Arthur & George Page 8

  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, oleag
inous 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.

  “And what does he do, this fellow from Middlesbrough?”

  “He is a writer. Like you, Arthur.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “He has written a dozen novels.”

  “A dozen! But he’s just a young pup.” An industrious pup, at least.

  “I can lend you one if you wish to judge him that way. I have Under Two Skies and The Boss of Taroomba. Many of them are set in Australia, and I find them very accomplished.”

  “Do you just, Connie?”

  “But he realizes that it is difficult to make a living from writing novels, and so he works also as a journalist.”

  “Well, it is a name that sticks,” Arthur grunted. He gave Connie permission to introduce the fellow into the household. For the moment he would give him the benefit of the doubt by not reading any of his books.

  Spring was early that year, and the tennis ground was marked out by the end of April. From his study Arthur would hear the distant pop of racquet on ball, and the familiar irritating cry made by a female missing an easy shot. Later, he would wander out and there would be Connie in flowing skirts and Willie Hornung in straw hat and peg-topped white flannels. He noted the way Hornung did not give her any easy points, but at the same time held back from a full weight of shot. He approved: that was how a man ought to play a girl.

  Touie sat to one side in a deckchair, warmed less by the frail sun of early summer than by the heat of young love. Their laughing chatter across the net and their shyness with one another afterwards seemed to delight her, and Arthur therefore decided to be won over. In truth, he rather liked the role of grudging paterfamilias. And Hornung was proving himself a witty fellow at times. Perhaps too witty, but that could be ascribed to youth. What was that first jest of his? Yes, Arthur had been reading the sporting pages, and remarked upon a story in which a runner was credited with completing the hundred yards in a mere ten seconds.

  “What do you make of that, Mr. Hornung?”

  And Hornung had replied, quick as a flash, “It must be a sprinter’s error.”

  That August, Arthur was invited to lecture in Switzerland; Touie was still a little weak from the birth of Kingsley, but naturally accompanied him. They visited the Reichenbach Falls, splendid yet terrifying, and a worthy tomb for Holmes. The fellow was rapidly turning into an old man of the sea, clinging round his neck. Now, with the help of an arch-villain, he would shrug his burden off.

  At the end of September, Arthur was walking Connie up the aisle, she pulling back on his arm for striking too military a pace. As he handed her over symbolically at the altar, he knew he should be proud and happy for her. But amid all the orange blossom and backslapping and jokes about bowling maidens over, he felt his dream of an ever-increasing family around him taking a knock.

  Ten days later, he learned that his father had died in a Dumfries lunatic asylum. Epilepsy was given as the cause. Arthur had not visited him in years, and did not attend the funeral; none of the family did. Charles Doyle had let down the Mam and condemned his children to genteel poverty. He had been weak and unmanly, incapable of winning his fight against liquor. Fight? He had barely raised his gloves at the demon. Excuses were occasionally made for him, but Arthur did not find the claim of an artistic temperament persuasive. That was just self-indulgence and self-exculpation. It was perfectly possible to be an artist, yet also to be robust and responsible.

  Touie developed a persistent autumn cough, and complained of pains in her side. Arthur judged the symptoms insignificant, but eventually called in Dalton, the local practitioner. It was strange to find himself transformed from doctor to mere patient’s husband; strange to wait downstairs while somewhere above his head his fate was being decided. The bedroom door was closed for a long time, and Dalton emerged with a face as dismal as it was familiar: Arthur had worn it himself all too many times.

  “Her lungs are gravely affected. There is every sign of rapid consumption. Given her condition and family history . . .” Dr. Dalton did not need to continue, except to add, “You will want a second opinion.”

  Not just a second, but the best. Douglas Powell, consulting physician at the Brompton Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest, came down to South Norwood the following Saturday. A pale, ascetic man, clean-shaved and correct, Powell regretfully confirmed the diagnosis.

  “You are, I believe, a medical man, Mr. Doyle?”

  “I rebuke myself for my inattention.”

  “The pulmonary system was not your speciality?”

  “The eye.”

  “Then you should not rebuke yourself.”

  “No, the more so. I had eyes, and did not see. I did not spot the accursed microbe. I did not pay her enough attention. I was too busy with my own . . . success.”

  “But you were an eye doctor.”

  “Three years ago I went to Berlin to report on Koch’s findings—supposed findings—about this very disease. I wrote about it for Stead, in the Review of Reviews.”

  “I see.”

  “And yet I did not recognize a case of galloping consumption in my own wife. Worse, I let her join me in activities which will have made it worse. We tricycled in every weather, we travelled to cold climates, she followed me in outdoor sports . . .”

  “On the other hand,” said Powell, and the words briefly lifted Arthur’s spirits, “in my view there are promising signs of fibroid growth around the seat of the disease. And the other lung has enlarged somewhat to compensate. But that is the best I can say.”

  “I do not accept it!” Arthur whispered the words because he could not bellow them at the top of his voice.

  Powell took no offence. He was accustomed to pronouncing the gentlest, courtliest sentence of death, and familiar with the ways it took those affected. “Of course. If you would like the name—”

  “No. I accept what you have told me. But I do not accept what you have not told me. You would give her a matter of months.”

  “You know as well as I do, Mr. Doyle, how impossible it is to predict—”

  “I know as well as you do, Dr. Powell, the words we use to give hope to our patients and those near to them. I also know the words we hear within ourselves as we seek to raise their spirits. About three months.”

  “Yes, in my view.”

  “Then again, I say, I do not accept it. When I see the Devil, I fight him. Wherever we need to go, whatever I need to spend, he shall not have her.”

  “I wish you every good fortune,” replied Powell, “and remain at your service. There are, however, two things I am obliged to say. They may be unnecessary, but I am duty-bound. I trust you will not take offence.”

  Arthur stiffened his back, a soldier ready for orders.

  “You have, I believe, children?”

  “Two, a boy and a girl. Aged one and four.”

 
“There is, you must understand, no possibility—”

  “I understand.”

  “I am not talking to her ability to conceive—”

  “Mr. Powell, I am not a fool. And neither am I a brute.”

  “These things have to be made crystal clear, you must understand. The second matter is perhaps less obvious. It is the effect—the likely effect—on the patient. On Mrs. Doyle.”

  “Yes?”

  “In our experience, consumption is different from other wasting diseases. On the whole, the patient suffers very little pain. Often the disease will proceed with less inconvenience than a toothache or an indigestion. But what sets it apart is the effect upon the mental processes. The patient is often very optimistic.”

  “You mean light-headed? Delirious?”

  “No, I mean optimistic. Tranquil and cheerful, I would say.”

  “On account of the drugs you prescribe?”

  “Not at all. It is in the nature of the disease. Regardless of how aware the patient is of the seriousness of her case.”

  “Well, that is a great relief to me.”

  “Yes, it may be so at first, Mr. Doyle.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean that when a patient does not suffer and does not complain and remains cheerful in the face of grave illness, then the suffering and the complaining has to be done by someone.”

  “You do not know me, sir.”

  “That is true. But I wish you the necessary courage nonetheless.”

  For better, for worse; for richer, for poorer. He had forgotten: in sickness and in health.

  The lunatic asylum sent Arthur his father’s sketchbooks. Charles Doyle’s last years had been miserable, as he lay unvisited at his grim final address; but he did not die mad. That much was clear: he had continued to paint watercolours and to draw; also to keep a diary. It now struck Arthur that his father had been a considerable artist, undervalued by his peers, worthy indeed of a posthumous exhibition in Edinburgh—perhaps even in London. Arthur could not help reflecting on the contrast in their fates: while the son was enjoying the embrace of fame and society, his abandoned father knew only the occasional embrace of the straitjacket. Arthur felt no guilt—just the beginnings of filial compassion. And there was one sentence in his father’s diary which would drag at any son’s heart. “I believe,” he had written, “I am branded as mad solely from the Scotch Misconception of Jokes.”