MARCH HOUSE

by MARY HOCKING

  I turned back to the room. It was empty. I rubbed myself down with a flannel and put on my nightdress.

  Douglas said, when I let him in, ‘I didn’t realise you were still in bed or I wouldn’t have bothered you.’ He was embarrassed and would not look at me. I was glad about that. He drew up a chair and took my hand. ‘How hot you are! Have you got a fever?’

  ‘I may have had a touch of delirium.’

  A sharp cry of pain beyond the window indicated that I was not back to normal yet.

  Chapter Nine

  My father said at supper, ‘I met Mrs. James at the station. She tells me you have had another visitor.’

  I said, ‘Yes.’ I did not know how many visitors I had had in reality. I wondered if this was a common feature of my complaint, but I couldn’t think of anyone I could ask.

  ‘Your office is very concerned about you.’ He sounded proud in an absent-minded way. ‘They must miss you.’ He nodded to himself; he had always known I would turn out well.

  Douglas had indeed come to tell me that he was concerned about me. He had sat, pale and sweating in the heat, his horn-rimmed glasses making his face look more solemn than ever and also, perhaps because of their size, fragile, as though the small nose had not been fashioned to bear their weight. It was difficult for him, whatever it was he was trying to say to me; his face had what Di called its constipated look. He was saying ‘. . . quiet and modest, but rather deep . . . a thinker . . .’ He was talking about me. How every odd! When he said ‘a thinker’ he gave me a brief, slightly disapproving glance, as though I was a secret drinker.

  ‘The office is so chaotic now. You kept it sane, Ruth. We should have been more grateful to you.’

  I bit my lip, fighting the desire to laugh at the idea of my being the guardian of sanity. The laughter wasn’t a very real threat, it petered out almost at once, leaving black despair. No doubt he had come to ask me to go back to the office. To divert him, I asked, ‘How did things go with the children at the week-end?’

  ‘It was awful,’ he answered, diverted. ‘They didn’t get on well with Eddie. I took them on the Nature Trail to get them out of the house, but he insisted on coming, too, I can’t think why; he hates the country and he sulked the whole time.’ He clenched his hands on his knees, staring down at the knuckles while he talked. ‘I couldn’t cope with Charlotte and the children. I expected it would be easier for all of us now, that we might even enjoy each other once there were no ties. I’ve not been ungenerous; I’m paying over the odds on maintenance, and I’ve bought the children a pony. But you don’t get rid of ties, you just keep the old and get entangled in new ones.’ He took off his glasses, perhaps meaning to polish them and then forgetting. His eyes were like the eyes of a blind man. ‘That time when I was stuck in the window, I had a vision of the life I would like to lead.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing. That was what was so extraordinarily pleasant. I saw myself lying in a punt; it was very peaceful and I was drifting past meadows with willows trailing in the water; all the spring flowers were out and I could smell hyacinths. It was a very still day, nothing moved, only the punt carried me on. I didn’t see all that then, of course; I’ve extended the experience since. At night, when I am trying to sleep, I put myself in the punt.’ He sat there, holding his glasses, drifting out of reach.

  ‘It sounds like “The Lady of Shalott”,’ I said, to bring him back.

  ‘Do you think she was autistic? I’m sure I would have been if autism had been fashionable when I was a child.’ He breathed on his glasses and polished them meticulously. ‘My trouble is that I was born into a world where everything has been found to be bad for us, all our pleasures and most of what we eat and drink, to say nothing of the air we breathe. What’s left? With my temperament, I might have been a contemplative. But it’s centuries too late for that. There is nothing to contemplate.’ He put on his glasses, indicating that he had himself well in hand now.

  ‘I didn’t come to tell you about myself. But this talk of escape into contemplation serves as an introduction. I was disturbed to hear you talk about that teashop you want to run. It struck an echo in my mind. The teashop is your form of escape. No doubt you would say it is a harmless daydream. But our daydreams are significant.’

  ‘I’m not going to run a teashop, I haven’t the capital any more than you have a poleless punt.’

  ‘But there are things you have got, Ruth. You have energy and will power and a good brain. Up to now, you haven’t had motivation. But with the death of your mother, a new life will start for you whether you like it or not. And you can make something of that new life, because you are a more positive person than I. Go to university, Ruth. It’s not too late.’

  ‘I am never going to university! I made a vow, a long time ago, that I was going to be the great non-achiever of all time and I’m not going back on it.’ If this wretched discussion served no other purpose, it clarified the university issue: this was the only childhood battle I had fought; I had constructed something, staked out a territory, made a place that was entirely mine. I intended to defend it.

  He did not take me seriously. Here he was, lazy, indecisive, draining his limited emotional resources on my behalf, in fact, making a sacrifice. It was important to him that the sacrifice should be accepted and to underline this, he sacrificed some more. ‘I’ve needled you in the past, Ruth. You seemed so secure, so rounded, and it angered me. Your serenity seemed to be a comment on my failure as a person. I came to think of it as something aggressive and I resisted it with aggression. I think I may have hurt you. In fact, I tried to hurt you in order to prove that underneath that calm exterior you were no less inadequate and confused than I.’ He was sweating. This was very difficult for him. So why did he have to do it, since neither of us wanted it? ‘During the days that you have been away I have realised how much we all depend on you. From what I have gathered of your home life, your mother depended on you, too. You must get away, Ruth; otherwise you will become the kind of person who needs to be used by other people, who colludes in her own exploitation. That pattern is all too easily established and very difficult to break.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ I said because I did not want him to go any further. He was still getting at me, even if his motives were more respectable.

  ‘I hope I haven’t hurt you?’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right about a lot of things. You’re very perceptive. You should have been a woman.’

  Not a muscle of his face moved; yet it was like watching a car windscreen when it is hit by a chance stone and the original hole is gradually concealed by the total fragmentation of the glass.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Or perhaps I’m not, perhaps I meant to get my own back. How can I tell? It’s your fault. You and Iris are always analysing motives until in the end nothing is what it seems, nothing adds up.’

  My father said, ‘I wonder if Mrs. James would do it.’

  I stared across the table at him. ‘Do what?’

  ‘Our laundry.’ We looked at each other, our minds not yet meeting. He said awkwardly, ‘I’ve done a bit of it myself, but . . .’

  ‘I’d forgotten all about the laundry. Why didn’t you remind me?’

  ‘You weren’t well, so . . .’

  I thought of him creeping down the stairs with his shirt and pants while I was lying in bed, worn down by my misery. ‘It must have been awful for you,’ I said, feeling very ashamed. The little things matter so much; he must have felt unloved and neglected.

  ‘I didn’t mind,’ he said, ‘only I don’t seem to get the stains out. Do you use a special powder?’

  ‘Leave it to me. It will do me good to have something to do. I shall enjoy it, really I shall.’

  He kissed me and told me how good I was, and I told him how good he was and then he made an excuse to go out of the room because neither of us could handle this much emotion.

  While I was doing the washing the te
lephone rang. It was the vicar about the flower festival. My father had promised to act as a steward, and he came into the kitchen to ask me if I minded him going to a meeting to discuss the arrangements. ‘There’s no need for me to go if you would rather not be alone.’ Hitherto when he had made this kind of remark he had been hoping I would provide him with an excuse for remaining in the house; but I could tell that this time he wanted to go out.

  I said that I did not mind being alone, but when he had gone I found that I did mind very much. I could not bear the thought that at any moment the telephone might ring and Dr. Laver would be on the other end of the line.

  At night I lay listening to the noises in the garden and once I got up to look out of the window because I was sure that someone was prowling about beneath my window. I got up early. I was afraid the telephone would ring, but also dreaded the thought of the morning wasting away with no pebbles thrown against my window. When my father had gone I decided to visit Miss Maud.

  I hoped she would be in, though how I intended to explain my call, I had no idea. I seemed to have got beyond the stage of explanations. Perhaps that was why I was going to see Miss Maud. She had got beyond that stage, too. Miss Maud had stayed at home with her father after her mother died. Miss Maud and I had a lot in common.

  It was a sunny day. It had been sunny for a long time now, a world of light and abrupt shadow. Was this summer something of a record? I didn’t seem to have read about it; but then lately the papers hadn’t been delivered because there was a newspaper strike, or because our papers weren’t getting through to us. Now that I wasn’t going to the office it was difficult to remember which day it was. Time stood still. It had been hot like this when old Mr. Leveridge had taken me out into the garden to pick mulberries; the garden had been beautiful. Nowadays it would be open to the public at week-ends in aid of the local charity, but then it had had all the charm of a private place which few strangers had seen. The old man had treated me with grave courtesy; it had been hard to believe that he was cruel to his family.

  I could see the Mill House in the distance. As I approached it I was surprised at how tall the weeds had grown. It was that time of summer when vegetation is at its most straggly; but even so, the vitality of the Mill House vegetation was surely phenomenal. It was not only the weeds which had grown; as I drew nearer I saw that the privet hedge which surrounded what had once been the croquet lawn was an impenetrable wall. It had grown so high that it was impossible to see whether anyone was in the garden, let alone the house. I wondered if Miss Maud had been taken ill and continued towards the house with apprehension.

  The laurels had grown high over the stone wall at the front of the house. A branch, heavy and ponderous, impeded my way as I opened the gate; there was something unpleasant about the shiny, speckled leaves. There seemed to me to be no purpose in a laurel, except to keep the outside world at bay; this one had certainly performed that task. I was surprised when I had fought free of the laurel to see that the front garden had been tidied up. The earth had been turned and several rose bushes had been rescued from the weeds which had once choked them. On an impulse, I walked round the side of the house, past mounds of cut grass and uprooted weeds, and garden implements ranging from a trowel with a broken handle to a rusty scythe and a quite presentable motor mower. I looked towards the croquet lawn and received a shock. The privet hedge seemed even untidier from this angle, but in comparison the lawn was smooth and orderly and had the look of a place with a secret life. There was a deck chair on the lawn and Miss Maud was sitting in it, elegant in a long Liberty print dress. There was something eerie about the scene; it was not so much a sensation of stepping into the past as of having intruded into a little enclosure outside time where I had no right to be. I had an urge to go away before Miss Maud saw me. But it was too late. She looked across at me and laid the book she was reading face down on the grass. It was almost as though if she had not actually expected me, she was prepared for me. I walked towards her. The grass was not as smooth as it looked, and it scratched my feet. I wished I had not come.

  There was something unusual about Miss Maud’s hair. Perhaps it was just that she had washed it and this had made it fly about in the breeze forming a spidery halo round her face. Her skin was too heavily powdered for me to tell whether she had washed it as well. Her cheekbones were lightly touched with lavender and her lips looked as if they were stained with bilberries. Miss Maud usually applied make-up with slapdash bravado, but the effect on this occasion, although startling, had a premeditated quality which I found rather disturbing.

  ‘What do you want?’ She was looking at me with hostility as though I, too, had changed.

  I was aware that I was a trespasser and said awkwardly, ‘I was just passing.’

  ‘I don’t think we are on visiting terms.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘And, in any case, people don’t pass this house. It is not on the way to anywhere.’

  ‘I was walking across the fields. I thought . . .’ I remembered Dr. Laver and said, ‘I came for eggs.’

  I had, it seemed, said the worst possible thing. ‘You came here to spy on me, did you?’ She got out of the deck chair with some difficulty. ‘Really, one has no privacy from your kind of person.’

  This conversation made no sense. I could not think of anything to say and was a little frightened. Now she was looking at me as though my body was an affront to her. The summer breeze stirred in my dress and made me conscious of my body, too. I found that I was thinking of Dr. Laver and, afraid that the thoughts must show in my face, I turned my head away.

  She said, ‘You don’t look like your mother; but I suppose bad blood will out. Are you a whore, too?’

  ‘My mother!’ I wanted to be angry, but this turn of the conversation was so bewildering that my voice came out in a startled yelp.

  ‘I’ve seen her walking back from the shops across the fields, wearing high-heeled shoes; making out she was surprised when she met him. I used to laugh when I saw them walking together, a bull of a man and an overblown woman, holding hands! But it was nothing to me. Good luck to them, I used to think. At least she knew her place; she never came flaunting herself in here, asking for eggs.’

  I said, ‘I’ll go,’ but I could not bring myself to turn away while her eyes were on me.

  ‘Now you’ve come, you can at least let me decide when you are to leave.’ She turned towards the house and indicated that I was to follow her. ‘I think there are things you ought to know.’

  She led me through the french windows. We stepped from sunlight into shadow and I felt goose pimples on my arms. The room smelt of incense and moth balls. There was a joss stick burning in a jar on the mantelshelf. I looked for an explanation of the moth balls and saw, glimmering in the subdued light, a crêpe-de-Chine shawl draped over the piano; its tasselled fringes moved slightly as we walked by. Potted plants had been placed about the room; one large one had dark leaves which gleamed as though they had been oiled. There was a decanter on a side table with exquisite Venetian glasses on a Florentine tray, and a packet of Turkish cigarettes.

  The hall smelt of carbolic and was full of furniture, cane chairs, chess tables, a tall cake stand with a Benares bowl on top of it, a long mirror, a brass bedrest and a mattress. Miss Maud threaded her way past these obstacles and I followed. We went up the stairs. Sheets and blankets were draped over the balustrade on the landing. Windows were open and doors creaked and banged all along the corridor. There were pillows airing on the window seat and a white cat was curled up on one of them. Miss Maud opened wide the door of the first bedroom. It was a handsome room with a big sash window; there was a bottle beneath the window containing ammonia and a pink flower in the Chinese carpet bore witness to its application. The walnut chest of drawers was open and its contents were spread about the room, on the floor, the mantelshelf, and the window sill.

  ‘I have been turning out,’ Miss Maud said. Before I could comment, she went on, ‘My lovers were a
ll very devoted.’ She took one of several bundles of letters down from the mantelshelf and handed it to me. I could see her fingerprints in the dust; I could also see that the top letter began, ‘My darling Maud.’

  ‘Poor Gerald!’ Miss Maud said. ‘He would have been very dull to live with; but he wrote amusing letters. He married his second choice, eventually. She’d been hanging over him like a ripe fruit for quite a time. Elspeth, she was called. It’s a name one should outgrow, don’t you think?’

  ‘Did you reply to the letters?’ I asked for want of something to say.

  ‘Of course I replied! One should always encourage lovers. It is such tremendous fun leading a man on.’ She looked at me in the sharp, malicious way that had characterised this exchange. ‘None of my lovers has ever cared for another woman.’

  ‘Didn’t you ever want to marry?’

  ‘Marry! Oh, my dear, what a vulgar little creature you are!’ She snatched the bundle of letters from me and threw it down on the bed. ‘Really, it’s quite intolerable to be insulted in this way! I can’t think why I ever bothered with you.’

  She must be quite mad, I thought; and yet I sensed a purpose in her madness which I was unable to understand. I tried to think of something harmless to say. ‘You’ve got your house looking very nice now, Miss Maud.’

  ‘Nice?’ She raised her eyebrows at the word. ‘It is beautiful. A world on its own. The only way to be free is to create a world of one’s own. The present world, after all, is scarcely one in which any sane person would want to live, so it is no place for those of us who don’t give a fig for sanity.’

  It seemed best not to reply, but silence availed me little.

  ‘I suppose you think you know all about sanity and madness because you work in that place.’

  ‘It’s all very confusing,’ I replied truthfully.

  ‘That’s not what you tap out on your typewriter, is it? Your psychologists and social workers like to pretend they know everything about everyone; but I know the truth about them. They are very timid. They have to label everything to make it safe, that’s why they use all this jargon. It makes them feel they are in command. But it’s all an illusion. I see the world more clearly; because I have a much better brain than any of them, and I’m not afraid of where it will lead me.’ Her eyes were so bright and penetrating that it was difficult not to believe her. ‘People are dying of tedium, rotting away quietly in their sitting-rooms—or lounges, as they would have it. When I was young we had customs and conventions, but they were just ways of avoiding tiresomeness, like unexpected callers and guests who don’t know when to leave; they didn’t inhibit us. Provided people didn’t make a damn nuisance of themselves in public no one was illbred enough to enquire what they did in private. My father drank and he got the parlour maid with child; my dear mother, who was the gentlest of souls, turned the silly creature out of the house and she drowned herself in the village pond. But none of our neighbours thought it was any concern of theirs. My brother and my sister were lovers. My father would probably have killed them had he known. I don’t think our neighbours would have cared much for it, either; but they wouldn’t have interfered. Nowadays, people don’t have private lives, they just sit in front of television congratulating themselves that, since they don’t do anything, nothing can ever happen to them. “Where did it get him?” they ask, looking at a man who has lost an empire.’ She was silent for a moment, and then she said, ‘I have written to the Shah and told him that if he would like to stay here he would be welcome.’