'And yet?'
'And yet. I scarcely dare voice the thought. It comes into my head when I am at the lowest. I find myself wondering… I find myself wondering: what if our love is not as I think, is not something existing outside time? What if everything I have believed about it is wrong? What if it is not special in any way, or at least, special only in the fact of being unadvertised and… unconsummated? And what if – what if Touie dies, and Jean and I are free, and our love can finally be advertised and sanctified, and brought out into the world, and what if at this point I discover that time has been quietly doing its work without my noticing, its work of gnawing and corroding and undermining? What if I then discover – what if we then discover – that I do not love her as I thought, or that she does not love me as she thought? What would there be to be done then? What?'
Sensibly, the Mam does not reply.
Arthur confides everything to the Mam: his deepest fears, his greatest elations, and all the intermediate tribulations and joys of the material world. What he can never allude to is his deepening interest in spiritualism, or spiritism as he prefers it. The Mam, having left Catholic Edinburgh behind, has become, by a sheer process of attendance, a member of the Church of England. Three of her children have now been married at St Oswald's: Arthur himself, Ida and Dodo. She is instinctively opposed to the psychic world, which for her represents anarchy and mumbo-jumbo. She holds that people can only come to any understanding of their lives if society makes clear its truths to them; further, that its religious truths must be expressed through an established institution, be it Catholic or Anglican. And then there is the family to consider. Arthur is a knight of the realm; he has lunched and dined with the King; he is a public figure – she repeats back to him his boast that he is second only to Kipling in his influence on the healthy, sporting young men of the country. What if it came out that he was involved in séances and suchlike? It would dish all chance of a peerage.
In vain does he attempt to relate his conversation with Sir Oliver Lodge at Buckingham Palace. Surely the Mam must admit that Lodge is an entirely level-headed and scientifically reputable individual, as is proven by the fact that he has just been appointed first Principal of Birmingham University. But the Mam will not admit anything; in this area she refuses adamantinely to indulge her son.
Arthur fears to bring the matter up with Touie, in case it upsets the preternatural calm of her existence. She has, he knows, a simple trustingness in matters of faith. She presumes that after she dies she will go to a Heaven whose exact nature she cannot describe, and remain there in a condition she cannot imagine, until such time as Arthur comes to join her, followed in due course by their children, whereupon all of them will dwell together in a superior version of Southsea. Arthur thinks it unfair to disturb any of these presumptions.
It is harder still for him that he cannot talk to Jean, with whom he wants to share everything, from the last collar stud to the last semicolon. He has tried, but Jean is suspicious – or perhaps frightened – of anything touching the psychic world. Further, her dislike is expressed in ways Arthur finds untypical of her loving nature.
Once he tries recounting, with some tentativeness and a conscious suppression of zeal, his experience at a séance. Almost at once he notices a look of the sharpest disapproval come over those lovely features.
'What is it, my darling?'
'But Arthur,' she says, 'they are such common people.'
'Who are?'
'Those people. Like gypsy women who sit in fairground booths and tell your fortune with cards and tea leaves. They're just… common.'
Arthur finds such snobbery, especially in one he loves, unacceptable. He wants to say that it is the splendid lower-middle-class folk who have always been the spiritual peers of the nation: you need look no farther than the Puritans, whom many, of course, misprized. He wants to say that around the Sea of Galilee there were doubtless many who judged Our Lord Jesus Christ a little common. The Apostles, like most mediums, had little formal education. Naturally, he says none of this. He feels ashamed of his sudden irritation, and changes the subject.
And so he has to go outside his iron-sided triangle. He does not approach Lottie: he does not want to risk her love in any way, the more so as she helps nurse Touie. Instead, he goes to Connie. Connie, who only the other day, it seems, was wearing her hair down her back like the cable of a man-o'-war and breaking hearts across Continental Europe; Connie, who has settled all too solidly into the role of Kensington mother; Connie, moreover, who dared oppose him that day at Lord's. He has never solved the question of whether Connie changed Hornung's mind, or Hornung Connie's; but whichever way round, he has come to admire her for it.
He visits her one afternoon when Hornung is away; tea is served in her little upstairs sitting room, where once she heard him out about Jean. Strange to realize that his little sister is now nearer forty than thirty. But her age suits her. She is not quite as decorative as she once was, she is large, healthy and good-humoured. Jerome was not wrong to have called her a Brünnhilde when they were in Norway. It is as if, with the years, she has grown more robust in an attempt to counterbalance Hornung's ill-health.
'Connie,' he begins gently, 'Do you ever find yourself wondering what happens after we die?'
She looks at him sharply. Is there bad news about Touie? Is the Mam not well?
'It is a general enquiry,' he adds, sensing her alarm.
'No,' she replies. 'At least, very little. I worry about others dying. Not about myself. I did once, but it changes when you are a mother. I believe in the teachings of the Church. My Church. Our Church. The one you and the Mam left. I haven't the time to believe anything else.'
'Do you fear death?'
Connie reflects on this. She fears Willie's death – she knew the severity of his asthma when she married him, knew he would always be delicate – but that is fearing his absence, and the loss of his companionship. 'I can hardly like the idea,' she replies. 'But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. You are sure you are not leading up to something?'
Arthur gives a brief shake of the head. 'So your position could be summed up as Wait and See?'
'I suppose so. Why?'
'Dear Connie – your attitude to the eternal is so English.'
'What a strange thought.'
Connie is smiling, and seems unlikely to shy away. Even so, Arthur doesn't know quite how to begin.
'When I was a lad at Stonyhurst, I had a friend called Partridge. He was a little younger than me. A fine catcher in the slips. He liked to bamboozle me with theological argument. He would choose examples of the Church's most illogical doctrines and ask me to justify them.'
'So he was an atheist?'
'Not at all. He was a stronger Catholic than I ever was. But he was trying to convince me of the truths of the Church by arguing against them. It turned out to be a misconceived tactic.'
'I wonder what has become of Partridge.'
Arthur smiles. 'As it happens, he is second cartoonist at Punch.'
He pauses. No, he must go directly at things. That is his way, after all.
'Many people – most people – are terrified of death, Connie. They're not like you in that respect. But they're like you in that they have English attitudes. Wait and see, cross that bridge when they come to it. But why should that reduce the fear? Why should uncertainty not increase it? And what is the point of life unless you know what happens afterwards? How can you make sense of the beginning if you don't know what the ending is?'