The BRIGHT DAY

by MARY HOCKING

  Moray said, ‘These things happen.’

  ‘But when they happen to an unmarried woman of Hannah’s age the results are unpredictable. There’s a side to Hannah that isn’t all sweetness and light – or haven’t you noticed? I explained all this to the police and they understood all right. Policemen know a deal more psychology than they are given credit for.’

  Moray raised his head and looked out over the humped hills which stretched away into the blueness of evening seemingly undisturbed by man. He did not think he could go on any longer without something to hold on to. Now, in this lonely place, where there was only the sound of the larks and the wind in the long grass, he saw that one must grasp at something; it was no use waiting, as he had waited, for some kind of inner truth, one must grasp at something. Wasn’t that what scientists did? In order to arrive at the truth about something, one postulated a theory: the theory, of course, must be tested, but first you must postulate. . . .

  He said, ‘Yes, I see what you mean about Hannah.’ Hannah was an unmarried woman, nearing forty; he should have taken her out to dinner, told her how much he depended on her, she might have settled for that. If Cope was not telling the truth, then one was left with an alternative that was altogether too bizarre.

  He postulated that Cope was telling the truth. And almost immediately, some block in his mind was removed and ideas ran out like a network of little veins drawing inspiration from this central theme. He must trust Cope. It had all started – his candidacy, the campaign – because he had trusted Cope. So now, he must go through with it. If he trusted Cope he would be all right. The reason why things had been going wrong was because he had failed to trust his own judgement: Cope and his judgement were one and the same. There was a kind of logic about it. He took a great gulp of air; the air was cooler now, he felt refreshed for the first time. He seemed, also, to be drawing himself together again, to be firm and whole; he could make affirmations – ‘Where I put my trust, I am not easily shaken.’

  He looked down at Cope and saw that he was still pale and that his face had become rather fine drawn. His body was thin, beneath the taut shirt the ribs were outlined too sharply. The illness had taken its toll of him. Perhaps it had been an effort to come so far? It occurred to him that Cope was one of those men who will push themselves to the far limit of physical endurance and never complain. This idea excited him. How extraordinarily fortunate he had been to be served by this man, and how ill he had rewarded him! He must have felt guilt about Cope for some time, now it stirred heavily within him. He put his hand out and ran it along the grass, close to Cope’s body. He wasn’t quite sure what he was doing, but a tremendous longing for absolution surged through him. It was the most intense feeling he had ever had; it was so intense that it frightened him and he held back from touching Cope, digging his nails into the earth which was hard and dry, pitted with sharp stones.

  Cope said, ‘We’ll go a little farther.’

  ‘You’re not too tired?’

  Cope looked surprised at the question as though his physical condition was of no possible interest to anyone, least of all himself. He got up and said, ‘The brow of the next hill.’

  Moray was breathless and his legs were shaky. The path was stony and he was not wearing suitable shoes; besides him. Cope walked more easily although he still had that strangely exciting look of a man whose resources are severely stretched. They reached the top of the hill and Moray, who had long ago lost his whereabouts, was surprised to see ahead of him the lights of Scotney reflected in a calm, dark sea.

  ‘How far away it seems!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘And how ridiculous to suggest that “Heffernan’s Hill”, as they are calling it, will be anything more than a modernistic Christmas tree! I think it would look rather beautiful, don’t you?’

  From this bird’s eye view, things did indeed seem different; the lights to the west petered out aimlessly, a scintillating spiral would certainly be more exciting visually.

  ‘I can see it could be made quite attractive,’ Moray said cautiously.

  ‘One needs to get things in perspective,’ Cope said. ‘Heffernan is coming down next week, he means to throw a party at the Imperial Hotel and try to influence people if not win friends. I thought we might bring him up here, impress upon him the importance of making the development compact so that it doesn’t straggle onto the Downs and spoil everything – the drama of complete contrast. I think he might go for that.’

  ‘Yes. We shall need to do some hard thinking before we see him, though.’ But it was good to have an aim in view. Something could be made of the West Front development; it would mean a fight with Heffernan, but surely no large-scale scheme ever got off’ the ground without considerable amendments having been made to the original plans. The important thing was not to be frightened by the size of the project: thinking small was no less dangerous than thinking big.

  As they came down the ridge, it was nearly dark. There were hares leaping in the field ahead of them; they stopped to watch.

  ‘There must be at least six of them,’ Cope said softly. He laughed, ‘Oh, what joy!’ He waited, not wanting to disturb them. A breeze was getting up; it was the first time for Weeks Moray had felt cool air brushing against his face and he began to shiver. When they eventually crossed the field, and the hares scattered. Cope said, ‘What a bore for them, two of these wretched humans still abroad at this time of the evening!’ One of the hares had wandered onto the road and was caught in the headlamps of the car as they drove down the hill; it ran frantically from side to side, dazzled by the light. Cope stopped the car and turned out the lights. He wound down the window. ‘There it goes! Look!’ The escape of the hare really mattered to him. The cool air now seemed to have penetrated the whole of Moray’s body and he could not stop shivering. He began to talk, hoping to distract Cope’s attention from the hare which must by now have disappeared.

  ‘What shall I do about Hannah?’

  ‘I shouldn’t do anything if I were you.’ Cope started the engine again. ‘Let her make the action.’

  ‘She’s been seeing something of Lomax.’

  ‘So I gathered.’

  ‘I’m not going to feel very easy having her around.’

  ‘Don’t do anything heavy-handed. It never looks good, particularly if you’re dealing with someone who is a bit off-balance.’

  Cope drove into Scotney and along the promenade to the harbour. ‘You get better food here than anywhere else,’ he said. ‘Must give Mario his due.’

  It was the kind of gesture which he enjoyed, but which seemed to Moray to be rather foolhardy. Moray’s first impressions were unfortunate as he tripped over some obstacle in the narrow foyer; a man who was on his way out and a waiter helped him to his feet. Cope was not there, he had gone into the gents.

  ‘It looks as though they are full,’ Moray said to him when he emerged.

  ‘I booked a table. Hullo, been in a fight already?’

  Moray glanced at a mirror on the wall; his right cheek was slightly bruised.

  ‘And your hands, man! However did you do that?’

  Moray went into the gents to wash his hands. He had torn the finger tips and he whimpered as he bathed them. He could not handle the cutlery very well so they took a long time over each course. The service was slow; Cope did not seem to mind, but Moray was aware that people at other tables were served more expeditiously. The food, however, was good and so was the wine. It was at the coffee stage when Moray realised that he had lost his keys; he was fumbling for a cigarette lighter when he made the discovery.

  ‘Perhaps they dropped out of your pocket when you fell over in the foyer?’ Cope suggested.

  ‘It’s hardly likely.’ But Moray spoke to the waiter, who also thought it unlikely, although he departed to make a search. A few moments later, he returned, smiling triumphantly. ‘Under the umbrella stand, sir,’ he said, as he handed the keys to Moray.

  ‘The files were everywhere, left open, on table and chairs
,’ the young man told Mario Vicente resentfully; he was something of an expert in his field and felt that his talents had been wasted, it was like calling in a surgeon to stop a nose bleed. ‘He even had some of the interesting bits marked with scraps of paper.’

  ‘You photographed everything we needed?’ Mario asked sharply. ‘Not just the bits he thought were important.’

  ‘I got everything. It was too easy. Oh, there was one thing.’ He brightened at the recollection. ‘A letter on the shelf over the fire; it hadn’t been opened and it was postmarked over two weeks ago! Can you imagine that?’ This way of managing one’s affairs had shocked him.

  Mario said, ‘I cannot imagine what it was if you do not tell me.’

  ‘It was from a woman. You never saw anything like it! Pages and pages, saying things like how much she loved him, and how he had changed her life, and how proud she was of knowing him, and how she wished she could be worthy of him. . .’

  ‘And how she has found another man?’ Mario showed a brief flicker of interest, and the young man laughed delightedly and nodded.

  ‘I never saw anything like it,’ he said. ‘What kind of man is this Moray?’

  Mario spread his hands out and gave a little shrug. ‘Obviously, a very worthy man. . . .’

  ‘And Cope?’ the young man said persuasively. ‘I think we need to talk to Cope.’

  ‘No. You leave Cope alone.’

  He didn’t want to become entangled with Cope. He had seen men like him, not many, but one or two, who did not conform to any pattern of behaviour which he could understand. If he was going to have a confrontation with a man, he had to understand him. He was no longer a gambler; he took calculated risks, but he didn’t gamble any longer. It made him sad because it was a sign he was growing old. But age had its compensations, you learnt to wait. You would get nothing out of a man like Cope by inflicting pain on him, as this energetic young man so longed to do; but leave him to his own devices and eventually he would destroy himself. That was another lesson you learnt as you grew older: to sit back and let other people do the hard work for you.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Hannah was frightened when she left her friends’ house in Pelham Square on Friday. She walked to the office. A walk would calm her down. ‘Now, just what is it that you are making this fuss about?’ she asked herself as she waited to cross from the square to Villiers Street. ‘You have written Neil a letter saying that you don’t feel you can continue to manage the office, but offering to do his personal letters for him. This morning you are going to the office to see how he feels about it. The only really difficult thing will be confronting him and Rodney Cope for what may be no longer than a quarter of an hour.’ It was the same argument she had put to herself when she was a child on the way to the dentist. Why is it that one’s moments of happiness all seem to take place in time and are whisked away almost before one has noticed them, whereas the black moments are as long as a lifetime?

  As she turned into Pont Street, she said to herself, ‘Let him do the talking. He will probably have decided that the arrangement won’t suit him. In a few minutes, you may be walking out of here completely free of any obligation.’ She went up the stairs, trying to summon the courage to walk into the room quietly.

  Neil was on the telephone when she entered the room; Cope was standing by the window, looking down. ‘Hullo Hannah,’ he said. ‘Did you see my car down there when you came along? I believe the police have moved it, the bastards!’

  ‘I didn’t notice.’ She walked across to the window and looked down into the street; she was so close to him her shoulder touched his arm, it was like looking over a precipice. ‘You wouldn’t be able to see from here anyway, would you? Not if you’ve parked in the usual place.’

  Neil put the receiver down. He said, ‘Hullo Hannah. Thanks for the letter. Come and sit down and we’ll talk about it.’ He sounded like a doctor giving a consultation.

  Hannah sat on the only spare chair. Cope remained by the window. They had not been so formal with one another since she first came to work for Neil. There was a pause while Neil read through the letter again; she looked down at her dress and followed the pattern which fortunately was quite an intricate one. Now that she had started quietly it began to seem possible that she might keep it up.

  ‘You don’t feel there is enough work here to keep you going all the week, is that it?’ Neil might have been asking where the pain was.

  Hannah said, ‘That’s it.’

  ‘What had you in mind, then?’

  ‘I thought if I put it in a letter it would give you time to think about it,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you happy about my suggestions?’

  Neil frowned down at the letter and turned over a page; he read as though it was written in a foreign language and he was having to translate as he went along. Hannah wished she knew what Rodney Cope was doing, she would have been more comfortable if he had not been behind her back; she visualised him sitting on the window ledge, smiling.

  ‘You will come into the office, whenever I’m here, is that right? Neil said. ‘But apart from that, if there is any work you would like to do it at home?’

  Hannah said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t like the office?’ he asked.

  ‘You’ve got your jacket off, and you still look hot,’ she pointed out.

  This annoyed him. She sensed that he had expected her to become flustered and apologise for herself. He was not prepared to meet her on equal terms. Behind her. Cope said, ‘It’s a damned uncomfortable place, Neil. I can hardly stand upright in it. By the middle of the afternoon it must be like an oven. I don’t know how Hannah has stood it for so long.’

  Hannah was overcome by gratitude at this unexpected intervention; tears came into her eyes. ‘We’ve worked together a long time,’ she said. ‘I felt I should offer something.’

  Neil was somewhat mollified by her distress. He said, ‘Yes, of course,’ and put the letter aside. ‘Well, let’s give it a try and see how it works, shall we?’

  ‘There is one thing,’ Cope said. ‘How about the post? Gould you come in and deal with it on days when I shan’t be here? When I am here, if there is anything that needs doing I could run it over to you.’ He sounded as though he was trying to make things easy for her.

  ‘We could try it that way.’ Her voice was husky and she cleared her throat.

  Neil said, ‘Don’t be upset about it, Hannah. We’ve been thinking that we can’t keep this place on much longer. After next month when the lease expires, I shall probably run things from my flat until we’ve got the organisation sorted out.’

  ‘What about coffee?’ Cope suggested. ‘Are we allowed to ask for that under the new regime?’

  He injected that little bit of raillery into his voice that was needed to lighten the atmosphere. Hannah got up to fetch the kettle, but Cope said, ‘I’ll fill it for you.’ He went out of the room with the kettle. Neil and Hannah were left alone. Hannah said, ‘I’m sorry about this, Neil.’

  ‘You must do as you think fit, Hannah.’ He picked up a letter from the tray on the table and began to read it, his face stiff with resentment.

  ‘Would you prefer to call it a day, now?’ she asked.

  ‘No. We’ll give it a try.’ He spoke as though he was reluctantly agreeing to a tiresome arrangement which was entirely for her benefit. ‘I can’t say I’m very impressed with the way you have gone about it.’ Before she could reply. Cope came in with the kettle. His eyes met Hannah’s, and for a moment it was as though they were allies, people who had played their parts sensibly only to be badly let down by a third party.

  ‘Don’t be such a miserable bugger, Neil!’ It was the first time Hannah had ever heard anyone speak so tersely to Neil. The result was unexpected; Neil’s anger evaporated and his attitude became almost fawning. She turned away to get out coffee and cups. Cope continued to make fun of Neil, rather savage fun which included a few home-truths about behaving as though he was god – ‘a little prep. s
chool god’. Neil was giggling nervously, almost as though he enjoyed it. Hannah waited impatiently for the kettle to boil.

  Neil said, ‘You must be right about this room, Hannah. It has a bad effect on all of us. Perhaps we should close down for the summer. I could dictate to you on the beach. It would probably be good for the citizens to actually see their Member at work. What do you think, Rodney?’

  Cope said, ‘I think I’d like coffee now.’ His voice was flat and tired.

  When Hannah gave Neil his cup of coffee he said to her in a bantering tone which was not natural to him, ‘What are your plans for this morning? Do they include a little note-taking?’

  ‘That’s why I’m here. Do you want to start now, or drink your coffee?’ She had never expected to speak to him so brusquely.

  Cope said, ‘That’s my girl!’

  Hannah took notes and it was agreed she would type at home and let Moray have the letters at his flat early on Monday morning. She did not say she was staying with friends in Pelham Square.

  When she left, her footsteps flagged as she walked down Villiers Street. There had been little drama of any kind; but an association had come to an end and her reactions were inexplicable and unreasonable. There was no doubt which of the two men she should hate, and which she should pity; but she found she did not hate either of them, and pity was not reserved for Neil alone. Indeed, she seemed to have moved further from Neil, whereas a relationship which was by no means a hostile one had been established with Rodney Cope who had shown magnanimity in his dealings with her. She was aware that this was not a socially acceptable attitude. But at the moment she did not see these strange events in relation to society, the need to see justice done, or the upholding of moral values; it was all happening inside her.

  She had promised Lomax she would telephone him when she left the office; he was at a civic lunch, but had insisted she should speak to him. ‘You will probably interrupt some boring speech.’ She told him what had happened and he asked anxiously, ‘How do you feel?’