Arthur & George

twenty-second? It all depends how quickly slumbering humanity wakes up and learns to use its eyes.
    And then his thoughts, already on a downward slope, tumble further. After nine years of wanting – of trying not to admit to wanting – the impossible, he is now free. He could marry Jean tomorrow morning and face only the bickering of village moralists. But wanting the impossible canonizes the wanting. Now that the impossible has become the possible, how much does he want? He cannot even tell this now. It is as if the muscles of the heart, overtaxed for so long, have turned to fraying rubber.
    He once heard a story, narrated over port, of a married man who maintained a long-term mistress. This woman was of good social standing, certainly fit to marry him, which is what had always been anticipated and promised. Eventually, the wife died, and within weeks the widower duly remarried. But not his mistress; instead, a young woman of a lower social class whom he had met a few days after the funeral. At the time he had sounded to Arthur like a double cad: cad to the wife, then cad to the mistress.
    Now, he realizes how easily such things happen. In the ragged months since Touie’s death, he had scarcely entered society, and those to whom he has been introduced have left only the faintest impression. Yet even so – and allowing for the fact that he does not understand the other sex – some of its members were flirting with him. No, that is vulgar and unfair; but certainly, they were looking at him differently, at this famous author, this knight of the realm, who is now a widower. He can well imagine how the fraying rubber might suddenly break, how a young girl’s simplicity, or even a coquette’s scented smile, might suddenly pierce a heart grown temporarily impervious to a long and secret attachment. He understands the behaviour of the double cad. More than understands: he sees the advantage. If you allow yourself to succumb to such a
coup de foudre
, then it is, at least, the end to lying: you do not have to produce your long-secret love and introduce her as a new-met companion. You do not have to lie to your children for the rest of your life. As for your new wife: yes, you say, I know how she strikes you, and she could never replace the irreplaceable, but she has brought a little cheer and consolation into my heart. The forgiveness sought might not be immediately forthcoming, but at least the situation would be less complicated.
    He sees Jean again, once in company and once alone, and on both occasions the awkwardness between them continues. He finds himself waiting for his heart to pulse again – no, he is instructing his heart to pulse again – and it refuses to do his bidding. He has been so used to forcing his thoughts, to pressing them and directing them where they have to go, that it comes as a shock that he is unable to do the same with the tender emotions. Jean looks as adorable as ever, except that her adorability does not set off the normal response. Some impotence of the heart appears to have struck him.
    In the past, Arthur has eased the torments of thought by physical exertion; but he feels no desire to ride, to spar, to strike a ball at cricket, tennis or golf. Perhaps, if he were instantly transported to a high, snow-covered Alpine valley, an icy breeze might disperse the mephitic air which hangs around his soul. But it seems impossible. The person he once was, the
Sportesmann
who brought his Norwegian skis to Davos and crossed the Furka Pass with the Branger brothers, seems to him long departed, long out of sight on the other side of the mountain.
    When, at length, his mind stops descending, when he feels less febrile of mind and gut, he tries to make a clearing in his head, to establish a little area of simple thought. If a man cannot tell what he wants to do, then he must find out what he ought to do. If desire has become complicated, then hold fast to duty. This is what he did with Touie, and what he must now do with Jean. He has loved her hopelessly and hopefully for nine years; such a feeling cannot simply disappear; so he must wait for its return. Until then, he must negotiate the great Grimpen Mire, where green-scummed pits and foul quagmires on every side threaten to pull a man down and swallow him for ever. To plot his course, he must call on everything he has learned up to now. In the Mire, there were hidden signs – bunches of reeds and strategically planted sticks – to guide the