LOOK, STRANGER

by MARY HOCKING

  Tudor remained on the stairs crying as though his body would break apart. She was not afraid that he would do anything desperate, he was too afraid of death for that. He was trapped, too, poor Tudor! But she would not weaken. He had invaded every corner of her life save this one. When he became her lover he had walked around her, slamming all the doors, closing all the windows, because he must have complete possession. But she had found a world into which he could not follow her and she was prepared to guard that territory.

  She went to her room and walked across to the window without turning on the light. She had been born in this room and it was from this window that she had first glimpsed the nuns. She had been thirteen then and she had known instinctively that there was something wrong about seeing them, so she had not run to tell her mother. She had kept the nuns at the edge of vision and sometimes they had seemed to fade, merging to a grey blur which might have been indicative of a slight visual defect. But when she was nineteen her father had died and her mother had decided to die, too. Zoe had given up her art course to nurse her mother in her long dying, had had a love affair with a married man, and grown almost imperceptibly into her thirties. At some time during that unhappy period the nuns had advanced beyond the edge of vision. It was only when Tudor became her lover, however, that she had finally turned to them and allowed herself to know them.

  ‘Scarcely a representative sample, is it?’

  Tudor’s voice came to her as she stood by the window. Tudor was good on samples; he used them as he used statistics, to disprove anything and everything. Disproof was important to Tudor. Fortunately, in this case it had been the numbers involved in the sample that concerned him. He was a long way from her problem. There was one odd thing about the nuns whom she saw. Some accommodated themselves well to their prison, others were unable to do so; but they were all imprisoned. Her “sample” did not include one who lived in the priory voluntarily because God had called her. And there must have been some in each generation. Yet she never saw them. She longed to see them, hoping that it might be catching, this glory that was theirs.

  ‘Why?’

  So many questions, questions, questions; questions without answer of everything and everyone, since Tudor came. Yet here, where she was safe from him, here in her private world, she was plagued by this question that was all her own.

  Chapter Four

  The Jarmans lived in a mock Tudor house in Elm Lane. Elm Lane still had elms; it had an unmade road, too, which was full of pebbles and shells having at one time led straight off the beach from which it was now separated by the coast road. The unmade road was the devil on car tyres but most of the householders had lived there a long time and liked it that way. The Jarmans’ house had been built in the early nineteen-thirties and stood in an acre of ground with an untidy lawn on three sides and a small orchard at the back. Some of the people in the lane had compromised with modernity to the extent of selling off part of their land so that here and there new properties had been eased in between the old. This infilling had been done discreetly; the buildings were of the log cabin type and peeped shyly from between the branches of trees. Barbara Jarman, who felt embarrassed by their subservience, called their owners the Disney Folk. In spite of the Disney Folk, the lane still looked much as it had in pictures taken before the war when it had been the only residential area of the west village.

  The elms, the unmade road, and the more generous gardens were all that remained of those rural days. Elm Lane now ran like a natural fault across a complex of well-surfaced roads where sensible people who wanted neat pavements and sodium lamps lived in bungalows and chalets in close proximity to amusement arcades, launderettes and supermarkets. The seascape, however, had not changed much, although old people said there had been more sand before the war. If one blinkered one’s eyes one could still look down Elm Lane to an unspoilt vista of pebble beach and sea merging imperceptibly into sky. Unblinkered, one would be primarily aware of the fairground to the right. At night, the Jarmans could see the lights of the ferris wheel from their sitting-room window and they could hear the noise of the fairground all over the house.

  The Jarmans were unlike any family Nancy had ever known. She had led rather a subdued life and her idea of a happy home was a place where peace, however fragile, is maintained intact. On the first occasion when she went to supper with the Jarmans, her arrival coincided with Mrs. Jarman’s return from a school staff meeting. The moment she set foot in the house Mrs. Jarman shouted to her daughter, Barbara, is the kettle on? I’m in shreds!’

  Barbara Jarman, seventeen and remarkably self-possessed, said to Nancy, ‘Mother believes it would be bad for her to stay at home, intellectually starved; it would make her neurotic and bad-tempered and we’d all suffer. So instead we have her like this. Aren’t we lucky?’

  ‘Tea first, darling,’ Mrs. Jarman said. ‘Analysis can wait.’

  She and Barbara went into the kitchen whence their raised voices could be heard, Mrs. Jarman talking about the staff meeting and Barbara saying couldn’t she ever talk about anything but school? Mr. Jarman regarded Nancy over the top of The Financial Times and said, ‘Supper will come in time.’

  Mrs. Jarman came immediately, a cup of tea in one hand. ‘Where’s Jeremy?’

  Her husband lowered the paper and looked around the room as though he expected Jeremy to emerge from behind the furniture. Barbara called from the kitchen, ‘He’s gone to supper with Mike Hanley.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have thought to tell me?’

  ‘Yes.’ Barbara appeared in the doorway looking amused. ‘He did think; he told me and I’m telling you.’

  Mrs. Jarman sank into an armchair and sipped her tea. ‘There’s a parents’ meeting at school next week,’ Barbara called from the kitchen.

  Mr. Jarman turned the pages of The Financial Times. Mrs. Jarman watched him for a moment or two and then said, ‘How long is it since you’ve been to a parents’ meeting? Not since the children were in junior school, I should think.’

  Mr. Jarman put The Financial Times down on the floor and went out of the room. Mrs. Jarman followed him and could be heard calling up the stairs, ‘That’s right! Retire to your favourite place the moment something is said you don’t want to answer.’ She went up a few steps to ensure that her words carried. ‘This is almost a one-parent family, the amount you participate in your children’s activities.’

  She came back to the sitting-room looking refreshed, drank her tea and went into the kitchen where she began to bang pans about. ‘Go and talk to Nancy, I can manage here,’ she instructed Barbara.

  Barbara came out of the kitchen and sat on the hearth stool. She was a compact-looking girl who was probably good at games and most others things as well; she had her mother’s dark brown eyes, a clear English complexion and she spoke with immaculate precision.

  ‘Are you shocked by us?’ she asked. ‘Didn’t you have rows in your house? We have them all the time.’

  ‘I couldn’t ever have talked to my mother in that tone of voice,’ Nancy said. ‘She would have been hurt.’

  ‘But you can’t live with someone for years without hurting them.’

  Nancy tried to win sympathy which was her inevitable response to situations where she felt herself out-classed. ‘My mother,’ she said quietly, ‘was very ill.’

  Barbara looked annoyed and said, ‘I’m sorry about that,’ as though she did not really mean it.

  Mrs. Jarman came in with a laden tray and Barbara put out the cutlery. Mr. Jarman returned and talked to Nancy about America. He seemed to know more about it than she did. He also gave the impression that there were things he knew about her. It wasn’t the same kind of knowing as that displayed by Tudor Lindsay. Tudor had told her about her psychological situation and had explained her hang-ups in language that was as impersonal as a case history; but Mr. Jarman looked at her as though he knew what she was like under her skin. He was an accountant, but sitting here in his own home he was Nancy’s idea of an English count
ry squire. There was a suggestion of the stables about him. She was glad when Mrs. Jarman summoned them to the table.

  ‘How are your squatters?’ Mrs. Jarman asked Nancy.

  ‘Mrs. Anguilo has been in and out a bit. She couldn’t get the stove in the basement to light. . . .’

  ‘My dear, she’ll never get anything to work if there’s someone else around to do it, so be careful.’

  Nancy said she would be careful, although she had enjoyed Mrs. Anguilo’s helplessness which had made her feel efficient in comparison.

  ‘Milo had a long talk with my father.’

  Barbara said, ‘Beware of Milo! Did you know that he belongs to the Ancient People?’

  ‘And who are the Ancient People?’ her father asked.

  ‘They are the people who worship the old gods who were driven out by Christianity. But they’ve been waiting around and now that Christianity’s on the way out, their time has come.’

  ‘What do they do?’ Mrs. Jarman said. ‘The worshippers, I mean, not the gods.’

  ‘Whatever turns them on.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought they needed to bring back the old gods to do that,’ Mr. Jarman observed, helping himself to another slice of ham.

  ‘That shows just how out of touch you are. Daddy. You don’t begin to understand how serious things are getting. “Way out” means “everyone’s been”; and soon there’ll be more people “underground” than above. You’ve got to be pretty ingenious to find something to be “outside” of nowadays.’

  ‘So, what’s the answer?’

  ‘You introduce another dimension, I suppose. Give the supernatural a whirl.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ Mrs. Jarman asked.

  ‘Cam told me. Ronnie Smart, their lodger, is a member of the Ancient People. He keeps the Smarts awake at night making strange noises. Apparently to be an Ancient Person you must empty yourself and see what takes possession, and he has difficulty emptying so he practises in bed at night. Cam’s mother thinks he’s making himself ill.’

  ‘I wonder if anyone possesses Milo.’

  ‘He has quite a success apparently. It’s understandable, don’t you think? If I was a spirit and I had to choose between inhabiting Milo or Ronnie Smart I’d go for Milo every time.’

  ‘What is all this about Ronnie Smart? I don’t know any Ronnie Smart.’ Mrs. Jarman sounded as though his existence must be proved mathematically if she were to accept him.

  ‘I told you, he’s the lodger. He’s a computer programmer at the university.’

  ‘Why ever does he live on Helmsley, then?’ Mrs. Jarman pushed the salad dish towards Nancy. ‘It all sounds very unlikely to me. I wouldn’t have thought a computer programmer would be interested in the old gods, or whatever they call themselves.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’ her husband looked surprised. ‘I would have thought computer programmers would be rather a long way out.’

  ‘What do you know about being a long way out?’ she turned on him. ‘You’re the most conventional man I know.’

  ‘It would be nice to have placid, dumpling sort of parents, wouldn’t it?’ Barbara said to Nancy who didn’t know how to answer.

  ‘Would you rather I was like Cam’s mother?’ Mrs. Jarman asked. ‘And took in lodgers like this unpossessed computer programmer, instead of going to work?’

  ‘Yes, I should love that. Cam says that her mother is always there when she comes home in the afternoon. She thinks it’s important that a teenage daughter should have her mother there so that she can off-load on her. Can you imagine that?’

  Mrs. Jarman pushed her chair back and began stacking the dirty plates. ‘I think you are very unkind. Perhaps I’d better give up my job. Would you like that?’

  ‘It’s too late for me.’ Barbara took a stick of celery before it was whisked away. ‘But Jeremy might benefit, I suppose.’

  ‘Perhaps teenage boys need their fathers to be at home?’ Mr. Jarman said. ‘We’ll have to ask Jeremy about that.’

  Mrs. Jarman went into the kitchen and Nancy followed carrying the bread-board. Mrs. Jarman heaped the dishes in the sink and turned the hot tap full on so that water squirted off the crockery onto her jumper. She began to attack the saucepans with vigour; her expression was as fierce as her movements. After a minute or two Barbara came in carrying the remainder of the dishes. She put them down on the draining board and picked up a tea-cloth; then she bent forward, looking up into her mother’s face, and said, ‘Woof!’

  ‘Woof, woof!’ her mother replied.

  Barbara wiped a plate and she and her mother talked companionably. Nancy thought the Jarmans were an upside-down sort of family. She was familiar with tension beneath a calm surface, but here, although things seemed rather rough on the surface, there was a strange absence of tension. She felt inexplicably happy and hoped she would come here often and help with the dishes.

  When they returned to the sitting-room Mr. Jarman was watching a film about a Special Branch officer who at that moment was in bed with a blonde. Mr. Jarman said, keeping his eyes on the screen, ‘This is what we pay our taxes for.’

  His wife said, ‘I don’t suppose Nancy wants to watch this.’

  Before Nancy could answer there was a knock on the front door. The caller was Mrs. Hooper. She came into the sitting-room looking deeply offended. The sight of Nancy seemed to make matters worse.

  ‘I hope I’m not intruding,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘That depends on why you’ve come, Maud,’ Mr. Jarman said as his wife turned off the television. ‘If it’s church business, then you are intruding.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know anything about church business!’ Mrs. Hooper’s face flushed and her lips trembled as though her dentures had slipped. ‘I’m too old to be of much use to the church.’

  Mrs. Jarman, who was standing behind Mrs. Hooper, caught her husband’s eye and a signal passed between them.

  ‘These young people want to watch television, Maud,’ Mr. Jarman said. ‘Suppose we go to the breakfast-room?’

  But Mrs. Hooper, having reluctantly consented to seat herself, was not to be easily dislodged. She said, as though continuing an interrupted conversation, ‘And what’s all this about “no man is an island”, then?’

  ‘It’s a quotation from John Donne,’ Barbara said uppishly.

  ‘You don’t have to tell me it’s a quotation,’ Mrs. Hooper snapped. ‘But it’s a funny thing to preach a sermon about when you’ve just come to an island, isn’t it?’

  Nancy looked at an old copy of the Radio Times which was used as a wedge under the castor of the television trolley; it had a picture on the front of a complacent ginger cat sitting in a winged armchair. Her mouth had gone dry. If this acid-faced woman was going to criticise her father she knew she wouldn’t be able to take it calmly.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve got the connection between your being of no use to the church and the vicar preaching a sermon about islands.’ Mr. Jarman fumbled for a pipe in his jacket pocket.

  ‘He was standing up there, his first sermon in our church, and telling us he didn’t like our way of doing things. That’s what it boiled down to, John Donne or no John Donne.’ Mrs. Hooper shot an aggrieved glance at Barbara.

  ‘I thought it was our way of not doing things that bothered him.’ Barbara took up the cudgels before Nancy could intervene. Her parents looked at her dubiously, but neither of them interrupted her. ‘But I don’t think he was getting at you particularly, Mrs. Hooper. I thought he was probably getting at me.’

  ‘You!’ Mrs. Hooper put a world of outrage and disdain into this one word.

  ‘Older people like to be with people they have things in common with. And the things people at All Hallows have in common are that they’ve been brought up to support the church and listen to the Queen’s speech on Christmas Day; they have standards and values and they sell flags for voluntary societies.’

  ‘I see. And those things are wrong, are they?’

  ‘They’re not
what the other half of the island is about. That’s why I think the vicar was getting at young people like me; we’re the ones who want to break down the barriers.’

  ‘You’d like to see the church filled with people from the Manning estate, would you, like the Roman Catholic church is; the parents in dirty jeans and the children running up and down the aisle during communion and pop groups playing the hymns?’

  ‘I don’t know that I would like that myself,’ Barbara said judicially. ‘But then I think I shall probably end up agnostic, so I suppose my vote doesn’t count. But Jeremy is very much for bringing in

  the Manning estate people, dirty jeans and all.’

  ‘Jeremy!’ Mr. Jarman exclaimed.

  ‘He’s gone to a meeting at Mike Hanley’s. They’re going to organize a door-to-door evangelical campaign. I’m not sure that’s the way to set about it. For myself. . . .’

  ‘I think that’s enough,’ Mrs. Jarman said. ‘Why don’t you take Nancy for a walk?’

  Mrs. Hooper, however, was not willing to let Barbara get away so easily. She leant forward and pointed a finger at her.

  ‘How long are the young young? Tell me that!’ She sat back in her chair and folded her hands over her stomach. ‘We have the church turned upside down for them, and then they aren’t young any more and there’s a new lot of young who want something different and everything has to be turned upside down again. And who keeps the church running while all this is going on? Old people! Old, out of date people who, even if they do listen to Her Majesty on Christmas Day, are prepared to go down on their knees and scrub floors, and clean brass, and make coffee, and put the chairs out in the church hall, and clear up afterwards. Are Jeremy’s groups going to do all that?’

  ‘It’s not just groups of young people,’ Barbara said. ‘There are old people on the Manning estate, and middle-aged people.’

  ‘Put your raincoat on,’ Mrs. Jarman said to Barbara. ‘It looks a bit misty outside.’

  Once outside the house, Barbara said to Nancy, ‘We’ll go down to the beach, shall we?’