MARCH HOUSE

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘I think I know myself better now,’ I conceded.

  ‘ “Know yourself better”!’ he mimicked. ‘Dear God, she’s back again, that prim little puss! You talk as though it was an exercise in self-knowledge which you had passed with B+. Let me tell you that you are only on the edge of knowledge. I can show you a Ruth Saunders you cannot even dream of; because, make no mistake about it, you haven’t the stamina, let alone courage, to explore on your own. You are the kind who has never got beyond a No Entry sign. Without my help you have no hope of finding yourself.’

  ‘You make it sound like a treasure hunt, as though I could dig myself up whole.’

  ‘And so you can, if you dig deep enough.’

  ‘Into the past? I’ve finished with the past.’

  ‘ “Finished with the past” she says! We spend our lives struggling towards an illusory future while being carried into the past, like people running up the down escalator. All our life is in the past.’

  He was bitter; behind the eccentric façade and the ugliness it masked, there was a rather ordinary man with a grievance which had taken root. I felt a change in myself. What could this man possibly know to make me so afraid of him? I said with a nice show of reasonableness, ‘Even if I don’t agree with everything you say, I have learnt a lot from you. And one of the things I have learnt is that I know as much as I need to know about the past.’

  ‘How arrogant! A few words of advice and you think you know it all and can go strutting off on your own.’

  ‘The last thing it has made me is arrogant. I’m beginning to see that too much of Ruth Saunders can be very boring.’

  ‘You are afraid, like Iris! You saw things you didn’t like in the past and now you are running away because you don’t want to be hurt. Isn’t that so, eh? eh?’ I had not escaped him after all; something very unpleasant was going to happen. I remained quite still, waiting. ‘But you are hurt, my dear. Damaged goods, that is you. A flawed personality, if you prefer that kind of language.’

  I was surprised at how calm I felt. This was the thing I had most feared and could not have articulated myself. In this building where they were forever diagnosing human failure I had often wondered what labels were attached to me. Now he had found the words for me; he had let them loose in this room where I had first seen the child with the doll, and I must test their power. ‘Hurt, yes.’ It was such a simple acknowledgement, but it had been hard to make and had taken a long time. Nothing seemed so bad as the admission itself. A little encouraged, I said, ‘But I don’t see it in terms of loss, of things which have prevented me.’

  ‘Are we to hear how you do see it, or haven’t you worked that out yet?’

  I looked at him, an ugly bearded man at a desk, a window behind him framing a tree and a patch of sky. ‘It was a set of circumstances, my situation. Different from your situation, or Iris’s. Not better or worse, but different. My given situation.’

  ‘Is this supposed to mean anything?’

  ‘It means that I have to accept it and get on with my life; just as I would have to accept it if I was short-sighted or diabetic or had one brown eye and one blue eye!’

  ‘Don’t deceive yourself, dearie. There are some things which will always be denied you because of your past.’ He was bent on destruction, yet I told myself not to resist, to be still and let it happen. He spoke dryly and sombrely, but with a rhythm like a man reciting poetry in which he has a secret pride. ‘You were a solitary child; other children learnt the give and take of life as they learnt to read and spell, effortlessly and without pain; they grew naturally into their role of man or woman, knew instinctively how to love and be loved. You botched that. And there isn’t any late flowering in these matters, whatever you may read in the hairdressers’. Believe me, you will always have to struggle and make an effort, you will never carry off the major events of life lightly and easily. Marriage is probably not for you, or, if it comes, it will be a poor, late, twilight thing. You will have no children and you have no creative talent; you are not competitive so you will have no success in whatever career you may choose.’ He paused; perhaps he was holding a few good things in reserve, but if this was so it did not show in his face. ‘You think this is cruel, but it is as well to be aware of one’s limitations.’

  I did not answer him immediately but waited until the vibration of his words died down and the room was still. In a distant room the telephone rang. Beyond the window there was no movement in the leaves of the sycamore and the birds were silent, but far away across the fields came the sound of a train whistle, mournful as a marsh bird.

  I said to Dr. Laver, ‘You talk about things which will be denied me because of my past; but won’t there be other things which will be given because of my past? I loved my parents and they loved me. All that struggling to love and failing and trying again, the mattering to one another, never indifferent, holding together somehow: that’s progress of a kind, something to build on. I love my mother more now than I ever did, and I understand my father better. There’s more gain than loss in that.’

  His mouth twisted sourly, ‘If you want to be romantic.’

  ‘Perhaps you are being romantic, because you talk as though there is an ideal human situation against which we must measure our own. And you speak of flawed personalities, as though there were flawless personalities. I’m not sure that’s the way it is.’

  He half-closed his eyes and allowed his head to nod forward, telling me how much my foolishness bored him. Another person seemed to slip past my guard. I leant forward and banged on the desk. ‘You shall not sit there saying those things and then just switch off!’ The blow seemed to have little effect on him, but jarred something loose in me. I wasn’t taking things so quietly. ‘Single, childless, no marketable talent . . . that’s what you said, isn’t it?’ He did not answer and I went on, ‘Well, all right. That’s only a recipe for disaster if I compare myself with other people. But I don’t have to live Di’s life, or Iris’s, I have to live my own.’

  He said, with his chin sunk on his chest, ‘And what is this life which you will live?’

  I could not organise my thoughts to make his kind of sense.

  ‘Age thirty plus,’ he said to the blotting pad, ‘and she is not sure about that little matter of what her life will be.’

  ‘Do you know what will come to you tomorrow, or the next day?’

  ‘Nothing comes, except to the rare ones who have their moment written in the stars. You’re not of their number.’ He looked sour, a small, sour, destructive man wearing absurd clothes. ‘There is only one way for you, Ruth. Turn your back on the here and now, it’s not for you. I knew the moment when I saw you that you needed me. What a little ghost you were! But in your eyes I could see a quite different woman, and I knew that I was the person who could release her. Isn’t that true?’ I did not answer because I was thinking about those absurd clothes. He said, ‘Well, there you are, then! You must explore further and I shall show you how to do it.’

  I said, ‘When I was a child I found it a relief to take off my clothes at night. But that was a small relief. What would be truly wonderful would be to slough off my skin, to feel it wrinkled round my ankles and step right out of it.’

  ‘You’re flushed as though you had been drinking. Compose yourself.’

  ‘And then to step out of my room, my home; to move about the world without that hidden camera ordering, selecting, composing . . . That’s what I want! I want to get beyond Ruth Saunders.’

  ‘All this passion is misdirected. There is no beyond; nothing at all.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘It is all in here, we never get beyond self. The only exploration is inwards. We have the secrets of the universe within us. You are mad if you think otherwise.’

  ‘I’ll be mad, then, and leave the secrets of the universe to you. Maybe mine won’t be such a big adventure . . .’ I hesitated, but what did a little more misdirected passion matter? ‘It will be paradise.’

  There was a long silence, then he sa
id, ‘What is to become of me, then? Had you thought about that? No, I don’t suppose you had. You just thought of yourself wallowing in bliss.’ He looked at me for the first time as another man might have done, assessing me as a person not committed to him. ‘You are reckless.’ He was surprised as though I had deceived him. ‘I see now that there is a reckless streak in you.’

  The telephone on his desk rang and I picked up the receiver. Mrs. Libnitz said, ‘The police are here for Dr. Laver.’ She spoke in a voice from which all emotion had been ironed out, yet I had never heard such fear in anyone’s voice.

  I said, ‘Ask them to wait, will you?’

  When I told Dr. Laver he became quite calm and resting his elbows upon the desk, his chin supported on his folded hands, he seemed to reflect upon some unseen equation. Eventually, he looked up at me and said, ‘Will you come away with me, Ruth?’

  ‘Never again!’

  He persisted gravely, ‘You could save me, you know. It could be the most splendid thing you would ever do. As a Christian you have no alternative.’

  ‘I’m going to have my hands full saving myself.’

  He looked thoughtful, contemplating another move, and then said, ‘Do you realise what you will condemn me to if you refuse?’

  The cuff of his pink shirt was missing a button and fell away from his wrist. There was a long scratch just above the wrist. I rememembered him cradling the cat in his arms in Miss Maud’s drawing-room. He was looking at me. He rubbed his fingers up and down the long scar, his eyes holding mine. There was reproach and regret in his gaze, but also something which the twist of his mouth now underlined, a deep satisfaction that I had failed him. It was as though it was necessary to him to have this confirmation that there was nothing for him in the world outside his own skull.

  He said, ‘Ruthless as well as reckless. Well, well . . . Will you at least give me five minutes’ grace, keep the police talking . . .’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be wiser if you . . .?’

  ‘We have nothing more to say to each other, have we?’

  The police turned out to be one man, a rotund, apple-faced countryman holding his radio against his chest like a shield. Iris was talking to him and Douglas and Di were standing behind her making background noises which were reinforced by the policeman’s radio which talked incessantly. The reception hatch was closed and I could not see Mrs. Libnitz.

  Iris was saying, ‘I think you should understand, Inspector, that we knew nothing about this, nothing at all, until last week.’

  ‘Last week?’ The policeman’s radio jerked and peppered us with car registration numbers.

  ‘Yes, well, that may seem surprising, but I can assure you that the postal service is entirely to blame.’

  Di edged up to me and whispered, ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Gone down the back stairs, I hope.’

  ‘I’ve got Kenny’s car. I’ll take him to my place; he can shack down with us.’

  I moved forward in the hope of distracting attention from her departure, but there was no need because the door to Douglas’s quarters flew open and a man ran out, his body agitated as though his flesh had been scalded. He laid a hand on Douglas’s shoulder.

  ‘It’s okay, fellah; it’s okay.’ He turned anguished eyes on Iris. ‘Don’t say a word, sugar, until your lawyer comes; not one word. I know the way these guys operate and believe me it’s the same whichever side of the Atlantic you are, only there’s more pretence over here. They’ll talk soft to you now, but once they get you down to the jailhouse, it’s the same ball-game.’

  ‘If you would allow me . . .’ the policeman began.

  ‘No, sir, I would not allow, not any way at all! None of these folks says a word until their lawyer is present.’

  ‘If you will allow me to explain, sir, I am not charging anyone here . . .’

  ‘Who isn’t here?’ Eddie did an agonised count; he seemed to know us better than we knew him. ‘The doc. and the nurse. Well, that’s not a crime that I’ve yet heard.’

  The policeman was dumbfounded. I did not think he could be that good an actor. I said, ‘Iris, have you parked your car in the farm gateway again?’

  In the lull which followed this suggestion the policeman took his chance. ‘It’s about a Mr. Brodie,’ he said.

  Iris held up a hand before Eddie could come to Mr. Brodie’s defence. ‘What about him?’

  ‘He fell in front of a train, ma’am.’

  ‘Oh, my God, is he badly hurt?’

  ‘It was the London express, ma’am.’

  ‘How dreadful! Poor Mrs. Brodie. I must go to her at once.’

  ‘The lady seemed calm, like it was all a dream.’

  Di came running in. ‘He’s gone. I couldn’t see him anywhere.’ She turned on the policeman. ‘What had the poor sod done, anyway? He didn’t hypnotise any of the patients; only Iris.’ Iris began to explain to her. In a corner of the hall Eddie was addressing Douglas in an angry, throbbing voice, ‘Now take it easy, fellah, there isn’t anything you have to worry about, I’m here and I’ll see you through.’ Douglas said, ‘I am NOT worried. I don’t care what has happened to Dr. Laver or to Mr. Brodie; I don’t care about anything AT ALL except being left in peace!’

  I went up a few steps and looked down on them. I felt like Alice and I wanted to tell them they were all a pack of cards; but I couldn’t do that, so instead I went to my room and typed out my notice.

  Later that afternoon we found a note in Dr. Laver’s room saying that he had been called away to the bedside of a sick aunt and could not say when he would return; in the meantime, he wanted Iris to know that if she made use of material involving his sessions at the clinic, he would sue her.

  At the inquest on Mr. Brodie the coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death, although the village gossip, who had been on the station platform at the time of the disaster, put about a rumour that Mrs. Brodie had pushed Mr. Brodie.

  Weeks went by and there was no news of Dr. Laver. Iris eventually wrote to the Foundation. ‘I think there is no need now to mention that Dr. Laver passed this way,’ she said cheerfully. ‘The important thing is to look to the future.’ The future was represented by Iris’s new-found friend. Dr. Rainer Brown, who used hypnotism in his treatment of patients. Unlike Dr. Laver, Dr. Rainer Brown would welcome participation by his colleagues. ‘Once the patient is hypnotised we shall be able to put questions to him, even make a few suggestions, though that is a function which would have to be exercised with extreme caution,’ she told Douglas. ‘I suppose you might describe it as a variation on joint counselling.’

  Douglas was not so sure that this was a correct description of what would take place; but he saw that once again Iris would be in charge and no great demands would be made on him, so he raised no objection. Di decided to go along with it until she and Kenny were married, which, as she was not yet divorced, might be ‘quite a little while’.

  Mrs. Libnitz said she would not stay at the clinic now that it had become involved with the police. She and I left at the same time, a week before Dr. Rainer Brown took up his appointment.

  The last week-end in September I went to stay with my friend Dorothy. She was having an affair with a married man of formidable integrity who was devoted to his wife and six children and crippled mother-in-law. In comparison, my own problems hardly seemed worth mentioning; but just before I left I told her that as my father would probably marry again I would be leaving home. She hugged me and said, ‘Once you are in the driving seat, there will be no stopping you, Ruth; you’ll end up with that big family you always imagined. I promise you!’ I, in turn, prophesied that some totally unforeseen event would occur which would sort out her love affair so that they all lived happily ever after. We parted feeling infinitely better and having resolved very little.

  Chapter Thirteen

  One late autumn evening Stewart told me that he was to marry Eleanor. We were in the garden; I was raking fallen leaves from the rose beds and he had mown the lawn for
the last time this year. I felt a surge of feeling for the house, the garden, and the still, flat landscape beyond the garden wall.

  ‘You may find it hard to understand,’ Stewart said. ‘But I want you to know it doesn’t affect the way I feel about your mother.’

  ‘No, I’m sure it doesn’t; I think you are very wise,’ I said quickly, wanting it over and done with. I raked the leaves into a heap as I went on, ‘It’s rather a relief to me because I have given in my notice at the clinic; I am planning to go and live in London, and I wouldn’t like you to be alone here.’

  ‘To London?’ He was dismayed, and so was I because until this moment I had thought I would join Hilda in her teashop. He said, ‘I didn’t want to drive you away from your home, darling.’

  ‘You’re not driving me away; it’s more than time I left home.’

  He looked at me, disbelieving and reproachful. ‘I had so hoped we could all be happy together here.’ He was fighting his old battle again, trying to make everything conform to his purpose. It wasn’t so much that he was selfish, but that he was too sensitive to ignore the feelings of others and so his pleasure would always be marred by guilt. I felt sorry for him and for myself. I had wanted him to accept my departure and thereby make it easy for me. In a way, I suppose I wanted him to conform to my purpose.

  ‘Where will you live?’ he asked.

  I told him about Hilda’s offer, which convinced him that in one respect at least this was a practical proposition. ‘But I think you should train for a career.’ He went on to list the careers which were still open to me. ‘Life has much more to offer a woman now.’ He had spent years in the civil service doing a job for which he was not suited and now he offered the same prospect to me as though he was making me free of a better kind of life. But I did not want to be strait-jacketed by a profession. I wanted to keep my mind free to run along the wrong lines, like a little local track the railways have forgotten to close down, running away into a territory of its own.