Years of Plenty

by Ivor John Carnegie Brown

"'Running things' is all these chaps really care about," said Davenant, intervening. "I don't believe they care a straw about their summer camps and boys' brigades as far as the boys go. They like to be in charge of clubs and canteens and order kids about and tell them what a good thing discipline is and how wicked Trades Unions are."

"Those are the neos," added Rendell quickly. "The old ones like to rag about, and there's something to be said for that. Hodges likes ragging. Of course he is an ass, but he's not a dangerous ass. On the whole, we may call him a dear old thing and let him go on shouting. But the bad men are Steel-Brockley's gang. They all suffer from bossing fever and can't live unless they're running something. And they're desperately fair-minded and don't believe in party, which simply means that they are Tory agents, and tell the boys what a sin it is to be discontented with five or six bob for a seventy-hour week."

"And they're dragging in the freshers," said Lawrence. "Ought to be strangled."

So in private they settled the business of the Hearties. But in public, partly because they were freshers and partly because they had not the courage of their convictions, they found themselves being quite polite to these good young men.

Religion had an ever-living appeal for the Push, because it is one of the few subjects about which argument is as fascinating as it is futile. Chard, it is true, couldn't be bothered with metaphysics: he was a history scholar, and his line was a first in history and then the Bar. But the discussions were never metaphysical in the technical sense and it amused him to listen and sum up with an epigram. Davenant used to murmur that he thought Christ rather a beautiful figure and that the Church had saved Art in the Middle Ages, but he did not receive much attention. It became more and more the custom to regard Davenant as a picturesque background to conversations, except when artistic matters were under discussion. Then he held the floor, or rather he stood gracefully before the fire and spoke slowly between puffs of smoke.

They met most often in Lawrence's rooms, which were large and conveniently situated on the ground floor. He had added to the dilapidated furniture some new cushions and a really good arm-chair, and, having no money, he started a colossal bill at Blackwell's, so that his shelves were soon piled with books which he rarely read. But he was not the man to care deeply for his rooms, as did Davenant, who believed in Gordon Craig and used to mess about in the afternoons, putting the light in remote corners or hanging up curtains of a new colour. It was well that Lawrence cared little for his rooms, as he became invariably drunk on Saturday nights, and when drunk he was violent. He would lie on the floor kicking and declaiming Limericks until someone put him to bed: even then he was known to rise again and break things.

Lawrence swilling beer in his rooms was a great spectacle. Usually blasphemous and always obscene, he did everything on such a generous scale and with such a childish innocence and honesty that he was always attractive and rarely repelled even one so fastidious as Davenant.

It was on Sunday nights that the Push talked about religion. Lawrence would pull out the sofa and build up a roaring fire: then with the aid of pipes and much swallowing of beer they would set about it. Every Sunday Rendell was pilloried, but the victim never objected and always returned to the combat. The great point about religious discussion is that you can never be beaten. They treated either with the truth of Christianity or the value of its practical results. In the latter case Lawrence would boom about bishops with fifteen thousand a year, and Martin would demonstrate with irrefutable logic that religion had always resisted freedom and education and had made the world the hole it is. As they both talked interminably Rendell had little opportunity of answering.

One night Lawrence rushed into his rooms shortly after dinner and found the Push assembled.

"My god!" he said, plunging into the sofa.