Arthur & George

miraculous light seen about the masts and yardarms of ships during a storm. He liked to picture himself as a mariner in peril on the seas of life, while she illuminated the dark skies for him. Indeed, he almost became engaged to Elmo; but then, after a while, he didn’t.
    He was also much concerned at this time about nocturnal emissions, which had featured little in the
Morte d’Arthur
. Damp morning sheets rather detracted from chivalric dreams; also from a sense of what a man was, or might be, if he put his mind and strength to it. Arthur sought to impose discipline upon his sleeping self by increased physical activity. Already he boxed, and played cricket and football. Now he also took up golf. Where lesser men consulted filth, he read Wisden.
    He began to submit stories to the magazines. Once again he was the boy standing on the school desk, deploying his vocal tricks; the cynosure of raised eyes, the cause of mouths dropped open in credulity. He wrote the sort of tales he enjoyed reading – this seemed to him the most sensible approach to the writing game. He set his adventures in distant lands, where buried treasure could often be found, and the local population was high on black-hearted villains and rescuable maidens. Only a certain kind of hero was fitted to take part in the hazardous missions he sketched. For a start, those whose constitutions were enfeebled, those given to self-pity and to alcohol, were manifestly unsuitable. Arthur’s father had failed in his chivalric duty to the Mam; now the task had devolved upon his son. He could not rescue her by fourteenth-century methods, so would have to apply those available in a lesser age. He would write stories: he would rescue her by describing the fictional rescue of others. These descriptions would bring him money, and money would do the rest.

George
    It is two weeks before Christmas. George is now sixteen, and no longer feels the excitement of the season as he once did. He knows our Saviour’s birth to be a solemn truth, annually celebrated, but he has left behind the nervous exaltation that still infects Horace and Maud. Nor does he share the trivial hopes his old schoolfellows at Rugeley used openly to express: for frivolous presents of a kind which have no place at the Vicarage. They also annually set their hearts on snow, and would even demean the faith by praying for it.
    George has no interest in skating or sledding or the building of snowmen. He has already embarked on his future career. He has left Rugeley and is studying law at Mason College in Birmingham. If he applies himself, and passes the first examination, he will become an articled clerk. After five years of articles, there will be final examinations, and then he will become a solicitor. He sees himself with a desk, a set of bound law books and a suit with a fob chain slung between his waistcoat pockets like golden rope. He imagines himself being respected. He imagines himself with a hat.
    It is almost dark when he gets home late on the afternoon of December 12th. As he reaches the front door of the Vicarage he notices an object lying on the step. He bends, then squats to examine it more closely. It is a large key, cold to the touch and heavy in the hand. George does not know what to make of it. The keys to the Vicarage are much smaller; so is that of the schoolroom. The church key is different again; nor does this seem to be a farm key of any kind. But its weight suggests a serious purpose.
    He takes it to his father, who is equally puzzled.
    ‘On the step, you say?’ Another question to which Father already knows the answer.
    ‘Yes, Father.’
    ‘And you saw no one put it there?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘And did you meet anyone coming away from the Vicarage on your way from the station?’
    ‘No, Father.’
    The key is sent with a note to Hednesford police station, and three days later, when George returns from college, Sergeant Upton is sitting in the kitchen. Father is still out on his parish rounds; Mother is hovering anxiously. It crosses George’s mind that there is a reward for finding the key. If this was one of those stories the boys at Rugeley used to love, it would open a strongbox or treasure chest, and the hero would next require a crumpled map with an X marked on it. George has no taste for such adventures, which always strike him as far too unlikely.
    Sergeant Upton is a red-faced man with the build of a blacksmith; his dark serge uniform constricts him, and is perhaps