by MARY HOCKING
Later, trying to trace the source of this sudden joy, he remembered that when as a child he had stayed with his aunt, the first thing he saw on waking was the light in the street which, at that angle, seemed to grow out of the wall of an old L-shaped stone house. He had known when he saw the light that he was secure from the tensions of his own home; when the weather was bad, there had been the additional luxury of being warm in bed while it was so unpleasant outside. But more than that, it seemed, because here he had no immediate responsibilities, that he was in a state of unbeing, free of the tyranny of time and place. Anything seemed possible. The light winked at him through the rain, telling him, ‘You must change your life.’
He never did, of course. Over the years, he made small adjustments here and there. But there was no dramatic change in his life until the wolf came.
He told the psychiatrist about the wolf, and the psychiatrist had no difficulty in accepting it. The psychiatrist was an extrovert, a hard, sinewy man with challenging eyes and a forceful manner. You knew the moment you set eyes on him that it would be very difficult to go mad in his charge. It wasn’t so much that he was reassuring as that he was a sceptic where madness was concerned. It was impossible to shock him; the woman on the landing caused him no surprise. He had heard it all before, he had heard everything that had ever happened to anyone since the world began: You killed your father? Yes, yes, we all do that. Slept with your mother? Well, this is something we all desire, though not all of us achieve it. Eaten your brother? Now, this is the last taboo, but we’re working on it, and there are already one or two very funny books on the subject.
As for the Wolf. . . . ‘Well, what do you make of him?’
‘I came to you for the answers.’
‘How can I find your answers for you? You must do that for yourself. It’s your subconscious. It’s your wolf. What do you make of him?’
‘It’s not only a wolf. I saw a man swinging on a gibbet at Hangman’s Corner on the Squires Bay road, where the new housing estate is. And the forests are spreading. Four horsemen have been seen riding up on Mount Caburn, not by me, but it’s been reliably reported. I have visions.’
But you couldn’t shock the man. He said, ‘You have indeed. But I don’t see what I can do about it. You’re a writer. Write about your visions.’
‘But I can’t. I’m a children’s writer.’
‘Don’t children’s writers ever grow up?’
‘It’s not a question of growing up. . . .’
‘In that case, what is the problem?’
‘I don’t think I can do it.’
‘There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there? Pick up your pen and write.’
Tom was shocked. It was a shocking thing that a man should come to a psychiatrist with such a terrible tale and be told to go away and write about it.
They were all unshockable in this hospital, he saw it in the nurses’ bland, unsurprised faces when he passed them in the corridor, or talked with the cheerful, smiling psychiatric social worker. But it was shock he wanted! He was so very shocked himself, and the calm confidence with which they viewed his condition made him feel more isolated than ever. He had come expecting to have his complaint explained away, he had been prepared to put up a fight for it, to insist that he felt the reality of it here in the centre of his being. And what had happened? He had been left with that reality: he could indeed feel it, tooth and claw.
‘I shan’t go to your friend again.’ he told Dr. Carey. ‘I felt worse when I went out of his room than when I went in.’ Dr. Carey did not seem surprised.
The rain had washed the snow away and the earth was green. Spring came quickly, bursting out of its prison. On the last day in the life of South Sussex, the Chairman of the Education Committee gave a party for the staff at which it was decided to form a South Sussex Association. Already people talked about South Sussex days with nostalgia as a period of great happiness that would never come again. The Chairman, who had once said publicly that the staff were underworked and overpaid, spoke with emotion of his respect for their untiring devotion to duty, and when he had finished the staff, carried away on a great surge of loyalty, sang ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’. Mather was on a cruise to Greece. Marsden, however, made a late appearance. Stark-naked, he mounted the platform and announced that he had a confession to make. ‘It was all his own fault,’ he said as he was led off the platform, deftly draped in a mink stole belonging to the Chairman’s wife, a timid but, in this instance, resourceful lady. ‘He told me that if you shut a problem away long enough, it ceases to exist. I’ve never liked him, so I shut him away.’ Although at the time people were shocked, this soon became one of the more hilarious stories of life in South Sussex which were recounted to enliven the hard years of exile in West or East Sussex.
It was a remarkably beautiful spring and the mood of optimism spread to the country as a whole. The announcers on The World at One spluttered all the bad news more zestfully than ever; there were constant reminders by politicians of the spirit of our people, assurances that the extremists were few and not powerful, predictions that the silent majority would soon speak. . . . Trade Union leaders said that although things were undoubtedly serious we were not in a crisis situation. The Stock Exchange staged a recovery as incomprehensible as its many setbacks. But Tom, working late at his new office in Brampton, did not share this optimism. He didn’t think you stood much chance of getting out of the dark, if you weren’t prepared to admit that it was dark.
One wild night he walked home over the Downs. Clouds chased rag, tag and bobtail across a steely sky, scrawny trees thrashed in front of a bright doubloon of a moon which had no time for such nonsense and rose imperturbably above them. As Tom looked down on Brampton now that darkness cloaked the ugly buildings, the lights of the town shone like jewels on a dark velvet backcloth. It was all beautiful and strange, and he felt an excitement that had nothing in it of the dread of the last months; no looking back or looking forward, but a sense of the wonder of being alive in this place at this moment. That sudden, inexplicable joy again; not a remembered joy, but a feeling of everything coming together. And he said, as though to a companion, ‘I wonder if I could live on a third of my income?’ Once the question was asked, the answer came immediately, ‘Why not try? The worst that can happen is that you will fail.’ It was so simple. Why hadn’t he seen it before?
He took a day off and went to London to see his publishers who were pleased to know that he intended to devote more time to writing, although he did not tell them what it was that he intended to write.
It now remained to talk to Isobel. If she would not go with him then he must go alone. He would not like that, but total commitment might be easier if he was on his own.
When he got back to the house, Isobel was not there. He remembered that there was a wedding in church the next day and that she had said she would arrange the flowers. It was nearly six o’clock and he was surprised she had stayed so late. He went in search of her, and because it was a beautiful spring evening, he walked in the graveyard instead of going into the church.
The graveyard was big and had long defeated the old man who cared for it, so that now it ran wild with grass and flowers and shrubs rampaging over the weatherworn tombstones. The birds were singing, the cherry trees had burst out in the last week, blossom clotting their boughs, and the foliage of the sycamores and chestnuts was at its freshest green. Beyond the wall of the graveyard, at the end of a sloping meadow, the river flowed fast. It was overwhelming, the vigour of it struck him like a blow. It was excessive, this offering that went beyond what one could possibly desire; he looked at the great daubs of blossom thick and creamy against the blue sky, and he felt puny and unprepared, a poor, anaemic creature who should not have been exposed to the unrestrained liberality of Nature. Only the sun, pale and clear, conserved its strength for summer; the rest, he sneered defensively, was overdone to the point of being inartistic. But almost immediately, there came another response
; a long, low howl that was full of pain, not the shrill, momentary pain of the snared animal, but the mourners’ cry which has no language in which to express the extreme of human grief. He stumbled down the overgrown path towards the wall of the graveyard. There, sitting back on her heels beneath one of the cherry trees, her head thrown back so that she stared up at the sky through the heavy blossom, he found his wife.
She started violently when she saw him and doubled up, her head on her knees, moaning. He crouched beside her. ‘Isobel, what is it? Are you ill?’
‘It’s all this. . . .’ She drummed her fist on the ground. ‘. . . this abundance . . . all too much. . . .’
He put his arm round her shoulders. She was tense, wrestling with whatever it was that disturbed her so much. In one of the sycamores a blackbird fluted his incomparable song and Isobel writhed as if the mellow notes sawed on her nerves. After a time, she said, her head bent over the grass, retching words, ‘I’ve been coming here every evening this week, walking round. Isn’t it silly? Tormenting myself like this.’
‘Aren’t you well?’
‘I’ve had a bad winter.’ She sat up, putting one hand to her side, pressing it there to contain the pain. Her voice was unusually harsh. ‘It had to come sometime. But I didn’t expect it yet. I have such awful dreams. I never used to dream, but lately. . . .’
‘What kind of dreams?’
‘Beastly.’ Once, there had been a treasure hunt, and she had rushed round the house searching, but in the end she had realised that the treasure was out in the greenhouse; but they wouldn’t let her go out there. ‘House full,’ they had told her. ‘You’re too late.’ Then, she had dreamt of the district nurses, bizarrely cheerful, at work with buckets and mops. The brutal crudity of these dreams appalled her.
‘Is something worrying you?’ Tom was still mystified.
‘My periods are drying out. My womb will be hard and shrivelled as a nut soon. I can’t have a child any more.’
‘I see.’ But he only saw just a little, something glimpsed through a crack in the door of a room he had never occupied. ‘Did you want a child so much?’
‘Not until now! Not until now!’ She put her hands over her face and began to rock to and fro, tears running through her fingers, blistering the backs of her hands.
Tom moved his hand up and down between her shoulder blades, letting her cry, giving himself time to think. He was stunned at how little they had managed to communicate, living so close yet understanding each other so little. Had her trouble been immediately apparent to others, to friends and neighbours? Was he the one person who had failed to notice? When she was a little calmer, he asked, ‘When you started to follow me about the house, was it because of this, because you were lonely?’
‘You seemed so strange. When you went out of the room, I was afraid you were going to telephone another woman; when you went out of the house, I used to go after you, try to keep you in sight. I was so ashamed of myself, but I couldn’t help it.’
‘I have never thought of leaving you, Isobel. Never.’
‘But I haven’t given much. In church, I prayed so hard. . . .’
‘For me?’
‘For ME! For forgiveness.’
‘Forgiveness?’
‘For being unfruitful. You remember the fig tree? It was the only thing that died at His touch. It was unfruitful. The one thing that is unforgivable is to be unfruitful.’
‘Oh, my dear. . . .’
‘Look!’ She stared wildly round her. ‘It screams it at you! There isn’t any way of getting round it.’
She appropriated all blame as though childbearing was something in which he had no part to play. He said, ‘Let’s talk about this.’ He helped her gently to her feet and, putting his arm round her shoulders, steered her down the overgrown path towards the gate. They walked close, not quite in step, jolting each other. Tom thought: how much do any of us want to know about those with whom we are most intimate? A moment of understanding with a stranger is one thing; but we are not prepared to live with another person’s hell. Something more comfortable has to be constructed: thus, Isobel contented and fulfilled in her voluntary work! Even now, he felt a shameful resentment at having her pain thrust at him, and he had to wait for a moment before he could strike the right note when he asked, ‘Would you like to adopt?’
‘No, no! I’m too old, and I’d be afraid of the responsibility. I’ve always been afraid, but I wish I hadn’t been. I wish, oh, how I wish I could have done things differently!’ They walked past an orchard where narcissi grew under the trees. Isobel said, sad, but quiet now, ‘Why can’t we know when we’re young that we’re going to feel like this when we’re older?’
‘When I was twenty I don’t think I really credited that one day I would be middle-aged,’ Tom said. ‘Let alone old.’
The light shafted down the road, pale, angled light more penetrating than any summer sun. The air was fresh, and evoked the shivery, reluctant excitement of enforced childhood walks. They were in sight of the house now. Tom said, ‘Would you ever feel you could move?’
‘I wouldn’t mind. I hate the house. All the unused rooms. I’ve scarcely been able to bear it.’
They leant against their garden wall, looking back along the way they had come. He said, ‘I want to give up my job, Isobel.’ He had not expected to talk it over in this quiet, companionable way. ‘There is something I want to write, something difficult that will take all my time and energy.’ He pushed at the old stone wall, feeling the warm dust move beneath his finger tips. ‘It would mean leaving here, finding somewhere smaller, less expensive, away from friends with money.’
‘I’ve been expecting something like this.’ Isobel sounded relieved. ‘Where would we go? Some ramshackle place out in the wilds?’
‘Could you bear that?’
‘I wouldn’t mind having a try at a conversion.’ She seemed faintly pleased at the prospect. ‘Nell Rogers took the ceilings of her cottage down herself.’
Later, they talked in the sitting-room after supper. Isobel asked no probing questions about his reasons for making this decision: she was content to leave that to him while she applied herself to the immediate problem of the move about which she seemed to be quite excited. She studied an atlas and said, ‘There’s Northumberland. Do you remember how we both enjoyed our holiday at that village with the funny name—Humshaugh? I didn’t want to come back.’ It was one of the few holidays which had given them mutual pleasure. She went on, ‘I wonder if houses are cheaper up there. You’ll lose your pension, won’t you? Can we afford to do this?’
‘I can’t afford not to.’
She did not ask why. But if she was not prepared to share his deepest feelings, there was no doubt of her eagerness to participate in the more practical side of the venture. As they talked, he began to realise what joy it gave her to be planning something they would do together. Where and how she lived were not important to her as long as she could be with her husband; it was not just that she loved him, but that she needed and would always need the shelter of marriage. He had thought, because she was the more practical, that she was the stronger partner, but he had been mistaken. The realisation of the extent of his responsibility brought misgivings, the first of many as the idea took shape and substance.
‘You’re sure you won’t mind this?’ he asked. ‘It may take you some time to make friends, to find something useful to do. It’s all right for me. I shall have my writing. What will you do?’
‘There’ll be the house and garden. We could grow our own vegetables. I might even keep poultry. That would bring in a bit of money.’
He saw then that it was not just relief she felt. She was proud that now, when he wanted to change his life, he had not turned to another woman as so many men did, but had asked her to share his new life. She was examining her gifts, trying to see how she could make a contribution. Did she see this as a beginning for both of them? The thought jarred him, shattering the sense of ease and comfort whic
h had been stealing over him. A new relationship with Isobel would be more difficult than anything he had envisaged. What new relationship could there be, other than love, for which neither he nor Isobel seemed well-equipped? Another kind of loving, then? Not the erratic, uncontrolled thing which sometimes worked and sometimes could not be made to work, like trying to coax a flame from a faulty lighter; something not ‘given’ in one rapt, spontaneous moment, but to be created day by day and year by year because marriage is the testing ground of love. He was dumbfounded by this idea which seeped in from an area which he had imagined to be finally sealed-off. If this could happen, what else might come upon him?
‘What is the new book about, Tom?’ Isobel asked, her finger tracing the line of the Northumbrian hills.
‘It’s about a time when the wolf comes back.’
‘So that’s why you talked so much about wolves during the winter? It’s rather a fantastic notion, isn’t it? How will you put it across?’
‘I don’t know if I can.’ The pale primrose light was beginning to fade and with it his assurance. ‘It may turn into something really big, or it may be the record of a personal experience.’
But that was to put the experience in the past, and it wasn’t in the past. Now, when he had thought he had straightened himself out, he found he had not arrived anywhere. All he had done was to clear away enough lumber to provide a space which was already being filled by a strange disquiet; and when he came to an understanding of this particular cause of disquiet, the way would be opened up for a disquiet which made even greater demands on his understanding. There would be no end to it. The disquiet was infinite and he was in a country without a frontier.
Mary Hocking
Born in London in 1921, Mary was educated at Haberdashers’ Aske’s Girls School, Acton. During the Second World War she served in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (Wrens) attached to the Fleet Air Arm Meteorology branch and then briefly with the Signal Section in Plymouth.
