INDIFFERENT HEROES

by MARY HOCKING

  The man said, ‘Your visit to your daughter wasn’t entirely successful?’ His voice sounded different, not exactly sympathetic, but as though they had arrived on common ground.

  ‘Her husband is in North Africa. I’m afraid something is not right there . . .’

  ‘At home, I take it – not in North Africa, where everything seems to be proceeding so splendidly?’

  ‘Yes, at home.’

  ‘A man?’

  ‘I suspect so. She didn’t say anything, of course – but she didn’t need to.’

  ‘Ah! “The fig tree putteth forth her green figs and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell . . .”?’

  ‘Yes.’ She gave a long sigh. Yes, she thought: I am jealous of Louise! It takes a stranger to tell one these things. After a few moments’ silence, she said, ‘Her husband has been away since 1939 – she hasn’t seen him since Dunkirk, and then only briefly. It’s a long time, when you’re young.’

  ‘It’s a long time at any age, damn it!’

  Judith leant back in her corner and closed her eyes to examine her own inner darkness. I am jealous and angry, she repeated to herself. I am in my late forties, and I still have desires; but everyone assumes that is over for me. For the rest of my life, I shall be expected to sit in a corner, knitting for my grandchildren and being careful not to make a nuisance of myself – but always being on hand when they need me. She repeated to herself, I am jealous, jealous . . . She still felt angry, but not so afraid.

  There was the sound of movement dislodging stones. Judith looked out of the window. A dim blue light was swinging towards the coaches. The man had become authoritative. ‘Let me!’ He leant out of the window and shouted, ‘Ahoy!’

  An aggrieved voice answered, ‘What you doing in there?’

  ‘We could well ask you that!’

  ‘Didn’t you hear what they said about the last two coaches?’

  ‘Not one single word, I assure you.’

  ‘You’d better come along of me, then.’

  The man said to Judith, ‘We are indeed fortunate. This must be the last porter in England. Cherish him!’

  As they followed their guide down the track, they learnt that a passenger had reported that two people had remained in the compartment. ‘ “I suppose that is all right?” ’ he said. Bloody twit! Whyn’t he tell you, instead of the ticket collector, and save all this.’

  ‘The Englishman’s unwillingness to interfere!’

  Judith sensed that her companion was relishing this. Her own feelings fell somewhat short of enjoyment. ‘Just where are we?’ she demanded.

  ‘Haywards Heath. Where do you think you are?’

  ‘But we left Haywards Heath. I remember that.’

  ‘You left it so we could shunt you in ’ere.’

  They had been walking past a high hoarding which separated the shunting area from the main station. When they rounded it, dim lights immediately became visible. Judith had a glimpse of her companion – a tall, broad man, probably in his early fifties. She noted, with compunction, that he walked with a limp.

  A train came creeping in almost as soon as they arrived on the platform. A desperate struggle ensued as soon as the doors opened. The porter led them to the guard’s van.

  ‘No room!’ The guard said.

  ‘You’ve got to take them, mate. They got shunted orf.’

  Wedged into the guard’s van were two calves, several soldiers with kit bags and rifles, three naval officers, and a handful of civilians, one of whom was a young woman whose children had been disposed at random among the service personnel. A corporal was patting an infant with phlegmatic professionalism, while a less experienced naval officer was attempting to change a nappy. The young woman, who had a pronounced Irish accent, was explaining to a disapproving elderly woman, ‘I bear them and me mother breeds them.’ As if by magic, she produced a spare infant and deposited it on the chest of Judith’s companion. Judith liked the fact that, although he did not make a fuss, he made no attempt to pretend he was pleased by the arrangement. Neither did the infant. The two seemed to have something in common – they had not learnt to dissemble.

  At Lewes, when they had extricated themselves from the train, Judith’s companion asked, civilly, but without being pressing, ‘How will you manage from here?’

  Judith could see Harry advancing towards her. ‘My brother-in-law is meeting me, thank you.’

  She said to Harry, ‘It was good of you to wait.’ But it transpired he had not waited, he had mistaken the time of her train.

  ‘You travelled with one of our local celebrities,’ he said, as Judith’s companion limped past them to another waiting car. ‘Austin Marriott.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Only by sight. He is not our sort of person – he’s a publisher.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Judith was tired and disposed to be fractious. ‘What sort of books does he publish?’

  ‘I have no idea. But they are a rather rackety lot, publishers.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you assume the best until you know the worst, Harry?’

  He made no reply, either because he was having so much trouble starting the car, or because he was annoyed. Judith wondered how much longer they were going to be able to tolerate each other.

  In the spring vacation, Claire came down to stay on the farm. The train in which she travelled did not shunt coaches into a siding, but it did have an unscheduled stop at a nameless country station. It seemed to Claire, as she looked out of the window, to epitomize all the country stations of her childhood. Beyond the deserted platform was a low bridge where one or two children stared unmoving at the train. In a field near by cows were contemplating a move which might – or might not – be made in the remote future. Far in the distance came the sound of sheep bells; a sound which seemed, to Claire, to be the echo of all the tranquil moments of her life. If only Alice were here! There were a lot of school children in the train. Claire, so lately escaped from school, had felt acutely their giggling silliness; but now, this ceased to irritate, and becam a part of the timeless peace of a country railway station on a warm spring afternoon. Why did I have to grow up? she thought, envying the schoolgirls the joys she imagined to be theirs.

  A guard had now got out of the train and was gesticulating wildly, presumably to the engine driver. Beyond the bridge, Claire saw a bird, coming in low and arrow straight. She remained at the window, transfixed, as something spurted from the bird. There was a deafening rattle of noise and dust fizzed up from the platform. Someone dragged her down on to the floor. Children were screaming. Hands grasped the seats and pulled them over their bodies. Afterwards, Claire was never sure which had been worse – being machine gunned, or the appalling discovery of what lay beneath the seats of Southern Railway trains.

  The plane did not return. After a time, the train went on. Some of the children laughed and others cried. Claire, who was extremely fastidious, was nearly hysterical with distress at the filthy condition in which she now found herself.

  She was late arriving at Lewes station, and no one was waiting for her. There was, however, an army utilicon which picked up a few soldiers; and the driver agreed to go a mile out of his way to leave Claire at the gate of the farm. The soldiers were concerned, but had nothing practical to offer in the way of comfort. One of them carried her case as far as the yard. ‘I’ll be all right here,’ she said, feeling that his presence would inhibit the exhibition which she intended to put on to shame her relatives for their desertion.

  In fact, she had no need of histrionics. When she burst into the kitchen and found Harry there, in the act of taking off his boots, all her tumultuous emotion gushed forth spontaneously.

  He looked at her aghast. In the dim light, thickly coated with grime and clotted with the putrefying remains of discarded food, she had all the appearance of one risen from the grave. ‘Oh, my darling, my darling!’ he cried. ‘My little Claire, what have they done to you?’ He took her in his arms, grappling to rid
her of the ‘they’ who had done this wicked thing. As they clung tighter and tighter to each other, it was difficult to tell which of them was the more transported.

  Meg, coming into the kitchen to investigate all this sound and fury, was immediately aware of feeling which went far beyond the requirements of comforting a distressed young woman.

  ‘What a disgusting noise you are making, Claire!’

  ‘My dear . . . Surely you can see . . . something dreadful . . .’ As he had no idea what in fact had happened, and was, moreover, ravaged by lust, Harry was hampered in going further.

  ‘I can see very well.’ Meg spoke in the tone of one to whom explanation would henceforth be superfluous.

  Claire became hysterical, and Meg slapped her face with an application which suggested she had been waiting just such an opportunity. ‘Now, go upstairs and get yourself clean!’

  There was much that each had been waiting to say to the other, but it would have taken a poet to render their emotions into suitably elevated language; and, being rather ordinary people, they had to make do with commonplace phrases.

  Claire screamed, ‘You vile woman!’

  Meg replied, ‘And you can leave this house tomorrow.’

  Harry tried to intervene, and Meg told him he was a whited sepulchre.

  By the time Judith returned, having waited on the wrong platform for Claire, the situation was beyond retrieving.

  ‘We are at the mercy of terrible forces!’ Harry said. This, it transpired, was not a simple acknowledgement of desire, but a reference to some more exalted state. His eyes strained from his white, hatchet face. Judith could see that pushed a little further, he might well take to mysticism in order to justify himself to himself. She did not think he was much concerned with anyone else.

  It was impossible to reason with Meg. Judith, whose sympathies were with her sister-in-law, was sorry about this. After years with Harry, she supposed that resorting to reason would be a negation of the whole of their life together.

  Claire, while proclaiming her intention of killing herself, had discovered that her overriding need was to get clean. She was standing naked in her bedroom, sponging herself while she wept. She still had the slenderness of a child. Judith noted with a pang how appealing she was and how vulnerable. Her body did not as yet seem ready to cope with the responses it aroused.

  Claire said, ‘I want to die. Mummy.’

  Judith unpacked her suitcase and put out fresh clothes. ‘We’ll go into Lewes when you have dressed and find somewhere to eat. Do you want me to wash your hair?’

  ‘I want to die.’

  But while Judith was washing her hair, she said weakly, ‘Anyway, how can we get into Lewes?’

  ‘I shall take Harry’s car, with or without his permission.’

  ‘The train was machine-gunned. Mummy.’

  ‘Yes, I know, darling. They told me at the station.’

  They had a meal in a hotel near Lewes. Afterwards, they sat in the car in a country lane overshadowed by the Downs, watching the last of the light fading.

  Claire said, ‘How was I to know? I shall never be able to be natural with a man again.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Claire.’

  ‘This has probably ruined my life.’

  ‘You are just like your father. You dramatize everything.’

  ‘What about Aunt Meg, then?’

  ‘You were partly to blame for the way she behaved. You have been making rather too much of Uncle Harry lately.’

  ‘But he’s my uncle.’

  ‘He is also a man. Men aren’t sensible about this kind of thing.’

  ‘I hate men!’

  Judith, a little worried about her daughter, said, trying to choose her words more carefully than was usual with her, ‘Claire, you are older now. You must try to be responsible for the way you behave with other people.’

  ‘Why aren’t I responsible?’

  ‘You tend to work on people’s feelings without knowing what your own feelings are. You used to do this with friends at school. You asked a lot of them, more than you were prepared to give yourself.’

  ‘I loved my friends.’

  ‘You wanted them to love you. Once they did, you sometimes stopped being interested.’

  Claire began to cry. ‘You love Alice and Louise more than me. You always did.’

  ‘That’s not true. You saw to that!’ Judith gave her a little hug. ‘I’m sorry, pet. You’ve had a dreadful day. I shouldn’t have said so much.’

  The next day they left the farm. Judith went to see the minister of the chapel which she attended near Lewes. His wife offered accommodation for the week of Claire’s stay. Judith hoped that during this time she would be able to find more permanent accommodation for herself. She was determined not to return to London, and it was certain she could not remain at the farm.

  Claire, enjoying the luxury of having her mother to herself, behaved entrancingly throughout the week. The minister’s wife said it was like having an angel round the house. Claire was now at Oxford, and the minister had been at Balliol. They had long talks about Anglo-Saxon history. Claire read them The Dream of the Rood. She read it in Anglo-Saxon, which only she and the minister understood. To have read it in English would have been easier for all concerned, but then anyone could have read it in English. The minister told Judith that Claire would go far.

  When they parted, Claire said to Judith, ‘I shall remember what you said to me.’ By this time, her mother’s words had been translated into acceptable form. Claire was adept at extracting from advice that small particle which she could assimilate without difficulty and with profit to herself. She now interpreted her mother’s words as a warning that other people might try to manipulate her, not that she was herself the manipulator. Claire had long ago cast herself in the role of the victim of others’ treachery; and it would have taken a radical revision of her nature to alter this view of herself.

  She was to spend a few days at the YWCA near Marlow with Heather. She was the first to arrive and, having deposited her suitcase at the hostel, she went for a walk along the towpath. It was a beautiful spring day. As she walked, she looked forward to telling Heather of all that had befallen her. In a field on the far side of the river there was a group of Free French soldiers. They called to her and she waved in reply. One of them began to sing a catchy French tune in the manner of Maurice Chevalier. She tossed her head, so that her curly red hair floated around her face; her lips parted slightly; she walked as in a dream, noting how utterly, utterly lost she was in the wonder of this glorious day. The Frenchmen also noted this. Further on, there were GIs picnicking with some very silly girls. She did not want to be disturbed by people. So she turned and walked back again. The Frenchmen cheered and waved. What a beautiful race they were! She must improve her French.

  In the distance, she saw Heather coming towards her. Her heart lifted at the sight of her beloved friend; she skipped and waved, so that the whole of her small form was animated by excitement. Heather was an ambulance driver. Uniform suited her long, raw-boned frame; but she was now wearing a summer frock, which had all the femininity of a sack draped round a lamp-post. Claire allowed the golden goodness of her love to pour like a benediction over poor, ugly Heather. Heather, delighted, ran to her, scooped her up and swung her round and round. The Frenchmen wailed outrage.

  Claire, unprepared for Heather’s joy to leap beyond her own, wavered. She was aware of the French soldiers indulging in mimes unworthy of such a beautiful race. She felt embarrassed and stood back from her friend, breathless, pushing her hair from her face. A slight flush made Heather’s sunburn even redder. She said, with a cheerfulness that was not without effort, ‘My, but it’s good to see you again!’

  Claire said brightly, ‘Aren’t we lucky it’s such a lovely day?’

  Heather took her arm. ‘Let’s get out of range of the Frogs, shall we?’

  They walked the way Claire had already been, passing the GIs and their girls, now a distastefu
l tangle of arms and legs. Further on, they came to an unfrequented meadow where they could lie and talk, still having a view of the river. The sun was hot for the time of year. It had brought out the freckles on Claire’s face and arms. Heather teased her, and said it wouldn’t be possible to get a pin between them. Then she stretched out, and sighed, ‘Oh, I have been looking forward to this!’

  Claire stretched out beside her, calmer now. ‘Yes,’ she thought, ‘I have been looking forward to it, too.’ As she listened to the droning of insects in the long grass, a feeling of sheer goodness quieted her spirit, and made her very nearly forgetful of herself. ‘I am happy,’ she thought, which was strange because she was always telling herself she was happy (or desolate), so why should she feel so surprised by this happiness? Somewhere, deep inside her, there was a cool delight, quite unlike her usual nervy rapturousness. This delight made her think of the first concealed sparkle of water in a cleft of rock; water that would run down into a hidden stream; and then become the river, running broad and free between green banks.

  ‘I’d like to swim,’ she said.

  Heather said, ‘Why don’t we?’

  ‘I haven’t got a costume. Besides, no one else is.’

  ‘My old Claire!’ Heather mocked. ‘Do you suppose there is a notice up somewhere telling us it is forbidden?’ She took hold of the hem of her dress, pretending to be about to raise it. ‘I will if you will!’

  ‘Heather, don’t!’

  Heather lay back, laughing her gusty laugh. ‘All right. I didn’t think you would.’

  ‘Would you have done?’

  ‘Probably not. It would be icy cold.’

  They lay in silence, half-dreaming in the warmth of the sun. Then Heather said, ‘Well, come on! Tell me about yourself. Are there any young men at Oxford?’

  ‘Just a few.’

  ‘The halt and maimed?’

  ‘There’s one who is quite passable. He’s got bad eyesight.’

  ‘I see. So that’s all, is it? One passable bloke with bad eyesight?’