LOOK, STRANGER

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘I see.’ Vereker nodded his head, remembering remarks and reactions which had puzzled him. ‘Why did she come back? Has she relatives here?’

  ‘No, but she may have had a forlorn hope that there might be something to which she could lay claim because she is John Penn’s daughter.’

  ‘Is there any proof that John Penn was her father?’

  ‘Milo, perhaps? They say red hair skips a generation. John Penn had a flaming thatch, by all accounts.’

  She stood up and looked around for a waste bin. It was almost dark now and they had no right to be here. It had only been dusk when they eased through the palings.

  Vereker had not thought of it as trespassing. The heat had broken down barriers on the island and during the day front doors stood open to any wandering cat and the rude inspection of passers-by. At night, the people came out like glow-worms, some stood in front gardens talking to neighbours; while others strolled up and down the streets as though they lived in one of those southern towns which comes alive at night. It had been a mistake, though, to come here, making a way where there should have been no way.

  ‘People thought a lot of John Penn,’ Zoe said. ‘Old Colonel Maitland was particularly distressed and you’d think he’d seen enough that was good go to waste in his time, wouldn’t you?’ They began to walk slowly down the broad central walk. ‘Do you think anything ever goes to waste?’ she asked, thinking of Cylla and the pain that had brought her into the world and taken her out of it with so little time in between for there to seem much purpose in the exercise.

  Vereker was looking for the way out. Even in daylight, his sense of direction was not good. He wished he had not intruded here. The past should be left alone, neat, well-ordered, out of the reach of well-intentioned meddlers. Yet every step one took was a step out of the past; if one looked over one’s shoulder for so much as a second. . . And here he did look over his shoulder. Something moved between the gravestones, crouching low.

  ‘Whatever it is, let it be.’ Zoe grabbed his arm. ‘If you drive it out of here it will only do more harm elsewhere.’

  She had understood more than he, her intuition outdistanced his slower reason. But he thought there was something crouched by the grave that he must challenge and he ran down the path without any sense that he was tackling a person who, however depraved, still needed understanding. Zoe cried, ‘Let it alone!’ A brick, hurled with some force but less precision, grazed his temple. He lurched to one side and tripped over the base of one of the more ornamental tombs. He lay full length on the tomb with his face resting on a mossy bed of flowers which had a peppery smell. He was much sobered.

  Zoe came running to his rescue. She picked up the brick and hurled it at the same time shouting, ‘Get out! Go on, get out! Go back where you belong.’ She threw a handful of pebbles which she had scrabbled up from the path. ‘Get out! Get out!’ The long grass at the back of a tombstone parted as a startled rabbit scurried for shelter. There was no other response to her furious activity.

  A wind which sprang out of nowhere caught the tops of the pine trees; it filled the graveyard with a strange, ominous roaring and then whirled away as quickly as it had come. On the ground all was still, not a blade of grass moved.

  Zoe knelt beside Vereker, ‘Your head is bleeding.’

  ‘It’s only a graze. Just give me a moment to get my breath back.’

  ‘We’ll go to the farm. It’s nearer.’

  ‘I’m all right now.’ He stood up to demonstrate the fact. She put a hand on his arm to steady him and he allowed her to lead him down the path.

  ‘Should we go to the police?’ he asked.

  ‘We haven’t anything to tell the police, have we? Did you see who it was?’

  ‘I didn’t see anything except those flowers up against my nose.’ In spite of all that had happened he felt surprisingly cheerful and he was talkative on their way to the farm. It was only when they entered the sitting-room and Zoe had made him comfortable on the sofa that a wave of desolation engulfed him; he was wet and shivering as well as infinitely sad and he buried his face in his hands and said, ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear’ over and over again.

  Zoe said, ‘It’s quite all right.’ It might have been his mother speaking; she had sounded just like that when he or one of his brothers had been sick – matter-of-fact, good-humoured, comforting. He did not feel that he deserved to be comforted.

  ‘Drink it while it’s hot.’ She was pressing a cup into his hands. He took a sip of the tea which was scalding and very sweet. ‘Why couldn’t I do more? I just walked away and left the Devil in possession.’

  ‘It’s shock.’ She laid her hand over his and raised the cup to his lips. ‘You went down with an awful bang, as well as getting that blow on the head.’

  ‘I can’t cast out devils.’ He took more sips of the tea to please her. When he had finished the tea and she was bathing his forehead, he said, ‘I’ve always thought that God didn’t expect spectacular things of me. But do you know what Milo said? He said, “You should go about among people as though you were branded!” and he struck his forehead when he said it.’

  ‘How very dramatic!’

  ‘But mayn’t he be right? Shouldn’t something mark a priest out from other people? Tonight, in the graveyard, there was a creature crying out for help and I had nothing to give. I’ve always tried to accept my limitations, but I would like to feel that just once in a way I could do something extraordinary. Milo thinks he’s extraordinary, and if it turns out he’s right, I shall find it very painful.’

  Zoe put the bowl of water aside and took his hand in both of hers. ‘How can you tell what you may have done for another person, Matthew? Perhaps you have cast out devils and never known it.’

  He looked down at his hand in hers. He felt confused and rather ashamed of himself. ‘Have I been talking a lot of nonsense?’

  She smiled at him. Their relationship had changed recently. Sometimes she would enter into conversations with him gingerly, like a person feeling the temperature of the water with a toe; at other times, she would talk and laugh unguardedly. Yet, whatever her mood, he had the feeling of something tremendous happening just below the surface of her skin. He had the feeling very strongly at this moment.

  ‘And now I am going to get us something to eat,’ she said.

  When she had gone, he sat and looked at the big brick fireplace. He remembered that when he first came here and gazed through the window into this room he had seen firelight leaping on a wall. He was beginning to feel more comfortable and a little drowsy. When we are young, he thought, we rage because our parents have such simple remedies for our great pains – a hot drink, a good night’s rest in a warm bed will put the whole world to rights. How we sneer at such simplicity! But when we are older we learn the value of even the humblest offering of warmth and comfort. In the ordinary, everyday acts of caring, Christ changes our water into wine.

  Oh, to be cared for again! When Zoe came in with bread and butter, home-made scones, jam and cake, and other symbols of caring, the longing was almost too much to be borne. She bent forward to place the tray on the table near the sofa. When she was older, she would be one of those gaunt women who, seen in a certain light, will suddenly make a man catch his breath, realizing how she must have looked when her beauty was fleshed; but that man would never be able to imagine quite how lovely she was at this particular time when, so late she had ceased to expect it, she found life pricking at her finger tips. Longing was drowned in a surge of desire such as Vereker had not experienced for a long time.

  ‘This is strawberry jam,’ she was saying. ‘And that is damson. We have to make the most of our jam today; it won’t be so good next year because of the drought.’

  He took a slice of bread and helped himself to strawberry jam. His mouth was dry and his mind refused to present him with any small talk. He could not look at her, so he looked around the room. She had propped a few recent sketches on top of the bookcase. They were village scenes:
there was the fishmonger hooking a pole to the blind with something of the swagger of one who might if he chose swing himself up onto the blind instead of taking it down; and there was the interior of a draper’s shop with two old women sitting behind the counter and, standing in a pool of sunlight in the doorway, a hovering child to whom the shop with its silk threads, its coloured ribbons, its lace and velvet and satin, was as magical as Aladdin’s cave. The sketches troubled him. The one which troubled him most was of little stick-like children dancing in the village street; the figures were more like a cascade of quavers and crochets than children and they had a surprising vivacity.

  Zoe said, ‘They are of the old village. I was surprised how much I remembered.’

  But these sketches were more than a recreation of things remembered: the faces of the people, the very smells they evoked must have come to her instantly, as though they had been released from a capsule. The capsule had contained something else too: the joy of being alive on a summer’s day.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.

  ‘I was thinking how good they are.’ The praise was grudgingly given; in his heart he begrudged her her joy because he feared he might have no part in it.

  ‘I think you are tired,’ she said kindly. Then she suggested that he should stay the night at which he protested so vigorously as to make the proposal seem improper. She offered to drive him back to the vicarage, but he said he preferred to walk, that the night air would clear his head. He sounded as if he could not get out of the house fast enough. It was not the way he wanted to sound. Nothing was going the way he wanted it to go, or the way she wanted it to go, either. They said goodnight to each other in mutual confusion and disappointment.

  Vereker walked slowly. His head was aching and he felt sick. When he came to the priory grounds he sat beneath the pillar where the valerian grew, the same pillar beneath which Milo had had his vision, perhaps the same from which John Penn had fallen. He felt oppressed by the sense of the past and he thought how hard it must have been for the nuns, living here at a time when the skin of civilization was so thin. It was very hot even at this late hour and the air was heavy and had a rank smell; even in the daytime a vapour seemed to rise from the ground so that one had the impression of a fine gauze net having been thrown over the area, while at night the darkness pressed on the eyelids. He could see the blurred outline of trees which had been hacked down, while around him the ruins had been worn away into grotesque shapes; even after the passage of centuries there was no sense of reconciliation, only of mutilation. The stones cried out for release from some intolerable strain that had been placed on them; every blade of grass proclaimed a need for clean, fresh air and the healing clarity of light. It wasn’t a sane place. He had a very strong feeling of being in a place where Christianity had failed to shake itself free of the web of superstition. He was glad Zoe seemed to be ridding herself of the influence the place had had on her.

  The idea of Zoe’s freedom did not, however, raise his spirits. What would she do when she could move freely in the here and now of life? He had seen himself as her rescuer, but how would she see him? Not every woman who is set free marries her rescuer: in real life, the right to be ungrateful is a condition of freedom.

  He got up and continued on his way to the vicarage. How unfair life was! How cruel that he should be awakened to hope only to face the possibility that nothing might come of it. But wasn’t that always the risk of loving? Not the second time round, he complained angrily; the second time round we should be spared all uncertainty, our love affairs should be comfortable and cosy like a romantic novel, only the young have the stamina for literature. For the middle-aged all should slot conveniently into place with as little fuss and bother as possible. Dear God, there must be some concessions for the middle-aged, the young have so much going for them as it is!

  When he got back to the vicarage Nan was making orange juice. She said the heat had got her down and she was going to bed.

  ‘What have you done to your head?’ she asked with halfhearted concern. ‘I fell over.’

  She looked surprised. For a moment it seemed as though she might demand more details; then, as he looked at her, he saw her eyes reckoning how much this would cost her in terms of energy expended. Her resources were obviously low, she looked tired and miserable.

  ‘Perhaps you’d better go to bed early as well; you look a bit rough,’ she said. ‘There is enough orange juice for you to have a drink, too.’

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘The town clerk was very concerned that a member of staff should have taken part in the demonstration.’ The establishment officer adjusted his glasses more securely on his nose and sniffed. ‘An active part, I gather.’

  Dorothy said, ‘Yes, I can see he would be concerned.’

  ‘You are usually so self-controlled,’ the establishment officer said uneasily.

  ‘I’ve been self-controlled for a long time,’ Dorothy said. ‘It’s become an effort.’ In fact, it had reached a stage where the effort was more apparent than anything else. People were becoming rather frightened of her. The establishment officer, for example, was dealing with her as though she had ‘handle with care’ branded on her brow.

  ‘I hope this won’t happen again,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think the opportunity is likely to arise again, do you?’ She must stop trying to control herself, she thought when she returned to her room. It would be interesting to see what happened. An explosion? Perhaps she would lose her job. Well, that might be no bad thing; she had served the community so long she would soon be doing it and herself a disservice. The telephone rang. She picked up the receiver, listened, and said, ‘No, she isn’t here and I can’t take a message. I’m in the middle of something very important.’

  In the middle of Dorothy Prentice, in fact. She snatched up her handbag and went out. She walked through the town thinking about Dorothy Prentice. One should not be concerned with self. She had lived by this principle for years and self was now crying out for a little concern. She yielded to its plea for the rest of the morning.

  Her meditation failed to produce a better frame of mind. She was increasingly aggressive with Erica.

  ‘You must pull yourself together!’ she said angrily when Erica announced her intention of staying in bed the next day. ‘This has been going on for over ten days now. If you can’t snap out of it, you must see the doctor.’

  ‘There is nothing he can do.’

  ‘But you have your family to think about. You can’t leave everything to me. I’m busy. I can’t cope indefinitely with your affairs as well as my own.’

  ‘Everything goes on all right without me,’ Erica said drearily.

  ‘What about Daniel? Things are going badly for him. He’s your husband. You have a responsibility to him.’

  She wanted Erica up on her feet, fighting. Erica preferred to cling to the ropes; she said, ‘I wish Daniel was dead – or I was dead; it doesn’t matter which.’

  ‘Don’t be so melodramatic’

  This was no way to handle Erica. The more vehement Dorothy’s protests, the wilder Erica’s statements became.

  It was Harry who inadvertently succeeded in rousing Erica. He had deliberately stayed away from Knocke Hall because he did not wish to intrude at an awkward time; caution played as large a part as delicacy of feeling in this withdrawal. Events had moved too rapidly lately and he had felt himself in danger of being drawn inexorably into the Kerrs’ affairs. He did not like the inevitable, one should always have a choice. It happened, however, that he needed an up-to-date list of the members of the conservation society and he called to obtain this one morning on his way from visiting a client. Erica was alone in the house. This was something for which she longed whenever people were about; but as soon as they had gone out, she felt frightened and deserted. She had been thinking about putting her head in the gas oven, and visualising the devastating effect this would have on her family when Harry knocked at the door. When she opened
the door and saw him standing there, pleasantly smiling in the winter sunlight, she knew this was something that was ‘meant’.

  ‘This is so kind of you,’ she said when they were seated in the drawing-room.

  She was pale, heavy-eyed and obviously in need of sympathy. As he was not quite sure at exactly what point sympathy should be applied, he asked, ‘How are things?’ This was much too comprehensive an inquiry. Erica needed someone to lead her item by item through her miseries; her tired mind could not cope with the amorphous mass of worry. She burst into tears.

  Harry was not without experience of weeping women. On more than one occasion women clients had discovered, looking into his gentle brown eyes, that the moment had come to unburden themselves of their troubles. He came and sat on the sofa, took Erica’s hand in one of his, and patted it with the other. He had found that more was seldom required and that thereafter the patient tended to cure herself When Erica had cried herself to a standstill, she whispered, ‘I feel much better now,’ and he gave her his handkerchief.

  ‘This must be a trying time for you,’ he hazarded.

  ‘I can’t cope with it.’ She looked at him, pitifully perplexed by an inadequacy so uncharacteristic of her that it was barely credible.

  ‘That’s hardly surprising. You’ve had rather a lot to cope with lately, haven’t you?’

  This simple statement did more to restore Erica than any number of bracing injunctions to pull herself together. She gave Harry the first smile she had ventured for a long time. He put an arm lightly round her shoulders and said, ‘Poor old lady!’

  ‘Oh Harry!’ She was tremendously grateful for these few words of affectionate sympathy; they solved nothing and yet she felt as though a load had been lifted from her.

  ‘What is the thing you find most difficult?’ he asked.