had aged in the last two years. Before I could ask him anything, he was talking – with the special insistence, I thought, of someone who wants to keep questions away.