A TIME OF WAR

by MARY HOCKING

  What gave this clutter of grey buildings hunched round a pebble beach its assurance? she wondered. Perhaps it was simply that the houses grew out of the rocks and this gave the place a certain homogeneity. Even the old men mending their nets or quietly loafing bore witness in their slow movements to a life ordered by the sea’s rhythm. She thought she would like to live in such a place; she could imagine herself, grown old, wearing oily layers of seamen’s jerseys, her face seamed as the rock. She said something of this to Peter and he responded gaily, promising that they would buy a cottage here and start growing old at once.

  `Or we could buy a boat and sail round the world.’

  He thought that was a marvellous idea; he thought everything was marvellous that afternoon.

  In the evening they walked down to the beach. The light was fading and the houses were shuttered, there was laughter from the fishermen’s bars, but few people about in the streets. The grey water moved stealthily over the pebbles, making a mockery of the barbed wire barricade, licking out to claim the litter washed in by a previous tide, a rusted can, an old boot, an airman’s Mae West. Kerren said:

  `It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’

  He did not answer and she had the feeling he had moved away from her.

  `What’s the matter?’ she asked.

  `Oh, nothing. Let’s go and find a drink.’

  `I hate drinking.’

  `You liked it well enough at Holly Green.’

  `I’ve outgrown it.’

  But he was not listening; he was hustling her past the cottages towards the inn called The Cod and Lobster. He talked about the importance of drinking but the slick pilot’s patter rang hollow in the stony street. They were not well-received inside; the men were a close, clannish folk and did not welcome strangers. To Kerren’s surprise Peter did not talk a lot after the first two drinks. When he was at Guillemot, the more he drank the more outrageous his behaviour became, but now he drank with a sullen absorption which repelled any intrusion, even her own. It was not a happy evening and she had trouble getting him to bed when they got back to the hotel.

  The next day the weather had changed, a crumpled sheet of cloud covered the sky and the wind whined like a nagging woman.

  `You look dissolute,’ Kerren told Peter as they dressed. She said it quite pleasantly, but there was a hint of reproof in her voice.

  The rain started while they were having breakfast. Peter watched it while Kerren scraped margarine on to toast.

  `You’re not eating,’ she pointed out.

  `That is because I am not hungry.’

  `Poor you.’ She finished the toast and took another slice. `This marmalade is really very nice.’ She poured herself a cup of coffee and said that that was nice, too. Peter got up and walked out of the dining-room. Kerren picked up a copy of the Daily Telegraph and studied it for ten minutes before she followed him upstairs.

  `Let’s go into Plymouth for God’s sake!’ he said as soon as she came into the room.

  `Why?’

  `Why!’ He jerked his arm at the window, scored with little exclamation marks by the rain.

  `Oh that!’ She shrugged her shoulders. `It doesn’t matter about the weather . . .’

  `What do you mean, it doesn’t matter about the weather? It’s there, isn’t it? Pressing its dirty nose against the window.’

  `You should be used to a bit of drizzle by now.’

  `Yes, I’m used to it. I can get drenched by it any day; it’s not something I look forward to doing on leave.’

  `We’ll go into Plymouth, then.’ She looked out of the window as though she was being denied a very special treat.

  `You have a morbid attraction to the unpleasant!’ he shouted, the scar white on his tanned face.

  `There’s nothing morbid about rain.’

  `What about last night, then?’

  `Last night?’

  `Standing looking at all that muck washed up on the beach and saying it was beautiful.’

  She made one of her exaggerated gestures and said airily: `But it was beautiful, in a sad, valedictory way.’

  `You take those things separately,’ he was almost stuttering with rage, `that old tin can, the boot, the Mae West . . .’

  `But they weren’t separate. They were together, part of a pattern of evening.’

  `It must be wonderful to stand back in that godlike way and talk of patterns of this and that. They should make you a war correspondent, or better still you could turn out some of that sad, valedictory poetry about doomed generations and lost youth.’

  `All this because you want to go into Plymouth! All right, we’ll go into Plymouth!’ She turned her back to him and groped in the cupboard for her raincoat, the tears stinging her eyes. He stood behind her and thundered:

  `You can’t tell me you really want to stay here on a day like this?’

  `I love the sea.’ She jerked on her raincoat and fumbled with the buttons, her back still turned to him. `I love it in all its moods, even when it’s grey and unfriendly. I thought you did, too.’

  `You’ve never known it when it’s unfriendly.’

  `I stayed in Connemara a whole winter.’

  `And you watched it, lashing the rocks, and thought how splendid it was while you stood with your feet firmly planted on earth. You didn’t have it boiling under you. You don’t know what it’s like then. There’s a lot you don’t know.’

  `At least I know what it is to travel like cattle. The Larne boat taught me that.’

  `The Larne boat!’

  `And I wouldn’t leave men herded in a corridor while I took my ease in a first class compartment.’ He collapsed abruptly on to the bed. `How does that come into it?’

  She began to cry, not the soft whimpering of a woman wanting comfort, but the violent discharge of passionate despair. Again, he had the feeling of rejection, of being on the fringe of her emotions. This frightened him. He made her sit on the bed beside him.

  `Kerren, what is it?’

  `I don’t know,’ she howled desolately.

  In the mirror on the dressing-table he saw their figures, dark against the clinical whiteness of the walls.

  `Is it something I’ve said?’ he asked.

  `You’ve changed.’

  The rain gusted against the window pane, the damp seeped through the blistered frame; his bones felt heavy, breathing was a labour.

  `Well, it’s a while since you’ve seen me, don’t forget.’

  `I don’t know you any more.’

  Her crying had abated; she rubbed her eyes and waited expectantly for him to become the man she had thought him. He looked at the mirror again; it did not tell him anything except how little he knew himself.

  `Is this all because of those fellows in the corridor? They wouldn’t have wanted to be with us.’

  `You’re not different from them, just because you’re an officer.’

  `They think I am.’

  He sounded weary; she stared at him, blinking away her own distress, aware of something defeated in him.

  `Don’t you like being an officer?’

  `Authority fits some men like a glove, but not me. To be honest, I didn’t ask those men into our compartment because I didn’t know what to say or how to say it.’ But really it was the silence that would come after he had spoken, the weighing of his worth, that had inhibited him. His self-respect had disintegrated over the last few months. Now he was quick to read judgements in other men’s eyes. Beside him, Kerren faltered:

  `But flying . . . you love flying . . .’

  He looked away. `It begins to wear after a while . . .’ To wear on the strained nerves jerking beneath the taut skin, on the muscles no longer so flexible, on the hot, aching eyes that sometimes fail to focus, on the brain that fumbles and misinterprets. `Are you disappointed in me?’ he asked.

  `Disappointed! Oh, my darling.’ She put her hand over his. He wanted to put his head in her lap and let the last control snap so that she could hold him close and see him safely th
rough to whatever lay on the far side of oblivion. But there were footsteps in the corridor and the proprietress opened the door to make sure they had made the bed. `We’ve no room staff now.’

  When she had gone, he leapt up and called her all the foul names he knew.

  `It doesn’t matter,’ Kerren said. Distress had kneaded her features into a coarser mould, and beneath the swollen eyelids the eyes lacked animation.

  `Nothing matters to you,’ he raged, hating to see her like this. `The rain doesn’t matter, the sea, that sour-faced harridan . . .’

  `We’ll go into Plymouth,’ she said in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice. `It’s much the most sensible thing to do on a day like this.’

  On the bus, she held his hand all the way as though she was afraid to let it go.

  Plymouth in the rain was unbelievably dreary. Kerren could not imagine why it had seemed so exciting on their honeymoon; it was all rubble and dust and dilapidated shacks where shops had been set up, the wooden slats creaking and paper flapping in the wind. A town in tatters. The strange beauty that had moved her had been extinguished since her last visit.

  `How can people live in this?’ she said as she and Peter threaded their way through the ruins that had been the centre of the town. `They don’t seem to care.’

  `What are they supposed to do? Stand around wringing their hands?’

  `In Ireland . . .’

  `In a few years’ time this rubble will be cleared away; in Ireland it would remain like this until the end of time.’

  Everything irritated him. `Oh God!’ she thought. `What are we to do? We can’t go on like this.’ And then, as though in answer to a prayer, they had a great piece of good fortune. Halfway down Union Street, they saw Con sauntering towards them.

  `Are you on leave?’ Kerren asked.

  `No. I’m out at Yelverton on a course.’

  `Doing what?’

  `It’s so secret they haven’t got round to telling us.’

  His bland imperturbability dispelled their tensions as daylight banishes nightmare.

  `You don’t have to go back to Yelverton this morning?’ Peter asked hopefully.

  `No. This course is supposed to be very exhausting and we’re supposed to need frequent breaks.’

  He looked fresh and healthy.

  `You must spend the day with us,’ Kerren said.

  `I’d like to, but I’ve promised myself a walk on the moors.’

  The promises he made to himself must be fulfilled; they accepted this as a matter of course.

  `It should be very weird out on the moors on a day like this,’ Kerren said wistfully.

  `Why not come?’

  She hesitated, looking at Peter. He was anxious not to let Con go and he said that a good walk was just what he needed.

  `I’m liverish,’ he slipped his arm through Kerren’s, `I’ve been an absolute swine all morning.’

  She squeezed his arm. The day was suddenly full of promise.

  They had an early lunch and were out on the moors by two o’clock. Mist curled around them, taking substance out of rocks and the few stunted trees, turning everything to grey vapour. There was no sense of time or place. Kerren said that at any moment the Doones might come riding out at them and Con said, `That was Exmoor, wasn’t it?’ Although he retained his light, mocking air, it was obvious that he shared her enjoyment. Peter told them they were both abnormal, but he was good-natured about it. He and Kerren kept close to Con. It was not just that he seemed to know where he was going, although that was comforting; it was as though there was some indestructible quality in him which would safeguard them while they were with him.

  It was very quiet on the moors, they themselves moved silently save when one of them stumbled into a hollow concealed by the bracken. The war receded, one felt that if one stayed here long enough one would emerge to find that it was all over, that the world had passed through its dark confusion and become sane again. Kerren was surprised to find that while she wanted this to happen, she would have preferred to have emerged into the past. Present-day sanity was a precarious thing, an arduous striving for balance which demanded constant effort. A bird called, a clear unwavering call that belonged to the moorland and to all places where there are no barriers between the land and the horizon. She wished she could stay here always.

  `Night will come down without our noticing it,’ she said to Con. `We shall have to sleep here. Will you be court-martialled?’

  `We’re near Two Bridges now,’ he answered.

  `How can you tell?’ Peter sounded a little resentful of this godlike assurance.

  `I’ve studied the area. It’s best to know where you’re going when you set out on a day like this.’

  `How mundane!’ Kerren plunged into a clump of heather. `I thought you liked venturing into the unknown.’

  `I do indeed. But to be lost in a mist on Dartmoor would be absurd rather than venturesome.’

  `One should be prepared to be absurd.’

  Con did not answer and Kerren, an iconoclast at heart, congratulated herself on discovering that he was sensitive to ridicule, and therefore vulnerable.

  But later, when they had reached the hotel at Two Bridges and were sitting in front of a dim fire drinking tea while their damp clothes steamed, she forgot that there was any weakness in him. Evening was drawing in and some change in the weather had lifted the mist; outside the window she could see the moors, their dark outline scarcely distinguishable from the sky so that at some point the two seemed to merge in desolate reconciliation. She turned away and looked, not at Peter with whom she would soon be alone on their way back to St. Ellery, but at Con. He was stretched out in the haphazard fashion of Americans who never seem to have limbs made to fit the English chair; she thought, he is all bone and sinew, nothing goes to waste in him, he is wonderfully durable.

  `I’d like to have lived here in the time of the Doones,’ she said, for no reason that she could think of except that they were durable, too, having survived a century and with many more years ahead of them.

  `You can step back a century in Connemara any day,’ Peter pointed out, faintly irritable again.

  `But you’re aware of having done it. And that makes it false, a kind of escapism.’

  `But you have a right to escape,’ Con said. `If you don’t like your century, you can live outside it.’

  `Not with a war to fight,’ Peter retorted.

  `But that’s one of the biggest escapes of all. A great release for hundreds of thousands of people caught up in a dull, routine existence and suddenly allowed to do all kinds of exciting things they’d have been jailed for in peacetime.’

  `You make it sound as though it was fun.’ Peter was definitely querulous now.

  `So it is for many people, if they were honest. When it’s over they’ll make it sound as though it was all agony and waste, because that’s the fashionable line in peacetime – “we gave our youth for our country”, all that crap. Do you regret spending your youth in this way?’

  `Of course not,’ Kerren said. `You meet so many different people and when you’re bored with them you get a draft and move on; and no one cares what you do provided you do it when you’re off duty. But sometimes I feel guilty about enjoying it so much, as though the whole thing was a gigantic sport put on for my benefit.’

  `That’s your puritan conscience,’ he mocked.

  `I joined up because I wanted to fight Hider and the Nazis; but all that seems less real now . . .’

  `That’s because you don’t have time to listen to all the propaganda. You’re in the fight now – ideals are for the people on the sidelines.’

  `It’s not a question of propaganda or ideals!’ She knew that he was deliberately provoking her, but she allowed herself to be roused nevertheless. She began to talk about the enslaved peoples of Europe and Con watched her, smiling, not because he did not agree with what she was saying, but because the fierce contortions of her small face amused him. She is like a belligerent goblin, he thoug
ht, and was rather dismayed at the affection that he felt.

  `It’s not clever to be cynical,’ she said, noticing his amusement but not understanding it. `In fact, in this context, it’s rather childish.’ She could not express what she felt adequately, it was an emotion without words, or indeed without the specific knowledge to put into words. `It is evil things that we are fighting,’ Chamberlain had said. She believed in the evil. When she thought of Hitler, she could smell the stench of barbarism and she knew that civilization was rotting away.

  `A lot of these tales are probably exaggerated,’ Peter muttered.

  `I’ve read eye-witness accounts,’ she retorted. `Old men and children beaten to death by storm troopers in streets where respectable people turn their heads away. It makes me feel ashamed when I think of it. Better to die where no one can hear your cries for help.’

  Her feeling was too genuine for the men to make mock of it and the three of them lapsed into embarrassed silence. Kerren watched a thin orange flame struggling in the slack heaped on the fire. Somewhere the lights are going out in attic rooms and cellars where people will never wake again, she thought; for a moment she could feel them around her, starving, terrified of every sound, perhaps of each other. Companionship does not always drive out fear. A waitress came in to put up the black-out. Peter shifted uneasily in his chair and looked at his watch.

  `Almost drinking time.’

  Later, when they left Con in Plymouth, Peter said, `I don’t go much on him.’ But in spite of this they sought him out again and again in the days that followed. On the occasions when he could not see them during the day, they looked forward to meeting him in the evening. Most evenings they drank because Peter seemed to find it necessary and they soon learnt that it was better to give in to him.

  Con was astonished at how much Peter had changed. His face had become the most vivid Con had ever seen, not by virtue of personality but because it betrayed so nakedly the forces which tore at him. The eyes were bright as though a thin protective skin had peeled away and every tiny particle of light stabbed, producing an unbearable pain; this pain jerked open the mouth and laughter gushed out inconsequently and as inconsequently died away. The face knew no repose; a nerve throbbed at the temple and the left eyelid was weak and twitched continuously. The limbs moved jerkily as though the co-ordination of mind and muscle was breaking down. To Con it seemed that this man’s own body had turned against him and was gradually destroying him.