(George would remember that one day.)
But he really meant it. He told the voters of Browdley exactly what he
intended to do if they should choose him to represent them; he mixed the
dream and the business in a way that was something rather new to the town,
and could be both praised and attacked as such. He had plans, not merely
promises, for slum clearance, education, medical insurance, and relief of
unemployment; and (to redress the balance, as it were) he had visions, not
merely opinions, about international trade, India, the League of Nations,
currency, and world peace. He was eager, cheerful, spontaneous, sincere, and
a little na ve. He battled his opponent trenchantly, yet with rough-spun
humour that took away most of the sting; it was another of George’s special
techniques, and he had already become rather expert at it. “I don’t like to
hear Mr. Wetherall attacked because he made a lot of money during the war,”
he would say. “Let’s be fair to the man—he couldn’t help it.
(Laughter.) It wasn’t his brains that did it. (Laughter.) He didn’t even have
to try to do it. (More laughter.) The money just came rolling in, because we
hadn’t got the laws or the taxes to stop it. So don’t blame poor Mr.
Wetherall. Blame the laws and the tax system of this country that enabled one
man to become half a millionaire while others had to fight in the trenches
for a shilling a day. And let’s get things changed so that it can’t happen
again. (Cheers.) But of course you mustn’t expect Mr. Wetherall to vote for
any such change. After all, why should he? (Laughter.)…” And so on.
Political prophets tipped George as the winner, but whether or not, Browdley
had certainly never enjoyed a more bracing political contest.
Election day dawned unseasonably windy and wet, which was his first item
of bad luck, for the other side had more cars to take voters to and from the
polling stations. He left his house for the central committee rooms at an
early hour and was kept busy all day with routine matters; meanwhile, as the
rain increased, his spirits sank a little. His agent, Jim Saunders, was
already giving him revised last-minute opinions that it would be ‘a damned
near thing’.
Polling closed at eight o’clock, and an hour later the count began in the
Town Hall. George paced up and down amongst the green-baize- covered trestle
tables, keeping his eyes on the mounting piles of ballot papers; his opponent
was absent, preferring to spend the anxious hours more convivially in a hotel
room across the street. The atmosphere in the Town Hall became tenser as it
also grew thicker with tobacco smoke and the smell of wet mackintoshes.
Towards midnight most of the ballot-boxes had been brought in from
outlying districts and half the count was over, with George leading by a
narrow margin. Watching the proceedings, he found it hard to realize that his
fate lay in those slips of paper—his own fate and Livia’s. And then,
whimsically, he thought of his election slogan—“A Vote for Boswell is a
Vote for Your Children’s Future”. It was a vote for HIS children’s future,
anyhow, he reflected.
By midnight he knew what his fate was, for the last few ballot- boxes,
drawn from the suburban fringe where mostly professional and retired people
lived, had contained a heavy preponderance of votes for Wetherall. The final
figures were not even close enough to justify a recount; George had lost the
election by a hundred and forty-eight.
As in a trance he received the impact of the news and went through the
ritual prescribed for defeated candidates on such occasions. He stepped out
on the balcony to make a short speech to his supporters, congratulated and
shook hands with the victor, seconded a vote of thanks to the returning
officer; it was all over by one o’clock in the morning, and the rain had not
stopped.
As he was leaving the Town Hall Jim Saunders handed him a throw- away
leaflet printed in the opposition colours that had been given eleventh-hour
circulation throughout the town.
George scanned it over and shrugged more indifferently than he felt. “Poor
stuff, Jim. And not even true. I’ll bet it’s not libellous, though.”
“I wasn’t thinking of that. But there’s a good many voters it may have
influenced.”
It was an artfully worded suggestion that George had secured a municipal
appointment for his wife—concealing the all-important fact that he had
not even met her till after she took the job.
“It’s the sort of thing that swings votes,” Saunders went on. “Shouldn’t
wonder if you’d have been in but for this.”
“I doubt it, Jim…” And all the way home George kept telling himself that
he doubted it.
Not till he turned the corner of Market Street and saw the familiar
printing-office (now plastered, and how ironically, with adjurations to ‘Vote
for Boswell’) did he contemplate the really worst penalty of failure, and
that was having to tell Livia. He wondered if she would already have
heard.
When he entered the house he waited to hear her voice, but only Becky came
up to him rather forlornly; and then he saw a note on the table. It told him
she had had to call the doctor early that evening and had been sent to the
hospital.
An hour later he sat at her bedside, realizing that for a
new and far
happier reason this was one of the memorable days of his life. His child was
born, prematurely, but thrivingly—a boy. And as he looked first at his
son, and then at Livia, a great tenderness enveloped him, so that he took her
hand and could not find words for anything in his heart or mind.
“I didn’t want you to come earlier,” she said weakly. “I wouldn’t let them
tell you because I knew you’d be busy… Is it over yet?”
“Why… don’t you know?” He realized afterwards that he had doubtless been
left the job of breaking the bad news gently, but it seemed so trivial then
that he answered outright and almost casually: “Aye, it’s all over. I lost.
By a hundred and forty- eight…”
“You LOST?” He was still so happy that the look of disappointment on her
face startled him, especially when she added: “No luck, George. I said so,
didn’t I?”
“LUCK? Why, isn’t THIS luck?” And he pointed to the child.
Of course his own personal disappointment returned, though
he knew he
would not have felt it so keenly but for hers. She had, and always had, that
curious capacity to weight or lift his mood with her own, to give him peace
or no-peace at will. In his own mind the loss of the election need not have
been tragic; after all, he was still young, and there would be other chances
—possibly within a short time. But she made it seem tragic by the way
she regarded it, and he, as if in defence of Browdley against this attitude,
plunged anew into work for the town.
Foremost was his plan to stir some civic spirit among the richer citizens.
There were no millionaires, but a few who were well off, and one was Richard
Felsby, partner of Livia’s father and grandfather in the days when the firm
had been Channing and Felsby. George had never been able to understand what
exactly the trouble was between Livia and the old man, perhaps a family feud
of some kind, certainly no concern of his own; and since Richard was over
eighty, ailing, a bachelor, and the owner of some land on Browdley’s
outskirts that would make a fine municipal park if given to the town, George
called on him one evening—quite prepared to be kicked out
unceremoniously, but unwilling to neglect even a hundred- to-one chance.
Richard Felsby, dressing-gowned, night-capped, and from a bedroom
armchair, astonished him by saying, during their first minute of
conversation: “Let’s not waste time, Boswell… When ye married Livia, ye
married a problem, and it’s not a bit of use comin’ to me about it.”
“But—” George protested, and then let the old man have his say,
since the saying might be of interest.
“And neither of ye need think ye’re going to get a penny o’ MY money,
because I’m leavin’ it all to Sarah.”
George did not even know who Sarah was, and perhaps his look showed it,
for Richard went on: “Sarah looked after Livia and her mother and father and
grandmother and grandfather for the best part of sixty years… and where
d’ye think she’d be now but for me?… Why, in the workhouse. That’s all
Livia cared. I know the woman’s stone-deaf and cranky and no beauty either,
but she deserved better than to be left stranded when Livia ran off to marry
you.”
“I never knew that,” George gasped.
“Aye, and I don’t suppose ye know a good many other things. But it’s the
truth, and ye can tell her so. Sarah gets my money, and if ye’ve come to talk
me into anything else it’s not a bit of use.”
George then felt that his simplest disclaimer was to tell the old man
frankly what he HAD come for, and now it was the latter’s turn to be
astonished. It had clearly never occurred to him that he owed anything to the
town, and George’s suggestion that he did so roused a host of vaguely
associated antagonisms—to mollycoddling and spoon-feeding and high
taxes and socialist agitators and what not. But the odd thing was that as the
interview proceeded, Richard Felsby found himself rather liking George
personally. (He was not the first to fall under that spell, or the last
either.) And when George rose to go, he grunted: “It’s all a pack of
nonsense, Boswell. This boom that’s on now isn’t going to last, and when it’s
over Browdley’ll need jobs, not parks.”
“So you won’t let go any of that land, Mr. Felsby?”
“Not a yard, except at a fair price… But ye can stay and have a drink,
if ye like.”
“Thanks, but I don’t drink.”
“Just as well, because the drink ye’d have got here is tea… I’ve often
caught chaps that way. To my mind it’s a misuse of the word that it should
only apply to alcohol… So ye’re a teetotaller, eh?”
George nodded.
“Teetotal family?”
“Not all of ‘em. My Uncle Joe drank plenty.”
“The black sheep?”
“Maybe, but I liked him better than some of the white ones.”
“Ye did?… Sit down, lad, and what about a cup?”
George accepted, and then had a chance to verify that Sarah was indeed as
had been described. Meanwhile Richard Felsby, who had enjoyed no such
congenial human contact since the death of his best friend, Dr. Whiteside,
made the most of the occasion and became almost garrulous. He admitted that
he wasn’t a big “giver” (George had known this already), but when he did
give, he said he liked to suit his own ideas—as when, for instance, he
had offered an annual prize to the Browdley Grammar School for the boy who
achieved “the best all-round lack of distinction”. “It was the prize I’d have
won myself when I was there,” he chuckled asthmatically, “but they wouldn’t
even let me offer it.” It appeared, too, that sometimes he amused himself by
sending cheques for small sums to people momentarily headlined in the news
—the farmer who refused to let a fashionable Hunt cross his fields, the
postman’s wife with her second set of triplets, and so on. “I reckon ye think
I’m a queer sort of chap,” he added, after these confessions.
“Aye,” answered George, unconsciously giving his voice a riper Browdley
burr to match the other’s. “Ye’re queer enough. And I suppose ye think I’M
queer for wanting Browdley to have a park?”
“Oh, to blazes with the park—are we on that again?… I hear ye’ve
got a baby.”
George nodded. “A boy.”
“Let’s hope it takes after you, then. Because I’ll tell ye this, Boswell,
the Channings are queerer than you and me combined… Must ye go?”
“Getting late,” said George, with a smile.
“Drop in again some time.”
“Aye… but I won’t promise not to mention that park.”
George did not tell Livia about his visit, because he felt
it would not
please her, however well he could justify it. And a few weeks later he
visited Richard again, partly in case there was any change of mind about the
park, but chiefly because he was passing the house and was touched by a
sudden vision of the old man’s loneliness in that upstairs room with no one
to talk to but a deaf servant. A moment later, having acted on impulse, he
was touched again by the evident warmth of Richard’s welcome.
“Sit down, lad, and make yourself at home… See this?” And he waved, of
all things, a cheque he had been busy writing. “I’m givin’ it away for
charity… Doesn’t it make your mouth water?”
George laughed, while Richard went on to explain that he was sending it to
a man he did not know, but whose name and address had appeared in that
morning’s paper—some fellow who had grown a hollyhock taller than his
house. “Mebbe ye’ll drop it in the post for me when ye go, Boswell. He’ll get
a nice surprise when he opens my letter tomorrow… Well, what are ye starin’
at me for? D’ye think I’m daft? Or don’t ye like hollyhocks taller than
houses?”
“I like ‘em all right,” answered George, “and houses too. I’ll count it as
one of your BETTER benefactions. Why didn’t ye make it a bit more, though?
What’s a pound from you?”
Whereat Richard enjoyed the best laugh he had had for years, for despite
his reputation for being tight with money, no one had dared to hint it to his
face until George, in sheer na veté, stumbled into doing so. But it made such
an instant hit that George was never quite sure afterwards whether he kept it
up out of candour or to give the old man more fun.
For he formed quite a habit of dropping in to see Felsby, whose house was
not far from the Town Hall. The visits did not have to be long ones, and
George enjoyed their brevity as much as the outspokenness of what was said on
both sides.
“The trouble with you, George, is that ye think too much of yourself. I
always thought ye did, ever since ye got on the Council. I’ve sacked hundreds
of better men than you for a tenth of the things ye’ve said to me
tonight.”
“Aye,” retorted George. “And ye’d sack me too, if I was an employee of
yours. But I’m not. My father was, though, for the best part of a lifetime.
Or the worst part, whichever way ye look at it.”