GOOD DAUGHTERS

by MARY HOCKING

  Alice turned and ran into the kitchen to tell her parents. ‘Guy is here!’ she cried triumphantly. ‘He hasn’t been home. He came here first!’

  That night, Alice looked from the bedroom window towards Kashmir and prayed that one day her dreams would come true as Louise’s had done. She sighed into the warm night air. If only she had a clear idea of what her dreams were!

  Louise and Guy went to St Just-in-Roseland for their honeymoon. One day they visited Falmouth and went down to the harbour to look at the Herzogin Cecilie which was taking on a load of grain. ‘She is square rigged and jigger rigged fore and aft,’ Guy told Louise. It was a hot day and Louise had wanted to go swimming. Tomorrow it might rain.

  Guy was very moved as he looked at the ship. He had always had a fear that he would never break away from his mother. Now, he felt as exhilarated as if he had left home and taken to the wild sea. He held Louise tightly to him as he talked about the great days of the windjammers.

  Louise, listening, felt a pang in her stomach. Would it always be like this, Guy loitering behind, caught up in some never-never land while she waited for him to enjoy the present moment with her? The dazzle of sunlight on the water must have hurt her eyes, and momentarily she had the illusion that the bright world was tilting like the deck of a ship. She shook her head briskly to get herself back in balance.

  They lunched with Louise’s grandparents. Guy and Joseph talked about the Herzogin Cecilie until Louise said crossly, ‘That old ship won’t go on for ever.’

  Guy bowed his face over his plate, his mouth turned down. After lunch, he strolled down to the harbour with Joseph while Louise helped Ellen in the kitchen. He stood with the light breeze ruffling his hair, and told himself that this was the happiest moment of his life. He was free, yet he was not cast off, dangerously adrift. ‘A hard life, but you must learn a lot from it,’ he said, squaring his shoulders.

  Joseph said, ‘Ay,’ thinking of the frailty of that lively vessel out in the void, subject always to a force beyond men’s comprehension which could overturn it, or smash it on the rocks and the next day be blessedly calm. The main lesson he had learnt was that life is precarious.

  Guy said, ‘I suppose she’d take a lot of pounding?’ The ship was now part of his happiness and therefore to be preserved at all costs.

  ‘Yes, she’ll have weathered quite a few bad passages,’ Joseph said. ‘I’ll be sorry to see her go.’

  ‘Don’t you get tired of it?’ Louise asked her grandmother. ‘Always staring out to sea?’

  ‘There’s nothing I can do about it, so there’s no point in fretting,’ Ellen answered. ‘You have to learn to accept what can’t be changed, otherwise you do yourself and other people a lot of harm.’

  Louise laughed and kissed her cheek. ‘Whatever else we are, we Hocken women aren’t miseries, are we?’

  ‘You’re happy, are you?’ Her grandmother looked at her, smiling, but with that reserve in her manner which sometimes seemed to distance her from people with whom she had hitherto been talking intimately. ‘I was afraid perhaps you felt you had to.’

  ‘I only had to because I love him. Don’t you think he’s wonderful?’

  ‘You won’t always think he’s wonderful. That’ll be the time to talk about loving him.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  In December, Louise gave birth to a boy. Guy suggested he should be called George in honour of the old King, but Louise was having none of this romantic nonsense and he was christened James. A few weeks later the nation mourned the death of King George V. Romanticism suffered a more bitter blow in April, when the Herzogin Cecilie was driven ashore and holed near Bolt Head in Devon. Guy thought this a terrible thing to happen in the first year of his marriage.

  Louise had the baby in her parents’ home, but soon afterwards she and Guy moved to Grandmother Fairley’s house in Holland Park. As Ben walked along Pratts Farm Road in early summer, he wondered how the house would seem now that Louise had gone. It was some time since he had seen the Fairleys. At Easter he had been to America to see his father’s family, and before that he had been studying hard. The American visit had not been successful, and the Fairleys had acquired a greater importance for him.

  As he walked up the path he was greeted by a peculiar nasal wailing which sounded one moment like a demented train siren, the next a low animal snarl. The front door was unlatched; he pushed it gently and looked in. Claire, thin as a stalk, dressed in pink jumper, black knickers and stockings, was tap-dancing, red hair flaming round her shoulders, while a big, gawky girl was stamping up and down, making this incredible noise.

  Claire stopped as soon as she saw him. She hugged him excitedly and then demanded, ‘Do I look like Ginger Rogers?’

  Ben would have preferred that she look like herself. The other girl said, ‘I’m Heather. I’ve heard ever such a lot about you.’ Ben resented her friendliness: anyone would have thought that of the two of them, she was the one who was at home here.

  ‘Are your parents out?’ he asked Claire.

  ‘Daddy’s on the river with the sea cadets and Mummy is at the YWCA. We’re supposed to be mowing the lawn.’

  ‘It’s Alice’s birthday next week, isn’t it?’ He handed a small parcel to Claire. ‘Do you think you could hide this away until then?’

  ‘Alice isn’t having a party because she can’t have the Vaselines,’ she said regretfully. ‘So she is having Irene and Daphne to tea and then they are going to the theatre.’

  ‘The theatre?’ Mr Fairley himself could scarcely have sounded more disapproving.

  ‘Oh, it’s all the theatre and French films with Alice now.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to get on with mowing the lawn,’ Ben said. ‘I’m going to dinner with Louise and Guy.’

  ‘You’ll probably meet Alice on the way back,’ Claire told him. ‘She’s been there this afternoon helping, but she hasn’t been asked to dinner.’

  ‘I can’t see my sister helping me when I’m married,’ Heather said.

  ‘I’m never going to get married!’ Claire sounded fierce.

  ‘Well, I am!’ Heather was equally vehement. ‘And I’m going to have six children.’

  They began to argue. Heather laughing but Claire shrill. Ben was forgotten. Eventually, Heather said, ‘Marriage can wait. The lawn won’t.’ Claire put on a skirt and they clattered off to the garden.

  Ben stood for a moment in the doorway of the drawing-room. The house had changed. It did not fold around him as it had once seemed to, its warm embrace shutting out the world. Perhaps this was just because it was summer, windows open, a soft breeze stirring curtains, rustling the old Christmas wrapping paper and fir-cones in the empty grate. He was afraid, though, that it was more than that. The family were growing apart. Society should be divided into two categories, he thought: the wanderers and those who remain constant. And by constant he meant as fixed as the star by which the helmsman sets his course. But it began to look as though, willy-nilly, people were wanderers.

  He looked at his watch. He had to meet a girlfriend at Holland Park tube station. Not that he was in a hurry: he was not looking forward to the evening.

  He met Alice in the Uxbridge Road. She had slimmed down, and looked attractive in a sleeveless dress and a blue beret pertly tilted to one side of her head. As became one who would shortly be sixteen, she had taken a grip on herself in other ways as well, and was more composed. There was no doubting her pleasure in seeing him, however, and she greeted him with the old, faintly conspiratorial grin, as though they shared some innocent naughtiness.

  ‘Aren’t you coming to supper?’ he asked. ‘That’s spoilt my evening.’

  She looked towards the house outside which they were standing. ‘I’m going out with Daphne.’

  Daphne appeared at that moment, a cool little customer who greeted Ben with a raising of the eyebrows.

  ‘What are you two getting up to?’ he asked, his eyes on Daphne.

  ‘We’re going to listen to Mosley,�
� she said.

  ‘What!’

  ‘Alice is very ashamed about it. But I come to listen to Donald Soper with her, so she feels she can’t get out of it.’

  ‘You like Mosley?’

  ‘Very much.’ She returned his gaze in a manner to which he was unaccustomed in young girls, not provocative so much as appraising. It made him angry: he would have liked to teach her a thing or two.

  ‘He’s a Fascist.’

  ‘What then?’ Still that level gaze.

  ‘In Italy, if they didn’t like Mosely’s opinions they would put him away. In Germany, they’d do it if they didn’t like the shape of his nose.’

  ‘Why not come and listen, then, since you’re all for free speech?’

  She had hazel eyes, not hard or bold as brown eyes can be, but quite fearless. If it hadn’t been for his girlfriend waiting at Holland Park tube station, he might well have taken up the challenge. A girl worth saving from folly.

  The Drummonds went on a cruise in the middle of July. Angus, who was now working at the Foreign Office, had the house to himself. He had grown into a rather severe but handsome man. His face had the look of a person who is withholding something about himself, and this fascinated women. He was already beginning to experience difficulty in living up to the promise of his looks.

  Sometimes he saw Katia passing the house. One Saturday morning when he was driving his father’s car, he offered to give her a lift.

  ‘I’m only going to the market,’ she said.

  ‘Never mind. Jump in.’

  She hauled herself in beside him, getting her skirt caught up inelegantly around her thighs. He drove a little way towards the market and then turned into a sidestreet. He stopped outside some lock-up garages; there was a nonconformist chapel on the other side of the road, closed at this hour. It seemed as secluded a spot as he was likely to find between here and the market.

  ‘And what have you been doing with yourself?’ he asked in the amused voice which he affected when talking to young women – a tone which suggested there was something faintly ludicrous about their affairs.

  Katia told him she had been taking music lessons. She had decided to be a great violinist, and her eyes shone as she talked about her father who, she said, played at concert halls all over the world. Her dark gold hair was knotted on top of her head, a style which she had not mastered but which, drawing the hair away from the face, served to highlight the curve of the high cheekbones and the winged eyes, which she had further emphasized with lavish application of mascara. Angus, whose taste normally ran to the soignée and chic, was startled to find himself exposed to so garish a display. He was both attracted and repelled, an unsatisfactory state in which to find oneself. Katia talked in a disjointed, breathless fashion, her hands moving constantly, adjusting her hair, touching her cheeks, the lobes of her ears, as though to assure herself that she was still all of a piece. While he talked, her fingers hovered around her mouth, tapping her teeth, patting her lips, caressing her chin. She was so conscious of her body that the sun falling on her through the windscreen made every nerve shrill, and she was incapable of paying attention to what he was saying.

  ‘You’re the nearest thing to perpetual motion I’ve come across,’ he teased. ‘Are you always so restless?’

  She laughed and turned her head away, while her fingers moved rapidly over neck, breasts and left ribcage.

  ‘What is it, then?’ he asked.

  She turned to him, mouth half open, a pulse beating in her throat. He was by now quite agitated himself, and placed a hand on her thigh.

  ‘That’s what old men do in the cinema,’ she said.

  ‘And what do you do?’

  ‘I get up and move.’

  He put his other arm around her shoulders, pressing her against the seat. She was becoming very excited. He had not expected this and was not sure what he should do; his lovemaking was usually carefully planned to avoid this kind of confusion. The feeling of unpreparedness was disturbing. They could go to his home, only the maids might talk, certainly would talk. His hand, moving up her thigh, came to the gap between stockings and knickers. ‘I’ll drive you back to my house,’ he said. She was shaking convulsively. Angus, alarmed and rapidly losing his hold on the situation, said, ‘Try holding your breath.’

  ‘That’s for hiccups, stupid!’

  He tried to start the car, but his hands were sweating and slipped on the gear lever; he swore angrily and stalled the engine. She opened the door and, getting out, began pacing up and down on the pavement, cradling her breasts and muttering ‘Stop it, stop it, stop it!’ to herself.

  He got the engine started and called to her, ‘Come on, we’ll go to my house.’

  She shook her head and went on walking up and down, taking gulps of air. Rage boiled in him. ‘You’re not going to back down now, my lovely.’ He was mortified to hear himself saying this in a hoarse voice as though he was playing melodrama.

  She began one of her rapid examinations of her flesh. ‘GET IN!’ he shouted.

  She turned and ran. He called after her, ‘You’re a dirty little Jewess! A dirty little Jewess!’

  Immediately it was said his passion evaporated. He was horrified. She had excited him, made him ridiculous, and then rejected him. In his humiliation he had behaved in a manner worthy of his father. He had only said it to hurt, he had not meant it; but it was unpleasant to realize how readily the words had come to him. He must make amends for his own sake as much as hers. She was running down the road. He jumped out of the car, stumbled, and fell on one knee, ripping a hole in his trousers. Grimly, he picked himself up and limped after her. He could feel blood trickling down his leg. He saw her cross the main road, heading for the market. He lurched after her, dodging in front of a bus. The driver shouted angrily, ‘Tired of life, mate? What’s wrong with the railway arch?’

  Katia had reached the market. He was not far behind, but it was crowded and there was a maze of stalls. A girl got in his way, he sidestepped and she sidestepped; she giggled and said, ‘Shall we dance?’ Angus, extricating himself, fell against a greengrocer’s stall and upset a mound of oranges. The stallholder came at him angrily, and Angus thrust money at him – not apparently enough, because the man snarled, ‘Think I’m giving them away, do you?’ Angus dodged behind a booth and found himself by a stall with an array of patent medicines. The stallholder greeted him warmly, ‘Now, ’ere’s a gent knows where to come!’ He picked up a bottle containing a bright purple fluid. ‘There you are, sir, stops bleeding, prevents nasty consequences.’ People laughed. Angus saw Katia in the distance and called to her. The stallholder said, ‘I wouldn’t like to think what might not ’appen with a leg like that, guv.’

  He had dreamt of situations like this when he was a child, himself the clown, people surrounding him, mocking and hostile. If only he could catch Katia now and make amends, all the beastliness would be drawn from him and he would be clean and whole like other people. He really believed this, just as once, counting paving-stones, he had believed that if he did not walk on the odd ones his father would not torment his mother that day, and when he came home from school he would not find her crying. He called, ‘Katia! Katia!’

  She dodged behind a rack of secondhand clothes. Following her, he became involved with a woman who was grabbing a coat; she elbowed him aside. ‘I saw it first!’ He tried to push past her and she kicked him viciously on the shin. In a rage, he picked up another coat and threw it over her head. ‘Have as many as you want,’ he shouted.

  By the time he had fought free of the secondhand clothes he had lost sight of Katia. He made his way out of the market and stood on the pavement, cold and shaking. How old was she – seventeen? What would happen if she told people he had assaulted her? He saw himself in court. But it would only be her word against his, and who would believe her – what, after all, was she? The words were waiting to be spoken again. He gave a little sob. A policeman came up to him.

  ‘You all right, sir?’
/>
  The man’s immediate assumption that, whatever had happened, he was the victim and not the wrongdoer, was comforting.

  ‘I had a bit of trouble in there,’ he answered unsteadily.

  ‘Better make sure you’ve got your wallet, sir.’

  Angus felt in his jacket pocket; his wallet had gone. The loss of the wallet seemed to set the seal of doom on the morning.

  Katia was walking towards Holland Park. She had not liked what Angus had said to her, but now that she had outstripped him she was no longer afraid: she felt exhilarated, and even wished she had let him catch up with her. What would have happened if she had? Her precocious physical behaviour had often landed her in situations for which emotionally she was not ready; but she sensed that this was changing now. She stopped at a greengrocer’s shop and bought cherries. Then she walked slowly to Holland Park where she sat under the trees, eating the cherries and seeing how far she could spit the stones. Lovemaking was a bit of a farce. That was a discovery: she would be able to handle it now she knew that. In future she wouldn’t be gauche, she would be soignée like Claudette Colbert. Life was opening out for her, she could feel it in the air and in her body. She was in command, and the agitation within her quietened. She would take her time and not let people rush her. In one of the houses which backed onto the park, someone was playing a violin. She listened, and gradually the music transformed her excitement into something deeper and richer. A sudden sound – a car backfiring, perhaps – agitated the birds and for a few moments the sky was dark with wings, but Katia did not notice this activity. The birds flew higher and higher until they lost form and semblance and became ashes blown in the sky. Katia sat thinking of all that lay ahead and was happy.

  Grandmother Fairley was no longer able to live alone and remained with Aunt May. Although very frail, she had seemed brighter in spirit since Louise’s marriage, a subject of absorbing interest which occupied her thoughts and helped to explain and justify her mournful attitude to life. Aunt May contrived to agree with everything her mother said without seeming to take any of it in.