Arthur & George (32 page)

They stop at a gate, and look down a tufted slope to the roof and chimneys of Masongill.

“But you are certain of your love for her, just as she is certain of her love for you?”

“Yes, but that is one-sided, that is not knowing, that is not proof.”

“Women often prove their love in a way that has been done many times.”

Arthur darts a glance down at his mother; but she is gazing resolutely ahead. All he can see is a curve of bonnet and the tip of her nose.

“But that is not proof either. That is just being desperate for evidence. If I made Jean my mistress it would not be proof that we loved one another.”

“I agree.”

“It might prove the opposite, that we are weakening in our love. It sometimes seems that honour and dishonour lie so close together, closer than I ever imagined.”

“I never taught you that honour was an easy path. What would it be worth if that was the case? And perhaps proof is impossible anyway. Perhaps the best we can manage is thinking and believing. Perhaps we only truly know in the hereafter.”

“Proof normally depends upon action. What is singular and damnable about our situation is that proof depends upon non-action. Our love is something separate, apart from the world, unknown to it. It is invisible, impalpable to the world, yet to me, to us, utterly visible, utterly palpable. It may not exist in a vacuum, but it does exist in a place where the atmosphere is different: lighter or heavier, I am never sure which. And somewhere outside of time. It has always been like this, from the beginning. That is what we immediately recognized. That we have this rare love, which sustains me—us—utterly.”

“And yet?”

“And yet. I scarcely dare voice the thought. It comes into my head when I am at the lowest. I find myself wondering . . . I find myself wondering: what if our love is not as I think, is not something existing outside time? What if everything I have believed about it is wrong? What if it is not special in any way, or at least, special only in the fact of being unadvertised and . . . unconsummated? And what if—what if Touie dies, and Jean and I are free, and our love can finally be advertised and sanctified, and brought out into the world, and what if at this point I discover that time has been quietly doing its work without my noticing, its work of gnawing and corroding and undermining? What if I then discover—what if we then discover—that I do not love her as I thought, or that she does not love me as she thought? What would there be to be done then? What?”

Sensibly, the Mam does not reply.

Arthur confides everything to the Mam: his deepest fears, his greatest elations, and all the intermediate tribulations and joys of the material world. What he can never allude to is his deepening interest in spiritualism, or spiritism as he prefers it. The Mam, having left Catholic Edinburgh behind, has become, by a sheer process of attendance, a member of the Church of England. Three of her children have now been married at St. Oswald’s: Arthur himself, Ida and Dodo. She is instinctively opposed to the psychic world, which for her represents anarchy and mumbo-jumbo. She holds that people can only come to any understanding of their lives if society makes clear its truths to them; further, that its religious truths must be expressed through an established institution, be it Catholic or Anglican. And then there is the family to consider. Arthur is a knight of the realm; he has lunched and dined with the King; he is a public figure—she repeats back to him his boast that he is second only to Kipling in his influence on the healthy, sporting young men of the country. What if it came out that he was involved in seances and suchlike? It would dish all chance of a peerage.

In vain does he attempt to relate his conversation with Sir Oliver Lodge at Buckingham Palace. Surely the Mam must admit that Lodge is an entirely level-headed and scientifically reputable individual, as is proven by the fact that he has just been appointed first Principal of Birmingham University. But the Mam will not admit anything; in this area she refuses adamantinely to indulge her son.

Arthur fears to bring the matter up with Touie, in case it upsets the preternatural calm of her existence. She has, he knows, a simple trustingness in matters of faith. She presumes that after she dies she will go to a Heaven whose exact nature she cannot describe, and remain there in a condition she cannot imagine, until such time as Arthur comes to join her, followed in due course by their children, whereupon all of them will dwell together in a superior version of Southsea. Arthur thinks it unfair to disturb any of these presumptions.

It is harder still for him that he cannot talk to Jean, with whom he wants to share everything, from the last collar stud to the last semicolon. He has tried, but Jean is suspicious—or perhaps frightened—of anything touching the psychic world. Further, her dislike is expressed in ways Arthur finds untypical of her loving nature.

Once he tries recounting, with some tentativeness and a conscious suppression of zeal, his experience at a seance. Almost at once he notices a look of the sharpest disapproval come over those lovely features.

“What is it, my darling?”

“But Arthur,” she says, “they are such common people.”

“Who are?”

“Those people. Like gypsy women who sit in fairground booths and tell your fortune with cards and tea leaves. They’re just . . . common.”

Arthur finds such snobbery, especially in one he loves, unacceptable. He wants to say that it is the splendid lower-middle-class folk who have always been the spiritual peers of the nation: you need look no farther than the Puritans, whom many, of course, misprized. He wants to say that around the Sea of Galilee there were doubtless many who judged Our Lord Jesus Christ a little common. The Apostles, like most mediums, had little formal education. Naturally, he says none of this. He feels ashamed of his sudden irritation, and changes the subject.

And so he has to go outside his iron-sided triangle. He does not approach Lottie: he does not want to risk her love in any way, the more so as she helps nurse Touie. Instead, he goes to Connie. Connie, who only the other day, it seems, was wearing her hair down her back like the cable of a man-o’-war and breaking hearts across Continental Europe; Connie, who has settled all too solidly into the role of Kensington mother; Connie, moreover, who dared oppose him that day at Lord’s. He has never solved the question of whether Connie changed Hornung’s mind, or Hornung Connie’s; but whichever way round, he has come to admire her for it.

He visits her one afternoon when Hornung is away; tea is served in her little upstairs sitting room, where once she heard him out about Jean. Strange to realize that his little sister is now nearer forty than thirty. But her age suits her. She is not quite as decorative as she once was, she is large, healthy and good-humoured. Jerome was not wrong to have called her a Brünnhilde when they were in Norway. It is as if, with the years, she has grown more robust in an attempt to counterbalance Hornung’s ill-health.

“Connie,” he begins gently, “Do you ever find yourself wondering what happens after we die?”

She looks at him sharply. Is there bad news about Touie? Is the Mam not well?

“It is a general enquiry,” he adds, sensing her alarm.

“No,” she replies. “At least, very little. I worry about others dying. Not about myself. I did once, but it changes when you are a mother. I believe in the teachings of the Church. My Church. Our Church. The one you and the Mam left. I haven’t the time to believe anything else.”

“Do you fear death?”

Connie reflects on this. She fears Willie’s death—she knew the severity of his asthma when she married him, knew he would always be delicate—but that is fearing his absence, and the loss of his companionship. “I can hardly like the idea,” she replies. “But I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. You are sure you are not leading up to something?”

Arthur gives a brief shake of the head. “So your position could be summed up as Wait and See?”

“I suppose so. Why?”

“Dear Connie—your attitude to the eternal is so English.”

“What a strange thought.”

Connie is smiling, and seems unlikely to shy away. Even so, Arthur doesn’t know quite how to begin.

“When I was a lad at Stonyhurst, I had a friend called Partridge. He was a little younger than me. A fine catcher in the slips. He liked to bamboozle me with theological argument. He would choose examples of the Church’s most illogical doctrines and ask me to justify them.”

“So he was an atheist?”

“Not at all. He was a stronger Catholic than I ever was. But he was trying to convince me of the truths of the Church by arguing against them. It turned out to be a misconceived tactic.”

“I wonder what has become of Partridge.”

Arthur smiles. “As it happens, he is second cartoonist at
Punch.
”

He pauses. No, he must go directly at things. That is his way, after all.

“Many people—most people—are terrified of death, Connie. They’re not like you in that respect. But they’re like you in that they have English attitudes. Wait and see, cross that bridge when they come to it. But why should that reduce the fear? Why should uncertainty not increase it? And what is the point of life unless you know what happens afterwards? How can you make sense of the beginning if you don’t know what the ending is?”

Connie wonders where Arthur is heading. She loves her large, generous, rumbustious brother. She thinks of him as Scottish practicality streaked with sudden fire.

“As I say, I believe what my Church teaches,” she replies. “I see no alternative. Apart from atheism, which is mere emptiness and too depressing for words, and leads to socialism.”

“What do you think of spiritism?”

She knows that Arthur has been dabbling in psychic matters for years now. It is mentioned and half-mentioned behind his back.

“I suppose I mistrust it, Arthur.”

“Why?” He hopes Connie is not also going to prove a snob.

“Because I think it fraudulent.”

“You’re right,” he answers, to her surprise. “Much of it is. True prophets are always outnumbered by false—as Jesus Christ himself was. There is fraud, and trickery, even active criminal behaviour. There are some very dubious fellows muddying the water. Women too, I’m sorry to say.”

“Then that’s what I think.”

“And it is not well explained at all. I sometimes think the world is divided into those who have psychic experiences but can’t write, and those who can write but have no psychic experiences.”

Connie does not answer; she does not like the logical consequence of this sentence, which is sitting across from her, letting its tea go cold.

“But I said ‘much of it,’ Connie. Only ‘much of it’ is fraudulent. If you visit a gold mine, do you find it filled with gold? No. Much of it—most of it—is base metal embedded in rock. You have to search for the gold.”

“I distrust metaphors, Arthur.”

“So do I. So do I. That is why I mistrust faith, which is the biggest metaphor of all. I have done with faith. I can only work with the clear white light of knowledge.”

Connie looks perplexed by this.

“The whole point of psychical research,” he explains, “is to eliminate and expose fraud and deceit. To leave only what can be scientifically confirmed. If you eliminate the impossible, what is left, however improbable, must be the truth. Spiritism is not asking you to take a leap in the dark, or cross a bridge you have not yet come to.”

“So it is like Theosophy?” Connie is now nearing the extremity of her knowledge.

“Not like Theosophy. In the end, Theosophy is just another faith. As I say, I have done with faith.”

“And with Heaven and Hell?”

“You remember what the Mam told us—’Wear flannel next to your skin, and never believe in eternal punishment.’ ”

“So everyone goes to Heaven? Sinners and the just alike? What incentive—”

Arthur cuts her off. He feels as if he is back arguing about the Tolley. “Our spirits are not necessarily at peace after we pass over.”

“And God and Jesus? You do not believe in them?”

“Certainly. But not the God and the Jesus who are claimed by a Church which for centuries has been corrupt both spiritually and intellectually. And which demands of its followers the suspension of rational faculties.”

Connie now feels herself getting lost and also wonders if she should take offence. “So what sort of Jesus do you believe in?”

“If you look at what it actually says in the Bible, if you ignore the way in which the text has been altered and misinterpreted to suit the will of the established churches, it’s quite clear that Jesus was a highly trained psychic or medium. The inner circle of the Apostles, especially Peter, James and John, were clearly chosen for their spiritist capabilities. The ‘miracles’ of the Bible are merely—well, not merely, wholly—examples of Jesus’s psychic powers.”

“The raising of Lazarus? The feeding of the five thousand?”

“There are medical mediums who claim to see through the body’s walls. There are apport mediums who claim to transport objects through time and space. And Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended and they all spoke in tongues. What is that but a seance? It’s the most exact description of a seance I’ve read!”

“So you’ve become an early Christian, Arthur?”

“Not to mention Joan of Arc. She was clearly a great medium.”

“Her too?”

He suspects she is now mocking him—it would be just like her; and this makes it easier, not harder, for him to explain things.

“Think of it this way, Connie. Imagine there are a hundred mediums at work. Imagine ninety-nine of them are frauds. This means, does it not, that one is true? And if one is true, and the psychic phenomena channelled through that medium are authentic, we have proved our case. We need only prove it once and it is proved for everybody and for all time.”

“Prove what?” Connie has been thrown by her brother’s sudden use of “we.”

“The survival of the spirit after death. One case, and we prove it for all humanity. Let me tell you about something that happened twenty years ago in Melbourne. It was well documented at the time. Two young brothers went out into the bay in their boat with an experienced seaman at the tiller. Sailing conditions were good, but alas they never returned. Their father was a Spiritualist, and after two days with no news he called in a well-known sensitive—that’s a medium—to try and trace them. The sensitive was given some of the brothers’ belongings, and managed by psychometry to provide an account of their movements. The last he could make out was that their boat was in great difficulty and confusion reigned. It seemed that they were inevitably going to be lost.