Arthur & George

moving slowly round the great amphitheatre, holding the same level, as if watching a spirit form go questingly from box to box. All George’s rational conclusions of a moment ago are worthless. His father is about to speak to him. His father, who spent all his life as a priest in the Church of England, is about to speak to him through this … improbable woman. What can he want? What message can be so urgent? Something to do with Maud? A paternal rebuke to his son’s failing faith? Is some terrifying judgement about to fall on him? Close to panic, George finds himself wishing Mother were by his side. But Mother has been dead these six years.
    As the medium’s head slowly continues to turn, as her arm still points to the same level, George feels more scared than the day he sat in his office, knowing that at some point a knock would come and a policeman would arrest him for a crime he had never committed. Now, he is again a suspect, about to be identified in front of ten thousand witnesses. He thinks he must simply rise to his feet and end the suspense by crying, ‘That is my father!’ Perhaps he will faint and fall over the balcony into the stalls below. Perhaps he will have a seizure.
    ‘His name … he is telling me his name … It begins with an S …’
    And still the head turns, turns, seeking that one face in the upper boxes, seeking the glorious moment of acknowledgement. George is quite sure everyone is looking at him – and soon they will know exactly who he is. But now George shrinks from the recognition he wished for earlier. He wants to hide in the deepest dungeon, the most noxious prison cell. He thinks, this cannot be true, this absolutely cannot be true, my father would never behave like this, perhaps I am going to soil myself as I did when a boy on the way home from school, perhaps that is why he is coming, to remind me I am a child, to show me his authority continues even after he is dead, yes, that would not be unlike him.
    ‘I have the name –’ George thinks he is going to scream. He is going to faint. He will fall and hit his head on – ‘It is Stuart.’
    And then a man of about George’s age, a few yards to his left, is on his feet and signalling to the stage, acknowledging this seventy-five-year-old who was brought up in India and passed in 1918, seeming almost to claim him as a prize. George feels that the shadow of the angel of death has been cast over him; he is chilled to the bone, sweaty, exhausted, threatened, utterly relieved, and deeply ashamed. And at the same time, part of him is impressed, curious, fearfully wondering …
    ‘And now I have a lady, she was about forty-five to fifty years of age. She passed over in 1913. She mentions Morpeth. She never married, but she has a message for a gentleman.’ Mrs Roberts starts to looks downwards, into the arena. ‘She says something about a horse.’
    There is a pause. Mrs Roberts drops her head again, turns it sideways, takes advice. ‘I have her name now. It is Emily. Yes, she gives her name as Emily Wilding Davison. She has a message, she had arranged to come here to give a gentleman a message. I think she told you through the planchette or Ouija board she would be present.’
    A man in an open-necked shirt, sitting near the platform, rises to his feet, and as if conscious he is addressing the whole hall, says in a carrying voice, ‘That is correct. She told me she would communicate tonight. Emily is the suffragette who threw herself before the King’s horse and died from her injuries. As a spirit figure she is well known to me.’
    The hall seems to take in a vast collective breath. Mrs Roberts starts to relay the message, but George does not bother to listen. His sanity feels suddenly restored; the clear, keen wind of reason is blowing again through his brain. Hocus-pocus, as he always suspected. Emily Davison indeed. Emily Davison, who broke windows, threw stones, set fire to postboxes; who refused to obey prison regulations and was consequently forcefed on numerous occasions. A silly, hysterical woman in George’s view, who deliberately sought death in order to advance her cause; though some said she was merely trying to plant a flag on the horse, and misjudged the speed of the animal. In which case, incompetent as well as hysterical. You cannot break the law to advance the law, that was a nonsense. You do it by petition, by argument, by demonstration if necessary, but by reason. Those who broke the law as an