'I might have been putting on the dog a little.'

'And look – here is little Mary standing on this very chair.'

Arthur leaned over. 'Engraved from one of my photographs – there, you see. I made sure they put my name underneath.'

Arthur had become a face in literary circles. He counted Jerome and Barrie as friends; had met Meredith and Wells. He had dined with Oscar Wilde, finding him thoroughly civil and agreeable, not least because the fellow had read and admired his Micah Clarke. Arthur now reckoned he would run Holmes for not more than two years – three at most, before killing him off. Then he would concentrate on historical novels, which he had always known were the best of him.

He was proud of what he had done so far. He wondered if he would have been prouder had he fulfilled Partridge's prophecy and captained England at cricket. It was quite clear this would never happen. He was a decent right-hand bat, and could bowl slows with a flight that puzzled some. He might make a good all-round MCC man, but his final ambition was now more modest – to have his name inscribed in the pages of Wisden.

Touie bore him a son, Alleyne Kingsley. He had always dreamed of filling a house up with his family. But poor Annette had died out in Portugal; while the Mam was as stubborn as ever, preferring to stick in her cottage on that fellow's estate. Still, he had sisters, children, wife; and his brother Innes was not far away at Woolwich, preparing for an army life. Arthur was the breadwinner, and a head of the family who enjoyed dispensing largesse and blank cheques. Once a year he did it formally, dressing as Father Christmas.

He knew the proper order should have been: wife, children, sisters. How long had they been married – seven, eight years? Touie was all anyone could possibly want in a wife. She was indeed a most charming woman, as The Strand Magazine had noted. She was calm and had grown competent; she had given him a son and daughter. She believed in his writing down to the last adjective, and supported all his ventures. He fancied Norway; they went to Norway. He fancied dinner parties; she organized them to his taste. He had married her for better for worse, for richer for poorer. So far there had been no worse, and no poorer.

And yet. It was different now, if he was honest with himself. When they had met, he had been young, awkward and unknown; she had loved him, and never complained. Now he was still young, but successful and famous; he could keep a table of Savile Club wits interested by the hour. He had found his feet, and – partly thanks to marriage – his brain. His success was the deserved result of hard work, but those themselves unfamiliar with success imagined it the end of the story. Arthur was not yet ready for the end of his own story. If life was a chivalric quest, then he had rescued the fair Touie, he had conquered the city, and been rewarded with gold. But there were years to go before he was prepared to accept a role as wise elder to the tribe. What did a knight errant do when he came home to a wife and two children in South Norwood?

Well, perhaps it was not such a difficult question. He protected them, behaved honourably, and taught his children the proper code of living. He might depart on further quests, though obviously not quests which involved the saving of other maidens. There would be plenty of challenges in his writing, in society, travel, politics. Who knew in what direction his sudden energies would take him? He would always give Touie whatever attention and comfort she could need; he would never cause her a moment's unhappiness.

And yet.

George

Greenway and Stentson tend to hang about together, but this does not bother George. At lunchtime he has no desire for the tavern, preferring to sit under a tree in St Philip's Place and eat the sandwiches his mother has prepared. He likes it when they ask him to explain some aspect of conveyancing, but is often puzzled by the way they go off into secretive spurts about horses and betting offices, girls and dance-halls. They are also currently obsessed with Bechuana Land, whose chiefs are on an official visit to Birmingham.

Besides, when he does hang about with them, they like to question a fellow and tease him.

'George, where do you come from?'

'Great Wyrley.'

'No, where do you really come from?'

George ponders this. 'The Vicarage,' he replies, and the dogs laugh.

'Have you got a girl, George?'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Some legal definition you don't understand in the question?'

'Well, I just think a chap should mind his own business.'

'Hoity-toity, George.'

It is a subject to which Greenway and Stentson are tenaciously and hilariously attached.

'Is she a stunner, George?'

'Does she look like Marie Lloyd?'

When George does not reply, they put their heads together, tip their hats at an angle, and serenade him. The-boy-I-love-sits-up-in-the-ga-ll-ery.'

'Go on, George, tell us her name.'

'Go on, George, tell us her name.'

After a few weeks of this, George can take no more. If that's what they want, that's what they can have. 'Her name's Dora Charlesworth,' he says suddenly.

'Dora Charlesworth,' they repeat. 'Dora Charlesworth. Dora Charlesworth?' They make it sound increasingly improbable.

'She's Harry Charlesworth's sister. He's my friend.'

He thinks this will shut them up, but it only seems to encourage them.

'What's the colour of her hair?'

'Have you kissed her, George?'

'Where does she come from?'

'No, where does she really come from?'

'Are you making her a Valentine?'

They never seem to tire of the subject.

'I say, George, there's one question we have to ask you about Dora. Is she a darkie?'

'She's English, just like me.'

'Just like you, George? Just like you?'

'When can we meet her?'

'I bet she's a Bechuana girl.'

'Shall we send a private detective to investigate? What about that fellow some of the divorce firms use? Goes into hotel rooms and catches the husband with the maid? Wouldn't want to get caught like that, George, would you?'

George decides that what he has done, or has allowed to happen, isn't really lying; it is just letting them believe what they want to believe, which is different. Happily, they live on the other side of Birmingham, so each time George's train pulls out from New Street, he is leaving that particular story behind.

On the morning of February 13th, Greenway and Stentson are in skittish mood, though George never discovers why. They have just posted a Valentine addressed to Miss Dora Charlesworth, Great Wyrley, Staffordshire. This sets off considerable puzzlement in the postman, and even more in Harry Charlesworth, who has always longed for a sister.

George sits on the train, his newspaper unfolded across his knee. His briefcase is on the higher, and wider, of the two string racks above his head; his bowler on the lower, narrower one, which is reserved for hats, umbrellas, sticks and small parcels. He thinks about the journey everyone has to make in life. Father's, for instance, began in distant Bombay, at the far end of one of the bubbling bloodlines of Empire. There he was brought up, and was converted to Christianity. There he wrote a grammar of the Gujerati language which funded his passage to England. He studied at St Augustine 's College, Canterbury, was ordained a priest by Bishop Macarness, and then served as a curate in Liverpool before finding his parish at Wyrley. That is a great journey by any reckoning; and his own, George thinks, will doubtless not be so extensive. Perhaps it will more closely resemble Mother's: from Scotland, where she was born, to Shropshire, where her father was Vicar of Ketley for thirty-nine years, and then to nearby Staffordshire, where her husband, if God spares him, may prove equally long-serving. Will Birmingham turn out to be George's final destination, or just a staging post? He cannot as yet tell.