by MARY HOCKING
There was an unpleasant fishy smell in the room. Tom wondered if it had arrived with the white cat, or whether it had been there all the time.
‘Was your aunt very ill for long?’ he asked.
‘Six or seven years.’
‘It must have been hard for you.’
‘Hard! They were the best years of my life!’ There was anger as well as contempt in her laugh. ‘I don’t mean that I gave them to her, or anything nauseous like that, but that. . . .’ Her lips curled as she mentally rejected one or two phrases that did not suit her purpose.
‘You mean that it was enjoyable?’
This disconcerted her; she would have been prepared herself to admit to enjoying her aunt’s last years, but she did not like it to be immediately apparent to someone else. ‘I liked looking after her because she taught me a lot,’ she said, more wary now. ‘Every day I found out something new about her.’
‘And did she find out something new about you, or did you outstrip her day by day?’
It seemed she could not sustain the aristocratic manner for long. Her voice was thin when she said, ‘She depended on me.’
‘You mean you learnt to manage her? You had your revenge for what she did to you?’
‘That’s a beastly thing to say!’ Her reaction revealed a squeamishness of which her aunt would surely not have approved. ‘You don’t think I’m very nice, do you?’
‘Nice? I think you could be magnificent if you chose.’
‘Magnificent? Oh dear me!’ She transferred her gaze from him to the electric fan heater; beneath the dark hair her face drooped and became a pale, elongated wedge of misery. The eternal victim was taking over again. He wanted to grasp her by the shoulders and shake her free before the personality change was complete. Only the sudden arrival in his lap of the missing tabby cat prevented him from some such act of violence. He flung the cat down and Phoebe scooped it up, holding it against her cheek and crooning endearments while the creature stared at Tom in wide-eyed astonishment, its tail twitching angrily. The white cat jumped down from the chair and rubbed jealously round her ankles. Tom got up and took a turn round the room.
She said, ‘You haven’t had a biscuit.’
He wanted to smash something, but contented himself with tugging viciously at a leaf of the nearest aspidistra.
‘And you’ve upset your coffee. Did Magnus do that, the naughty pussums? Shall I make you some more?’
‘You are infantile!’ he shouted, hating her for her consistent refusal to be magnificent. ‘Infantile!’
Her lips quivered and tears filmed her eyes. He seemed to watch the tear process in slow motion, the water welling up to the rims, drowning the eyes, the first splash on the cheek and then the water running fast until the whole face was awash. Her body began to shake, muscles twitched and jerked uncontrollably. The tabby, distrusting this excess, jumped down and stalked away, its tail brushed up straight. Phoebe stood before Tom like some strange under-water creature, shimmering and rippling. He was aware of being manipulated into a drama that was none of his making. He said, ‘Let me get you a drink.’ He spoke coldly, grudging any interest in her performance.
She let out a choking cry, caught her breath and began to whoop. He went to the kitchen to fetch a glass of water. When he returned to the drawing room she was walking up and down, still making strangled noises. She refused the glass of water as decisively as if she suspected poison. Her eyes, pink and wet, held his. There was reproach in the look she gave him and a hint of aggression; there was also a sly expectancy. A stage had been reached when some kind of submission was demanded of him. He did not know how the scene was to be played, but he sensed that if he trusted himself to her she would guide him through it. As proof of this, she began his initiation by whispering, ‘You despise me, don’t you?’ The little whisper sent a shiver through him. She was looking at him with the reckless effrontery of a woman inviting a declaration of love. ‘Go on!’ she urged. ‘Admit it. You despise me.’
The stale, fishy smell in the room was becoming overpowering; he was sick and sweating, unable to think coherently, and all the time she regarded him avidly, waiting to be stripped of all dignity. She flicked her tongue across her lips, anticipating the pleasure of abasing herself before him. Yet while she fawned and grovelled, it was he who would really be dishonoured, and the thing which gave spice to the situation was that they would both be aware of it.
‘You despise me,’ she prompted, and gave a little smile of complicity to encourage him.
He made a great effort and said haltingly, ‘I don’t recognise you. You are not . . . there is another person. . . .’
He turned away, afraid of being ensnared into a position where he must grant recognition to this unsavoury creature. As he walked down the hall he could hear her talking to the cat. He was glad when he was out in the fresh air again. Beth had said to him, ‘You don’t want a woman to be herself, you want her to be your idea of her. We are all projections of you!’ For a moment in that unpleasant room there had been a danger that the situation would be reversed and he would become Phoebe Huber’s creature. The smell was still in his nostrils and when he got into his car it smelt oppressive as a sick person’s unventilated room. Some of the cat’s hairs were about his face; he rubbed with a handkerchief but could not get rid of them. He felt sick and afraid for himself. If I am not very careful, he thought, this will become my smell.
When he got back to the office he tried to put Phoebe Huber out of his mind. Far from resenting every interruption, he welcomed each one; he went over the reports and correspondence on his desk with care; he made unnecessary telephone calls; he did a tour of his section to see how his staff were getting on. But not even the realisation that he had lost much goodwill in the last few weeks enabled him to concentrate his mind for long on anyone but Phoebe Huber; she came to him like those wandering thoughts which seem so much a part of church service, insidious, distracting, sometimes blasphemous.
That evening at supper he talked to Isobel about her. He was not quite sure why he did this, except that he wanted Isobel to know about her.
‘She sounds as if she’s in rather an unhealthy state.’ The subject was obviously distasteful to Isobel.
‘If people are in bad health they need help.’ He began to justify himself at Isobel’s expense. ‘But you will never acknowledge that.’
‘What do you want me to do? Shall I ask her to tea?’
‘Tea!’
‘This is the last of our tomatoes.’ She pushed the salad bowl towards him. ‘They haven’t been very good this year. I don’t know if it’s worth growing any next year.’
‘We shall probably have to grow all our own food next year,’ he muttered wretchedly.
‘I hope not.’ She gave a wry laugh and helped herself to a tomato. ‘If our previous results are anything to go by we should starve.’
Later, when she was clearing the table, she said, ‘I shouldn’t get too involved with this Miss Huber if I were you. You’re under enough pressure yourself without taking on other people’s worries.’
But this was his worry. For weeks he had wanted to know where Phoebe Huber was at night and at week-ends. Now he felt he knew even less than before. She had given his imagination the slip: that house belonged to nightmare and his imagination would never embrace its nightmare possibilities.
The triviality of his previous expectations was now apparent to him. With what pretension he had talked to himself about the dark forces, when what he had actually been seeking was a negative relationship with an off-beat spinster in a snug little cottage! The reality was altogether less pleasing and he was frightened. How could he have thought that he could encounter the woman on the landing without being frightened? As he dwelt on this, he began to be excited again and told himself that the fear was a part of the landscape of his journey, a dark place through which he must pass on his way to whatever it was that lay at the centre of Tom Norris. The fear was good. Nevertheless, it was fear and
it persisted. He was like someone who is edging along the wall of a cave, reassuring himself by saying, ‘Not much further; we don’t have to go any further . . .’ and always glancing back over his shoulder to make sure that the tiny crack of light is still there.
The next morning Isobel said to him, ‘Tom, I think you should go to the doctor. You don’t look well and you were very restless last night.’
‘Did I talk in my sleep?’ he asked sharply.
‘Nothing intelligible.’
She looked rather careworn this morning, nevertheless he said bitterly, ‘If it had been intelligible you wouldn’t have liked it. You never want to listen to anything unpleasant. You wouldn’t listen to anything unpleasant to save my life.’
She considered this for a moment in her reflective way, and then said gently, ‘I don’t think that is quite fair. I don’t like all this delving into things, but I’ve never refused. . . .’
‘You’ve never ventured anywhere near the brink!’
‘Oh, Tom! Don’t keep on at me so!’ Her face crumpled and she pushed a fist against her mouth to contain the grief which spilled from her eyes and ran down her cheeks, over the clenched fist. Her body shook with fierce, silent spasms. He had never seen her cry like this in the whole of their married life and he was shocked.
‘Isobel!’ He went towards her, but she held out her free hand, gesturing him to go away. Her grief was her own, not to be shared with him. He stopped, afraid to force himself on her, and said, ‘What is it? At least tell me what it is!’ like a child seeing his mother cry, more frightened for himself than for her.
She pressed her hand to her stomach and bent forward, engaging her whole body in the effort to contain this inward grief. It was so primitive an expression of grief that he recognised it instantly although he did not understand it. He went out of the room, very shaken. While he paced up and down the hall, thinking of Isobel, the telephone rang. He snatched up the receiver.
Madge Conroy said, ‘I’ve just had a telephone call from Phoebe Huber. Why she rang me I can’t imagine, because she wanted to get a message to you! She won’t be coming in today, she’s had a tummy upset. She seemed to think you might be picking her up this morning.’
The disappointment was intense. He sat on the stairs. He felt as if life had run out of material and stopped. There was no sound from the breakfast room; Isobel must still be crying, otherwise she would be clearing the breakfast table. He didn’t want to go on any longer, and it was only the knowledge that he could not stay sitting on the stairs indefinitely without making some explanation to Isobel that gave him sufficient energy to get himself out to the car.
When he got to his office, Mather’s secretary, Jean Coxon, was waiting for him.
‘Thank goodness you’re here! Will you take the meeting with the primary head teachers this morning?’ She was an austere woman who did not normally permit herself the luxury of emotion, but now she sounded near to breaking point.
‘But the meeting was arranged because the head teachers insisted on a discussion with the Chief Education Officer, himself and no other.’
‘Himself-and-no-other won’t go.’
‘What do you mean, he won’t go?’
‘He is sitting in his room reading The Financial Times and he has no intention of moving. And, believe me, nothing will move him. He will sit there the whole morning reading The Financial Times; and in the afternoon he will read The Investors’ Chronicle. He’s done it before, did you know that? Even before the reorganisation got under way it was getting rather bad; but we always covered up, said the Chairman of the Education Committee had come in unexpectedly, or some such excuse, and fobbed people off with Bertie. But the head teachers won’t be fobbed off with Bertie; and anyway, Bertie won’t know any of the answers because Himself makes sure the information doesn’t come Bertie’s way.’
She was not a garrulous person, but today her lips were shaking out words. She had been Mather’s secretary for fifteen unrewarding years and although she did not like the man she had been loyal to him because disloyalty would have diminished her self-respect. Now, both self-respect and self-control were slipping out of her tired grasp. Tom decided he would rather face seventy angry head teachers than witness the disintegration of Jean Coxon.
Later, he regretted the decision. It took him forty minutes to calm the teachers and obtain their consent to proceed with the business of the meeting. But what was it he had to tell them? He had the panic-stricken feeling of being on stage, having learnt the wrong play and noticed the prompter asleep in the wings. Although he had not had a chance to go over the papers before the meeting, the subject matter was familiar to him and words would normally have come to his mind as he glanced at the papers thrust at him by Mather’s administrative assistant. But words had become slippery as eels and danced off the edge of his mind, and when he did succeed in trapping one, it was the wrong one. He stuttered and expressed himself badly. Cold slime covered his forehead. He had sufficient command of the strategy of the tight corner, however, to say to one of the head teachers, ‘Perhaps you would give me an outline of what it is that troubles you particularly over this question of protected salaries.’ He chose his man well, a teacher to whom a grievance is more dear than its removal. While the man talked, Tom tried to concentrate on the document prepared by the County Treasurer, but he lost the sense of the first paragraph before he reached the end of it. He went back and read it through again, making brief notes. By the time the man had finished speaking he had made some sense of the document; but he was slow to get the meaning across to the teachers, and when questions were put to him, he stumbled over the answers. His brain was falling apart like a loose jigsaw puzzle.
The head teachers had no intention of leaving until they had made all the points that were important to them; but, in view of Tom’s poor performance, they accepted a situation in which he listened and promised to make a comprehensive report to Mather. The meeting broke up just after one o’clock. The teachers had borne with Tom reasonably well because they were so angry with Mather; but the administrative assistant looked at him speculatively no doubt thinking he could have taken the meeting better himself.
Tom went to see Mather in the afternoon. Mather was reading The Investors’ Chronicle. He raised his eyes lazily from the paper, making it apparent that even this effort was asking a great deal of him.
Tom said, ‘You didn’t come to the meeting of primary head teachers.’
Mather said, ‘Dear Jean forgot to tell me about it until it was over. I can’t be expected to keep all these things in my mind.’ It was a deliberate lie made in the full knowledge that Tom knew that it was a lie. There is a degree of perversity with which it is difficult for reasonable people to deal and Mather was aware of this. It occurred to Tom that murder was probably the only answer to someone like Mather, provided one could be sure of Hell. He said, ‘I’ve brought your files back.’
‘Do some notes, will you, there’s a good chap.’ Mather returned his gaze to The Investors’ Chronicle, which was as well for him because when Tom threw the box file at him his right eyelid was cut but the eye was not damaged.
Tom said, ‘Do the notes yourself, you lazy bastard.’ He noticed the blood streaming down Mather’s face, but he was not very concerned about it because the border between wanting to do something and actually doing it had become blurred and he had difficulty in distinguishing the wish from its fulfilment.
Nevertheless, by the time he reached the third floor landing he felt faint, so he went down to the car park and sat in his car with the window open. He had forgotten about Mather and was thinking of Phoebe Huber. Something she had said yesterday had been hovering at the back of his mind. ‘She’s all right.’ That grudging comment about the woman who had taught her suggested that Miss Towton was alive. He must call on Miss Towton who had had an opportunity to influence Phoebe Huber during the formative years of her life. No sooner had he decided this than he found himself driving through the narrow lan
es towards Pendlecombe village.
As he drove down the village street he realised that he had been here before but had approached the village from another direction. The cottage, red-brick, raw, utilitarian, that he had imagined as being Phoebe’s home, existed and it was next door to the General Stores. Enquiry at the General Stores elicited the information that it was Miss Towton who lived in the cottage. It all fitted into place. Who would believe that life is a random happening?
He needed to talk about Phoebe Huber who now seemed to him to represent reality; when he thought of her he touched the current of life, the confusions which befuddled him were dispersed, his mind cleared and his senses sharpened. But he could not maintain this heightened awareness on his own. He needed stimulation and here was Miss Towton pattering down the hall to provide it. She would be like his aunt, one of those gentle, velvet women who, having failed to achieve matrimony, spends a lifetime in the service of others. She would be only too glad to talk to him about Phoebe Huber.
As soon as Miss Towton opened the door he realised there had been a mistake: the right character had been bundled offstage and the spotlight directed on a quite inappropriate player who had no idea what the action was all about, but would play things her own way, deaf to any promptings from the wings. It seemed for a moment her hall must be lit by a thousand-watt bulb there was such dreadful clarity about this figure. The impression of light was momentary, then everything seemed to dim, including Miss Towton herself. He saw a big woman, now become frail and impatient of her frailty; she had fine golden hair which had faded until it almost matched the skin which was a little too yellow. The blue eyes, which no doubt had always seen too clearly for her own and other people’s comfort, had now acquired some knowledge they were keeping to themselves.
When Tom started to explain that he was from the Education Department she cut him short, ‘You had better come in. The kettle is on. You’d like tea.’ She was diagnosing his condition rather than offering hospitality; she was a headstrong woman and would not be shaken from her diagnosis. He felt he had known her a long time and that this was not the first time they had had occasion to disagree about diagnosis. While she went into the kitchen he walked up and down her sitting-room, wondering whether it had been wise to come. The events of the morning, and his scene with Mather, had shaken him and he felt physically exhausted; so he decided to stay, whether wise or unwise. He was past caring about wisdom.
