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never forgot the tales heard while the porridge stick was raised. For Arthur the root of Englishness lay in the long-gone, long-remembered, long-invented world of chivalry. There was no knight more faithful than Sir Kaye, none so brave and amorous as Sir Lancelot, none so virtuous as Sir Galahad. There was no pair of lovers truer than Tristan and Iseult, no wife fairer and more faithless than Guinevere. And of course there was no braver or more noble king than Arthur.
    The Christian virtues could be practised by everyone, from the humble to the high-born. But chivalry was the prerogative of the powerful. The knight protected his lady; the strong aided the weak; honour was a living thing for which you should be prepared to die. Sadly, the number of grails and quests available to a newly qualified doctor was fairly limited. In this modern world of Birmingham factories and billycock hats the notion of chivalry often seemed to have declined into one of mere sportsmanship. But Arthur practised the code wherever possible. He was a man of his word; he succoured the poor; he kept his guard against baser emotions; he treated women respectfully; he had long-term plans for the rescue and care of his mother. Given that the fourteenth century had regrettably ended, and that he was not William Douglas, Lord of Liddesdale, the Flower of Chivalry himself, this was the best Arthur could currently manage.
    It was the rules of chivalry, and not the textbooks of physiology, which governed his first approaches to the fairer sex. He was handsome enough to attract women, and robustly flirtatious; once, he proudly informed the Mam that he was honourably in love with five women at the same time. It was different from being bosom friends with fellows at school, but at least some of the same rules applied. Thus, if you liked a girl, you gave her a nickname. Elmore Weldon, for instance: a pretty, sturdy thing with whom he flirted furiously for weeks. He called her Elmo, after St Elmo’s Fire, that miraculous light seen about the masts and yardarms of ships during a storm. He liked to picture himself as a mariner in peril on the seas of life, while she illuminated the dark skies for him. Indeed, he almost became engaged to Elmo; but then, after a while, he didn’t.
    He was also much concerned at this time about nocturnal emissions, which had featured little in the
Morte d’Arthur
. Damp morning sheets rather detracted from chivalric dreams; also from a sense of what a man was, or might be, if he put his mind and strength to it. Arthur sought to impose discipline upon his sleeping self by increased physical activity. Already he boxed, and played cricket and football. Now he also took up golf. Where lesser men consulted filth, he read Wisden.
    He began to submit stories to the magazines. Once again he was the boy standing on the school desk, deploying his vocal tricks; the cynosure of raised eyes, the cause of mouths dropped open in credulity. He wrote the sort of tales he enjoyed reading – this seemed to him the most sensible approach to the writing game. He set his adventures in distant lands, where buried treasure could often be found, and the local population was high on black-hearted villains and rescuable maidens. Only a certain kind of hero was fitted to take part in the hazardous missions he sketched. For a start, those whose constitutions were enfeebled, those given to self-pity and to alcohol, were manifestly unsuitable. Arthur’s father had failed in his chivalric duty to the Mam; now the task had devolved upon his son. He could not rescue her by fourteenth-century methods, so would have to apply those available in a lesser age. He would write stories: he would rescue her by describing the fictional rescue of others. These descriptions would bring him money, and money would do the rest.

George
    It is two weeks before Christmas. George is now sixteen, and no longer feels the excitement of the season as he once did. He knows our Saviour’s