THE CLIMBING FRAME

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘Oh my darling, my darling!’

  She had thought that they would be safe here, that they had come to the place where the parallel lines meet.

  ‘I’ve never been like this before. My mind races, I can’t keep pace with it. I find myself making speeches, saying things I’d forgotten to point out, answering people back, a crazy jumble of dialogue as though some mad playwright had got loose in my head . . .’

  ‘Try to forget it, just for a while . . .’

  ‘I longed to be with you so much, I thought it would all be swept away . . .’

  ‘Oh, my darling, it will be soon, it will be, I promise you.’

  Even tonight, when he was so upset, she had thought, it will be all right now that we are here just the two of us in this quiet, white room with nothing beyond but that vast, uncaring sky and the surge of the sea on a pebble beach. But the tension in his body dispelled this peaceful illusion. Had she been deaf and dumb, he could have communicated his distress to her as easily; her hands told her all she needed to know. She moved them gently across his back, trying to ease the taut muscles. The love which had seemed so mighty, now seemed so helpless, so gentle a thing to pit against this violent unrest. Love could only work its miracles within the human soul, it was powerless to alter events or stem the tide of disaster; however much she loved him, she could not remove one stone from his path nor break his fall. She could only wait and pick up the pieces. For the first time she asked, what will become of us? and felt for the first time the chill trickle of despair.

  ‘I’m worried for my children,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid they will get at them.’

  ‘No, no . . .’ she soothed. ‘Your children have nothing to do with this, they will leave them alone’. This was a fear into which she could not enter, a place where she could not follow him; she did not want him to talk about his children.

  Gradually, he grew quieter, the warmth of physical contact beginning to have its comforting effect.

  ‘When must you go?’ she whispered after a time. She had never asked this before, but now it seemed that she needed to know.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I told my wife I had to get out and she accepted it.’ It had been true; even if he had not intended to meet Maggie, he would have had to get out. Jemima was angrily on his side, she had peppered him with questions and ejaculations until he felt that something in his brain would give.

  So we have this evening, Maggie thought; while the light lasts we can be together, perhaps a little longer. Time had reasserted its hold over them.

  While they were lying together, at last recapturing some of that earlier rapture, Jemima was walking down a long avenue, under lime trees shimmering in the summer heat. She was wearing a pale primrose two-piece which she had carefully pressed before leaving home; her accessories, gloves, shoes and handbag, were white and white beads were knotted at her throat. She looked neat and fresh, her face smooth as marble, dusted with just enough powder to maintain the impression of cool assurance.

  ‘I must get out,’ Mylor had said. She had thought: some of us escape into the country or run away to the seaside; but some of us have to stay and face the ugly facts of life, some of us have to act. The Marthas of this world, they call us, dull, unimaginative, insensitive creatures, concerned only with the material and the mundane; but it is the Marthas who keep the wheels turning. It was then, inspired by this thought, that she had put up the ironing board and fetched the primrose two-piece. In the moment of doing this, she had been moved by intense nervous irritation and had wanted to occupy herself; quite how it had happened that by the time the two-piece was pressed she had determined on a course of action, she could not have said. Perhaps it was the realization of a long-felt need: there had been times in Jemima’s life when she had longed to wrest affairs from the hands of men and deal with matters sensibly and practically, as only a woman can. On this occasion, the urge was overwhelming. Ideas solidified quickly with Jemima. Now, as she walked, holding her impeccable amber head high, her will to act was inflexible. Mylor would be angry, but nothing would deflect her from her purpose. She knew that what she was doing was right and so she would be able to withstand his anger; there are times when a wife must stand and fight for her home and family, she would tell him.

  She did not falter at the gate, nor fumble with the catch; she laid one finger on the wrought iron and the gate swung open for her. This was her moment; Jemima advanced towards it, moving neither too fast nor too slow.

  Major Rudderham watched her progress up the drive from the dining room window. He had no idea who she was, but he approved of her; the sight of a well-groomed woman was a pleasure not often vouchsafed these days when the trend was towards the casual if not downright tatty. She inspired in him a yearning for departed joys, not all of which he had actually experienced.

  ‘Mrs. who?’ he asked in astonishment when his housekeeper came in with the message.

  ‘Mrs. Drew.’

  The poor woman! In all this upheaval, which of them had spared a thought for the wife of Mylor Drew? And how typical that a bounder like Drew should attract such a woman and then misuse her! Rudderham was overcome by shame and exasperation; he despaired of his own sex. Nevertheless, he would have preferred to avoid a meeting with Mrs. Drew at this moment; but he did not feel that it was possible to do so without being churlish. He went into the hall and held out his hand.

  ‘Well now,’ he said, holding her hand a little longer than was strictly necessary. ‘I’m not sure what I can do for you, but . . .’

  ‘I realize how extremely busy you are,’ she said in a voice which rang so crisp and clear that it sent a shiver down his spine. ‘But I should be very grateful if you could spare me a few minutes.’

  ‘Of course, of course . . .’

  He conducted her into his study, placing a guiding hand on her elbow, and ensconced her in an upright armchair which he judged, correctly, to be ideally suited to her dimensions. She folded her hands lightly over the clasp of her bag and crossed her ankles; her hands were white, the fingernails varnished but not coloured, her ankles were very trim. Rudderham gazed at her with all the grateful wonder of a man who has found a spring in the desert. At heart, he was a very sentimental person. He had married a muscular blonde who had trampled on all his softer impulses; after fifteen years of guerilla warfare, she had left him to run a hotel in Torquay. Although fate, abetted by his own lust, had dealt him Judy O’Grady, he still longed for the Colonel’s Lady. Jemima Drew personified that image. He hoped that he would be able to help her through what must undoubtedly be a very difficult interview and that he would do so with that touch of gallantry only to be found in an older man.

  ‘Now tell me, my dear; why have you come to me?’

  Jemima said, ‘I must tell you first that my husband does not know that I have done this. He would not approve of it.’

  This Rudderham could well believe.

  ‘This may be very ill-advised of me,’ Jemima went on with an air of primness which he found enchanting. ‘But as his wife, I cannot sit by and do nothing. If you feel that I have been impertinent in coming to you, I hope you will make allowances.’

  Rudderham said, ‘My dear, I don’t regard this as an impertinence. Far from it.’ He thought that she was very brave, but judged that the moment to say so had not yet arrived.

  Jemima was aware that she had made a good impression, though not in the way that she had intended. In her youth she had had a provocative appeal which assured attention whenever she flicked an eyelid. Things had not been so easy since. She was surprised to find that the old charm had not entirely lost its potency. She had come here angry and determined to attack if necessary; but now she saw that success might be achieved with rather less effort. It gave her a glorious feeling of power and a sudden irrelevant, but quite delightful, sense of the essential frivolity of life.

  ‘Major Rudderham,’ she said. ‘You are the Chairman of the Education Committee.’ If she had said that he was the Archangel Gabri
el she could scarcely have implied more trust in his authority. ‘We all know, everyone knows, how interested you are in the welfare of the schools. I refuse to believe that you can’t do something to put an end to this intolerable situation.’ She tilted her chin just a little to add extra provocation to the challenge.

  ‘I think we should all like to see an end to it.’ He adopted his elder statesman manner. ‘But, you know, it isn’t quite as simple as it may seem to you.’

  ‘I must confess that it does seem very simple to me.’ She gave him a frank smile. ‘Why can’t the press be told that it is all a pack of lies? It always seems to me a great pity that there are so few people who are prepared to deal firmly with the press.’

  ‘There are occasions which call for restraint rather than firmness.’ He paused to give her a shrewd, but kindly look. ‘I don’t want to hurt your feelings, my dear, but your husband has not improved the position by the statements he has made recently.’

  ‘But why shouldn’t he call Miss Cathcart neurotic?’ she protested gaily. ‘Why should it be all right for all this abuse to be heaped on my husband, who has done nothing, while Miss Cathcart must be protected? Why can’t we tell reporters what a trouble-making creature she is?’

  ‘We can’t do this because we are responsible people.’ He shook his head and said rather more heavily. ‘It is one of the drawbacks of responsibility that we can sometimes be pilloried by the Miss Cathcarts of this world. Other people besides your husband have been involved in this. I have come under fire myself.’

  ‘Then you must defend yourself. This is why I came to see you.’

  ‘To ask me to defend myself?’ Courtly smile.

  ‘And my husband, of course.’ Responsive twinkle.

  It was delightful; but it was stalemate. Rudderham said regretfully, ‘My dear, there is nothing that I can promise you at this moment.’

  ‘Nothing!’ She lost a little of her composure and gained in appeal. ‘But something must be done. People will believe the things that this woman is saying if they aren’t denied.’

  ‘We shall of course issue a statement eventually.’

  ‘Eventually!’ He had anticipated her distress and was not disappointed in the result. A little display of weakness was essential in a really feminine woman.

  ‘Timing is very important, my dear. We must not give the impression . . .’

  ‘Timing, impression!’ She took the words out of his mouth a shade too sharply for his liking. ‘You’re all playing a game . . .’

  ‘No, no, my dear . . .’

  ‘Yes, I say, yes! You’re all playing a game, choosing the right moment to make a movement! But we’re human beings that you’re manoeuvring with, and we’re hurt by this.’ A quite regrettable flush stained her neck: it seemed that it was his fate always to be left with Judy O’Grady. ‘My husband has worked so hard at that school, he has done so much for boys like Peter; now his reputation is being damaged. And it’s affecting me and my children. People come up to me in the street, to sympathize so they say, but really to get a good look at me, to see how I’m weathering the storm. My children are distressed. A man leapt up and photographed me today as I came out of a shop. My little girl was terrified. She and Daniel keep asking what it’s all about. And it’s about nothing. Nothing! It’s just not possible that all this can be allowed to go on because an unbalanced woman makes a wild accusation. Someone’s got to stop it or something dreadful will happen.’

  Rudderham said sternly, ‘Mrs. Drew!’

  ‘Yes! Something dreadful! And you’d be to blame!’

  ‘Madam, don’t you think that your husband is the best guardian of his reputation?’

  She became quite still, her anger abruptly extinguished by something ominous in his tone. He made the most of his opportunity.

  ‘You know of what I am talking, of course.’ She raised her head, a proud, instinctive reaction which he took as an acknowledgement. ‘I hope you will forgive my speaking of it. But if you will take the advice of an older man, you will use all your influence to make your husband free himself from this entanglement. If rumours were to get around at the present time about the Head Master of Crossgate Primary School and a member of the education office staff, it would be very unfortunate for all of us.’

  There was a pause. He was relieved to see that the Colonel’s Lady was in possession again.

  Jemima said quietly, ‘This is something between me and my husband.’

  This is the moment that tells with a woman, he thought; such dignity, a real thoroughbred. In a sudden gush of emotion, he said, ‘You are very brave, my dear. I admire you for it.’

  Jemima stood up, handbag and gloves held neatly in one hand, the other extended.

  ‘I have taken up enough of your time as it is. Thank you for seeing me.’

  He took her hand and folded his other hand over it. Jemima waited passively.

  ‘I hope I am allowed to say that it passes my comprehension how any man . . .’ He let the sentence drift and shook his head. ‘I wish I could do more.’

  Jemima said, ‘Not at all,’ or some other absurd phrase summoned from the storehouse of social habit. He saw her to the door and watched her walk down the drive, neither too fast nor too slow, opening and shutting the gate efficiently. When she had turned the corner of the square, and was walking down the lime tree avenue, she said to herself, ‘So that is it.’ And after that she did not think at all.

  When she reached the house she thanked the neighbour for looking after the children and offered coffee which was refused, the neighbour being anxious to watch a favourite television programme. She stood at the front door while the neighbour took her leave and smilingly agreed that it was one of the best summers on record. Then she went up to her bedroom, slipped out of the pale primrose two-piece, put away the gloves, shoes and white handbag. The children called to her from above and she said, ‘Just a minute, darlings’ in a high, cheerful voice. She put on a cotton working frock and went up to them. They were both seated on Daniel’s bed.

  ‘It’s hot,’ Clare said.

  Jemima opened the window wide and adjusted the curtains. How intolerable these hot nights were for children! She went to them and held them close. ‘Oh, my darlings, my darlings . . .’ she whispered.

  ‘What is it, Mummy?’ Daniel said sharply.

  ‘Why nothing, darling, nothing. Mummy has a headache, that’s all.’

  ‘Why have you got a headache?’

  ‘Because it’s so hot. You can’t sleep when it’s hot, can you? And I have a headache. See?’

  ‘Clare can’t sleep,’ her daughter claimed her attention imperiously.

  Jemima waited for them to settle down again; she did not hustle them, or reprimand, because this would only make them even more restless. When Daniel said, ‘Sing to us, Mummy,’ she knew that she could not do this because of the tightness of her throat muscles, but she said, ‘It’s too hot, Daniel. But I’ll hum if you like.’

  Her throat ached when she went down the stairs at last, but it seemed to be the only pain she had. It was too hot to sit in the house, so she went into the garden where she sat in a wicker chair and looked at her shadow until it dissolved in dusk. Darkness came, and a faint breeze rippled across the fields and played fitfully with a rag she had left hanging on the washing line. An owl hooted, and far out in the fields there was the squeal of a creature in pain. The night was not kind, but then whoever thought that it was? Jemima shifted slightly in her chair and looked up at the sickle moon and the cascade of stars and found no promise there and was grateful to be left comfortless. She felt calm, almost at peace, as though something had happened which she had long awaited. It was a relief to have to come to terms with it at last.

  When Mylor came in, hours later, his ragged temper aroused in her only a surprising tenderness. She marvelled that he, too, could be so vulnerable, and as the days went by she tried to ease his pain by withdrawing into the shadows of his life. Suffering had always had an attraction for
her, and this disciplined self-effacement gave her almost the feeling of a vocation. She did not attempt to talk to him about his affair. It was only possible to bear the fact that he loved another woman as long as that woman remained unknown, a rival must have shape and substance to constitute a threat. Jemima had no intention of precipitating a crisis. Instinct told her that only by not thrusting herself forward could she hope to salvage anything. And she was very determined to salvage something.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘No,’ the typist said, ‘I can’t help you. I’m sorry, I just do the typing. I don’t know what goes on.’ She put her hand over the mouthpiece and hissed urgently at Angela. ‘Tell the switchboard to take this call back.’

  ‘They won’t,’ Angela hissed. ‘They say someone’s got to speak to him.’

  ‘Then get someone!’ The typist hoisted storm signals.

  Angela fled down the corridor to Mr. Crocker’s room.

  ‘It’s the television people on the line again, Mr. Crocker.’

  Mr. Crocker said, without raising his head from the printer’s proof which he was correcting, ‘Mr. Ellis has said that no one beneath the rank of Assistant Education Officer is to speak to the press.’ He made a hieroglyphic in the margin of the proof.

  ‘But Mr. Punter’s not in and Mr. Maskell says it’s nothing to do with Further Education, so he won’t speak to them . . .’

  ‘It will have to wait for Mr. Ellis then, won’t it?’

  ‘But we can’t get rid of the man, Mr. Crocker, and he’s ever so annoyed. He keeps saying “are they all at tea break?” and things like that.’

  Mr. Crocker pursed his lips over a misplaced colon and made another hieroglyphic in the margin. ‘If anyone had wanted me to deal with this sort of inquiry, I assume I should have been told. Enough instructions have been issued lately, goodness alone knows.’

  Angela ran to Maggie’s room.

  ‘Maggie, do come and speak to this television man, we’ve got him again.’

  ‘My love, I dare not.’