Read Online George Passant by C. P. Snow - Free Book Online

landing. The furniture was mixed, but all old; the red velvet sofas seemed like the relics of a gay house of the nineties; so did the long mirror with the battered gilding. But there were also some marble-topped tables, picked up in a café, several wicker chairs and even two or three soap boxes. One of the bulbs was draped in frilly pink, and one was naked. Women giggled and shrilled; and among it all, the ‘manager’ (whose precise function none of us knew) sat in the corner of the room, reading a racing paper with a cloth cap on the back of his head.
    Now and then a pair went out. The gramophone wailed on, like all the homesick, lust-sweet longing in the world. The thudding beat got hold of one, it got mixed with the smell of scent. After one dance, Jack spoke to me for a moment.
    ‘Jesus love me, I can’t help it, Lewis,’ he said with his fresh open smile. ‘I’m going all randy sad.’
    It was after one o’clock when the three of us gathered round one of the marble-topped tables. The room was nearly empty by then, though the gramophone still played. We should have liked to go, but there was over an hour before the last train home. So we sat there, sobered and quiet, ordering a last glass of gin to mollify the manager: and, of course, we talked of women.
    ‘The first I ever had,’ said George, ‘happened on the night before my eighteenth birthday. She told me that she did it for a hobby. Afterwards, when I was walking home, it seemed necessary to shout, “Why don’t they all take up a hobby? Why don’t they all take up a hobby?”’ The words would have resounded boisterously three hours ago, when we entered that room; but now they were subdued. He was not randy sad, as Jack and I had been; this was a different, a deeper sadness. He knew the pleasure he had gained; and turning from it, he – whose pictures of the future usually glowed like a sunrise – felt all that he might miss.
    ‘I should have wanted something better before now,’ said Jack, ‘if I’d been you.’
    ‘It serves my purpose,’ said George. ‘I don’t know about yours.’
    Jack smiled. ‘Why don’t you try nearer home?’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I mean that some of the young women in our group would be open to persuasion. You’d get more happiness from one of them, George. Clearly you would.’
    ‘That would destroy everything I want to do,’ George said. ‘You realise that’s what you’re suggesting? You’d put me into a position where people like Morcom could say that I was building up an impressive façade of looking after our group at the School. That I was building up an impressive façade – and that my real motive was to cuddle the girls on the quiet.’
    Jack looked at George in consternation. For once in a quarrel, he had not raised his voice; yet his face bore all the signs of pain. Affectionately, Jack said: ‘I want you to be happy, that’s all.’
    ‘I shouldn’t be happy that way,’ said George. ‘I can look after my own happiness.’
    ‘Anyway, for my happiness, I’m afraid I shall need love,’ said Jack. ‘Love with all the romantic accompaniments, George. The sort of love that makes the air seem a remarkable medium to be moving through. I’m afraid I need it.’
    ‘I don’t know whether I need it,’ I said. ‘But I’m afraid that I’ve got it.’
    ‘Don’t you ever want it, George?’ Jack asked.
    ‘Of course I want it,’ said George. ‘Though I shouldn’t be prepared to sacrifice everything for it. But of course I want it: what do you think I am? As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking tonight that I’m not very likely to find it.’ He looked at me with a sympathetic smile. ‘I don’t know that I’ve ever been in love – at least not what you’d call love. I’ve made myself ridiculous once or twice, but it didn’t amount to much. I dare say that it never will.’
    It seemed strange that George, not as a rule curious about his friends’ feelings, should have