THE SPARROW

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘I suppose it may come to that.’

  He didn’t sound as though the prospect had any attraction for him. But then no one doubted his motives. Ralph, too, watched the loading of the coaches. How slowly and decorously the police seemed to be proceeding today! He closed his eyes and put his head in his hands. Myra had accused him of neglecting his responsibilities towards herself and Sarah. Sarah! How could he be guilty of neglecting this child who always touched his heart although there seemed to be so little he could do for her! Wasn’t it her stricken face that he so often saw staring at him among the crowd in those dreadful pictures of Hiroshima? Hadn’t he dreamt once that he was kneeling there in the shattered street trying to reassemble the fragments of her broken body? It was Sarah’s need that was most in his mind on all these occasions.

  It seemed to him that a long time passed before he looked up again. The crowd was as vast as ever and the police seemed only to have nibbled at the fringe of it. The girl with the food basket gave a sharp laugh: ‘Tea up!’ Ralph saw that a mobile canteen had been set up in Spring Gardens. Several constables were standing about drinking tea. He clenched his hands. At this rate . . .

  ‘I’m not comfortable here,’ he said to Frank, who was now quietly reading a book. ‘Should we stretch our legs a little? Move further over, perhaps?’

  Frank gave him a rather sharp look.

  ‘If I’m arrested, I’m arrested. But I’ve no intention of offering myself to the police.’

  Ralph turned away, feeling the colour rise in his face. Perhaps the rebuke was merited. But what was to happen to him if he wasn’t arrested? He would go back to Myra and recriminations about Wilson. Myra would say . . . He stared despairingly at the tea-drinking constables. Damn these men! What were they about? A kind of police go-slow? Why didn’t they hurry to his aid and break this relentless grip which his wife seemed to have established on his mind?

  He closed his eyes again. But the confusion within his own brain was worse than any external irritation. He knew, at such moments as this, that it was not Myra that he was fighting. There was another force, stronger than Myra’s will, trying to turn him back, to ensnare him in the small world of everyday affairs. Even when he prayed it was this other thing that he felt in the silence when he listened for the Word. He could not name it, but he feared it greatly. Even now, in the bright sunlight of this false spring day, he was afraid.

  He looked at Frank. Was he never tormented, did he never feel that he had lost his way? Apparently not. He looked quite calm, sitting there intent on his book. To divert his thoughts, Ralph glanced over his friend’s shoulder to see what he was reading. Eliot! All his misery crystallized into a violent rebellion against Eliot; dry, desiccated, without passion or splendour, the poet of meanness and poverty, of ‘burnt-out ends of smoky days’. Who else could have written:

  O weariness of men who turn from GOD

  To the grandeur of your mind and the glory of your action . . .

  ‘What does your son think of that stuff?’ he asked roughly.

  To his surprise, Frank, who was usually so eager to talk about his son, replied almost equally roughly:

  ‘I haven’t asked him.’

  And he turned back to the book, setting his mouth in a disapproving line as though Ralph had intruded on a family matter instead of making an intellectual enquiry.

  Ralph looked at his watch; nearly four and Nelson’s Column casting a long shadow. The starlings flying in.

  ‘What is beyond all this?’ he asked himself.

  He must have spoken aloud, because the Daily Worker immediately snapped up the subject.

  ‘Yes, indeed! What is beyond it? Surely we should be planning now, far more carefully than we have done, for what lies ahead. It isn’t the bomb alone . . .’

  Frank sighed and closed his book.

  ‘It will take a long time,’ he answered, peering with pale blue eyes into the growing shadows of Cockspur Street as though looking down the vista of the years to some point where, as far as Frank Godfrey was concerned, the scene would blur and dissolve in darkness.

  ‘But we have to be ready,’ the Daily Worker insisted. ‘We must plan . . .’

  Plan, plan, plan! How he hated the word! Ralph thought. It took the heart out of things. He had looked beyond to the new Jerusalem; now his vision shrivelled as he listened to all this talk of planning, as though the aim were to establish a kind of glorified Hampstead Garden Suburb.

  ‘That is surely one of the most valid criticisms against us,’ the Daily Worker was saying, ‘that we have no very clear conception of where we are going from here.’

  ‘What lies beyond is for others,’ Frank Godfrey replied. ‘This one step will be enough for me.’

  But not for me, Ralph thought. He would not renounce his vision; he must, he would reach the promised land. And the way, he was more more convinced, was through the prison gates. There would be security of a kind there, and time in which to find himself again, to purify his vision. He felt the uneasy excitement which had stirred him before at times in his life and which had always up to now led him to a point where he hovered on the brink of failure.

  ‘I don’t think we’re going to spend the night in the cop shop,’ a voice said.

  It was Jill, who had been working her way towards them for some little while. She stood with her hands stuffed in the pockets of a fashionably disreputable duffel coat and surveyed the labours of the police moodily. She sounded rather disgruntled and Ralph wondered whether she, too, was anxious to be arrested. Her next remark disillusioned him.

  ‘I turned down a date to come here.’

  She plumped down beside Frank Godfrey and glowered across at the National Gallery.

  ‘You should have brought your young man along,’ Frank said.

  ‘Keith?’ Ralph looked startled, but she did not notice and went on: ‘He’s much too concerned with his own troubles.’

  ‘Not unnaturally, perhaps,’ Frank murmured.

  ‘If he was a little less concerned with himself, he wouldn’t have such a chip on his shoulder,’ she answered uncharitably. ‘It was stupid of him to quarrel with the men at Kleine’s. And then, when things get nasty, he quits the job!’

  ‘Was that why you wouldn’t go out with him?’

  ‘It’s much more important for me to be here,’ she answered, without much conviction.

  Ralph picked up Frank’s book and pretended to read The Waste Land to cover his agitation. Eliot was not very cheerful company, but at the moment Jill was even more disturbing. He hoped that nothing would develop between her and Wilson. Not that he begrudged Wilson happiness. But Jill was all that he would have wanted his own daughter to be, and, therefore, destined for the heights. He snatched a quick look at her face; its radiance was a little dimmed just now, but the eyes were as candid as ever, the mouth as generous. There was so much ahead of her. Perhaps the same thought was in her mind, because she said to Frank:

  ‘Do you think you should do things for people just because they seem to need you?’

  ‘If you do it in that spirit, they might be better off without your efforts.’

  ‘That’s what I think. If you have something to give a person, you must really feel it, without reservations. And if you don’t feel completely whole-hearted—if there are other things you would rather do—you ought to leave them alone. And I’ve got a lot of plans and he doesn’t fit in with them.’

  She was staring at the offices of a shipping company; a little further down the street there was Thomas Cook’s. Cook’s windows would be full of bright posters advertising trips to Greece, Spain, Casablanca; the shipping line would take her further, to those dim places ‘somewheres East of Suez’ where even her thirst for adventure might be quenched. Frank was saying:

  ‘The kindest thing of all, of course, would be to alter your plans to include him.’

  Jill was no longer listening, but Ralph intervened sharply:

  ‘I don’t think Wilson is so much Jill’s res
ponsibility as mine.’

  Then he realized what he had said and cursed himself for setting the whole relentless train of thought in motion again. He looked across at the labouring policemen who were still some distance away. Frank Godfrey watched them, too. The bright regulation image was beginning to fade and something exasperated and decidedly more human was taking its place.

  ‘Thugs in uniform,’ the girl with the food basket said, taking out a ham roll.

  Her boy friend yawned.

  ‘I dunno; this can’t he much fun for them.’

  Frank Godfrey, feeling the familiar waves of sickness, fumbled in his pocket for his pills.

  ‘They seem to be stepping up the pace a little, don’t you think?’ he said.

  His voice was more husky than usual and Jill looked at him in surprise. If it had been anyone else she would have thought that, as he watched the police moving nearer, he was afraid. But Frank was very nearly a saint; and surely saints aren’t afraid? He was so frail, though. His body seemed to have shrunk even since the last time she saw him and there was a transparent look about his skin across the cheekbones. She remembered one line of a poem by Eliot that he had read at a poetry evening Ralph had organized; he was always reading Eliot and sometimes one got a bit tired of it, especially the bits that were quite incomprehensible even with the footnotes. But this had seemed to mean something: ‘costing not less than everything’. At the time, she had thought the words beautiful and impossibly brave; now, as she saw the gleam of life waning in the thin body beside her, she felt a kind of panic. Could so much be demanded?

  There was the noise of battle: a chorus of voices chanting the number of a constable. The girl with the ham roll and her boy friend were arguing as to whether it was justified. Ralph closed the book. His voice was husky, too; but he was excited.

  ‘I rather think that we are going to spend the night in the cop shop—as you put it—after all.’

  It certainly did seem that if the police continued to advance in the same direction there was a good chance that this section would be cleared. The light was bad now, though; it was too dark to see the time by St. Martin’s clock and Ralph refused to betray his impatience by glancing at his own watch. Several yards away a police inspector was standing with his back to him, directing operations in this area; he appeared to be swinging the column of constables slightly to the right. Ralph stared at him. There was something familiar about that back. The man turned his head slightly and Ralph saw his profile. Inspector Pym! Surely Pym would not be influenced by personal feelings? Ralph recalled suddenly that Pym’s baby girl was due to be christened tomorrow. After a few minutes during which the column of constables swung still further to the right, Frank Godfrey let out a little sigh and murmured:

  ‘Not this time!’

  The lights came on in the square; a bright sickle moon appeared riding high above Admiralty Arch. It was very cold, there would be frost tonight. The crowd was glad to disperse, many people making for the nearby coffee houses although a few lingered to demonstrate their disagreement with the decision to call off the sit-down at dusk. As he walked with Jill and Frank towards Tottenham Court Road tube station, Ralph wondered whether it was God, or Inspector Pym, who had decided that the Reverend Ralph Kimberley should go free to carry out his sabbath duties.

  He also wondered how Myra would greet him. Would she be amused or antagonistic? As it turned out, she was not greatly concerned; she had been too occupied with her own affairs. In the event, it was Ralph who was put out by Myra’s activities.

  Chapter Seven

  I

  Myra had had her hair cut. The soft, loose curls which had trailed around her face in a style first adopted when she was twenty had gone; the hair was swept up and back revealing the high forehead; brisk waves flicked forward at the tips of the ears emphasizing the lines of the cheekbones. One noticed the shapeliness of the head, the sharp outline of the jaw. She looked alert, not a little challenging.

  ‘Well?’ she greeted Ralph. ‘Does it meet with your approval?’

  ‘You seem so different,’ he answered uneasily.

  Myra was uneasy herself. She could no longer feel the weight of her hair and this affected her profoundly. It seemed that along with her hair she had shed the youthful Myra; a corner had been turned in life’s journey and a new person awaited her. On her return from the hairdresser’s she had sat for a long time studying this new person in the mirror. The eyes were bright, but their laughter was not kind and the twist of the mouth was not without cruelty. There was, too, in the tilt of the shapely head a hint of the predatory, a suggestion of piracy in the unmasked boldness of the eyes, a cheap, but not uncourageous, daring betrayed itself in the lift of the jaw.

  ‘I am different,’ she said defensively. ‘We all change as we grow older.’

  Ralph was too disturbed to answer. He seemed to see her more clearly, as though she had stepped out of the shadows on to a brightly lit stage. It occurred to him that a new relationship might have to be devised to go with the new hair style.

  ‘Can’t you put it back the old way?’ he asked persuasively.

  ‘It’s shaped this way now.’

  She was a little frightened, too. But what could she do about it? The new person had, after all, been in embryo for a long time; it was rather late, now that she had emerged triumphantly complete, to disown her. Even now she was taking charge of the situation, testing her power to disturb.

  ‘You weren’t arrested?’

  ‘No.’

  It was obvious that something had happened which had distressed him. Once, she would have said, ‘Tell me about it, Ralph,’ and he would have gone past her as though she were not really there, seeking some solace that lay beyond her. Now, she did not offer comfort. Instead, she said:

  ‘Perhaps you’ll be arrested next time, dear.’

  He went up to his study and slammed the door. It was the most definite reaction she had had from her husband for a very long time.

  After that he began to work with great energy on plans for the next demonstration, shutting himself away in his study for hours on end, Myra tried to occupy herself usefully. During the next few days she devoted an unusual amount of her time to good works, visiting at the hospital, calling on the old and lonely in the parish, even helping Mrs. Thomas with the teas for the young wives’ meeting. But while she did these things a part of herself stood to one side making caustic comments. As she walked through the windy streets on her way to and from her charitable ventures the dead leaves scurried across the pavement and a dry voice whispered, ‘You don’t belong among the angels; not you, dear, not you’. She started to make a costume for Sarah to wear in the Easter pageant: her feeling for Sarah, at least, was genuine. But even this task eventually led to trouble.

  One evening she made her way to the church hall, meaning to search through some old boxes of theatrical costumes which were stored under the stage. As she went up the path, her breath coming quickly in the frosty air, she heard the melancholy pulsing of a slow fox-trot. It was not one of the evenings on which the youth Sclub met. On an impulse, she crossed the grass and looked in at one of the windows.

  The music had stopped. Wilson and Jill were standing by a table going through a pile of records. Myra recalled that he had said that he wanted to weed out the ones that were no longer ‘with it’. She watched him put on a record and then stand to one side, his weight resting on the balls of his feet, his body ready for the music, still but not static. Jill, firmly anchored to the earth, continued to sort through the pile on the table. Myra took out herhandkerchief and rubbed at the pane of glass which had misted over. When she could see clearly again, he had swivelled on his heel to face Jill, his hands outstretched. The girl accepted his invitation awkwardly, standing away from him, looking down. He laughed. Myra could almost hear him telling her not to fuss about her feet. She could hear the music, too; soft, mournful, a slow fox-trot again, exacting in its demands on balance and timing. They might as well have d
anced in separate rooms for all the unity they achieved, Jill bobbing up and down like a cork in a rough sea while he rose and fell smoothly, obedient to the swell of the music. But he was a good teacher. Myra, shivering in the cold, the tip of her pointed nose reddening, marvelled at his patience. He did not mock at Jill’s clumsiness and in time she was persuaded to abandon her nervous giggling. Once, when they were passing the window, the girl’s face loomed very near; as Myra looked at the flushed cheeks, the half¬closed eyes, the slightly parted lips, she was reminded of herself at that age, waiting, wondering and excited, for the curtain to go up on life. The couple spun round. Now it was Wilson that Myra could see, pale and solemn as ever as he steered Jill with tender concern as though the room were full of snags and pitfalls which only he could see; the strained stiffness had gone and Myra realized that, despite the solemnity, he was happy. Gradually, as she watched, her eyes smarting with the cold, the two figures fused together as Jill relaxed, allowing her body to respond to the pressure of his. Myra turned away, but stopped at another window to catch a last glimpse of them; frost had starred the pane of glass and she saw them through a tinsel haze, like creatures in a fairy story. And she herself was momentarily transported into that fantastic world; only she was the darker spirit, angry at being left outside in the night.

  She hurried back to the vicarage. Ralph, meeting her in the hall, said with concern:

  ‘Why, what is it, darling? You’re crying.’

  ‘It’s the cold.’ And this time it was she who hurried past to seek solace alone.

  ‘What a little fool Jill is!’ she said to herself as she walked up and down the bedroom, fighting back the tears. ‘A fine Prince Charming he’ll make!’ She crouched in front of the electric fire, pushing her fists against her sharp cheekbones. Dear Jill! Dear gawky Jill! It would be most unfortunate if . . . And yet, it was not really of Jill that she was thinking.

  She began to pay more attention to Wilson. He was not always as happy as he had been in that moment with Jill. The week following the sit-down in Trafalgar Square he had managed to get himself a job on the Shepherd’s Bush Tribune, a paper which was teetering on the verge of bankruptcy and was not, therefore, in a position to pick and choose its reporters. For a time he seemed to be enjoying himself, and then he suddenly became very reticent, avoiding any discussion of his work and becoming irritable if questioned. Myra remembered how he had behaved when she took him out for coffee after his interview at the Labour Exchange. She had thought then, ‘. . . if I press him, he might break down’. She had been ashamed then.