LOOK, STRANGER

by MARY HOCKING

  Zoe rose from the tree stump on which she had been sitting and walked slowly through the ruined chancel. She was shocked by her treatment of Dame Eleanor, who was too frail for dissection. When Zoe glanced over her shoulder. Dame Eleanor showed distressing signs of disintegration; she seemed to have lost a dimension and had become a stencilled figure, lacking depth. Even her grief had no substance. But perhaps that was because Dame Eleanor’s grief had somehow got itself mixed up with Nancy Vereker’s grief, which definitely did have substance. Zoe could taste Nancy Vereker’s grief in her mouth and it was strong and bitter.

  Nancy had been standing on tiptoe peering in at the un-lighted sitting-room window when Zoe returned from the meeting last night. Zoe remembered the father gazing in at that same window. What do they want of us, the Verekers, she asked herself? Demands frightened her and for a moment she contemplated creeping round the side of the house and letting herself in by the back door. But it was no use trying to escape; the Verekers and their need would still be here on Helmsley in the morning. Zoe walked across the lawn and said to Nancy, ‘Won’t you come in?’

  Nancy was as agitated as if she had been about to break into the house only to be offered the key by the owner. ‘I just had to go for a walk after that terrible meeting,’ she gabbled. ‘So I walked over here, you must think I’m very rude.’

  Zoe knew how Nancy felt at this moment, just as she sometimes knew how Dame Eleanor felt; but Dame Eleanor was dead and Nancy was alive. Zoe put out her hand and touched Nancy’s hand and felt how painful it was to be alive. ‘Things aren’t getting out of control, are they, Nancy?’

  Nancy answered with guilty vehemence, ‘Oh no, no!’

  The grass and the shrubs were damp and Zoe could smell the rosemary. She said, ‘As long as you know what you are doing,’ and was surprised to hear herself utter these words, so well-worn with incommunicable love and concern.

  ‘It’s all right, really it is.’ Nancy squeezed Zoe’s hand, then she turned into the shrubbery, trying to find her way to the gate. Zoe followed her, smelling the rosemary more strongly as she pushed against it. At the gate, Nancy said, ‘You won’t say anything to Tudor about me being here, will you?’

  ‘Not if you don’t want me to.’

  ‘I’d look so silly.’ She sounded as if she couldn’t conceive of anything worse than looking silly.

  Zoe felt reluctant to let her go so unarmed into the darkness. ‘I don’t think you should go back alone, not at this hour.’

  ‘I won’t take the footpath. I’ll go back through the village.’ She seemed pleased to have someone fussing over her.

  ‘I shall watch you set off, to make sure.’

  ‘Oh, you’re so nice!’ Nancy said impulsively. ‘You’re the nicest person I’ve ever met.’

  Zoe stood at the gate until the sound of Nancy’s footsteps died away. It would be a lonely walk and a long one, but at least she wouldn’t meet Tudor who would be certain to come back across the fields.

  After this encounter Zoe had gone into the house. She made herself a cup of Oxo, ate a digestive biscuit and went up to her bedroom. Tudor would not intrude here. They had ceased to be lovers some time ago and he now had a West Indian girl on the mainland. No doubt he would like to have someone on the island as well; it would be more convenient and the West Indian girl wouldn’t last, Tudor couldn’t sustain a love affair for long.

  It was not Tudor she thought of, however, as she prepared for bed. Her affair with Donald Jarman had been over for many years now. At the time some people had said it was touch and go whether he left his wife or not, but that wasn’t true; Gwynneth was a determined, resilient woman and she had held fast and waited. Zoe was incidental to Donald Jarman’s life, the whole affair was incidental. He had had to visit the house frequently when Zoe’s mother was bedridden and obsessed with anxiety about her financial affairs. Mrs. Lindsay was a tiresome woman and Jarman would have given the work to one of the junior partners had he not discovered the daughter. The desire to play Prince to the Sleeping Beauty was irresistible. Unfortunately, the workaday world makes a muddle of fairy tales and in the end Beauty went to sleep and the Prince reverted a little sadly to the Beast. Donald Jarman had begun to draw Zoe together into a whole person, but he had gone away before the process was complete and what he had started, Tudor had destroyed. Ineradicably destroyed, it had seemed, until this encounter in the garden with Nancy.

  The pain was out there; it had been waiting out there all these years for the moment of release. There were other feelings, harder to bear, that accompanied the pain. They were all out there, the garden was full of them, they pressed against the window pane; if they found the tiniest crack they would be in and she would never get them out of the house again. Even now, it might be too late. The faint smell of the rosemary was about her; she lifted her hand to her face and smelt it at her finger tips.

  ‘Oh, Nancy, Nancy!’ She turned away from the window and walked up and down the room. How can I warn her? There is only one person who can deal with experience and that is yourself; and once the experience has started, once the first symptoms appear, it is too late. There is no cure.

  Moonlight reflected the tossing leaves of a tree on the wall above her bed. The wind stirred in the chimney and the leaves of honesty rustled together in the dried flower arrangement on the mantelpiece. It was too late.

  She had slept and dreamt and forgotten her dream and had got up early. She had come out here to the ruined priory to assure herself that all was as before. But it wasn’t as before, something had changed. And what it meant and what she was to do about it, she did not know.

  By nine o’clock it was a dreary day, the rain pouring down the window pane in a way that made sense of that line of Swinburne “grief with a glass that ran”. Vereker had a lot of grief. The fact that he had brought it on himself only made it harder to bear. It was the first of May. He had been here six weeks and as a result of his activities he had alienated half the congregation and the altar would probably have to be reconsecrated.

  When he came down this morning he had found several letters on the door mat. One was from an old lady who had gone straight home and written to him “while your wicked words are still ringing in my ears.” Another said that he had “betrayed his cloth”, while another accused him of threatening the writer’s peace of mind. If he had given hope or inspiration, he could only assume that the recipients were still sleeping soundly.

  He buttered a piece of toast. Nan was still upstairs and he hoped she would not come down yet. The police would be coming soon to talk about the damage to the church which had been discovered late last night by a vigilant young constable. There was a knock on the front door. The police? Or perhaps the postman? At least the postman could not be the bearer of praise or blame, it would take the postal service some time to deliver itself of either. Vereker went to the door and found himself confronted by Mrs. Hooper, dressed in a black raincoat and sou’wester, and grim-visaged as the angel of death.

  ‘I won’t interrupt your breakfast.’ She glared at the piece of toast in his hand as though it was proof, were proof needed, of his utter degeneration. ‘Nor I won’t come in. But there are things I have to say.’ Vereker put the piece of toast down on the hall table, and wiped his fingers with a handkerchief; not, he realised, the happiest of gestures.

  From the line of her attack, he gathered that she was as yet unaware of the damage to the altar. ‘You upset a lot of people last night. And you know who you upset, don’t you? Not that foul¬mouthed layabout who sat behind me; nor that bearded weirdy who made all those wicked suggestions. They went away laughing. It was the old folk you upset, the ones who come to church regularly in all weathers, and bear their afflictions bravely like we are told we should.’

  Vereker put his handkerchief away in his pocket. He had a bad conscience where some of the old people were concerned, but this did not extend to Mrs. Hooper. It wasn’t the old people she was talking about, it was herself; and as she
talked it became apparent that she had God just where she wanted him, boxed up in her neat little house from which he must never be allowed to venture into a world where his dignity might be affronted by bearded weirdies, foul-mouthed layabouts and other mistakes of His creation. Vereker listened, his face expressionless. She didn’t like him any the more for bearing his chastisement with composure. A dull mulberry mottled her cheeks and her little eyes grew hard with anger; her speech coarsened.

  ‘We’re told not to cast our pearls before swine, aren’t we? That old man who sat next to me hadn’t had a bath this side of Christmas. I never expected to find myself mixing with the scum of the island at All Hallows; I’d have joined the Salvation Army if I wanted to get down in the gutter.’

  Vereker said, ‘If you care to come into the church with me, we can talk about your feelings in this, and any other matter on which you have difficulty.’ He had for the moment forgotten the damage, but the suggestion was, in any case, quite unacceptable to her.

  ‘Talk! Difficulty!’ She was outraged. ‘I’ve never needed to have any “talks” with Mr. Roberts and I’m certainly not going to “talk” to you! God knows all there is to know about me.’

  The telephone rang and Vereker turned to answer it. By the time he had dealt with the call, Mrs. Hooper had gone. No doubt when she discovered how swiftly God had visited retribution on All Hallows she would return much refreshed to the fight. He went into the study and read through the letters he had so far received. After a few minutes, Nan came in.

  ‘Who was that on the telephone?’ she asked.

  ‘Someone from the local paper. Apparently Roberts used to have a paragraph once a week. They’ve offered me a column. Isn’t that nice?’

  ‘It’s more than you deserve. I thought you were dreadful last night. Whatever came over you?’

  ‘I got rather cross.’

  ‘Are all those about it?’ she indicated the letters on the desk. ‘What do they say?’ She made no move to see for herself, but kept her distance like a frightened spectator at an accident.

  ‘Some say one thing, some another. You know the way it is.’

  ‘That was Mrs. Hooper at the door, wasn’t it?’ She searched his face anxiously. ‘Was she foul?’

  ‘She wasn’t very pleasant. But I expect that was partly my fault. I don’t like her and I daresay I showed it.’

  Nan was silent for a few moments, then burst out, ‘I think Helmsley Island is the most awful dump! And now it’s started to rain as far as I’m concerned it can go right on until the whole island is underwater.’ It was the nearest she could get to a gesture of solidarity with her father.

  Vereker, touched, but aware how precariously the scales were tipped in his favour, said vaguely, ‘It will all blow over, I expect.’

  The knock on the front door was prompt to remind him of the untruth of this.

  Nan said, ‘Whatever it is, I don’t want any part of it.’ She scuttled out and Vereker waited until the kitchen door had closed behind her before he admitted the police.

  Nancy had expected him to go straight to the door and the fact that he did not do so triggered an alarm bell in her system. The kitchen was too far from the front door, and the walls too solid, for her to hear what was said and this increased her uneasiness. She took a slice of toast and poured coffee. Perhaps it was the rural dean come to warn her father that unless he mended his ways he would be returned to America, labelled “unsuitable for export”. Her father would never be able to defend himself. She tended to see her father as muddled, ineffectual, and vulnerable. She thought that most people over forty were vulnerable because they had staked their lives on so many mistaken beliefs that they were practically incapable of survival in the modern world.

  She comforted herself by spreading butter thickly on the toast, and while she was doing this, Zoe arrived. She was early because Tudor had brought her in the car.

  ‘He promised to meet Meg Jacobs here to see how the Anguilos are settling down.’ Zoe looked unsettled herself.

  ‘They aren’t going to move the Anguilos, I hope?’ Nancy said.

  Mrs. Anguilo had been pathetically grateful for the shelter offered her and desperately anxious not to cause any inconvenience. She never asked for help, but she would walk about the garden looking fraught. Nancy would watch her wandering distractedly round the lawn pretending to gaze at the flower beds, then she would go out and say, ‘Tell me about it,’ and Mrs. Anguilo would drop today’s problem at her feet. Nancy had a lot to give Mrs. Anguilo, and there weren’t many people of whom that could be said.

  ‘It would be wicked to move the Anguilos!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘I don’t suppose they will move them. After all, they haven’t done any harm.’

  Nancy poured coffee for Zoe. ‘They don’t do anything I would call harmful,’ she said, ‘but I happen to know that they. . . well, take part in certain practices of which Mrs. Hooper, for one, wouldn’t approve.’

  ‘But I don’t suppose Mrs. Hooper knows, otherwise we would have heard about it before now.’

  ‘But you know!’ Nancy exclaimed. ‘Did Tudor tell you?’

  ‘Tudor? He would consider it too silly and immature to discuss.’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s immature?’

  ‘What does it matter if it is?’ Rags of colour streaked Zoe’s cheeks and her low voice sounded unexpectedly rough, almost aggressive. ‘It’s something they need. Why don’t people try to answer the need, instead of analysing it!’ She had a finger hooked into the handle of the cup and as she jerked her hand she upset the coffee. ‘Nancy, don’t you ever look at yourself in the mirror and want to cry out, “I’m not like that”; or hear yourself speak and think, “this isn’t me”?’ She dabbed agitatedly at the spilt coffee with a tissue. ‘We are the person in the mirror and the person who speaks, but there is more to us. We long for someone else to realize this; but it doesn’t happen. We are left with so little, so very little.’ She threw the sodden tissue aside as though its ineffectiveness was too much to be borne. ‘And some people can’t bear the littleness, so they undress and dance and make obscene gestures in the moonlight, and people call them immature; but they don’t try to help them. They collect up the bits and pieces, not to make a person out of them, but a specimen.’

  Nancy felt she was on the edge of a great truth; but at the same time she was irritated by the fact that the coffee was now dripping off the table onto the floor. She wanted to be like Zoe, unconcerned with triviality; nevertheless, she got up and fetched the floor cloth. ‘I think you’re so right,’ she said as she mopped up the coffee. ‘I feel an awful jumble myself.’

  Impulsively, Zoe reached out a hand and patted Nancy’s shoulder. ‘You’ll be all right. I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have spoken like that.’ Distress had changed her. Now that she had pulled out all her emotional pins she looked less remote, rather ordinary, in fact. Nancy went to the sink for the dish cloth; there was still a pool of coffee on the table. While she was standing at the sink, her father and two policemen walked past the window.

  ‘They are going to turn them out!’ Nancy exclaimed.

  Zoe said, ‘They mustn’t do that.’ Nancy put the dish cloth on the table to soak up the coffee and they both moved purposefully to the door.

  In the basement Tudor was denouncing witch hunts while Mrs. Anguilo, quite unable to understand that he was angry for her, not with her, moaned, ‘Oh no, no, no!’ Meg Jacobs was surprised that Tudor should react so strenuously before the police had done anything naughty; Vereker was looking at the ground, his head to one side, listening intently; something seemed to be puzzling him. These people, and the two policemen, were standing in the centre of the room. Milo sat on a bench against the wall, slack, hunch¬shouldered, like a player snatching a rest in the wings.

  The elder of the two policemen, a sergeant, was as surprised as anyone by Tudor’s vehemence. For all that had so far been said by the police, they might have come to make enquiries about a lost bicycle or
a dead cat. The sergeant was a pleasant-looking, fresh-faced man with a gently amused manner, and shrewd enough to capitalize on these assets. The benign approach, in his experience, produced better results than bullying. He was, therefore, annoyed that a contentious atmosphere was being created before he had had time to set the tone of the proceedings. For this reason, he welcomed the diversion created by the arrival of the newcomers.

  ‘Good morning. Miss Lindsay,’ he greeted Zoe affably. ‘And Miss Vereker, isn’t it? I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Sergeant Briskett and this is Constable Muldoon.’ He noted that the two ladies looked rather hostile, but continued with impervious cheerfulness, ‘You may not have heard that the altar and a stained glass window in the church were damaged last night? We are making a few enquiries. . . .’

  ‘Which immediately led you down here.’ Tudor could not let well alone.

  ‘It’s natural that we should start at the vicarage, isn’t it? After all, the folk here are nearest to the church and therefore the most likely to have noticed anyone who might have been hanging about.’

  ‘There was a meeting in the church hall last night after which close on a hundred people were hanging about,’ Tudor retorted. ‘Including everyone in this room with the exception of Milo.’ Milo shot him a quick, involuntary glance. It was the only time that he looked at Tudor during the whole interview.

  ‘The key in my study is missing,’ Vereker explained. He, like the sergeant, seemed content at this stage to behave as though this was an informal news conference.