Arthur & George

Six weeks later he walks into a musical afternoon and she is singing one of Beethoven's Scottish songs while an earnest little fellow in white tie accompanies her. He finds her voice superb, the pianist ma

They separate; a few minutes later, with some ghastly cellist groaning away in the background, they meet again, this time alone. She says at once, 'I see I shall have to wait at least nine months.'

'For what?'

'For my skiing lesson. There is no possibility of snow now.'

He does not find this forward, or flirtatious, though he knows he should.

'Are you pla

'Why not? Wherever you wish. Scotland. Or Norway. Or Switzerland.'

They seem to have passed, without his noticing, through some French windows, across a terrace, and are now standing under that very sun which has long banished all hope of snow. He has never resented a fine day more.

He looks down into her hazel-green eyes. 'Are you flirting with me, young lady?'

She looks straight back at him. 'I am talking to you about skiing.' But those, it feels, are only her nominal words.

'Because if you are, be careful I do not fall in love with you.'

He barely knows what he has said. He half means it entirely and half ca

'Oh, you are already. In love with me. And I with you. There is no doubt about it. No doubt at all.'

And so it is said. And no more words are needed, or uttered, for a while. All that matters is how he is to see her again, and where, and when, and it must be arranged before someone interrupts them. But he has never been a Lothario or seducer, and never known how to say those things which are necessary to arrive at the stage beyond the one where he currently stands – not really knowing either what that further stage might be, since where he is at the moment appears, in its own way, to be final. All he can feel rising up in his head are difficulties, prohibitions, reasons why they will never meet again, except perhaps decades later, in passing, when they are old and grey and will be able to joke about that ever-remembered moment on someone's su

Yet almost without his being aware of her questions and his answers, it is somehow arranged. And it is not an assignation, or the start of an intrigue, it is merely the next time they will see one another, and in the five days he is obliged to wait he ca

It is not an assignation, though he finds himself getting out of the cab on the corner of the street. It is not an assignation, though there is a woman of indeterminate age and class who opens the door and disappears. It is not an assignation, though they are at last alone together sitting on a sofa covered in satin brocatelle. It is not an assignation because he tells himself it is not.

He takes her hand and looks at her. Her glance is neither shy nor bold; it is frank and constant. She does not smile. He knows that one or other of them must speak, but seems to have lost his daily familiarity with words. But it does not matter. And then she half-smiles and says, 'I could not wait for the snow.'

'I shall give you snowdrops on every a

'March the fifteenth,' she says.

'I know. I know because it is engraved upon my heart. If they cut me open they will be able to read that date.'

There is another silence. He sits there, perched on the sofa's edge, longing to concentrate on her words, her face, the date and the thought of snowdrops; but they are all driven out by the awareness that he has the most tremendous cockstand of his entire life. It is not the decorous swelling of a pure-hearted chevalier, it is a thumping and unavoidable presence, something rowdy, something in off the street, something living up to that word cockstand which he has never himself uttered but which is pressingly in his head. His only other thought is a relief that his trousers are loosely cut. He shifts a little to ease the constriction, and in doing so inadvertently moves a few inches closer to her. She is an angel, he thinks, her look so pure, her complexion so fair, but she has taken his movement as a sign that he intends to kiss her, and so is trustingly offering her face to his, and as a gentleman he ca

An image comes into Arthur's head, an image from decades earlier. Night-time at Stonyhurst, with a Jesuit quietly patrolling the dormitories to prevent beastliness among the boys. It worked. And what he needs now, and for all the time he can foresee, is his own patrolling Jesuit. What happened in that room must never happen again. As a doctor, he might find such a moment of weakness explicable; as an English gentleman, he finds it shameful and perturbing. He does not know whom he has betrayed the most: Jean, Touie or himself. All three to some degree, certainly. And it must never happen again.

It is the sudde

But now that the dilemma has manifested itself in full clarity and awfulness, Arthur is able to address it. His brain begins to work on the practicalities of love as once it worked on the practicalities of illness. He defines the problem – the problem! the aching, wracking joy and torment! – thus. It is impossible for him not to love Jean; and for her not to love him. It is impossible for him to divorce Touie, the mother of his children, whom he still regards with affection and respect; besides, only a cad would abandon an invalid. Finally, it is impossible to turn the affair into an intrigue by making Jean his mistress. Each of the three parties has his or her honour, even if Touie does not know hers is being considered in absentia. For that is an essential condition: Touie must not know.