The Anathema Stone

by John Buxton Hilton

  As it was, the chaos was like a loose scrum. Too many people were trying to attend to the child; the haemorrhage was alarming. Too many people wanted to examine the fallen lamp. Children were crying; a teenage girl had fainted. Even the vicar’s voice failed to rally the dissipated herd.

  Then Horrocks called for his crowd scene, a popular event in the play. He got all his rhubarb-mongers on to the stage and thus off the floor. Elspeth and another woman were able to deal soberly with Susan Brightmore; and Kenworthy was looking over the electrician’s shoulder at the spotlight.

  ‘Someone ought to be shot in the county drama store, loaning stuff out in this condition. The bracket was practically shorn through.’

  Kenworthy ran the tip of his finger over the torn metal. Then he slipped out and made the telephone call that one thing or another had caused him to put off.

  When he returned, Davina was back in the Hall. She was wearing an austere two-piece costume in dove-grey and had put her hair up: a docile gesture, and an effect well suited to the scene they were going to play. She went and sat at the back of the room, swinging her legs from a perch on the Boys’Club vaulting-horse. Kenworthy lifted himself up beside her.

  ‘What’s an Ultimate Anarchist?’ he asked.

  She laughed with stage bitterness.

  ‘It’s obvious who you’ve been talking to.’

  ‘Well, you set that up. What’s an Ultimate Anarchist?’

  She recited her answer like a well-drilled catechism.

  ‘An Ultimate Anarchist believes that the height of moral perfection will be reached when life can be conducted without the need for external discipline of any kind, no rules, no exhortations even, no sanctions. The Ultimate Anarchist applies that principle to his own life, and strives by every non-violent means within his power to spread the pattern to the rest of society.’

  ‘Bravo. And do you think that such idealism is worth pursuing, human nature being what it is?’

  ‘I think that the earliest Christian churches came near to it. And the first settlers in Pennsylvania.’

  ‘Inappropriate examples. In both cases they had rules and spiritual inspiration.’

  ‘I said, came near to it.’

  There was an impatient crack in her voice.

  ‘Neither party succeeded in bequeathing either peace or saintliness to the next generation.’

  ‘It takes time. Failure is no excuse for not trying again.’

  ‘And that’s what the Beaker Folk believe in? Indiscipline?’

  ‘That’s the wrong term for it.’

  She was now angry with him.

  ‘You say the same things that everyone else of your age-group does.’

  ‘It seems to me too much like a damned good excuse for doing whatever you like,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think you’ve met any of the commune yet, have you? Except John?’ She was still much put out, but then they were called on stage and played through their dialogue with reasonable efficiency. Kenworthy did not extemporize this time. He had made no pretence at learning anything from the later stages of the play, and kept his script in his hand. Davina was in crisp command of the character of the curate’s young wife and gave him all the help he needed. But when Horrocks said, ‘Cut, home and bed!’ she walked away from Kenworthy as if their conversation on the vaulting-horse still rankled. Before he could isolate her in the still loosely-crowded room, the news was broken by someone who had just come in hot with it that Colonel Noakes had died in hospital earlier in the evening. Though not an old man, he had a constitution weakened by the deprivations of a prisoner-of-war camp and by a lifetime of lonely self-catering. He had been unable to stand up to pneumonia following secondary shock. Kenworthy began to pay very close attention indeed to Davina Stott.

  She had got herself into a tight group of school-friends, with whom she had been laughing at nothing when the news was brought in. She heard it. They all heard it. And then, after a few subdued seconds, she was the one who started the conversation where it had left off. They were reminding each other of catch-phrases from a television situation comedy.

  Colonel Noakes meant nothing to her at all; she did not pause to think of the passing of the man. Yet four nights ago she had been crouching under his knees, stroking his ribs under his pullover, not stopping to think what a sport he was to let himself in for it. Kenworthy came up behind her.

  ‘I’ll walk you home, Davina.’

  For seconds it looked as though she was going to snub him.

  ‘You and I have a conversation to finish. We were not making much progress, remember, under the eagle eye of Mrs Scadbolt.’

  She turned to him then with her most angelic of smiles. It was similar to the way in which she had reacted to Horrocks’s rebuke. It seemed that when she had been in the wrong she could snap out of her mood suddenly, behave as if it had never happened, could perhaps even convince herself that it hadn’t. It was as if she had not even remembered.

  ‘Good idea. If there’s anyone else down our lane tonight, they’ll be too wrapped up in their own affairs to be eavesdropping.’

  She took his arm as they left the grounds of the Hall, leaned her head for a moment against his shoulder, as if they were Gertrude and Gabbitas, then straightened herself up, said, ‘This won’t do, will it?’ and walked respectably enough at his side.

  ‘I don’t like that hat-stand,’ she said. ‘There was one in a furniture shop in Scarborough I fancied, but I did not see how we would ever get it home.’

  ‘But we are living in the nineteenth century, dear girl. If you saw one in Outer Mongolia that appealed to you, I would have it brought to Spentlow.’

  Thus reciting, they pulled themselves away from the crowd. As they were approaching the narrow entrance to the lane, beyond the pool of light from the last of Spentlow’s few lamps, she began to lean against him again. He put her gently away.

  ‘We are not blind beggars, afraid that we might get lost. I’d better warn you that I am one of those people who have rather a horror of physical contact.’

  ‘Like Lawrence of Arabia?’

  ‘Let’s say the comparison ends there.’

  ‘You’re not doing so badly in the play.’

  ‘Let’s forget the play for ten minutes. You were telling me this morning how worried you were.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’

  ‘Well, are you? Or aren’t you?’

  ‘Don’t sound so severe, Mr Kenworthy. Of course I am worried. Daddy doesn’t answer my letters. He has access once a month, but he no longer comes for me. He doesn’t remember my birthday. I just can’t make contact.’

  ‘You haven’t done anything to upset him?’

  ‘She did cover a lot of ground with you this afternoon, didn’t she?’

  ‘I always listen to both sides. Now I’m listening to yours. And if I ask blunt questions, it’s because I want unembroidered answers. That’s my way, and if you don’t like it, you’d better not come to me with your troubles.’

  ‘Sorry, Mr Kenworthy.’

  ‘Has he another lady-friend, perhaps? Is he thinking of marrying again? Maybe someone who wouldn’t want to be strung up with his past?’

  ‘Daddy won’t marry again. The way Mummy saddled him with maintenance, he couldn’t afford to keep two homes. I don’t know how he manages the one and a half that he’s stuck with at present. That’s what it amounts to. He’s in a bed-sitter. And I may say I’m costing him a pretty penny myself.’

  ‘Are you proud of that?’

  ‘Why do you say things in that tone of voice, Mr Kenworthy?’

  He ignored the question.

  ‘You said this morning that his money is still coming through?’

  ‘It has to. It’s paid through the court.’

  ‘And why did they break up?’

  ‘Marriage hopelessly on the rocks. Mummy drank. She’s been dried out three times. Always at Daddy’s expense. In clinics. Once even since they parted; she always goes back to it. She always will.’<
br />
  They had drawn abreast of her bungalow now. No sign of the light or life. Kenworthy led her further down the lane, towards Sidi Barrani.

  ‘She’s an alcoholic – and yet she got custody of you?’

  ‘Daddy’s too much of a gentleman. He took the blame for their failure. Admitted mental cruelty. Sometimes I think he really believes it was his fault.’

  ‘It takes two to make most situations. And you don’t think that you yourself might have contributed to their troubles? You have to agree that it could be on the cards.’

  ‘It is on the cards. It was true. I was a little bitch sometimes.’

  An odd confession; sudden and factual, without tone of remorse. It might be because she knew how to win and hold attention.

  ‘But I’ve learned better now.’

  ‘Does your mother think so?’

  ‘Oh, her –!’

  ‘She is an interested party.’

  They had now reached the Colonel’s cottage, and Kenworthy still went on walking, down towards the ‘Roman’ paving. She seemed to show reluctance to come with him, but stayed at his elbow. When they reached the spot where the Colonel had fallen, he began shuffling his feet. He drew his torch suddenly out of his pocket and shone it on the ground. The beam spread over the stone in an elongated oval.

  ‘I don’t think you liked playing Gertrude to Colonel Noakes’s Gabbitas, did you?’

  ‘Not half as much as I do with you, that’s for certain. He should never have been asked to do the part. Oh, don’t think I’m not sorry about what happened to him. But he was ruining the play.’

  He showed her the place where the stone had been tampered with.

  ‘Somebody did this with a trowel. Someone who lived near at hand, I think – near enough to slip back here and fill it in again. It was your dog that someone fixed into a snare. He didn’t get into it himself. Someone tied a knot in two tufts of grass. Someone who likes taking country walks?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re getting at, Mr Kenworthy.’

  ‘I’m suggesting that there are some people who would go to any lengths, even to get something trivial, if they wanted it badly enough.’

  He stopped talking, and she was in no hurry to puncture the silence. For seconds they stood motionless, half turned to each other. Then she came smartly to life and turned away from him.

  ‘Please let me go home. I’d hate to be someone you seriously suspected, Mr Kenworthy.’

  ‘You’re a strange girl, Davina.’

  ‘And not a very happy one,’ she said. ‘I must go now.’

  She began to walk up the lane. He walked a yard or two from her and they did not linger outside her gate.

  Elspeth had already gone to bed when he got in. She was lying on her side with the sheets pulled up over her cheeks. He quietly emptied his pockets into the drawer of his bedside table. But she was not asleep. The onslaught started abruptly. She was primitively angry.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Exploring. Seeing a young lady home.’

  ‘Are you out of your senses?’

  ‘No – merely reeling a little.’

  ‘You know that that girl has a crush on you?’

  ‘Is that the opinion of the Amalgamated Ladies of Spentlow?’

  ‘It’s the opinion of my own eyes and ears. She’s making a set at you, and a man of your age and experience ought to have seen it.’

  ‘I doubt if any crush will have survived what I said to her just now.’

  ‘You’re falling into the very trap that catches the most reasonable of men. You let yourself feel flattered by her attentions. I suppose you’re at what they call the dangerous age. And I’m sorry if I’ve not been feeling too –’

  ‘If you had heard our line of talk –’

  ‘The last I saw of you, you were crossing the Green like a couple from Hardy: “Yonder a maid and her wight –”’

  ‘That was before I told her I can’t stand physical contact.’

  ‘So what have you been doing all this time?’

  ‘Showing good reason why I might suspect her of murder.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just made her think. I don’t think I did any harm. The local police will be here in the morning. I’ve telephoned them. I’ll be glad to have it out of my hands.’

  ‘You really think that that child –? Well, of course, you can’t call her a child –’

  ‘She’s a child, right enough, in a number of ways. A clever one. A consummate actress and an intuitive manipulator of people. She likes the limelight – she must have it. Must be different, must be distinguished. It doesn’t always come off, so she’s what’s known as mixed up. Her mother had her at Child Guidance Clinics before they came here.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  He had taken off his shirt and vest and went out to wash. When he came back, Elspeth was motionless again. But again she pulled the bed clothes away from her face.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘She’s mixed up, as most kids are at some time or other. But she doesn’t sort herself out as most kids do, which is by practical compromise. She can’t do that, because she’s too positive. Getting yourself unmixed – we’ve all had to do it at some time or other – is the process of socialization, adapting to your environment. Davina can’t adapt. Her ego won’t let her. When her ego is threatened – I saw it happen just now, when John Horrocks ticked her off for exhibitionism – she sometimes retreats. But there are times when she can’t. All this, by the way, is pure hypothesis. Let’s call it Possibility One.’

  ‘And Possibility Two?’

  ‘That’s she’s a psychopath.’

  ‘I’m never quite sure what that word means.’

  ‘What Davina Stott is.’

  ‘Try again.’

  ‘Then let’s say she’s plain evil.’

  ‘Emotive and unsatisfactory. Define your terms.’

  ‘By evil I mean absence of good.’

  ‘That’s just begging the question.’

  ‘Let’s beg it, then. Daniel Dunderdale would be more categorical, but I’d rather steer clear of his specialized terms. Let’s say Davina Stott is evil. She knows what good is, but she rejects it. A lot of people do; that’s how I come to earn a pay-packet at the end of each month. But in the case of most people, being good is a pretty superficial business. It means keeping out of trouble; you adapt to society, but you keep an eye open for society’s weaknesses. It goes deeper than that with Davina Stott, because she’s positive about evil, too. It’s not just that she doesn’t choose to be good. She hates good. So whenever she sees it she sets out to destroy it.’

  ‘That’s making a devil of her.’

  ‘Now we are back into Dunderdale’s world. If you’d seen her callousness about the Colonel, you might have believed it. Her mother says she destroyed their marriage; and that woman has been destroyed by something. Why do you think she loves playing Gertrude Allsop? Correction, loves being Gertrude Allsop? Because Gertrude Allsop ultimately destroyed Wilbur Gabbitas; destroyed him because she had come to hate a goodness that she could not match. Is that such a long march to Davina destroying the play? Her mother believes she’s going to destroy the Beaker Folk.’

  ‘I hope you’re wrong, Simon. She might try to destroy you, next. What’s your state of aversion to physical contact?’

  ‘Amenable.’

  ‘Put your arm round me.’

  Sleep came hard to him. At two o’clock he drew away from Elspeth. Without putting on the light he found his way across the room, took his dressing-gown from the bedroom door, and went down the stairs as silently as the abused treads would tolerate.

  On top of the bookcase downstairs were Elspeth’s notes on the life of a CID wife. He did not read them, but his eye could not help catching the top sheet. She had divided her talk into two parts: ‘What he tells me?’ and ‘What I am left thinking’. He put the kettle on and settled down to make notes to pass on to his Derbyshire colleagues.
r />   Half past four was upon him when he looked again at the clock. He did another stint at learning the script, and applied himself to the last scene. Gertrude had become more and more restless as she aped the superficialities of the curate’s wife’s world. There were times when even Gabbitas’s love for her became exasperated, times when the couple quarrelled, when Gabbitas could not escape from his own orthodoxy. Suddenly, Gertrude had vanished from home, had hidden herself irretrievably back among her familiar hills. On one of the parlous smallholdings she had taken up with some cousin, also an Allsop, a quasi-savage recluse, a man of crude appetites as insatiable as her own.

  Gabbitas had pined for her, had sought her in vain amongst the sterile crags and the valleys, frustrated and tricked at every turn by the freemasonry of the hill-folk. Never a strong man, his constitution sapped by the midnight oil and closed garrets of his youth, his will to resist infection dissolved. He succumbed to the consumption that set red spots burning high on his cheek-bones.

  When she heard of his death, Gertrude saw all things clearly. She came back to Dogtooth to seek spiritual refuge with her father; but old Reuben would not let her in. The last tableau of the play saw her writhing hysterically on the stolen threshold of the farm – the Anathema Stone itself.

  At a quarter to five Kenworthy drew back the living-room curtains. The world was invisible in black night. He opened the window a couple of inches, and a cold draught blew in. He went back to the sofa, exchanging the script for the new book of Hob: a naive and not very amusing yarn about an irresistible Sopall and an immovable Glitter-Better. A cosmic parallelogram of forces had sent them both off along a lethal diagonal.

  Then footsteps ran the length of the village. He looked at the time: seventeen minutes past five. Someone was running inefficiently, hindering himself by attempting a speed that was beyond him. Kenworthy heard him stumble, thought he had fallen, but the footsteps picked up their rhythm again. He went to the window, but could see nothing: a close-blanketed night, as yet not a niggardly breakthrough of grey.