by MARY HOCKING
‘After many months, the new Council had its vision. It saw a building which would take older pupils away from the secondary school, where they were inhibited, and give them a new “environ¬ment”. This “environment” was to be called a sixth-form college. And as a result of providing a number of these “environments” not only would the older pupils no longer be inhibited, but the other pupils could remain in the existing schools, except that these schools would no longer be called “modern” and “grammar”, which would mean they were “equal”. The new Council had one thing in common with the old Council: it believed that words are very important.
‘The parents were not so joyful this time. It was not that they were ungrateful, but only that they had been offered so many good things for their children that their digestion had suffered. But the members of the political parties enjoyed the public meetings because this free exchange of ideas is what democracy is all about.
‘The Department of Education and Science, however, was sad that it was not being asked for money to alter the existing school buildings and it decided to talk about this to the Council’s miracle workers; and these discussions went on for a long time because everyone cared about the good of the children.
‘Six years went by and in this time many children were banished to modernland. It was not possible, because of the very careful thought which was being given to their future, to carry out improvements to the school buildings, some of which did not even have a science laboratory.
‘The teachers felt that they did not care much what happened provided it happened soon.
‘But this is not the attitude of people who really care about children. And when, at the next election, a new Council was elected, it bravely put aside the proposal to provide sixth-form colleges.
‘What vision the new Council will have is not yet known, for this is a story without an ending and we must leave the visionaries filing into the Council Chamber. There are not many spectators in the gallery. The parents have switched off and the teachers are drifting away. But what matter? It is the game that counts. The visionaries wait eagerly for the whistle to blow and the caring to start again.’
Phoebe outlined the last few words. Tom sipped the coffee which had gone cold. He had a feeling of anti-climax. Somewhere below, lift doors clanged and there was a clatter of buckets and brooms as the cleaners moved raucously into the building.
‘How does it strike you?’ Tom asked Phoebe.
‘I’d never have expected so much anger.’ She was looking at him shrewdly. The shrewdness gave unexpected authority to her face and for a moment the anxious lines, the bruised shadows, represented nothing more than an unsuccessful attempt to impose the appearance of frailty on a face not structurally designed for it. ‘If you’ve got that much anger you ought to use it.’ She spoke as though anger was a beautiful thing. ‘Don’t just write fairy stories.’
He was taken aback and wished he had not asked her opinion. ‘I’m not as angry as all that,’ he muttered.
‘Oh, but you are! And you haven’t got the half of it down here. It’s muffled by civilised manners and social sense and whatever.’ She was enjoying this; he thought angrily that she was the kind of woman who delights in exploring hidden weakness. That was the danger with writing, you gave yourself away, opened up a part of yourself for analysis. The more deeply you penetrated, the more you would give away. The idea that to write you must put yourself at risk was not at all to his liking. He said lightly, ‘Really, I think you’re making rather too much of this little piece.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She became flustered, muttered some banality about speaking out of turn and concentrated on transcribing the story.
The woman in the vault had been on her way to meet him, but he had turned aside. Nothing he could say that evening, whether caustic or persuasive, could summon back the fugitive.
For some weeks there was neither sight nor sound of her. Tom had a number of meetings to attend, and when he was in the office his attention was taken up with problems relating to teacher appointments and the arrangements for the eleven-plus examination. His stock of patience seemed to have been exhausted and he had also run out of tact; but as the general atmosphere at County Hall was increasingly combative, no particular attention was paid to the minor disorders taking place in the person of Tom Norris. Senior officers were intent on making applications for a variety of posts, both in and out of Sussex, and they were neglecting work which had to be undertaken by overworked subordinates. Norma Rossiter had applied for a post as Deputy Education Officer; and Phillimore, hearing of this, seriously considered applying for one of the Chief Education Officer posts and was only dissuaded when it was pointed out to him that this would put him in competition with Mather and put paid to any chance of obtaining a reasonable reference.
At the beginning of November the first interviews were held. Mather presented himself for consideration as Chief Education Officer of West Sussex and was not appointed. No one had expected that he would be appointed; nevertheless, an air of even deeper gloom pervaded the cluttered corridors of South Sussex Education Department. There was little sympathy for Mather. Norma Rossiter, who was becoming more strident but less robust, said, ‘It wouldn’t take any appointments board five minutes to realise what a sod he is!’ Phillimore could see no evidence of a Roman Catholic conspiracy against Mather. It was rumoured that it was the compensation in which Mather had been interested and that he had deliberately set out to alienate the appointments board. Others said he had had too much to drink before he attended the interview. Either way, it didn’t give his staff much confidence in his ability to look after their interests; no one thought Mather was capable of fighting very hard for anything in which he did not have a stake.
‘The least altruistic man I know,’ Edgar Holmes observed when he came to talk to Tom and Madge Conroy after the news was received that Mather had failed in his bid for the West Sussex post.
Tom turned to Phoebe, whom he liked to draw into any conversation which took place in his room. ‘Perhaps you think we’re not being fair to Mather? He may not lose interest.’
‘Of course he won’t!’ She spoke quite affectionately. ‘There’s malice in the old boy yet. He’ll bitch up everyone else’s chances now.’
Edgar Holmes, who seemed to regard Phoebe as his protégée, was delighted and said gleefully, ‘That about sizes Mather up!’
Tom was surprised at how much Holmes and Phoebe seemed to know about Mather when he himself had only recently become aware of the evil in the man. Evil had been out of fashion lately; he had never given it enough thought. Now it burgeoned everywhere. When Edgar Holmes and Madge Conroy had gone, he said to Phoebe:
‘Do you believe it is true for all of us, what St. Paul says, “For the good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do?” Is it more natural for us to be evil?’
‘He had an awful hang-up about sin, hadn’t he? Poor old St. Paul. I often think it might have helped him to have had a chat with Oscar Wilde.’
‘Don’t you believe in good?’
‘I think Mr. Holmes is good. He was very sympathetic about my cat. Anyone who cares about cats is good.’
She would not be drawn. Ever since he had retreated from her when she criticised his ‘fairy story’ she had pointedly taken refuge in triviality whenever a discussion took a serious turn.
It was a Friday evening. The clocks had been put back and by half-past four the light was going and the one-way arrow outside the building was already illuminated. Low cloud scudded across a blue sky that looked fragile as an egg-shell; the main cloud was pink, crumbling at the periphery into a scatter of ashes. The Downs were a dull, unshadowed green and the trees which only last week had been one leafy mass were now a troup of golliwogs marching in single file along the ridge. Below, he could see car lights looped like a string of frosted beads in the valley between the hills. There was nothing out there to suggest any lingering warmth. This time tomorrow Isobel would be persuading him to come
in from the garden; soon all the leaves would have fallen and there would be no more work for him in the garden. What would he do when winter came?
He worked hard on the Saturday, and while he was out in the garden it occurred to him that perhaps in the winter he might set about cutting back the trees. The trouble was they had grown tall and strong and he was not sure that he could manage on his own; perhaps he could lop off a few branches.
He must have overtired himself because he slept restlessly. At some time during the night, half-in, half-out of sleep, he thought that the window on the landing must have been left open. There was a draught of cold air coming from the corridor. But now he was on the landing, having closed the window, and there was still that draught of cold air. There was a gas bracket on the wall and the yellow light flickered and popped. He was standing in the comer in front of the fireplace and he was very frightened because he realised that there was someone in the corridor on the opposite side of the landing. He could see a light, very small, like the farthest star. As he watched this light move he experienced a terror that was almost beyond bearing, a terror so great that he would have surrendered to anyone, to Death himself, in order to have been freed of it. Yet when the bearer of the light appeared it was difficult at first to see why she should rouse terror in anyone. The face, although it was interesting, was not extraordinary; beneath the dark hair, it was pale and composed, the lips compressed: a face that might have stared out of any Victorian photograph album. She had taken her stance beneath the gas lamp, the candle, which she no longer needed, held in one hand, while the other arm hung loosely at her side. She stood there still and seemingly passive, save that, although the mouth made no complaints, the eyes, grey as water on a wintry day, gave to the face an expression of muted hostility. As he looked at those eyes he began to notice other things about the face. The dark hair was drawn tightly back and the severe frame gave the appearance of breeding. Yet when he looked more carefully, he saw that the breeding was an illusion; there was someone else there behind the Victorian lady, a woman with flat cheekbones, widely-spaced eyes and broad, flattened nose. Her clothes—her robe was coarse and shapeless and she wore a kerchief round her head—suggested that she was further away in time. There was something monumental about her and the hostility was implacable. It was this woman who had taken up her place on the landing, and he knew as he looked at her that she was manifesting a right to be there. He also knew that he must challenge that right, but that he did not dare to do so. And while he was thinking about this, he saw that, behind the peasant woman, was someone else with a more rudimentary face with roughly hewn cheekbones and deep eye-sockets. It was this archaic face that began to move towards him, and he saw that the eye-sockets were entries to a cavern and that a long way down in the cavern a single light flickered.
He woke rigid with fear, unable to turn his head. Isobel had pulled the eiderdown over to her side of the bed and he was cold, but he did not dare to put out a hand and take hold of the eiderdown. The curtains were drawn back from the window and he could see a moon, bald and bright with a full, imbecile face across which wisps of cloud painted here an eyebrow, there a nose, but no eyes.
Chapter Eight
‘I WAS thinking about that suggestion of yours,’ Phillimore said to Norris. ‘After all, with my war-time experience. . . .’
‘How would your war-time experience help you to run a Further Education Section?’
‘I was referring to your suggestion that I should join a private army.’
‘Did I really suggest that?’
‘I am considering offering myself. You don’t think that is ill-advised?’
‘If we’re going to have a civil war you might as well get in on the ground floor.’
‘Civil war! I don’t like to think in those terms.’
‘Then in what terms were you thinking of joining a private army?’
‘Well, helping to maintain law and order if the police find themselves a bit stretched. But not civil war, old man; this country is much too sensible for that.’
‘If you say so.’
‘Civil war . . . Mmh. . . . In the near future, would you say?’
‘About chapter five, I should think.’
‘I don’t follow your drift.’
‘Or perhaps earlier than that; in fact, before the beginning. Perhaps as much as three years before the beginning.’
‘Is this a book you are writing?’
‘It’s a book I’m not writing.’
Phillimore circled an item on his agenda. ‘I hope you’re not going to put me in it?’
Norris looked at him thoughtfully. ‘I’d have to make one or two changes.’
They were sitting in the Council Chamber, having arrived early for a meeting of the Education Committee.
Phillimore said, ‘The trouble is, I don’t like to mention it to my wife. She’s not herself lately. People get odd obsessions in middle life. Ever noticed that? It’s trains, with my wife. She always thinks there’s a wheel loose; wanted me to pull the communication cord when we came down from Victoria last time. We had rather a bumpy journey and after a while other people in the carriage began to get nervous. Embarrassing. A nuisance, too. I have to drive now and parking’s not easy in London.’
‘She’s not afraid of a wheel coming off the car?’
‘Doesn’t mind the car. Trains seem to represent something special for her, I can’t work out what.’
There was another pause. Phillimore, having nothing better to do, looked at Norris. ‘Ever thought of doing anything like that yourself?’
‘Like what?’
‘Joining one of these private armies.’
‘Not my style.’
‘You might surprise us all.’
‘You think so?’
‘Mmmh. . . .’ Phillimore liked to know the type of person he was dealing with; his typing system wasn’t as complex as Jung’s but it worked well enough for him and he always felt better able to cope with a man once he had typed him. If he had had his way, people would have been issued with type badges, just as an airman has a category badge to wear on his sleeve. Tom Norris presented some difficulty: a devious person with the plastic face which can do service as a traitor to a cause, or a martyr to a cause, or even as someone without a cause at all. Phillimore wasn’t too easy at the thought of men like Norris roaming round untyped. ‘Ever thought of acting?’ he asked.
‘No. I should be no good with other people’s lines.’
‘All a question of style?’ Phillimore tapped his front teeth with his thumb nail. ‘It’s style that counts with you, is it?’
‘More a matter of rhythm, I would say.’
‘Mmmh. . . .’
They sat in silence for a minute or two, then Norris said, ‘Shall I tell you about my book, the one I’m not writing?’
‘Yes, yes, please do.’ Phillimore felt acutely embarrassed and hoped that Norris was not going to ask for his advice because he never had time to read anything as frivolous as fiction.
‘Well, we’re in the middle of some kind of breakdown, aren’t we?’
‘We?’
‘Nationally.’
‘Oh yes, I see what you mean. Breakdown of law and order.’ The maintenance of law and order was of paramount importance to Phillimore; every compromise diminished him. ‘That, of course, is why I feel there may be a need for private armies.’
‘But this applies to all of us,’ Norris said impatiently. ‘The people who are running the private armies are having the breakdown too.’
Phillimore could see he was right inside his story, so he said soothingly, ‘You tell it in your own way, old man. I won’t interrupt again.’
‘At present, we are still at the stage where we can keep going and fool outsiders that we are leading a normal life, a bit under stress, perhaps, but nothing that can’t be put right. Whereas in fact we are breaking up. All the obvious signs are there. . . .’
‘Law and order. . . .’
‘No, no, no! It’s worse than that. Look at what is happening to our faculties. Take Miss Merredew: she thinks in circles, hears what she chooses, says one thing and does another, and she has double vision. You see what I mean?’
‘Now that could be multiple sclerosis. I had a cousin who had double vision and that was what it led to. But I wouldn’t want Miss Merredew to know that.’
‘It’s getting very dark. You are not aware of it, are you?’
‘Time of year, old man.’ Phillimore swivelled in his seat and looked round the Council Chamber which was still empty. ‘It’s cold, though. Had you noticed?’
‘I noticed that a long time ago.’ Norris sounded possessive, as though the cold was his personal property. ‘But now it’s getting dark as well. One must be prepared to go into the dark.’ He became excited. ‘Do you know, I hadn’t realised that! One hears it, of course, but it never means anything, just one of those things people say when they are trying to be clever about their own nervous breakdowns. . . .’
‘The meeting starts in two minutes and there isn’t a single person here.’ Phillimore was whispering as if he was in church.
Norris, who did not appear to see anything odd about this, said impatiently, ‘Perhaps the lift has stuck.’
‘One lift wouldn’t carry the entire Education Committee.’
‘All three lifts, then.’
‘Are they separately powered?’
‘What does it matter about the lifts! Look, I’m trying to tell you something. God knows I’ve listened to you often enough over the years; and now when I’ve got something to say, all you can do is talk about the lift service.’
Phillimore said uneasily, ‘Yes, all right.’ He was beginning to think that something unpleasant must have happened and he was no more eager to go out and investigate than he had been to go into the strong room after Marsden fainted. He did not like the unknown. ‘I’m listening,’ he said to Norris.
‘It has to be the dark, can’t you understand? There isn’t any more uncharted territory, and we’ve been to the moon. The dark is the only unexplored region.’
