AN IRRELEVANT WOMAN

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘By which you mean they present no problem to society?’

  ‘I doubt if they think much in terms of society.’

  ‘Another island?’

  ‘Stephanie talks about social problems but I don’t think she does much more than put a toe in the water.’

  Dr Potter knew when to keep silent. After a moment, Janet said, ‘Do you go to Greenham Common?’

  ‘I have been, yes.’

  ‘I wanted to. But I wasn’t well enough to travel on the day.’

  ‘Only the one day?’ This hardly had the ring of social involvement. ‘Why did you want to go?’

  ‘I felt I should like to understand about Patsy, Patsy is my daughter-in-law.’

  ‘Tell me about Patsy.’

  ‘She isn’t like us. She wears what I think of as cottage industry clothes – the draggly, droopy variety, not the expensive wool ones. And she has causes stuck all over her like leeches. But she wasn’t always like that. It has come about gradually since she married Hugh – the ill-fitting clothes and the causes. I sometimes feel it is us as a family that she is demonstrating about.’

  ‘And you? Do you support any of her causes?’

  ‘Me?’ Oh, we’re not going to talk about me! ‘I don’t have the time.’

  Towards the end of the session, Dr Potter said, ‘What do you think is wrong with you?’

  ‘The doctor says I am over-tired. My children all have different ideas . . .’ Dr Potter noted ‘unprepared to discuss her illness at this stage’.

  ‘Would you like to come to see me again?’ she asked.

  ‘Would you like me to come?’ Janet was polite as if it was a social invitation.

  Dr Potter reflected for a few moments and then said, ‘I think perhaps we should leave it that you will get in touch with me should you feel it would be helpful to see me again.’

  After Janet had gone,’ her secretary said that the son wished to see her. ‘He says he won’t go until he has seen you.’

  ‘The son?’ Dr Potter paused on the verge of outrage and glanced down at her notes. ‘Which son is this?’

  ‘The married one.’

  ‘Ah yes. Married to the Patsy. All right. I’ll see him.’

  Hugh had been instructed by Stephanie to insist on being given some information about Dr Potter’s findings. Dr Potter proved more than willing to oblige.

  ‘Each of us has a model of life,’ she told him, sitting at her desk looking uncomfortably like a tipsy judge, wig slightly awry. ‘And we observe what our model leads us to expect.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can see that.’

  ‘I’m sure you can. But we shall perhaps conclude this more expeditiously if you refrain from giving each of my statements your vote.’

  It was all Hugh could do to refrain from saying, ‘Yes, m’Lud.’

  ‘As I was saying, we all have a model of life. Sometimes, for a few people, the model is broken. This seems to be the case with your mother, but why this has happened, I don’t yet know.’

  ‘I suppose scientists have a series of models,’ Hugh said, rather at a loss. ‘When one fails, they make another . . .’

  ‘We are not talking about scientists, though, are we? We are talking about your mother, who does not strike me as being in the least scientific. And when we make another model, we have to do it with the materials at our disposal. So it is a matter of collecting a lot of shattered fragments, and that is not easy.’

  ‘I don’t think anything has happened to shatter my mother,’ Hugh said uneasily.

  ‘Life is a series of shattering experiences, Mr Saunders.’

  A look of pain darkened Hugh’s eyes but he made no reply. It was apparent that if there were members of this family who were prepared to snap up challenges, Dr Potter was not seeing them this morning. She went on, ‘An alternative explanation is that a breakdown is sometimes a protection. In your mother’s case, I don’t yet know what she might be protecting. Have you any idea?’

  He looked baffled, a reaction which she guessed was his form of protection.

  ‘Come, come! You are her son. You must have some ideas. Your sister, Stephanie, who has been in touch with me, doesn’t seem short of theories, albeit negative ones.’

  ‘Stephanie is very clever but she does tend to trip over her own brains from time to time.’

  Dr Potter looked at him with increased interest. ‘Why did you leave your wife?’ she asked abruptly.

  The baffled look intensified.

  ‘Come! You insisted on seeing me. Now you must answer a few questions.’

  He accepted this illogical statement without protest. He must have been pathetically easy to discipline as a child. He said, ‘Each morning I tried to put my house in order and Patsy spent the day taking it apart again.’

  ‘One can have too much order.’

  ‘And too little. For example, I am one of those people who actually likes to have breakfast before I leave home for work.’ He was quite animated about this.

  ‘No regular meals?’

  ‘The only thing Patsy ever did on time was to catch the coach to Greenham Common.’

  ‘There was only the one coach?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That would seem to argue a certain ability to organise herself.’

  ‘Precisely! She can do it when she wants to. But order is a necessity to me and a threat to Patsy.’

  ‘How much did this upset your mother?’

  ‘I think she was very upset for the children. I have a feeling she blamed me for leaving home. She is very fond of Patsy. Patsy is very easy to love.’

  ‘Nothing that has so far been said would seem to support that.’

  ‘Oh, but she is.’ He applied himself to the righting of a wrong impression much as he might have corrected a legal document. ‘She is affectionate, generous, very loyal . . .’ He ticked the attributes off on his fingers.

  ‘Is she as intelligent as you?’

  He went bright red to the tips of his ears.

  ‘And when you had arguments, I suppose you drove her into a corner?’

  He had assumed his baffled expression. Dr Potter said, ‘Has it ever occurred to you to look upon your wife as a princess locked in a pattern of behaviour from which she is unable to escape?’

  He reflected on this. ‘That may well be so. But it makes it more hopeless, doesn’t it?’ He was no knight errant, but a country solicitor unqualified to deal with dragons.

  When he left he said with unexpected intensity, ‘What my mother needs, Doctor, is not analysing, but healing.’

  ‘You can’t have the one without the other from a poor mortal! And as all that the Holy Spirit has moved your vicar to say is that she should “forget herself” I think you might be wiser to stick with me!’

  ‘I don’t think you should see her again,’ Hugh said as he drove his mother home.

  ‘Why not? I liked her emerald beads.’

  ‘You haven’t lost your ability to concentrate on the inessential. That’s a good thing.’ He sounded as though he might find genuinely affectionate comfort in this.

  ‘How did you get on with her?’ Janet demanded.

  ‘I thought she was impertinent.’

  ‘Stephanie may feel you concentrated on inessentials.’

  Hugh made no comment and Janet went on, ‘Stephanie thought that being a solicitor you would elicit significant information from Dr Potter simply by asking for it.’

  ‘How ridiculous!’ Hugh said uncomfortably, recalling how few questions he had, in fact, asked.

  ‘Stephanie has a respect for the law which far exceeds her respect for psychology.’ Janet reflected on this for a few minutes and then said, ‘We are a very law-abiding family, aren’t we? Do you think that is because we believe that it is the cornerstone of civilisation, or simply that it has never inconvenienced us very much?’

  ‘Mother, how long have you been doing all this thinking?’

  ‘Didn’t you think I was capable of thought?’
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br />   ‘Well, not of putting it all together like that.’

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s all very random, really.’ She sat back, suddenly tired. They travelled in silence until Hugh turned the car on to the lane leading down to the village, then she said, ‘And when is Malcolm coming?’

  ‘Malcolm?’

  ‘Yes, your brother. He must be included, surely? You are all taking it in turns. Katrina was here last weekend. Who drew up the rota? Stephanie, I suppose.’

  ‘It is only natural that we should be concerned, Mother.’

  ‘You don’t think your father is capable of looking after me? Capable – or willing?’

  ‘Father is doing his revise.’

  Janet looked down at the water in the stream, black now save where needles of light penetrated the trees’ dark mass. ‘Have you ever thought what a relief it would be to be ill – really ill, for weeks and weeks and weeks? So ill that you drifted out of range of concern of any kind?’

  ‘I think perhaps your CP has the answer to all this. You are overtired and you need a long rest. We are becoming too sophisticated and we have lost sight of simple solutions.’

  He turned the car towards the village street where he was immediately confronted with a number of simple solutions. Patsy’s car stood on a grass verge near her cottage, festooned with stickers advocating nuclear-free zones, noninterference in Nicaragua, troop withdrawal from Northern Ireland and sanctions against South Africa. Her near neighbour was obviously not of her political persuasion. Since no one had thought it worthwhile to produce a sticker saying “Soviets out of Afghanistan” he had remedied this omission with one of his own devising. The two cars stood bonnet to bonnet. The neighbour’s car was large and muscular with teeth – one snap and it could swallow Patsy’s Mini.

  They drove through the village and were on the narrow uphill lane when Hugh said, ‘Those stickers are all black and white, like their literature. That is how they see issues.’

  Janet said, ‘No colour. All dark, so dark. Hugh, can you stop the car please!’

  The request was made with such urgency that he jammed his foot hard on the brake and the car shuddered to a halt. ‘What was it?’ he asked, peering through the windscreen.

  ‘I’ll walk from here.’

  ‘Good God! I thought I’d run over a cat or a dog.’

  ‘I need fresh air. Please, Hugh.’

  He looked at her, anxiety rendering his usually bland face as wrinkled as wash-leather. ‘Mother, what is it?’

  ‘It’s the darkness. It starts on top of my head and works its way right down through me. It’s worst of all when it gets to my stomach.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like me to leave the car here and walk with you? I can come back for it later.’

  Janet said wearily, ‘If it will help you. I can see that you have to deliver me in one piece.’

  He left the car near the entrance to a field and they walked slowly uphill towards the house. Hugh looked about him as he walked, making mental notes of his surroundings which would be recorded later in his diary. Since he left Patsy and the children he had made a daily record of sensual experiences – an undertaking few, even among his intimate relations, would have associated with him. Quietly, meticulously, he noted the small things which might otherwise be overlooked and so not pass into memory’s safe-keeping. Already, he realised that even at a time when one might be tempted to see life as a long stretch of unadulterated misery, a surprising amount of pleasure is incorporated into everyday experience. One wet January day, travelling by train from Sussex into London, he had noted umbrellas folded like wet cabbages, umbrellas large as café sunshades, black, striped; white and blue, and fun umbrellas – one with a Donald Duck handle – carried by people not amused by another day’s rain. Rain soaking into the little leftover commons of Clapham, Balham and Streatham. When he reread this entry, he smelled the rain and found himself refreshed as he had probably not been at the time. So now, in the hope of future refreshment, he noted hawthorn white and dusty pink; hedgerows feathered with Queen Anne’s lace; a rusty farm gate open and – beyond an apple orchard dotted with buttercups – a dappled cow rubbing its head against a wooden paling . . . One day he would completely rewrite his life, imposing order on it, extracting joy from pain, redeeming loss.

  Beside him, Janet walked head down, darkness crushing her chest, weighing heavy as a dead child in her womb. She tried desperately not to snatch for breath, which might alarm Hugh.

  Hugh wrote in his mind’s diary – “spring’s climax, summer’s threshold . . .”

  Chapter Six

  ‘People are so difficult nowadays,’ Mrs Beaney, the vicar’s wife, said to Deutzia. ‘They want an open-air service, if you please. Because it’s Pentecost. And we shall have all the other denominations there, to say nothing of the Evangelicals. Most of them don’t understand what it’s about – only that “something” took place in the open air.’

  Deutzia, interested in more recent events, exclaimed, ‘There goes Janet!’

  Mrs Beaney frowned out of the window, short-sightedness augmenting a perpetual air of having come down in the world. She had been a beauty, but the high temper which had once been splendidly matched by auburn hair had gradually been damped down, leaving the faded face more irritable than mettlesome.

  ‘She is probably driving into town,’ Deutzia said. ‘All on her own, too. If I had known I would have kept her company.’

  The doctor’s young wife, who had called at the vicarage to sell flags for cancer relief and found herself taking coffee, wondered if she might leave now that they were all standing up. She fluttered ineffectually between the two old women like a pretty little moth.

  ‘Do you think she is well enough to be out on her own?’ Deutzia said to her.

  ‘Well, I suppose she must be.’ Ann Bellamy tried to look as if she had no idea that there was anything wrong with Janet Saunders.

  Mrs Beaney had long since decided that discretion is the last resort of those who want a quiet life. A quiet life in a village being a kind of death, she had adopted as her maxim “the truth never hurt anyone” and now enjoyed a reputation for forthrightness to which she was pleased to conform. She said, ‘If she is on her own, she has no one to blame but herself. She has never tried to make a friend of anyone in the village.’

  ‘She has spent herself looking after Murdoch,’ Deutzia said in mitigation.

  ‘I know that everything in that house centres round him. But who planned it that way? It is women who really control what goes on in a house. For me, of course, it is different.’ Her eyes rested on the shabby sofa and worn carpet. ‘Our house is subject to constant invasion . . .’ She lost the thread of her argument. Deutzia obligingly picked it up for her.

  ‘I have to admit that outside her own home Janet is not as selfless as one might imagine. She can be quite ruthless if she doesn’t want to be involved with people.’

  ‘She takes part in the dramatic society’s productions,’ Ann Bellamy pointed out.

  ‘She takes a leading part,’ Mrs Beaney corrected. ‘But she never lifts a finger to clear up afterwards.’

  ‘She is a very good actress, though.’

  ‘Very.’ The bitterness of this response was as impressive a tribute as any amount of praise. ‘She makes the others look painfully amateur.’

  Ann Bellamy flushed. As Mrs Beaney was aware, Ann was invariably cast in any part demanding a presentable young female whether fifteen or thirty.

  Deutzia said, ‘She has persuaded one or two very good instrumentalists to come to the music society.’

  ‘Oh yes. And she does do quite a lot at the pageant, helping with the costumes. But there it ends. We are lucky if we get so much as a jar of marmalade for the bring and buy stall and she can’t even be relied on to do the church flowers. I know these are small things, but they have to be done.’ Who should know this better than the daughter of a bishop who should have had other things to do than concern herself with the small change of villag
e life?

  Ann Bellamy said firmly, ‘I must be on my way.’

  ‘Where?’ Deutzia demanded. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Well, I . . .’ Ann muttered something about early lunch and Deutzia turned away.

  ‘I thought perhaps you were going in to town.’

  Mrs Beaney said, ‘Is there something you particularly want to get?’

  Deutzia said she needed to restock her freezer.

  Mrs Beaney said, ‘What a pity Hector has the car. Otherwise I would have taken you.’

  Ann Bellamy saw Deutzia’s distress as the dazzling prospect of a trip to town was withdrawn before she had had time to contemplate it and good-nature triumphed over the desire to put her feet up on a garden chair. ‘I could take you this afternoon,’ she offered. ‘If you don’t mind risking yourself in my ancient Beetle.’

  Deutzia expressed willingness to risk herself and they left the vicarage together. ‘It is so embarrassing to have to depend on the kindness of neighbours when one’s own relatives live nearby. I can’t think why Janet didn’t ask me to join her.’

  ‘Perhaps she wasn’t going to town? And anyway, I shall enjoy the outing. I find life rather dull here,’ Ann Bellamy confided. ‘But it is difficult to get a part-time job. I had wondered whether I dared offer to do Mr Saunders’ typing.’

  ‘It would probably give you melancholia, my dear. I did try to suggest to him once that there is a need for books which people can enjoy.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said he didn’t “sit down each day resolved to give people a pain in the arse”. He can be rather crude sometimes, I’m afraid.’

  ‘He probably doesn’t mean his books to be depressing. I always find he leaves me with a feeling of hope that man won’t pull out the plug.’

  ‘Oh dear! I’m afraid I need rather more than that!’ Deutzia came to her garden gate and rested a hand on it. ‘Now, what time will you come for me?’

  ‘Would two o’clock be too early?’

  ‘I’ll be waiting at the door.’

  After Ann had walked away, Deutzia remained by the gate, looking across the road to the banks of the stream, the water now hidden by the bright green branches of sallows. ‘Pull out the plug!’ she said. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!’