“Woodie,” she says, and it seems to George that a strange look comes over his companion. But before he can assess it, the secretary has somehow disappeared.
“Mr. Edalji,” Lady Conan Doyle pronounces his name with just the right stress, and rests a gloved hand on his forearm. “I am so pleased you could come.”
George is taken aback: it is not as if he has been obliged to turn down many other engagements to be here.
“I wish you every happiness,” he replies. He looks at her dress. He has never seen anything like it before. None of the Staffordshire villagers his father has married has ever worn a dress remotely like this. He thinks he ought to praise it, but does not know how to do so. But it does not matter, because she is speaking to him again.
“Mr. Edalji, I would like to thank you.”
Again, he is taken aback. Have they opened their wedding presents already? Surely not. But what else could she be referring to?
“Well, I wasn’t sure what you might require—”
“No,” she says, “I do not mean that, whatever it might be.” She smiles at him. Her eyes are a sort of grey-green, he thinks, her hair golden. Is he staring at her? “I mean, it is partly thanks to you that this happy day has occurred when it has and how it has.”
Now George is completely baffled. Further, he is staring, he knows he is.
“I expect we shall be interrupted at any moment, and in any case I was not intending to explain. You may never know what I mean. But I am grateful to you in a way you cannot guess. And so it is quite right that you are here.”
George is still pondering these words as a swirl of noise takes the new Lady Conan Doyle away. I am grateful to you in a way you cannot guess. A few moments later, Sir Arthur shakes his hand, tells him he meant every word of his speech, claps him on the shoulder, and moves on to his next guest. The bride disappears and then reappears in different clothes. A final toast is drunk, glasses are drained, cheers are raised, the couple depart. There is nothing left for George to do except bid farewell to his temporary friends.
The next morning he bought The Times and the Daily Telegraph. One paper listed his name between those of Mr. Frank Bullen and Mr. Hornung, the other had him between Mr. Bullen and Mr. Hunter. He discovered that the white flowers he had been unable to identify were called lilium Harrisii. Also that Sir Arthur and Lady Conan Doyle had afterwards left for Paris, en route to Dresden and Venice. “The bride,” he read, “travelled in a dress of ivory white cloth, trimmed with white Soutache braid, and having a bodice and sleeves of lace, with cloth over-sleeves. At the back the coat was caught into the waist with gold embroidered buttons. In front, folds of the cloth fell softly at either side of a lace chemisette. The dresses were by Maison Dupree, Lee, B.M.”
He scarcely understood a word of this. It was as mysterious to him as the words the dress’s wearer had uttered the day before.
He wondered if he would ever marry himself. In the past, when idly imagining the possibility, the scene would always taken place at St. Mark’s, his father officiating, his mother gazing at him proudly. He had never been able to picture his bride’s face, but that had never bothered him. Since his ordeal, however, the location no longer struck him as plausible, and this seemed to undermine the likelihood of the whole event. He wondered if Maud would ever marry. And Horace? He knew little of his brother’s present life. Horace had declined to attend the trial, and had never visited him in gaol. He managed an inappropriate postcard from time to time. Horace had not been home in several years. Perhaps he was married already.
George wondered if he would ever see Sir Arthur and the new Lady Conan Doyle again. He would spend the next months and years attempting to regain in London the sort of life he had once begun to have in Birmingham; while they would go off to whatever existence world-famous authors and their young brides enjoyed. He was not sure how things would go between them if a common cause was lacking. Perhaps this was being over-sensitive on his part, or over-timid. But he tried to imagine visiting them in Sussex, or dining with Sir Arthur at his London club, or receiving them in whatever modest accommodation he might be able to afford. No, that was another implausible scene from a life he would not have. In all probability they would never meet again. Still, for three-quarters of a year their paths had crossed, and if yesterday had marked the end of that crossing point, perhaps George did not mind so very much. Indeed, part of him preferred it that way.
FOUR
Endings
George
On the Tuesday, Maud passed her Daily Herald silently across the breakfast table. Sir Arthur had died at 9:15 the previous morning at Windlesham, his home in Sussex. DIES PRAISING HIS WIFE announced the headline; and then “YOU ARE WONDERFUL!” SAYS SHERLOCK HOLMES’ CREATOR and then NO MOURNING. George read how there was “no gloom” in the house at Crowborough; the blinds had deliberately not been drawn; and only Mary, Sir Arthur’s daughter by his first marriage, was “showing grief.”
Mr. Denis Conan Doyle talked freely to the Herald’s Special Correspondent, “not in a hushed voice, but normally, glad and proud to talk about him. ‘He was the most wonderful husband and father that ever lived,’ he said, ‘and one of the greatest men. He was greater than most people knew, because he was so modest.’ ” Two paragraphs of proper filial praise followed. But the next paragraph made George embarrassed; he almost wanted to hide the paper from Maud. Should a son speak like this about his parents—especially to a newspaper? “He and my mother were lovers to the end. When she heard him coming she would jump up like a girl and pat her hair and run to meet him. There had never been greater lovers than these two.” Apart from the impropriety, George disapproved of the boasting—the more so as it followed close upon the assertion of Sir Arthur’s own modesty. He, surely, would never have made such claims for himself. The son continued: “If it had not been for our knowledge that we have not lost him, I am certain that my mother would have been dead within an hour.”
Denis’s younger brother Adrian corroborated their father’s continuing presence in their lives. “I know perfectly well that I am going to have conversations with him. My father fully believed that when he passed over he would continue to keep in touch with us. All his family believe so, too. There is no question that my father will often speak to us, just as he did before he passed over.” Not that it would be entirely straightforward: “We shall always know when he is speaking, but one has to be careful, because there are practical jokers on the other side as there are here. It is quite possible that they may attempt to impersonate him. But there are tests which my mother knows, such as little mannerisms of speech which cannot be impersonated.”
George was confused. The instant sadness he felt at the news—as if, somehow, he had lost a third parent—was deemed to be impermissible: NO MOURNING. Sir Arthur had died happily; his family—with one exception—was resisting grief. The blinds were not drawn; there was no gloom. Who was he, then, to pronounce himself bereft? He wondered whether to express this quandary to Maud, who would be able to think more clearly about such matters; but judged it might seem egotistical. The dead man’s own modesty perhaps compelled a modesty of grief among those who had known him.
Sir Arthur had been seventy-one. The obituaries were substantial and affectionate. George followed the news all week, and discovered to his slight discomfort that Maud’s Herald gave him rather more information than his own Telegraph. There was to be a GARDEN FUNERAL which was JUST A FAMILY FAREWELL. George wondered if he would be invited; he hoped that those who had celebrated Sir Arthur’s marriage might also be allowed to bear witness to his . . . he was going to say death, but the word was not in use at Crowborough. His passing over; his promotion, as some termed it. No, this was an inappropriate expectation—he was not in any sense a member of the family. Having settled the matter in his mind, George felt slightly piqued to discover from the next day’s paper that a crowd of three hundred would attend the funeral.
Sir Arthur’s brother-in-law, the Revd. Cyri
l Angell, who had buried the first Lady Conan Doyle and married the second one, took the service in the rose garden at Windlesham. He was assisted by the Revd. C. Drayton Thomas. There was little black in the congregation; Jean wore a flowered summer dress. Sir Arthur was laid to rest near the garden hut which had served him so long as a study. Telegrams arrived from all over the world, and a special train had to be run to carry all the flowers. When laid out on the burial field, they looked, according to one witness, as if a fanciful Dutch garden had grown as high as a man’s head. Jean had ordered a headboard made of British oak, inscribed with the words BLADE STRAIGHT, STEEL TRUE. A sportsman and a chivalrous knight to the end.
George felt that all had been done properly, if unconventionally; his benefactor had been honoured as he would have wished. But Friday’s Daily Herald announced that the story was not yet complete. CONAN DOYLE’S EMPTY CHAIR read the four-column headline, and beneath it an explanation which jumped from type-size to type-size. CLAIRVOYANT to attend GREAT MEETING. 6,000 Spiritualists at Memorial Meeting. WIFE’S WISH. Medium Who Will Be Quite Frank.
This public farewell would take place at the Albert Hall on Sunday July 13th 1930 at 7 p.m. The service was to be organized by Mr. Frank Hawken, secretary of the Marylebone Spiritualist Association. Lady Conan Doyle, who would attend with other family members, said that she looked upon it as the last public demonstration she would attend with her husband. An empty chair would be placed on the stage to symbolize Sir Arthur’s presence, and she would sit to the left of it—the position she had occupied tirelessly over the last two decades.
But there was more. Lady Conan Doyle had asked that there be a demonstration of clairvoyance in the course of the meeting. This would be performed by Mrs. Estelle Roberts, who had always been Sir Arthur’s favourite medium. Mr. Hawken favoured the Herald with an interview: “Whether Sir Arthur Conan Doyle will be able to demonstrate sufficiently yet awhile for a medium to describe him is problematical,” he stated. “I should imagine that he would be quite capable of demonstrating already. He was quite prepared for his passing.” Further: “If he did demonstrate it is doubtful whether the evidence would be accepted by the sceptics, but we who know Mrs. Roberts as a medium would have no doubt on the matter at all. We know that if she cannot see him she will be quite frank about it.” There was no mention here, George noted, of any threat from practical jokers.
Maud watched her brother finish the story. “You will have to go,” she said.
“You think so?”
“Definitely. He called you his friend. You must say your farewell, even if the circumstances are unusual. You had better go to the Marylebone Association for your ticket. This afternoon or tomorrow—otherwise you will be anxious.”
It was strange, but agreeable, how decisive Maud could be. Whether at his desk or not, George was in the habit of chasing one argument after another before coming to a decision. Maud refused to waste such time; she saw more clearly—or at least more quickly—and he handed over household decisions to her just as he handed over whatever money he did not require for clothing and office expenses. She looked after their living costs, placed a certain amount each month in a savings account, and gave the remainder to charity.
“You do not think Father would disapprove of . . . of this sort of thing?”
“Father has been dead for twelve years,” replied Maud. “And I always like to think that those who are in God’s presence find themselves somewhat changed from how they were on earth.”
It still took him by surprise that Maud could be so forthright; her statement verged on the critical. George decided not to discuss it, but to consider it later in private. He returned to the newspaper. His knowledge of spiritualism was mostly based on a few dozen pages written by Sir Arthur, and he could not say they had received his fullest concentration. The notion of six thousand people waiting for their lost leader to address them through a medium struck him as an alarming proposition.
He had an aversion to large numbers of people gathered in one spot. He thought of the crowds at Cannock and Stafford, of the rough loiterers besieging the Vicarage after his arrest. He remembered men thumping violently on the cab door and waving their sticks; he remembered the crush of men in Lewes and Portland, and how it sharpened the pleasures of solitary confinement. In certain circumstances he might attend a public lecture, or a large meeting of solicitors; but as a general rule he regarded the tendency of human beings to agglomerate in one place as the beginning of unreason. It was true that he lived in London, a most populous city, but he was able largely to control his contact with his fellow men and women. He preferred them to come into his office one by one; he felt protected by his desk and by his knowledge of the law. It was safe here at 79 Borough High Street: the office downstairs, and upstairs the rooms he shared with Maud.
It had been an excellent notion that they should live together, though he could no longer recall who proposed it. When Sir Arthur was helping vindicate him, Mother had stayed some part of the time with him at Miss Goode’s lodgings in Mecklenburgh Square. But it became evident that she must return to Wyrley, and the idea of exchanging the women of the household had seemed logical. Maud, to their parents’ great surprise, though much less to his, had proved immensely capable. She organized the house for him, cooked, acted as secretary when his own was away, and listened to his stories of the day’s work with as much enthusiasm as if she were back in the old schoolroom. She had become more outgoing and more opinionated since moving to London; she had also learned how to tease him, which gave him rare pleasure.
“But what shall I wear?”
Her speed of reply meant that she must have foreseen the question. “Your blue business suit. It is not a funeral, and in any case they do not believe in black. But it is important to show respect.”
“It is a vast arena by the sound of it. I doubt I shall be able to get a ticket near the stage.”
It had become part of their living together that George habitually looked for objections to plans that had already been decided. And in return, Maud indulged such prevarication. Now she disappeared, and he heard the sound of objects being dragged around the attic room above his head. A few minutes later she placed before him something that caused a sudden frisson: his binoculars in their dust-laden case. She fetched a cloth, and wiped the dust away; the leather, long unpolished, shone dully with damp.
Instantly, brother and sister are standing once more in Castle Gardens, Aberystwyth, on the last entirely happy day of his life. A passer-by points out Mount Snowdon; but all George can see is the delight on his sister’s face. She turns and promises to buy him a pair of binoculars. Two weeks later his ordeal began, and afterwards, when he was free and they moved to Borough High Street, on their first Christmas together she had given him this present which had made him come close to weeping for himself.
He had been grateful, but also puzzled, since they were now far from Snowdon, and he doubted they would ever return to Aberystwyth. Maud had anticipated this response, and suggested he take up birdwatching. This had immediately struck him, like all Maud’s proposals, as eminently sensible, and so for several Sunday afternoons he had gone off to the marshes and woodlands surrounding London. She thought he needed a hobby; he thought she needed him out of the house from time to time. He stuck at it dutifully for a few months, but in truth he had trouble following a bird in flight, and the ones at rest seemed to take pleasure in being camouflaged. Additionally and alternatively, many of the places from which it was deemed best to watch birds struck him as cold and damp. If you had spent three years in prison, you did not need any more cold and damp in your life until you were placed in your coffin and lowered into the coldest, dampest place of all. That had been George’s considered view of birdwatching.
“I felt so sorry for you that day.”
George looked up, the picture in his head of a twenty-one-year-old girl by the disappointing ruins of a Welsh castle replaced by a greying, middle-aged woman behind a teapot. She spott
ed some more dust on the binocular case and gave it another wipe. George gazed at his sister. Sometimes he could not tell which of them was taking care of the other.
“It was a happy day,” he said firmly, holding to the memory he had made into certainty by repetition. “The Belle Vue Hotel. The tramway. Roast chicken. Not going to pick up pebbles. The railway journey. It was a happy day.”
“I was pretending for most of it.”
George was not sure he wanted his memories disturbed. “I could never tell how much you knew,” he said.
“George, I was not a child. I might have been a child when it all began, but not then. What else did I have to do except work it out? You cannot keep things from someone of twenty-one who rarely leaves the house. You are only keeping things from yourself, pretending to yourself, and hoping she will go along with it.”
George thought his way back from the Maud he knew now, and realized there must have been a lot more of this woman in that girl than he was aware of at the time. But he had no desire to pursue the complications of this. He had decided long ago what had happened; he knew his own story. He might be willing to accept a general correction of the kind just made; but the last thing he wanted was fresh detail.
Maud sensed this. And if, back then, he had kept things from her, she had also kept things from him. She would never tell him of the morning Father had called her into his study and announced that he feared greatly for the mental stability of her brother. He said George had been under much strain and was refusing to take the slightest holiday; so he would propose over dinner that brother and sister take a day trip to Aberystwyth, and whether she wanted to or not she was to concur and insist that they must, absolutely must go. And this was what had happened. George had politely yet stubbornly refused his father, then yielded to the pleas of his sister.