THE MEETING PLACE

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘This is very kind of you,’ Clarice said.

  ‘It’s exciting for me – nowadays, it’s only members of the family who are interested. She was your headmistress, you say?’ They put the television on the floor and gave pride of place to the old leather suitcase that contained the diaries. ‘You must have liked her. My headmistress was a tartar; I’d have given a wide berth to the place where she spent her holidays.’

  ‘It isn’t curiosity,’ Clarice said, moved, as one can be occasionally, to confide in a sympathetic stranger in a way not possible with friends. ‘Well, I suppose I was a bit curious. But that came after the decision was made. It was that chance association of the Beacon Theatre and the farm. I don’t believe in chance. So I came. I suppose you might say, I’m here to find out why I’m here.’

  The farmer’s wife seemed unsurprised by this. ‘Let’s see if we can find something that will help.’ She opened the case.

  At first sight it looked a formidable task they had set themselves; but the diaries were tied up in decades and Clarice was sure that the most likely months in which there might be references to Roberta Wilcox’s visits would be July, August and September. They agreed to take a decade each, the farmer’s wife the 1920s and Clarice the 1930s.

  It was the farmer’s wife who found the first, and longest, entry:

  9th July, 1922. A Miss Wilcox called while I was helping Dad with the wagon. She is staying at The Drover. A big lady and most pleasant. She was very interested in the house. It seems her grandmother was born here. She was a Carey. It disappointed her when we said there weren’t any Careys farming round here now, it was the Roes farmed here before us. Dad told her the vicar was the one to ask and as I had to fetch the lambs from the heath, I offered to walk the lady there. She told me she was headmistress of a girls’ school. You’d not have believed it, she was so jolly. She asked about my brothers and sisters and told me she was one of seven. She was a good, stout walker and when she had seen the vicar she came back to our farm and asked Mother if she could put her up as she means to come back in the spring.

  They found the diaries for the spring of the following year. She did come back. There were subsequent references to her throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, but it seemed she became so accepted a visitor that only her arrival was recorded in any detail. She was now a friend of the family and perhaps her original reason for visiting was forgotten in the pleasure of taking part in the life of the farm. From time to time there were glimpses of her riding to sheep sales, raking out the straw in the barns. If ever she found out any more about her grandmother – perhaps during the many conversations she must have had with the womenfolk – it was not recorded.

  Most of the entries in the diaries related to events on the farm or in the nearby hamlet of Cherril’s Ford and only once in the section that Clarice read did other matters impinge. In 1931 a historical novelist had identified a broken stone pillar, which jutted up at the side of the lane just outside the farm, as the site on which witches had been burnt during the fifteenth century. The old man was sceptical. ‘He reckoned there would have been an inscription and wanted to know how long the pillar had been broken. We told him it had been like that ever since we could remember. Anyways, they’d never have bothered with an inscription, not in stone; different if it had been wood, but not something as lasting as stone. Have made it more like a memorial, that would.’

  ‘Do you know the stone?’ Clarice asked the farmer’s wife.

  ‘Sunk into the earth now, it has; more like a mile post.’

  ‘Do you ever get enquiries about the old priory?’

  ‘From time to time people come asking if we ever dig up any remains in the fields.’ She laughed. ‘Anything we dig up goes back under pretty quick. We’re sitting right over that old priory; the less interest there is in it, the better for us.’

  Clarice could understand this attitude. The present grows out of the past’s decay; why disturb a natural process? It was eleven o’clock and there must be other matters the farmer’s wife had to attend to before she went to bed. Clarice thanked her and they parted, both having enjoyed their time together.

  Chapter Three

  ‘It’s getting old that’s my trouble,’ Clarice told herself as she was once more plagued by the sense of having lost her bearings. She was sitting in the prompt corner. Around her, different spaces contained seemingly unrelated tableaux – in the wings opposite one of the wardrobe ladies was measuring Alan, tape stretched tight around his chest, disbelief curling her lips in the way that always reminded him he fell short of her ideal of masculinity; in the auditorium the director, a far-away look in his eyes, was pretending to listen to the lighting man; while on stage Pericles was recounting how, accompanying the barmaid from the pub the previous evening, his amorous advances had been brought to an abrupt end by a close encounter with a moorland pony.

  I am in some kind of no-man’s-land, Clarice thought. Age is a foreign country, and the old are like people who must live far from home, the place which has been left behind is ill-remembered and, even could it be revisited, would occasion shock and dismay. And the future? Could it be that the future is more friendly – like a room in a house that you haven’t yet been into, but you know it’s there, furnished, with every appearance of being lived in, and when you do walk into it, you’ll have a sense of recognition?

  She had had something of that feeling when she first entered the farmhouse, not so much the sense of having been there before, but of a place waiting for her.

  The director, for whom everyone had been waiting, suddenly said in an exasperated tone, ‘Can we make a start now, please?’

  Pericles pretended not to hear and went on with his saga. ‘Carver Doone and the Hound of the Baskervilles rolled into one!’

  The director said, ‘Now, please,’ at his most intimidating, and Antiochus whispered to Pericles, ‘What of the wench, though – Jamaica?’ and everyone on stage let loose their frustrations in a blare of laughter.

  The director, aware that however puerile he might find this display there was nothing he could do about it, said, ‘Perhaps we should have coffee now, Liz, since everyone seems so unsettled.’

  Pericles said gloomily to Clarice as they waited for the milk jug to be handed round, ‘We’re all going to be kept in during the lunch break now.’

  She was looking over his shoulder, frowning.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘I thought the company that’s rehearsing in the stables were doing The Crucible.’

  ‘So I heard.’

  ‘Then their wardrobe people haven’t got a very good sense of period.’

  He turned to look in the direction she had been looking. The door at the rear of the auditorium had swung open, but whoever Clarice had seen had moved away.

  ‘Don’t really want them looking in on us, do we?’ he said, not taking kindly to the idea that his foolery had been witnessed by a member of a rival company. He edged past the jostle of people around the coffee tray and closed the door.

  Clarice, who noted and deplored a growing tendency in herself to defend not only her own, but others’ privacy, was discouraged by the effect the intrusion had had on her. There was no doubt she was becoming worse. She would soon be as territorial as her old Border terrier, Maggie, who had resented anyone coming near Clarice’s car and had on one occasion petrified an innocent group of children on a beach who had presumed to approach the spot where she was guarding Clarice’s clothes. But lecture herself as she might, the agitation remained and several times during the morning she glanced towards the door at the rear of the auditorium.

  In the afternoon, just when she felt more relaxed and was enjoying Pericles’s playing of the shipwreck scene, the woman came again. She stood in the doorway, the light behind her, quite still. How long she stayed Clarice did not know because the director began to tell them about cuts he was making and, by the time she had amended her script, the woman had gone.

  Clarice said, ‘
Do you think we could have that door bolted? It keeps swinging open.’ She was reluctant to mention the woman until she was more in possession of herself.

  ‘I’m not sure one can have a barn door bolted,’ the director said, annoyed at the interruption.

  ‘It’s a theatre now.’ Clarice was unrepentant. ‘It’s not full of straw.’

  Antiochus, edgily determined to be flippant, said, ‘But we hope it will soon be full of people.’

  ‘Will someone please shut the bloody door so that we can get on with this rehearsal,’ the director said in his quiet, I-am-at- breaking-point voice.

  The woman came once more towards evening and again she stood quite still, looking towards the stage. Well-to-do, mid-Victorian, Clarice thought, seeing the outline of the dress, the suggestion of lace at throat and cuffs, certainly not Puritan New England. She resolved that tomorrow she herself would take matters in hand.

  But in the morning it was different. The woman must have entered by the backstage door because, without warning, she appeared in the wings and, gathering her skirts above her ankles, walked across the stage and paused for a moment in front of the prompt corner, before making her exit. The actors took no notice; but actors became astonishingly resigned to infringements of their space – lighting staff bearing ladders, stage management marking the position of furniture, sound staff checking positioning of speakers. The director, who could at times block out anything he did not wish to see, or hear, or know, went on with the rehearsal as if nothing had happened. Clarice, mouth dry and heart pounding with rage, could barely wait for the morning break to tackle the stage manager.

  ‘I think it’s a bit much for a member of one of the other companies to come prowling around in here while we’re rehearsing.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said impatiently.

  ‘Well, we don’t want them to see it until we’re ready, do we? She could be reporting on what we’re doing, or not doing.’ She could feel her cheeks flushed with agitation.

  ‘What is this all about?’

  ‘The tall woman in Victorian costume, you must have seen her, she’s an arresting enough figure, and she walked right across . . .’

  ‘There are so many people scrambling in and out of costumes, I’m not surprised if an odd Victorian has crept in! Do you know how many parts Mike Lewis is playing? Five, and you know how long it takes to get him into one costume. And the wardrobe people can’t do it in the changing rooms because it’s got to be done so quickly. So it’s all happening right here.’ Seeing her troubled face, he calmed down and put an arm around her shoulders. ‘I’m sorry, love, but just don’t add to my problems; you’re usually such a trouble-free prompter.’

  ‘Yes, all right.’

  ‘Tell me if she does it again and I’ll tackle her.’

  But Clarice knew that she would not tell him.

  They worked through lunch. The rehearsal went well and the director called it a day at half-past three.

  Pericles said that his friend the barmaid worked during the daytime in a tea-room and the theatre emptied rapidly, even the director being drawn by the promise of food.

  ‘Maybe she’s not so keen since you mistook her for a pony,’ Antiochus said as they went out.

  ‘No, no, she’s a great lass. Wonderful sense of humour.’

  Their voices died away. Alan had been well to the fore; he would not notice Clarice’s absence for some time. He wouldn’t give it much thought, knowing from long experience how it irritated her to have to stop for tea.

  She sat on the prompt stool and waited, looking towards the door at the back of the auditorium. The effort it took to sit there quietly was surprising; one might almost have thought it required courage. The company had left the door open. There was a farm truck in the yard which blocked the light so that the doorway became an empty frame. Presently, the woman came and filled it. For a long time the two women looked at each other, the strange woman seeming as interested in Clarice’s costume – the rumpled jersey and corduroy slacks – as was Clarice in hers. Then Clarice got up and descended the steps at the side of the stage. The woman watched her advance until she was half-way down the auditorium, then she turned into the yard. Clarice followed. Her eyes watched the lavender grey dress so intently that she did not notice where the woman was leading her. It was certainly not to the stable block where The Crucible was in rehearsal, for the set on which she eventually found herself was definitely Victorian. And rather well done, Clarice grudgingly admitted, as her eyes took in the clutter of furniture and the numerous pictures on the walls. The property department must have been both well informed and hard-working to have assembled all this. Then she caught sight of a face in a mirror. Close curled grey hair framed wry, puzzle-wrinkled features: her own face, oddly incongruous in this period setting. Her gaze turned down stage and her heart missed a beat. She was looking at a fourth wall. This was not a stage set, it was a sitting room. In fact, it was the small sitting room in which only yesterday she and the farmer’s wife had sat reading the diaries of an old man who would not have been born at the time this room was furnished.

  The woman was standing by the window, a little to one side, as if she did not wish to be seen looking out. Was she wondering if she had been followed? Because of her slanting stance, Clarice could see her clearly for the first time. Her face had the clarity of a freshly cleaned painting. Quite a few of her kind must have looked out of old gilt frames, their eyes seeming to reflect on something outside the viewer’s range. Her skin was pale with the faintest touch of pink on cheeks and lips. Clarice noticed how the thick eyebrows gave definition to the face, perfectly complementing the eyes that might otherwise have seemed enigmatic. Put those eyebrows on a face less harmoniously proportioned and you’d have a clown, she thought, whereas what you’ve got is a haughty English rose.

  The woman turned away, apparently satisfied, and sat at a small desk in the corner to the side of the window. She took a key from the pocket of her dress, unlocked a drawer and drew out a small leather-cased book. At first, Clarice thought she meant to read, but suddenly she reached forward and took a pen from the ledge at the front of the desk. After a moment’s reflection, she dipped the pen in the brass inkwell and began to write.

  Even if I die for this, Clarice thought, and it didn’t seem too unlikely a consequence at that moment, I must find out what it is she’s writing. She moved quietly forward and, holding her breath, looked over the woman’s shoulder.

  The writing was small but legible and Clarice read:

  Today I saw the strange woman again. For I am sure this poor ghost is, in fact, a woman. It is true she is dressed as a man, though no man I ever saw dressed in quite this fashion; and the grey hair is cut close, a crop of little curls that would spring back into place after they are brushed, just like a child’s. But the face is a woman’s face. It is so alive, this little monkey face, so full of interest, and the eyes look at me with such warmth . . .

  Chapter Four

  Since I first saw her, I have followed her into the barn that seems to have some significance for her. She sits there on a stool with a book in her lap, a lamp to one side of her that throws an eerie light. She seems intent on some scene that is hidden from me.

  Why have they come to me, my two ghosts? It would be such a relief could I disclose their presence, but were I to confide in Edward, he would be very distressed. He would think it a sign of that ill-health he so dreads in me, without any idea that he himself fosters it. He would fear for my mind. If only I could make him understand that there is nothing to fear save fear itself.

  Rhoda Tresham had laid the pen down while she sought for something she could not quite put into words. But it was not a sudden intellectual enlightenment that focused the eyes and brought colour to her cheeks, it was the barking of dogs and the sound of heavy footsteps in the yard. One glance out of the window and the book was quickly thrust into the drawer. The ghosts, it would seem, were locked away with it and her ani
mated attention bestowed on the new arrival, now being greeted in the yard by her husband. As she watched the two men, her colour came and went as unaffected eagerness disputed with a more sober propriety.

  ‘You are most welcome,’ Edward Tresham was saying as the two men walked towards the farmhouse. ‘But you will have to make do with my wife and myself, for the family is off at the horse fair.’ As they entered the house, he called out, ‘The vicar is come, my dear.’

  The newcomer, stooping slightly as he crossed the threshold, murmured a civil reply. His was a strong presence. It was not merely the mud-splattered clothes that brought the smell of peat bog into the house and reminded one of his exertions; there was an energy released around him, the thrust of an on-going journey. He was a man of contradictions, sensuality apparent in the mouth and the droop of the eyelids, but a little quivering of a nerve in the cheek suggesting sensitivity, even vulnerability. Perhaps aware of how his abrasiveness contrasted with Mrs Tresham’s ivory delicacy, he seemed ill at ease in her presence and had some difficulty in striking the right note in his greeting. He looked as though he were still outside, a traveller glimpsing through a window a symbol of domesticity his travels unfitted him to share. His manner was unaccountably reserved when he apologised for imposing on her time.

  ‘No,’ Edward assured him. ‘We are most anxious to hear the news you bring. My wife will be much eased in mind to learn that things are not so bad as she had feared.’

  As there had been no time for the clergyman to impart his news, this was a strange statement, revealing some anxiety in the speaker, as though by using this form of words he might hold at bay, if not actually avert, some calamity. His companion, more inclined to meet calamity head on, replied tersely, ‘I bring no good news, I’m afraid.’