Arthur & George

the terms of a contract she has signed while happily blindfolded.
    Her tone makes his heart melt and his brain blur. As confirmation of the contract they kiss. She likes to peck at him rather, with eyes open, in birdlike attacks; he prefers the long adhesion of the lips, with eyes closed. He cannot believe he is kissing someone again, let alone her. He tries to stop himself thinking in what ways it is different from kissing Touie. After a while, however, the perturbance starts up again, and he pulls back.
    They are to meet; they are to be alone together for limited periods; they are allowed to kiss; they are not to become carried away. Their situation is intensely dangerous. But again she appears to be only half-listening.
    ‘It is time I left home,’ she says. ‘I can share a flat with other women. Then you may come and see me freely.’
    She is so different from Touie: direct, frank, open-minded. She has treated him from the start as an equal. And she is an equal in terms of their love, of course. But he has the responsibility for them, and for her. He must see that her straightforwardness does not lead her into dishonour.
    There are times, in the following weeks, when he even begins to wonder if she was not expecting him to make her his mistress. The eagerness of her kisses, the disappointment at his drawing back; the way she presses herself against him, the sense he sometimes has that she knows precisely what is going through him. And yet he cannot think this. She is not that sort of woman; her lack of false modesty is a sign that she trusts him entirely, and would trust him even if he were not the man of principle that he is.
    But it is not enough to solve the practical difficulties of their relationship; he also needs moral approval. Arthur takes the Leeds train from St Pancras in a state of trepidation. The Mam remains his final arbiter. She reads every word he writes before it is published; and she has done the equivalent for his emotional life. Only the Mam can confirm that the course of action he proposes is correct.
    At Leeds he takes the Carnforth train, changing at Clapham for Ingleton. She is waiting at the station in her wickerwork pony-and-dog cart; she wears a red coat and the white cotton cap she has taken to affecting in recent years. The two ambling miles in the cart seem interminable to Arthur. The Mam defers constantly to her pony, which is called Mooi, and has its eccentricities, such as a refusal to go past steam engines. This means that roadworks have to be avoided, and each whim of equine inattention flattered. At last, they are inside Masongill Cottage. Arthur immediately tells the Mam everything. Everything, at least, that counts. Everything necessary for her to give him advice on this high and heaven-sent love of his. Everything about the sudden wonder and sudden impossibility of his life. Everything about his feelings, his sense of honour and his sense of guilt. Everything about Jean, her sweetly direct nature, her incisive intelligence, her virtue. Everything. Almost everything.
    He backtracks; he starts again; he goes into different detail. He stresses Jean’s ancestry, her Scottishness, a lineage designed to seduce any amateur genealogist. Her descent from Malise de Leggy in the thirteenth century, and by another line from Rob Roy himself. Her present condition, living with wealthy parents in Blackheath. The Leckie family, respectable and religious, who made their money in tea. Her age, twenty-one. Her fine mezzo voice, trained in Dresden and soon to be perfected in Florence. Her supreme ability as a horsewoman, which he has yet to witness. Her quickness of sympathy, her sincerity and strength of character. And then her personal appearance, which sends Arthur into rapturous mode. Her slender frame, small hands and feet, dark gold hair, hazel-green eyes, gently elongated face, delicate white complexion.
    ‘You paint a photograph, Arthur.’
    ‘I wish I had one. I asked her, but she says she takes a poor picture. She is reluctant to smile for the camera, because she is self-conscious about her teeth. She told me quite straightforwardly. She considers them oversized. Of course they are nothing of the sort. She is such an angel.’
    The Mam, listening to her son’s account, does not fail to observe the strange parallel that life has thrown up. For years she was married to a man whom society politely chose to regard as an invalid, whether he was being brought home by cadging cabmen