WELCOME STRANGER

by MARY HOCKING

  This produced a fresh outburst of weeping. ‘Everyone’s so changed and I’m so lonely.’ Heather, holding her close, wondered how she could make Claire see that it was she who had changed the most. Or perhaps she hadn’t? Perhaps she was still behaving as she had when she was a child and someone at school (probably me!) had said something to disturb her. Only then, the adult world had had answers which comforted her. Now, she was one of the adults.

  When Claire had recovered, they went to Kew Gardens and sat on the grass looking down the long avenue towards the Pagoda. Heather noticed how physically undeveloped Claire was, still thin as a hazel stick, the little freckled face peering tentatively from the bush of frizzy red hair. In spite of her own robust nature and gawky strength. Heather had always felt herself subject to Claire, who effectively manipulated people by a series of emotional rewards and punishments. Herself more mature now, Heather realised that what she had often taken for cruelty was really Claire’s only weapon: there was no other way that she could hold her own. Oh, lovey, she thought, if only I had known this sooner!

  ‘The Pagoda is closed because someone once jumped off it,’ Claire said. ‘At least, that’s what we were told when we were young.’

  ‘Don’t be so morbid!’

  ‘I’m not morbid. I was informing you.’

  ‘Then I’ll inform you. It’s very lonely for you, imprisoned all day with the kids. You need to join something.’

  ‘I did go to a Quaker meeting. But it wasn’t any good. Rather like a Methodist prayer meeting, except that those who were moved to speak had a more extended vocabulary. And what moves them.’ I don’t want to listen to the predictable rumblings of other people’s subconscious. And if it’s supposed to be the Holy Spirit, that just takes me back where I started going wrong. Also, it was not all that silent.’ This was what had really irked her. Silence, in her view, had to be absolute. ‘People-came in late and left early. And in the period in the middle there was a large dog who kept shifting his position and sighing. I found myself watching him. Every so often he lifted his head and rolled his eyes hopefully at his master. When it was all over, his joy was quite bounding!’

  ‘You don’t seem to have got into the spirit of it, if I may say so.’

  ‘I can’t concentrate if people fidget. And anyway, I like to know what I’m supposed to be concentrating on.’

  She was talking more easily now. After a few minutes, she said, ‘I suppose I could join a choir.’

  ‘And fret because you weren’t chosen as soloist?’

  Claire laughed and admitted, ‘I expect I would. What do you suggest?’

  ‘Something where you’ve got a definite task allotted to you. Singing might be the answer. A smaller group than a choir, though – and you the only soprano!’

  ‘I’m not as bad as all that!’ But Claire did not mind Heather’s candour; there was a personal quality about teasing which she had always found gratifying.

  They stretched out on the grass in companionable silence until it was time to eat their packed lunch. As they ate, they talked of mutual friends. Heather told Claire about her meeting with Jacov – ‘only you mustn’t tell Alice about Katia, because it would upset her.’ Claire, who did not like to be told what she must, and must not, say to her sister, made a mental note that this was something Alice ought to know. Fancy Heather presuming to advise on a matter where only the Fairleys were involved!

  In the afternoon, they walked along the tow-path and Claire sang Greensleeves as they looked across the river at Syon House, stately amid serene green lawns. Claire said, ‘I think I’d like to have lived then.’

  ‘And been seduced by the lord of the manor? We’d both have been skivvies then, you know. No middle class in those days.’

  Claire, for once, did not rise to the bait. ‘Can you imagine us, both working in the kitchens? Carrying those enormous stew pots into the Great Hall?’

  ‘Stirring in a few turds because we hated their guts and having a laugh about it!’

  They walked on and when they came to where The London Apprentice was hidden by trees they made up a thriller, all Dickensian mists and unseen oars stroking dark water. As Richmond Bridge came in sight and the afternoon shadows lengthened, laughter dwindled in regret. If we had been braver, what would we have made of our life? Heather wondered. Claire, unable to ask herself this, built up her defences as they left the river behind.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘October!’ Alice exclaimed. ‘And hardly a yellowed leaf to show for it.’

  ‘Those are evergreens,’ Ben said.

  ‘Not all of them. I know an evergreen when I see one.’

  Louise and Guy, sitting behind them in the coach, hoped they weren’t going to bicker all the time.

  They passed through a village with a Green Man public house, its sign depicting a truculent Robin Hood, one hand on hip, the other holding his bow like a staff. Then they were out in the country again, fields on one side, beech woods on the other. It was a clear autumn day with a blustery wind and a lot of cumulus clouds chasing one another across the sky. Ahead the Chilterns banked steeply and Alice, who had only stayed at Jordans, and then briefly, was delighted by countryside that was new to her and could not forbear from extolling its particular qualities. The hills, she felt, were more blue than Sussex hills; there was, in fact, a blue tendency to the landscape as a whole.

  ‘It’s autumn,’ Ben pointed out.

  ‘Not only that. The sky is enormous. There’s a quite different feel. It’s landlocked – I have no sense of the sea over the next hill.’

  ‘Landlocked is the middle of a continent,’ he said.

  Alice said that, to her, Buckinghamshire was landlocked.

  The hills dived down into villages of great charm. Buckinghamshire buildings, they all noted, merged admirably into the landscape, so that, seen contained in the window frame, one could scarcely have said whether they were designed for the hills or the hills as a backcloth for them. ‘No wonder there are film studios here!’ Louise exclaimed.

  ‘We’re long past Denham,’ Ben said.

  She leant forward and tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Stop pouncing on everything we say. You’re not in court.’

  ‘Even so, it would be nice to hear one accurate statement.’ He was good-natured in his chaff and put an arm round Alice’s shoulder. ‘It’s your literary career I’m worried about. You’re not going to write one of those reminiscences of a country childhood, are you – “As I came over the brow of the hill . . .” Or gurt hill, I suppose it would be.’

  Alice did not respond. She was gazing with satisfaction at a sturdy flint farmhouse, forming with its long, low barns a compact unit, the lines clean and neat. The little complex was plain and grey and abiding, as befitted a county which had reared men as staunch as John Hampden. John Hampden was one of Alice’s heroes.

  They came to a village with wide grass verges, a few yellow beech leaves scattered on the deep greensward. ‘See,’ Ben said. ‘Golden-grove unleaving.’ Just beyond the village the coach driver stopped and they got out. A sign above an overgrown track pointed the way to the youth hostel.

  ‘I’m glad to see you travel light,’ Ben said to Alice as she hitched her haversack over her shoulders.

  ‘Years of experience.’

  ‘I wish you’d tell your sister how to do it.’ Guy was hampered by a heavy suitcase. ‘We’re going to look ridiculous.’ He had never been to a youth hostel before and only now, as they set out down the lane, did he realise that it would be quite different from the small guest houses in which he had spent his youthful holidays.

  There was only the warden at the youth hostel, and he was too agitated to take note of their luggage. ‘There are no other people staying here,’ he said. ‘I’ve got rather an emergency – my mother has been taken ill. But you are all responsible people. You can take care of yourselves, can’t you? I mean, you don’t need me to supervise you.’ He gave a nervous neigh of laughter. ‘I’ll just show you round and
leave a key with you.’ He led them on a tour of the building, which did not take long as it was small with limited amenities, and he was in a considerable hurry. He seemed peculiarly excited by his mother’s illness.

  ‘It’s rather like a log cabin in New England,’ Alice said to Louise as they made the beds. ‘Do you remember how we loved The Country of the Pointed Firs?’ She went to the window and gazed out at the wood, still green, with here and there the trunks of young birches, spindly as undernourished children. Further away in the lane, the sunlight was pale on an elm, softening its elephant grey ridges to corduroy. ‘I wouldn’t mind living here.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind some tea. Let’s investigate the cooking facilities. I’ve a feeling they are more or less non-existent from the way he glossed over them.’

  Ben and Guy had already investigated. Guy had found a kettle and Ben was lighting a primus stove. Ben said, over his shoulder, ‘I don’t think his old mother is ill, do you?’

  ‘He was in a hurry to leave,’ Guy said.

  ‘It wasn’t that kind of impatience, though. I bet he’s got a girl friend tucked away in one of the villages.’

  ‘Perhaps he had her here – when there were no youth hostellers,’ Alice said, thinking what a secret place it was; but Louise said, ‘Too overlooked. All those trees.’ They were so close she felt they might invade the room if one was not vigilant.

  After they had had their tea, they walked down to the village, now nestling in the shadow of a bare, blunt hill. It was early evening, a touch of primrose in the sky. The berries were bright in the hedgerows and on the mountain ash, and rosy apples were hanging from boughs. In the cottage gardens there were big yellow daisies, dahlias and peonies. ‘All the robust flowers,’ Louise said approvingly.

  ‘Mummy would be out spraying those dahlias!’ Alice said.

  There was a great beech tree in the centre of the village with a bench beneath it on which Louise and Guy sat while Guy took out his ordnance survey map. ‘We haven’t got long,’ he said. ‘So we mustn’t waste any time. Where shall we walk tomorrow?’

  ‘You work out a route.’ Louise leant back against the trunk of the tree and gazed at the small pond with the church just beyond, which was the most there seemed to be of open space in this narrow village. She had felt very oppressed in the youth hostel and was only now regaining her zest for this holiday to which she had looked forward so much.

  ‘How far do you think you could walk?’ Guy asked Ben, who had only recently recovered from a bout of malaria.

  ‘As far as anyone else,’ Ben answered snappishly. ‘You have no idea how many miles I walked in Siam.’

  ‘Break us in gently.’ Alice came to his rescue, although she felt she could walk for miles and miles in this crisp, acrid air. She was already beginning to regret not having put on a sweater beneath her raincoat.

  Guy was wearing a v-necked pullover and an open shirt. Casual clothes did not suit him and his pale, surprised neck looked unprepared for exposure. Alice noted with interest that on Ben the effect was quite different; the unbuttoned collar became an adornment out of which the neck thrust like a strong stem supporting the bold flower of the head. She then noticed that, despite his recent illness, he was distinctly more mettlesome than Guy – though that was probably because all the nerve ends were exposed. A little tremor went through her, as though she had actually touched him. At that moment he looked at her, and she saw her own shock mirrored in his eyes. The air between them quivered. Yet Louise was speaking as though nothing unusual was happening.

  ‘No one is to talk about their war experiences on this holiday. If I hear one word from any of you about the desert or the jungle, I shall go home.’

  Guy said, ‘When I was at Mersa Matruh . . .’ and she punched his shoulder. ‘Get down to your maps, sirrah! You have yet to prove you can lead a country walk.’

  And Alice was standing there, surely as conspicuous as a beacon flaring a signal!

  Louise and Guy dwindled over the ordnance survey map. The sun was going down, the darkening hills growing more massive. All the small everyday comforts receded with the dying of the light. And man and woman confronted each other.

  ‘Supper,’ Louise said, as Guy folded the map and put it in his pocket.

  The water in the pond was only faintly touched with colour, a memory of the primrose in the sky. As they turned into the shadow of the lane leading to the hostel, and saw that the trees had closed their ranks, Louise whispered to Alice, ‘Honestly, do you like this place?’

  The air smelt of woodsmoke, just as though the setting sun had really set the damp trees alight. Louise said, ‘I’m not very keen on our loping off into the wood like this; and I don’t like that miserable little hut.’

  Guy said, ‘Primitive man would think it was a palace.’

  ‘We’re not primitive, are we?’

  Ben and Alice were silent. Louise hoped they were not going to be out of temper all the time.

  When they reached the hut, Alice remained outside, taking deep breaths and gazing at what she could see of the sky through the tangle of branches. ‘I must learn to be sensible,’ she told herself. Since that glimpse of Ivor with the woman she had thought little of him and had imagined herself quite recovered. But obviously this was not so. She must still be in a very unstable condition and quite unable to command appropriate responses to situations. Otherwise how could it be that at the very moment when all her senses should have warned her against impetuosity, she should experience this irresistible spiral of joy? She had had that feeling before, and what had come of it? A voice that was not unwise insisted that this was different. She said, ‘It’s like enough,’ took three more deep breaths, and entered the hut. Here the everyday world seemed to have established firm control. This was mainly due to the fact that Louise had forgotten to bring a tin opener and several substitutes were being tried. Ben, who claimed that he was used to opening tins with a bayonet, proved less successful with a penknife and a hunt for the first aid kit ensued. ‘At least we shall have used all the facilities,’ Louise said, when eventually it was found. ‘Now, keep still! It’s only a small cut. There’s no need to be in such a dance about it.’

  It was half-past seven by the time they sat down to eat. ‘Baked beans with a dash of blood,’ Louise said. ‘Quite like old times for you troopers.’

  After the meal, Louise said it was too cold to sit about and she and Guy went to bed, leaving Alice and Ben to wash up. Alice, slowly drying the dishes, wondered what they would do when they had finished. She had been alone with Ben on many occasions; by the sea, in Gunnersbury Park, in the cinema, they had laughed, argued, walked and swum, without giving a thought to the matter of their being alone.

  In the little room where they had eaten, the trees came right up to the window and she could see the light from the oil lamp hoisted like a child’s toy among the dark branches. Ben opened the outer door and appeared to stare intently at something in the darkness. Alice could feel the cold air pushing past him into the room, smelling of leaf mould.

  He said, without turning round, ‘Let’s go for a walk, shall we? It’s too cold to sit about in here.’ There was a pile of logs to the side of the grate, but neither considered the possibility of getting a fire going.

  They walked along a track at the edge of the wood. Moisture dropped from leaves and brambles clawed their limbs. Alice’s tongue was tight as a spring against the roof of her mouth. After a few minutes, Ben said, ‘I’m sorry if I was bad-tempered earlier on.’

  ‘You weren’t particularly.’

  He held branches aside for her to pass. The path was leading them out of the wood and they could smell wet stubble. ‘You mean I’m usually bad-tempered?’

  ‘No, I meant you were a bit scratchy once or twice, but not bad-tempered.’

  They walked on until they came to the top of a gentle incline and the valley lay before them, huge and milky in moonlight. Alice, freed from constriction, held her arms wide. ‘The country is so end
uring!’

  ‘You only want it to be enduring. In fact, it’s changing rapidly. These won’t be working villages soon. They already have quite a few people living in them who work in the towns.’

  ‘Perhaps they settle here because they feel the country is enduring, because they want to put down roots in a saner life.’

  ‘Which they hope to achieve by importing their way of life into the country? Newly painted houses with spruce little gardens and no pot holes in the roads!’

  She remembered how often, in his absence, she had cited him as the one person who would feel as she felt. And just as often, when they were together, he had been argumentative and contrary. Yet the feeling that, at some deep level, they were in accord had always persisted.

  ‘But it is saner, Ben,’ she said gently. ‘The scale is right, for one thing. It’s one in which human beings can operate.’

  ‘No doubt it’s better for individual people to have room in which to breathe,’ he acknowledged. ‘But the villagers will suffer when all the little cottages have been snapped up by city gents.’

  ‘How hard you are on my dreams!’

  ‘Oh, Alice!’ he cried out. ‘I too, have dreams, believe me! I have spent years of my life thinking that things could be just because I willed them so. But there are some things which no amount of yearning and longing can ever make so.’

  ‘You mustn’t talk like that!’ She was shaken by the intensity of his feeling. ‘I have always thought of you as the sort of person who could make anything happen if he set his mind to it.’

  ‘I’m not as confident as I once was.’

  Mist was forming in the fields and they could see hedgerow trees rising up from nowhere, like floating bunches of broccoli.

  Alice said quietly, ‘What is it that you want so much, and aren’t sure of, Ben?’ She waited for his answer, her breath coming light and shallow.

  He began to talk passionately about some project he had been working on to do with people who were imprisoned without trial in countries of which Alice knew little and cared less. ‘I feel it matters more than anything else while I am working on it. And then, when I am doing other things . . .’ (Like standing here with me, Alice thought) ‘I think how stupid it is to imagine that anything worthwhile could ever come of it. Then I remember how much letters meant when I was a prisoner, how we went wild with joy when the first letters came. I tell myself, then, that I should be more humble. Be content with small beginnings . . .’