THE MEETING PLACE

by MARY HOCKING

  The reverie was broken by a tap on the door. Her secretary, Miss Heffernan, announced that an old girl had called. She gave the name, but Clarice at that time was not listening attentively. She was preparing to ease herself into her new role, be gracious, strike just the right note with a young woman who was no longer a pupil. The girl would go away and tell friends, ‘Out of school she’s so warm, so approachable, one could simply relax and enjoy . . .’

  She did not remember the young woman who came in. Twenty- three perhaps, she thought – before my time. She had a general impression of cinnamon. Brown hair, fawn skin speckled with freckles, pouched lids above eyes you had to look at twice to decide the colour – hazel, probably grape-green in some lights. A hard face, not brash, more a matter of lack of softness. A face that made calculations as of necessity. She looked round the room much as the fire officer might, assuring himself that there was more than one exit. She wore a tobacco-coloured suit and a cream blouse, and looked well turned out but not as if it gave her any pleasure.

  ‘I’m Gillian Davies.’

  ‘Of course, we have your sister.’ Why ‘of course’? Anyone less like Teresa one could hardly imagine. The telephone rang. It was the secretary asking if tea would be in order.

  Clarice said, ‘Certainly’ She put the receiver down. ‘Will you excuse me a moment – something has just cropped up that I need to attend to. You will take tea, won’t you?’

  To her secretary, she said, ‘Gillian Davies. Is there anything I should know about her? She doesn’t look as if she’s come to make a courtesy call.’ Usually, it did not worry her to be caught unawares; she quite enjoyed the challenge.

  Miss Heffernan, who, Clarice sometimes thought, knew everything that had happened since Abraham led his family out of Ur of the Chaldees, said, ‘Second of four girls. Eldest is a nun now. Gillian left before taking her A levels; she’s a personnel manager at one of the big London stores, I forget which.’ Clarice thought she hadn’t forgotten, she simply didn’t think it important.

  ‘The third child is Coralie, am I right? A family of clever girls who tend to disappoint academically, although we have hopes of Teresa. Anything else I should know?’

  ‘If there is, I expect she’s going to tell you,’ Miss Heffernan said reasonably.

  Gillian Davies was sitting staring out of the window at the beech tree which Clarice thought one of the glories of her view. It did not appear to give the young woman much satisfaction. She waited until Miss Heffernan had put down the tea tray and departed before she turned her head.

  ‘You know my parents?’ She spoke with the inappropriate brusqueness of the emotionally ill-adjusted.

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  Dr Davies was a much respected, if not entirely loved, local doctor – too clever to be loved. Clarice had no difficulty in bringing him to mind. He was a man who established an immediate and somewhat uncomfortable rapport with his companions. In a dark, merry face, the eyes seemed to see through the disguises of the flesh. Clarice felt all her organs on display under his scrutiny. But there was a certain air of hilarity about him that robbed his appraisal of severity, even of seriousness; it was as though he were saying, ‘Life and death are one tremendous joke, possibly in bad taste, but this is the best life we have on offer, so make the most of it.’ His wife, not sharing his humour, had settled for invalidism, to which she was wholly dedicated.

  Gillian Davies said, ‘Coralie’s going to Canada at the end of the year. When she goes, he’ll start on Teresa.’

  Clarice poured tea and handed cup and saucer to Gillian. She also gave her a plate and put another plate, with biscuits, on the table near to her. While she did these things, they could hear the sounds of girls’ voices on the playing field, the sharp blast of a whistle, sounds that punctuated Clarice’s days here and gave to them a reassuring sense of the continuity of all schooldays. When she had settled herself, Clarice said, ‘What is it you’re telling me?’

  ‘I can’t put it plainer than that.’

  ‘I think you will have to.’ She was aware of the coldness of her voice. How sick was this young woman? And if sick, then why?

  ‘The priest knows. He’ll tell you if you ask him. He won’t be betraying a confession. We’ve both talked to him about it, Coralie and I.’

  ‘This is a very serious accusation.’

  Gillian Davies looked at Clarice; it was a look that combined destitution and indifference and there was no debating with it. Even so, Clarice was surprised that she should so readily accept that Dr Davies’s dark humour might embrace evil. She said, ‘How long has this been going on?’

  ‘You’d have to ask Felicity that. Sister Benedicta. She’s in France and she won’t talk, anyway.’

  ‘Why have you come to see me now?’

  ‘I said: Coralie will be going away at the end of the year. He’s never touched Teresa. She seems to have got on better than the rest of us.’

  Only a few minutes ago, Clarice had said to Miss Heffernan, ‘We have hopes of Teresa,’ as though it was a matter of no great moment. Now, hearing again the voices on the playing field, it seemed that Teresa, so light of heart, so gifted, epitomised all the hope that older generations invest in the young. She said, ‘Does Teresa know what you are telling me?’

  Gillian Davies thought about this, lowering her eyes. She had sandy eyelashes. The eyebrows were scarcely visible. Perhaps it was this absence of lines of demarcation that made the face seem so lacking in animation. As Clarice recalled, the mother was somewhat similar. They seemed both to have been subjected to that technique used in fantasy films when a ghost or an illusion is introduced to create an impression of the unreal, something not flesh and blood. Clarice disliked her and wanted to disbelieve her.

  ‘We’re not very close as sisters. There are big age gaps between us, four or five years. I have a theory we represent the times when our mother allowed access. But I think Teresa knows things go on that she doesn’t understand – or want to understand. And he makes it easy for her. She’s his favourite, very like him in many ways. He doesn’t want to spoil her. They’re friends. I can remember when he was a friend to me. He’s good at it.’ She sounded quite dispassionate, no hint of nostalgia there.

  ‘Why have you come to me?’

  ‘Where else could I go? Our mother? She’s been no more a mother to us than a wife to him. She’s not really ill, you know, it’s a convenience; something that gives her dispensation from the necessity of becoming an adult. She spends a lot of time at the convent and when she’s not there she recites the rosary. My father is quite brilliant; he could have gone a long way in his profession. But he had to be mother and father to us when we were young.’

  From what Clarice remembered of Mrs Davies on her rare appearances at the school, this portrait, though unpleasant, could well be true to the subject.

  ‘Your priest?’ she asked. ‘What about him?’

  ‘It would split the parish and the bishop wouldn’t like it. He might help if someone else did something, got things going – otherwise he won’t.’

  ‘What do you mean by “got things going”, Gillian?’

  ‘She could be sent to a boarding school, couldn’t she? I know a girl who was sent to boarding school the first time her father laid a finger on her. But her aunt was a JP and very tough. Coralie thinks you’re tough, too.’

  ‘Why didn’t she come with you?’

  ‘She won’t talk about it.’

  ‘She talked to the priest.’

  ‘That’s different. She knew he wouldn’t talk.’

  ‘Gillian, you’re saying that neither of your sisters will talk about this, that your mother . . . I’m not sure what it is you’re saying about your mother, but I don’t get the impression she would admit anything. Have you any idea of what you would have to face if you pursued this allegation, of the pressures on you from which neither I nor anyone else could protect you?’ Or, she thought, looking at the face with its sick distaste of life, the impression you wou
ld give under cross-examination. Whatever she might have suffered, this young woman was unlikely to arouse sympathy, did not, in fact, appear to want it.

  Gillian said, ‘I don’t mind much what happens to me.’ Again that indifferent tone. ‘There’s not much anyone could do that would be worse than what’s already happened.’ Clarice could see her at the stake, saying, ‘Light your bonfire, I can hardly wait,’ and not touching any hearts.

  ‘Then what do you want?’

  ‘I want to save Teresa, of course. It’s just that I don’t know how to set about it.’ She looked surprised that it should be necessary to say this, and for a moment there was something in her face that suggested that if a course of action were to be mapped out for her she would be prepared to go through the fire.

  And can I do less? Clarice asked herself. It sounded extravagant, but when one reflected on it, faced with such a story and believing it, could one do less? Well, of course, one could be sensible. One could consider the reputation of Dr Davies and make comparisons that could only be unfavourable to this unappealing young woman. But Clarice had had an upbringing that had not laid much emphasis on being sensible. Her father had had common sense, but where his political sympathies were concerned he rather regretted the passing of the days of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Her own headmistress. Miss Wilcox, had had little political zeal, but Clarice had no doubt how she would have responded to this situation and it was with a flood of gratitude, a sense of awakening, that she said, ‘I’m no more sure than you how to set about this, but I promise you I will do something.’

  The next day she made a few tentative enquiries.

  She tried Miss Heffernan first. Miss Heffernan said, ‘Things can’t be good in that house. You have only to look at that woman.’ The members of the staff to whom she spoke reacted in much the same way. If anything was wrong in that house the culprit was Mrs Davies. Clarice allowed herself to go as far as floating a suggestion. ‘She may well be the root cause, but surely Dr Davies . . .’ They took her to be referring to a mistress. Dr Davies would have too much to lose by any impropriety, they asserted, and anyway he was not that kind of man. A number of the staff were elderly women who had devoted their lives to teaching – not much scorched flesh there, Clarice thought, or understanding of it. They really believed a man did not endanger his career simply for sexual gratification. Clarice wondered how they managed with history lessons and English literature. But then Antony was a licentious Roman and Parnell was an Irishman, whereas Dr Davies was a respected local doctor known to them all. And why should she sneer at them? She had never suspected anything herself. Probably the most successful secret society in the world is the close-knit middle-class family.

  Only one teacher, the music mistress, seemed to hold her eye a little longer than was necessary before she said, ‘No, I don’t know of anything that might be troubling Teresa.’

  ‘You have no reason to wonder?’

  ‘No.’ Again, thoughtful.

  ‘If anything should give you concern, even something quite small, would you let me know?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ She seemed relieved, whether because the matter had been put to one side, or because she had been offered an opportunity to re-open the subject, Clarice could not tell. This was a rather touchy woman and she thought more might be gained by leaving it at that for the time being. But as she turned away, the woman said, ‘She isn’t singing so well – doesn’t seem able to loft her voice so effortlessly.’

  ‘Have you talked to her about it?’

  The woman looked away ‘I think perhaps she may feel she’ll miss Coralie.’ Whatever else she knew, she would not say.

  Clarice turned to the only person to whom she felt she could speak frankly.

  The moment she began to relate details of her talk with Gillian Davies to Robert Havelock she knew she had made a mistake. Disquiet made her tense. She had wanted to talk quietly, reflecting on the situation as she laid it before him. Instead, she was aware that her manner was unsympathetic, her voice brusque. She watched the contours of the familiar face she so loved change as mystification gave way to astonishment, not so much at the tale Gillian had told, but at her acceptance of it. The geniality was stripped away like topsoil, revealing a much harder substratum. The furrows in the cheeks deepened and the strong lines set around the mouth; the eyes that had so often laughed into hers filmed over. She was reminded that the Border Country had formed him. His mother had been an Armstrong and it amused him to say that he came of a reiver family. ‘You would never have been so ruthless,’ she had told him and he had said, ‘Make no mistake, had I lived then I’d have been a rider.’ The eyes that looked at her now might well have witnessed those turbulent times.

  He said, ‘I trust you haven’t told anyone else?’

  ‘No, that’s why I’ve come to you. I need help in handling this.’

  ‘Handling it?’ He raised his eyebrows and she saw that he was furiously angry. ‘In what way do you have to “handle” this?’

  ‘I have to do something,’ she said on a rising note.

  His voice was icy. ‘You do realise that by doing something with this calumny you may destroy that family? Certainly, you will destroy the very innocence you seek to preserve.’ He spoke incisively and she could sense that he was distancing himself from her, standing back to get a clearer view. It was as if, in this one brief conversation, their love was being replaced by dislike and she was watching it happen. He had enjoyed their differences; his was a strong personality and he had no need to fear dissension. Her quirkiness he could accept; her unease in the job had made her vulnerable, and that he had liked, too; even her comments on her colleagues he could respond to, he relished saltiness in a woman. But a certain steely quality of mind he had never found attractive. He had tolerated it in her because he was seldom a target and we all overlook the blemishes in the beloved. Now he saw her stripped of all the pleasurable trappings and imagined himself confronted with the truth of her. He was repelled.

  But she loved him every bit as much for being himself at this moment. She was desperate to keep him.

  ‘I know you’re right,’ she said. ‘The danger is of causing more harm than has already been done. That’s why I’ve told you and no one else. I badly need your advice.’

  ‘You’ve had my advice.’

  ‘Robert, I know that Malcolm Davies is a great friend. But Teresa is my pupil. You know her as well as I do. She’s young and eager and full of promise, one of the most lively, unusual children in the school . . .’

  ‘And if she weren’t full of promise, a pudding of a child, what then?’

  ‘And if the wife were sympathetic and engaging, what then? Let’s say I am as attached to Teresa as you are to her father.’ She pulled herself up. ‘Let’s not say anything of the kind. Whatever the circumstances and however much we would prefer not to know of this, once known, something has to be done. It is inconceivable that this lovely child should be spoilt.’

  ‘What is inconceivable is that you are ready to believe there is any question of her being spoilt. The wife is an hysteric and Gillian, too, no doubt – she was always singularly unappealing. For some reason she wishes to hurt her father. And for a story like this to get around would be sufficient. A doctor is very vulnerable. Have you any experience of how people’s lives can be ruined by vicious gossip?’

  ‘No, I haven’t, have you?’ The words flashed out before she could control her tongue.

  ‘Quite some experience, in fact. Don’t forget I grew up in a small Scottish village. The Free Church minister, whose wife was a harridan, enjoyed the company of one of his congregation. It was totally, pathetically innocent, amounting to no more than his escorting her home from evening service, never even setting foot inside the garden gate, let alone the house. But bitter spinsters who had never even enjoyed that much pleasure in their lives got to work. For those few brief moments of happiness he was hounded out of his living.’

  He himself had done far more to deserve
condemnation, but Clarice, who felt the less guilty, was not sensitive to this and came in too impatiently.

  ‘This is different, Robert. It’s his daughter who makes the accusation, and the eldest daughter became a nun.’

  ‘I appreciate that you’re a Quaker, but let me assure you that not all convents are full of abused women.’

  ‘And Gillian says the priest knows.’

  ‘He would never betray the secrets of the confessional.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s any question of that. She says she and Coralie have spoken to him. Father Damien is your priest. I hoped you might feel you could have a word with him.’

  ‘If you think I will be party to this kind of witch hunt, you are much mistaken.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be a witch hunt. Teresa could be sent to boarding school.’

  ‘And you’re prepared to meddle in other people’s lives as the result of an unsubstantiated allegation?’

  ‘Made by his own daughter. She’s telling the truth, Robert. If she wanted to cause trouble for her father there would be better ways of going about it than telling her priest and coming to me.’

  He was not listening and she realised it was the allegation itself that affronted him. He saw quite clearly the devastating effect it would have on his friend and his instinct was to defend him. The question of the truth of it was not something he was prepared even to consider.

  He said, ‘I’m indebted to Malcolm Davies. He’s been a good friend to me – to us, as it happens.’

  ‘You mean, he knows about us?’ The unholy glee she sometimes glimpsed in the eyes in that dark face assumed new meaning.

  ‘Don’t worry. He would never betray a confidence.’

  ‘No, he enjoys them too much.’ It was on the tip of her tongue to say she would rather he had confided in anyone but Malcolm Davies, then she recalled that she had discussed their affair with a woman whom Robert disliked. She felt herself becoming entangled in a mesh of conflicting emotions and loyalties which blurred the issue so that the clarity of the main outline was lost. The centuries had bequeathed to the man she loved complex ideas of honour and betrayal, justice and indebtedness. He was someone of whom it could be said: a good man to have at your shoulder in troubled times. She was confused and rather frightened.