He searched for clues in his favourite author, Captain Mayne Reid. He looked in The Rifle Rangers: or Adventures of an Officer in Southern Mexico. He read The Young Voyageurs and The War Trail and The Headless Horseman. Buffaloes and Red Indians were now mixing in his head with chain-mailed knights and the infantrymen of Pack's Brigade. His favourite Mayne Reid of all was The Scalp-Hunters: or Romantic Adventures in Southern Mexico. Arthur did not as yet know how the gold glasses and velvet dress were to be obtained; but he suspected it might involve a hazardous journey to Mexico.

His mother takes him once a week to visit Great-Uncle Compson. He lives not far away, behind a low granite kerb which George is not allowed to cross. Every week they renew his jug of flowers. Great Wyrley was Uncle Compson's parish for twenty-six years; now his soul is in Heaven while his body remains in the churchyard. Mother explains this as she takes out the shrivelled stems, throws away the smelly water, and stands up the fresh, smooth flowers. Sometimes George is allowed to help her pour in the clean water. She tells him that excessive mourning is unchristian, but George does not understand this.

After Great-Uncle's departure for Heaven, Father took his place. One year he married Mother, the next he obtained his parish, and the next George was born. This is the story he has been told, and it is clear and true and happy, as everything ought to be. There is Mother, who is constantly present in his life, teaching him his letters, kissing him goodnight; and Father, who is often absent because he is visiting the old and the sick, or writing his sermons, or preaching them. There is the Vicarage, the church, the building where Mother teaches Sunday school, the garden, the cat, the hens, the stretch of grass they cross between the Vicarage and the church, and the churchyard. This is George's world, and he knows it well.

Inside the Vicarage, everything is quiet. There are prayers, books, needlework. You do not shout, you do not run, you do not soil yourself. The fire is sometimes noisy, so are the knives and forks if you do not hold them properly; so is his brother Horace when he arrives. But these are the exceptions in a world which is both peaceful and reliable. The world beyond the Vicarage seems to George filled with unexpected noise and unexpected happenings. When he is four, he is taken for a walk in the lanes and introduced to a cow. It is not the size of the beast that alarms him, nor the swollen udders wobbling in his eye-line, but the sudden hoarse bellow the thing utters for no good reason. It can only be in a very bad temper. George bursts into tears, while his father punishes the cow by hitting it with a stick. Then the animal turns sideways, raises its tail and soils itself. George is transfixed by this outpouring, by the strange splatty noise as it lands on the grass, by the way things have suddenly slipped out of control. But his mother's hand pulls him away before he can consider it further.

It is not just the cow – or the cow's many friends like the horse, the sheep and the pig – that renders George suspicious of the world beyond the Vicarage wall. Most of what he hears about it makes him anxious. It is full of people who are old, and sick, and poor, all of which are bad things to be, judging from Father's attitude and lowered voice when he returns; and people called pit widows, which George does not understand. There are boys beyond the wall who are fibbers and, worse than that, liars through and through. There is also something called a Colliery nearby, which is where the coal in the grate comes from. He is not sure he likes coal. It is smelly and dusty and noisy when poked, and you are told to keep away from its flames; also, it is brought to the house by large fierce men in leather helmets which carry on down their backs. When the outside world brings the door-knocker down, George usually jumps. All things considered, he would prefer to stay here, inside, with Mother, with his brother Horace and new sister Maud, until it is time for him to go to Heaven and meet Great-Uncle Compson. But he suspects that this will not be allowed.

They were always moving: half a dozen times in Arthur's first ten years. The flats seemed to get smaller as the family grew larger. Apart from Arthur, there was his older sister Annette, his younger sisters Lottie and Connie, his little brother Innes, and then, later, his sisters Ida and Julia, known as Dodo. Their father was good at engendering children – there were another two who had not survived – but less good at providing for them. This early realization that his father would never furnish the Mam with the proper comforts of old age made Arthur all the more determined to provide them himself.

His father – Dukes of Brittany aside – came from an artistic family. He had talent and fine religious instincts; but was highly strung, and his constitution was not robust. He had come to Edinburgh from London at the age of nineteen; an assistant surveyor in Scotland 's Board of Works, he was precipitated at too early an age into a society which, though kindly, was often rough and hard-drinking. He did not progress at the Board of Works, nor at George Waterman amp; Sons, the lithographic printers. He was a gentle failure of a man, with a soft face behind a full, soft beard; he perceived duty distantly, and had lost his way in life.

He was never violent or aggressive; he was a drunkard of the sentimental, open-pursed, self-pitying kind. He would be brought home, dribbling into his beard, by cabmen whose insistence on being paid would wake the children; the next morning he would lament at maudlin length his inability to support those he loved so tenderly. One year Arthur was sent away to lodgings rather than witness a new stage of his father's decline; but he saw enough to endorse his crescent understanding of what a man could or should be. In his mother's tales of chivalry and romance there were few parts for drunken illustrators.

Arthur's father painted in watercolour, and always intended to supplement his income by selling his work. But his generous nature constantly intervened; he gave his pictures away to all-comers, or at best accepted a few pence for them. His subjects could be wild and fearsome, and often gave evidence of his natural humour. But what he liked to paint best, and was most remembered for painting, was fairies.

George is sent to the village school. He wears a deep starched collar with a loose bow tie to hide the stud, a waistcoat which buttons up to just below the tie, and a jacket with high, almost horizontal lapels. Other boys are not so neat: some wear rough, home-knitted jerseys or ill-fitting jackets passed on from elder brothers. A few have starched collars, but only Harry Charlesworth wears a tie as George does.

His mother has taught him his letters, his father simple sums. For the first week he finds himself seated at the rear of the classroom. On Friday they will be tested and rearranged by intelligence: clever boys will sit at the front, stupid boys at the back; the reward for progress being to find yourself closer to the master, to the seat of instruction, to knowledge, to truth. This is Mr Bostock, who wears a tweed jacket, a woollen waistcoat, and a shirt-collar whose points are pulled in behind his tie by a gold pin. Mr Bostock carries a brown felt hat at all times and places it on the desk during class, as if he does not trust it out of his sight.

When there is a break between lessons the boys go outside into what is called the yard, but which is merely a trampled area of grass looking across open fields towards the distant Colliery. Boys who already know one another instantly start fighting, just for something to do. George has never seen boys fight before. As he watches, Sid Henshaw, one of the rougher boys, comes and stands in front of him. Henshaw makes monkey faces, pulling at the sides of his mouth with his little fingers while using his thumbs to flap his ears forward.