by MARY HOCKING
‘I am never ill and I don’t go on holiday.’
‘But I think that living in this state must be bad for you.’ It was certainly bad for Phillimore, he was becoming rigid again. ‘It clutters the mind. One needs to be able to stand back from a problem, be objective about it. . . .’
Marsden, who disliked being lectured, fumbled in his pocket for the key and moved towards the strong room door, circumnavigating a half-unwrapped parcel of duplicating paper and easing past a trolley piled high with parcels. Phillimore was saying, ‘One sometimes finds that the very thing which has worried one is no longer important. . . .’ Marsden opened the strong room door and muttered, ‘That’s funny, the light is on . . .’ Phillimore said, ‘If you shut a problem away for long enough, it ceases to exist. . . .’ Marsden, who had taken a couple of steps into the strong room, staggered back, colliding with a pyramid of County Council reports. Tom steadied him, whereupon he crossed himself, turned his eyes up horribly and collapsed on the floor.
Phillimore said, ‘My God, he’s not dead, is he? I had no idea he felt so strongly.’
‘He’s only fainted.’ They put a couple of parcels beneath his head and Phillimore found a mug half-full of cold tea which he pressed to Marsden’s blue lips.
Tom said uneasily, ‘I think something in there upset him.’
Phillimore, now strenuously chafing Marsden’s wrists, appeared not to hear. Tom got to his feet and went towards the strong room. He hoped some unfortunate cat hadn’t been trapped there all night.
Bad ventilation and the dust of nearly a century made the room smell like a vault. There was a naked electric light bulb at the entrance, but it didn’t shed its sickly light very far. On either side, tall columns of shelving, bearing the years of County Council history bundled in brown paper, receded down a long aisle at the end of which was the figure of a woman, sitting on a library stool. She was dressed in a long, loose grey robe and her head was bowed meditatively over a document which she had spread out on her lap. She had lit a candle, the flame of which was not visible, but which cast an aura round her head. She had dark hair drawn severely back from her face, and an air of quiet concentration which gave her the look of a woman of another age; but of what age it would have been impossible to say because there was an elusive quality about her, something mysterious which made her a creature not to be contained by any one century. Although he recognised her, Tom felt as unnerved as Marsden had done; but the shock had a different effect on him, and he went towards her feeling he had stepped out of the corridor of time into another dimension.
‘Miss Huber.’ He spoke softly, afraid that any loud noise might cause her to vanish; for although she seemed more than mere flesh and blood, there was nevertheless something insubstantial about her. ‘How did you get in here?’
She looked up at him, laying one hand across the document in a companionable gesture as though she had been disturbed reading by a fireside hearth in some other existence they had shared. But though he had interrupted her, he had been expected; her smile acknowledged his right to be with her here in this musty room.
She said, ‘I came through the door. It was open. Mr. Marsden had nodded off and I didn’t want to disturb him, so I just slipped in.’
The candle shed a small pool of light at her feet, a magic circle into which he stepped, close enough to touch the stuff of her gown which was cool and smooth. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.
‘I was checking to see whether there was a copy of the report on the war-time reception areas here; if so, we might let the County Archivist have your copy.’
‘Weren’t you frightened when the door was closed on you?’
‘Not really. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be entombed.’ She folded the report and put it back on the shelf; then she sat for a moment with her hands clasped in her lap, looking round the room while candlelight flickered on the wall behind her. ‘How long do you think it would be before the air in here began to get foul?’
‘You have a macabre mind.’
‘Life is a macabre business, don’t you think?’ She spoke serenely, as if she was standing somewhere outside life, considering it.
Tom was short of breath. At each exchange he felt greatly daring, as though he was penetrating a territory in which she was at home but which was unknown to him.
‘The Mistletoe Bough must be your favourite reading,’ he said. ‘Served the stupid bitch right, playing silly love games!’ She got up and pushed the library stool to one side; there was a strength and decisiveness about this movement which excited him. If only they had long enough in here he felt he must make a great discovery.
A shadow fell across the doorway and Phillimore said, ‘For a moment I thought you had fainted, too! Who’s that with you?’
Phoebe picked up the candle. Tom saw that she was wearing a long, shapeless overall smudged with duplicating ink. ‘It’s Phoebe Huber, Mr. Phillimore.’
‘You gave poor old Marsden the devil of a fright.’ Phillimore showed no desire to venture farther into the room.
‘What about your report?’ Tom asked him.
‘I don’t think I’ll bother about it just now.’
Phoebe began to walk towards the door, holding the candle high like a priestess. Tom walked beside her feeling as if he had been too rudely awakened from a dream and that this had damaged him in some way. Marsden was sitting in an armchair which Phillimore had cleared; his feet rested on the lower tier of the trolley. He looked at Tom and Phoebe with resentment. Phoebe hung her head and said abjectly, ‘I’m so sorry, Mr. Marsden.’ Marsden ignored her; perhaps it occurred to him that their styles, depending as they did on an assumption of peculiar personal misfortune, were too similar for a confrontation between them to be effective. He addressed himself to Tom, ‘If any member of your staff wishes to enter the strong room in future, a request must be made through you.’
Outside Marsden’s room, Phoebe walked beside Tom, head still bowed. ‘What a terrible thing to happen,’ she marvelled. When they reached the general office, she said, ‘I must return this overall’ in the tone of a latter-day Cinderella who entertains no hope of a happy ending. Tom ignored her. This was a pale shadow of the woman in the vault.
He was still thinking of the woman in the vault when he reached his room. Madge Conroy was waiting for him.
‘Would it be too much to ask for the morning’s post?’ She essayed a not very convincing raillerie.
‘You can have it immediately,’ he said brusquely. ‘Sorry about the delay, but Miss Huber got herself locked in the strong room.’
‘Did she suffocate?’
This irritated him and he did not answer. She stood by his desk while he looked through the routine post folder, which irritated him still more. When he handed her the folder, she did not go away. His irritation was, by this time, almost beyond control. Any moment Phoebe Huber would return and he wanted to observe her undisturbed.
‘I’m sorry I’ve been so difficult,’ Madge Conroy said. ‘You can’t possibly be saddled with her in here, I realise that. Shove her into our room, we’ll make a space somehow or other; and I promise we won’t be cruel to her.’
‘No. It wouldn’t work.’
‘I’d make it work.’
‘You’re much too valuable to me to have you upset.’ Although this was true, he said it in a way which carried no conviction.
She looked at him uncertainly. ‘Anything wrong?’
‘What a damn silly question! Can you tell me anything right about this place?’
She was startled. ‘I’ll get out from under your feet.’
On her way out she passed Phoebe and they paused in the doorway to exchange civilities which seemed to go on endlessly, as if they were now in collusion to annoy him. Had he been disposed to do any work, it would have been impossible while they were cluttering up the doorway with their chatter. He felt an uncharacteristic urge to be authoritarian and tried to think of something which he could insist Phoe
be should do for him. He was saved this necessity by the arrival of Phillimore.
Phillimore was more kinetic than ever, wriggling his shoulders as if his jacket was too tight, snapping his fingers, drumming his heel like a Spanish dancer. ‘Did you see that?’ he demanded.
‘Did I see what?’
‘Ha! You didn’t notice. He crossed himself.’
‘What about it?’
‘Did you know he was a Roman? No, of course you didn’t. Neither did I. And we’ve known him for years.’
‘So what? I’m a lapsed Anglican.’
‘I will tell you so what.’ Phillimore placed both hands on the desk and leant towards Tom. ‘I was at Brampton when Cardinal Heenan opened the new Roman Catholic College, and it was an eye-opener, I can tell you. We were all introduced to him, and I was staggered at the people who kissed his ring, including officers from the Department of Education and Science, quite a few of them!’
Tom gazed at him stonily.
‘They infiltrate,’ Phillimore said.
‘Good luck to anyone who wants to infiltrate the Department!’
‘This country is being taken over bit by bit.’ Phillimore stabbed a forefinger on Tom’s blotting pad. ‘We’re being run from the outside; big business run by the Yanks, the trade unions by the Communists, and soon the Romans will take over the church. We’ll have nothing left to call our own.’
‘Not even the strong room key.’
‘Now look, this is serious. . . .’
‘Not to me it isn’t!’ Tom was shouting. ‘I’ve got work to do if you haven’t. Tell Mather about the strong room key, report the officers of the Department to the Archbishop of Canterbury, join a private army, anything you fancy, but get out of here!’
Phillimore gave one violent twitch and then remained still for several seconds, staring at Tom. ‘Are you all right?’ He sounded nervous.
‘No, I’m not all right! I’m doing three people’s work and I’ve been doing it for years.’
‘Well, take it easy, old man. Mustn’t overdo things.’ He retreated, obviously having no desire to render first aid a second time.
When the door had closed behind him, Tom looked at Phoebe Huber to see how she had reacted. She looked conventionally shocked.
‘Would you like me to make you coffee?’ she asked in a subdued voice.
‘The trolley has gone.’
‘There’s an emergency supply in the general office.’
‘How interesting. What emergency is the general office anticipating?’
‘Perhaps it’s just for poor souls in need.’
‘Do you believe in the soul?’
She cast her eyes down and mumbled, ‘I hadn’t thought about it.’ She looked as unlike the woman in the vault as it was possible to be. ‘How do you like your coffee?’
‘Black. And strong.’
‘I’ll see to that.’
‘Two lumps of sugar.’
‘Yes.’
‘You think you can manage to get sugar lumps?’
‘I’ll do my best.’ She went out of the room looking worried to death.
Tom wondered how one managed to communicate with the woman in the vault, what it was that brought her to life; he had actually picked up his pen to jot down one or two ideas on the subject when the telephone rang. It was the headmaster of Squires Bay Grammar School.
‘Someone left an umbrella here after yesterday’s meeting.’
‘What do you expect me to do?’
‘I thought a note could be put in the bulletin.’
‘There’s a paper shortage. If someone wants that umbrella they’ll get in touch with you.’
‘Suppose they don’t?’
‘Use it yourself if it’s a good one.’
There was a pause, then the headmaster said, ‘I am through to extension three-three-nine?’
‘Yes.’
‘You sound different. It must be a bad line.’
‘I’ve had a bad morning.’
‘Don’t let me detain you,’ the headmaster said huffily.
Tom put the receiver down and thought, ‘That’s better!’ One could try too hard to be pleasant; it was a mistake to believe that the meek would inherit the earth, at least during his lifetime.
When Phoebe Huber came back with the coffee, he said, ‘Do you think we should live for the present?’
‘I hadn’t thought about it.’ She looked at him reproachfully as if he had asked her to do something inappropriate to one in her station of life. The telephone rang.
‘Tell them I’m not here.’
The person at the other end of the line was persistent, but Phoebe did not allow herself to be browbeaten; she was patient in a way that suggested that much patience was needed. Tom could imagine how much she must be exacerbating the annoyance of the frustrated caller. It was an accomplished performance and there was little doubt that she was enjoying it. He had come to the office this morning resolved to make life more bearable for a less fortunate human being, but as he watched her this charitable intention underwent some modification.
Chapter Seven
‘The trees are losing their leaves more quickly this year.’ This was dreadful for Isobel who hated winter.
‘A lot of colour, though,’ Tom said. ‘I can’t remember that ash ever being as fiery as it is now.’
She looked at the ash tree, stripping it in her mind’s eye and said, ‘But it doesn’t last.’
Tom thought, ‘and now I shall say “nothing lasts” and melancholy will be complete.’ Instead, he said, ‘It will all happen again next year.’
‘Next year! Oh, Tom, the years go by fast enough as it is!’
Tom looked at the clock. It was a quarter past two and the day was Saturday. Didn’t Isobel have a meeting to attend? Were there no jumble sales, no bazaars? Why was it that when he wanted to be left alone with his thoughts, Isobel should have so much time to spare? When she had started this elegy for the fallen leaves, he had been in the middle of an argument with Phoebe Huber and he had lost the thread of it now.
‘Should we go away for Christmas?’ Isobel mused.
‘Go away!’
‘You’ve been under the weather lately. I thought it might do you good.’
‘But you’ve always said you couldn’t possibly go away at Christmas. What about refreshments for the carol singers?’
‘Someone else could see to that for a change.’
‘Where would Aunt Enid go?’
‘Perhaps we could take her with us.’
‘Not with hotel prices as they are now.’
There was a pause, then Isobel said, ‘I wasn’t really serious.’ But she seemed to have something on her mind and she remained by the window, looking at the leaves blown this way and that by the wind. Her face was pinched, perhaps she had a headache.
‘I think we should put on one bar of the electric fire,’ she said. ‘That radiator never seems to heat the room properly.’
She was going to stay in this afternoon! Did she expect him to sit in here with her? He noticed for the first time that her reading glasses were on the sofa together with a pile of old newspapers. He felt unreasonably angry, like a child denied a promised treat; all the morning he had been looking forward to sitting in here alone, arguing with Phoebe.
‘I’ll sweep up the leaves,’ he said.
She looked at him in surprise. ‘Wonders will never cease!’
‘Somebody’s got to do it,’ he said irritably.
While he was putting on his boots she came out to give him instructions about the compost heap; then she told him to wrap up warmly because there was a cold wind.
‘It will blow the cobwebs away,’ he said.
But once he was out in the garden on his own there were no cobwebs to blow away; his mind was sharp and clear as the day itself. He worked with vigour and was sorry to stop when Isobel called him in for tea.
‘I shouldn’t go out there again,’ she said. ‘You’ve done enough for one day.’
/>
‘There are still a few leaves scattered about the lawn.’
‘But there are plenty more on the trees! It’s no use chasing each leaf; by tomorrow the ground will be covered again.’
But in spite of this, he went out again and cleared the lawn with obsessive care. It was getting dark, but Isobel had not switched on the light in the sitting-room and at first he thought that she must be dozing in front of the fire; then he saw her standing by the window, watching him.
‘What’s the matter?’ He went up to the window and shouted at her.
‘It’s a good job you don’t do much gardening.’ She opened the window especially to tell him this. ‘You’re behaving like a fussy old maid out there!’
‘I’m trying to get it clear, that’s all. If you didn’t want me to help in the garden, why didn’t you say so in the first place?’
‘I’m delighted for you to help. I was just amused at the way. . . .’
‘I do live here, you know. This is my garden as well as yours!’
‘Tom! Whatever has come over you?’
He turned away, not knowing himself what had come over him. After a few moments the light came on in the sitting-room and Isobel drew the curtains. He leant on the rake, exhausted and frustrated. The argument with Phoebe was not going well; he had a precise ear for speech, but he could not manage to make her speak convincingly. A tendency which he had noted in actual conversation with her persisted in his imaginary dialogues: she was mischievously intent on striking the wrong note whenever possible. This afternoon she had been particularly contrary. He put the rake and the broom away in the shed, and eased off his boots outside the scullery door. He did not want Isobel to talk to him again, so he entered the house quietly and tip-toed up the stairs. ‘I’m going to have a bath,’ he called when he reached the comparative safety of the landing.
He tried to relax in the hot water while he thought about Phoebe Huber. This time, instead of arguing with her, he analysed his reasons for thinking so much about her.
The reason he had been thinking so much about her, he told himself, was that she stimulated him to argument, and the delights of argument had been missing from his life. His father had insisted on intellectual argument at breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner because it developed the mind. Tom had resisted this, and resistance had become a habit so that at the first sign of disagreement he withdrew into himself. Lately, he had begun to drift away from people; he had found it difficult to relate to those around him and they had lost their reality. Phoebe Huber was real as an exposed nerve. For one who was always at pains to avoid an outright contradiction, it was surprising how effortlessly she could create a contentious atmosphere. She made peace seem a very fragile thing. He had spent much of his life yearning for peace, but he now wondered whether it was discord that he had really needed.
