LOOK, STRANGER

by MARY HOCKING

‘I don’t know.’ His manner made her uneasy; she wondered how she was going to keep up her end of the conversation all the way to the island.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He sounded genuinely contrite. ‘I’ve had a bloody awful morning. Do you think coffee would do us both good?’

  They stopped some distance out of town at a hotel called The Barley Mow and had coffee in the bar; the only other person in the room was the woman who served them and she paid little attention to them as she washed down the bar counter. A radio in a room at the back of the bar blared folk music. Tudor Lindsay asked Nancy about her life in America. She told him about Coppers Town, about her mother’s illness with sclerosis which seemed to have gone on as long as she could remember, about how much she wanted to get away from it all and really start living. Then he told her that she wasn’t ready for much living yet because she hadn’t had a chance to get her growing up done properly; her emotional life had been submerged and she hadn’t learnt how to form relationships with other people. She said wasn’t it bad to be like this at nineteen and he said, yes, it was bad, but she would come out of it, given time.

  ‘Time is what I don’t have,’ she said, feeling very old.

  ‘You’re going to have trouble, let’s face it; but there’s a lot that can happen between nineteen and old age.’

  Then he asked her if she had grieved for her mother, and she wasn’t sure because it had seemed to happen too gradually for grief; but he insisted it was important to get her grieving done and she promised to try. She felt she was reading a book someone had written about her. She asked if he wrote books and he said he didn’t have time even to read them, he was a social worker.

  ‘That must be wonderful! To do so much good for other people.’ Why, in just under half an hour he had told her more about herself than anyone ever had in all her nineteen years!

  He said bitterly that you couldn’t do anything worthwhile until the system had been changed. As they continued their journey, he told her how the system should be changed. She was so absorbed she didn’t even notice that they had left the mainland until, just as the car turned into a country lane, she had a fleeting glimpse of sea behind her and the tall masts of sailing boats.

  ‘I can’t tell you how grateful I am!’ she said when he stopped the car outside the vicarage.

  ‘Try.’ He looked at her, smiling in a way that made her feel foolish. She wished she hadn’t sounded so enthusiastic; he would think she was just a silly kid. Then he bent forward and kissed her on the mouth. It was such a shock she didn’t respond, but sat there meekly while his mouth pressed harder and harder against hers until she could feel his teeth cutting her gums. When he was finished, she said breathlessly, ‘Thank you,’ which was a silly thing to say. He remained bending over her, leisurely examining her face; she felt her cheeks burning and she wanted to get out of the car and run away somewhere to hide her shame. Then he took her hand and pressed it. ‘Never mind.’

  He got out of the car and began to put the cases down in the road. ‘Do you mind if I just stack them here? I’ve got to see a family in East Helmsley and I’m late.’

  She realized after he had gone that he hadn’t told her how he came to have heard of her father; but her father himself explained that later as they had supper together.

  They had unpacked and tried to establish a presence by scattering a few of their possessions about, but the house hung around them ill-fitting as borrowed clothes. People had called bringing flowers, jam, home-made cakes, notices to read in church on Sunday, invitations to lunch, tea, supper, summonses to attend a vigil, choir concert and a meeting of the Bible Society; the rural dean had telephoned to say he would refrain from pressing invitations until they had settled down.

  It was nine o’clock, dark and cold by the time they sat down to a supper of ham and eggs, provided by Mrs. Jarman. They ate in the kitchen which was at the back of the house; they had drawn the curtains in the front rooms, switched off all the lights which could be seen from the road, and taken the telephone receiver off the rest. It was not a cheerful meal. Nancy was overwhelmed by the effort of being sociable to so many people whom she had never met before and Vereker was depressed by the threat of imminent social engagements with the rural dean.

  Nancy was about to collect their plates when she was conscious that her father had mentioned the Lindsays in connection with help in the house.

  ‘Is that his wife?’ she asked sharply.

  ‘No, they are cousins.’

  ‘I think we ought to accept,’ she said, brightening a little. ‘We can’t start by refusing help.’

  ‘We should start as we mean to go on.’

  He spoke quite mildly, but she snapped back at him. ‘But I don’t know how I mean to go on until I’ve started.’

  ‘There’s some sense in that,’ he said pacifically.

  This annoyed her, too. When he disagreed with her she felt obscurely threatened, when he agreed with her she felt he was undermining her in a more subtle way. Everything he said and did annoyed her, from his slow manner of speech to the way he held his knife. Yet the more he annoyed her, the more she loved him; love and annoyance seemed inextricably tangled in her. She took his plate from him as soon as he had finished torturing the last piece of ham. ‘Now just leave the dishes to me for once, will you? Why don’t you put the kettle on for coffee?’

  He fumbled in the cupboards and by the time she had dried the dishes, he had located the coffee.

  ‘When I’ve drunk this I’m for bed,’ she said. ‘I’m so tired I could drop.’

  He looked unhappily at her cup but did not say that she wouldn’t sleep if she drank strong coffee.

  ‘Do the Lindsays live near here?’ she asked.

  ‘They live in a farmhouse way across the fields. You’d like it, Nan. Oh, and there’s a ruin of some kind, too: a priory that is much older than the farmhouse. Mrs. Jarman and Mrs. Hooper made quite a mystery of it. Do you suppose it could be haunted?’

  ‘More like those are two silly women!’ She was aware that he was trying to cheer her up and miserably unable to respond.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, then he said, ‘Do you think you’ll like it here, Nan?’

  ‘I can’t tell until I’ve seen the place properly, can I?’ She scraped back her chair and carried her cup to the sink where she poured away what was left of the coffee. ‘Too strong,’ she said, wanting to make amends. Then, looking at him hunched wearily over the table, she thought what an ungenerous little beast she was and how dearly she loved him. She went across and hugged him.

  ‘Goodnight, Our Dad.’ This was a family joke; a Yorkshire couple had stayed with them in Coopers Town when she was a toddler, in the days when her mother was well and laughed a lot.

  ‘You remember the Dempseys, do you?’ He was immensely cheered, bless him! ‘Perhaps I could get in touch with them. Yorkshire’s not all that far, I expect they come south sometimes.’

  She took a glass of water and turned resolutely to the door, determined not to show how little she relished her first night in this big, echoing house. ‘Don’t stay up late, you’ve had a long day.’ She didn’t like to think of him down here alone in this enormous old kitchen. Since her mother’s death she had been afraid that he might do something dreadful. She wanted to get away from him, but the thought that he might get away from her was beyond bearing.

  When she got into bed she could not sleep; but it was not the coffee, or the strangeness of the house, or her fears for her father, which kept her awake; it was the memory of Tudor Lindsay’s kiss. The kiss pervaded her whole body with warmth and set up a throbbing agitation in that area which had so recently been the steward’s province. All sorts of conflicting feelings came flooding in now, complicating what had been effected with so little fuss and bother. She wished she had not let the steward touch her when he came into the cabin as she stepped out of the shower; he hadn’t been very forceful, she would not have had a lot of difficulty getting rid of him if she had tried.
But as though in a trance she had allowed him to carry her to the bed and while he was arranging her to suit his inelegant purpose she had thought that it was a good thing it was happening at last; she had fixed her eyes on the porthole and when he lunged on top of her she had not cried out even if she had not enjoyed it. Why hadn’t she enjoyed it, when now she wanted him, or if not him, she wanted someone rather badly? She drew her knees up tight and folded her arms about them, pressing them to her small breasts; and she cried because her father would be sad if he knew what she had so casually permitted.

  While Nancy was suffering pangs of guilt and desire, her father had stepped out into the garden, tempted by a white cat. The cat had appeared at the kitchen window, its pink nose pressed against the pane, its wide green eyes pitiful as a soul locked out of paradise. But as soon as Vereker went out with a saucer of milk, the cat became disdainful and strolled off into the shrubbery. Vereker remained in the garden. There was no moon, but it was a cloudless night and the stars were bright. It was quiet; not the quiet of the vast American open spaces, but a small, individual quietness, as though somewhere a current had been switched off. He was a stranger here; if he went out of the front gate he wouldn’t know which way to turn to look for the first lighted window. The fear that from now on he was always going to be on the outside of the lighted window had been terrifying him ever since Alma’s death. But in Coppers Town he had been able to keep the fear at bay because he had a role to play; he had carried on with his pastoral work and it had carried him through. Now, in a strange place which had no need of him, he felt in full the loneliness of life without Alma. Nan would go, and the sooner the better for her sake. When she had gone there would be no one for him to love. People would be kind, of course; they would throw him crumbs of comfort, make sure he didn’t eat alone too often, but really he would be an awful nuisance to them. His faith told him otherwise; it told him that God always has use for His creatures. But panic clamped his tongue and he could not pray. It was only when he was in his bedroom that the habit of many prayerful years reasserted itself and he repeated over and over again, although he felt no response and there was darkness without and within, ‘Lord, save me from too much concern with myself. Teach me to love you in all your creatures.’

  Chapter Three

  The next day the squatters moved in. There were two women, three men and five children accompanied by their guardian angel, a stocky, trousered woman with cropped hair slicked across her forehead to conceal a disfiguring scar. She had a cigarette stuck to her lower lip and regarded Vereker through a blue haze while she talked to him in a harsh, gasping voice as though she was functioning on only half a lung. It seemed that she had had much experience of commandeering property. Vereker decided that this was the time to play the waiting game; he was good at the waiting game, patience was his long suit. While the trousered woman talked, he studied the human casualties that she had deposited at his feet.

  The squatters looked at him as though he was a potential enemy: he was, after all, in possession of a house. This much they had in common, otherwise their attitudes differed sharply. The men, rank and dishevelled, with long dark hair parted neatly in the centre (the only neat thing about them), sat cross-legged with heads bowed like beggars in an eastern bazaar – or Lazarus at the rich man’s gate. The women stood aloof from the men. The older of the two was in tears. She was a big, soft brown creature with the bewildered air of a pet rabbit who has been abandoned to fend for itself in the wild. Her tears came easily as though crying was her first, and perhaps only, response to difficulty. Her companion, on the other hand, had been bred over many generations for the situation in which she now found herself. From her narrow, sharp-featured face looked out the hungry extras who had crowded the sets of the London of Gay, Hogarth, Dickens, cunning, vicious, resourceful, derisive and tenacious. She looked at Vereker with the indifferent assurance of one who is well-aware of the problem she poses. When society came up with a solution, she would present it with another problem: this was a game in which she held all the good cards. Vereker decided that he was not taking her on if he could help it.

  Only last night, he had prayed that he might see God in all His creatures: one puts oneself in grave peril when one talks to God. Vereker played for time with God and the squatters’ guardian angel. ‘I only arrived here yesterday. I don’t know what accommodation there is in the house.’

  ‘I know.’ She threw the damp cigarette butt on the floor and ground her heel on it.

  Vereker was unimpressed by this display. If she knew the house so well, it was a mistake not to have taken possession while it was empty. It was just possible that this lady was not so formidable as she appeared. He said, ‘I haven’t had a chance to meet my churchwardens yet. I don’t even know who owns the property.’

  ‘The Church own the property.’ She said “own” as though the Church was engaged in an obscene practice.

  ‘So I can hardly talk terms with you,’ Vereker went on determinedly. ‘But if you and our friends here like to go into the garden, I daresay we can rustle up some breakfast while I make a few enquiries.’

  At the mention of breakfast the squatters betrayed signs of willingness to agree a truce. Vereker led them down the corridor to the back door. It was a pleasant morning and the garden looked inviting; two of the younger children immediately began to chase each other, jumping over the daffodils and burrowing into the shrubbery, while the older children made for the nearest climbable tree. The men sat on the grass and contemplated their navels while the women sat one each end of a garden seat with broken slats. Vereker returned to the house. The guardian angel was waiting in the hall; she seemed unsurprised by the defection of her charges.

  ‘What organisation are you working with?’ Vereker asked her.

  ‘My own. I used to be with Shelter, but not any more. Shelter’s not effective out of London and the big cities.’

  ‘Shelter is shit.’

  Vereker looked round, surprised, and discovered that not all the squatters had defected. The oldest of the children, a youth with long, curly red hair, was sitting on the stairs whence he regarded Vereker. Although he was small and slight, he was older than Vereker had at first imagined. Sixteen, possibly seventeen, Vereker thought, looking at the pale freckled face.

  ‘I don’t want breakfast so you’ll have to think of another way of getting rid of me.’ He managed to convey quite clearly that he thought the offer of breakfast about as well-intentioned as the kiss of Judas.

  ‘This is Milo Anguilo,’ Meg Jacobs said to Vereker.

  The red-head bowed in mocking acknowledgement of the introduction. Then the boy looked up and smiled into Vereker’s face and Vereker was aware that he was confronted by no ordinary personality. The smile sweetened the face and bestowed on it a kind of elfin grace, a strange blend of shyness, warmth and malice. There was no suggestion of contrivance, the smile was a gift with no conditions attached to it; yet Vereker was conscious of a number of usually disparate, even explosive, qualities contained in what appeared to be a fragile vessel: a highly strung, and possibly unstable creature, this.

  Vereker said, ‘I sent the others into the garden because I wanted to talk to Miss Jacobs alone.’

  ‘About how to get rid of us?’ The question was not entirely cynical; although the mouth was wry, the violet eyes manifested a naive belief that the truth might still be told. Vereker said, ‘I can’t possibly take all of you.’

  ‘That’s fair enough,’ Meg Jacobs intervened. ‘I think Sir here may be prepared to help us. Leave this to your Auntie Meg and get some breakfast, old son.’ She placed nicotine-stained fingers on the boy’s shoulder. The boy laughed uneasily, not liking the gesture; nevertheless, he did not allow himself to shrink from her touch. Vereker wondered whether, at Milo’s age, he would have been capable of such forbearance.

  ‘All right, Meg; I’ll leave it to you.’ Milo disengaged himself gently and got to his feet. He looked at Vereker. ‘You’ve got to take my mothe
r.’ He made the statement simply, without any suggestion of appeal or threat. ‘She can’t cope like Mrs. Peters can.’

  Vereker watched as the boy moved away, walking with the dancer’s light step which, for all its ease, conceals a formidable flow of energy from the top of the head to the tips of fingers and toes.

  Meg Jacobs said, ‘You can’t take on the Peters family, I know that. And the odds are they wouldn’t stay anyway. But you must take the Anguilos, for Milo’s sake, not his sodding mother’s.’ She lit another cigarette and placed the spent match carefully in the matchbox; she had become quite friendly. ‘Father is an Argentinian diplomat, or so Mother says.’ For all her concern, Vereker noticed she had the regrettable habit of depriving people of their identity. ‘He went back to the Argentine years ago and they haven’t heard from him since. So, Milo is the man of the family; that means keeping Mother and his two sisters, and that will soon mean stealing and anything else that comes his way, including drug peddling. He’s very worried about Mother. For years she has “shared” all her problems with him because “it will help him to grow up”. Without him, she’d fold up altogether and he knows it.’

  Vereker could hear distant screams. He said, ‘That’s bad.’

  ‘It’s worse than bad. He’s sensitive and she’ll get every ounce of emotion out of him until she’s sucked him dry.’

  Vereker, from his brief glimpse of the boy, suspected that his survival chances might be higher than Meg Jacobs rated them. Nevertheless, he could well imagine that Milo’s present problems might lead him into crime. He said, ‘I’ll do what I can.’

  ‘You will?’ For a moment Vereker was afraid she would embrace him; she looked as though she might be given to bear hugs. He muttered something about telephoning Donald Jarman and she said, ‘He’ll be at his office now – six-nine-o-four, Jarman and Laker, chartered accountants. Don’t let his secretary put you off, tell her we’ve set light to the place.’ There were more screams from the garden. ‘I’d better go and see what they are doing, otherwise you may have a fire for real.’