by MARY HOCKING
He called to the woman, ‘I can’t find the way. You must show me the way.’ He could have gone back the way he had come, but he knew that this was not allowed, that there were penalties for turning back and that they were heavy.
A flame flickered at the end of the corridor. ‘You’ve been a long time in there,’ she said. ‘What were you doing?’ She held a candle aloft in one hand. The other hand secured the shawl and the dark material which engulfed her body so that her face seemed to peer through a rent in the darkness.
‘Stay there!’ He was afraid now that there was only the face that he might lose that, too; already the substance of flesh and bone had been pared away and the features were only a trick of light and shade. ‘Please stay there. If you go away on your own, it will be bad for us. We mustn’t be separated.’
‘But I have to be on my own. It’s part of the game.’
‘We’re not playing a game.’
‘Oh, but we are! We’re playing hide and seek just like I used to, years ago!’ She snuffed out the candle and the face dissolved in the dark.
They had been close to each other. Now, it was as if at one stroke the pathetic trappings which held feeling imprisoned were gone; and in this unbeing, freed from her cage of flesh and bone, the woman was everywhere. Tom felt her pricking along his hairline, stinging his cheek, running across his upper lip leaving a trace of salt on his tongue. And now she moved inside him, dancing down the veins, breaking through the walls of the stomach, stirring stealthily in the loins with a flexing of long, teasing fingers.
The fingers urged him forward slowly; inch by inch they drew him spiralling down. The walls laboured heavily and the narrow rail which he held throbbed at his touch, the bone steps cracked and once almost threw him forward into a dark well of blood which pressed against his eyeballs. The steps snaked down and down as the pressure of blood increased; he was giddy and short of breath when he came to the last turn of the stair. Beyond was a dim tunnel. He stood listening while something that was like a burning moth fluttered in his groin. To the right of the tunnel there was a cave penetrated by cold blue light and from the cave came a low moan which jerked a knotted wire taut through the centre of his body. The pain was so intense there could be no going beyond it. The moment had come and he entered the cave where he immediately stumbled over an obstacle at his feet.
Light swayed, not the cold blue light but something more insipid which steadied as it was put down on a marble-topped washstand. Phoebe said, ‘You took a long time on those stairs. I was afraid you weren’t coming.’ She moaned again. ‘Oh, I had forgotten all this, but it hasn’t changed.’
Above the washstand was a stuffed stag’s head looking over the rim of a brass bedstead. Ranged round the room were garden chairs, a tallboy, a bamboo screen, a stuffed owl perched precariously in the horn of a very old gramophone, and a long Victorian couch on which Phoebe now draped herself in a reclining position. Tom leant across the box trunk which had tripped him and stared at her. She seemed in good spirits as she occupied herself in arranging the folds of her shapeless lilac dress and winding an enormously long feather boa round her neck. She wore a red wig back to front and her mouth was inexpertly daubed with carmine. When she had arranged the dress to her satisfaction, she swished the feather boa in Tom’s face and said, ‘You haven’t much sense of drama, have you?’
He rested his forehead on the trunk.
‘You look most inelegant slouched there. Is that the best you can do? These are Aunt Mady’s “dressing up” clothes. Don’t you think they are fine?’ For a time, she lay on the couch idly flicking the feather boa across Tom’s shoulders. Then, tiring of this, she began to talk to him. ‘Wanted to know me, did you? Well, I know all about that!’ She gazed round the room. ‘It’s been the scene of quite a bit of “knowing” has this room. My cousin, Nigel, raped one of the housemaids on this very couch. I was in the tallboy at the time. It was quite instructive. He took her hair down and there were pins everywhere; but she just thrashed about and moaned. Silly bitch! There are a lot of uses one can put a hairpin to.’ The feather boa was moulting and she picked pieces from her lips. ‘You’ll never guess her name. It was Violet.’ She looked expectantly at Tom who made no movement. ‘You don’t know your Sigmund, do you? Violet. Violate.’ After a pause, she muttered, ‘No sense of humour, either.’
She flicked the feather boa about a bit more, but soon lost interest in this and swung her feet to the ground. She sat on the edge of the couch, looking round the room anxiously. ‘You started this,’ she said. ‘And now you just fold up. You’re worse than Edgar.’
She threaded her way to a dressing-table mirror balanced on a wicker chair and crouched in front of it. After a moment or two, she dragged off the wig and threw it at the stag; it caught on one antler. She smoothed her own dark hair down on either side of her face; the carmined mouth twisted despairingly. ‘It’s no use planning fun,’ she said. ‘It never comes up to expectations. Life is a long anti-climax from the cradle to the grave and don’t let them tell you any different.’ She levered herself to her feet more in the manner of an Edwardian drab than the lady of fashion she had tried to emulate and hobbled over to the washstand to pick up the hurricane lamp. At the door, she paused, staring perplexedly at Tom. ‘If you can’t pull yourself away from your devotions, you’ll have to make it an all-night vigil. I’m not having you loose in the house.’ She closed the door; as she shot the bolt, she said, ‘Though I daresay I’d be safe enough.’
It was quiet after she had gone, a quiet without resonance. The darkness was black velvet, but this was only because there was pressure against his eyes. When the feathery wisps got in his nostrils and made him sneeze, the darkness was shot with dancing points of light; but this display lasted only a few seconds and then he saw that the room was once more lit by that strange blue light. He shaded his eyes from the light and whispered, ‘Phoebe?’ There was no answer. He repeated, a little louder, ‘Phoebe!’ Still no answer. The performance was over. It had all been a cheat; something done with mirrors.
He opened the trunk. It was filled with theatrical effects; cardboard sword and helmet, a dunce’s cap, a tambourine, plaits of hair, a parasol, clown’s mask, a pair of stays, an Elizabethan ruff, a garter with flowers stitched to a buckle. He supposed that Phoebe’s effects might as well be stored here, it seemed the most appropriate place. The tasselled shawl hung on the back of a garden seat; a length of dark curtain material draped the bamboo screen; the wig was hooked on the deer’s antler. He bundled them together and thrust them in the trunk. As he closed the lid he had a feeling of panic. He went to the door and rattled it gently to and fro hoping to ease back the bolt; but the bolt held fast.
He sat on the couch and thought about Phoebe. But now that he had put her effects away he didn’t seem able to concentrate on her. He had put the pitiful things away because they were a distraction, and now that the distraction was removed all that came to mind were other distractions: Phoebe worrying at Norma Rossiter’s report, Phoebe humping files, Phoebe crooning to her cats while the fish boiled. After a time he had difficulty keeping his mind on the distractions. The essential Phoebe was somewhere in the house, possibly she was asleep. Did she know that she was losing her grip on him as the hours passed and she was borne further and further away on a tide of tedious images? Did she know that she would never wake? The thought was agony to him. He went to the door and banged on it until his knuckles were raw and bruised.
Agony quieted to pity, and pity turned to desolation. And then, he was suddenly aware of how cold it had become. Desolation was swamped by terror. There was a high, barred window and it was through this that the strange blue light gained entry. What use are bars against light? He was imprisoned here and helpless; everything that had happened had led to this moment. For a time Phoebe had seemed to offer a way of escape; but now Phoebe was dying. A shadow moved beyond the window and snow shifted on the sill. He sat and watched, hour by hour, while the prowler snuffed outside.
As the sky blanched, Phoebe’s blood drained away and in the morning her hold was too frail to withstand even the weak light of the winter sun. When he heard the bolt scrape back and footsteps patter away, it was the sound of a little fractious ghost retreating. He had no interest in it. There was no one between him and the wolf now.
Chapter Thirteen
To his surprise Tom survived without Phoebe. He got up in the mornings, washed, dressed, and coped with decision-making—grey suit, green tie, choice of cereal for breakfast. He went to the office and sat staring out of the window most of the day; no one interrupted him, people were in such a state that had he sat cross¬legged in the corridor meditating in a loin cloth it would not have aroused much comment.
Terror lies not in sanity or in madness, but in the area in between, the area where a man still cares enough to despair, where hope is too great a burden to be borne. In this area of not quite sane and not yet mad the battle for the mind has to be fought. He had sweated his guts out in that battle and he had no idea whether he had lost or gained ground; all he knew was that he had no strength left. If the wolf wanted him, he would have to come and get him. So he just emptied himself and sat quietly gazing out of the window, waiting to see what happened.
From time to time he received news from other sections of the battlefront.
Norma Rossiter was to work in a school for autistic children. She had had a trial session with some of the children and hadn’t noticed that they were particularly strange; they, in their turn, had accepted her to the extent which they accepted anything. She said it had all seemed very sane after local government.
Edgar Holmes was taking a job in a prisoners’ aid society, an activity in which he had long been engaged in a voluntary capacity.
‘I have always had great sympathy for the under-dog,’ he said.
‘But not for the under-bitch,’ Phoebe remarked.
Phoebe was now working with Marsden. They would remain at the office for a year to deal with outstanding problems.
One of the outstanding problems with which Marsden was having difficulty was Phillimore. Phillimore was in hospital suffering from severe mental strain. He had failed to get Marsden arrested for attempted murder and was said to be considering private prosecution. Marsden was afraid that he had intended to lock Phillimore in the strong room and he talked about this to Phoebe Huber who was very sympathetic and always referred to him as ‘Dear Bertie’.
Madge Conroy was transferring to West Sussex. Tom had not exerted himself on her behalf and she had failed to gain promotion, but she bore him no malice. ‘I was disappointed at first, but I think you were wiser than me.’ She had convinced herself that his negligence had been calculated. ‘You have to be a masochist if you have an urge to get to the top nowadays. But I’m glad you’ve pulled off the Brampton job. We’re all so glad about that.’
They were moving away gradually, like people at the end of a Hollywood epic, moving towards the sunrise. They thought he was safe and sure, travelling by another route. But he wasn’t travelling anywhere, he was just sitting in his office gazing out of the window and beginning to fear that nothing very much was going to happen. By Easter he had been emptied for so long he wondered whether he had set up some kind of a record.
Easter was early. Isobel said as they went to church on Good Friday, ‘Snow from Christmas to Easter!’ As they walked up the church path, she said, ‘I sometimes wonder if it’s all there still, under this whiteness. If it really is going to be green again in the spring.’ Her face had the taut, exhausted look of the sufferer from neuralgia.
‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Those hyacinths in the drawing room are coming along splendidly.’
He had at first refused to accompany Isobel, but since this was the great celebration of emptiness he had eventually decided to come along to see how the church managed its effects. It was cold and bleak in its mourning purple, with no flowers to divert the eye from the austerity of its design. This indeed was the death of hope, he granted the church that. But no sooner had the service started than he began to reflect how much the system had grown since Christmas; it was incredible that out of something so frail should have emerged this authority of anguish, this authenticity of grief. All the pretty frills and embellishments of Christmas were pared away and now the bones of the structure showed formidably strong and durable. One might talk about outgrowing Christmas. But this? This was shockingly uncompromising: one didn’t outgrow it, one retreated before its demands. And what were those demands? He thought about this while the rest of the congregation rose to sing. ‘There is a green hill far away.’ It was all very well to sing about a green hill long past; but surely to be a Christian one must believe that the call that was made to the Galilean fishermen has ever since been made to each person individually and will continue to be made while Christ dies on green hills still to come. Most Christians spend a lifetime avoiding too much inconvenience in their way of life. And who, on the evidence of this day, should blame them? Certainly not Tom Norris, who only recently had summed up his soul’s experience in a glib phrase about Pendlecombe being his Antarctic, who had said of himself that he did not have the ‘stickability’ to be a saint. Not only had he not answered whatever call had been made, but he was a fair way to burying his one talent as well.
He tried to stop himself trivialising, to think what it was that was demanded. First, to find oneself; for how can a man give himself if he doesn’t know what it is that he is giving? And then, having found himself, to go to the limit of that self. It wasn’t, as he had sometimes supposed, that a man must diminish himself by sacrifice; on the contrary, what was asked was that he should allow himself to become fully, dangerously alive. The ‘inconvenience’ was to be total. But this meant putting oneself at risk. Suppose one got half-way on this journey into God and lost one’s nerve? There wouldn’t be any way back. This was a lonely and uncharted enterprise; one couldn’t give a destination and expect a rescue party to set out if one got into trouble.
It was at this point that he decided to go to a psychiatrist. It was, he argued, much safer to think in terms of an investigation rather than an expedition, and to put that investigation into the hands of an expert.
On the Tuesday after Easter the weather changed at last and a thaw set in. It was raining in the West country and by the next day rain was pouring down all over the South of England. Now there was water everywhere. The River Ouse was flooded from Lewes to Barcombe, heavy seas damaged the sea wall at Brampton, rushing streams caused a landslide on the Squires Bay to London road; on the domestic front, water systems which had not operated because of blocked pipes were now out of action because of burst pipes.
‘Nature never learns, does it?’ Phoebe marvelled. ‘You’d think that by this time it would have got the mixture right. It makes one wonder whether God is really all that intelligent. Or perhaps it’s just that He doesn’t like us very much.’ She was sitting on a packing case studying the daily papers which had been in short supply during the time that the cold had paralysed the transport services. ‘Two more soldiers killed in Belfast. Car workers on strike at Cowley. A million unemployed in next six months. Bombs in Birmingham. Another bus conductor murdered. More rain forecast. Isn’t it nice to be back to normal? And what about this? “Housing lottery—Mayor draws winning householder from a hat”. I suppose they’ll be doing the same thing with hospital beds soon.’
It was remarkable to watch the transformation in Phoebe. Day by day she grew more assured and, reaping zest from disaster, she became vivacious as her wit sharpened. People were drawn to her. It became part of the pattern of the last days to listen to ‘Phoebe’s pensées’. At morning coffee and at afternoon tea, she held court; draped in an overall daubed with duplicating ink and enthroned on a packing case, she delivered a mordant summary of the day’s events. Her face had acquired an olive lustre and her narrow eyes glistened. She was powerfully alive, and seeing her like this Tom experienced a brief renewal of interest. Why did she thr
ive like this? he wondered. He meditated on the question all one afternoon.
That night he dreamt of a lake in a forest clearing. The green, stagnant water was choked by weeds and on all sides trees and undergrowth grew densely; but the trees were stunted and it seemed they were threatened by the lake. Someone said the lake was ‘reverting’ and Tom knew that it was reverting to primaeval swamp. He also knew that the proof of this lay in the plant which had appeared in the centre of the lake. The plant had a small, close bud which, as Tom watched, grew to the size of his own clenched fist and then began to unfold thick, blubbery petals faintly tinged with pink at the edges. When the flower was finally revealed it was white and waxy as a magnolia and had an exquisite, premeditated beauty which was spellbinding. Tom stretched out a hand towards it, but that Puritan voice shouted, ‘No, no!’ It dragged him to consciousness and he woke knowing that he must get help.
He did not allow himself to be inhibited by his father’s memory: of all the terrors he had to face, fear of his father was now the least. He went to Dr. Carey who was friendly with ‘just the right chap for you’. Dr. Carey used his influence to obtain an early appointment.
The appointment was for a Monday afternoon. Tom was alone in the house the preceding Saturday afternoon. Isobel had gone to a bazaar. Rain gusted against the sitting-room window, fell steadily on sodden grass, sluiced from a blocked gutter; bare trees glistened, their thin branches embroidered with bright beads of water. He could see railings reflected in dun-coloured paving stones, and in the distance a metallic sheet of water where no water should be. There was no sky any more. How depressing it should have been! Yet, as he looked at the pallid light of a lamp against the wall of an old Sussex-stone house, he was suddenly filled with inexplicable happiness, so great that he almost cried out aloud. He stared at the lamp, and the wall of the house, and for several minutes the happiness stayed.
