THE MEETING PLACE

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘On the fourth day we stayed in one of those French villages that spill down a hill, a clutter of oblong buildings like so many dominoes. Scrubby hills around, mountains on the skyline. We went for a long walk and as we came home towards evening the clouds were gathering and to the west the sky was a deep lavender. Did you notice what I said? “We came home.” I said it quite naturally just as the thought came to me then, that feeling I get in those old French villages of a homecoming. It isn’t nostalgia but the essence of all homecomings.

  ‘The sun shafted across the village, caramelising all those higgledy- piggledy buildings; something touched my cheek, soft as a bird’s feather. I thought it was for me, that moment; I didn’t realise until afterwards it only brushed me in passing.

  ‘That evening at supper she came to life again. She was never someone who had to hold attention by monopolising conversation, but she could convey an intense interest in her companions that heightened an occasion. On this evening that is what she did, as though she had something precious to share with us.’

  She bent forward for a moment, rubbing her fingers through her tangled hair as she gathered herself for something she was now almost too drained to tell. When she spoke it was as if she was relating something to herself, bringing it into being.

  ‘It was a warm night for October, but I don’t think that explains why I went out into the little yard at the back of the house in the early hours of the morning. She was there, in a stone archway leading on to the side street; only a shadow in the moonlight, but I knew it was her.

  ‘I said, “Teresa, come back.” ’ No authority, just a plea.

  ‘She said, “Give me a few hours. Miss Mitchell, please.”

  ‘I stood there in the yard and watched her go. I heard her footsteps in the street. Then the cloud covered the moon and it was pitch dark and I thought this is madness. I felt my way towards the arch and out into the narrow street. I could neither see nor hear. I went back. The member of staff I shared the room with was still asleep and I didn’t wake her.’

  She clasped her hands around her knees and bowed her head. Alan knew how to hold a pause and he held this one a long time before he asked:

  ‘How old was Teresa then?’

  She straightened. ‘You may well ask. She was thirteen. I let a thirteen-year-old girl walk out into a pitch black night in a French village a long way from any town and I didn’t report her missing until the next morning.’

  Alan was silent, considering this. Eventually he said, ‘I think that was rather a brave thing to do.’

  ‘It was wildly irresponsible. I’ve never been able to work out since whether it was one of those things that’s meant to happen and I was merely the instrument, or whether it happened as a result of a flaw in my character. At the time, I had to assume it was a flaw in my character and I resigned. In that I’m sure I was right – as well as prudent, since I would have had to go anyway; it was obvious to myself and everyone else that I was not fitted to be in charge of young people.’

  ‘But did they know you saw her go?’

  ‘It was a question they never asked. I often wonder when I read the reports of enquiries how much goes undetected because the right question is never put. Robert, of course, guessed. But he wouldn’t betray me – after all, he was indebted to me.’

  ‘And the governors?’

  ‘They wanted someone to blame and said that the arrangements for supervision hadn’t been adequate. I sympathised with that.’

  ‘Did her family have any idea of where she might have gone?’

  ‘Who can tell? They certainly weren’t going to. The mother became, if anything, more dissociated. And, as you know, her father committed suicide. Gillian went to see him; what she may have said, or threatened, I can only surmise, but it was shortly after that visit he hanged himself. He was a doctor, he must have known gentler ways, but he hanged himself.’

  ‘And nothing has been heard of her since?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She got up abruptly, flexing stiffened muscles. ‘I don’t want to examine how I feel about that.’

  He stood beside her and put an arm round her shoulders. ‘You did your best, Clarice.’

  ‘God help anyone when I do my worst.’

  ‘At the time, though . . .’

  ‘Oh, at the time, I knew. In that moment when we looked at each other, she was already a dark form, her substance lost to me. Had we talked all night, it would still have come down to that plea, “Give me a few hours. Miss Mitchell, please.” I knew I had to let her go. But there are consequences. I’ve lived with the consequences ever since, Alan, and I can no longer be sure it was something other than an act of madness on my part. In my darkest moments I can even persuade myself that she wanted me to stop her.’

  ‘Have you ever been back? I know you’ve been to France – we went together once. Did we go to that village?’

  ‘We passed through it.’

  ‘There was one time . . .’

  ‘I don’t want to say any more; there are some things I can’t talk about.’

  He could accept this easily enough, as he accepted most things. He wasn’t really curious, just showing willingness to provide what comfort lay within his power, confident she would not ask for anything beyond his capacity for giving. But he loved her in so far as he was able and felt some lingering uneasiness.

  ‘Is there something you’re afraid of?’

  ‘I’ve said I can’t talk about it.’

  He saw that if he pushed any further there would be unpleasantness of one kind or another.

  ‘Pub lunch.’ He pointed to where, across the bridge, people were making their way to a small hotel on the hillside.

  ‘Where did they all spring from?’ Clarice asked.

  ‘They’ve come from the fair, I expect.’

  ‘I don’t know that I want to get caught up with fairground people,’ she said, uncharacteristically apprehensive.

  ‘There aren’t that many of them. We shall find a table on our own. And it’s not swings and roundabouts, more of a craft fair. I thought we might have a look on our way back.’

  After lunch, they went to the fair, which was on the heath, and Clarice bought scarves for Christmas presents. Alan bought her a sweater that she had admired. At one booth people were having their faces painted, not only children; Clarice watched, aware once more of a certain uneasiness. She remembered going to a fair in France and the fear that suddenly one of the bizarre figures would swing round on her and it would be Teresa. Then the figure would dance away and she would never know whether the girl was simply playing a part in the carnival, or whether she had changed dreadfully.

  On the way out, a figure did swing suddenly into her path. A bright, sun-warmed face smiled not so much at her as through her. Alan caught her arm as she stumbled. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A woman. I keep seeing her. She’s getting older.’

  ‘Aren’t we all?’ he said absently.

  Visibility was poor on the moor. Green turf threaded its way between clumps of heather down tracks that dissolved in murky haze. A shining grey car parked on the turf looked spectral, as if it had landed from another planet. Clarice, following a little behind Alan, said, ‘She still doesn’t see me.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Joan had been to the fair. She sat in the yard, taking off her boots to relieve her swollen feet. The wind parted her hair at the nape of her neck and blew chaff in her face. It was autumn and the wind already had winter’s breath on it; Joan’s face glowed where it had caught her cheekbones. The old servant watched her from the kitchen door.

  ‘We were afeared something had happened to ’ee.’ She had not really been frightened, it was her way of rebuking Joan for taking a long time. ‘Mistress warned ’ee to leave early. Always robbers about when people are returning from the fair.’

  ‘I haven’t been to a fair for years,’ Joan said, bringing her purchases into the kitchen. ‘There was so much to see.’

  The old woman bega
n to check the articles before putting them away in the cupboard that she guarded closely.

  ‘There was a man with a performing bear, Martha. The bear mauled him.’ It had brought the performance to an abrupt end, otherwise she would have been back even later. ‘There was a madwoman came to the fair when I was a child. She used to dance through the village street.’

  The old woman said, ‘You’ve forgotten the ginger.’

  ‘There wasn’t any.’

  ‘You’re a liar.’ She went into her store cupboard and brooded over the omission of the ginger. ‘I don’t know why she took you in.’

  ‘We are related,’ Joan said indifferently.

  ‘Related! I’ve served her for thirty years. I was with her afore she ever went to be with the Duchess. And I never heard any mention of ’ee.’

  ‘My mother was a Twynyho. Ankarette used to visit us years ago. Plump and rosy, she was, and she wore a yellow kirtle. I can see that kirtle now . . .’

  ‘Oh, you can see anything you set your mind to, and she’d believe anything, she’s so good-natured. It was the priest got her to take you in, telling her some story that moved her kind heart.’

  ‘All this fuss about ginger.’

  ‘She does so love a touch o’ ginger,’ the old woman adopted a crooning voice, as though talking to a child. ‘Apple tart wi’ ginger I was going to make for her, because she’s been so sad since the Duchess died and she came back here.’

  The wind sent dust and bits of straw eddying into the kitchen. ‘There was a juggler, too,’ Joan said. ‘He was so funny, I laughed until I ached.’ She pressed a hand to her breast as if the laughter and the ache were still there. ‘Oh, Martha, doesn’t it stir you, an evening like this! All sparkling, and the wind . . .’

  ‘I don’t have no time, me dear. And, anyway, I’m too old. Little bit o’ peace is what I want, not stirring up.’ She looked at the other woman, her wrinkled face neither friendly nor particularly hostile. Never going to be young again, she thought, but comely enough, even in her thirties. Something wrong there, though. Never settle will this one; she’ll be moaning and crying out at every turn of the wind, no good to herself or any man. And she’ll know no more about life the day she dies than the day she was born.

  Joan said, ‘He was a lovely man, the juggler . . .’

  ‘They’re bad folk, those wandering people. Bad folk, all o’ them.’ She went past Joan into the yard and hauled herself up the steps to the loft that was above the kitchen. Joan could hear the timbers creak.

  Martha called out, ‘Will ’ee get that washing in afore dark?’

  Joan loitered in the yard, throwing up pegs and trying to catch them as the juggler had done. While she was doing this a noise of which she had been half aware became more definite. ‘Horses!’ she called out. ‘Just fancy, Martha, more than one horseman riding this way.’ She listened as the distant thrumming became distinct and metallic. ‘A fair and several horsemen riding by! And all in the one day. Can’t ever have been so much happen here afore.’

  But they weren’t riding by. Suddenly, they were in the yard, five men splendidly mounted.

  ‘Is it the bear?’ Joan cried out to one of them, who seemed too fine to be concerned with a runaway bear. She was holding the sheet in front of her, stretched out, half-folded. Perhaps in the dusk he did not see her. He swung down from his horse and went towards the kitchen, where Martha was now standing, clasping a basket full of apples.

  ‘Where’s your mistress?’

  ‘What do ’ee want with ’er?’ Martha’s voice quavered.

  The other men crowded after the first man, pushing the old woman into the kitchen. Joan dropped her arms and the wind folded the sheet gently around her limbs. She heard the sound of heavy boots on stone, overturned furniture, Martha’s voice, further away, not like she had ever heard it before. ‘I tried to stop ’um. Mistress, I tried . . .’

  None of the other servants came running out to see what was happening. Memory triggered fear. Joan freed herself from the sheet and ran into the kitchen, through the narrow archway into the hall. Men were coming down the stairs, one of them had Ankarette slung over his shoulder, she was clutching at the stair rail and screaming, her mouth a gaping hole in her face. Martha was lying at the top of the stairs, her head was tilted back sharply over the top step and her mouth was open in a bloody grimace. Joan knew that she was dead.

  ‘What’s this? One here we missed.’

  A man had turned back. He was standing with a foot on the bottom step, looking up at her. Behind him, someone called out and he half-turned; in that moment when he was off-balance Joan rushed past him into the kitchen. He recovered soon enough and came after her, but she had managed to grab a warming pan from the hearth and as he lunged towards her she swung with all her might, hitting him between the eyes. She was a strong woman. He lay still where he had fallen, but to make sure, she hit him several times.

  The table had been overturned and the apples from Martha’s basket rolled about under her feet. She picked one up and ate it while she put on her boots. Then she sat, hunched forward, shivering as if she had the ague. After a time she was conscious of movement out in the yard. She picked up the warming pan and turned towards the door. There was a man standing there; she could see a horse behind him laden with baggage. His face in the light of the lamp that he carried was white as flour. He whispered hoarsely, ‘I heard terrible screaming when I was some distance away.’

  ‘They took my mistress,’ Joan said.

  He nodded, apparently needing no convincing. ‘They were in the town,’ he said, ‘asking for someone. The Duke of Clarence’s men. ’Tis said she poisoned the Duchess of Clarence.’

  ‘She was good and kind to me.’

  He came towards her and she moved back to let him into the kitchen. It was the juggler from the fair, a small, wiry man with bandy legs and arms as long as a monkey’s, not very lovely at close quarters, but with some gentleness about his puckered face. He looked around the kitchen and then walked towards the hall; as he passed the upturned table he saw the man lying there. Joan, who was feeling faint now, took another apple and stood by the open kitchen door, looking out into the darkness, glad of the cool of evening.

  ‘Did you do that?’ His face was more green than white now.

  ‘They took my mistress away and they killed old Martha.’

  There was blood on her hands, she noticed for the first time; it was all over the front of her gown, too.

  ‘You must be very strong.’ He looked at her respectfully.

  Then, becoming business-like: ‘You’d best get him out of the way. It won’t help your mistress if they find him here.’

  Joan said, ‘Where can I take him?’

  ‘There’s a river yonder, across the field.’

  The juggler found rope in the loft and tied the dead man’s hands and feet together to make it easier to carry him; then they humped him out into the yard. ‘I’d put him on my horse,’ the juggler said, ‘if it wasn’t for the blood getting over everything.’

  So they carried the man down to the river which was full and rushing crisply over the boulders. When they had pushed the body into the water, they washed their hands and Joan rubbed down her gown. ‘ ’Tis hardly dried, so maybe it won’t stain,’ she said. The water was very cold; some of the coldness was inside her now and she was shaking more violently.

  ‘There’ll be his horse,’ the juggler said. ‘I reckon we could sell his horse and no questions asked; a horse isn’t like a dead man.’ It took them some time to catch the horse which had strayed; as they crossed the field, cajoling softly, Joan thought, ‘I can’t go back, so I suppose I’d better go with him, since that’s what he seems to have in mind.’

  ‘I killed a man. Lady.’

  ‘Do you think she really killed a man?’ Dame Priscilla asked. ‘That’s a matter for the priest,’ Dame Ursula said wearily. ‘He seems to think she’s harmless.’

  ‘Don’t turn from me, Lady. They took m
y children away and I didn’t know what I did after that.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  As she drew up outside the church, Clarice thought, I seem to be in and out of lives other than my own. There is something I am being told that I don’t want to accept, it waits for me, like a patient presence.

  The church was in the village of West Bentham, which had not appeared to be signposted. Perhaps if she had come another way it might have merited a mention, but she doubted it. In this area, she had discovered, signposts tended to deal with places at some distance, such as the town of Mellor; the near-at-hand they disdained. Local people, when available, seemed uninterested in place names. She supposed that at one time villagers must have remained in their tiny communities with little knowledge of the outside world, even of what lay on the other side of the hill. Or did the fact that the area was sparsely populated mean that in the distant past people had moved from place to place, not settled, led a wandering life? These were not idle speculations. It was as though she were tracing her ancestry, or that of an acquaintance – two acquaintances, in fact, one deeply rooted, the other, Clarice guessed, rootless.

  She looked at the noticeboard beside which she had parked her car. St John the Evangelist: Vicar, Rev. John Moxey. The church itself was partly hidden by a short avenue of trees; to its right was the vicarage and to the left, the village school. As far as she could see, this was the extent of West Bentham. But here, as elsewhere, appearances were deceptive, because soon parishioners began to arrive, some by car, but a number on foot, springing, it seemed to her, out of the very hedges.

  As the bell began to summon the faithful, Clarice experienced a reluctance to join them that had nothing to do with religious scruples. She enjoyed the Anglican services she attended from time to time, only wishing that if they felt it necessary to sing they would do it as wholeheartedly as the Methodists. No, this reluctance was more the wish to prolong the state of uncertainty which had so plagued her of late and which now seemed unaccountably to have become wholly desirable. Already she was beginning to regret the impulse that had led her to make an appointment with the vicar.