by MARY HOCKING
‘There are the teacher training colleges,’ he said to Daniel. ‘They might have something to offer you. They are not administered by my authority, but I could give you one or two names . . . I’ll think about it and pass something on to you—through Harry, perhaps.’
Daniel said brusquely, ‘Please don’t bother. I’ll make my own inquiries.’ He made no attempt to disguise his displeasure, this would have been as alien to him as were direct statements to Hunt.
Hunt regarded him in amusement, as though it was inconceivable that a professional man could be so uncouth. ‘As you wish.’ He came round the side of the desk and laid a hand on Daniel’s arm; whether Daniel liked it or not, the interview was going to be played through his way. ‘If I were you, I should regard education as a last resort. A man with your qualifications should be able to get something much more rewarding in industry. And in the meantime,’ he was leading Daniel towards the door, ‘Why not have a rest? Too many tensions these days. I feel it myself, too many tensions. What about a cruise?’ He opened the door and pushed Daniel gently towards the lift. ‘Give my regards to Harry, won’t you?’ He summoned the lift which was the old-fashioned cage type. ‘Doors take a bit of managing,’ he said. When Daniel was inside the lift, Hunt pulled the heavy door across. ‘You press the button marked “ground floor”.’ He stood by the lift, watching, just in case Daniel should by some mischance release himself and get out somewhere en route.
Daniel emerged into the street, deeply shocked. Gordon Hunt’s antagonism seemed to him completely inexplicable. He could understand Sir Noel Baddeley’s reaction; he had attacked Sir Noel when he refused to work at the laboratory. But what possible harm could he have done to Gordon Hunt? He looked at the people passing along the street, anxious for reassurance, for an unheeding glance, a casual smile. They hurried past him, he was of no importance to them. But if they had known who he was, would they have reacted as Hunt had done? It was not just that Hunt felt he was a bad risk, that might be understandable, but it was more than that: Hunt regarded him as a threat to an ordered society. And, now that he came to think about it, the reaction of the blue woman had been much the same, although she would not have expressed it in these terms. Why? He did not want to undermine society. Far from it. He wanted to save it. Why did people not understand this? Was it his views, or himself, they found so unpalatable? Was there something wrong with his approach to people? He sat on a bench, thoughtfully provided for the elderly near the market cross, and watched the people passing by. What is it? he asked himself; what is it about me that is so abrasive?
But this mood of humility did not last long, and after a few minutes he was concerned with rather different questions. With all the zeal of the missionary, he was asking, ‘How? How can I make an impact on these people who are obstinately hurrying down the blind alley of their existence, unheeding, often unaware of the real forces which influence their world? Where does one start? At what level? Should one become a member of parliament, or even a member of the borough council?’ But, judging by Gordon Hunt’s reaction, he was unlikely to be elected. He was back with the problem of his approach to people. ‘Do I feel sufficiently involved with them?’ he asked. Much of this talk of involvement struck him as being rather glib, but he could not rephrase the question and he did not know the answer anyway. It was all very unsatisfactory.
Chapter Eleven
A shrill February day, not the atmosphere in which tempers are cooled or fears laid to rest.
Erica lay in bed and listened to the wind in the trees, not a gentle soughing wind, but a fierce, impatient wind. If it goes on like this it will bring the poplar down, she thought. She turned on her side and looked at the wall. Where would the poplar fall if it came down? It depended on the direction of the wind, and she could not work that out; it seemed to be coming from all directions, tearing round the corners of the house and meeting itself coming the other way. She had a pain in her stomach. Dorothy thought it was psychosomatic, but had consented to fill the hot-water bottle before she left this morning. It was cold now. Erica heard her mother on the landing and called out, ‘Mother, could you fill my bottle?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with you, you know,’ her mother said when she returned. She handed the bottle to Erica. ‘You’d be better to take your husband to bed.’
Erica said, ‘Don’t be coarse, please.’
Her mother said, ‘I don’t understand you.’ But as she had never understood her eldest daughter there was no point in trying now, so she went back to her sitting-room.
Erica looked at the ceiling and said, ‘I wish I was dead,’ and then, because she felt particularly low today, wondered whether she should send for the doctor. The wind seemed to tear through her head, twanging every nerve. She turned her face to the pillow and began to cry. Tears came so easily now she seldom stopped crying for long.
The wind whipped itself into a frenzy. It surged through the flat, unprotected town with a long way to go before it met the resistance of the Downs. The cathedral spire rose serenely, a finger pointing heavenward while little whisks of angry cloud scudded past unheeding, intent on something of greater urgency which was happening elsewhere. The trees offered more resistance to the wind, but were none the less shaken by its rude insistence. Harry Glare caught the full force of it as he walked from the car park to his office. He stopped. The wind had chased the clouds away from the sun, and the stones of the old city wall, the slate roofs of houses, sparkled in its pale, clear light. To the right, the road ran straight and flat to the level crossing, the gates were closed, the nine-fifty to London was due; to the left, he could see the cathedral spire rising above the roof of the Midland Bank and he knew that beyond the cathedral and the old city wall, beyond the cluster of new housing estates and the link road, there were the marshes running out for three miles to the sea. The wind was so strong he could have sworn he could smell the tang of the sea. Suddenly, he knew that he had stood here, arrested at just this point, as a young man; and for a moment, he was in that young man’s body and felt again the quickening of the blood, the thrilling of the nerves, the agonisingly acute response to smell and touch that belongs to a time of life when all the senses are heightened. But what had the young man thought as he stood here? That, he could not recall. Perhaps he had wanted an adventure. ‘Oh why, why . . .?’ he cried out, as though regretting an injury done to another person, a son whom he had kept on too tight a rein, a young clerk whose romantic dreams he had derided. He began to walk towards his office. His flesh was heavy, his bones ached. What a waste his life had been! ‘You must always look to the future,’ his father, who was a bank manager, had told him. He had put all his energies into the future and mortgaged the present. He struggled forward, the wind almost taking him off his feet. He must do something, now, now, now! But what? He was none the wiser by the time he reached his office. He thought about asking his secretary out to dinner, but when he saw her, caution overcame him. They had a good relationship and she was very efficient.
In the afternoon, in Southampton, Daniel found a sad park hemmed in by old, wrecked warehouses and a terrace of dilapidated Victorian houses. The snow had cleared away, if it had ever snowed here; everything was the colour of slush. The park gave the impression of having been forgotten a long time ago; there were no flower borders, just thin grass, a few trees and an asphalt path which ran beside the chain-link fence. The wind was bleak, blowing in from the sea, spitting spume. His sinus trouble was getting worse, and the damp chilled him to the bone. He walked along the asphalt path, between sodden grass and thin, deprived-looking trees; his collar was turned up and his hands were bunched in the pockets of his raincoat. He felt like a character in one of those French films he had seen in his student days, where men emerge from the mist, make a few ineffectual attempts to break out of the trap of life, and then are lost in the mist again. It was not a school he had ever admired. The drifting hopelessness . . . Ugh! But he was on the edge of it himself He had argued with Erica when she s
aid that life must have a purpose. Now, he was desperate to find a purpose, as though it had always been there and he had mislaid it. He needed a purpose as much as he needed food and drink. He stopped. He had come back to the point where he started. It was a small park. He stood, moisture running down his forehead and gathering in drops on his eyebrows, staring uncertainly up at the terraced houses. Should he go back? Should he go back and tell that abominable little man that he would take the job?
The man was secretary to a society called Action for Peace; the organisers ran a monthly journal and they wanted a science editor. ‘You would have to attend conferences, too,’ the man said; ‘here . . . and abroad.’ He had looked inquiringly at Daniel; it was evident that he was thinking in terms of travelling east rather than west. He had talked a lot about peace and the need to create a sane society, but he wasn’t really interested in peace. He had aggrieved eyes and a caustic mouth. A natural hater. He was the kind who needed a system to overthrow; if the system was completely different, he would still want to overthrow it. ‘You will be under my direction,’ he had said to Daniel. ‘We shall work closely together.’ Daniel had said he didn’t feel he was suited for the post.
He was glad to get out of the office. ‘Something wrong with the set-up,’ he told himself. ‘Seedy.’ Then, as he walked down the stairs, he began to have misgivings. Had he the right to pick and choose? He would have been certain of the answer at one time, but now he was no longer certain about anything, the first cold douche of air blew all his certainties away. As he came into the street, his stomach muscles contracted as though he was an invalid and could not stand so much bracing air. ‘What will happen if I don’t find work soon?’ He felt himself in danger, disintegrating. He was actually afraid of poverty. How contemptible he would have found this admission only a few weeks ago! In Africa, material possessions had not been closely related to self-respect; here, among his own people, it was different. He turned down a narrow alley to get out of the wind and came thus to the park.
What should he do? After he had walked round the park once again, he still did not know the answer. He could not think properly; the sinus trouble was so bad his brain might have been clogged with treacle. He left the park and turned into a narrow street; he was not sure which way he had come to the park and seemed to have lost his sense of direction. He took a left turning, and then found himself in the road leading to the railway station. As he came abreast of the station, he heard a train coming. His watch said half-past three: it must be the train he had planned to catch. He ran for it, without thinking. What a way to make a decision! he thought as he settled in the corner of a compartment, his heart pounding. If I had walked the other way, I would have taken that job.
By the evening, it was bitterly cold in Yeominster. People hurried in the streets; scoured faces turned from the wind’s edge, they sometimes collided, cursing, the polite veneer shredded away. The inn sign swung outside the Militia Man, curtains streamed from an open window above a shop, scaffolding creaked ominously around the Midland Bank, sawdust from butchers’ shops, dust and sand from builders’ yards, were blown on to pavements, into the eyes to add to the stinging misery of the wind. The wait for traffic at a street corner was the ultimate agony, men jogging from foot to foot, a child dancing round and round like a spinning top whipped by the wind. Motor-cyclists rode by, scarlet-faced; girls wobbled on bikes with red flesh beneath mini skirts, raw weals above tight boots.
Old Mrs. Postyn, who had stopped Dorothy for a chat, said, ‘You’ll be in a hurry, then?’ She was standing in the doorway of her cottage which opened direct on to the pavement; there was a warm fire in the room behind her and she was shielded from the wind. Dorothy, not so fortunate, said, ‘I want to get to Gilmers. They stay open until eight on a Thursday.’
‘Always in a hurry,’ the old woman muttered as Dorothy walked away.
It was true. Lately, even on occasions when there was no need to hurry, Dorothy’s body leant forward, tensed for a quick start. Tonight, her head down, she seemed to be butting her strength against that of the wind. Even when she was in the store, she found herself pressing forward urgently, maddened by slower customers who stood in her way. The whole of life was maddening; had she been Samson she would have grasped one of those stacked shelves and rocked the whole edifice! But why this urge to break things apart? she asked as she pushed impatiently towards the frozen food section. Something had snapped, broken loose, more than that, much more than that! Quick, Daniel, what is the proper scientific term for the state I am in? Quick, or I shall use one of those imprecise phrases you so dislike! Or is it that the imprecision frightens you, do you feel menaced by what cannot be defined? She paused, a packet of frozen peas in one hand, suddenly desolated by the thought that today he had gone for an interview in Southampton. But, of course, he must take this job, he must! She took two cartons of yogurt and turned in the direction of the breakfast cereal shelf, holding the wire tray before her as a battering ram. It is bad for a man to be out of work, and for a man like Daniel it is inhuman cruelty to allow it to happen. She took a packet of shredded wheat and rammed it into the wire tray; then she eased her way to the cash counter. How contemptible officials were, those cold-blooded men at the Department, Gordon Hunt . . . The cashier, who had been staring at her with basilisk hostility, said:
‘Would you mind emptying the contents on to the counter, madam.’
She had a plump face with heavy jowls and looked like a discontented pug. How vile people are! Dorothy thought, as she banged down the contents, how petty, ungenerous, censorious, vengeful . . .
‘That will be fifty-seven pence, please,’ the cashier said, and then, with a sigh, ‘You wouldn’t have it exactly, I suppose?’
Dorothy said ‘No’ and the cashier looked sourly satisfied.
Out in the street, it felt as though someone had skimmed a razor over the top of her ears removing the protective layer of skin. And yet she was almost grateful for the agony because she needed something on which to fix her resentment. She turned into Eastgate and found herself on the edge of a jostling crowd on the steps of the town hall, tempers raw as the wind.
‘They’ve closed the door!’ A woman turned to Dorothy; apparently it was one of those moments of supreme excitement when people are drawn together and strangers speak to each other as brothers – or in this case, sisters.
‘What’s it all about?’ Dorothy asked, ready to take up any fight that was going.
‘The by-pass. The council are going to tell us about the by-pass.’
‘But that’s a public meeting,’ Dorothy recalled. ‘They can’t turn the public away . . .’
‘The hall’s full.’ A man turned to speak to them. ‘They say the hall’s full.’
‘It doesn’t matter whether the hall is full or not.’ Dorothy’s anger found beautiful release. ‘They can’t close the doors at a public meeting, it isn’t legal.’ She spoke with more authority than she in fact possessed and around her there arose a little ripple, ‘it isn’t legal . . .’ ‘she says it isn’t legal . . .’ ‘Of course it isn’t legal!’ And then, a man’s voice thundering, ‘It isn’t legal! We’re going to get in there!’ There followed a great hammering on the door and an elderly man near Dorothy rapped on a lighted window with the handle of his umbrella. A press photographer, who had appeared as if by magic, took a photograph of him.
‘If someone gives me a leg-up, I can get in here,’ a young man was shouting somewhere to Dorothy’s right.
A solitary police constable tried to get through to the young man and the crowd closed its ranks; the constable departed in search of higher authority.
‘Ring the bell,’ Dorothy commanded imperiously. ‘They’ll hear it in the main hall, it’s a very loud bell.’
The bell was indeed very loud. After a few minutes, the door opened and a police inspector was thrust out like the dove from the ark. The crowd, being composed mainly of the more law-abiding members of the community, momentarily checked its press
ure; the door shut behind the inspector and the crowd, feeling that its restraint had been ill-rewarded, howled with rage.
‘The hall is full,’ he boomed at them.
‘It’s a public meeting, they can’t turn the public away,’ Dorothy boomed back.
The inspector began to say something about fire regulations, but his voice was drowned by a shrill voice to the far left which announced that if its owner was not let in, he was going to force an entry.
‘That would be very foolish, sir.’
But the owner of the voice felt that every cause needs its martyrs and yelled, ‘It would draw attention to the rotten way this town is run.’
The constable had returned; he was divided from his superior by a particularly militant section of the crowd and showed no disposition to make a gesture of solidarity by attempting to join him.
‘Shall I try to get some sort of answer for these folk, sir?’
‘I think that might be an idea,’ the inspector said gloomily.
The constable disappeared, followed by one or two members of the crowd who evinced a desire to accompany him wheresoever he went. The inspector leant against the door, not so much to protect it as because he had no option. Dorothy felt that some use should be made of this hostage which fortune had sent them. ‘What are they saying in there?’ she demanded.
‘I don’t know.’ His voice implied that he would not want to associate himself with them.
