WELCOME STRANGER

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘When you become a nuisance, I shall tell you.’

  Jacov said, ‘It won’t do.’

  They talked of other things.

  ‘You’ll be back in the theatre before too long,’ Austin assured him. ‘There have been some notable theatrical breakdowns.’

  Jacov gave the ghost of a smile at a card signed ‘Noel’. Those who hadn’t written had come personally to recount their own traumas.

  No more mention was made during this visit of plans to move Jacov.

  After they had gone, he said to the nurse, ‘They won’t take me out of here, will they?’

  ‘You can’t stay here for ever, can you?’ she said with the good humour appropriate to a little display of unreason in the nursery.

  As prisons go, it seemed to him not unsatisfactory. ‘But I could go to another hospital. Somewhere for the mentally ill.’

  ‘Now, you wouldn’t really want that, would you?’

  ‘I don’t know what I want.’ This was what they should be treating him for, instead of imagining that his normal state was one of knowing and trying to restore him to it.

  Why was he here? Was it some secret want of his which had landed him here? This puzzled him. He puzzled about it for the rest of the evening, until they gave him his sleeping tablets. Even after that, half in and half out of sleep, he puzzled. Why was he lying here? Why had he not gone into the darkness? And why, oh why, with all his experience, had he looked that nurse in the eye? Was it that he wanted to live, or that he had not wanted to die enough? Must one pay as careful attention to the matter of one’s dying as one’s living? It had been a mistake to look to Death for a solution – it was, after all, only the first of the Last Things.

  And now this offer of Judith Fairley’s, what was he to make of that? It was one thing to be wistful about what went on over the garden wall, quite another to be asked to play a part in the mystery. And while it was permissible for him to be curious about the Fairleys, it was unthinkable that they should have questions to ask of him. But if the Fairleys (in his confused state he thought of Austin as another Fairley) took him in, might they not expect to get to know him better once he was on their side of the garden wall? And he had nothing to offer them. Over the years he had found no place for himself, even within himself. He felt more frightened of this barrenness than of anything else.

  He thought about the place to which Judith would take him. Somewhere in Sussex. He had only been to Sussex once or twice. He remembered hills and empty green spaces. He was used to the theatre, to the crowded streets around Westminster in which it was possible to pass one’s life without making connections. The country was different. Man, that upright tree that moved, was so conspicuous in the country. The hills and valleys offered no place in which to hide one’s unrelatedness. He would always need somewhere to hide.

  As he was thought to be improving, they supplied him with a newspaper so that he could read the theatre columns. He read that Mr Herbert Morrison had said, ‘When the war ended, there was no prejudice in the democratic world against the Soviet Union. We were, on the contrary, full of admiration for the achievements of the Red Army, which we had assisted to the full extent of our power . . .’ He went on to say how saddened he had been by the Soviet’s unwillingness to ‘reach accommodation, to give as well as take . . .’

  The next time Judith and Austin came, Jacov said, ‘I shall never be able to become a British subject now. The police will have my name chalked up. And they never wipe the slate clean.’

  ‘In this country, it’s the same law for everyone – even the police,’ Judith said, patiently reminding herself that it was difficult for him to accept this with his background. The most difficult thing of all would have been for her to understand that the law is never impartial.

  Austin said, ‘You will have to make an effort.’

  ‘How far will one effort get me?’ he wondered wryly. It was the first time he had ever examined the possibility that he might have to search for a foothold on this shore on which he and his family had been washed up.

  A week later, when they were discussing arrangements for his move, he said to Austin, ‘Even if I try, I don’t know that I’ll succeed.’ He had tried to walk that morning and had been unable to – and that was the least of his problems.

  ‘Which of us can do more than try?’ Austin himself was full of misgivings.

  ‘There has been far more of failure in my life than anything else.’ He said this, not in self-pity, but rather preparing his defence against the time when it should be needed.

  ‘Let’s assume failure, then,’ Austin said. ‘And try to make it comparative.’

  Alice was to wear the wedding dress which Claire had worn, and which she, in turn, had borrowed from a college friend. The dress had had to be taken in for Claire and now it was being let out for Alice. Claire said, turning Alice so that she could see how the dress hung at the back, it’s all very silly, but I know how you feel. I was just the same over my wedding.’ She was insistent that Alice shared her views.

  Alice said, ‘I bet you didn’t feel as constricted! I shall be too terrified to take a deep breath.’

  ‘Will you stay long at the Holland Park house? I don’t think we shall want to stay here.’ She went on quickly before Alice could comment, ‘I thought of our country mansion when Louise and Guy talked about house-hunting. I expect you did, too.’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘It was all very silly, wasn’t it?’ She sounded sad.

  ‘It saw us through those first years in Shepherd’s Bush.’

  ‘It was all a dream, though. One can’t live a dream. That’s unhealthy. But I was surprised at how it all came rushing back to me when Guy talked about the old house we passed in that country lane.’ She had been pinning the hem of the dress; now, for a moment, she stopped, crouched behind Alice. ‘Do you know what I actually found myself thinking? Suppose we all took it over? That’s how people lived at one time, several branches of a family in one house. It’s very unnatural, the way we live now, don’t you think? In little individual boxes. It would be much healthier, I’m sure, to have several people sharing their lives.’ She began putting in pins again. ‘You used to climb the tree in our garden in Pratts Farm Road to see that old house that was hidden away near us – Kashmir. Do you remember? You started telling me a story once about two children who climbed the wall that surrounded it. You never told me what they found there. You said it was the garden that mattered. You could sit on the lawn and pick the flowers and nothing was forbidden. I couldn’t imagine a place where nothing was forbidden. It quite frightened me when I thought about it afterwards. Wasn’t that silly?’

  ‘It was frightening. That was why I couldn’t finish the story. I didn’t understand it. The fear seemed a part of the scene, the walled garden, the green lawn, the flowers, a boy and a girl . . . Every time I thought about it, I couldn’t separate the fear from the enchantment.’

  ‘Don’t you wonder about it? Of course, all that dreaming we did wasn’t very healthy. But you are a writer, so perhaps you ought to go on wondering. Besides, I should like to know the end of that story.’

  ‘I don’t think it has an end, Claire. But if ever I write any more about it, I’ll tell you.’

  Claire put the last pin in place and sat back on her haunches. ‘Do you want to stay in London?’

  ‘It’s not what I expected, but it’s the most sensible thing for us to do.’ She turned to look at her sister. ‘When the twins are a bit older, you’ll be able to get out more.’

  ‘I’ve joined a small group of singers – we do madrigals and that sort of thing. Not very exciting.’

  ‘It’s a start. And I expect there will be things we can do together. We’re not all that far apart.’

  That same day Judith and the daily help prepared the room which was to be Jacov’s.

  ‘I’d have given him that poky little attic,’ Mrs Harman said, speaking of the room which had so pleased Alice. ‘All those stairs to
climb and a long walk to the lav. if he wants it at night. He’d not stay too long then.’

  Judith was taken aback, not so much by this repudiation of the traditional idea of country hospitality, as by the fact that Mrs Harman should read her mind so unerringly.

  ‘I don’t believe you often have visitors you don’t welcome,’ she said. ‘Your house has the reputation of an ever-open door.’

  ‘That’s Mr Harman. You turn anyone away from your door and it’s the Lord Jesus. He was brought up that way and takes it very seriously.’

  ‘Suppose it should be the Devil at the door?’

  ‘He’d come with drink on his breath – or so Mr Harman believes. No good comes of arguing with him.’

  ‘And you find you can manage?’

  ‘Well, you might say I’m Martha and Mr Harman is Mary. When we’ve got someone with us I don’t much take to, I keep to the kitchen.’

  Judith had kept to the kitchen most of her life. When the children were young, the house had been full of people. But she had always been selective. Not only had she kept the Vaseyelins at a distance, she had not encouraged those children whom she considered to be bad company for her daughters, such as the dreadful Maisie of whom Claire had been so fond.

  ‘Well, I can offer him good food and a cheerful countenance,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to see how far that gets us.’ Austin must do the rest. He had surprised her by his willingness to come this far. She hoped they would continue to surprise each other.

  Her domain had always been small, but it had been important to her that she was in command of it. This would no longer be so. She had started on something to which she could not set limits and there was no asssurance it would turn out well.

  Even now, in the cold light of a late January afternoon, the room seemed to have changed in anticipation of its occupant. With its plain white walls and modest furnishings – there was only the bed, one upright chair and a small chest of drawers – it had seemed simple and uncluttered. The vase of gold and magenta chrysanthemums had contributed a homely gaiety. But now she saw that it had no distinctive feature and she was primarily conscious of the empty spaces between the pieces of furniture, already in shadow.

  ‘I think we have an oil lamp downstairs,’ she said to Mrs Harman. ‘I’ll see if I can find it. It will be useful if we have more power cuts.’

  When she came back with the lamp, the sun had gone down but an eerie pink light lingered in the cold sky and in her absence it had crept into the room, falling on the wall behind the bed and touching the edge of the pillow.

  Chapter Nineteen

  On a warm spring day Alice and Irene met for lunch in Kensington High Street. Alice was to be married in three days, and they both knew that this was the end of a particular kind of friendship. Alice was confident that marriage could only deepen her relationship with Irene, while Irene was resolved that something should be salvaged.

  Ben was decorating the house in Holland Park. Alice had visited this house frequently as a child and had lived there for the last three years; and until it became her property it had seemed to her perfect in every respect. Ownership had sharpened the eyes, and, making their first inspection, she and Ben had gone from room to room exclaiming, ‘How could they have put up with this for so long?’ and ‘Whatever else had to be left, I should have insisted on that being done!’ Just as Louise and Guy were exclaiming as they inspected their new home in Lewes.

  ‘You must come and see what we are doing,’ Alice said. She was about to add that Ben would always be glad to see Irene, when she remembered how dismal she had found such assurances which had seemed to emphasise the single woman’s dependence on the goodwill of her friends’ husbands. There would be other opportunities of eliciting from Irene a recognition – which had not yet been forthcoming – of Ben’s warmth and generosity, indeed, of his possession of all the qualities most desirable in a husband.

  Irene was saying, as if the relationship was comparable, ‘And you and Ben must have supper with Mother and me. We are taking a home course in cookery, you will be glad to know.’

  They talked about arrangements for the wedding, in which Irene evinced a sufficient, if not a lively, interest. When they were drinking their coffee, Irene told Alice that she was taking a job with a firm of brokers in the City. She talked eagerly about stocks and shares and risk-taking.

  ‘I didn’t think there were many women in that sort of job.’

  ‘There aren’t, that’s what makes it so exciting.’

  She had become animated. Alice was partially glad for her. It was good to see Irene recovering some of her sparkle after the blows which had befallen her, but sad that she might develop into a career woman.

  ‘Is Daphne coming to the wedding?’ Irene asked.

  ‘Yes. They were going abroad, but she has delayed it. I don’t think Peter is best pleased.’

  ‘Do you think we shall keep up with her? Their way of life seems so strange.’

  ‘We probably shan’t see so much of one another, but we shall keep in touch.’

  To lose touch with a friend was unthinkable. Daphne must be of the same mind, since she had been so insistent on attending the wedding. Irene was not so sure. Ideas were more important to her than to Alice and she could see that a time would come when she and Daphne had not an idea in common. She said, ‘Peter and Daphne want the world to be a more dangerous place than it really is. When they get older and can’t satisfy that particular craving, they will take to drink.’

  Alice laughed, doubting this. ‘Thus proving that the world is a dangerous place!’

  ‘Whereas by that time Ben will be working ferociously hard on this enterprise of his which will have become worldwide. But the fact that he is part of an organisation won’t make it any easier for him, because even though others may have put up signposts, he will always have to hack his own path through the forest.’

  ‘And what shall I be doing?’

  ‘Oh, I can see you quite clearly, writing short stories in the bedroom with a “do not disturb” notice pinned to the door on which someone has drawn a rude face; and then dashing down to prepare lunch and keep the peace among your six children who could do with more of their father’s attention. You will never have much money; but you will keep your family well-fed and loved, while neglecting the housework. They will tease you by telling you how neat and tidy their friends’ homes are.’

  ‘It sounds as if you will have turned to writing short satirical novels!’

  ‘I shall be Aunt Irene, always welcomed by the children because I take their ideas seriously, while tending to mock the pretensions of their parents.’

  And I shall tell them, after you have gone, that your brightness was not always so brittle; in fact, there was a time when it seemed you might be the most profoundly sensitive of us all, able to strike notes quite outside our range.

  ‘You have drifted away, Alice. Are you composing one of your short stories?’

  ‘No, I was just waiting for you to put aside your crystal ball.’

  ‘Don’t you like looking into the future? Yours seems so assured.’

  ‘The only assured thing is the present.’ She was surprised to realise that she meant this. Until now she had always been wondering what was waiting for her round the next corner. This was perhaps the only time in her life that she would be content with the gifts of the day. Irene thought, when they parted, that if she looked half as happy on her wedding day, she would be a radiant bride.

  Irene walked in the direction of Knightsbridge, stopping frequently to look in the windows of dress shops. Clothes were of particular interest to her. One’s clothes made statements, and at the moment she wanted something to wear at the wedding which would enhance those qualities, seemingly irreconcilable, of liveliness and repose which had so attracted Angus, while holding him at bay. She sensed that in future she would always keep men at a distance, and it seemed more important than ever that – even if unfulfilled – the promise should not be dimmed. An
air of amusement was essential; but the right clothes would help. Not that she intended to settle for superficiality. Far from it. She was convinced that comedy and tragedy were merely different ways of approaching life, and in her situation she found comedy the more congenial. And I do not propose, she vowed, studying a coolly feminine ballerina suit, to be observed smiling through my tears at this wedding.

  Alice took a turning off the High Street and threaded her way confidently through the maze of little streets which surrounded Holland Park.

  She came abruptly, at the turn of a road, to a row of bombed houses. Grass had come up between the bricks and someone, perhaps one of the neighbours opposite, had planted spring flowers where once a hearth would have been. A grey cat sat on a low, jagged wall, washing itself in the sun. And Alice remembered the elderly woman she had seen standing amid the smoking ruins of Coventry, her cat cradled in a shawl, indifferent to the chaos created by the German bombers and the attempts of the firefighters and soldiers to restore order. Spring flowers had not bloomed here: all around were heaps of smouldering brick, a city centre reduced to one great crumbling chimney belching ash; and this woman had stood, disdainful amid the ruins, her one concern to preserve the life of an old tabby. The memory brought a certain fierceness into this benign spring day, transforming vague longings into something of a quite different order: I hope because I am, there is no other possible condition.

  Alice walked on to the park which, in early April, had the look of a tapestry largely unworked, a few colours pricking through the beige. It was a clear day, not a frown to wrinkle the pale blue sky. Over a near-by garden wall a lawnmower was at work. Ahead someone was lying, half-concealed, heels waving in air like giant flippers rising from a flower bed. She came eventually to the bench where Katia had sat twelve years ago, seeing how far she could spit cherry stones, exhilarated after an encounter with Angus Drummond which had further darkened his mind. Alice watched a schoolgirl ambling slowly past, wide-hipped, lethargic, hair the colour of dark treacle toned with amber. She felt life stirring around her and was aware, as Katia had been, of a change in her own body, a sense of at last being in command. She, too, was happy. There had been other happy moments, and they came to her now, clear and distinct, untarnished by the past or shadowed by the future. For time is only the area in which we have to live, the space into which we are fitted, the distance we have to run. Nothing is erased. Hope does not cancel out despair, nor despair invalidate hope. Each note once struck has its place in the whole composition. It belongs, now, and as long as the music lasts.