by MARY HOCKING
‘Lots of local government officers make a mad dash for the Surrey borders as soon as the office closes!’
‘I wasn’t thinking of local government.’
‘Not this prisoners exercise?’
‘It’s more than an exercise. Quite a lot of field work is already being done, people have actually visited countries to observe, sometimes to give advice . . .’
‘I hadn’t realised you were quite so serious about it.’
‘There’s nothing else I’m serious about.’
Now she was the one to be silent. He said, ‘Now look, I didn’t mean . . .’
‘No, no. I know what you meant. I just hadn’t realised it was so important.’
‘I could take a room in London, and we could have our home in the country.’
‘Whatever we do, it won’t be that.’
‘We don’t have to decide anything now. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting cold.’ He drew her closer. ‘A closed circuit gives warmth.’
But even as his nearness began to warm her, she experienced again that chill of isolation. The stable life in the little county town had been lost almost before she had had time to contemplate it. How different her married life would be from that of her parents, with no place in this shifting world which would be home as they had known it. We shall live roofless as birds, she thought, bringing up our brood and sheltering them under our wings. She had grown up imagining that man is supposed to put down roots. Was that a mistake? Another belief to be left behind?
Louise and Guy returned with the children. It was not difficult to keep Angus out of the conversation because they were absorbed in their own affairs.
The next day Louise went shopping in Regent Street. In the late afternoon she lay beside Jacov listening to the throb of a cello and wishing they had put on something more sprightly. Usually this music carried her beyond herself; but today she was more conscious than ever of Jacov, so near yet separate. She propped herself on one elbow and looked down at his face, which was the part of him about which she knew the least. She tapped his forehead. ‘I have no idea what goes on in there,’ she said wonderingly.
He bit her finger, it’s not an area you ever show much interest in exploring.’
‘Don’t be alarmed. I’m not going to start now. It just struck me as odd that I know so little about it, whereas I know what Guy is thinking without his telling me.’
‘There are other ways of telling,’ he said, and turned her to him. Yet Guy exposes himself to me more nakedly than ever you will, she thought.
Then thought ceased as power began to throb, spiralling throughout her body, touching hidden springs, insistent as the sun’s warmth unfolding a tight knot of petals. How could she live were she to be denied this dark, secret flowering? Afterwards, the music seemed more potent than before: the notes of the piano trilled in the tips of her fingers and danced along the arteries; the violins sighed in her loins.
She said, ‘I shall come back after we move. On shopping expeditions, like today. We shall carry on just as usual.’
He was silent for a time, listening to the music. What he felt about it she would never know, because they did not talk about it. This listening without the need for words was the thing she most valued in him.
‘You will forget about me,’ he said at last. ‘You will find other men.’
She would forget about him for days, perhaps weeks; but he would always be a part of her, the foreign side of her own nature. ‘You won’t do so badly, either,’ she said.
They made love again. They were not usually as agitated as this. Catherine told Alice, ‘We are going to move to Sussex. I’m not supposed to tell you.’
‘Why not?’
‘ ’Cos Mummy says it’s all very much in the air.’
‘But why aren’t you supposed to tell me?’
‘Case you get upset.’ Catherine observed Alice hopefully for signs of distress.
‘Well, I’m not upset about that. And you can tell Mummy so.’
‘I can’t tell her. I’m not supposed to have told you.’
‘That’s your problem.’
‘We’re only doing it because of Daddy. I don’t want to move. But no one cares about what I want.’
‘Poor old sausage!’
‘Will you and Uncle Ben live here? Mummy says you’re going to marry him. Can I come and live with you?’
‘No, but you can come and stay with us, provided you don’t grizzle all the time.’
Alice told Ben about the conversation. The savouring of conversations so that she could later convey their flavour to him was one of the newly discovered joys of loving. During the two or three calm days before the police began asking questions, there were other bonuses. They went to a party given by a friend from Ben’s old chambers where they separated and talked to different people. Occasionally, their eyes met across the room and each knew that no one else really existed. The party was a delightful charade put on by their host and hostess so that they might enjoy the indescribable pleasure of joining hands as they walked away down the drive when it was all over. And oh, with what relish they discussed the evening’s encounters! Alice realised how incomplete all her social engagements had been hitherto. The long street stretched ahead, their feet sounded companionably on the paving stones, and they mimicked, reconstructed, expostulated, making something entirely their own of the event.
Daily, their love grew. She had waited so long for love, keeping a space within her, like a room, bare because the means to furnish it are lacking, fearing it would never be filled. Now, suddenly, she had riches at her disposal and every day added some small sign of occupancy.
They went to see Tuppence Coloured at the Lyric, Hammersmith, and were convulsed by Max Adrian as the blonde who did not remember Vienna, and as Emmett’s mad signalman sending trains to Eastbourne by way of Beachy Head. On the way home, Ben entertained Alice with songs which he and Geoffrey had composed for camp concerts on the troopship. This was the first time he had laughed about his war experiences and she was surprised by his unexpected gift for the broadly comic.
The next evening the police called.
Ben, who had come to supper, insisted on being present while they interviewed Alice, and they raised no objection. She and Ben had already discussed what she would say in such an event. To questions about the Norfolk weekend, she replied briefly, but honestly. When asked if she had been surprised at the discovery of the equipment, she said she hadn’t been sure what it was and had assumed that, in any case, the police would take whatever action was necessary. Her interrogator, who was not a senior officer, saw no point in pursuing this matter. It was apparent that this was a routine enquiry and that she was not regarded as an important witness. He asked her when she had last seen Angus and she said she could not remember, she did not know him very well. She would remember whether it was a matter of months or weeks, would she not? She said she thought it was weeks. She had seen him in the street. They had had a conversation about a dog. He had seemed to be in a hurry.
The policemen had other, more fruitful, lines of enquiry to follow up that evening. They said that it might be necessary for her to come to the police station to make a formal statement. If she remembered anything else that might be relevant, however insignificant, would she please contact Detective Inspector Frobisher; they gave her a number which she could ring, and departed.
‘I lied to them,’ she said mournfully to Ben.
‘Would you have wanted to involve Daphne and Peter?’ he asked gently.
‘I needn’t have involved them. I could just have said that while I was out trying to find you, Angus left.’
‘They would have been very interested in that story. The questioning wouldn’t have been left to those two. You might not have held out.’
‘I can be quite obstinate when I choose.’
‘Guilt undermines you, Alice. And you would still have been lying. I don’t think you would have held out.’
He took her
hand and gave it a little shake, seeing that she was not really attending to what he was saying. ‘Alice, if you told them exactly what happened, they wouldn’t believe you. You must understand that. They would assume that you and I were a party to whatever it is that Peter and Daphne did. It’s a much more tidy story than this business of people playing Box and Cox with each other, and leaving notes about taking packages.’
‘Whoever said it’s always better to tell the truth just didn’t know what they were talking about!’ she said passionately.
‘Luckily for us, it seems likely the police lost sight of Angus over ten days ago. Unless something unexpected crops up, there is no way they can link his disappearance with any of us. The way in which they are behaving doesn’t suggest they have any grounds for suspecting that his friends or relatives were involved.’
‘Yes, I can see we’re lucky.’ She was unconvinced.
He kissed her and said, ‘Apply that Puritan conscience to being grateful for small mercies.’
But it was not her Puritan conscience which kept her awake at night. It was fear. She had been pushing something to the back of her mind. Now it claimed her. Louise heard her walking about the house at night and came down to her. ‘Alice, you mustn’t worry about this. Ben says there is nothing to worry about. After all, you hadn’t seen Angus for weeks.’
Even to Louise she had lied.
She said, ‘Do you think that was how it all began, with Katia? Two men coming at night, saying they had a few questions to ask?’
‘You’re not going to start up this obsession with Katia again!’
‘She called my name. On the train. Claire told me.’
She told Louise what Claire had said, and Louise said, ‘I could strangle Claire! And, anyway, whatever were you doing over at hers, fetching Ben out at that time of night?’
Alice burst into tears and Louise made her a cup of tea and forgot that her question had not been answered. Later, as she lay in bed, Alice realised that Ben had been right about one thing: she would never hold out under expert questioning. She had come very close to telling Louise. She clenched her hands and prayed for strength not to tell Louise. It was like having the plague and asking that she might not pass it on.
During the days that followed, Ben was a constant support and comfort, patiently going over and over the rights and wrongs of their course of action. But, troubled himself, sometimes he nearly foundered. When this happened, Alice’s mind would clear, and just as if she had come out on top of the cloud level and was gazing down at him from a flawless sky, she would put forward arguments which he found convincing and soon imagined to be his own. It seemed hard that this should happen to them at a time when they should have been carefree and light-hearted in the early glow of love. Yet they found out a lot about each other, their relative strengths and weaknesses, the places which could stand tension and the points at which pressure must not be applied.
The one trouble Alice was unable to share with him, was her obsession with Katia. He had never known Katia well, and could no more understand the depth of Alice’s feeling than she could share his lasting sadness at the loss of Geoffrey.
‘No one knew about Katia . . . these dreadful things happened to her and no one knew.’ Martyrs occupied centre-stage. The victims of massacre, however poor, had their moment in history – individual deaths might not be recorded, but people knew what went on; even in a place as remote as Glencoe, and more recently in Lidice, people knew. It was the silence which was so unbearable in Katia’s case.
‘She didn’t do anything. It makes it seem that life is like a game of chess, and Katia just landed on the wrong square.’
‘And was removed. It is still happening. Not on the scale of the concentration camps, but it is still happening.’
‘Is that why you write letters to men who may never receive them?’
‘Doing something is better than doing nothing.’
‘I should have done something. I should have sat on a stool outside the German Embassy. The brother of a girl at the office had something wrong with his car and the makers wouldn’t do anything about it, so he went and sat outside their London office, and in the end they were so embarrassed about it, they gave him the new parts for nothing. And he did that for a car!’
‘It wouldn’t have worked, Alice,’ he said soberly, realising how disturbed she was. ‘Not then. You’ve got to get a lot of support behind you before you can begin to be effective. It will take years. And in the Thirties, that support wasn’t forthcoming. Most people didn’t want to believe in the concentration camps, for one reason or another – because the idea was too monstrous, or they didn’t like the Jews, or because it didn’t suit their right-wing beliefs, or their pacifism.’
Katia continued to gnaw at Alice’s mind. At night she made up stories in an effort to console herself, imagining that by re-writing events she might miraculously uncover the truth. She willed Katia to be free. Katia had been so rebellious; she wasn’t an obvious victim and would not have allowed them to treat her like so much human cargo. She pictured Katia managing to get one of the doors of the train open. Katia never went to the camp; perhaps she was killed falling from the train, or perhaps she was alive now . . . One day, if she went on doing this, she would get the right answer, it would explode in her mind.
In the early evenings, on her way home from the office, she sometimes went into the church at Notting Hill. It was usually empty apart from people arranging or re-arranging flowers. One Friday, when she had taken the afternoon off to do Christmas shopping, she went to the church at the hour when people could make confession. This being the Church of England, few availed themselves of the opportunity, and on this particular afternoon none came. The vicar sat in the side aisle, quiet, unobtrusive, waiting. After a time, Alice approached him. ‘It isn’t a confession . . . at least . . .’
‘Can you tell me about it?’ He gestured to her to sit beside him.
She told him about Katia. He said nothing. It was difficult to think what comforting words he could have said, even St Paul might have found himself rather stretched; but she felt he should have tried. ‘People say I should put it out of my mind,’ she prompted. ‘But I can’t.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose you can.’ He was silent again, and this time she waited, pleased that at last someone seemed to be taking her predicament seriously. Late sun filtered through the narrow side window and Alice looked at the light reflected on a stone pillar, blue, yellow, gold, with an expectant lift of the heart. Eventually, he said, ‘These things which will always be with us – and this will always be with you – we have to treat differently from our temporary afflictions. We have to make room for them – accept them as part of the landscape of our lives – bleaker, perhaps than we had imagined or hoped. Because, of course, it’s not what happened to your friend that worries you after all these years, but the way in which it alters your perception of life. You see now that the skin of our civilization is very thin.’ Alice listened with a sense of having had a sentence passed on her, of being told she was terminally ill. He went on, ‘If you live on moorland, the elements won’t go away. You may make a break of trees to give your home some relief from the full force of gale and snow; but you must always allow for them. Plan your garden accordingly. I know, because we lived for some time on the North Yorkshire moors. Forgive me, parsons are prone to this kind of Nature symbolism.’
Alice waited, for now that they were concerned with Yorkshire, he must surely mean to introduce hope in the form of rare fauna and flora. She would find this irritating, but she accepted his professional obligation to preach the Resurrection. Time went by rather slowly. The light from the window shifted, but did not pierce the dimness of the interior. In the distance, she could hear the erratic pulse of traffic. Here, there was nothing. Light flickered in the lamp in the Lady chapel. Behind the altar, the crucifix loomed, the spread arms casting dark shadows. She had come seeking hope and the restoration of joy, and now she felt stri
pped, all her little gifts taken from her; she was dry and there was a remote echo in her head as if she was slightly deaf. She understood at last that there was no way that Katia’s death could be softened. There was no way round the crucifixion. She had tended to think of it as the prologue to Easter, and had not taken in the simple fact that Easter, with its triumphant abundance of flowers, was on the far side of death; and that the gate through which all must pass, and each alone, was Good Friday, that dark eternity when it all seemed to have gone wrong.
She said dully, ‘So there is nothing I can do.’
‘Do you pray for your friend?’
‘I used to. As long as I could convince myself she might be alive, I prayed. But I’ve stopped lately.’
‘But you should still pray for her.’
‘If she’s dead she doesn’t need it, does she? I mean – one way or the other . . .’
‘But you are still living. Your understanding of her – your friendship, is still developing. It will develop whether you do anything about it or not. Nothing stands still. Our way of thinking about people, our understanding of them and the things which happen to them, is always changing – for better or for worse.’
‘Then I could pray for my father.’
‘Indeed, you should pray for him, and for your friend. Pray in the hope that one day God will unite you in his perfect love.’
‘I shall feel rather strange . . .’
‘That doesn’t matter. Our feelings are of no consequence when we pray, which is fortunate, since they are so mercurial we should scarcely utter a word if we waited for them to compose themselves. It is only the intention which matters.’
‘I hope I’m well-intentioned.’ Alice was doubtful.
‘You must settle for the hope.’
There was a certain hardness about his utterances which she found unexpectedly calming. When she left the church she was not comforted so much as sobered. She accepted what she had known ever since Katia disappeared, that life would not be the same again. It was not going to be patched up and rendered back to her bright and shining in the dew of her illusions. The world was a much harsher, more dangerous place than her sheltered childhood had led her to believe, and she must learn to live in it or be broken by it. She did not ponder the fact that Katia had had no choice. The possibility that ultimately there is no choice was not an idea she was as yet ready to consider. She walked towards Holland Park, firm in the belief that she had at last come into possession of her world.
