LOOK, STRANGER

by MARY HOCKING

  There was no peace for Tudor Lindsay, either. At first, Vereker thought that this was his fault. Lindsay was eating his supper in the sitting-room when Vereker arrived. Vereker said, ‘I am sorry about this,’ but Lindsay accepted the interruption with thin-lipped satisfaction as though he had been waiting for something to spoil his evening.

  Zoe said to Vereker, ‘I’ll get you coffee,’ and Vereker accepted because he thought this might make Lindsay more relaxed so that he wouldn’t hurry over his meal. In fact, it made little difference as Lindsay was a compulsively quick eater.

  ‘Squatters,’ Lindsay said when Zoe had gone out to the kitchen. ‘How does the Christian Church solve that one?’ He hitched himself back more comfortably in his chair and resettled the tray on his knees.

  Vereker said, “Yes, it’s an awkward one.’

  ‘What did the Christian Church do before the social services department was set up, I wonder?’ Lindsay addressed his plate.

  ‘Are you going to rehouse the squatters?’ Vereker asked.

  ‘How neat and tidy that would be, wouldn’t it? A wave of the fairy godmother’s wand, and hey presto, a neat little house appears in a clearing in the wood. I’m afraid I don’t deal in magic’

  ‘Then I suppose the Christian Church will have to carry on much as it did before the social services department was set up.’

  Lindsay looked angry. He might make mock of others, but he expected to be treated with respect himself. He attacked his food in silence. The waves of unrest were very strong.

  After a few minutes, Vereker got up and went over to a bookcase on the far side of the room. No doubt it wasn’t polite for a stranger to make himself at home in this fashion but he felt an imperative need to remove himself from Tudor Lindsay’s magnetic field. The books were old and had leather bindings with gilt lettering: Lorna Doone, Sir Nigel, Master-man Ready, The Lamplighter, From Log Cabin to White House; he took down the latter. Dust tickled his nose but he managed to stifle the sneeze. On the yellow, pock¬marked fly leaf were inscribed with decorative flourishes the words “Silas Duverell on his ninth birthday from Father”. A photograph slipped from between the leaves of the book, a studio portrait of a woman with her hair knotted up beneath a lace cap. This must surely be a relative of Zoe, the bone structure was unmistakable. He closed the book and replaced it on the shelf. He looked about the room for something else to occupy his mind. Lindsay was eating cheese and biscuits; he seemed to have forgotten about Vereker. The door of the room was open and Vereker could see part of the hall with the fireplace stuffed with Christmas wrapping paper and an oil lamp on a chest near the stairs. He wished that the fire and the lamp were alight, they would give such a welcoming glow to the hall. This house should be welcoming, there was nothing sinister about it; it had been built at a time when people first sought a degree of comfort in their homes, but before there was any thought of luxury. It was sound, secure, comfortable, unpretentious. So why did he have this feeling of something in the house that was trying to get out? Did every English country house have a prisoner in the East Wing?

  Zoe came with coffee. ‘What a pity you’ve had all this trouble so soon after you arrived,’ she said.

  ‘The dispossessed are incredibly inconsiderate,’ Lindsay said.

  Zoe said to Vereker, ‘Milk? Sugar?’ Apart from a slight drawing together of her features as though she had a headache, nothing in her manner suggested that she was aware of her cousin or had heard him speak. When Vereker had accepted milk and sugar she seated herself on a cushion on the hearth and gazed at the log fire.

  There was an awkward silence which Vereker broke by asking Lindsay, ‘Have you lived here all your life?’

  ‘God forbid! Don’t be misled by my ridiculous name. My mother saw a film called Tudor Rose; that was how my mother reached the important decisions of her life, such as giving a name to her first born. In fact, I come from a working class background.’ Lindsay looked at Vereker as though he was hoisting a banner.

  ‘Go back one or two generations and most of us are sons of the soil,’ Vereker said easily.

  ‘Not in England. In fact, you are speaking in the presence of a sprig of the oldest family on the island. The Duverells came over with William the Conqueror, they belong to the real aristocracy, undiluted by the vulgar Tudors.’ He made a gesture towards Zoe.

  Zoe held a poker against the largest of the logs, turning the tip slowly, boring into the log so that eventually it fell apart and a shower of glowing ash fell into the grate. ‘Edward the Fourth did his share of the diluting,’ she said.

  ‘And what is that supposed to mean?’ For the first time since Vereker had arrived, Tudor Lindsay looked directly at his cousin.

  ‘Edward the Fourth came before the Tudors, that’s all’

  ‘Thank you for the history lesson.’ His anger was intense.

  She took no notice of him and went on poking the log.

  ‘It was a scandal in our family when Zoe’s mother married Jonas Lindsay.’ At first, Tudor Lindsay spoke quietly, with an electric amusement which struck sparks from the atmosphere; but as he failed to gain her attention his voice grew louder. ‘My mother was terribly shocked about it. Whenever Jonas’ name was introduced into the conversation, she would explain to any stranger who happened to be present, “Jonas married above himself”; it wasn’t “fit”. To do something that wasn’t “fit” was a crime to her.’

  ‘Have you ever thought of leaving England?’ Vereker asked in the hope of deflecting some of this bitterness.

  ‘For America, the Land of Liberty?’

  ‘You think that even worse?’

  ‘Let’s say I’d sooner stay in England.’

  ‘Russia, then?’

  ‘As bureaucratic as America!’

  ‘China?’

  Lindsay picked up the tray and hurled china in the hearth. ‘Can’t you ever attend to anything that’s said?’ he shouted at Zoe. ‘Can’t you ever be part of anything that’s going on, here, now, in the twentieth century?’

  Zoe gave a start and the poker dropped from her hand; this apart, she remained absolutely still until Lindsay had gone out of the room saying that he would go across to the vicarage in a few minutes. When his footsteps sounded on the stairs, she said, ‘I’ll get the dustpan.’

  Vereker was left alone feeling like a bit player deserted on-stage by the two principal characters. The fire was almost out and the room was distinctly chilly. He locked his fingers together and blew on them. Zoe came back with a dustpan and brush and began to sweep up the broken crockery. Vereker did not know what to do. He felt that his presence had barely registered with these two and that it might be tactless to intrude at this particular point. While he was still undecided, Tudor Lindsay came back, struggling into a raincoat.

  ‘I think I should make it quite clear,’ he said, ‘that my sympathy is with the squatters.’

  ‘I have sympathy for them, too,’ Vereker answered.

  ‘Moreover, I don’t believe in God.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Don’t you mind?’ Lindsay had himself well in control now and seemed genuinely amused.

  ‘It’s an occupational hazard,’ Vereker answered. ‘I’ve noticed people seem to have a compulsion when introduced to a writer to confess that they don’t read his books. With a clergyman, they don’t feel comfortable until they’ve told him they don’t believe in his God.’

  ‘Let’s go, shall we?’ Lindsay was rather deflated.

  Vereker said goodbye to Zoe. She answered, ‘Goodbye’ and then, as the two men went into the hall, she called out, ‘I’ll be over in the morning, Mr. Vereker.’ Lindsay had the front door open and Vereker followed him without replying.

  A mist had come up from the sea, trailing a grey shroud over the fields, and without Lindsay beside him Vereker would not have known which way to turn. Sound was muffled. Vereker rubbed a finger in his ear but it made no difference. He felt chilled to the marrow. Lindsay, however, seemed in better spirits now
that he had got his adrenalin going and said cheerfully, ‘You really dislike me, don’t you?’

  ‘Why is it so important to you to be disliked?’

  ‘Because you know where you are with people who dislike you.’ Lindsay opened a gate. ‘This way,’ he said to Vereker who was trying to go through the hedge.

  Vereker said, ‘But you must have some friends, surely?’

  ‘I prefer women.’

  ‘And that excludes friendship?’

  ‘With a woman, for God’s sake!’

  ‘I’ve often thought women have a greater gift for friendship than men,’ Vereker said.

  ‘Can you imagine being friendly with a woman like Zoe?’

  Vereker did not answer. He was beginning to understand Zoe’s attitude, silence was probably the best defence against Lindsay.

  ‘She retreats from all confrontations, takes herself off into a world of her own and puts up the shutters. People with that gentle, impervious manner always are utterly selfish, but they never get found out.’

  ‘You’ve found out.’

  ‘But at a price; oh, believe me, at a price. Do you think I enjoy scenes like that one this evening?’

  ‘I had an idea you might.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about psychology. Hasn’t it reached the Far-West yet?’

  ‘Middle-West.’

  ‘You shouldn’t stifle things inside you; it rots your guts. You’ve got to be prepared not to give a damn what other people think and just holler.’

  Vereker stumbled over a clump of grass and remained crouched forward.

  ‘Hurt yourself?’ Lindsay put a hand on his shoulder; he sounded concerned.

  ‘No, just getting my breath back.’ Vereker’s heart was thumping again. ‘I hope you know where we’re going.’

  ‘To hell. All of us.’

  ‘For an agnostic, you have an odd turn of phrase.’

  ‘Atheist.’

  They stood silently with the mist swirling round them thicker than ever.

  ‘Hell,’ Lindsay said, ‘is oneself.’

  ‘That thought has been around a long time, even in the Middle- West.’

  They walked on. The mist played games with them; sometimes it was dense, sometimes it parted so that they could see quite clearly. In one clear spell, Vereker saw a wall jutting up like a fang.

  ‘We’re in the priory grounds,’ he said.

  ‘The grounds were extensive. We are actually inside the building.’ Tudor Lindsay slowed his pace. ‘Go carefully, there are heaps of stone and rubble everywhere. If I had my way the whole site would be levelled.’ As they threaded their way in and out of the low walls, he said, ‘Can’t you do something about this nonsense?’

  ‘Exorcism? I’m surprised you ask.’

  ‘I’ve tried psychiatry; she wouldn’t go.’

  ‘So the alternative is to make the nuns go?’

  ‘Something has to be done. Other people are beginning to get in on the act. Did you know that?’

  ‘Mrs. Hooper?’

  ‘Not only Mrs. Hooper. She’s harmless. Something has to be done. I’m serious about this. Think about it. You came to me quick enough when you were in trouble with the squatters.’

  The mist cleared abruptly as they reached the church. By the time they arrived at the vicarage, Tudor Lindsay had assumed his professional role. He played it well and Nancy was very impressed.

  ‘Isn’t he terrific!’ she said, as Lindsay talked to Meg Jacobs and the squatters.

  Undoubtedly, here was a man who was prepared to be endlessly patient with those less fortunate in their circumstances than himself and less well-endowed intellectually; a man who was also a capable negotiator, and had the judgement to know when to stand firm and when it is safe to give way.

  ‘He managed that well, give the devil his due,’ Donald Jarman said when eventually it was agreed that Milo, his mother and his sisters should remain in the basement rooms.

  Vereker made no comment on Lindsay’s performance. There was a sterile violence about the man which roused a response in Vereker which, if not actually violent, was far from peaceable.

  Later, the mist cleared from the priory ruins and Zoe saw Dame Alice making her nightly round. She christened her Dame Alice because it was convenient to name those of the nuns whom she saw most often.

  Zoe was sitting on a low wall in the middle of a field where cattle pastured during the day. Diseased elm trees had been cut down only that afternoon and now lay twisted on the ground like prehistoric monsters. Although the mist had cleared damp air still rose from the grass and Zoe in duffel coat and Dame Alice in hood and habit were sensibly dressed each in her own fashion. Dame Alice walked purposefully across the field towards Zoe, then for no apparent reason did a sharp right turn, walked a few paces, did a left turn and proceeded calmly and without deviating through two felled elms, bowed her head and crossed herself as she walked through a thorn bush, and entered the complex of low walls where Zoe was sitting. Now, Zoe knew that Dame Alice had reached the corridor leading from the great hall to the dorter. Zoe herself was seated in that corridor.

  Dame Alice paused just outside the great hall, standing with her head to one side in a listening attitude. Hopefully, Zoe sang “We’ll all go to sea in a yellow submarine” which was the only song that came into her head at that moment. Dame Alice lifted up her voluminous skirts and after some fumbling produced something which she crammed greedily into her mouth. Scarcely a response to a song sung some seven hundred years hence, Zoe thought resignedly. As Dame Alice moved forward again, Zoe kicked a stone into her path, but Dame Alice did not respond to that, either. Now she was within a foot of Zoe. Her face looked as it always had looked since Zoe first saw her, like a russet apple which has been stored too long and is not quite wholesome. There was a sour smell as she passed by.

  Zoe did not wonder where Dame Alice was going, or how she would spend the hours until the morning. She simply accepted what Dame Alice communicated to the night air as she did her lonely round. Zoe prayed, ‘Good Lord, be merciful to your servant Alice who didn’t choose to serve you in this way and doesn’t understand what it is all about.’ Then she got to her feet, holding the hood of her duffel coat around her face, and turned towards Carrick Farm.

  Poor Dame Alice, an obdurately cheerful middle-aged woman whose good-nature had been eroded by the wear and tear of the uneventful years: yet, in some ways, lucky Dame Alice, not so aware as some of the others that she was caught in a trap. Zoe could see Carrick Farm now, solid against the sky. As she looked, a light snapped on in Tudor’s room. Now that he was awake he might read or he might turn out the light and go to the window. If he went to the window he would see her coming back. She began to hurry. What fools women are! she thought angrily as she stumbled over the twisted branches of an elm. Life can’t be as difficult as we make out; there must be a knack about springing the trap, something quite simple, all the great discoveries are simple. The light went out in Tudor’s room. He was waiting at the top of the stairs when she came in from the kitchen entrance.

  ‘How many nuns did you see tonight?’ he asked, brittle as a character out of Coward.

  ‘One.’ It would have been easier to lie to him, but she wasn’t prepared to do that.

  He switched on the light and came half-way down the stairs, blocking her way; he had a nice sense of the dramatic had Tudor. His face was expressing strong emotion, but whether rage or desperation, she could not tell since she never looked at him for long nowadays. Each glance was like exploring an exposed nerve.

  ‘That priory was in use for two hundred years at least,’ he said in a low, tight voice.

  ‘Yes, I know.’ She folded her hands and looked down at them, wondering whether she could make the thumb and middle finger of the one hand meet across the knuckles of the other.

  ‘And how many women have passed within its walls in that time? Four or five hundred, would you think that a reasonable estimate? And you see-how many? Six or seven? Sc
arcely a representative sample, is it?’

  ‘No,’ she agreed, smiling as though she had made some silly mistake in ordering the groceries; the knuckle bones were too big, the fingers failed to meet.

  ‘Does the action all take place over one decade or does it span several generations?’

  She shrugged her shoulders and tried the experiment with her hands reversed. The knuckle bones didn’t seem so big; she wondered if she had arthritis in the other hand.

  ‘Don’t you ever subject these apparitions to rational scrutiny? Do you really think it is likely that out of all the women who have lived in that priory you should be visited by only six or seven?’ She shook her head. She did not think it likely, it just happened.

  ‘They are creatures of your mind.’

  He meant this to frighten her, but it would have been kinder were it true that they were a product of her sick mind. These women had minds of their own which meant that their pain was their own, too. She felt their pain.

  ‘I’m tired, Tudor,’ she said. ‘I’ll go to bed now.’

  ‘We’ve got to talk about this.’

  ‘Not now. It must be three o’clock.’ Almost imperceptibly the balance of advantage was shifting.

  ‘It doesn’t matter if we talk all night, we have got to talk!’

  ‘I’ll go to bed now.’

  ‘this is making me ill!’ He shouted as he had shouted as a child, so loud that his parents gave in to him for fear that otherwise he would harm himself, ‘don’t you care that you are making me ill?’

  He was barring her passage up the stairs and had manoeuvred her against the wall; yet in spite of this, she seemed to elude him.

  ‘You wouldn’t mind if I died.’ It had been his ultimate threat to his parents and he had never found a way of going beyond it.

  She said, ‘Don’t be silly.’

  He put his hands to his face and began to cry.

  She said, ‘No, Tudor, no,’ in a quiet, cold voice. She could pass him now, and did.