'You see,' he says, 'there is a path here, and over there is Ingleborough, and we know that if we climb Ingleborough we can see across to Morecambe. And there are rivers whose course we can follow, which always flow in the same direction.'

The Mam does not know what to make of these topographical platitudes. They are most unlike Arthur.

'And were we to miss the path and get lost on the Wolds, we could use a compass and a map, which are easily obtainable. And even at night there are stars.'

'That is all true, Arthur.'

'No, it is banal. It is not worth saying.'

'Then tell me what you wish to say.'

'You brought me up,' he replies. 'There was never a son more devoted to his mother. I say that not as self-praise, merely as a statement of fact. You formed me, you gave me my sense of myself, you gave me my pride and what moral faculties I have. And there is still no son more devoted to his mother.

'I grew up surrounded by sisters. Annette, poor dear Annette, God rest her soul. Lottie, Connie, Ida, Dodo. I love them all in their different ways. I know them inside out. As a young man, I was not unfamiliar with female company. I did not debase myself as many another fellow did, but I was neither an ignoramus nor a prude.

'And yet… and yet I have come to think that women – other women – are like distant lands. Except that when I have been to distant lands – out on the veldt in Africa – I have always been able to find my bearings. Perhaps I am not making sense.'

He stops. He needs a reply. 'We are not so distant, Arthur. We are more like a neighbouring county which you have somehow forgotten to explore. And when you do, you are not sure if the place is much more advanced or much more primitive. Oh yes, I know how some men think. And perhaps it is both and perhaps it is neither. So tell me what you wish to say.'

'Jean is struck down with bouts of low spirits. Perhaps that is not the right way to describe them. It is physical – she has migraines – but it is more a kind of moral depression. She behaves, she talks as if she has done some awful thing. I never love her more than at such moments.' He attempts to take a deep breath of Yorkshire air, but it sounds more like a great sigh. 'And then I fall into black moods myself, but I merely loathe and despise myself for them.'

'And at such times no doubt she loves you just as much.'

'I never tell her. Perhaps she guesses. It is not my way.'

'I would not expect otherwise.'

'I think at times I shall run mad.' He says it calmly but bluntly, like a man giving a weather report. After a few paces, she reaches up and slips her arm through his. It is not one of her gestures, and it takes him by surprise.

'Or if not run mad, die of a stroke. Explode like the boiler of a tramp steamer and just sink beneath the waves with all hands.'

The Mam does not answer. It is not necessary to refuse his simile, or even to ask if he has seen a doctor for chest pains.

'When the fit is on me, I doubt everything. I doubt I ever loved Touie. I doubt I love my children. I doubt my literary capability. I doubt Jean loves me.'

This does call for an answer. 'You do not doubt that you love her?'

'That, never. That, never. Which makes it worse. If I could doubt that, then I could doubt everything and sink happily into misery. No, that is always there, it has me in its monster grip.'

'Jean does love you, Arthur. I am quite certain of it. I know her. And I have read her letters that you send.'

'I think she does. I believe she does. How can 1 know she does? That's the question that tears at me when this mood descends. I think it, I believe it, but how can I ever know it? If only I could prove it, if either of us could prove it.'

They stop at a gate, and look down a tufted slope to the roof and chimneys of Masongill.

'But you are certain of your love for her, just as she is certain of her love for you?'

'Yes, but that is one-sided, that is not knowing, that is not proof.'

'Women often prove their love in a way that has been done many times.'

Arthur darts a glance down at his mother; but she is gazing resolutely ahead. All he can see is a curve of bonnet and the tip of her nose.

'But that is not proof either. That is just being desperate for evidence. If I made Jean my mistress it would not be proof that we loved one another.'

'I agree.'

'It might prove the opposite, that we are weakening in our love. It sometimes seems that honour and dishonour lie so close together, closer than I ever imagined.'

'I never taught you that honour was an easy path. What would it be worth if that was the case? And perhaps proof is impossible anyway. Perhaps the best we can manage is thinking and believing. Perhaps we only truly know in the hereafter.'

'Proof normally depends upon action. What is singular and damnable about our situation is that proof depends upon non-action. Our love is something separate, apart from the world, unknown to it. It is invisible, impalpable to the world, yet to me, to us, utterly visible, utterly palpable. It may not exist in a vacuum, but it does exist in a place where the atmosphere is different: lighter or heavier, I am never sure which. And somewhere outside of time. It has always been like this, from the beginning. That is what we immediately recognized. That we have this rare love, which sustains me – us – utterly.'

'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.