Arthur and George (9 page)

He became accustomed to success, to being recognized and inspected; also to the various pleasures and embarrassments of the newspaper interview.

“It says you are a happy, genial, homely man.” Touie was smiling back at the magazine. “Tall, broad-shouldered and with a hand that grips you heartily, and, in its sincerity of welcome, hurts.”

“Who is that?”

“The Strand Magazine.”

“Ah. Mr. How, as I recall. Not one of nature’s sportsmen, I suspected at the time. The paw of a poodle. What does he say of you, my dear?”

“He says . . . Oh, I cannot read it.”

“I insist. You know how I love to see you blush.”

“He says . . . I am ‘a most charming woman.’ ” And, on cue, she blushed, and hurriedly changed the subject. “Mr. How says, that ‘Dr. Doyle invariably conceives the end of his story first, and writes up to it.’ You never told me that, Arthur.”

“Did I not? Perhaps because it is as plain as a packstaff. How can you make sense of the beginning unless you know the ending? It’s entirely logical when you reflect upon it. What else does our friend have to say for himself?”

“That your ideas come to you at all manner of times—when out walking, cricketing, tricycling, or playing tennis. Is that the case, Arthur? Does that account for your occasional absent-mindedness on the court?”

“I might have been putting on the dog a little.”

“And look—here is little Mary standing on this very chair.”

Arthur leaned over. “Engraved from one of my photographs—there, you see. I made sure they put my name underneath.”

Arthur had become a face in literary circles. He counted Jerome and Barrie as friends; had met Meredith and Wells. He had dined with Oscar Wilde, finding him thoroughly civil and agreeable, not least because the fellow had read and admired his
Micah Clarke.
Arthur now reckoned he would run Holmes for not more than two years—three at most, before killing him off. Then he would concentrate on historical novels, which he had always known were the best of him.

He was proud of what he had done so far. He wondered if he would have been prouder had he fulfilled Partridge’s prophecy and captained England at cricket. It was quite clear this would never happen. He was a decent right-hand bat, and could bowl slows with a flight that puzzled some. He might make a good all-round MCC man, but his final ambition was now more modest—to have his name inscribed in the pages of Wisden.

Touie bore him a son, Alleyne Kingsley. He had always dreamed of filling a house up with his family. But poor Annette had died out in Portugal; while the Mam was as stubborn as ever, preferring to stick in her cottage on that fellow’s estate. Still, he had sisters, children, wife; and his brother Innes was not far away at Woolwich, preparing for an army life. Arthur was the breadwinner, and a head of the family who enjoyed dispensing largesse and blank cheques. Once a year he did it formally, dressing as Father Christmas.

He knew the proper order should have been: wife, children, sisters. How long had they been married—seven, eight years? Touie was all anyone could possibly want in a wife. She was indeed a most charming woman, as
The Strand Magazine
had noted. She was calm and had grown competent; she had given him a son and daughter. She believed in his writing down to the last adjective, and supported all his ventures. He fancied Norway; they went to Norway. He fancied dinner parties; she organized them to his taste. He had married her for better for worse, for richer for poorer. So far there had been no worse, and no poorer.

And yet. It was different now, if he was honest with himself. When they had met, he had been young, awkward and unknown; she had loved him, and never complained. Now he was still young, but successful and famous; he could keep a table of Savile Club wits interested by the hour. He had found his feet, and—partly thanks to marriage—his brain. His success was the deserved result of hard work, but those themselves unfamiliar with success imagined it the end of the story. Arthur was not yet ready for the end of his own story. If life was a chivalric quest, then he had rescued the fair Touie, he had conquered the city, and been rewarded with gold. But there were years to go before he was prepared to accept a role as wise elder to the tribe. What did a knight errant do when he came home to a wife and two children in South Norwood?

Well, perhaps it was not such a difficult question. He protected them, behaved honourably, and taught his children the proper code of living. He might depart on further quests, though obviously not quests which involved the saving of other maidens. There would be plenty of challenges in his writing, in society, travel, politics. Who knew in what direction his sudden energies would take him? He would always give Touie whatever attention and comfort she could need; he would never cause her a moment’s unhappiness.

And yet.

George

Greenway and Stentson tend to hang about together, but this does not bother George. At lunchtime he has no desire for the tavern, preferring to sit under a tree in St. Philip’s Place and eat the sandwiches his mother has prepared. He likes it when they ask him to explain some aspect of conveyancing, but is often puzzled by the way they go off into secretive spurts about horses and betting offices, girls and dance-halls. They are also currently obsessed with Bechuana Land, whose chiefs are on an official visit to Birmingham.

Besides, when he does hang about with them, they like to question a fellow and tease him.

“George, where do you come from?”

“Great Wyrley.”

“No, where do you
really
come from?”

George ponders this. “The Vicarage,” he replies, and the dogs laugh.

“Have you got a girl, George?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Some legal definition you don’t understand in the question?”

“Well, I just think a chap should mind his own business.”

“Hoity-toity, George.”

It is a subject to which Greenway and Stentson are tenaciously and hilariously attached.

“Is she a stunner, George?”

“Does she look like Marie Lloyd?”

When George does not reply, they put their heads together, tip their hats at an angle, and serenade him. “The-boy-I-love-sits-up-in-the-ga-ll-ery.”

“Go on, George, tell us her name.”

“Go on, George, tell us her name.”

After a few weeks of this, George can take no more. If that’s what they want, that’s what they can have. “Her name’s Dora Charlesworth,” he says suddenly.

“Dora Charlesworth,” they repeat. “Dora Charlesworth. Dora Charlesworth?” They make it sound increasingly improbable.

“She’s Harry Charlesworth’s sister. He’s my friend.”

He thinks this will shut them up, but it only seems to encourage them.

“What’s the colour of her hair?”

“Have you kissed her, George?”

“Where does she come from?”

“No, where does she really come from?”

“Are you making her a Valentine?”

They never seem to tire of the subject.

“I say, George, there’s one question we have to ask you about Dora. Is she a darkie?”

“She’s English, just like me.”

“Just like you, George?
Just
like you?”

“When can we meet her?”

“I bet she’s a Bechuana girl.”

“Shall we send a private detective to investigate? What about that fellow some of the divorce firms use? Goes into hotel rooms and catches the husband with the maid? Wouldn’t want to get caught like that, George, would you?”

George decides that what he has done, or has allowed to happen, isn’t really lying; it is just letting them believe what they want to believe, which is different. Happily, they live on the other side of Birmingham, so each time George’s train pulls out from New Street, he is leaving that particular story behind.

On the morning of February 13th, Greenway and Stentson are in skittish mood, though George never discovers why. They have just posted a Valentine addressed to Miss Dora Charlesworth, Great Wyrley, Staffordshire. This sets off considerable puzzlement in the postman, and even more in Harry Charlesworth, who has always longed for a sister.

George sits on the train, his newspaper unfolded across his knee. His briefcase is on the higher, and wider, of the two string racks above his head; his bowler on the lower, narrower one, which is reserved for hats, umbrellas, sticks and small parcels. He thinks about the journey everyone has to make in life. Father’s, for instance, began in distant Bombay, at the far end of one of the bubbling bloodlines of Empire. There he was brought up, and was converted to Christianity. There he wrote a grammar of the Gujerati language which funded his passage to England. He studied at St. Augustine’s College, Canterbury, was ordained a priest by Bishop Macarness, and then served as a curate in Liverpool before finding his parish at Wyrley. That is a great journey by any reckoning; and his own, George thinks, will doubtless not be so extensive. Perhaps it will more closely resemble Mother’s: from Scotland, where she was born, to Shropshire, where her father was Vicar of Ketley for thirty-nine years, and then to nearby Staffordshire, where her husband, if God spares him, may prove equally long-serving. Will Birmingham turn out to be George’s final destination, or just a staging post? He cannot as yet tell.

George is beginning to think of himself less as a villager with a season ticket and more as a prospective citizen of Birmingham. As a sign of this new status, he decides to grow a moustache. It takes far longer than he imagines, allowing Greenway and Stentson to ask repeatedly if he would like them to club together and buy him a bottle of hair tonic. When the growth finally covers the full breadth of his upper lip, they begin calling him a Manchoo.

When they tire of this joke, they find another.

“I say, Stentson, do you know who George reminds me of?”

“Give a chap a clue.”

“Well, where did he go to school?”

“George, where did you go to school?”

“You know very well, Stentson.”

“Tell me all the same, George.”

George lifts his head from the Land Transfer Act 1897 and its consequences for wills of realty. “Rugeley.”

“Think about it, Stentson.”

“Rugeley. Now I’m getting there. Hang on—could it be William Palmer—”

“The Rugeley Poisoner! Exactly.”

“Where did he go to school, George?”

“You know very well, you fellows.”

“Did they give everyone poisoning lessons there? Or just the clever boys?”

Palmer had killed his wife and brother after insuring them heavily; then a bookmaker to whom he was in debt. There may have been other victims, but the police contented themselves with exhuming only the next-of-kin. The evidence was enough to ensure the Poisoner a public execution in Stafford before a crowd of fifty thousand.

“Did he have a moustache like George’s?”

“Just like George’s.”

“You don’t know anything about him, Greenway.”

“I know he went to your school. Was he on the Honours Board? Famous alumnus and all that?”

George pretends to put his thumbs in his ears.

“Actually, the thing about the Poisoner, Stentson, is that he was devilish clever. The prosecution was completely unable to establish what kind of poison he’d used.”

“Devilish clever. Do you think he was an Oriental gentleman, this Palmer?”

“Might have been from Bechuana Land. You can’t always tell from someone’s name, can you, George?”

“And did you hear that afterwards Rugeley sent a deputation to Lord Palmerston in Downing Street? They wanted to change the name of their town because of the disgrace the Poisoner had brought upon it. The PM thought about their request for a moment and replied, ‘What name do you propose—Palmerstown?’ ”

There is a silence. “I don’t follow you.”

“No, not Palmerston. Pal-mers-town.”

“Ah! Now that’s very amusing, Greenway.”

“Even our Manchoo friend is laughing. Underneath his moustache.”

For once, George has had enough. “Roll up your sleeve, Greenway.”

Greenway smirks. “What for? Are you going to give me a Chinese burn?”

“Roll up your sleeve.”

George then does the same, and holds his forearm next to that of Greenway, who is just back from a fortnight sunning himself at Aberystwyth. Their skins are the same colour. Greenway is unabashed, and waits for George to comment; but George feels he has made his point, and starts putting the link back through his cuff.

“What was that about?” Stentson asks.

“I think George is trying to prove I’m a poisoner too.”

Arthur

They had taken Connie on a European tour. She was a robust girl, the only woman on the Norway crossing who wasn’t prostrate with seasickness. Such imperviousness made other female sufferers irritated. Perhaps her sturdy beauty irritated them too: Jerome said that Connie could have posed for Brünnhilde. During that tour Arthur discovered that his sister, with her light dancing step, and her chestnut hair worn down her back like the cable of a man-o’-war, attracted the most unsuitable men: lotharios, card-sharps, oleaginous divorcees. Arthur had almost been obliged to raise his stick to some of them.

Back home, she seemed at last to have fixed her eye on a presentable fellow: Ernest William Hornung, twenty-six years old, tall, dapper, asthmatic, a decent wicketkeeper and occasional spin bowler; well-mannered, if liable to talk a streak if in the least encouraged. Arthur recognized that he would find it difficult to approve of anyone who attached themselves to either Lottie or Connie; but in any case, it was his duty as head of the family to cross-examine his sister.

“Hornung. What is he, this Hornung? Half Mongol, half Slav, by the sound of him. Could you not find someone wholly British?”

“He was born in Middlesbrough, Arthur. His father is a solicitor. He went to Uppingham.”

“There’s something odd about him. I can sniff it.”

“He lived in Australia for three years. Because of his asthma. Perhaps what you can sniff are the gum trees.”

Arthur suppressed a laugh. Connie was the sister who most stood up to him; he loved Lottie more, but Connie was the one who liked to pull him up and surprise him. Thank God she had not married Waller. And the same went,
a fortiori,
for Lottie.