THE SPARROW

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘Oh, my dear!’

  Mrs. Thomas blundered across the room, tears blurring her eyes, and flung her arm round Myra’s shoulders. While the woman gushed out comfort, Myra thought: I shall never despise myself more than at this moment.

  They went through the church together. Spencer was putting out extra prayer books which would be needed next week when all the one-day-a-year worshippers presented themselves for communion on Easter Sunday. He followed them into the porch and watched them walk down the path.

  ‘He’s going queer in the head,’ Mrs. Thomas whispered loudly. ‘I saw him prowling round your garden one evening. If I were you I should tell Pym to keep an eye on him.’

  ‘He’s welcome to prowl round the garden. There’s no gold buried there.’ Myra was not interested in Spencer’s vagaries. As they reached the vicarage gate and Mrs. Thomas showed no signs of departure, she said resignedly: ‘Come in and have coffee.’

  When Myra opened the front door, she saw that there was a letter on the mat. The envelope was lying face down, but there was something familiar about the cheap paper. As she turned it over in her hands, she was bracing herself for the shock but in spite of this she had to put her hand against the door to steady herself.

  ‘For Sarah?’ Mrs. Thomas asked, seeing the sprawling, childish capitals.

  ‘No. For Ralph.’ Myra managed to walk quite steadily to the hall table where she laid the letter down. ‘He gets some odd correspondence from time to time.’

  Mrs. Thomas had lost interest.

  ‘I’ll make that coffee,’ she said. ‘And I shall put a little brandy in it.’

  While Myra sat in the lounge she thought about the letter. Ralph would not be in until the evening; she would have to wait a long time for him to open it. Alternatively, she could open it herself and burn it. But what would be the use? There would be others. And, in any case, there was a part of her that was glad that the climax was approaching.

  II

  Big Ben was chiming the half-hour when Jill left the Treasury where she worked and turned towards Great George Street. Half-past five. A fine evening, a little sharp, but with some sunlight still and hardly a cloud in the hazy blue sky. At the far end of Great George Street she could see the trees in St. James’s Park, green leaves beginning to clothe their skeletal branches. She hesitated, surprised to find that the sight brought sadness. Surely she was a little young to experience the ache in the heart of beauty? She felt impatient with herself; nevertheless, she would not risk the park tonight. She would catch an 11 bus from Parliament Street. Then, as she half¬turned, she caught a glimpse out of the corner of her eye of a figure hovering on the kerb. It was a mistake, of course; only her racing pulse seemed to think otherwise. She began to walk down Great George Street, choosing the lesser evil of the park.

  Keith Wilson watched her go without attempting to follow her. She took about half-a-dozen steps and then turned again. As they came together, they spoke at once:

  ‘I didn’t like to . . .’

  ‘I wasn’t sure at first if it was you . . .’

  Two of Jill’s friends from the Treasury went past, studying Wilson with interest; as they walked away one of the girls turned and nodded her head approvingly. Jill ignored her. Wilson was saying:

  ‘I had to see someone over at County Hall, so I thought . . .’

  ‘Anything interesting?’

  ‘No; just some figures about housing we wanted to check up on.’ He sounded quite important; anyone would think he was running the office. The odd thing was, he got away with it. The new air of authority faltered a little, however, on the personal level.

  ‘I was wondering . . .’

  ‘I’m on my way to St. James’s Park Station. Why not walk along with me?’

  She steered him across the road under the outraged eyes of the policeman who had just beckoned on the traffic. They walked in silence towards Birdcage Walk. He glanced at her quickly once. Was it because her face was a little thinner that the features seemed less blunt? The colour in her cheeks betrayed confusion, but the mouth was more composed and words did not spill out so readily. They crossed into Birdcage Walk. She had been so friendly, so uncomplicated. He looked at her again. There was a glow about her still, but its quality had changed; an inner sparkle had replaced the cheerful schoolgirl warmth. He was suddenly aware that he loved her very deeply; all the things that he had planned to say seemed too shallow to offer to her. He turned his head away and stared bleakly at a twisted iron staircase which led down from one of the office buildings into a garden where an old wooden bench supported an even older cherry tree. The garden had the look of a place which is never visited.

  ‘I expect you’re busy getting ready for May?’ he asked.

  ‘Very busy.’

  The terraced buildings in the Walk were honeycombed with lights now. In one ground floor window they could see a man bending over a drawing board, while from the shadows of the garden outside a small stone cherub gazed forlornly at the lighted window. On the opposite side of the road the trees in the park seemed to have moved closer together. Wilson said in a voice which just failed to strike the right casual note:

  ‘I hoped you might have a bit of time to spare this evening.’

  ‘Anyone can see you haven’t a flat to run.’

  They were crossing the entrance to the Cockpit Steps. Ahead of them was Queen Anne’s Gate leading to St. James’s Park Station. Jill looked at it as a tired runner looks at the finishing post. It will all be over soon, she told herself. You just have to harden your heart and be very firm for two or three minutes. As they reached Queen Anne’s Gate, he said:

  ‘That flat won’t come to grief in half an hour, will it? After all, it’s going to get along without your ministrations from May onwards.’

  While she was trying to formulate a reply which would not involve lying about being houseproud, another person took over and said:

  ‘I could walk across the park, if you like, and get a train from Green Park.’

  The park was already a purple hollow of shadow. On the far side she could see the substantial buildings in the Mall; they seemed a long way away and as they crossed the road her feet felt leaden as though she would never make the distance.

  They entered the park by the path that led to the bridge. Although the sunlight still lingered here and there, Jill had the feeling of darkness closing around her. The fact that Wilson now walked a little further away from her seemed only to emphasize the tension between them. There were still a few people strolling around, aimlessly enjoying themselves; on one seat a young couple nuzzled one another and on the next a woman was feeding the pigeons. These people, by their very imperturbability, seemed to heighten her own uneasiness. There were some early bluebells out under the trees and one or two men were standing paying them the townsman’s awed tribute. Jill and Wilson joined the gazing group for a moment. While she stared at the bluebells she was thinking about him. She did not dare to look up at him and she was surprised how difficult it was to recall his features. Memory told her that he was pale, dark-haired, over-serious and more than a trifle arrogant; but he was also, if the verdict of her girl friend at the Treasury was to be accepted, personable. Now that she had had this glimpse of him through another person’s eyes, he had ceased to be quite so familiar to her. She wondered what Connie would have thought if she had known that the man Jill was accompanying had recently been released after serving a term for inflicting grievous bodily harm.

  As they began to walk under the towering plane trees towards the bridge, it was something more than the evening mist that sent little shivers up and down her arms. She tried to fold her loose jacket tighter about her. How strong was the impulse to violence within him? Was it something that could be controlled, or was it some kind of decay that would gnaw at his brain until one day the thread of reason snapped? A month ago, she would have dismissed such thoughts as nightmare fantasies. But now, in spite of his strangeness, he had become nearer to her; when she trie
d to see him clearly the image blurred. She forced herself to look at him. He smiled at her; he did not look very dangerous and the slow, rather unpractised smile had a trustful quality about it. She found that this trustfulness frightened her more than anything else. She was no more to be trusted than he was and he must be made to realize it.

  They had reached the bridge. There were a few people leaning against the railings and some small boys were still feeding the ducks. Wilson put his hand on her elbow to turn her towards the railings and withdrew it quickly. His touch excited her and she was inconsistently annoyed with him for treating her with such anxious respect.

  ‘It’s very beautiful, isn’t it?’ he asked hopefully, as though the view were something he had arranged himself for her special benefit.

  Indeed it was beautiful. On either side of the lake the willows were coming to life again. What other tree was so transformed by spring? Witchlike in winter, its branches like coarse strands of greying hair, who could ever guess its flowing summer grace? She stopped herself on the verge of regret. There would be other summers in which to enjoy the willows in St. James’s Park; many, many other summers with every bit as much promise as this one. And yet . . . Just for a moment as the water rippled in the wake of a swan and the dank, weedy smell came up from the lake, she wondered whether this summer might not promise the greatest adventure of all. She looked at him again. He was leaning on the railings looking at the pale plumes of willow with a rather sad expression on his face, as though her regret had communicated itself to him. He is very easy to hurt, she thought; he will never grow sleek and self-satisfied. She doubted whether he would ever be a very comfortable person, either; he would mingle with the crowd, but he would not be absorbed into it. Perhaps that would not matter, if he was strong enough to live always a little on the outside. But was he strong enough? Uncertainty hovered in the eyes still, giving him on occasions the look of a wary and rather unstable animal. Was the flaw a permanent one? I am asking how much I have to lose, she thought: it was a question which she had always considered no adventurer should ever ask. In the distance she could see the tall new building on the South Bank rising above the Admiralty. She said determinedly:

  ‘London’s skyline will have changed when I come back.’

  ‘And will you have changed, do you think?’ he asked, still looking at the willows.

  ‘Of course I shall have changed. That’s the whole idea. We all have to change, grow, expand . . .’

  ‘And you have to travel in order to do that?’

  ‘I want . . .’—her mind searched frantically for convincing arguments but found only one sorry cliché—‘I want to see something of the world I live in.’

  ‘You want to grow in breadth, but not in depth, is that it?’

  Her hands gripped the railings as she looked down at the water beneath the bridge which was very dark. She had always been afraid of dark water. The sun was going down now, draining colour and warmth; in the distance the lake was like glass. I am young! she said angrily to herself as she watched the twilight transformation.

  I am twenty and I haven’t lived yet; there is so much to do and to see, so much gaiety and excitement.

  ‘I have to go, Keith,’ she said abruptly. ‘Really, I have to go now.’

  He, too, was affected by the dwindling of the day. Despair came too easily to him. And with despair came doubt. As they stood in the Mall waiting to cross to St. James’s Palace and the evening wind sent the dust and scraps of paper eddying about their feet, he wondered whether he could in fact sustain marriage. He knew that at first she would have to give more than him, and this he resented. He had planned to tell her that he, too, wanted to travel; that when he got a job on a London paper—as with his talent he surely must—he would become a foreign correspondent and then they would go all over the world at some Press lord’s expense. As they walked through the empty courtyard at the back of the Palace towards Cleveland Row he found it quite impossible, amid the stone solemnity, to give voice to these bright day-dreams. They lost themselves in the maze of small streets and by the time they were trudging up Green Park, he was telling himself that he didn’t want a wife who thought about nothing but skittering from one place to another. There were lights along the terrace at the Ritz, waiters and a few people in evening dress looking across the park. That’s all she’ll get out of her travels, he thought, one opulent hotel after another. But when they neared Piccadilly he held her back for a moment in the seclusion of the park to ask:

  ‘Will I see you again?’

  ‘I don’t think there is any point.’ She sounded resolute, but spoilt the effect by adding: ‘Is there?’

  He looked away towards the race of traffic. She thought that he was about to make some kind of an appeal, and her heart began to pound again.

  ‘That last time . . .’ he said wretchedly. ‘I wouldn’t want you to think . . . I couldn’t bear you to think . . .’

  He was not, she realized, making an appeal: he was simply apologizing for having made love to her.

  ‘I didn’t think anything at all,’ she assured him coldly.

  ‘It’s not because of that that you won’t . . .’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I do respect you; I respect you very much. I know it can’t have seemed like it . . .’

  ‘I haven’t any doubt of your respect. And now I really must catch my train.’

  He put his hand out and then let it drop to his side. He muttered: ‘Oh, what’s the use.’ He saw her to the tube station. She bought a ticket to South Kensington, stepped firmly on to the escalator and did not look back.

  She caught a train going in the wrong direction. Of course, it would never have done, she told herself as she settled down in a side seat. Marriage with him would demand so much; she would have to transfuse zest and joy to him and since the stock was not inexhaustible she would lose some of her vitality. But then in marriage there must be both gain and loss: was that the answer? The train swayed and lurched, the doors opened and shut, opened and shut. Her mind became confused until she was no longer sure what was gain and what was loss. She stared at a sign that said: ‘Covent Garden’. The words seemed unfamiliar, like the meaningless jumble of a nightmare.

  She stumbled out of the train. The station was rather badly lit, and it had dark holes leading off it into which a few people were disappearing while the train rumbled away down another dark hole. She was alone, lost; she would never find her way back. The next train would take her to still more unfamiliar places; she would travel endlessly, pursued by a relentless desire to escape and yet haunted by the fear that the trap really lay ahead. There was a growl from the throat of the tunnel and after a few moments the next train emerged; it went through the station without stopping. A man in uniform came up to her as she stared in dismay at the vanishing amber light and asked where she wanted to go. She could not remember, so she said: ‘It’s all right; I know where I’m going,’ and plunged into the nearest of the dark holes.

  III

  Ralph opened the letter as he sat in his study in the early evening. He did not at first take its content seriously. It seemed to him incredible that Myra should be capable of deception; even more incredible was the idea that he should have been deceived. Myra was in the kitchen, but she had said that she was coming up with a bowl of daffodils. He resisted his first reaction, which was to go down to her. As he waited, some of his confidence trickled away. So much had happened in the last few days, he seemed to have been jostled from one crisis to another and now he felt dazed and unsure of his balance. By the time that she came into the room, he was thoroughly uneasy. He watched her walk across to the window; she carried the bowl carefully, as though it contained something which might spill at any moment. She remained by the window for a time, touching the flowers with her hands. When at last she turned to him, he held out the letter without looking at her.

  ‘Perhaps you had better have a look at that.’

  She sat in the deep leather armchair which
was outside the circle of light thrown by the reading lamp. Her eyes flicked briefly over the sheet of paper, ‘DO YOU KNOW ABOUT YOUR WIFE AND WILSON?’ Her face, in the shadows, was enigmatic, her hands were folded quietly in her lap; she waited, as though no comment could be expected from her. He listened to the soft tick of the clock on the mantelpiece; it seemed to be measuring the seconds during which something very important that he could not identify was slipping away from him. It was all a monstrous misunderstanding, of course; but he wished that she was not so strangely passive. He spoke quickly, trying to bridge with words the gulf which seemed to be separating him from the comprehensible world.

  ‘I suppose we have been a bit lax, lately? You’ve been out with him once or twice, haven’t you? I encouraged it, I know; but we shall have to be more careful in future for the lad’s sake. This kind of thing, however absurd we know it to be, could harm him.’

  The rattle of words stopped. She stirred and turned her head towards him. He had moved the lamp to one side so that his face also was shielded from the light.

  ‘You want to escape so badly, don’t you, Ralph?’

  Her voice was dry, but there was no bitterness in it, only wonder and the beginning of pity. She sat up in the chair and clasped her hands more purposefully on her knees; her head was bent slightly and he could see her brows drawn together as she sought the words she needed. He was suddenly appalled at the ruthless precision with which women planned their more destructive speeches. To forestall her, he said:

  ‘Need we take this contemptible thing seriously?’

  ‘You didn’t tear the note up and throw it away, did you, Ralph?’ He stared at her, dumbfounded. This, he now saw quite clearly, was the action which he would normally have taken. She went on, quite gently:

  ‘What did you believe when you read it?’

  ‘That much had been made out of little.’

  He spoke firmly. Perhaps he guessed at a mild escapade, a piece of autumnal silliness which he could accept without flinching. She smiled.