WELCOME STRANGER

by MARY HOCKING

  Heather cursed her impulsiveness. She had little to add to what he already knew. Buchenwald . . . Once again she was struck by the absurdity of the conjunction of Buchenwald and the Winifred Clough Day School for Girls. To conceive of the same person having a role to play in both was a cosmic casting error. Katia had been four years her senior, and had the Vaseyelins not been Claire Fairley’s next-door neighbours. Heather would have known little about her. In those days, Claire had shared everything with her dearest friend. So Heather had learnt that when Katia visited her Jewish grandparents in Germany, she had secret meetings with a German boy whose father was a friend of Hermann Goering. Heather had looked at Katia with new respect. But all she had seen was a big, bosomy girl with a thorny tangle of dark gold hair, and pronounced sweat marks under the arms, who moved with a slow surging of the body as though she was constantly breasting new crests of emotion. Heather, who had been given elocution lessons in an attempt to tune her speech to the well-modulated pipings of her fellows, could see that only a cosmetic exercise on the Hollywood scale could have shaped Katia into the accepted mould.

  She said, ‘It’s only an incident, I’m afraid. But I thought you ought to know . . .’

  A train approaching the station blew its whistle. Jacov said, ‘Give me a moment.’

  The scream of the train whistle continued in his head. He remembered Katia on the last occasion he had seen her. She had been leaning out of the carriage window. . . . ‘We’re off!’ she had said triumphantly, but it was the train on the next platform which began to move. She looked at it angrily, as though it was stealing time from her, and spat on the platform. Jacov was aware of a change in her. Hitherto, her precocious physical behaviour had invited experiences for which she was not ready. Now, as she turned her large protruding eyes on the people hustling to board the train, he was aware that her raw eagerness had been infused by a certain amusement. Her clothes were the same ill-fitting jumble of style and colour she had worn for the past three years; but now, her personality, presiding imperiously over this rag-bag, compelled it into her service as though it was her own distinctive livery. He warned her of the need to be careful. On no account was she to become involved with Germans, particularly German men. She listened without the resentment which was her customary response to all advice, her eyes continuing to appraise the people who would be her companions on the journey. ‘You don’t have to be so solemn about it,’ she said. ‘It’s all a bit of a laugh. As long as you know that, you can handle anything.’ She craned her neck, impatient for the whistle which would send the train on its way, carrying her beyond all strictures. When it started, she remained at the window, her head turned in the direction in which she was going. She had always rebelled against the passive despair of her parents. For her, things were going to be different.

  He said to Heather, ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I see a lot of refugees in my work. When I get an opportunity, I ask about Katia. The other week, I talked to a woman who said she remembered her. She said they had been together on the train which took them to their first camp. That must have been a long time ago. I didn’t know whether to believe her. I was even more doubtful when she said she remembered Katia particularly because she boasted about her father being a great concert violinist who played all over the world. Katia told her, “When they know that they will let me go.” ’

  Jacov had become very still, but she was not aware of this. If she had ever heard that there was a Mr Vaseyelin who played the violin outside tube stations, she had forgotten about it. Heather went on, ‘She said that at first Katia kept saying “As soon as they find I’m from England they will let me go.” She said they had no idea how long they travelled. The windows were boarded up and they could not tell day from night. She said that, several years later, she saw Katia again at Buchenwald.’

  ‘What else happened?’

  ‘That was all she could tell me.’

  ‘Oh, but there must be more. You needn’t be afraid to tell me. My aunt was burnt to death by a mob in St Petersburg. They jeered and laughed as she died. I heard my parents talking about it. For months I couldn’t sleep for thinking of it. Now I never think of it. It is better to know. There is nothing worse than not knowing.’

  ‘But, Jacov, she didn’t say any more about what happened to Katia. I don’t think she knew. And, in any case, she was only concerned with her own story. She told me this bit about Katia because she thought it would interest me in her.’

  ‘Then it may not have been Katia. There must have been other girls whose fathers played the violin.’

  ‘No. It was Katia. She asked me whether Katia had a sister, because sometimes, in the railway truck, Katia called out “Alice!” ’

  He put his head in his hands. For a moment, a dark curtain had been twitched aside, but to reveal so little it would have been better to have seen nothing.

  Heather said, ‘Do you think I should tell Alice?’

  ‘No. You mustn’t tell her.’

  And I shouldn’t have told you, she thought wretchedly. He began to shake. Heather put her arms around his shoulders, and, since he seemed unable to do so, she cried. ‘What can it have been like?’ It was this stage of the journey that had a horrible fascination for her, not what came afterwards which was unimaginable – this time while you were still you, not a number, dehumanised, but a person who had gone to bed with plans for the next day. What could it have been like to find yourself herded into a truck in the middle of the night? Perhaps it was just cold and uncomfortable, and you worried about draughts, and whether you would have pneumonia by the time it had all been sorted out and you were free again? Did you take it stage by stage, this journey into oblivion? She could not believe you could step immediately from light into darkness. Jacov, his fingers gripping the seat in front, had no such difficulty; and perhaps what he imagined for Katia during that stage of her journey was worse than it had actually been. Or is hope an extra burden to carry?

  He had been shaking so violently that it had become hard to snatch breath and he had a terrible pain in his chest. As the sharpness of his awareness of Katia diminished, so his alarm for himself increased. ‘I think I am having a heart attack,’ he said to Heather.

  Heather, on surer grounds with hypochondria, said firmly, ‘No, you’ve just worked yourself into a panic. Sit back quietly and take a few deep breaths. You’ll be all right.’

  Each concentrated fiercely on his indisposition. It is such a short time one can give wholly to another’s tragedy. He gave a wretched sob. Heather said, ‘That’s better.’

  The clipboard with his notes on it was on the seat beside him. He fumbled for it. Heather said, ‘Won’t the janitor, or whoever it is, want to lock up?’

  ‘I have the keys.’ He hunched down into the seat.

  ‘You can’t stay here on your own.’

  He looked around him, surprised. If there was one place where he would be all right, it was here. ‘I’ve spent the night in a theatre before now.’

  ‘Well, you’re not going to do it tonight,’ she said sharply. ‘You need to eat. Is there anywhere we could go?’

  She was by no means confident of her prescription, but to her surprise it seemed that food was the one comfort he could accept. They took a taxi to a restaurant in Soho where he was obviously well-known. Apparently restaurants were akin to theatre for him. He made ordering seem part of a holy ritual, each act of which must be performed with due ceremony. The waiter played his part faithfully, Between them they created an illusion of plenty while studying a menu severely restricted by the regulations laid down by the Ministry of Food. When the food came, he gave it his undivided attention. One might have thought he had cause for celebration. But later, when they came out into the street, he shrank back in the doorway. ‘Will you come to my flat with me?’ As she hesitated, he said, ‘For coffee, perhaps . . .’

  ‘Only for coffee, no perhaps.’

  She wanted to walk, but he insisted on taking a taxi. He did not like walkin
g in a city at night, and had never learnt how to find his way from one place to another without difficulty.

  In the taxi, he said, ‘Why only coffee?’ He made a practised gesture with his hands and did something rueful with eyebrow and mouth.

  ‘I’ve got a beau of my own in Germany.’

  ‘So far away?’

  ‘No, right here, next my heart.’ She produced a snapshot.

  The flat was in Westminster, well appointed. He explained, ‘I share it with a friend. He is away playing in America. We are seldom here together, fortunately.’

  Heather looked round the room. Not only were the photographs all theatrical, but most were of people in costume, ranging from Regency buck to Playboy Irish. She could remember playing Bottom in the school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Even she, uninhibited as she seemed in comparison with her school fellows, had experienced a surprising sense of release when she put on the ass’s head. Apart from the photographs, the room would have served as the setting for innumerable Thirties light comedies. At least she was seeing it in close up – normally her view would be from the gallery.

  Jacov, who had absented himself to prepare coffee, returned draped in a long silk dressing-gown.

  ‘Oh, very Chu Chin Chow of China!’ she commented. He pursed his lips. On closer scrutiny, she saw that the dressing gown was old and in such a state of dilapidation that it would probably be unwise to wash it. Either he had pinched it from a theatre wardrobe, or it had been handed down through generations of Vaseyelins. ‘I keep forgetting you’re a Russian aristocrat.’ She bobbed her head and steepled her hands in a mock gesture of peace.

  He said, ‘I remember you now. You were Claire’s friend.’

  It was her turn to take offence. ‘I told you that when I introduced myself.’

  ‘But it meant nothing to me then.’

  ‘I was the common one the Fairleys were so kind to,’ she said, and hated herself for it, because they had been genuinely kind. ‘Do you see them often?’ She longed for news of Claire, but it was Alice whom he had seen recently.

  ‘And Louise? We all thought she was terrific.’

  Jacov, who had made love to Louise a month ago, during the interval between a matinee and an evening performance, screwed up his eyes as though recollecting her in a more distant past, and agreed that she was terrific.

  ‘I couldn’t understand their mum marrying again. Isn’t that odd? I used to rag Claire because they had such a special idea of themselves as a family, but it came as a right old shock to me. English people are all puritans under the skin. Is that the way we strike you?’

  ‘I don’t know about English people. Only the Fairleys.’

  His monkey face screwed up in an expression of grief so raw it had nothing of the theatrical about it. Grief on stage must be recognisably grief, however bizarrely expressed it must not make you look as though you had peeled an onion which was stinging your eyes fit to blind them. ‘Mr Fairley was my first English friend.’ It was what he always said to explain this rending grief whose origin he did not himself understand.

  If I’m not careful I’m going to stay here comforting him. Heather thought. And I bet there’s only one kind of comfort he understands – and I don’t suppose he has to exert himself overmuch to get it. She gulped down her coffee and got up. ‘What you need is a strong drink and a couple of aspirins before you go to bed.’

  That was monstrously inadequate advice considering the circumstances, she thought as she strode along Victoria Street. But, considering the circumstances, what was there to say?

  Ten minutes later, Jacov was sitting in a taxi. The theatre was empty when he got there and he could not find the light switch. He fumbled his way to the auditorium and thence to the lighting box. But when he touched the switch, no lights came on. The main switch had been turned off. He had now become quite disorientated. There was no crack of light. However long he remained here his eyes would not make out so much as a wrinkle in this enveloping blackness, certainly there would be no outline of seat or exit door or proscenium arch. He started to shuffle, hoping to make his way to the stage door, but after a time he realised he was in fact going down one of the aisles. He sat on the floor which he soon realised was a mistake because now that he was still he was aware of the thunderous pounding of his heart. He was also aware that he was quite alone, as isolated as an explorer in the middle of an empty continent. No, that was fanciful; this continent had no contours and he had no form. He held up his hand, but saw nothing. If comparisons must be made, he was a man who had fallen down a well. If he was not to die here and now of a heart attack, he must remain absolutely still. He tried to remember the opening lines of the play. No words came. He pressed his face against the side of a seat and terrorised himself into oblivion. The cleaner discovered him the next morning. The doctor at the hospital told him severely, ‘You worked yourself into a state of hysteria. Didn’t you realise you had a lighter in your pocket?’ He recommended a week’s rest, which was the last thing Jacov needed.

  Heather telephoned Alice at her office the next day. ‘Louise gave me your number. She said it was all right to ring you. I wondered if we could have lunch.’

  ‘I can’t leave here until one,’ Alice said, eyeing Mr Hadow who was snuffling disapproval. ‘But I’d like to see you.’

  ‘One o’clock then. I’ll meet you outside. It will give me time to sunbathe in St James’s Park.’

  It was a bright day and all of Heather’s exposed parts, face and neck, arms and legs, were scalded salmon pink by the time Alice came out of the office, looking very composed with her hair parted in the middle and drawn back, and wearing a brown linen dress which did not suit her colouring. They greeted each other a little awkwardly. Heather had been Claire’s friend and not, therefore, a person to be taken seriously, certainly not a companion for oneself. It is difficult, however, to maintain an older sister attitude walking beside someone so much taller than oneself, and by the time they reached the café in Great Smith Street Alice had become less dignified.

  ‘I thought you were going to university,’ she said, when they had squeezed into a corner table. ‘Then, the next I heard, you were driving ambulances.’

  ‘I was going to Bristol. But it didn’t seem right, somehow, with a war on. Then, when the war was over, it seemed too late. It’s upset my dad. He was so proud of my scholastic achievements he thought I’d become a vice-chancellor! There’s going to be no stopping our lass, he told our neighbours.’

  ‘How is your dad?’

  ‘He’s a local councillor now. We all tease him he’ll become the mayor if he doesn’t watch out. He says if he does they’ll have to get a smaller car. He’s not going to be driven round in a hearse! What do you make of local government?’

  ‘It’s so dull. Heather! We had the most awful fuss this morning because someone had done a lot of letters for secondary heads using pink paper for the copies when it should have been yellow. Pink is for primary schools.’

  ‘And that matters?’

  ‘The general office is in a state of dementia!’

  The waitress came bearing vegetable hotpot for Alice and spam fritters for Heather. When she had gone, Heather said, ‘There were lots of men clambering up poles and lamp-posts in Whitehall. What’s happening?’

  ‘They are preparing for the Victory Parade. I meant to go away. I’ve seen enough of people in uniform to last me a lifetime. But the Wren friend I was going with has changed her mind at the last minute. Now she wants me to stay with her, because she has found an unattached male and dare not let him out of her sight for as much as a day. I stayed in her house once before and nothing would persuade me to do it again.’ Alice shuddered at the memory of her visit to the home of Felicity Naismith.

  ‘I’d like to get away,’ Heather said. ‘Could I come with you instead?’

  She thought Alice might consider this presumptuous, but in the WRNS Alice had become used to going on forty-eight-hour leave with anyone who happened to
be off duty, so she agreed readily.

  When Alice returned to the office Mr Hadow was at a committee meeting. She had had a bigger lunch than usual and felt sleepy. She was also depressed. This was probably because her period was due, but the fact remained there was quite a lot to be depressed about. She wished she had thought of trying to get into UNRRA. She read through the minutes she was to stick in the Secondary Education Sub-Committee minute book. Attached to the minutes was a report on secondary education, listing the sins of the grammar schools, not least among which was the emphasis placed on character building. Multilateral, or comprehensive, schools were not going to need to do this; apparently simply by being they would effect a fundamental change in the human condition. The language was very persuasive and it was difficult to resist the conclusion that her own schooling, with its emphasis on standards and values, had been harmful; and that the ideal of service to others had been a form of atonement, something to be undertaken in order to justify being more fortunate than other people.

  She looked out of the window and was aware once more of being watched by girls in a room in the adjacent wing. She waved and they turned their heads away and began to busy themselves with bits of paper; one of them reached for a telephone. ‘Well, that’s got them moving!’ Alice thought, reaching for the glue.

  She was not good at sticking in minutes and was glad when a girl from the general purposes section came in. ‘I always make them corrugated however hard I try,’ she said sadly.

  ‘You need to press down from the centre and then ease the page outwards.’

  It was too late for the first two pages, but the advice worked wonders for the remainder. Her companion watched her. Peggy Trotton had been a Waaf, and she and Alice had become friendly and often exchanged reminiscences of their war service.

  ‘The first warm day,’ Peggy said, ‘and they are all grumbling about the heat! Mr Stubbings came in and told them they should have been in India. When he had gone, they all began to tell their bomb stories, just to make it clear who suffered most.’ She picked up a piece of blotting paper. ‘I should put that between the pages if I were you. You’ve been a bit heavy-handed with the glue.’