by MARY HOCKING
Then he noticed that the brick wall that divided the vicarage garden from the graveyard was beginning to crumble in one place. He hurried across to inspect it. Somewhere he heard a door slam and looking up he was surprised to see the verger limping across the road. Spencer opened the gate and came up the path as fast as his lame leg would allow; his face wore a strangely accusing expression.
‘What’s wrong, then?’ he demanded.
‘Wrong?’ Ralph repeated in surprise. ‘I was just . . .’
‘It’s much too early to clip that grass yet,’ Spencer said. ‘And . . .’
‘I don’t intend to clip the grass!’
‘And the ground has been too hard for any weeding. As for that brick wall, I noticed that and I was meaning . . .’
It was ridiculous, the man was actually shouting at him! Ralph said mildly:
‘Really Spencer, I have every right to inspect the grounds of my own church.’
Spencer seemed to shrink into himself, muttering:
‘I thought that something was wrong.’
‘Nothing is wrong,’ Ralph answered.
Except that, in spite of a hollow feeling in his stomach that proclaimed that lunch was now ready, he was reluctant to go in and face his wife. What cowards we men are! he told himself as he at last turned in the direction of the vicarage. He smiled at his frailty and quite forgot to utter any encouragement to Spencer who continued to prowl unhappily round the graveyard for some time afterwards.
As he reached the gate, Ralph saw young Wilson in the distance. He waited for him.
‘How did you get on?’
‘I got a job at Kleine’s timber yard.’
‘Fine!’ They walked up the path together. ‘That’s splendid news. The greater part of the battle, you know.’
And a relief to have one problem settled.
Chapter Four
I
Sarah had been prepared for unpleasantness to follow Mr. Wilson’s arrival. She had, however, expected that it would be of the dramatic kind. In fact, it was the irritating, uncomfortable kind. Meal times were adjusted slightly. More disturbing, behaviour underwent that mysterious adjustment which the intrusion of a stranger seems to necessitate with the result that Aunt Myra and Uncle Ralph became suddenly less familiar. As for Mr. Wilson himself, he was careful and over-anxious, like a new boy at school. During that first week he liked everything, his room, his job, his food; he helped with the washing-up, made his bed, cleaned his own shoes and Uncle Ralph’s as well, even peeled potatoes when he came in early one evening. Sarah was disgusted by this craven eagerness to please. She had expected more of Mr. Wilson.
The snow was the only real excitement that week. There was a heavy fall on the Wednesday and it continued intermittently on the Thursday and Friday. On the Saturday, the clouds lifted. The sky was pale blue, the snow still fresh and white, and the apple tree in the vicarage garden glistened as though studded with black sequins. The air was very cold, but dry, and the snow crunched beneath the feet. Children played on the green beyond the church, making snowmen and fighting great snowball battles. Sarah was told that she could join them if she did not get herself too wet. She preferred, however, to watch Mr. Wilson who had offered to brush down the drive and the pavement outside the house. He had forgotten about the length of the brick wall and was not pleased to discover the full extent of the task which he had undertaken. Sarah made a pretence of helping him. He was not a very good companion; but he suffered her without giving a lot of tiresome instructions and he wasn’t jolly about the snow.
At least, he wasn’t jolly about the snow until Jill came up the road, scarlet in the face from the wind and breathless with laughter. Everything was explosively funny to her. In particular, she thought it funny that Mr. Wilson should have volunteered to clear the pavement because she had done the same thing herself the last year that the snow was bad. Mr. Wilson suddenly decided that he thought it very funny, too.
Jill went off in search of a shovel, taking Sarah with her. They finally tracked one down in Spencer’s shed. Spencer argued about lending it because he had intended to clear the pavement for the vicar. He seemed very injured as though he had been robbed, and did not brighten when Jill suggested that he should sit by his fire and take a well-earned rest.
‘I’ll be pensioned off next, I suppose,’ he muttered. ‘Except that I shan’t get no pension.’
They went back to the vicarage wall. Jill and Mr. Wilson did a little work and a lot of fooling about, getting her shovel and his broom entangled and tripping over one another like a couple of clowns. Spencer watched them gloomily from his front window. Jill was enjoying herself, but the clowning did not come naturally to Mr. Wilson. Sarah thought that he made an awful fool of himself.
‘I always imagine that Moscow looks like this in winter,’ Jill said. ‘I shall be terribly disappointed if it doesn’t.’
‘You sound as if you were going there,’ he teased, watching her pink, shining face as though it dazzled him.
‘But I AM going there, silly!’
He stopped work and stared down into the snow, looking so put out that Sarah thought he must have found something nasty in it. Jill seized the broom from his hands.
‘Well, if you don’t intend to work . . .’ She brushed a heap of snow into the gutter with an exuberant ‘whoosh!’ and then turned to face him. ‘I’m going round the world—travelling east because all the really exciting places seem to be east.’
‘Air hostess?’
‘No!’ She tossed her head, the snow winking in her hair. She was showing off dreadfully, Sarah thought in disgust. ‘That’s not the way to see the world. I mean to work my way, getting a job in one place for six months or so and then moving on. I thought of starting in Turkey; but it might have to be Hong Kong because I’ve got relatives there.’
Mr. Wilson took the broom and pushed at a mound of snow in a half-hearted way.
‘That costs money,’ he pointed out.
His face was dark and sullen, but the more dismal he became the more it pleased Jill. She scooped up some snow and moulded it into a ball in her hands.
‘I’ve been saving up ever since I was thirteen. I’ve got enough money for a return fare from anywhere in the world. Mummy made me promise I wouldn’t go until I had money for the return.’ She threw the snowball, quite gently, at Sarah. ‘Wake up, Sarah Jane!’
Mr. Wilson propped the broom against the wall and picked up the shovel.
‘It’s not much of a life for a girl.’
He looked so downcast that Jill said more kindly:
‘I hope you didn’t mind my telling you about it? I usually do. Otherwise it wouldn’t be fair, would it? Because I’m not going to settle down until I’ve done it.’
Mr. Wilson scraped savagely with the shovel.
‘I haven’t asked you to marry me, have I?’
‘I know you haven’t. But I say it to all my boyfriends. Just to be fair, you see.’
‘You must have quite an opinion of yourself.’
Jill made a show of being offended; she strutted off towards the gate, missed her balance and plopped down in the snow. Sarah suspected that she had done it on purpose, but Mr. Wilson made as much fuss as if she had fallen down a mountain. He helped her to her feet and then took out a clean handkerchief and carefully flicked away the heavy patches of snow along the hem of her coat. Jill stood stiffly, looking down at him as he half-knelt before her.
‘You’re very gallant, aren’t you?’ She sounded pleased, but not quite so sure of herself. ‘Most of my boy friends wouldn’t think of that.’
He smiled at her.
‘I expect they’re rather young.’
He stood up and flicked his wet handkerchief to and fro. Jill watched him. She seemed suddenly to have become shy.
‘I suppose they are.’
She picked up the broom and they began to fool about again; but this time it was Jill who was the awkward one. After a time Aunt Myra came out to see what
was happening. There were some people coming in for coffee that evening and she said that she wanted help in the kitchen. It was Sarah who was detailed off to help her; an arrangement which did not suit Aunt Myra.
‘It’s only one person’s work to brush down that pavement,’ she said to Uncle Ralph who was standing in the hall just about to make a telephone call. He looked at her enquiringly and she jerked her head in the direction of Jill and Mr. Wilson who were now proceeding quietly with their work.
‘Is that a good idea?’
Uncle Ralph smiled and shut the front door.
‘Jill will come to no harm.’
‘There may be a few surprises in store for you where Jill is concerned. Just because she’s enthusiastic about nuclear disarmament you regard her as a latter-day Joan of Arc; whereas in fact she’s a quite ordinary young woman. And sensible enough to realize it soon.’
But Uncle Ralph was already dialling a number. Later he came into the kitchen to say that Mr. Rutledge would be coming for coffee but not Mrs. Rutledge who had her mother staging with her.
‘I suggested they should bring the old lady along, but that wasn’t well received!’
Aunt Myra said slyly:
‘You’ll be able to tell Rutledge about the new boiler, won’t you.’
‘Oh, he won’t mind.’
‘Heaven protect you, you’ll never protect yourself!’ Aunt Myra exclaimed, and she put down the butter knife as though she did not trust herself with it. ‘He will mind because you didn’t consult him. He thinks you do it deliberately to humiliate him.’
‘What rubbish!’ Uncle Ralph picked up a cheese biscuit and winked at Sarah. ‘He isn’t the type to be humiliated.’
Aunt Myra pushed the biscuit tray out of his reach.
II
The coffee party was Wilson’s first social occasion since his release. ‘We don’t bother with formalities,’ the vicar assured him. ‘Just make yourself at home’. Which was the one thing that Wilson was incapable of doing. He edged his chair further into the corner, bit his nails, and hated them all except Sarah who had been allowed to stay up as a special treat and was looking disagreeable because she would have preferred to have ‘acted’ in her bedroom. He could hear the conversation buzzing around him, meaningless as noises on a wavelength to which he was not tuned in.
‘Perhaps we can discuss it some other time?’ the vicar was saying.
‘The proper time,’ Rutledge pointed out, ‘would have been before you told Spencer that we’d order a new one.’
What were they talking about? It seemed very important to them. He tried to forget himself and become the disinterested observer again. The vicar was looking down into his coffee cup, his expression a nicely calculated mixture of puzzlement and contrition. Frank Godfrey was watching him with the rather irritable affection that friends of long-standing often have for one another.
‘It was most thoughtless of me,’ the vicar said. ‘I do apologize. The trouble with me . . .’
Rutledge slashed through this gentle magnanimity.
‘The trouble with you, Vicar, is that you’ve got your mind full of this nuclear disarmament business.’
He winked at Myra Kimberley, who pulled a wry face and said:
‘He’s got you there, darling!’
This brought Jill to the attack. She had been unusually quiet up to now, sitting on the hearth-rug, watching the flames roaring up the chimney and looking detached and inaccessible as though she had already embarked on her travels. Now she put her cup down with a sharp click on the fender.
‘He puts first things first.’
She’s going to spout politics, Wilson thought in disgust. Myra Kimberley had the same thought.
‘You’re a naughty girl,’ she reproved affectionately. ‘If you’re going to turn my coffee party into a disarmament debate you shan’t come again.’
Jill looked abashed, but Rutledge ploughed on.
‘It would be a bad thing if we all neglected our work to sit down in the road, wouldn’t it? Someone has to keep the world going round.’
‘But the world may soon be nothing but a burnt-out scrap heap whizzing round.’ Jill cast an apologetic glance at Myra who flicked the tip of her tongue out at her. ‘What can be more important than to prevent that happening?’
‘Your turn,’ Myra said resignedly to Rutledge.
‘I agree, my lass,’ he said heavily. ‘I agree. But do you think the sight of you all sitting on your bottoms is going to move Mr. K. so much that he’ll crawl away and bury his bombs?’ He took a gulp of coffee and shook his head. ‘You’ve got to live in this world, you know; not way up in the clouds like so many people in your outfit.’
Myra darted a glance that was amused, but a little apprehensive, at her husband. He was sitting with his pipe clenched between his teeth; perhaps to prevent himself from intervening. Frank Godfrey, on the other hand, sat with the composed detachment of someone who has no desire at all to intervene.
‘Negotiations,’ Rutledge was saying. ‘Hard negotiations. That’s what will win peace, not all your resounding moral gestures. Old Mr. K. don’t understand ‘em.’
‘I doubt if he understands negotiations in our sense of the word, either.’ The vicar put his pipe to one side. ‘And, in any case, negotiations take time . . .’
‘And patience,’ Rutledge countered. ‘More patience than your folk have. There’ll be men—dedicated men in their way—negotiating on this issue when half your members have lost patience and joined up with some other racket.’
It was fascinating to watch Frank Godfrey. Wilson sensed that he was quite outside this argument—or perhaps it might be more true to say that he was beyond it. He was as passive and remote as a Byzantine saint, and there was the same impression of stillness at the heart. By contrast, the vicar, now passionately engaged in the argument, seemed less convincing.
‘The negotiators are too timid, too half-hearted,’ he was saying. ‘We have to take matters into our own hands.’
And yet, in spite of the resolute voice, one was aware of a slight uncertainty. Beside Godfrey, the vicar was reduced to the rôle of another struggling mortal not quite sure of his place in the pattern of things.
‘You’re playing into Mr. K’s hands,’ Rutledge said.
‘I don’t give a damn about Mr. Kruschev!’ Jill tossed the remark at Rutledge with a provocative tilt of her head. ‘Better to play into his hands than commit mass suicide.’
There was no uncertainty here; only a marked lack of depth. She was eager enough, but one had the impression that to some extent this was all part of a game to her. She had had the same eager look when she talked about going abroad, Wilson remembered; as though life were a tremendous adventure, an expedition into an undiscovered territory where at every moment she would be confronted with the challenge of the unexpected.
‘Man has discovered something so terrible that it can put an end to all life,’ she went on excitedly. ‘What other course is there but to renounce the bomb if we are to survive? You talk about us as though at best we were a bunch of woolly idealists. In fact, we are so realistic that you can’t stomach what we are saying. If something isn’t done soon, the argument will be finished. We shall all have lost.’
The thought made her solemn, but not really desolate. The vicar was regarding her with the forbearing expression of a fond parent. Myra, however, was beginning to lose patience.
‘Does anyone want sherry, Ralph?’ she prompted.
The vicar frowned and shook his head. Myra turned away, her eyes bright with anger.
‘Frank? Sherry, dear?’
‘Thank you, Myra.’
Wilson accepted a glass because he felt better with something in his hands. His hands were unsteady, however, and he spilt a little sherry on the table as he put the glass down and furtively tried to rub it off with the sleeve of his jacket. Rutledge waved the sherry aside.
‘And suppose we do take your advice, young lady? It won’t have much effect, excep
t t’other side of the Iron Curtain where they’ll think it means that the rot has set in in the West.’
Sarah, secure in her corner, was mimicking Rutledge. She did it rather well and Wilson, watching her, felt slightly hysterical. He decided that he must have a cigarette and went across to the mantelpiece for matches. Rutledge concluded:
‘And in ten years’ time we shall all be living under the hammer and sickle.’
There was a short silence. Wilson, standing by the mantelpiece fumbling awkwardly with the match-box, had placed himself at the focal point of the picture. Rutledge stared, noticing him for the first time; there was something calculating in that stare. He knows about me, Wilson thought; he is going to make a scene. The observer had gone: there was only Keith Wilson now, surrounded by a blur of faces, mask-like, unreal. His heart began that thudding beat which he had come to dread.
