by MARY HOCKING
‘You are the most obstructive person it has ever been my misfortune to encounter!’ Norma Rossiter was strident, savage, yet without hope. ‘Obstructive, disruptive, subversive. . . .’
‘Oh, Miss Rossiter, Miss Rossiter, please. . . .’
‘And a masochist.’
‘Oh, what am I to do?’ Phoebe spoke in an aside. ‘She won’t listen to me, she won’t ever listen to me.’
‘It is you who are to listen to me! This report on integrated studies was only written eighteen months ago. There MUST be other copies and I want a dozen of them on my desk tomorrow afternoon.’
Tom had crept forward. Norma Rossiter’s back was towards him; but he could see Phoebe’s face, blank and wasted by war.
Norma Rossiter said, ‘You understand me?’
‘Yes, Miss Rossiter. It’s no use my saying any more; whatever I say to you it is never the right thing.’ Her eyes, which had been fixed sadly on Norma Rossiter’s feet, now gazed up and to her left, seeming to exchange a look of weary understanding with some unseen presence who was witness to the impossibility of saying the right thing to Norma Rossiter. Apparently she gained courage from this exchange, for she then said with brave resolution, ‘You shall have the copies if I have to stay here all night.’
‘Perhaps my secretary can help.’ Norma Rossiter faltered badly at this point.
‘I can manage alone. Don’t worry, Miss Rossiter; you shall have your copies.’
Norma said, ‘Tomorrow afternoon, then.’ She made a clumsy exit, brushing past Tom without seeming to notice him. He had a brief glimpse of a face strangely contorted by despair.
Norma’s secretary must have been in the room while Norma and Phoebe were talking. Now she said, ‘She’s driving herself dotty about that report. She’s going for an interview soon.’
‘In that case I suppose I shall have to stencil it for the poor cow. It’s a long report, but if I’m doing that I can’t be humping parcels about for the whole of the Schools Section.’
‘You’ll make yourself ill.’
‘It won’t be the first time.’ The prospect seemed to cheer Phoebe.
‘I should tell Mr. Norris you can’t do so much, he’s very kind.’
‘He’s a soft touch for sympathy, I’ll grant you that. But he’s only kind as long as it doesn’t cost him anything, is our Tom. He won’t take on Norma Rossiter. He doesn’t fight in her league.’
The telephone rang and Sybil answered it. Phoebe walked out of the room. She looked at Tom in faint surprise but did not lose her composure. ‘Miss Rossiter isn’t in there,’ she said. ‘If that is who you are waiting for.’ She walked away; her steps sounded light and brisk.
Norma’s secretary was still on the telephone; she was leaning across the desk, craning her neck to see what was going on. When she saw Tom she put one hand over the mouthpiece and hissed reassuringly, ‘She always gets like this after a time, whoever she’s working with. We’ve been wondering how long it would be before she turned sour on you.’
Tom walked slowly back to his office. His pulse was thudding and there was pressure between his eyes. ‘This is the time when you have to be very careful,’ he told himself. ‘Careful and reasonable.’
She had already started to type the stencil and she did not look up as he came into the room. She was crouched forward and her fingers, arching like claws above the typewriter keys, moved with incredible speed; her breathing was shallow except for a little hiss which escaped her lips whenever there was a moment’s delay, as when the typewriter jumped two spaces or keys jammed together.
He came and stood beside her desk. ‘There is no need for this,’ he said quietly.
She let her breath out in a little whinny of despair and crumpled like a busted paper bag.
‘I want to talk to you,’ he said, very quiet and reasonable.
She half-closed her eyes and clasped her hands tight to her stomach as though keeping them from the temptation of resuming work.
‘You can put that stencil away.’
‘Miss Rossiter wants copies of the report by tomorrow afternoon,’ she said in an agonised voice.’
‘But you don’t work for Miss Rossiter. You work for me.’
‘She’ll be so upset.’
‘It doesn’t matter whether she’s upset or not; she had no business to ask you to do it.’ She squinted at the typewriter.
‘I am trying to help you.’ The pressure between his eyes was worse, but he managed to keep his voice calm. ‘You came to work for me because it was thought you would be treated more considerately in my section.’
She said, ‘Yes,’ bleakly.
‘Haven’t I been considerate?’
She gave a sour little smile and said, ‘May I go on with the stencil now, please?’
‘I have been considerate, haven’t I?’ he pleaded as reason shredded away. ‘Or if I haven’t been considerate, tell me about it. . . .’
She placed two fingers exploratively on the typewriter keys.
He said sharply, ‘You are not to type that report.’
‘Miss Rossiter will go dotty if I don’t.’
‘It is my report and I say she can’t have copies of it.’
‘You know I must do it if she asks me to.’
‘I know nothing of the sort! You work for me, not Miss Rossiter.’
‘Poor Miss Rossiter.’
‘You are not to type that report, do you understand me? YOU ARE NOT TO TYPE THAT REPORT.’
The door of the room had opened and Edgar Holmes and Phillimore stood there, looking incongruous like a double act, one thin and neat, the other fat and shabby, both pop-eyed with astonishment. Tom turned and shouted at Holmes:
‘Does Miss Huber work for me or does she not?’
‘We could hear you in the corridor. . . .’
‘Don’t prevaricate, just answer my question.’
Furtively, Phoebe began to type. Phillimore edged away, but Tom raised one hand high and pointed a finger, like a conductor bringing in a section of the orchestra. ‘And you! I want you! You’re a witness and God knows I shall need a witness with these two.’
Holmes said, ‘If I were you, Miss Huber, I should. . . .’
Tom caught at the lapel of his jacket as he moved towards Phoebe. ‘Did you or did you not ask me to take Miss Huber into this section?’
‘Sadly, yes. . . .’
‘Then leave me to give the instructions, will you?’ As Holmes made no reply, Tom took hold of the other lapel as well and gave Holmes a little shake. Holmes, who feared physical violence, shut his eyes and pleated his lips tightly together. Tom said, ‘And what do you mean “sadly”? You asked me to take her into this section because I would be considerate to her. And I have been considerate, I have been very considerate. My staff are hardly speaking to me because I have been so considerate to Miss Huber.’ He shook Holmes backwards and forwards, not very effectively as he was not used to this kind of thing and Holmes carried a lot of weight. ‘You told me that she had to be taken away from Norma Rossiter’s section, didn’t you? But you didn’t tell me about the other sections she had to be taken away from, did you?’ Phoebe was now typing fast. ‘And you didn’t tell me about her aunt. But I’ve found out about that. I’ve found out about her aunt, do you understand? I know what happened to her aunt but it’s not going to happen to me.’
Holmes spoke out of the corner of his mouth like a ventriloquist. ‘Get help! He’s mad.’
‘Not yet, I’m not. Not yet! But that is no thanks to her.’
Phillimore stepped forward and said, ‘Steady on there, old man.’
Tom let go of Holmes and thumped Phillimore in the chest. Then he ran out of the room, along the corridor, and down the stairs to the foyer. The porter was still standing by the front door. He said, ‘I think you’re right about that blizzard. It’s started to snow again.’ He looked surprised as Tom pushed past him; but the cold had dulled his brain and it was a couple of minutes before he opened the door and edged out
onto the step. ‘I shouldn’t go out in this if I were you, sir.’ The wind skimmed painfully over the tops of his ears. In the hall, the telephone began to ring and he went inside to answer it.
The snow was coming down in big, woolly bobbles. By the time Tom reached the winding road that led to his village the windscreen wipers had ceased to work and he was driving with the window open. The nerves around his cheekbones were jumping and his teeth were on edge. It was intensely cold and quiet. He would have felt he was the only person alive had it not been for Phoebe. But Phoebe was everywhere; out in that white wasteland, caught in the headlamps of the car, her face in the pattern of snow on the windscreen. Everything he looked at turned into Phoebe.
He turned down the road that led to the village only to find after some minutes that the road had gone. The landscape had been drastically revised since morning and the old distinctions between road, field and hedge had been swept away. No sooner had his mind registered this than the new, undifferentiated landscape was swept away. There was nothing at all. Phoebe had swallowed up the world.
He stopped the car. At least, he put his foot on the brake, but he had no sense of the car stopping. Perhaps it had already stopped? He sat blinking confusedly, trying to work out whether he was moving or not. The test seemed to be to get out. There was no point in staying in the car, anyway, because it was obvious it could not come to terms with the new landscape which he had glimpsed before Phoebe obliterated everything. He got out and walked to the bonnet; a feat of endurance this, because something had happened to gravity and the usual leg movements did not achieve the expected results. It wasn’t silent any more, that was one thing. Phoebe swooped and wheeled around him. At last, he had the car behind him and was stumbling forward, goaded on by her wild, insistent honking.
He felt cheerful and confident, but found it difficult to match his physical performance to the high endeavour of which his spirit was undoubtedly capable. The maddening thing was that he wasn’t the right make for this new kind of existence; for one thing, he hadn’t been equipped with an adequate pump, ‘I must take it slowly.’ Even thought had to be spaced out in order not to use too much energy. ‘Slowly. Otherwise my pump will give out altogether . . . opportunity . . . wonderful new opportunity . . . will slip through my fingers. . . .’ Not that he had any fingers, he was practically all spirit now. Was that the answer? Yes, yes, of course! He was in a new dimension in which the attributes of the flesh were inappropriate; he must stop thrashing about in this clumsy, human manner and give himself, or lose himself, or whatever. . . . The relief was enormous. Effort dissolved and he began to drift down a delicious cotton wool slope to where she waited to enfold him in that peace which is beyond all peace. Now, he saw her white face lying beneath him, beautiful and enigmatic as the face of the moon. But as he pressed his own face against her cold lips some treacherous voice inside him began to insist that this was wrong, wrong, WRONG! He tried to ignore this Puritan voice but it continued with remarkable persistence to exert authority over his limbs so that they acted against his deepest desires, dragging him up and away from her peace.
All right! the shrieking wind said; be human in this un-human place, see how you make out! Try to walk, for example. For a time his body strove, in spite of the wind’s mockery, to make the old familiar movements. At each step, he must climb a mountain. Too many mountains. Gradually, he grew tired of the intricate operation of making a step. Too much muscular activity to co-ordinate. Too many mountains. There was an overwhelming longing for peace and a new voice, higher and purer than any human voice, which called to him on a long, sustained note. He called back, ‘Phoebe! Phoebe!’ The note went on, serene, uncaring. He called again and again. He stretched out his hands, struggled and fell. It had been a mistake to struggle; he let himself go down, down, down that serene, uncaring throat. But even there he could not escape the Puritan voice, and this time it was reinforced by another voice which repeated itself, sharp, staccato, ‘Tom! Tom!’ He managed to struggle to his knees, leaning against the wind, listening. Ahead a light swayed to and fro.
‘Is that you, Tom?’ Isobel called. ‘I’m here, at the window. You can’t get in at the door.’ The light swayed about and he struggled towards it but didn’t seem to be moving. At last, however, Isobel’s face bobbed about behind the light.
‘You’ll have to climb over the sill,’ she said.
‘Can’t.’
‘Must . . . Wait . . . kitchen steps. . . .’
What was she talking about? He leant against the sill and closed his eyes; but there was to be no peace because soon something banged against his shoulder, hands took him by the scruff of the neck. ‘Put your foot on the step, on the step, on the step. . . .’ The voice nagged and nagged until he reached a point where it was as little trouble to topple forward as backward, so he toppled forward headfirst into the sitting-room.
Chapter Eleven
He had wanted to relax in the snow but the Puritan voice had spoilt that, and it wasn’t any easier to relax into illness. He tried, but Isobel, perversely overcoming her dread of sickness, sat beside him all night and pestered him with aspirin, brandy, hot-water bottles, so that he was unable to concentrate on being ill. And what was the use anyway? Who could hope to make an issue of personal illness in the face of cosmic intervention of the sort which the South of England was now experiencing? He was no Lear to match up to Nature and compete with its effects. With these thoughts in mind, he drifted into sleep and dreamt that there was a Great Power that was moving against South Sussex. He went from person to person, arguing, ‘It’s not just us, it’s the whole country, the whole of Europe is threatened; and America and Russia won’t let Europe go under. And even if America and Russia alone can’t save us, there’s still China. She’s a Great Power now. China won’t let it happen to us.’ When he woke, he couldn’t think what Great Power it was he feared so much. It must have been very great because in his dream he had not been able to convince himself that America, Russia or China were going to be very effective against it.
When the blizzard had blown itself out, he went back to work in spite of Isobel’s protests.
‘You don’t believe I’m ill,’ he said wearily. ‘You just think I’ve got pneumonia.’
The hall porter greeted him admiringly on his arrival at County Hall. ‘You knew a thing or two, sir. Most of us had to spend the night here.’
The world was cracking up. There was a great cleft in it and they lived in the immediate area that was coming adrift; but all the porter could think of was that people had been marooned at County Hall all night!
Phillimore was waiting for the lift. He and Tom got in it together. Phillimore said to Tom, ‘You’ve got my sympathy for what it’s worth, old man. That little scene the other afternoon was quite an eye-opener to me.’ He blew up his cheeks and puffed out air, his eyes goggling.
Tom stared at him blankly.
‘You gave me a shove when you departed,’ Phillimore told him. ‘You probably weren’t aware of it, but it pushed me off-balance and I tripped over a pile of parcels that bloody Huber woman had put on the floor.’ The liftman had been having trouble with the doors but had finally closed them; the lift started with a jerk. ‘To stop myself falling, I grabbed at the shelf. No use. I fell just the same; but half the contents of the shelf came down on top of me, cascades of reports and files and what was left of her lunch, banana skin, chewed biscuit, half-eaten sandwich and some cold coffee that went in my ear.’ The lift had returned to the ground floor to pick up Edwin Spiers and two women from the Clerk’s Department; it appeared to have done itself a mischief in the process and ascended in a series of convulsive jerks. One of the women from the Clerk’s Department said she would like to get out. Phillimore said, ‘And, do you know, she just went on typing as though nothing had happened! It wasn’t as if it was all over in a trice, either, because some of those files were heavy and I was winded; and Edgar not being particularly athletic, it took some time before I resumed the verti
cal. . . .’
The lift man said, ‘The power’s low. That’s the trouble.’
‘And she never took her eyes off that stencil. . . .’
‘I’m getting out at the next stop!’
‘It wasn’t natural. I told old Edgar afterwards, when we chewed things over in his room, that she would drive me mad if I had her around me.’
The lift had stopped navel-level with the third floor.
‘I also told him I didn’t think much of the way she had behaved to you, either. As for La Rossiter! What do you make of that? Stealing other people’s reports and giving work to other people’s staff! Dog doesn’t eat dog. I told Edgar that!’ Tom wondered which way he would elect to go if they had to break the doors down; he decided he would haul himself upwards. What was another mountain? ‘You’ve got to be careful with him, he’s a bit of a creep is Edgar. And if you ask me, he’s found a kindred spirit in that weird sister of yours. But by the time I’d finished I think he realised that the wisest course would be for him to forget the whole episode. . . .’
Spiers was saying to the two women from the Clerk’s Department, ‘I’m getting out of local government. Going into my old man’s undertaking business.’
‘If he mentions it to you, I should just tell him you are prepared to overlook the matter provided Norma Rossiter and the Huber woman behave themselves in future. That’s the way to handle Edgar. Attack all the time, never defend yourself.’
‘You’re always sure of trade,’ Spiers said. ‘Nothing else is safe now.’
‘Mustn’t ever defend yourself with a chap like Edgar. Hasn’t even got a degree, did you know that?’
‘You do look funny down there, Dot,’ a woman called from above. ‘Like a lot of turnips with funny faces painted on them.’
