A TIME OF WAR

by MARY HOCKING

  She was not quite so restrained in the cabin. Hazel asked her, `Did the padre read that bit about “They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old?” ’

  `Yes.’

  `It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ Hazel’s eyes brimmed over with tears.

  `It’s wicked!’ Kerren shouted. `Don’t you dare quote it to me! Peter would have hated it, and so would Michael and all the others. They would have hated all that solemn hypocrisy!’

  She saw the shocked faces turned to her and she knew that they would never understand. But she felt it deeply. `They shall not grow old . . .’ As though there was some melancholy satisfaction in the fact that young men had been cut down before they had matured! What more would Peter have asked than to have grown old; to have had the opportunity to make mistakes and to find himself; to watch his children develop, his family spread its branches; to take stock as age wore him down, meditating on the achievements, the disappointments, the joys that the years had brought; to think of the things yet to come even though the sun was low in the sky. All this was nothing, was it? Nothing. One was supposed to thank God that this generation had been spared this long maturing over the years. Had no one anything to offer but pious platitudes? Even Dorothy had written, `You have had something that some people never have in their whole life. . . .” Yes, she had had it. But she had lost it in the twinkling of an eye; before she could close her hand to hold it, it had slipped away. And what was left for her? When she heard the bombers come back at night she prayed that one would crash on the cabin and blot her out, just as Beatie had been blotted out. As time went on, she seemed to turn inward. She did her work, she did her cabin chores, she spoke if she was spoken to; but there was no attempt at communication.

  `She ought to go on leave,’ Naomi said. `She needs a break.’

  The others agreed. They knew that what Naomi meant was that Cabin 8 needed a break. Kerren and Hazel were too much for one cabin to bear.

  `Of course. Hazel would have come to a bad end anyway,’ Marney said. `She’d have gone mad once Michael got himself a girl friend. At least this way she can keep him to herself.’

  Jessie felt Kerren’s withdrawal most of all. There were things she wanted to share with Kerren.

  `She used to be the sort of person you could really talk to,’ she explained to the old woman at the farm. `But now she doesn’t seem to hear.’

  They were in the sitting-room with Frank, waiting for supper. The old woman was sitting in the high-backed armchair by the fire. Her face had the texture of old leather, its dry surface crisscrossed with lines furrowed by the long assault of wind and rain and sun. Her eyes were very bright, but as she listened to Jessie they dimmed at some memory of pain or grief. Her comment, however, did not seem particularly relevant.

  `Irish, isn’t she? I had a brother in the Black and Tans.’ She shook her head and sighed as she unfolded the sewing in her lap.

  `It’s as though she wasn’t really there,’ Jessie went on. `She’s been like it ever since Peter was killed.’

  The old woman turned down a hem with fingers knotted with rheumatism.

  `They did some terrible things in the Troubles.’

  Jessie went on talking about Kerren while Frank watched the old woman. Her face was not soft and this he liked. He liked, too, the way she fumbled for the pins which were stuck along the arm of the chair. Sewing obviously represented a long and painful refusal to accept defeat. He saluted this toughness of spirit. He looked round the room with its clutter of photographs. At one end of the piano, a girl in late-Victorian clothes looked straight at the camera with bright eyes which seemed to mock the conventional modesty of the pose, the quietly folded hands, the sloping, acquiescent shoulders. At the other end of the piano, a girl in modern school uniform turned the same forthright eyes to the camera. There were wedding groups, brides slender as lilies standing beside men on whose stocky bodies the formal clothes looked a trifle ridiculous. Each group was different, but the difference lay in the techniques adopted by the photographers: the people did not change. The atmosphere of family, enclosed, self-sufficient, was overpowering. Frank looked back at Jessie, sitting on the footstool by the old woman. Jessie was accepted here; there was a certain irritability in her tone as she said:

  `You do remember Kerren, Gran?’

  `Of course I remember,’ the old woman eyed her sharply. `She married a pilot.’

  `He was killed.’

  The old woman said, `So many of the young men . . .’ She sounded sad, but not in a very immediate way and she fumbled for another pin. Jessie looked impatient because she wanted sympathy, not so much for Kerren’s pain as for her own bewilderment. But Frank, watching the old woman, thought that it was good to have roots that went deep, beyond one generation’s madness. He sat quietly while the women talked. The children came in from school, brown country children who stood close together in the doorway, laughing inwardly and refusing to speak. Their grandmother told them to go away until they could behave sensibly and Frank heard them whispering as they went up the stairs. The old woman was leaning to one side, trying to catch the last of the light from the window. Soon they would have supper. For as long as these people could remember they had had supper when the slanting light began to fail and the men came in from the fields. Perhaps the war had demanded some adjustments – labour was short and there was more land under cultivation – but the rhythm of life had not changed. Jessie said, `It’s too dark for you to sew any more’ and the old woman’s mouth pleated in an obstinate line. Jessie folded her arms. She looked very solid sitting like that, not at all beautiful, but immensely strong and durable.

  They had a good meal. When it was time for the news, the radio was switched on. The farmer had brothers fighting in Italy. For a moment the war intruded, a strange world glimpsed briefly in a lightning flash. Then the radio was switched off and the farmer began to tease Jessie, counting how many scones he could make her eat. It was an old game between them and Jessie enjoyed it. But as they walked back from the farm, she talked about Kerren again.

  `She’s my only real chum. It hurts to lose her.’

  She sniffed, partly to show how hurt she was and partly because her nose was running. Frank said severely:

  `You’re better without any of the girls in that cabin.’

  `I do have to live with them, Frank,’ she pointed out.

  It was bitterly cold. Talking wasn’t easy; when you drew breath it was like cutting your own throat. Frank said harshly:

  `You shouldn’t let them influence you. It’s wrong to be influenced by other people.’

  `I don’t let them influence me,’ Jessie protested. `Not any more. It’s only Kerren I care about.’

  They walked in silence for a while down the narrow lane. Frank’s face was very pale, except for the blue-shadowed jaw. Eventually he said savagely:

  `In some ways she’s the worst, your Kerren.’

  `No, Frank! She’s my friend, my real friend.’ Jessie was wounded. Her watery eyes regarded his dark outline reproachfully.

  They reached the churchyard. There was a footpath that ran down one side of it and led eventually to the woods at the back of the camp. Frank pushed open the gate and as Jessie walked past him he glared at her as though she had done him an injury. They sat on a long, raised tombstone near the path. Frank was silent, waiting for Jessie to break. Jessie stared up at the sky; the cold seemed to agree with the stars, she had never seen quite so many. She said quietly:

  `There’d be something wrong with me if I didn’t have any girl friends, Frank.’

  `You let yourself be dazzled.’ He looked down at her with a stern possessiveness that Jessie found alarming but not entirely unpleasing. `You talk about Kerren as though there was something very special about her.’

  `There was something very special about Beatie, too.’ Jessie surprised herself by being provocative. `You didn’t mind that.’

  For a moment he was so still that she thought she had said something he would
never forgive. Then he said a little ruefully, as though he was surrendering something, `Beatie was the fairy on the Christmas tree.’

  It hurt Jessie to hear him speak like that. `You mean she was out of reach, like?’ she said gently. `She’d never have married you. Is that it?’

  `Married me?’ He sounded surprised. `You don’t think I would have married her?’

  Jessie was too bewildered by this interpretation of the affair to say anything; the cold seemed to have got into her brain and nothing made sense. Frank kicked a stone into the long grass.

  `I’m going to be a farmer,’ he said. `Beatie wouldn’t have made a farmer’s wife.’

  Jessie watched the moon rise above the dense foliage of the yews and felt sad for Beatie in a comfortable way.

  `It’s you I’ll marry, Jessie,’ Frank said.

  Jessie looked at him. In the moonlight his face looked set and terribly determined; in spite of the cold there were beads of sweat on his upper lip. There was no doubt that he knew what he was saying. She would have liked a little more romance, but she was a realist and she was prepared to have him on his terms.

  `Where will we live?’ she asked.

  He began to talk about Somerset. Jessie listened. She sensed that she would have to do quite a lot of listening, so she might as well start now. But later, when they said good night, she cried a little and said that she did not want to go back to the cabin. This aroused his protective instincts, which were strong. He comforted and fondled her and Jessie, having successfully made her first demands on him, went back to the cabin crying with happiness.

  The others thought she was crying with the cold, and as they were cold, too, they were not sympathetic. Naomi said:

  `Oh get into your bunk and stop snivelling. It’s the same for all of us.’

  But it was not the same for all of them. As she heaped greatcoat, raincoat, jacket and skirt on top of the blankets, Jessie felt a tremendous superiority. There was only one thing she needed to make her happiness complete.

  `Kerren,’ she whispered.

  Kerren came across carrying one of her blankets. She laid it on top of the mound of clothes on Jessie’s bunk and said:

  `Here you are, Jess. Something to keep out the cold! Only put it on my bunk before I come back in the morning.’

  She patted Jessie’s cheek. Her fingers were icy. Jessie realized that she had nothing to give Kerren that would keep out the cold, so she remained silent. She heard the door close, heard the crunch of wheels on the cinder track. She was sorry she had not been able to tell Kerren; but already the warmth from the heavy mound of clothes was beginning to tell. She thought about Frank and about how she would allow him to depend on her without his ever knowing it. The world got warmer and warmer although outside the first snow was beginning to fall. She saw it just before she went to sleep, thick, heavy flakes like those in the glass balls you shook and the snowflakes swirled round and round and round.

  Kerren saw the snowflakes, too. But she was not outside the glass globe, admiring it from the warmth of another sphere. She was in it. When she got to the met. office she said to Adam:

  `Fall of snow, moderate, beginning to lie. I hope you forecast it?’

  `Hunter did,’ he answered. `God save Hunter!’

  She wondered whether he would go to bed soon. She liked to be alone at night. So she said:

  `How about a cuppa before you retire?’

  He answered, `I’m not tired. But I’ll have a cuppa.’

  The room seemed very spare and bright, no shadows. It was hot, too, and smelt of the paint on the radiators. Adam was sitting at the map table; he had one arm hitched over the back of the chair and the other resting on the table. It looked a relaxed attitude; but Adam had tremendous control over his body, it didn’t betray his feelings or his intentions. Kerren plugged in the kettle and then sat on the high stool in front of the plotting board, her hands resting in her lap. She did not look at him.

  `Fancy snow at the beginning of December!’ she said. `Is it fairly widespread?’

  `No. Very local. If you get yourself a draft somewhere up in Scotland you’ll find it warmer.’

  `Really?’

  `Or South Africa. Very pleasant at Simonstown just now.’

  Reluctantly she raised her eyes to his face.

  `Trying to get rid of me?’

  He smiled. `I’d miss you terribly. I rely on you and Egan to cover up my mistakes for me. But this is your one chance to see the world at your country’s expense. Why not make the most of it?’

  `I’m not interested.’

  `That’s not a sufficient reason.’

  The kettle was boiling. She slid off the stool and went to the cupboard where the cups and the tea caddy were stored. She put tea in the pot – for once Adam did not tell her to warm the pot. Out of the corner of her eye she watched him warily as she went across to the kettle. She hoped he would drop this subject, not because she was afraid of emotion – Adam’s emotions were always well-controlled and she hadn’t any to control – but because she found it tiring. Adam was sitting in the same position, not a muscle twitched; she was aware of the toughness of his body and she found herself thinking that he would take a terrible beating and never show it. She said:

  `Don’t talk about drafts. I don’t want to go away from here. I don’t even want to go on leave.’

  `Why not?’

  She thought for a moment; but thought was constricted, there was only a small area in her mind where it could roam free. She said:

  `Peter isn’t real to my mother. She will talk about him as a stranger I married. I couldn’t bear that.’

  `That’s understandable. But why don’t you want a draft?’

  `I don’t want to go anywhere else.’

  `A negative reason.’

  `All my reasons are negative now.’

  She handed him the cup of tea and went back to the stool. He was quiet for a moment, stirring the tea with a pencil. Then he put the cup down and walked across to the teleprinter. She watched him as he stood with his back to her looking down at the machine; a broad back, straight, the shoulders braced, the weight slightly forward. Very well-balanced, Adam. He turned round as she was watching him, a deliberate movement. He said:

  `The war does enough that’s bad that can’t be remedied. Don’t make yourself a voluntary casualty.’

  `Voluntary!’ There was enough emotion in her after all to make speech difficult. `Voluntary! I was married, my husband . . .’

  `No. You weren’t married. You didn’t live for years with Peter, making a life together until he became a part of your own personality. You had a honeymoon. It’s sad: but not irrevocable. Don’t try to imagine it is.’

  For a moment it seemed as though she might be angry, but there was not enough strength in her for that. She said at last:

  `It was all I had. It was all that Peter had. There isn’t anyone else who knew him, cared for him. He can only live through me now. If I don’t remember him, it will be as though he had never been.’

  `If you do remember him – in that deeply involved way – it will be as though you had never been.’

  `Perhaps.’ She did not seem to care; she had, in any case, lost the feeling of herself as a person. Adam went on:

  `The war will end. And you won’t be able to stay behind. It will be a difficult time, particularly if you haven’t prepared yourself for it. You must learn to be interested in things, even though the inclination is lacking. You must learn to live again.’

  He paused, looking down. Kerren watched the steam rising from his untouched cup of tea. He seemed more still than ever, and now there was something painful about his stillness; it made her momentarily afraid of pain, a sensation she had not experienced since Peter’s death. She hoped that Adam was not going to talk about his own experiences; it was something he had never done before and she was too exhausted to have his pain thrust at her. But when he raised his head and began to speak his voice was so calm and the words were chose
n with such clinical precision that she was not disturbed by the personal element.

  `I know about this myself, of course. It isn’t easy, and one would rather like to be finished with things. You have to learn to live a little every day; otherwise you die a little every day. There is no third way – we don’t stand still.’

  She shook her head and made a small, empty gesture with her hands.

  `There’s . . . nothing . . .’

  `There’s always a lifeline. Mine was music. There’s no rebirth, or anything spectacular like that, of course. But something seems to survive, some small element of pleasure – not to put it too strongly – that bridges the gap between what you were and what you have become. I thought I should never want to listen to music again. But I found I was wrong. And the fact that I still enjoyed it made some kind of a link with the past, the only link that is bearable.’

  She looked at him, dimly aware that she had been given something, not knowing quite how to acknowledge it. She said, without really knowing why:

  `What was your wife’s name?’

  He did not answer for a moment; when he spoke the syllables came slowly, rusty from long unuse.

  `Alison.’

  Alison. She had expected something more sophisticated. Alison was a person one might have known, an ordinary person not unlike oneself. One could imagine her moving from room to room in the childless house while the world grew smaller and smaller until it was just a tight shell of skin and bone in which she was the lone prisoner. Kerren felt an understanding for this woman and she said:

  `Why should we learn to live again? There has to be a reason for learning.’

  `There is a quite adequate reason. Self-preservation.’

  `Self-preservation?’

  `Yes. I’m not interfering in this abominable way because I think you are unhappy and need a little advice.’

  She stared at him. She was listening now, but it was difficult to tell what effect his words were having. Perhaps there was a flicker of resentment in her eyes: he hoped so. He said: