Arthur & George

mind.
    But these recourses can only do so much. You can thrash the other side’s bowlers to all quarters, then pitch short into their batsmen’s ribs; you can take a driver and punish a golf ball into the farthest distance. You cannot keep the thoughts at bay for ever; always the same thoughts, and the same repellent paradoxes. An active man doomed to inactivity; lovers forbidden to love; death which you fear and are ashamed to beckon.
    Arthur’s cricket season has been going well; scores made and wickets taken are relayed to the Mam with filial pride. She in return continues to give him the benefit of her opinions: about the Dreyfus Case, about the sacerdotal bullies and bigots in the Vatican, about the odious attitude towards France of that dismal paper the
Daily Mail
. One day, Arthur is playing at Lord’s for the MCC. He invites Jean to watch him, and knows, when he comes out to bat, just where in ‘A’ Enclosure she will be sitting. It is one of those days when the bowlers have no secrets from him; his bat is impregnable, and scarcely registers the impact as he smacks and wheedles the ball around the field. Once or twice he lifts it straight into the crowd, and even has time to make sure beforehand that there is no danger of it dropping near her like a shell. He is jousting in the name of his lady; he should have asked for a favour to wear in his cap.
    Between innings, he comes to seek her out. He needs no words of praise – he sees the pride in her eyes. She needs to walk a little after sitting on a slatted bench so long. They take a turn around the ground, behind the stands; beer wafts on the hot air. Amid an idling, anonymous throng they feel more alone together than under the friendliest chaperoning eye at a dinner table. They talk as if they had just met. Arthur says how he wishes he could have worn her favour in his cap. She slips her arm through his and they walk silently on, deep in happiness.
    ‘Hello, there’s Willie and Connie.’
    It is indeed; coming towards them, also arm in arm. They must have left little Oscar with his nurse back in Kensington. Arthur now feels even prouder of his performance with the bat. Then he becomes aware of something. Willie and Connie are not slowing their pace, and Connie has started looking away, as if the back of the pavilion had become something of irreducible interest. Willie at least does not appear to be denying their existence; but as the couples pass, he raises an eyebrow at his brother-in-law, at Jean, and at their linked arms.
    Arthur’s bowling after the change of innings is faster and wilder than usual. He takes only a single wicket, thanks to an over-greedy swipe at one of his long-hops. When he is sent to field in the deep, he keeps turning to look for Jean, but she must have moved. He cannot spot Willie and Connie either. His throwing-in causes more alarm to the wicketkeeper than usual, and has him scuttling in all directions.
    Afterwards, it is clear that Jean has left. He is now in a state of pure rage. He wants to take a cab straight to Jean’s flat, lead her out on to the pavement, put her arm through his, and walk her past Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. And with him still in his cricket clothes. And shouting, ‘I am Arthur Conan Doyle and I am proud to love this woman, Jean Leckie.’ He visualizes the scene. When he stops doing so, he thinks he is running mad.
    Rage and madness subside, leaving him with a steady, inflexible anger. He takes a shower-bath and changes, all the while swearing internally at Willie Hornung. How dare that asthmatic short-sighted part-time spin bowler raise his bloody eyebrow. At
him
. At
Jean
. Hornung, the journalist, the writer of no-account stories about the Australian outback. Totally unheard of until he purloined – with permission – the idea of Holmes and Watson; turned them upside down and made them into a pair of criminals. Arthur let him do it. Even provided the name of his so-called hero, Raffles, as in
The Doings of Raffles Haw
. Allowed the damned book to be dedicated to him. ‘To A.C.D., this form of flattery.’
    Gave him more than his best idea, gave him his wife. Literally: walked her up the aisle and handed her over to him. Made them an allowance to get started on. All right, made Connie an allowance, but Willie Hornung didn’t say it was a stain on his honour as a man to accept such help, didn’t say he’d go out and work harder to keep his young wife,