The Vicar does not correct Mr Brookes's source. He also senses something idle about the man's attitude. 'But you didn't merely put the letters in a drawer?'
'I asked around a bit. I asked Fred what he knew.'
'Who is this Mr Wynn?'
Wynn is apparently a draper who lives up the line at Bloxwich. He has a son who goes to school at Walsall with Brookes's boy. They meet on the train each morning and usually return together. A while ago – the ironmonger does not specify how long – Wynn's son and young Fred were accused of breaking a carriage window. Both swore it was the work of a boy called Speck, and eventually the railway officials decided not to press charges. This happened a few weeks before the first letter arrived. Perhaps there was some connection. Perhaps not.
The Vicar now understands Brookes's lack of zeal in the matter. No, the ironmonger does not know who Speck is. No, Mr Wynn hasn't received any letters himself. No, Wynn's boy and Brookes's boy are not friends with George. This last is hardly a surprise.
Shapurji describes the exchange to George before supper, and pronounces himself encouraged.
'Why are you encouraged, Father?'
'The more people involved, the more likely the scoundrel is to be discovered. The more people he persecutes, the more probable it is he will make a mistake. Do you know of this boy called Speck?'
'Speck? No.' George shakes his head.
'And I am also encouraged in one respect by the persecution of the Brookes family. This proves it is not merely race prejudice.'
'Is that a good thing, Father? To be hated for more than one reason?'
Shapurji smiles to himself. These flashes of intelligence, coming from a docile boy who is often too much turned in on himself, always delight him.
'I will say it again, you will make a fine solicitor, George.' But even as he pronounces the words, he is reminded of a line from one of the letters he has not shown his son. 'Before the end of the year your kid will be either in the graveyard or disgraced for life.'
'George,' he says. 'There is a date I wish you to remember. The 6th of July 1892. Just two years ago. On that day Mr Dadabhoy Naoroji was elected to Parliament for the Finsbury Central district of London.'
'Yes, Father.'
'Mr Naoroji was for many years Professor of Gujerati at University College London. I was briefly in correspondence with him, and am proud to say that he had words of praise for my Grammar of the Gujerati Language.'
'Yes, Father.' George has seen the Professor's letter brought out on more than one occasion.
'His election was an honourable conclusion to a most dishonourable time. The Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, said that black men should not and would not be elected to Parliament. He was rebuked for it by the Queen herself. And then the voters of Finsbury Central, only four years later, decided that they agreed with Queen Victoria and not with Lord Salisbury.'
'But I am not a Parsee, Father.' In George's head the words come back: the centre of England, the beating heart of the British Empire, the flowing bloodline that is the Church of England. He is English, he is a student of the laws of England, and one day, God willing, he will marry according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England. This is what his parents have taught him from the beginning.
'George, this is true enough. You are an Englishman. But others may not always entirely agree. And where we are living-'
'The centre of England,' George responds, as if in bedroom catechism.
'The centre of England, yes, where we find ourselves, and where I have ministered for nearly twenty years, the centre of England – despite all God's creatures being equally blessed – is still a little primitive, George. And you will furthermore find primitive people where you least expect them. They exist in ranks of society where better might be anticipated. But if Mr Naoroji can become a university professor and a Member of Parliament, then you, George, can and will become a solicitor and a respected member of society. And if unfair things happen, if even wicked things happen, then you should remember the date of the 6th of July 1892.'
George thinks about this for a while, and then repeats, quietly yet firmly, 'But I am not a Parsee, Father. That is what you and Mother have taught me.'
'Remember the date, George, remember the date.'
Arthur
Arthur began to write more professionally. As he put on literary muscle, his stories grew into novels, the best of them naturally being set in the heroic fourteenth century. Each page of work would be read aloud to Touie after supper, and the completed text sent to the Mam for editorial comment. Arthur also took on a secretary and amanuensis: Alfred Wood, a master from Portsmouth School, a discreet efficient fellow with the honest look of a pharmacist; an all-round sportsman too, with a very decent cricket arm on him.
But medicine remained Arthur's current livelihood. And if he was to advance in his profession, he knew it had become time to specialize. He had always prided himself, through every aspect of his life, in looking carefully; so it did not require a spirit voice, or a table leaping into the air, to spell out his chosen calling – ophthalmologist. He was not a man to prevaricate or palter, and knew at once where best it was to train.
' Vienna?' repeated Touie wonderingly, for she had never left England. It was now November; winter was coming on; little Mary was beginning to walk, as long as you held her sash. 'When do we leave?'
'Immediately,' replied Arthur.
And Touie – bless her – merely rose from her needlework and murmured, 'Then I must be quick.'
They sold up, left Mary with Mrs Hawkins, and took off to Vienna for six months. Arthur signed up for a course of eye lectures at the Krankenhaus; but quickly discovered that the German learned while walking along flanked by two Austrian schoolboys whose phraseology was often less than choice did not fully prepare a fellow for rapid instruction littered with technical terms. Still, the Austrian winter provided fine skating, and the city excellent cakes; Arthur even knocked off a short novel, The Doings of Raffles Haw, which paid all their Viennese expenses. After a couple of months, however, he admitted that he would have been better off studying in London. Touie responded to the change of plan with her usual equanimity and despatch. They returned via Paris, where Arthur managed to put in a few days' study with Landolt.
Thus able to claim he had been trained in two countries, he took rooms in Devonshire Place, was elected a member of the Ophthalmological Society, and waited for patients. He also hoped for work passed on by the big men in the profession, who were often too busy to calculate refractions for themselves. Some regarded it as mere donkey-labour; but Arthur considered himself competent in this field, and counted on overflow work drifting his way.
Devonshire Place consisted of a waiting room and a consulting room. Yet after a few weeks he began to joke that both were waiting rooms, and that he, Arthur, was the one doing the waiting. Idleness being repugnant, he sat at his desk and wrote. He was now well-apprenticed in the literary game, and turned his mind to one of its current bedevilments: magazine fiction. Arthur loved a problem, and the problem went like this. Magazines published two kinds of stories: either lengthy serializations which ensnared the reader week by week and month by month; or single, free-standing tales. The trouble with the tales was that they often didn't give you enough to bite on. The trouble with the serializations was that if you happened to miss a single issue, you lost the plot. Applying his practical brain to the problem, Arthur envisaged combining the virtues of the two forms: a series of stories, each complete in itself, yet filled with running characters to reignite the reader's sympathy or disapproval. He needed therefore the kind of protagonist who could be relied upon to have regular and diverse adventures. Clearly, most professions need not apply. As he turned the matter over in Devonshire Place, he began to wonder if he hadn't already invented the appropriate candidate. A couple of his less successful novels had featured a consulting detective closely modelled on Joseph Bell of the Edinburgh Infirmary: intense observation followed by rigorous deduction was the key to criminal as well as to medical diagnosis. Arthur had initially called his detective Sheridan Hope. But the name felt unsatisfactory, and in the writing Sheridan Hope had changed first into Sherringford Holmes and then – inevitably as it seemed thereafter – into Sherlock Holmes.