Arthur & George (30 page)

And twice a year, they are able to escape to Masongill together. They arrive and leave by separate trains, like weekend guests who just happen to coincide. Arthur stays in his mother’s cottage, while Jean is lodged with Mr. and Mrs. Denny at Parr Bank Farm. On the Saturday they sup at Masongill House. The Mam presides at Waller’s table, as she always has, and presumably always will.

Except that things are no longer as simple as they were when the Mam first came here—not that they were ever simple then. For Waller has somehow managed to get himself married. Miss Ada Anderson, a clergyman’s daughter from St. Andrews, came to Thornton Vicarage as governess, and, so village gossip asserts, instantly set her cap at the master of Masongill House. She succeeded in marrying the man, only to find—and here gossip turned moralizing—that she could not change him. For the new husband had no intention of letting mere matrimony alter the way of life he had established. To be specific: he visits the Mam as often as he ever did; he dines with her
en tête-à-tête;
and he has a special bell installed at the back door of her cottage, which only he is allowed to ring. The Waller marriage does not bring forth children.

Mrs. Waller never sets foot in Masongill Cottage, and absents herself when the Mam comes to sup at the House. If Waller desires that woman to preside, then so be it, but her authority at the table will not be recognized by the mistress of the house. Mrs. Waller increasingly busies herself with her Siamese cats and a rose garden laid out with the rigour of a parade ground or vegetable plot. During a brief encounter with Arthur she showed herself both shy and stand-offish: the fact that he came from Edinburgh and she from St. Andrews was no ground for intimacy, her manner suggested.

And so the four of them—Waller, the Mam, Arthur and Jean—sit round the supper table together. Food is brought and taken away, glasses shine in the candlelight, the talk is of books, and everyone behaves as if Waller were still a bachelor. From time to time, Arthur’s eye is caught by the silhouette of a cat slipping along the wall and keeping well clear of Waller’s boot. A sinuous form, easing its way through the shadows, like the memory of a wife discreetly absenting herself. Does every marriage have its own damn secret? Is there never anything straightforward at the heart of it all?

Still, Arthur long ago accepted that Waller would have to be endured. And since he cannot be with Jean all the time, he is content to golf with Waller. For a short and scholarly type, the master of Masongill House has a neat enough game. He lacks distance, of course, but is rather tidier, it has to be admitted, than Arthur, who still tends to despatch the ball in improbable directions. Apart from golf, there is decent shooting to be had in Waller’s woods—partridge, grouse and rooks. The two men also go ferreting together. For five shillings the butcher’s boy will arrive with his three ferrets and work them all morning to Waller’s satisfaction, scaring up the contents of numerous rabbit pies.

But then there are the hours earned by such dutiful endeavour—the hours alone with Jean. They take the Mam’s pony-and-dog cart and drive to nearby villages; they explore the range of wold and fell and sudden valleys north of Ingleton. Though Arthur’s returns here are never uncomplicated—the taint of kidnap and betrayal will always linger—the role of tourist agent comes to him naturally and full-heartedly. He shows Jean the Twiss Valley and Pecca Falls, the gorge of the Doe and Beezley Falls. He watches her nerveless on a bridge sixty feet above Yew Tree Gorge. They climb Ingleborough together, and he cannot prevent himself feeling how good it is for a man to have a healthy young woman at his side. He is making no comparison, impugning nobody, just grateful that they do not have to make constant frustrating halts and rests. At the top, he plays archaeologist and points out the vestiges of the Brigantian stronghold; then topographer as they look west towards Morecambe, St. George’s Channel and the Isle of Man, while far to the north-west the Lake mountains and the Cumbrian ranges discreetly show themselves.

Inevitably, there are constraints and awkwardnesses. They may be far from home, but decorum cannot be abandoned; Arthur is, even here, a well-known figure, while the Mam has her position in local society. So a glance is sometimes required to rein in a certain tendency to candour and expressiveness on Jean’s part. And though Arthur is more free to articulate his devotion, he cannot always feel as a lover should—like a man freshly invented. They are driving through Thornton one day, Jean’s arm resting on his, the sun high in the sky and the prospect of an afternoon alone together, when she says,

“What a pretty church, Arthur. Stop, let us go in.”

He acts deaf for a moment, then replies, rather stiffly, “It is not so pretty. Only the tower is original. Most of it is no more than thirty years old. It is all specious restoration.”

Jean does not press her interest, deferring to Arthur’s gruff judgement as chief tourist agent. He snaps the reins against the idiosyncratic Mooi, and they drive on. It does not seem the moment to tell her that the church was no more than fifteen years restored when he walked down its aisle, a newly married man, with Touie’s hand on his arm just where Jean’s is now.

His return to Undershaw this time is not without guilt.

Arthur’s way of being a father is to leave the children to their mother’s care and then descend from time to time with sudden plans and presents. It seems to him that being a father is like being a slightly more responsible brother. You protect your children, you provide for them, you set an example; beyond that, you make them understand what they are, which is children, that is to say imperfect, even defective, adults. Yet he is also a generous man, and does not believe it necessary or morally improving for them to be deprived of what he was deprived of as a boy. At Hindhead, as at Norwood, there is a tennis ground; also a rifle range behind the house, where Kingsley and Mary are encouraged to improve their marksmanship. In the garden he installs a monorail, which skims and swoops through the hollows and rises of his four acres. Driven by electricity and stabilized by gyroscope, the monorail is the transport of the future. His friend Wells is certain of this, and Arthur agrees.

He buys himself a Roc motorbicycle, which proves mightily insubordinate, and which Touie will not allow the children near; then a chain-driven twelve-horse-power Wolseley, which is much applauded and does regular damage to the gateposts. This new motoring machine has rendered his carriage and horses redundant; though when he mentions this obvious fact to the Mam, she is outraged. You cannot put a family crest on a mere machine, she argues, let alone one which suffers the regular indignity of breaking down.

Kingsley and Mary are granted liberties not available to most of their friends. In summer they go barefoot, and may roam anywhere within a five-mile radius of Undershaw as long as they are home for meals, clean and tidy. Arthur has no objection when they make a pet of a hedgehog. On Sundays he will often announce that fresh air is better for the soul than liturgy, and enlist one of them as his caddie; a ride in the high dogcart to Hankley Golf Course, an erratic progress with a heavy golf bag, and then the reward of hot buttered toast in the club house. Their father will readily explain things to them, though not always the things they need or want to know; and he does so from a great height, even when he is on his knees beside them. He encourages self-sufficiency, sports, riding; he gives Kingsley books about great battles in world history, and warns him of the perils of military unpreparedness.

Arthur’s forte is solving things, but he cannot solve his children. None of their friends or schoolmates has a private monorail; yet Kingsley, with infuriating politeness, lets slip that it does not go fast enough, and perhaps the carriages should be bigger. Mary, meanwhile, climbs trees in a manner incompatible with female modesty. They are not bad children in any way; as far as he can assess the matter, they are good children. But even when they are well-mannered and properly behaved, what Arthur has not counted on is their relentlessness. It is as if they are always expectant—though of what, he cannot tell, and he doubts they can either. They are expectant of something he cannot provide.

Arthur privately thinks that Touie should have taught them more discipline; but this is a reproach he cannot make, except in the mildest terms. And so the children grow up between his erratic authoritarianism and her benign approving. When Arthur is in residence at Undershaw, he wants to work; and when he stops work, he wants to play golf or cricket, or have a quiet 200-up with Woodie on the billiards table. He has provided the family with comfort, security and money; in exchange he expects peace.

He does not get peace; still less from inside himself. When there is no chance of seeing Jean for a while, he tries to bring her close by doing what she would like doing. Because she is a keen horsewoman, he enlarges his stable at Undershaw from one horse to six, and begins riding to hounds. Because Jean is musical, Arthur decides to learn the banjo, a decision Touie greets with her normal indulgence. Arthur now plays the Bombardon tuba and the banjo, though neither instrument is famed for its ability to accompany a classically trained mezzo-soprano voice. Sometimes he and Jean arrange to read the same book while they are apart—Stevenson, Scott’s poems, Meredith; each likes to imagine the other on the same page, sentence, phrase, word, syllable.

Touie’s preferred reading is
The Imitation of Christ.
She has her faith, her children, her comfort, her quiet occupations. Arthur’s guilt ensures that he behaves towards her with the utmost consideration and gentleness. Even when her saintly optimism seems to border on a monstrous complacency, and he feels a rage gathering within him, he knows he cannot inflict it upon her. To his shame, he inflicts it upon his children, upon servants, caddies, employees of the railway and idiot journalists. He remains utterly dutiful towards Touie, utterly in love with Jean; yet in other parts of his life he becomes harder and more irritable.
Patientia vincit
reads the admonition in stained glass. Yet he feels he is growing a stony carapace. His natural expression is turning into a prosecutor’s stare. He looks through others accusingly, because he is so used to looking through himself.

He begins to think of himself geometrically, as being located at the centre of a triangle. Its points are the three women of his life, its sides the iron bars of duty. Naturally, he has placed Jean at the apex, with Touie and the Mam at the base. But sometimes the triangle seems to rotate around him, and then his head spins.

Jean never offers the slightest complaint or reproach. She tells him that she cannot, will not, ever love another person; that waiting for him is not a trial but a joy; that she is entirely happy; that their hours together are the central truth of her life.

“My darling,” he says, “Do you think there was ever such a love story as ours since the world began?”

Jean feels her eyes fill with tears. At the same time, she is a little shocked. “Arthur dearest, it is not a sporting competition.”

He accepts the rebuke. “Even so, how many people have had their love tested as we have? I should think our case was about unique.”

“Does not every couple think their case unique?”

“It is a common delusion. Whereas with us—”

“Arthur!” Jean does not think boastfulness appropriate to love; she is inclined to find it vulgar.

“Even so,” he persists, “even so I feel sometimes—no often—that there is a Guardian Spirit watching over us.”

“So do I,” Jean agrees.

Arthur does not find the notion of a Guardian Spirit fanciful, or even a banality. He finds it plausible and real.

Nevertheless, he needs an earthly witness to their love. He needs to offer proof. He takes to forwarding Jean’s love letters to the Mam. He does not ask permission, or regard this as breaching a confidence. He needs it to be known that their feelings for one another are still as fresh as ever, and their trials not in vain. He tells the Mam to destroy the letters, and suggests a choice of method. She may either burn them, or—preferably—tear them into tiny pieces and scatter them among the flowers at Masongill Cottage.

Flowers. Each year, without fail, on the 15th of March, Jean receives a single snowdrop with a note from her beloved Arthur. A white flower once a year for Jean, and white lies all the year round for his wife.

And all the time, Arthur’s fame increases. He is a clubman, a diner-out, a public figure. He becomes an authority on worlds beyond literature and medicine. He stands for Parliament as a Liberal Unionist in Edinburgh Central, where defeat is tempered by the recognition that much of politics is a mudbath. His views are canvassed, his support counted on. He is popular. He becomes more popular when he reluctantly submits to the joint will of the Mam and the British reading public: he resuscitates Sherlock Holmes and despatches him in the footprints of an enormous hound.

When the South African War breaks out, Arthur volunteers as a medical officer. The Mam does everything to dissuade him: she thinks his large frame a sure target for the Boer bullet; further, she judges the war nothing but a dishonourable scramble for gold. Arthur disagrees. It is his duty to go; he is acknowledged to have the strongest influence over young men—especially young sporting men—of anyone in England bar Kipling. He also thinks that this war is worth a white lie or two: the nation is getting into a fight which is a rightful one.

He leaves Tilbury on the
Oriental.
He is to be looked after on his adventure by Cleeve, the butler from Undershaw. Jean has filled his cabin with flowers, but will not come to say farewell; she cannot face a parting amid the thronged and thumping cheerfulness of a transport. As the whistle sounds for visitors to leave the ship the Mam bids him a tight-mouthed goodbye.

“I wish Jean had come,” he says, a small boy in a hulking suit.

“She is in the crowd,” the Mam replies. “Somewhere. Hiding. She could not trust her feelings, she said.”