Arthur & George

the raging for both of them, in silence, by himself. He also concealed his blacker feelings. Each uncomplaining cough sent a pain, not through her, but through him; she brought up a little blood, he brought up gouts of guilt.
    Whatever his fault, whatever his negligence, it was done, and there was only one course of action: a violent attack on the accursed microbe which was intending to consume her vitals. And when his presence was not required, only one course of distraction: violent exercise. He had brought his Norwegian skis to Davos, and took instruction in their use from two brothers called Branger. When their pupil’s skill began to match his brute determination, they took him on the ascent of the Jacobshorn; at the summit he turned, and saw far below him the flags of the town being lowered in acclamation. Later that winter the Brangers led him over the 9,000-foot Furka Pass. They set off at four in the morning and arrived in Arosa by noon, Arthur thus becoming the first Englishman to cross an Alpine pass on skis. At their hotel in Arosa, Tobias Branger registered the three of them. Next to Arthur’s name, in the space for Profession, he wrote:
Sportesmann
.
    With Alpine air, the best doctors, and money, with Lottie’s nursing help and Arthur’s tenacity in wrestling down the Devil, Touie’s condition stabilized, then began to improve. By the late spring, she was judged strong enough to come back to England, allowing Arthur to depart for an American publication tour. The following winter they returned to Davos. That initial sentence of three months had been overturned; every doctor agreed that the patient’s health was somewhat more secure. The next winter they spent in the desert outside Cairo at the Mena House Hotel, a low white building with the Pyramids looming behind. Arthur was irritated by the brittle air; but soothed by billiards, tennis and golf. He foresaw a life of annual winter exiles, each a little longer than the previous one, until … No, he must not let himself think beyond the spring, beyond the summer. At least he could still manage to write during this jerky existence of hotels and steamers and trains. And when he couldn’t write he went out into the desert and whacked a golf ball as far as it would fly. The whole course was in effect nothing but one vast sand-hole; wherever you landed, you were in it. This, it seemed, was what his life had become.
    Back in England, however, he ran into Grant Allen: like Arthur a novelist, and like Touie a consumptive. Allen assured him that the disease could be resisted without recourse to exile, and offered himself as living proof. The solution lay in his postal address: Hindhead, Surrey. A village on the Portsmouth road, almost halfway, as it happened, between Southsea and London. More to the point, a spot with its own private climate. It was high up, sheltered from the winds, dry, full of fir trees and sandy soil. They called it the Little Switzerland of Surrey.
    Arthur was immediately convinced. He thrived on action, on having an urgent plan to implement; he loathed waiting, and feared the passivity of exile. Hindhead was the answer. Land must be bought, a house designed. He found four acres, wooded and secluded, where the ground dropped away into a small valley. Gibbet Hill and the Devil’s Punchbowl were close at hand, Hankley Golf Course five miles away. Ideas came to him in a rush. There must be a billiards room, and a tennis ground, and stables; quarters for Lottie, and perhaps Mrs Hawkins, and of course Woodie, who had now signed up for the duration. The house must be impressive yet welcoming: a famous writer’s house, but also a family house and an invalid’s house. It must be full of light, and Touie’s room must have the best view. Every door must have a push-pull knob, as Arthur had once tried to calculate the amount of time lost to the human race in turning the conventional kind. It would be quite feasible for the house to have its own electricity plant; and given that he had now attained a certain eminence, it would not be inappropriate to have his family arms in stained glass.
    Arthur sketched a ground plan and handed the work over to an architect. Not just any architect, but Stanley Ball, his old telepathic friend from Southsea. Those early experiments now struck him as appropriate training. He would be taking Touie to Davos again, and would communicate with Ball by letter and, if necessary, telegram. But who knew what