Laverick to exercise judgment, so it would not have been in the public interest to have given him responsibility.
You and I, reader, looking back from the nineteen-sixties , you and I, who have read a little history, a little psychology, a little sociology and get a whole lot more every week, in the book reviews of the Fridays and the Sundays, we may see very well that, in the context of his time and his education, Edward Laverick had done about as well for himself as he could, and that the Civil Service had been for him, not a trap, but a most appropriate pigeon-hole. He had written a play (we shall come again to that), but if he had had a writer’s vocation, a writer’s obsessions, he would not have stopped at one. He was not a scientist, not even a backyard inventor, and he had no money-itch, that might have brought him from barrow to shop to chain of shops.
Today Edward Laverick would pass his Eleven-Pius, go on to a Grammar School, stay there until the age of eighteen, and then win a place at a University; today he might indeed become an Administrative Officer of the Civil Service, or a producer of B.B.C. programmes, or a schoolmaster, solicitor or dentist. He might do very well for himself
today
, but yesterday he did about as well as might have been expected.
Edward Laverick, who lacked our hindsight and our detachment, did not see matters like that in 1942. He resented the Ministry, and the renouncing of his pension seemed to him the kind of gesture that proved him alive again; it was as if he had torn the badge of life-in-death from off his arm. And did they think he
cared
, in 1942, with the war in its most critical stage, and two new-born grandchildren in the house—did they think that, when men were dying, and great events were all about him, Edward Laverick cared about his job or his pension, cared about “security” at
that
time of all others, cared about the piddling documentation of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries? No, he would take Daphne and the twins to the moorland farm where his sister lived, and he (even he, at fifty-six) would bicycle in all weathers and every working day to the factory where, however badly to begin with, he could do a real job with his hands, packing the components that men needed to fight with, and earning (as it turned out) as much money a week as he had done after forty years with the Civil Service. Edward Laverick was going to work with “real” people, and the Ministry knew what it could do with its pension, because the time had come for Edward Laverick, like Bartleby the Scrivener, to say “I would prefer not”. Heroic sentimentality!
And then the war ended, first in Germany, and then in Japan, with both a bang
and
a whimper from those who had the time, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to make so undignified an expression of suffering. Edward Laverick’s grandchildren grew, and were old enough to go to school. The urgency dribbled out of life. There was no longer any reason to stay on a small farm outside Chesterfield, especially since it was more crowded now with cousins returned from the war. Edward Laverick had grown too old to bicycle in all weathers to work in a factory, even ifthe factory itself had continued to need him, now that there were younger men available. He had a house of his own in Herne Hill, if he could recover it from its present tenants. Daphne wrote, first to the tenants, then to a solicitor, and finally to the London County Council Department of Education. The return was arranged. And about time too, Daphne said in private to her father. She didn’t want her children growing up with north-country accents like one of those comedians on the wireless.
The children had seen more of Edward Laverick’s married sister than of their own mother, who had been teaching five days a week. They knew that Edward Laverick’s married sister was not their mother, but they loved her as a friend. They wept when they had to leave, and so did she. But tears
You and I, reader, looking back from the nineteen-sixties , you and I, who have read a little history, a little psychology, a little sociology and get a whole lot more every week, in the book reviews of the Fridays and the Sundays, we may see very well that, in the context of his time and his education, Edward Laverick had done about as well for himself as he could, and that the Civil Service had been for him, not a trap, but a most appropriate pigeon-hole. He had written a play (we shall come again to that), but if he had had a writer’s vocation, a writer’s obsessions, he would not have stopped at one. He was not a scientist, not even a backyard inventor, and he had no money-itch, that might have brought him from barrow to shop to chain of shops.
Today Edward Laverick would pass his Eleven-Pius, go on to a Grammar School, stay there until the age of eighteen, and then win a place at a University; today he might indeed become an Administrative Officer of the Civil Service, or a producer of B.B.C. programmes, or a schoolmaster, solicitor or dentist. He might do very well for himself
today
, but yesterday he did about as well as might have been expected.
Edward Laverick, who lacked our hindsight and our detachment, did not see matters like that in 1942. He resented the Ministry, and the renouncing of his pension seemed to him the kind of gesture that proved him alive again; it was as if he had torn the badge of life-in-death from off his arm. And did they think he
cared
, in 1942, with the war in its most critical stage, and two new-born grandchildren in the house—did they think that, when men were dying, and great events were all about him, Edward Laverick cared about his job or his pension, cared about “security” at
that
time of all others, cared about the piddling documentation of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries? No, he would take Daphne and the twins to the moorland farm where his sister lived, and he (even he, at fifty-six) would bicycle in all weathers and every working day to the factory where, however badly to begin with, he could do a real job with his hands, packing the components that men needed to fight with, and earning (as it turned out) as much money a week as he had done after forty years with the Civil Service. Edward Laverick was going to work with “real” people, and the Ministry knew what it could do with its pension, because the time had come for Edward Laverick, like Bartleby the Scrivener, to say “I would prefer not”. Heroic sentimentality!
And then the war ended, first in Germany, and then in Japan, with both a bang
and
a whimper from those who had the time, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to make so undignified an expression of suffering. Edward Laverick’s grandchildren grew, and were old enough to go to school. The urgency dribbled out of life. There was no longer any reason to stay on a small farm outside Chesterfield, especially since it was more crowded now with cousins returned from the war. Edward Laverick had grown too old to bicycle in all weathers to work in a factory, even ifthe factory itself had continued to need him, now that there were younger men available. He had a house of his own in Herne Hill, if he could recover it from its present tenants. Daphne wrote, first to the tenants, then to a solicitor, and finally to the London County Council Department of Education. The return was arranged. And about time too, Daphne said in private to her father. She didn’t want her children growing up with north-country accents like one of those comedians on the wireless.
The children had seen more of Edward Laverick’s married sister than of their own mother, who had been teaching five days a week. They knew that Edward Laverick’s married sister was not their mother, but they loved her as a friend. They wept when they had to leave, and so did she. But tears
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