THE MEETING PLACE

by MARY HOCKING

  Edward Tresham immediately turned to his wife. ‘My dear, I think it might be best . . .’

  ‘It would be best were we to allow Mr Jory to be seated after his long walk,’ she replied. ‘Millie has kept a good fire in the parlour.’

  Millie had been coming and going all the afternoon to Edward’s irritation, this, in his view, being no way for a servant to behave. Now, no sooner were they seated and had exchanged a few necessary courtesies, than the old woman bustled in unbidden, carrying a loaded tray. ‘When I saw you come, I said to myself. Parson will be wanting good food inside him after tramping the moor.’

  ‘You spoil me, Millie.’ He spoke as one more familiar with the ways of the household than either of his present companions; and, since they were the guests of a few weeks, he was not unduly concerned to avoid Edward’s displeasure.

  Rhoda Tresham, aware that given encouragement the old woman would make one of the party, hovering in the background and constantly interposing her opinions, went to help her lay out the tea things. Edward watched his wife. He had the fastidious, finely wrought features of the perfectionist and there was about him that sense of strain felt by those for whom every object must be held in its right place, every thought examined so that no loose ends are left lying about: a man who perceived the crust of civilisation to be very thin. His gaze betrayed the delicate balance of his peace. His wife’s fragility was both a torment and a necessity to him; failing health could rob him of his dearest treasure, yet were she to become more robust, the danger might be the greater. The other man watched him, the twist of his lips suggesting he might understand a little more than Edward Tresham would have found comfortable.

  ‘I will look after this now, Millie,’ Rhoda said gently. ‘My husband wishes to speak to Mr Jory.’ She contrived, while making the dismissal unequivocal, to suggest that the whims of menfolk must be humoured.

  ‘Oh, I know what he come about,’ the old woman said in a penetrating whisper. ‘And ’tis my opinion that little mite never left home alive.’ At the door, she made her final pronouncement. ‘When I was a young girl, they’d not have wasted no court’s time dealing with him.’

  ‘My dear,’ Edward looked at his wife with tender concern when tea and scones had been plentifully dispensed. ‘I think this may be painful . . .’

  Rhoda, apparently having no mind to be spared, seated herself and said, ‘What is your view of this matter, Mr Jory?’

  ‘As you know, Jarvis’s story is that he left the cottage with the little maid before morning light, to take her to live with his sister in Mellor.’

  ‘I suppose there is still a chance she is with this sister?’ Edward said.

  ‘But how would he have communicated his intention to the sister, an unlettered man?’ Rhoda asked.

  Edward waved this aside. ‘I doubt these people worry about such things. They are feckless and don’t think ahead. He probably arrived with the child . . .’

  ‘And what arrangements did he make for the other children to be cared for in his absence? Feckless he maybe, but he surely wouldn’t abandon them.’

  It was Jory who answered. ‘People’s memories are not always reliable, but the cottagers, who are the only folk likely to have noticed his movements, think he was not gone long enough to have travelled to Mellor and back – that, at least, is what they now believe to be the case. As for the children, they are with Mrs Oldman for the time being.’ There was a pause while they let these facts settle in their minds, then Jory said, ‘But to acquaint you with the latest development – young Rob Simpson, out searching for a dog that had attacked his sheep, came across the remains of a fire and when he kicked over the ashes he found a buckle and pieces of burnt cotton print. I took Mrs Tibbs up there today and she has identified the cotton as part of little Ellie’s pinafore.’

  Edward, aghast, held up his hand, signalling that no more be said, but Jory went on, ‘Nothing else. No human remains were found.’

  There was a heavy silence, then Jory said, ‘The first thing to do, of course, is to see the sister. I plan to set out for Mellor tomorrow.’

  Rhoda said, ‘I pray that you may find the little girl there, safe and well; but there seems scant hope.’

  ‘It is hard to believe such wickedness.’ Edward Tresham was deeply affected. He looked out of the window as if some explanation might lie outside among those bleak hills. ‘This is a rough, harsh place – I am afraid you had forgotten just how harsh, my dear.’ He seemed to feel a need to underline this statement by explaining to Jory, ‘As you know, my wife was born on this farm and passed her childhood here. The childhood vision is very selective and she sees this place as a lost paradise, especially the moor. Yes, yes, you do, my dear. I just hope that this terrible crime will correct that image and you will no longer wish to make these yearly visits to stay with your cousin.’

  ‘Here at least what happens is known to us,’ Jory said crisply. ‘In London there must be terrible crimes committed of which you are quite unaware.’

  ‘But is it not better to be unaware, if there is nothing we can do to mend matters?’ Edward turned to Rhoda. ‘I know you don’t agree with me, my dear.’ She made no reply and he went on, talking to Jory as though she were no longer there. ‘My wife, you see, thinks that knowledge will work miracles. She is intent on sending our daughter to this new school that Miss Beale has founded.’

  ‘Is your daughter then in need of a miracle?’ Jory had an uncomfortable way of pruning a conversation to the quick and Edward was disconcerted. But it was not Edward at whom he was looking.

  Rhoda said quietly, ‘I think education helps people to understand their world and it gives them the ability to change their lives.’ She allowed her eyes to meet his; the look was held for a length of time she could only regard as audacious.

  They were both shaken by the force of something exchanged, unmediated by words. Jory looked into the heart of the fire, his face reflecting its ruddy glow. Rhoda poured hot water into the teapot. Her hand was unsteady and the water splashed across her knuckles; the pain steadied her, indeed she welcomed it.

  Edward was saying, ‘There has been some fear expressed that a woman’s brain and health would suffer if exposed to the rigorous intellectual training to which boys are subjected. Indeed, I have heard one eminent doctor say that he seriously considers it might damage the reproductive system.’ He would not normally have made such a comment in mixed society, but he was very agitated. He gazed at his wife as she bent forward to fill his cup, her face so prettily flushed by the firelight, and he thought how readily this sweet, rosy bloom might turn to fever. ‘Then, also, there is the contact with pupils from the lower orders – because this, it seems, is what is intended; and this contamination, for this is what I am afraid it would be, could only have the worst possible consequences. I know that you have taken an interest in providing education for the poorer classes. What is your opinion?’

  Jory, who had not attended to this speech, said, ‘That I must set out again. There are pressing church matters I must see to if I am to leave for Mellor tomorrow.’

  Rhoda’s relatives returned soon after he had left. The children played in the yard, the Treshams’ daughter, Veronica, among them. The farmer, Harold, and his wife, Rhoda’s cousin Eleanor, were eager to hear the news that Jory had brought, but Rhoda excused herself, saying they would understand that she could not bear to hear this tale twice told.

  Indeed, there was much that she could not bear. Upstairs in the bedroom, she composed herself to pray for the lost child. Mr Jory had said she should pray for the father, too, which had angered Edward, who had retorted, ‘I do not agree that we are not called upon to judge; surely, we are daily called upon to make judgements, the choice between good and evil is never made once and for all, but it sometimes seems to me is presented to us almost hourly.’ To this, Rhoda could only say amen.

  After a time she grew calmer and listened to the children chanting in the yard. ‘. . . a bunch of blue ribbon to tie up my
hair’. She had the sense of time running through her fingers. The light was failing and a voice called the children in. Someone was still singing. It was not the voice of someone singing out of doors; there was an echo, as there might be in a church.

  ‘. . . a length of green say,

  I asked him to bring me

  A length of green say.’

  Chapter Five

  Clarice had known several people who claimed to have seen ghosts. Those of her friends who had had what might be termed paranormal experiences were admirably matter-of-fact about them and the one person who owned to a resident ghost – a gardener, not a living-in one – seemed to be on good terms with it and happy to let it roam at will among her flower borders. They all testified to the benignity of these apparitions. ‘There is nothing in the least frightening about them.’ Had it been otherwise, their manner suggested, they would not have tolerated the intrusion.

  Clarice was far less nonchalant. As she saw it, either something was very wrong with the generally accepted laws of nature, or Clarice Mitchell was suffering from some abnormality, a dysfunction of the brain. Throughout the remainder of the day she had been unable to think of anything but that unnerving description of herself, written by a woman who had lived a century earlier. The feeling grew that she was cut off from the people around her, the theatre groups, the farmworkers; even the sight of the postman on his bicycle gave her a sense of immense isolation. ‘She’s becoming more and more neurotic,’ she had said only recently to Alan, referring to one of the wardrobe assistants who was plagued by a ghost whose delight it was to come in during the night and rearrange all the costumes that had been carefully hung in the order in which they were required. No one, as far as she knew, had produced a ghost who made notes about them in a day book. Her mind worried away at the events of the last few months, trying to identify other instances of instability, to pin down what it was that had triggered her decline. She had had trouble with a painting, but that was an occupational hazard long since accepted. Physically, she noted more signs of wear and tear. These, too, she accepted; she was coming up to seventy and would soon be living in injury time. Perhaps the oddest thing that had happened had been her decision to come here.

  In the middle of the night it came to her that she must find the diary. Perhaps the desk was still there, pushed away into a corner of that cluttered sitting room. She got up and, pulling on her dressing gown, tiptoed on to the landing. All was quiet and she remembered that no one else was sleeping in this part of the house. She switched on the hall light which should be sufficient to enable her to see what she was doing.

  There was a desk in the sitting room, but she thought it was too large and heavy to be the one at which the woman had seated herself Even so, she pulled open the drawers. The small top ones at either side were stuffed with old snapshots and farm catalogues; the lower, larger ones contained a table-tennis net, ping-pong balls, lead toy soldiers and an assortment of jigsaw puzzles. It had been a ridiculous notion. The sensible thing would be to ask the farmer’s wife whether, by any chance, pieces of the Carey family’s furniture remained in the house. But how would that help? If she failed to find the diary, it proved nothing. The possibility that she might find it was unthinkable; a fact emphasised by the queasiness of her stomach.

  And then, going up the stairs, she recalled seeing other words written in the diary; other words which, so fascinated had she been by the description of herself, she had overlooked. ‘Why have they come to me, my two ghosts?’ Two. Not a little personal matter then, between herself and this woman. Her heart stalled; a small tremor seemed to shake the house. This is the thing I have been warned of, she thought, kneeling on the stairs. In the hall mirror she could see her face framed by the banister rails, as people sometimes say they see ghosts, staring through bars or a palisade as if looking out from another dimension. For some time she clung there, too faint to move, cold sweat soaking her nightdress. In time, the machinery of her body started up again, albeit grudgingly. She hauled herself up to the landing, resting on each tread, and finally, leaning on the wall for support, reached her bedroom. She took a pill and lay down in her dressing gown, drawing the duvet over her shivering limbs. The room swayed, and the bed swayed up and down, not unpleasantly, had one not known this was not its natural motion. Accompanying this sensation of being rocked was an odd distortion of vision. Beyond the window, the moonlight seemed to throw the shadow of a great wall across the yard and into the field. It was as though she were looking out of the window of a building many times larger than the farm. As she looked, the light changed and grew brighter. Her hand rested on the window-sill and as she felt the sun’s warmth spread up her arm, she went to sleep like a comforted child.

  Chapter Six

  A young woman of some sixteen years, sitting on the sill of the priest’s room in the priory, felt the warmth of the sun on her flesh and found it more difficult than usual to collect her thoughts. She pushed the tawny hair back from her forehead, her fingers groping among the curls as she teased out more words.

  ‘And say to him that I hope he will not forget the cinnamon, for I have tried everywhere and cannot get it here. And I hope he keeps well, for we hear reports of sickness in the towns. And to buy, if he can, a length of say of that green he so much admired in my sister-in-law’s gown. And I hope he will be with us soon.’ The quill scratched the parchment, translating Joan Mosteyn’s hopes into a sinister pattern of black characters. The nuns’ priest looked at what he had penned and said, ‘Written at Foxlow Priory on this twentieth day of September, 1460 in the reign of Henry the Sixth . . . Do you understand that may not be the case, Joan?’ She did not understand. He explained, ‘It is said that Richard, Duke of York, has landed in Cheshire and means to claim the throne.’ And much Joan cared about that, so long as her husband returned soon.

  The priest said, ‘I have business to attend to, so I will walk part of the way with you.’

  Outside, the wind was strong and it billowed the girl’s gown and whipped her cheeks scarlet. ‘There is no need for you to come to me if you wish to send another letter,’ the priest told her, as they walked along the track leading to the village. ‘I will come to you, if you send for me.’

  ‘I like to come,’ she answered. Her mother was staying with her and an excuse to escape was welcome. Her mother had told her only that morning, ‘You’re well enough to look at and there’s no serious fault in you, you’re honest and ready to please; but once the bloom fades you’ll have little to commend you to a husband. You’re scatter-brained, idle, and a bad manager.’

  Above, the clouds raced across the sky and the wind tore at the thorns in the thicket. The tumult touched a nerve in the girl’s body and she wanted to throw back her head and laugh. Everything around her was alive and dancing, only woman must go about her business soberly. If the priest had not accompanied her, she would have tossed her cloak aside and danced like the madwoman who came to the village last spring.

  The priest, frowning at the dust rising from the track beneath their feet, said, ‘I trust you are taking advantage of your husband’s absence to order the house well?’

  ‘It’s more difficult than I had thought,’ she said resentfully. ‘I hadn’t expected the servants would need so much attention.’ It had not occurred to her that instruction would be necessary; servants, she had imagined, not only did things, but knew what things to do and when and how. ‘I’m to supervise the weaving of household clothing, plan the winter supplies, the salting and the pickling, and see that we have sufficient food to meet the needs of wayfarers. I sometimes feel it would be less trouble were I to do the work myself.’ And that was saying a lot, because she did not like work.

  ‘You must make sure they realise you are indeed their mistress,’ the priest told her severely. ‘It is not a matter of their carrying out your instructions, you must make sure that the work is well done.’

  ‘So I begin to see.’

  ‘And you must study the art of being t
hrifty and frugal, while still maintaining a good table.’

  Joan nodded and pulled at a plant struggling to break free of the thorns; she crushed the leaf between her fingers to see whether it smelt pleasant.

  ‘Otherwise the servants will not respect you.’

  ‘You would think they would be pleased to have a mistress who did not ask too much of them, wouldn’t you?’ she said wistfully. Her standards of order and cleanliness were not exacting, but instead of working with a will because she was so easy to satisfy, the servants grew daily more lackadaisical. She told the priest something of this and he assured her that if only she would set her mind to it, she would succeed because the management of a household was a natural function of a woman.

  She listened and said optimistically, ‘Well, if it’s natural, I expect I shall come to it in time.’

  She hoped it would be soon rather than late, since it was something Martin expected of her and she wanted to please him. She wanted to please him in other ways, too. She had not had much joy of her wedding night, and even on subsequent nights when her husband was sober she had not had quite the pleasure she had anticipated. She hoped that would come soon, too. She earnestly desired pleasure.

  After they parted company, she walked down a steep track to a deep pool, so bound about by bushes and stunted trees that the water was always still. A magic pool, it was said, where wishes would be granted. She knelt down and looked into it, but was so taken by the face that gazed up at her she forgot to wish; a broad face gashed by a wide mouth split open to laughter and encompassed by a cloud of abundant tawny hair shot with darker strands of chestnut.

  ‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘but I was comely then.’

  ‘She has been maundering all the morning,’ Dame Ursula said to the prioress, looking with disfavour at the woman for whom their charity was demanded. In spite of all efforts to promote cleanliness and order, she still looked as if she had been dragged through a thorn bush backwards; her hair a thicket through which eyes that were surprisingly bright surveyed the scene, like an animal deciding whether to come out of cover, her clothes a bundle of faded rags.