LOOK, STRANGER

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘And your grandparents?’

  ‘I didn’t have any.’

  ‘We all have grandparents.’

  Milo shrugged. ‘I’m a one-off job.’

  ‘That’s silly,’ Miss Draisey said severely.

  But he did not think it was nearly as silly as having a father and grandparents; the idea of generation was to him as unlikely as immaculate conception.

  ‘You must have known at least one of your grandparents.’

  His mother had been brought up by a maiden aunt, only to be remembered as far as Milo was concerned for one overheard conversation.

  ‘My grandmother,’ he said, ‘died giving birth to my mother in Shepherds Bush market.’

  He bad always thought this hilarious and was surprised that it should shock Miss Draisey so much.

  She said, in a strangled voice, ‘Shepherds Bush market!’

  ‘The police caught her trading clothing coupons and it brought the baby on. It was in wartime, you see.’

  He thought the story got funnier as it went along, but Miss Draisey just kept repeating, ‘Shepherds Bush market!’ Milo supposed that to a snob like Miss Draisey it was inconceivable that anyone could be so undiscerning as to give birth, let alone die, in such a squalid place as Shepherds Bush market.

  ‘Had her parents turned her out?’ Miss Draisey asked. ‘Was she destitute?’

  He did not know anything except that she had died giving birth in Shepherds Bush market. That was enough, surely?

  Miss Draisey had come with the confused idea of giving Milo his birthright and thereby expiating her own sin. It was an idea gleaned from the romantic fiction which had filled her head as a young girl and which subsequent intellectual infilling had failed to dislodge. Shepherds Bush market had not featured in the story she had planned to tell Milo. ‘I have, in a manner of speaking, been holding something in trust for you,’ she had meant to say, rather grandly. Now, she thought, looking at him, ‘He would think that funny; he can barely keep from laughing at me as it is.’ She got to her feet. It was important that she should go away at once and set about the task of building up the great ramparts of busyness which had to some extent protected her since the day when she sent Delphina packing without even bothering to find out how the girl would be received at home.

  ‘I don’t think there is anything I can tell you,’ she said to Milo.

  He was not surprised, being quite sure that he knew more about the facts of life than did Miss Draisey.

  By the time Miss Draisey got home she had realized that Shepherds Bush market, while it could not be incorporated in the story she had planned to tell Milo, must now be incorporated in her own life. ‘I must change,’ she thought and wondered if she should stop colouring her hair. It would look like chewed string and turn her into a superannuated Meg Jacobs; she didn’t think she could bear that. She seriously considered doing without whisky; but that was too drastic. Since Meg Jacobs had come into her mind, however, it might be an idea to see what went on in that place for unmarried mothers.

  She lit a cigarette and wandered round the room, pausing to look at one or two of the photographs. She saw Delphina in the back row of the school photograph, but the picture which held her attention the longest was of a young girl dressed severely in a high-necked blouse which had been out-dated at the time when the photograph was taken early in the ’twenties. The girl had the unlined face to which nothing has yet happened, but the eager eyes looked as if they wanted to break out of the restricting frame. Miss Draisey knew even less about the young Genevieve than about Delphina and there was nothing she could do for her now.

  Henry was whining in the kitchen. She went out and gave him his supper. Then it occurred to her that she ought to find out whether Tudor had got home safely. There was no answer when she telephoned and her stock of caring was exhausted by now, so she told herself that he was probably resting.

  Tudor, in fact, was in the kitchen when the telephone rang. He had returned to Carrick Farm over an hour ago only to find that Zoe was still out. He was tired, but too angry to rest. He went to his study, intending to compose an article for the local paper that would be so savage the editor might refuse to print it, in which case, he would get it printed privately as a pamphlet. Probably he would be sued for libel. He saw himself on trial, pilloried by the press, committed to prison. . . . The images came to mind easily, but the words of the savage attack did not. It was a poor, lamed thing now, this anger of his. In the end, he gave up the attempt to write an article and began to jot down a series of questions. He worked at this for an hour, refining and simplifying, and when he was satisfied he typed a number of copies which he would distribute to those of his clients who could be relied on to make good use of them without resorting to violence. He had just finished doing this when the telephone rang.

  He nerved himself not to answer. Things had gone much too far between himself and Nancy while he was in hospital, but the hospital had at least afforded him a refuge. It would be dangerous to take up with Nancy again now that they were both free-ranging. He did not reach this decision without a certain regret. There had been one or two occasions while he was in hospital when he had had the sense of being on the edge of happiness.

  When the telephone had stopped, he felt very bad and he thought that perhaps he had made a mistake. He went into the hall and picked up the receiver. After a moment during which he stood staring at the teasels in the basket, he dialled a number. The bell rang four times, then the receiver was lifted. ‘Audrey?’ he said.

  ‘Tudor! I heard you were in hospital, but I couldn’t come to see you, it’s been such a hectic term.’ School was her community, she did not have time for anything serious outside it. He was safe with her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The congregation filed out and Vereker stood in the porch in spite of the icy wind blowing from the darkness. Nancy stood beside him. They shook hands and made enquiries about sick relatives. Several of the women had woolly hats pulled down over their ears and the youngsters were muffled in scarves. Outside, car windows which had unfrozen briefly during the afternoon were glazed over again. ‘At this rate we shall have snow at Christmas,’ Donald Jarman said.

  ‘Christmas in two weeks!’ Vereker said as he and Nancy walked down the path towards the vicarage. ‘And after that, we shall be back in Coopers Town in under ten weeks.’

  She did not answer and he was too jolted by the thought to take note of her silence. When they came to Helmsley Island, she had seemed to be the thread on which his life hung, but now it was Zoe who occupied his thoughts. He put his hand in his pocket and fumbled with frozen fingers for the front door key. Nancy jigged up and down beside him. When he failed to get the key in the lock at the second attempt, she took it from him. ‘Here, let me do it. This wind is going right through me.’ She got the door open at once and switched on the hall light.

  ‘It was good of you to come on a night like this,’ he said.

  ‘You have to go, don’t you?’ She slipped off her coat and hung it over the banisters. He noticed how thin she had become. ‘I’ll put the soup on,’ she said and went into the kitchen.

  During the summer she had stayed away from church to show that she no longer needed the prop of religion. Lately, however, the duty to support her father had seemed more important and she had made a point of attending one of the Sunday services. She lit the gas ring and put the saucepan over the asbestos mat so that the soup would heat through slowly. She did not know what she would have done during the last weeks without her father to look after.

  When she first realized that Tudor was avoiding her, she put it down to the fact that he was having difficulty in reorientating himself to the demands of everyday life. After the second week had elapsed, she told herself that he was having quite understandable doubts about their relationship. Everyone has these ups and downs, she said, and this carried her through the next two weeks. Then she forced him to see her.

  ‘I love you,’ he told her, ‘
but I’m not the marrying kind. I did warn you.’ He looked regretful, yet, even while she pleaded with him, she saw that thin face as she had once seen it before, sensitive, fine-drawn, yes, but the face of a man who will never give of himself, and ultimately cruel.

  ‘I don’t mind about marriage,’ she insisted. ‘I don’t mind if you come and go. . . .’

  ‘But I have someone else who doesn’t mind if I come and go and she doesn’t make scenes.’

  Everyone has to love and lose, she told herself after that; I am travelling in a great company down a well-worn path. But it wasn’t true. No one ever suffers as you have suffered or loves as you have loved; and there is only one person who can deal with your experience and that is you. She had gone into the experience as if it was an initiation rite which would make her one of her generation; and then, quite suddenly, she was swept far out of her depth and she was drowning.

  Now here was her father come to talk to her while she prepared the supper. ‘You’ve lost weight, haven’t you, honey?’ he asked, mildly concerned.

  ‘It’s the cold,’ she said.

  He talked. She saw his lips move and his hands making gestures and it had no relation to her; it was all as incomprehensible as the shadow plays he had performed behind a sheet to amuse her when she was a child.

  ‘There’s nothing worrying you?’ he asked as they sat down at the table.

  ‘What would I worry about?’ At first, when it began to be bad, she had thought she would like to die; then, as it became really bad and she was aware that something was dying, she was terrified and wanted nothing more than life. She clung to the longing for life like the survivor of a wreck clutching at a raft. She passed bread to her father. He helped himself to cheese and then said:

  ‘I know you want to be independent, Nan, but that doesn’t mean you can’t ever confide in me again, does it?’ He said it quite lightly so that she didn’t have to take him up on it there and then. ‘Why, I might even want to confide in you one of these days.’

  ‘What would you ever have to confide?’ she asked inattentively.

  ‘You make it sound as if I’m as old as Methuselah.’

  She said, ‘Well, aren’t you?’ reaching across and absently pressing his hand. Her fingers were ice-cold.

  ‘Now, look,’ he said, ‘I am going to wash the dishes and make us coffee while you sit by the fire in the sitting-room.’

  When they finished eating she went away obediently.

  Vereker did the washing-up and thought about the three months which were left to him. He thought about Zoe and how much he wanted her, and of all the little signs she had given which must surely mean that she wanted him. He wondered whether she would also want a child, whether he wanted a child. Whether he had the right to put his own happiness before Nan’s. He wondered how he would break the news to Nan and ended, as he had every time he had thought about it during the past few weeks, by ridiculing himself for even imagining that Zoe would accept either him or Coopers Town.

  Undoubtedly, she would find life in Coopers Town dull. Yet, if he was honest, he knew that this was not the reason why he hesitated, nor was he really concerned with Nan’s happiness: it was his own reluctance to put his affections once more at risk which held him back.

  ‘Now, look at it from another angle,’ he said aloud as he poured coffee into the jug. ‘Imagine yourself going back to Coopers Town without Zoe, imagine yourself there now, alone in the kitchen, washing the dishes, going up to that empty bedroom. . . .’

  While his mind was occupied with this bleak prospect, the telephone rang. The bell rang once or twice and then Nan picked up the receiver; she was commendably quick to answer telephone calls, he had noticed.

  She came in carrying his windcheater and said, ‘Mrs. Jarman says old Miss Harmer is going, they don’t think she’ll last the night.’

  He would not let her drive him to the Jarman house where old Miss Harmer had been taken to do her dying. When he had gone she walked about the house aimlessly, fighting down the temptation to telephone Carrick Farm so that she could hear Tudor’s voice again. She had resisted the temptation for several weeks, but tonight it was too strong. She went into the hall. There was a crumpled questionnaire on the telephone table and she picked it up eagerly. Earlier in the week the police had called on her father to warn him that there was likely to be trouble at the priory meetings. They had said that there was evidence that the crowd was being infiltrated by what they described as undesirable elements. It seemed there was a group of people of mixed nationalities whose mission it was to disrupt the life of the country; they toured from one trouble spot to another. Up to now the island had escaped their attentions. ‘At the moment,’ one of the policemen had said, ‘they are just heckling and handing round these questionnaires, but they won’t let it rest at that.’ He had handed a copy of the questionnaire to her father, saying, ‘Drawn up by Mr. Lindsay, who should have known better.’

  Surely she should warn Tudor of what the police had said? He would want to know about these undesirable elements. She picked up the receiver and dialled his number. Zoe answered.

  ‘Nancy, how nice to hear you! I was afraid the call might be for Tudor – he’s away tonight.’

  Zoe knew. Nancy had suspected it for sometime but tonight there was no doubting it. ‘I feel so miserable.’ Nancy wept and made grotesque contortions of her features which she could see in the hall mirror; it looked as if someone had stepped on the back of her head and squashed her face breadthways.

  ‘I know what it’s like, Nancy,’ Zoe was saying. ‘I know how bad it is, but one does get over it.’

  Nancy snatched enough breath to say, ‘If you’ve got over it, you don’t know.’ Words died away in a long whinny of anguish.

  Zoe said, ‘You cry, Nancy, We all need to cry sometimes. You go on crying.’

  After about ten minutes of this Nancy whispered that she felt better now and refused Zoe’s offer to come to see her. ‘Pa would wonder why.’

  ‘Don’t you want him to know, Nancy? Should you shut him out of this?’

  Nancy thanked Zoe for being so understanding and put down the receiver. She could not tell her father about it because that would mean going back to the beginning which was something she could not bear to do. She went to have a bath in case he returned sooner than she had expected and saw her face all blubbery; and also because she was afraid that if it got any colder the water in the pipes would freeze so this might be the last bath until the thaw.

  Vereker spent the night at Miss Harmer’s bedside and various members of the Jarman family took turns in watching with him.

  ‘She did housework for us for years,’ Gwynneth said. ‘She used to say we were her family and we always promised her she wouldn’t die alone with no one to care for her.’

  Barbara made tea and brought a cup to Vereker in the early hours of the morning. She looked at the old woman with an expression of horror on her face. Later, when it was all over, Vereker took the opportunity to speak to Barbara when they were left alone in the sitting-room.

  ‘It was wonderfully good of your mother and father to bring her here instead of letting her go to hospital.’

  ‘She always had to rely on other people’s goodness. She never had any love she could take for granted.’

  ‘Yet she always seemed happy.’

  ‘Happy!’ Barbara’s voice spiralled; she was not nearly so composed a young person as he had at first imagined. ‘Nothing happened to her. She might as well not have lived for all that happened to her!’

  As he looked at her white, strained face, Vereker was aware that her immediate problem was a sexual one; at the same time, to his surprise, he found that she reminded him of Nan. He faltered and lost his grip on the situation. He was glad when Gwynneth returned. She glanced at her daughter and said with the brusque tactlessness which seemed to characterize their relationship, ‘I knew this would be too much for you.’

  ‘You know what she said to me yesterday? She said,
“I never expected to go like this”, as though she was the Queen! She had so damn little, everything exceeded her expectations.’

  Gwynneth made a rueful face at Vereker. ‘Don’t make a great drama of it, poppety. She was eighty-three. Your father is honouring us by making coffee. So perk up.’

  Barbara said, ‘Perk up!’ and went across to the window. The front door slammed as Jeremy went off on his paper round. Donald Jarman came in carrying a tray and Vereker and Gwynneth talked to him while they drank their coffee. Barbara sat by the window. Her mother was talking about Miss Harmer. The body that Miss Harmer had preserved un-tampered with even to the very end was lying up there on the spare room bed, and her mother was saying how good Miss Harmer had been because she had never found the opportunity to be anything else.

  This will happen to me, Barbara thought, but I shan’t be grateful for small mercies! For a time, Milo had been unable to decide whether refraining from having sex with Barbara would be a puritan denial of God’s gifts, or a first lesson in self-mastery. Self¬mastery was currently more attractive. This was not how he had put it to Barbara, but it was how she understood it. While he was toughening his spiritual muscle, she must bear the strain for both of them. ‘It has to be Milo,’ she thought. ‘There will never be anyone else for me. If I don’t have him, I’ll become sour and withered, like a fruit the frost has got at.’

  Her mother said, ‘Drink your coffee, Ba. I think that was Doctor Clements’ car.’

  Barbara flung cup and saucer down on the floor and gave way to hysteria. Fortunately, the doctor arrived at this point and dealt with her briskly and efficiently.

  ‘This has nothing to do with Miss Harmer,’ Donald Jarman said to Vereker as Barbara was led away by her mother. ‘But I suppose you think that God will take of the hysterics as well as the heresies.’

  Vereker was more disturbed by Barbara’s display than he had been by the warnings of the police. ‘I’ll have a word with Milo,’ he promised Jarman. He knew that he was being panicked because of that moment when Barbara, in her agitation, had reminded him of Nan. Absurd, of course: Nan had never been impressed by Milo. Nevertheless, even though two agitated youngsters did not represent mass hysteria, perhaps it was time to cool things down a bit. He would see Milo as soon as the boy returned from school.