Arthur & George

fellow pupils the stories of chivalry and romance he had first heard from beneath a raised porridge stick. On wet half-holidays, he would stand on a desk while his audience squatted around him. Remembering the Mam’s skills, he knew how to drop his voice, how to drag out a story, how to leave off at a perilous, excruciating moment with the promise of more the next day. Being large and hungry, he would accept a pastry as the basic price of a tale. But sometimes, he might stop dead at the thrill of a crisis, and could only be got going again at the cost of an apple.
    Thus he discovered the essential connection between narrative and reward.

George
    The oculist does not recommend spectacles for young children. It is better to let the boy’s eyes adjust naturally over the years. In the meanwhile, he should be moved to the front of the classroom. George leaves the farm boys behind and is placed beside Harry Charlesworth, who is regularly top in tests. School now makes sense to George; he can see where Mr Bostock’s chalk is stabbing, and he never again soils himself on the way home.
    Sid Henshaw carries on making monkey faces, but George barely notices. Sid Henshaw is just a stupid farm boy who smells of cows and probably cannot even spell the word.
    One day, Henshaw rushes at George in the yard, barges him with his shoulder, and as George is recovering himself, pulls off his bow tie and runs away. George hears laughter. Back in the classroom, Mr Bostock asks where his tie has got to.
    This presents George with a problem. He knows it is wrong to get a schoolfellow into trouble. But he knows it is worse to tell lies. His father is quite clear about this. Once you start telling lies you are led into the paths of sin and nothing will stop you until the hangman slips a noose around your neck. No one has said as much, but this is what George has understood. So he cannot lie to Mr Bostock. He looks for a way out – which is perhaps bad enough anyway, the start of a lie – and then he simply answers the question.
    ‘Sid Henshaw knocked me and took it.’
    Mr Bostock leads Henshaw out by the hair, beats him until he howls, comes back with George’s tie, and gives the class a lecture about theft. After school, Wallie Sharp stands in George’s path and as he steps round him says, ‘You’re not a right sort.’
    George rules out Wallie Sharp as a possible friend.
    He rarely feels the lack of what he does not have. The family takes no part in local society, but George cannot imagine what this might involve, let alone what the reason for their unwillingness, or failure, might be. He himself never goes to other boys’ houses, so cannot judge how things are conducted elsewhere. His life is sufficient unto itself. He has no money, but also no need of it, and even less when he learns that its love is the root of all evil. He has no toys, but does not miss them. He lacks the skill and eyesight for games; he has never even jumped a hopscotch grid, while a thrown ball makes him flinch. He is happy to play fraternally with Horace, more gently with Maud, and more gently still with the hens.
    He is aware that most boys have friends – there are David and Jonathan in the Bible, and he has watched Harry Boam and Arthur Aram huddling at the edge of the yard and showing one another things from their pockets – but he never finds this happening to himself. Is he meant to do something, or are they meant to do something? In any case, though he wants to please Mr Bostock, he is not especially interested in pleasing the boys who sit behind him.
    When Great-Aunt Stoneham comes to tea, as she does on the first Sunday of each month, she scrapes her cup noisily across its saucer and through a wrinkled mouth asks him about his friends.
    ‘Harry Charlesworth,’ he always replies. ‘He sits next to me.’
    The third time he gives her the same reply, she puts her cup noisily back in its saucer, frowns, and asks, ‘Anyone else?’
    ‘The rest of them are just smelly farm boys,’ he replies.
    From the way Great-Aunt Stoneham looks at Father, he knows he has said something wrong. Before supper, he is called into the study. His father stands at his desk, with all the authority of the faith shelved behind him.
    ‘George, how old are you?’
    This is how conversations often begin with Father. They both of them already know the answer, but George still has to give it.
    ‘Seven, Father.’
    ‘That is an age by which a certain intelligence and