Arthur & George (3 page)

Arthur

Stonyhurst offered to remit Arthur’s school fees if he was prepared to train for the priesthood; but the Mam declined the proposal. Arthur was ambitious and well capable of leadership, already marked down as a future Captain of Cricket. But she did not foresee any child of hers as a spiritual guide. Arthur, for his part, knew that he could not possibly supply the promised gold glasses and velvet dress and seat by the fire if he vowed himself to a life of poverty and obedience.

The Jesuits were not bad fellows, in his assessment. They considered human nature to be essentially weak, and their mistrust seemed justified to Arthur: you only had to look at his own father. They also understood that sinfulness began early. Boys were never permitted to be alone together; masters always accompanied them on walks; and every night a shadowy figure would perambulate the dormitories. Constant surveillance might undermine self-respect and self-help; but the immorality and beastliness rife at other schools were kept to a minimum.

Arthur believed, in a general way, that God existed, that boys were tempted by sin, and that the Fathers were right to beat them with the Tolley. When it came to particular articles of faith, he argued in private with his friend Partridge. He had been impressed by Partridge when, standing at second slip, he had taken a blinding catch from one of Arthur’s fastest deliveries, pocketed the ball quicker than the eye could see, and turned away, pretending to watch the ball disappear to the boundary. Partridge liked to bamboozle a fellow, and not just on the cricket field.

“Are you aware that the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception became an article of faith as recently as 1854?”

“Somewhat late in the day, I’d have thought, Partridge.”

“Imagine. The Church has been debating the dogma for centuries, and all that time it has never been heresy to deny it. Now it is.”

“Hmm.”

“Now why should Rome decide, so far after the event, to downgrade the participation of Mary’s corporeal father in the matter?”

“I say, steady on, man.”

But Partridge was already addressing the doctrine of Papal Infallibility, pronounced only five years previously. Why should all the popes of centuries past be implicitly declared fallible, and all popes present and future the opposite? Why indeed, Arthur echoed. Because, Partridge rejoined, it was more a question of Church politics than theological advance. It was all to do with the presence of influential Jesuits high up in the Vatican.

“You are sent to tempt me,” Arthur would sometimes reply.

“On the contrary. I am here to strengthen your faith. Thinking for ourselves within the Church is the path of true obedience. Whenever the Church feels threatened, it responds by imposing stricter discipline. It works in the short term, but not in the long. It’s like the Tolley. You are beaten today, and so you do not offend again tomorrow or the next day. But not offending for the rest of your life because of a memory of the Tolley is a nonsense, is it not?”

“Not if it works.”

“But in a year or two we shall be quit of this place. The Tolley will not exist any more. We need to be equipped to resist sin and crime by rational argument, not the fear of physical pain.”

“I doubt rational argument will work on some boys.”

“Then the Tolley by all means. And the same in the world outside. Of course there must be prison, and hard labour, and the hangman.”

“But what is the Church threatened by? It seems strong to me.”

“By science. By the spread of sceptical teaching. By the loss of the Papal States. By the loss of political influence. By the prospect of the twentieth century.”

“The twentieth century.” Arthur mused on this a moment. “I cannot think that far. I shall be forty by the time the next century begins.”

“And captain of the England team.”

“I doubt it, Partridge. But not a priest, at any rate.”

Arthur was not exactly conscious of his faith weakening. But thinking for himself within the Church slipped easily into thinking for himself outside it. He found that his reason and conscience did not always accept what was placed in front of them. In his last year at school, Father Murphy came to preach. High in the pulpit, fierce and red-faced, the priest threatened sure and certain damnation for all who remained outside the Church. Whether their exclusion came from wickedness, wilfulness or mere ignorance, the consequences were the same: sure and certain damnation for all eternity. There followed a panoramic description of the torments and desolations of Hell, especially designed to make boys squirm; but Arthur had stopped attending. The Mam had told him what was the case; and he now gazed up at Father Murphy as at a storyteller he no longer believed.

George

Mother teaches Sunday school in the building next door to the Vicarage. Its brickwork has a diamond pattern to it which Mother says reminds her of a Fair Isle comforter. George does not understand this, though wonders if it has anything to do with Job’s comforters. He looks forward to Sunday school all week. The rough boys do not attend: they are running wild in the fields, trapping rabbits, telling lies, and generally going down the primrose path to everlasting damnation. Mother has warned him that in class she will treat him exactly the same as everyone else. George understands why: because she is showing them all—equally—the way to Heaven.

She tells them exciting stories which George can follow easily: like Daniel in the Lions’ Den, and the Burning Fiery Furnace. But other stories prove more difficult. Christ taught in Parables, and George finds he does not like Parables. Take the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares. George understands the part about the enemy planting Tares among the Wheat, and how you shouldn’t gather up the Tares in case you root out the Wheat at the same time—though he isn’t entirely sure about this, because he often sees Mother weeding in the Vicarage garden and what is weeding except gathering up the Tares before they and the Wheat are fully grown? But even ignoring this problem, he can go no further. He knows the story is all about something else—that is why it is a Parable—but what this something else might be his mind will not reach to.

He tells Horace about the Wheat and the Tares, but Horace does not even understand what Tares are. Horace is three years younger than George, and Maud is three years younger than Horace. Maud, being a girl, and also being the youngest child, is not as strong as the two boys, who are told it is their duty to protect her. Quite what this involves is left unspecified; it seems to consist mainly of not doing things—not poking her with sticks, not pulling her hair, and not making noises in her face as Horace likes doing.

But George and Horace prove inadequate at protecting Maud. The doctor’s visits begin, and his regular inspections cast the family into a state of anxiety. George feels guilty whenever the doctor calls, and stays out of the way, in case he is identified as the prime cause of his sister’s illness. Horace feels no such guilt, and cheerfully asks if he may carry the doctor’s bag upstairs.

When Maud is four, it is decided that she is too frail to be left on her own all night, and that neither George nor Horace, nor even the combination of the two, can be trusted with her nocturnal care. From now on she will sleep in their mother’s room. At the same time, it is decided that George will sleep with his father, and Horace will have the nursery to himself. George is now ten, and Horace seven; perhaps it is thought that the age of sinfulness is approaching, and the two boys should not be left alone together. No explanation is given, and none is sought. George does not ask whether being put to sleep in his father’s room is a punishment or a reward. It is how things are, which is all there is to be said.

George and his father pray together, kneeling side by side on the scrubbed boards. Then George climbs into bed while his father locks the door and turns out the light. As he falls asleep, George sometimes thinks of the floor, and how his soul must be scrubbed just as the boards are scrubbed.

Father is not an easy sleeper, and has a tendency to groan and wheeze. Sometimes, in the early morning, when dawn is beginning to show at the edges of the curtains, Father will catechize him.

“George, where do you live?”

“The Vicarage, Great Wyrley.”

“And where is that?”

“Staffordshire, Father.”

“And where is that?”

“The centre of England.”

“And what is England, George?”

“England is the beating heart of the Empire, Father.”

“Good. And what is the blood that flows through the arteries and veins of the Empire to reach even its farthest shore?”

“The Church of England.”

“Good, George.”

And after a while Father begins to groan and wheeze again. George watches the outline of the curtain harden. He lies there thinking of arteries and veins making red lines on the map of the world, linking Britain to all the places coloured pink: Australia and India and Canada and islands dotted everywhere. He thinks of tubes being laid along the bed of the ocean like telegraph cables. He thinks of blood bubbling through these tubes and emerging in Sydney, Bombay, Cape Town. Bloodlines, that is a word he has heard somewhere. With the pulse of blood in his ears, he begins to fall asleep again.

Arthur

Arthur passed his Matriculation with Honours; but being still only sixteen, he was sent for a further year among the Jesuits in Austria. At Feldkirch he discovered a kindlier regime, which allowed beer drinking and heated dormitories. There were long walks, on which English pupils were deliberately flanked by German-speaking boys, thus obliging them to speak the language. Arthur appointed himself editor and sole contributor of
The Feldkirchian Gazette,
a hand-written literary and scientific magazine. He also played football on stilts, and was taught the Bombardon tuba, an instrument which wrapped twice around the chest and made a sound like Judgement Day.

On his return to Edinburgh, he discovered that his father was in a nursing home, officially suffering from epilepsy. There would be no more income, not even occasional coppers from watercolours of fairies. So Annette, the eldest sister, was already in Portugal, working as a governess; Lottie would soon join her, and they would send money home. The Mam’s other recourse was to take in lodgers. Arthur felt embarrassed and affronted by this. His mother, of all people, should not be reduced to the status of a landlady.

“But Arthur, if people did not take in lodgers, your father would never have come to live with Grandma Pack, and I should never have met him.”

This struck Arthur as an even stronger argument against lodgers. He knew he was not allowed to criticize his father in any way, so he remained silent. But it was a nonsense to pretend that the Mam could not have made a better match.

“And if that had not happened,” she went on, smiling at him with those grey eyes which he could never disobey, “not only would there have been no Arthur, there would have been no Annette, no Lottie, no Connie, no Innes and no Ida.”

This was indisputably true, and also one of those insoluble metaphysical conundrums. He wished Partridge were there to help him debate the question: could you remain yourself, or at least enough of yourself, if you had a different father? If not, it also followed that his sisters would not have remained themselves either, especially Lottie, whom he loved the best, even though Connie was said to be prettier. He could just about imagine himself being different, but his brain would not stretch to changing one iota of Lottie.

Arthur might have better stomached the Mam’s response to their reduced social condition if he had not already met her first lodger. Bryan Charles Waller: just six years older than Arthur, but already a qualified doctor. Also a published poet, whose uncle had received the dedication of
Vanity Fair.
Arthur did not object to the fact that the fellow was well-read, even scholarly; nor to the fact that he was a hot-hearted atheist; he objected to the way he was far too easy and charming around the house. The way he said, “So this is Arthur,” and smilingly held out his hand. The way he implied he was one step ahead of you already. The way he wore his two London suits, and talked in generalities and epigrams. The way he was with Lottie and Connie. The way he was with the Mam.

He was easy and charming with Arthur, too, which went down ill with the large, awkward, stubborn ex-schoolboy just back from Austria. Waller behaved as if he understood Arthur even when Arthur could not seem to understand himself, when he stood there by his own fireside feeling as absurd as if he had a Bombardon tuba wrapped twice around him. He wanted to blow a blast of protest, the more so when Waller affected to peer into his very soul and—which was the most annoying part—to take what he found there seriously and yet also not seriously, smiling away as if all the confusion he detected was unsurprising and unimportant.

Far too easy and charming with life itself, dammit.

George

For as long as George can remember, there has been a maid-of-all-work at the Vicarage, someone in the background scrubbing, dusting, polishing, laying fires, blackening grate and setting the copper to boil. Every year or so there is a change of maid, as one gets married, another goes off to Cannock or Walsall or even Birmingham. George never pays them any attention, and now that he is at Rugeley School, taking the train there and back each day, he notices the maid’s existence even less.

He is glad to have escaped the village school with its stupid farm boys and odd-talking miners’ sons, whose very names he soon forgets. At Rugeley he is generally with the better sort of boy, while the masters consider it a useful thing to be intelligent. He gets on well enough with his fellows, even if he does not make any close friends. Harry Charlesworth goes to school in Walsall, and nowadays they merely nod at one another if they meet. George’s work, his family, and his faith, and all the duties that flow from these adherences, are what count. There will be time for other things later.

One Saturday afternoon, George is called to his father’s study. There is a large biblical concordance open on the desk, and some notes for tomorrow’s sermon. Father looks as he does in the pulpit. At least George can guess what his first question will be.