THE MEETING PLACE

by MARY HOCKING

‘It was rather awful,’ she said.

  ‘A shipwreck, indeed.’

  She watched a bird poised still above a thicket. ‘Is that a buzzard?’

  ‘A kestrel. You can’t possibly think it’s a buzzard – however many times do I have to tell you?’

  ‘Until seventy times seven, it would seem.’

  She looked down into the valley below where water rushed dark green, silvered with foam.

  ‘Do you ever dream of your daughter?’ she asked Alan.

  ‘Mmh. Usually just before she gets in touch to grumble about her mother.’

  ‘I dreamt last night. I can’t get it out of my mind.’

  He looked at her, but said nothing, waiting to see whether she wanted to go on. It was one of the things she prized in him, that he could listen to her silences. Eventually, she did go on.

  ‘I dreamt of a girl, a light, dancing creature – she wasn’t Teresa Davies and yet she was her.’

  ‘Often the way in dreams.’

  ‘Yes, I sometimes think they use the same technique as the short story writer, getting the maximum mileage out of each image. There are people within people. This girl, who wasn’t Teresa and yet so surely was her, was more rounded physically, plump in fact, with dimpled cheeks and elbows. A Victorian miss. She was talking to her father about a cook. I could recall the dialogue when I woke up.

  ‘He said, “I think Mrs Possett is preparing to leave us.”

  ‘She replied, “Oh, I must go and talk to her.”

  ‘ “Might it not be better were she to go?”

  ‘ “No, Father, we should find it very difficult to obtain anyone so satisfactory as Mrs Possett.”

  ‘ “What are we coming to if we have to regard Mrs Possett as satisfactory? When I was young we had a succession of admirable cooks.”

  ‘ “No, Father, the very fact of their being a succession proves they were not admirable. You only think Mrs Possett is worse because you observe her more clearly now that it is you and not Mama who must deal with her while I am at school.”

  ‘I think there was a bit more, but the traces have faded.’

  Alan said, ‘It was rather good – not unlike Goldsmith, would you say, except the bit about being at school?’

  She looked down at the water swelling as the river widened out beyond a little bridge until one felt it must free a passage on to the greensward. She said in a low voice, ‘The mother wasn’t there. Why was that?’

  ‘Probably died in childbirth,’ Alan suggested, only mildly interested. ‘So many women did at that time.’

  ‘Not this one.’

  ‘You knew that in the dream?’

  ‘Not in the dream – at least, not in that dream.’ She looked at him speculatively, needing his help but not sure how much she could tell him without asking for an involvement he was unable to offer. At the moment he seemed more interested in a fastidious examination of his sandwich than in what she was saying. ‘I was so disturbed, isn’t it silly?’

  ‘It doesn’t sound disturbing; pleasantly domestic, in fact, told in the daylight.’

  The qualification encouraged her. ‘It was the school that did it. It set up echoes in my mind. Your name was put down for public school while you were in the womb and you took education as a matter of course, a process that had to be gone through. For me, and for the girl in my dream, it was a gift that would enable us to comprehend our world and move about in it with confidence.’ She pushed the short curls back from her forehead as though the gesture might clear cobwebs from the mind. ‘But there’s no magic prescription, is there? No Golden Road – we each have our own Samarkand. If the girl in my dream is who I think she is, she had seven children and it was one of her daughters who truly seized the gift.’

  ‘Is this your headmistress. Miss Wilcox?’

  ‘Yes. You know how I feel about her. I must have told you often enough. I was so grateful that I thought I must go into education myself. I didn’t understand that what she really handed to me was space to find my own way. It was left to Teresa to restore that space to me.’

  ‘At some cost.’

  ‘There’s always a cost, isn’t there?’

  Alan, not entirely easy with this notion, looked up at the sky as though seeking some signal, perhaps a threat even, that might make a move advisable. Failing to find any such portent, he said reluctantly, ‘It brought it all back, I suppose?’

  ‘It was so mixed up, so many feelings; I couldn’t identify them all as mine even, some belonged to the dream people, you know the way it can happen. Sometimes you don’t know who’s doing the dreaming – it’s as if you were outside watching someone else’s dream. But I was in it, not just a spectator, because I woke up crying, “Teresa, don’t go away!” It’s a good thing there’s no one in the room next to mine.’

  Alan turned back the corner of a sandwich suspiciously; he had noted that the farm seemed to be more generous with meat than the pub on which he was dependent. ‘Do you dream of her often?’

  ‘Not now. She hovers around sometimes indirectly. But it’s years since I’ve seen her so vividly. And even then, the face wasn’t hers.’

  They finished their lunch in silence, each absorbed in private thoughts. As she collected the rubbish, Clarice said, ‘She was Marina in the school production of Pericles – a glowing performance, half inspiration half the incandescence of youth. There are other scenes in Pericles that are darker and the players in those scenes were there, too, waiting in the wings of my dream.’

  ‘Let it lie,’ Alan advised. ‘If it’s significant, I expect there’ll be a sequel.’

  Clarice said, ‘Yes, I’m afraid there will.’

  There was a rehearsal in the evening and by now there wasn’t time to walk down to the village below. ‘I told you we should have brought beer with us,’ she said as they turned in the direction of the farm some four miles away.

  ‘I should only go to sleep. We can’t afford another bad rehearsal.’

  As they walked the sun changed the scene more effectively than any theatre lighting expert. At one moment there were soft bands of mother of pearl across a cool blue sky and all was quiet and unemphatic. Then it grew dark and the moor became an undifferentiated dun mass. A brief reappearance of the sun brightened the dark hills and hobbled the sky with orange and eau de Nil. Soon the colours changed more rapidly; the moor was streaked with brown and grey while on a near slope a shaft of sun cast a vivid lime-green spotlight, creating an arena surrounded by an already dark amphitheatre.

  When they had meekly assembled, all on time, in the theatre, the director said, ‘We’ll take the scene with Antiochus and his daughter – and try to get the riddle right this time, Pericles; it does, after all, contain the nature of this relationship.’

  ‘My mother never let me read about such things,’ Pericles murmured coyly. The director pretended not to hear.

  The king and his daughter took up their positions. On the edges of the action the followers stood round. When the director had said he would use masks for the followers one of them had protested that he felt he should be expressing something.

  ‘What do you want to express?’

  ‘I don’t quite know . . .’

  ‘The masks do know.’

  And watching the strange archaic faces with the gashed mouths and burnt-out eyes, Clarice thought the director had been right.

  The lights in the theatre dimmed, leaving only a circle of light encompassing the players. Gower spoke, and the masked faces watched as the human drama unfolded.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I

  The door swung slowly on its hinge. There was a rustling in a pile of sacking in the corner and something, a rat perhaps, scuttled across the floor. Joan stood at the door, but did not go any further. The light was fading now, but she did not need more light to see that the kitchen was empty of human occupants. She looked over her shoulder back towards the gallery. Somewhere up there a window, left half-open, rattled as a gust of wind blew down the s
tairs. She took a few paces into the hall, put one foot on the stairs and paused, her hand on the rail, looking up into the gallery. She went up the first two steps; they creaked, she had never noticed before how wood creaked and cracked at night. Half-way up the stairs, she sat down, facing the hall. Her eyes moved warily from side to side, no longer trying to discover a presence in the house but exploring her fears.

  They had all gone. She had been down to one of the villeins’ cottages to see the seamstress; it was only a short distance and it had taken her little more than three-quarters of an hour, but in that time the house had emptied. Even the children were gone.

  The servants had grown more insolent over the months since Martin Mosteyn died, and behind their insolence lay something else, an inexplicable fear. Joan told herself she should be glad they were gone. But the children . . .

  She got to her feet and edged up the stairs, keeping close to the wall; she came to the window in the gallery and, standing to one side, looked out. The fields came close to the house on this side and often at this hour she had seen hares leaping; now, nothing moved. She looked in the direction of the wooded valley and then the other way, towards the village. The breeze had momentarily died down and even the long spear-headed grass was still.

  She said, ‘So that’s all right, then,’ and walked along the gallery, her arms crossed, fingers gripping the flesh above each elbow. She set her feet down carefully, anxious not to disturb this strange peace. She went into her chamber and sat on the window-sill. She could see the track that led to the village. Near at hand were the outhouses. A horse moved in the stables; the horses were restless tonight. Perhaps they had not been fed?

  ‘I will get my own supper,’ she said. ‘Now, while it is quiet.’ But she stayed at the window, looking at the track that led to the village.

  An owl flew out from one of the barns on silent wings. She clapped her hands over her mouth, thinking it an ill omen, and waited, fearful lest her own movement should have stirred something out there, beyond the outhouses. It was nearly dark now, she could no longer see the track and the line of the barns was beginning to merge into the blackness of the fields.

  ‘I hope they don’t come back drunk,’ she said. ‘I’d as soon they didn’t come back if they are drunk, only I must find where they have taken the children.’

  She went along the gallery and stood on the threshold of the small chamber where the children and the old nurse slept. The room was empty, as though no one had ever been there. Suddenly, she flung herself down, pulling at the bedding, feeling among the rushes strewn on the floor; while she did this she howled like a dog baying at the moon. Then, as suddenly, she stopped, terrified by her own activity. Her heart thumped and she put her hand to her breast to quiet it. Her eyes had lost their half-dreaming expression and were sharp as those of an animal. She crossed the floor, hunched low, and peered out of the slit window. Things had changed in the short time since she last looked out. Now the darkness was pierced by tiny points of light that had sprung up well beyond the outhouses and crissed and crossed and then seemed all to wheel round in a merry dance of flame and then to stretch into a line. The line began to thread its way along the track from the village. She ran into the gallery and leant out of the window; a noise no louder than the murmur of bees on a summer day came to her ears. She crouched, staring, her eyes wide, her mouth hanging open foolishly. The points of light lengthened and grew brighter. In the stable, the horses began to thrash about. She jerked up and, gathering her skirts around her thighs, ran down the stairs, her feet sending up thudding echoes in the empty house. She had bolted the outer door to the yard and now her frenzied fingers failed to draw the bolt. Instead of persisting, she abandoned the effort and ran to one of the hall windows. Ruddy light streamed upward and she could see, following the column of flame, the dark outline of wildly gyrating figures. Crimson light reflected on the window-pane.

  She ran to the outer door and this time managed to draw back the bolt. Which way to run? She had always felt free in the fields, but they led on to heathland, open country. She needed to be on the far side of the house where she could run downhill into the shelter of the wooded valley. She crouched, panting, unable to think what to do, her eyes staring in fascination at the flames that leapt up where bracken was already ablaze. There had been no rain for a long time and the ground was tinder dry. Something moved round the side of the house and a figure, bent low, scurried across the yard. She opened her mouth to scream, but had no breath for that. A body crashed down beside her, fingers grasped her wrist. She recognised him by the sour smell of his breath: it was the priest.

  ‘Save me! Save me, good sir!’ She clutched at his arm.

  He began to drag her back towards the house. They could smell burning tar now. The roar of voices seemed rent from some great beast maddened by the scent of blood.

  ‘Your husband’s clothes,’ he said. ‘There must be something you can wear.’

  ‘I must get away,’ she screamed. ‘I must, I must . . .’

  ‘You won’t get away by running.’ He had pushed open the outer door and now he paused and turned her round. ‘Look!’

  The torches were coming from all directions, the night was ablaze and close at hand two great, three-pronged torches tilted towards one of the outhouses.

  ‘Listen!’ he commanded. ‘When the barns are well ablaze, we will join the throng.’ He dragged her across the threshold of the house. ‘Take off your gown. I will make some kind of dummy to prop at this window. It will divert them long enough for our purpose.’

  But she was incapable with terror. He tore the gown from her and he it was who opened first one chest, then another, finding a pair of breeches here, a shirt there. There was dust a-plenty to darken her face. Momentarily emboldened by the strange garb the child in her awoke; she switched her hair up on top of her head and pulled an old woollen sock over it, low down on her forehead. The excitement of being someone else outweighed her fear.

  The yard was brighter than day now and the barns were alight. He stuffed a bundle of clothing into Joan’s discarded gown and propped it close to the window, standing well back himself while Joan crouched on the ground. They went down the stairs and had reached the hall when there was a splintering of wood and a jet of flame gushed forth. It was too late to get out of the house. As men rushed into the hall the priest pushed Joan into the little room where her husband’s steward had kept his accounts. Voices were screaming, ‘Burn the witch! Burn the witch!’ Someone threw a flaming torch through the door of the room in which they crouched and ran on. The priest bent and picked up the torch, then he caught Joan by the arm and forced her into the hall. They ran forward shouting, ‘Burn the witch!’ The priest thrust the torch into the face of a man who came too close. He reeled back, lost his footing and dropped his torch along with his life. Joan bent down and picked it up. The man’s hair was already on fire. They ran on. Joan cried, ‘Burn the witch!’ It gave her courage and she shouted louder, ‘Burn the witch!’ Then she began to scream without ceasing, ‘Burn the witch, burn the witch, burn the witch!’ She lost all sense of herself, madness took possession of her and she leapt exultant in the flames. The stairs were alight and there were men trapped above. A window shattered as someone jumped. A man rushed past Joan and the priest screaming, his clothing ablaze. The priest dragged Joan towards the stone-flagged kitchen where the flames had not yet gained a hold. She was screaming wildly, ‘Burn the witch!’

  He had to wrest the torch from her. He threw it back into the doorway and his own after it. The fire was raging everywhere now, the barns were well alight, animals thrashing and shrieking. Men ran from the furnace, blind with panic, not knowing which way to go to escape. Outside Joan, too, wanted to run. Flames leapt high into the night sky, but she wanted to dash through them in the direction of the fields. The priest stayed her. The wind was stronger. He waited to see in which direction it was blowing.

  ‘This way.’ He pulled her along the side of the house. Flame
s reached out to them as they ran; ahead, the trees were alight and streamers of flame danced into the air and ran along the ground. It seemed at first there was no way out. But the priest, who had no mind to be martyred in his efforts to save this foolish creature, kept his wits about him. The flames were rolling east. Their only chance lay on the far side of the blazing house. He dragged Joan with him. No one paid heed to them. Had she been recognised it would no longer have mattered to the frantic people around them.

  In the direction of the wood there was an area of darkness and they ran towards it. The flames roared and crackled, burning the soles of their feet. They were blinded by smoke and their lungs were bursting; but they stumbled on, driven by fear of the fire that gained hold rapidly as though the parched soil rushed forward to meet it.

  The wood and the valley lay beneath them. Once they reached the shelter of the trees they lay down, panting, to recover breath; but soon they had to haul themselves up as flame spiralled around them. It was no longer possible to tell which way the fire was going. They began to lose their senses and even the priest staggered sometimes dazedly towards the fiery torch trees. In the undergrowth, animals ran; the wood was alive and moving. The burning trees roared as though welcoming their destroyer with a hymn of praise. Joan and the priest went with the animals. At last, when it seemed there was a ring of flame closing in on them, they came to the bank of a stream. There was no water there now, but the bank was very steep and the bed of the stream was wide; this clearing might afford some shelter, though it was doubtful whether it would be enough to hold back the flames. If it wasn’t, they must die. Death seemed more welcome now than further effort. Joan was almost unconscious as she half-rolled, half-fell into the bed of the stream – a refuge that they shared with many terrified live animals and not a few dead ones, some of which had died of thirst and whose bodies were in varying stages of decay.

  Above them, the flames roared and trees came down like flaming towers; once a trunk fell across the stream making a bridge of fire. The heat became intense and it seemed this alone would kill them for it was impossible to breathe in this furnace, although they lay with their faces pressed against the stones so that the air would not sear their lungs. And then there came a roar louder than anything they had heard and they looked up fearfully, expecting the whole wood to come down on top of them. Eerie light flickered above the flames and twisted away. Joan croaked, ‘Sweet Jesus, forgive me!’ thinking herself already dead, but the priest gasped, ‘Lightning.’ As though in answer to his words, the rain came down, blinding, torrential.