There was a particularly violent thunderstorm on the first night of Hedda Gabler. Backstage, in the old part of the building, buckets and bowls were put out and the stage manager warned the cast, ‘Just watch where you are walking when you get your call.’ His words did not go unheeded. On a similar occasion three years ago, Leontes had fallen over a bucket and broken his leg, thus bringing the run of A Winter’s Tale to a premature end. It had been almost impossible to explain to the Director of the theatre that there were occasions when the show could not go on.
In the newer part of the building which comprised the foyer, cloakroom and bar, windows had steamed over and there was an unpleasant smell, as if a lot of old, wet dogs had been let loose.
Hester was in charge of front-of-house for this performance, a duty she tended to take over-seriously.
‘How you find the time, Hester, is a mystery to me.’
‘You’re hardly the one to talk about time,’ Hester replied. Her friend, Annie Cleaver, had recently been entertained at Her Majesty’s expense for a week.
‘Oh well, I know you need your little recreation.’
Hester, stung by the implication that her pleasures were superficial, the more so since there was some truth in the accusation, retorted, ‘You were known to enjoy yourself before you became so heavy with purpose.’
‘If you knew what I have been through – and, of course, my experiences are nothing in comparison . . .’ But here Annie was swept into the foyer before she could give details of her harrowing. ‘If you can tear yourself away from your scribbling, you must come to supper one day next week,’ she called over her shoulder before her voice was drowned by a roll of thunder.
Age! Hester thought, glaring around her; why do our lighter notes no longer sound? She walked towards the lobby, aware that she herself was not approaching her task with notable lightness of heart.
The main entrance to the building opened into the small lobby; to the left a few steps led down to the foyer and to the right stairs tunnelled up to the gallery. Anyone standing in the lobby commanded a good view of the people in the foyer. From this vantage post Hester was aware of a regrettable affinity with Captain Bligh on the look-out for mutineers on the lower deck. Obviously she was the kind of person who should not be entrusted with too much authority. Behind her the telephone rang. She approached it in nervous anticipation. The one question which hung heavy over anyone doing front-of-house was the identity of the stage manager.
‘Who is that?’ The voice at the other end of the line betrayed equal apprehension.
‘Hester Pascoe.’
‘Ah, my favourite front-of-house lady.’
‘Flattery will get you a long way, George,’ Hester said, unconvinced but pleased nonetheless. ‘Are there any particular problems?’
‘Apart from the fact that we shall soon be wading knee-deep back here, you mean? Well, yes. The producer wants a prompt start and a quick interval – so wheel them in pronto, there’s a love, otherwise I’ll have him crying all over me.’
‘We’re likely to have latecomers on a night like this. What about them?’
‘Hold them back and give me a ring. I’d like a minute for things to settle. You’re going to ring the bell at five to, aren’t you?’
Hester enjoyed ringing the bell and was quite sorry it had to be tolled only the once. The foyer cleared quickly and there were no strays in the toilets. As she approached the stairs up to the bar she encountered the producer who said, ‘All clear up there.’
Hester phoned the stage manager, noting with pride that the time was a minute to eight. She turned away from the phone to find herself confronted by a large man with a broken nose and an angry expression. Obviously he had anticipated making a quick get-away because he had no raincoat. He stood before her, steam rising menacingly from his large frame. Hester recognized that bane of the front-of-house person, the policeman going off-duty whose car is trapped in the car park.
‘The curtain has only just gone up,’ she said, sorry to note an ingratiating intonation in her delivery.
He regarded her with dislike, his wrath tempered by the knowledge that he had no authority to use the theatre’s car park during performances.
‘You can’t expect me to wait until the interval.’
They both knew that this was exactly what the theatre management did expect, but Hester felt there were people better equipped than herself to remind him of the fact. She went up to the bar. The bar staff showed little inclination to quit their entrenched position and immediately busied themselves polishing glasses. Fortunately by the time she returned to the foyer one of the refreshment ladies had admitted responsibility.
Another problem was waiting in the presence of Charles Venables.
‘You are very late,’ she told him severely.
‘Yes.’ He shifted from one wet foot to the other, looking like a schoolboy who has been caught out of bounds – if there were any bounds nowadays for schoolboys.
Hester went to the phone and he said, ‘Er, perhaps you had better wait a moment’ and made an awkward movement of one hand in the general direction of the ladies’ toilets. Hester raised an eyebrow. Charles turned away, muttering about programmes, his ears red. The door to the toilets opened and Shirley Treglowan emerged, remarkably refreshed by the rain, looking flushed, triumphant and guilty – a young person capable of almost Mozartian diversity, Hester thought as she obtained the resigned approval of the stage manager to let them into the auditorium. ‘The bloody door knob has come off already, so what does another diversion matter?’
As she opened the inner doors to the auditorium, Hester was aware of that scuffling and throat-clearing which indicate that an audience has not settled down. Rain drummed on the corrugated iron roof. Then Valentine’s voice rang out with a confident expectation of attention. Notice was given that from now on the audience would be expected to bend their minds to what was happening on stage. Not a head turned as Charles and Shirley slunk like thieves in the night towards their places.
Hester closed the doors softly. This was the time when she usually read a book. This evening she sat quietly, reflecting on the humbling discovery that Valentine appeared better able to handle authority than Hester Pascoe.
Charles looked forward to talking to Shirley during the interval about the producer’s interpretation, which he felt was at variance with Valentine’s playing of Hedda. It was apparent that Valentine had taken a strong dislike to Hedda. This was a ruthless portrayal of a woman with too little to occupy her time and no constructive idea as to how her situation might be remedied. Hers was the desperation of the woman who knows that she is being destroyed but cannot summon either the will or the courage to break out of the system which holds her. Eventually, when she has closed every door on herself, there will be only one course left to her.
From the performance of the rest of the cast, Charles guessed that the producer looked upon Hedda as the true sister of Nora and all other gallant women who refuse to be confined in a doll’s house. The pistol shot was a declaration of independence. Valentine had told Charles she thought that by this stage neither Hedda nor her creator had the faintest idea what was to become of her. ‘I don’t believe in that pistol shot any more than Desdemona’s handkerchief.’
Charles had overlooked the fact that Shirley often worked backstage at the theatre. As they made their way into the foyer during the interval he was surprised to find that she had definite ideas of her own about production if not interpretation.
‘I can’t think what he was doing allowing Tesman to mask Hedda like that,’ she said.
‘Like what?’ Charles asked, mystified.
‘And then, setting the chairs in a straight line so that poor old Brack had either to say all his lines out front as though Hedda wasn’t there, or let us see the back of his head most of the time.’
‘Would you like coffee?’ Charles asked austerely.
‘Please.’
When he returned she was talking to a haggard blonde who had played Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire and had the distracted air of having become detached from reality ever since.
‘Oh yes,’ the blonde said wearily, ‘they are all quite mad about her. Definitely the flavour of the month.’ She turned to the Director of the theatre who was standing alone staring glassily at a damp patch over the kitchen door. ‘I must say Tesman rose to the occasion when the door knob came off – just as if knobs came off doors all the time in his house.’
An alarming crimson tide suffused the Director’s face. ‘Well, they don’t come off doors all the time in this theatre.’
‘He’ll have someone’s head on a charger before the night is out,’ Shirley told Charles.
‘Really?’
She sipped her coffee, looking around for more people with whom to gossip and failing to find a likely candidate returned her attention to Charles. ‘What did you think of that book I lent you?’
‘It was amusing enough. I noted from the jacket that someone had suggested it might be a masterpiece. Personally, I found it rather like a packet of Rice Krispies – a lot of snap and crackle but little in the way of sustenance.’
‘That’s just what I felt only I could never have put it like that.’ She gazed at him admiringly.
He began to talk to her about the producer’s interpretation of the play and she listened with avid attention while her coffee grew cold.
The box office manager, who had left the theatre ten minutes ago, returned to tell Hester that the car park was awash. ‘Better warn them when they leave that they’ll have to wade to their cars.’
‘Oh goodness!’ Hester had worn her only respectable pair of shoes in honour of this occasion.
‘It’s not so bad if you go out of the dressing-room exit; but we can’t have the audience tramping around back-stage.’
‘No, of course not,’ she said cheerfully. ‘They their worldly task hast done so home must go and take their chance.’
She clanged the bell vigorously and watched her charges in the foyer troop back to the theatre. Then she checked that both toilets were empty before going up to the bar. Only three people remained there. She stood at the head of the stairs looking at them. A lurid flash of lightning heralded her arrival. The effect was remarkable. She could see herself in their eyes, hunched in her puce velvet jacket, like one of those small, malevolent creatures that decorate the fringes of medieval pictures of the gateway to the underworld. The woman cringed and lowered her eyes; the pop-eyed old man drained his drink. They went past her with averted eyes. ‘I hope you enjoy the rest of the show,’ she said, feeling they deserved a reward for good behaviour. Neither had the spirit to respond. One man remained. He looked at her brazenly and she bared her teeth at him in a basilisk smile. He poured a good half glass of whisky down his throat and headed for the stairs. She stood to one side so that she could follow close on his heels. He went at a good pace across the foyer and then darted into the Gents. Hester stood outside, snapping with frustration. He was there so long she began to think he was afraid to come out.
‘Is there anyone else there?’ she asked when he eventually emerged.
He shook his head and looked around furtively as if seeking another avenue of escape, then resigned himself to the second half of Hedda. She closed the pen doors behind him. One minute behind time, damn and blast him! Undoubtedly in a sheep dog trial she would be disqualified for taking a nip here and there.
‘Sorry,’ she said to the stage manager, ‘One stray sheep.’
Her shepherding duties over, Hester went to the broom cupboard and then began to sweep the foyer floor. When her cleaning duties were finished, she counted the refreshment money. She was on her third recount when the auditorium door opened and closed behind Norah Kendall.
‘Are you all right?’ Hester asked, seeing that she looked very pale.
‘I keep falling asleep and it is maddening Hesketh.’
‘One way and another, I would hardly have thought it was a time to sleep. Shall I get you a coffee, or I expect that the bar could provide something more stimulating.’
‘No, I’ll just sit here with you if I’m not in the way. I’ve got a bit of a headache, I expect it’s the storm.’
‘I hope it’s going to blow over. Veronica is staying with me and we planned to do a long walk tomorrow.’
‘You’ll be able to go for a swim instead.’
Norah wore the emerald green sheath which Hester remembered as her going-away dress. It hung more loosely on her now; she had lost weight since her wedding. In spite of this, and her evident tiredness, she seemed in good heart.
‘The vengeful creature was burning a manuscript when I took my leave. Does that chill your blood?’
‘I always keep a second copy to meet just such an emergency. And when I go away I take it with me in case the house catches fire.’
‘Do you really expect the house to catch fire?’
‘The part of me that decides how much insurance to pay doesn’t.’
‘What a lot of different people you are, my old Hester.’
‘I encounter more than one Norah Kendall.’
Norah flushed and there was an awkward silence. Hester realized that now, if ever, she should say something and knew that there was nothing to say. She put the refreshment money in the paper bag provided and scribbled a note for the treasurer to the effect that her maths was not up to standard – a fact of which he was already aware.
‘We had a letter from Samantha this morning,’ Norah said. ‘She is going to Spain to stay with a friend who has a villa there.’
‘I would have thought that was a bit like slumming for Samantha.’
‘I don’t think she’s fussy so long as the sun shines.’
‘The last time we talked about Samantha your voice reached high C every time her name was mentioned, now you sound most equable.’
‘I seem to have discovered an unexpected strain of sweetness in myself. Don’t laugh at me.’
‘I am far from laughing at you.’
‘Hester, I would like . . .’ Whatever it was that she would have liked to say to Hester was interrupted by the refreshment ladies who had finished in the kitchen. ‘Don’t forget to put the milk order out, will you?’ one of them said to Hester as she bustled past.
‘That’s Millie Perkins, isn’t it?’ Norah said. ‘Bossy little piece.’
‘I’d better go and do it now. It is the one thing I tend to forget.’
The refreshment ladies opened the side door and rain surged in. Hester had to lean against it to close it after them. When she returned to the foyer Norah said, ‘Are you joining us on the pilgrimage to Walsingham?’
‘Yes, I thought the opportunity of observing the behaviour of pilgrims at first hand shouldn’t be passed over.’
‘That’s not quite the right spirit. Does it mean you are going to put us in a book?’
‘A short story is all you’ll get from me.’
‘I am told we may have to double up. Will you share a room with me?’
‘If it has to be anyone, I’d as soon it was you.’
‘Thank you for that grudging acceptance, my lover.’
‘Unless, of course, you can persuade Hesketh to join you.’
‘Hesketh? On a pilgrimage! That would be material for a volume of short stories.’
‘Yes.’ Hester wrinkled her nose, wondering if she could do it anyway without the material involvement of Hesketh. It certainly opened up a lot of interesting possibilities – a guide to the Retreat Houses of England written by a character very much resembling Hesketh would be really quite wicked.
‘The worst part of it all,’ Norah was saying, ‘will be the long coach journey with young Alan Judge being the life and soul of the party.’
‘And frequent stops for people who are travel-sick. There must be somewhere nearer than Walsingham where one can be a pilgrim.’
‘It has to be Walsingham because Laura once had an “experience” there. Why Laura should expect to have two revelations when St Paul only had one, I can’t imagine.’ She sighed and said without undue remorse, ‘How I do lack charity to that woman.’
‘And what about Shirley Treglowan?’ Hester asked. ‘Is she coming?’
Norah was surprised. ‘I shouldn’t imagine so for one moment.’
‘I was just thinking that she might bring Charles. Charles on a pilgrimage would be even better value than Hesketh.’
‘Charles Venables, do you mean? Why ever would Shirley bring him?’
‘They are here together this evening, she hanging on his every word.’
‘I have always thought of Charles Venables as neuter.’
‘So have I. But when I looked at him this evening I began to wonder. He had those rather protruding eyes which I associate with sexually aroused males.’
‘Thyroid, more like, in his case.’
‘Maybe, but I never cease to wonder at the capacity of ordinary people to surprise.’
Norah smiled to herself.
Smile if you will, Hester thought, but don’t imagine you have any secrets from me. I know just where you are at this stage of the affair – suspended somewhere out of time in a place where you fondly imagine you cannot be hurt or yourself hurt any other person. And a hard coming to earth you’ll have of it, my dear.
Their silence lasted until the gun shot rang out distantly. ‘Well, that’s that,’ Hester said. When she opened the outer auditorium doors the applause had started; after a few moments there was a great crescendo in which thunder joined whole heartedly. Someone in the gallery shouted ‘Bravo!’ A triumph for Valentine.
The storm continued during the night. Michael, who had come to meet Valentine, found the fire brigade pumping out water from the car park. When it was possible to reach his car, the engine would not start. Hesketh responded to the situation with an unexpected display of histrionic virtuosity, insisting on carrying Norah to his two-seater while declaiming ‘Lord Ullin’s Daughter’.
‘The Bar’s gain is the theatre’s loss,’ Valentine said to him as she and Michael waded towards the street.
By way of an encore he called after them, ‘ “There’s a power of deep rivers with floods in them where you do have to be lepping the stones and you going to the south, so I’m thinking the two of them will be drowned together in a short while surely”.’
‘It seems to have been worse in other parts of the country,’ Michael said to Valentine at breakfast the next morning. ‘Serious flooding in Norfolk. A month too early.’ The pilgrimage had been arranged before he came to the parish and he would have welcomed an opportunity to cancel it. ‘At least it’s not like a retreat. As far as I can gather I don’t have to do much except be there.’
‘And be jolly. I am assured it is very jolly. We all go to the pub in the evening and the locals are so surprised that vicars can be jolly – although this has been going on for so many years one would think the locals would have ceased to be surprised by anything.’
‘You are coming, then?’
A place had been booked for the new vicar and his wife, but when Valentine heard of this she had made it quite clear that she had no intention of taking part. Now, she said, ‘Why not? I, too, have a soul. Don’t you want me to come?’
‘Of course I want you to come.’
How easily you have learnt to lie in this far country which you now inhabit, she thought.
‘I have to go to the Diocesan meeting,’ he said. ‘And this afternoon I thought I would call on Hester. She has Veronica staying with her.’
‘I thought they spent all their time out walking.’
He looked out of the window. The rain had stopped but the lawn had become a lake. ‘I don’t think even Aunt Hester would walk in this weather.’
The opportunity to challenge him had passed, as had many others. Valentine told herself that it was no use issuing challenges while he was out of her reach. This sense of leading a charmed existence would not last and she would be wise to wait until, one way or another, the spell was broken. The last thing she wished to do was to risk letting loose a lot of violent emotion in the house; were this to happen she feared that when all the barriers were down what would be laid bare would be her own emptiness.
Michael’s attachment to Norah Kendall had concentrated Valentine’s mind on herself. Her unwillingness to blame him for what had happened interested her, and as she reviewed her attitude she had come to realize that the disdain and fastidious contempt which had for so long distanced her from other people was in reality nothing more than self-dislike. In any confrontation with Michael she must be the loser unless she could find a person within herself with whom she could be reconciled.
She thought about this as she washed up the breakfast dishes and fed the cat. The image of womanhood which she most constantly derided was that of the good and loving woman, sustaining and supporting her husband, nourishing her children and sending them out in due season to make their own way in the world. She had mocked this image most of her adult life – ever since, in fact, the time when she discovered she would not be put to the test of motherhood. Perhaps she would not have made a good mother, but not being given the opportunity to surprise oneself was rather like not being allowed to sit an examination. One did not like to think of oneself as being such a waste of an examiner’s time. And it was no use behaving as though this was of little importance to her. The image of womanhood remained strong and undiminished by ridicule. There was a distinct possibility that she believed in it, and that being so, having been rejected as a mother, she could not afford to be ruled out as a candidate for good wife. Or, if good was setting one’s sights too high, then proper – a proper wife. If she did not make measurable progress towards that goal during this crisis in her life she would always despise herself. ‘Proper,’ she said, testing the word and finding it less daunting than good.
It was at the very moment when she repeated the word proper that she became aware of the smell. The torrential rain had ceased and most of the yard outside the kitchen had been dried by the wind. The few dark patches which remained looked something more than damp; had it been autumn she would have thought decaying vegetation had been blown into the yard. A closer inspection seemed advisable if not desirable. Valentine walked slowly into the yard, one hand over nose and mouth. The drain had overflowed but it was only too apparent that it was not the proper contents of the drain which confronted her.
Her first impulse was to retire to her bed with a bottle of eau-de- Cologne until Michael returned. Or she could phone Hester and leave a message for him. She had a vivid picture of how Hester would react; the situation might well form the basis of a short story. Valentine straightened her back and raised her head; then, aware that her posture owed more to Joan of Arc approaching the stake than a housewife dealing with an unpleasantness in the back yard, she consulted the yellow pages. In a few moments she was assured that help would be on its way very soon. In spite of the damage caused by the storm, it seemed that an overflow from the main sewer rated priority treatment.
She went into the kitchen and made sure that all the food had been put away. Within half an hour a taciturn man arrived and lifted the manhole cover in the yard. Valentine, watching from a distance, was aware that it would be years before she would be able to contemplate the contents of a stewpot with equanimity. He put down the rod and immediately, with a subterranean gluck-gluck, the whole evil boiling disappeared. Valentine paid him what seemed a very large sum of money for so little effort.
She had hoped he might be persuaded to clean up the mess but he merely said, ‘Little bit of Dettol will soon get rid of that.’
Whatever else Dettol might do, it would not sweep the yard clean. Michael would not be home until after tea. Valentine meditated on whether a proper wife would reserve this task for her husband. Then it occurred to her that whatever the proper might do, Mrs Pettifer would certainly be out in the yard with broom and Dettol.
She went up to her bedroom, found a stocking and pulled it over her head, carefully cutting slits for the eyes. Then she went into the yard armed with a bucket of water and a bottle of Dettol. As she swept, the yard broom held at a fastidious distance, she reflected on the never-failing ability of life to make a bawdy joke of lofty pretension.
After seven applications of water and Dettol, she was satisfied that there was no danger of typhoid. She was left with the problem of the yard broom. It was inconceivable that it could retain a place in her household; equally inconceivable that it could be taken anywhere in the car, which would undoubtedly be Michael’s solution if she left its disposal to him. She removed the stocking mask, ran a comb through her hair and left the vicarage carrying the broom. Proud and haughty, offering no explanation to anyone whom she met, Valentine made her way to the Council’s tip, holding the broom at a disdainful distance like a deranged Britannia descended from her throne.
Only when she had cast the broom into one of the skips did she relax, standing in the deserted yard, weeping at her weakness.
‘It’s so nice not to have to hurry,’ Veronica called down the stairs to Hester, who was waiting to put toast in the rack.
In Hester’s opinion much misery – breakdown of marriage, disaffection of children, loss of friendship, to say nothing of many minor irritations and discomforts – could be avoided if people would only refrain from breaking their fast together. Some might rise from their beds light of spirit and kind of heart, but these were the few. The majority, of whom Hester was one, come leadenfoot to the table, the night still like grit in the deep crevices and crannies of their personality.
She had offered Veronica breakfast in bed, or the opportunity to ‘have a lie in as it is raining and get your own breakfast when you feel like it’. What had not been on offer was breakfast together combined with no need to hurry.
‘I grow more intolerant with the years, Tabitha,’ she said to the cat who was agitating to be fed. ‘And you are no better.’
By lunchtime all this had changed. As they had their pre-lunch drink and Veronica brought her friend up to date on matters in which Hester was not very interested, such as the old aunt’s health, Hester reflected on the propensity of modern writers to approach old age as if they were reporters, medical dictionary tucked under one arm to make sure they had all the symptoms at their fingertips. But in reality, she thought, old people don’t look at each other making mental notes of brown splodges on wrinkled arms, arthritic finger joints, hiccups in articulacy and quirks of memory. Amazingly, when they say ‘You haven’t changed!’ they really mean it. They actually look at each other, as I am looking at dear Veronica now, and see the person they have always seen. Perhaps it is different with men – there are two ages for men, one with and one without hair. But Veronica sitting there resolutely disposing of strong gin is recognizably the Veronica who mapped our walk along the Pennine Way with such fine disregard for contours that we twice failed to reach our overnight stop; the Veronica of the perpetually broken heart who believed that one should never say no to love, the Veronica of the good beginnings who has furnished me with much factual material on matters as diverse as psychical research, pig breeding, hotel management and Russian Orthodoxy at which she has at last arrived via Coptic art and transcendental meditation.
‘You have had quite a journey through life,’ Hester said enviously.
‘But I have ended up where I started from.’
‘You didn’t start within a thousand miles of Orthodoxy.’
Veronica, who always maintained that her present affiliation was the constant of her whole life, smiled mysteriously and said, ‘Ah, the Spirit, you see. Only the Orthodox understand the Spirit.’
‘I don’t know about that.’ Hester could be mettlesome too. ‘The Orthodox Church hasn’t changed much in a thousand years. Some might say that is hardly allowing the Holy Spirit to work within it.’
They argued about this all through lunch, so that Hester was in a good mood when Norah Kendall arrived, saying she had not seen Veronica for so long she felt she must call and hoped it was not inconvenient. Even when Michael arrived saying much the same thing, Hester remained tolerantly amused. Veronica, of course, was delighted and only too willing to see herself as the focus of interest. The attentions of those younger than oneself become increasingly precious over the years, Hester thought indulgently. One must not begrudge Veronica her little triumph, delusory though it might be.
She sat back and let Michael and Veronica debate the attitude of their respective churches to the Holy Spirit while Norah tickled Tabitha behind the ears.
Veronica’s grasp of theology was tenuous and she soon tired of listening to Michael expounding the one vital difference between the two Creeds. ‘This must be very boring for you,’ she said kindly to Norah. She screwed up her eyes, gazing back an infinitely long way to her own period of unenlightenment. ‘I can understand how bewildered you must feel.’
Norah, usually well able to note condescension and put it down smartly, smiled as if indeed no thought of any consequence had ever troubled her mind.
‘Do you remember when we were young, Hester,’ Veronica hastened on before Michael could set himself to giving Norah an exposition on the Creeds, ‘how we used to gather round the piano and sing? Every Christmas guests arrived with music,’ she explained to Norah. ‘People made their own pleasures when we were young, you see. We would sing pieces like “We’m come up from Somerset”. I don’t suppose you have ever heard of that.’
‘Indeed, I have.’ And Norah surprised Veronica by singing ‘We’m come up from Zummerset where the Zoider apples grow . . .’
‘Yes, well,’ Veronica said. ‘There was “The Gentle Maiden”, too.’
Norah said to Hester, ‘Do play for us.’
Hester, who had enjoyed those far off days, was not unwilling. Sunlight wavered on the window sill as if uncertain of a welcome after its long absence and sent an exploratory ray across the hearth, demure and unassertive. What more seemly activity to match this meek, nostalgic mood than the making of music? Hester played ‘The Gentle Maiden’ and Michael sang in his deep, grave voice, while on the hearth Tabitha switched her tail, stroking the rug gently as a feather duster. They all sang ‘Cockles and Mussels’ and ‘Early one Morning’. Norah’s voice was high and sweet and Veronica regarded her without favour. She was much taken by Michael and suggested a number of songs well-suited to his strong baritone, such as ‘Drake is going West’ and ‘The Fishermen of England’. Tabitha kneaded the rug and purred, dribbling a bit because she was very old.
The sun, filtering through the leaves of the trees, sent little green flames darting across the keyboard. The feeling of shared pleasure grew stronger and a convivial warmth spread through the group around the piano. Michael and Norah smiled into each other’s eyes as they sang. There was a subtle change in the vibration of their voices. The flames danced up and down the scale and in and out of the notes and behind the eyes of Michael and Norah a banked fire silently established its hold. Hester, feeling the itch of old scars, thought, enough is enough, and struck up the ‘Song of the Western Men’.
’A good sword and a trusty hand
A merry heart and true,
King James’s men shall understand
What Cornish lads can do . . .’
Michael sang as if the words had been written yesterday for men with hearts afire. Veronica, carried away, joined croakingly in the chorus while Norah, flushed with febrile excitement, head held high, looked to Hester’s jaundiced eye ridiculously like one of those damaged pagan figures whose disfigured heads still bear blazing torches.
’And have they fixed the where and when
And shall Trelawny die
Here’s twenty thousand Cornishmen
Will know the reason why.’
As he sang the last chorus Michael let loose the full power of his voice; magnificent, triumphant, it seemed to Hester to ring out a message telling the whole of the West Country what was afoot in this small terraced house. She slammed down the lid of the piano.
‘I want no part in this,’ she said, looking at them with angry eyes. ‘It was wrong of you to come here. Very wrong.’
She got up and went into the kitchen. In a few minutes Veronica came and joined her. ‘Now what was all that about? They have gone without waiting for tea.’ Her tone implied that if her party had to be broken up in this way, then the least Hester could do was to make a good story out of it. Hester, shaken beyond discretion, complied.
When she had finished, Veronica said, ‘You very nearly wrecked your cousin Harry’s marriage before you decided not to go through with the affair.’
‘I can’t even claim that much credit. He it was who broke away and made a dash for home and that dull little woman.’
‘You never told me.’
‘I can’t think why I have told you now.’
Hester inspected the geraniums on the window sill, prodding the earth although she could see at a glance that it was parched.
‘Since you have told me, perhaps you can say why if you thought it was right for you . . .’
‘I didn’t think it was right.’ Hester ran water into the sink. ‘There is no right and wrong at such times, as you well know, Veronica. It is a kind of madness.’
‘Then let them have their madness.’ Veronica spread out her arms in the manner of a conductor asking a choir to raise the roof with jubilation.
‘It doesn’t last,’ Hester said flatly, beginning to submerge the pots in the sink. ‘We aren’t mad all our lives. And Michael believes in the absolutes – however far short he may fall and however often he falls, he believes. That will not have changed when the madness passes. Desire is totally selfish,’ she said sternly to the gaudy geraniums. ‘I remember how it was to love, but the man himself has become nothing more than a stimulant to sensation. That is all Norah is to Michael. His marriage to Valentine is much more important than this affair, an intrinsic part of all that he is.’
‘I don’t know how you can possibly say that.’ Veronica’s eyes travelled round the room as if seeking a clear image of lost loves.
‘It has just come to me in one of those revelatory flashes which give one so little comfort.’ Hester watched the water bubbling round the pots. ‘It may well have been true for Harry and the anaemic Gwynneth.’
‘And Norah?’
‘I have received no such revelation as to Norah’s condition.’
‘She is probably one of those women who will be able to roll up the memory of her one true love in cotton wool and store it away snugly inside her,’ Veronica said contemptuously. She looked at Hester and saw that her face was bleak.
‘If you feel so badly about it, you shouldn’t have been so melodramatic, slamming down the piano lid and practically telling them never to darken your doors again. What would you have done if I had behaved like that when you and Harry made use of my house?’
The smell of the geraniums was hot and as strong and unsubtle as the traces Tabitha sprayed about the garden. Hester said, ‘Envy. I envy them, Veronica; even at my age I envy them their madness and all the pain it will bring them.’
Mrs Flack was cleaning the brass when the Vicar came into the church. The door to the graveyard was open and the church seemed full of the smell of rain-wet earth and the singing of birds. Mrs Flack had the sensation of being young again, a state of which she had little recall. Her life had been sliced in two when her husband died and the severed part in which she lived her widowhood had drifted away like an ice-floe. But now she saw a little girl dressed as a fairy sitting on the steps to the chancel while older children enacted a scene from a play. Suddenly the little fairy burst into tears and cried out, ‘Mummy, Mummy, I’ve wet myself,’ and a young woman ran from the body of the church and, gathering the fairy into her arms, carried her out into the graveyard where raindrops hung from branch and leaf, glistening like the tiny beads sewn round the neck of her fairy frock. Mrs Flack blinked her eyes in a beam of sunlight. She saw that the Vicar was standing transfixed at the door leading into the grayeyard and was surprised because he hadn’t been at St Hilary’s long enough for light and sound and smell to play tricks with his memory. Suddenly, he reached out and closed the door; then he locked it and, walking across to the main door, locked that, too. Laura Addison would have objected to the church being shut an hour early, but it was not the way of Mrs Flack to object. She went on cleaning the brass and minding her own business. When the Vicar came out of the vestry he did not acknowledge her, but strode, stern as an Old Testament prophet, towards the sanctuary where he seemed to lose his sense of purpose and stood, shoulders hunched, looking down at the worn floorboards. As she was not a person who expected to be noticed, and certainly not to be thanked for her efforts, Mrs Flack was content to remain invisible.
When she had finished polishing she went into the vestry and put away the cloths and Brasso. It should have been obvious that, having locked both the outer church doors, the Vicar was intending to leave by the vestry door. Mrs Flack’s mind, however, was on other things. She bolted the door into the church and, smiling rather foolishly, went out of the vestry door into the sunlight.
Michael Hoath’s mind was also on other things, and he had hung the key to the graveyard door on the appropriate hook in the vestry and absently put the key to the main door on the table. So it was that when he had read the Office he found himself locked in the church.
At first he refused to believe what had happened and walked from door to door, tugging and knocking. The graveyard door had glass panels covered by wire mesh and alone offered a view of the outside world. He stood by it while the sounds of early evening came to him, children shouting on their way home from the playing field, the fluting of a blackbird, the continuous hum of outgoing traffic inching across the bridge over the river. He saw moisture hung on the roses atop the garden wall, the refracted light glittering yellow, indigo, violet. He watched a large thrush pecking for worms in the ground beneath the tree where he had knelt with Norah. For him, as for Mrs Flack, this glistening garden had the quality of fairyland; a world new-made, full of magical delights awaiting those brave enough to turn their backs on the wearying world of here and now. He was desperate to step out into this secret place where Hester’s anger could not follow him. Never before had a rain-cleansed garden seemed so lovely in its innocent refreshment. He wanted to be part of this joyous celebration of earth and tree and flower, to tunnel into this green enchantment until his mind was drugged by sensual delight, his body exhausted. He put his fist to the door and leant his head against it, crying out, ‘I will not be trapped here.’
He had never before felt such desperation at being thwarted. For some time he stood by the door, looking out because he dared not turn inwards. He took hold of the handle and shook it. He had a vision of his own face, hideously distorted, eyes protruding, lips bared, like a gargoyle spewing out venom. He looked up at the stained glass windows which contained figures of saints, imperviously benign, each with one hand uplifted in blessing. Rage and panic were so strong that he turned and blundered down the aisle towards the chancel steps where there was a heavy stool. He found himself facing the crucifix. It stopped him, but he did not fall to his knees; instead he turned into the lady chapel and sat down, trying to compose himself to wait. His heart thumped and he found it difficult to draw breath; his hands were sweating. This was ridiculous. In an hour and a half the choir would arrive for practice. There was no reason to believe that they would discover their vicar dead of suffocation. He thought of the longest poem he had ever learnt, which was ‘The Battle of Lepanto’, and began to recite. It imposed its own strong rhythm on his mind and kept the panic at bay. He was repeating – in word and heartbeat – ‘strong gongs groaning and the guns boom far’ for the eleventh time when the organist arrived early for choir practice.
‘I got shut in the market cross once,’ he said sympathetically, noting that the Vicar seemed in a pretty poor state. ‘Gives one an awful feeling of claustrophobia, doesn’t it? And the worst of it was that I could smell the food cooking in the Indian restaurant. You could have knocked on one of the windows on the north wall, someone in the street might have heard.’
‘I was afraid of breaking the glass,’ Michael said hoarsely.
He walked slowly back to the vicarage, breathless and shaking. He wondered how he was to explain his condition to Valentine, but as it turned out she had some story about sewage to relate.
‘You’ll miss John Cleese,’ she said when they had finished their meal.
‘Will I?’
‘You’ve got Desmond Treglowan coming in ten minutes.’ She poured coffee. ‘Do you remember when we had that woman staying with us at Oxford who was going through a crisis of belief and she came across us convulsed over the attempts to dispose of the dead body at Fawlty Towers?’
He stirred his coffee. ‘I had forgotten about Desmond. I haven’t thought what I am going to say to him.’
‘Better ask questions and let him do the talking in that case.’
As he sat opposite the youth in his study, Michael experienced the listlessness he had felt many years ago at college when he had been expected to discuss any difficulties he might have with his spiritual adviser, and had been unable to think of a thing to say. And it hadn’t been the case that he did not have any difficulties. He had realized then that once one can articulate a problem it is half-way to being solved – the other person is merely a sounding- board for one’s own ideas.
He recalled that Charles had reported Desmond’s mother as saying that he had an alternative life on offer – the loving Christian community. He could not remember a time when he had felt less able to measure up to that challenge.
Desmond, who did not mind himself being responsible for long silences but did not much like them to be caused by other people, said, ‘I’ve read these books’ and shoved them into Michael’s hands. Michael, unprepared, dropped both books. After a confusing scuffle which just avoided head-butting farce, they righted themselves and Michael flipped through the pages of The Star Thrower to give himself time to recover his equanimity.
‘A man of some passion, Eiseley,’ he said, ‘filled with an awe in the face of Nature and its mysteries which most of us Christians have lost.’ He looked out of the window. ‘I suppose our landscape is wrong, so small and domesticated . . .’
‘Yes, that is precisely how I feel about him,’ Desmond said eagerly. Michael was taken aback: the purpose of this meeting was not that they should agree with each other but rather explore their differences.
Desmond, elaborating the theme, was already some way from the small and domesticated, speaking of Eiseley’s acceptance of the unpredictability of the universe as though he was the only man to have made this discovery.
Michael said, seeking to get the discussion back on the rails, ‘All scientists would accept some such description.’
‘But most of them don’t apply it to life as ordinary people live it.’ As Desmond talked he raised his eyebrows so high they seemed in danger of disappearing in the brush of tow-coloured hair, a feat which plainly startled the wide, colourless eyes. ‘Most scientists seem unaware of the weather in the streets, holed up in their laboratories. The people who have really let the darkness in in this century have been artists and writers. You don’t get protestors starting riots and hurling bricks when the Royal Society meets, and daubing walls. The censor doesn’t get busy.’ Desmond’s Adam’s apple bobbed about and he looked as agitated as a boy soprano who finds his voice breaking in the middle of a crucial aria.
‘And this darkness – it appeals to you?’
‘It’s there, isn’t it, whether it appeals to me or not. It seems a good place to start – with the darkness, I mean.’
Michael looked at the book again. This was not quite how he had expected this talk to go. For him, it was the pain in Eiseley which communicated itself; he liked the man because he believed in the pain which drew him to life’s failures. He had thought that perhaps they would talk about Eiseley’s deaf-mute mother, the isolated prairie artist, and that this would then lead to a delicate exploration of Desmond’s own feelings about his father’s desertion. He perceived it was not going to be as simple as that.
He turned the pages of the book. ‘Certain coasts’, someone, not Eiseley, had pronounced of Costabel, ‘are set aside for shipwreck.’ Eiseley had said, ‘with increasing persistence I had made my way thither.’ And then, ‘Perhaps all men are destined to arrive there as I did.’ The idea that shipwreck is inevitable at some time in one’s life released in Michael a sudden gush of warm, unfocused anger. He said, ‘This sort of thing is all very well, but in life one must be positive and buoyant. Too much concentration on our wounds can lead to psychological sickness. It is impossible for people to go through life avoiding acts of betrayal and even cruelty.’ His blood was pounding.
Desmond said, ‘Yes, I see that.’ It was apparent he thought Michael’s anger both surprising and inappropriate.
Michael put down the book. ‘Let’s forget about Eiseley, shall we?’ He made an effort to compose himself. ‘It seems to me that it is the day-to-day patterns of life with which most of us need to be concerned. Ideas which a brain like Eiseley’s can encompass are too vast for most of us, our minds can’t accommodate them. We have to concentrate on the here and now of life.’
‘I don’t seem able to see any day-to-day patterns,’ Desmond said. ‘It’s all too close and muddled.’
So this is what it all boils down to, Michael thought impatiently. Eiseley’s main attraction for Desmond is that the man was a solitary and what intimations of immortality he had came from encounters with animals rather than human beings – a man most at ease at some distance from his own species. He said, ‘You can’t escape, Desmond. Even the remotest tribe in Africa will have a pattern to its life. There is a pattern to life.’
Desmond said, ‘Nature is a pattern.’ He drew the back of his hand across his mouth, tugging down the lower lip as though seeking to slow down the torrent of words. His voice was sharp and staccato when he continued. ‘You talk as if studying the patterns of Nature is some kind of retreat, a running away from life. But it’s not. The awareness of animal life, a knowledge of rock and stone and desert places, is genesis.’
Michael was aware of being involved in a struggle for authority. He said, ‘To live outside the human pattern is to be mad, Desmond.’
‘But anthropology is a study of patterns, isn’t it?’
‘If you are prepared to accept it as a discipline, yes. But if what you are after is a kind of emotional satisfaction, if you entertain some idea of examining ancient skulls in the hope they may eventually reconcile you to what goes on in the human heart, then you will be disappointed.’
Desmond stared at him, looking as unemotional as a camel.
‘Have you considered that it may be here, in the place with which you are familiar and of which you have some understanding, that you have to begin your search for a meaning in life?’
‘I’ll tell you what I really think.’ Desmond spoke brusquely; but it was no longer the awkward brusqueness of the adolescent, it was the voice of a man who feels that enough of his time has been taken up. ‘I think that if God created the universe, he should blow a whistle at half-time and then we would be expected to find our way back to our beginnings, bearing with us the knowledge gained during the first half. That’s about the only idea which really excites me.’
Valentine must have left the sitting-room door open; Michael could hear her laughing at John Cleese, genuine delight in the sound. Here in the library it was getting dark, which was apt enough, he thought grimly, since he found he was unable to speak of the ideal of the loving Christian community to this young man. He said wearily, ‘You are not alone in that view. Others have been haunted by the need to find a way through ancient tracks. It’s not an idea which is new to me, Desmond, although I suppose I would express it differently, seeing it as man’s eventual return to God at the end of his long journey of discovery, bringing with him all the fruits of human consciousness. But whatever words we use, religious or otherwise, the quest is a perfectly honourable one; though I fear it may present greater perils . . .’
And yet, was it really more perilous, the lonely Odyssey, than the rooted life within the human stockade? He was still thinking of this after Desmond had gone and Valentine had left camomile tea and biscuits on his desk and departed upstairs.
Desmond slept well that night but Michael not at all. The boy is too sensitive, he thought, flinching from the direction in which his thoughts constantly led him. True, his father had abandoned him and his mother might now be contemplating another unpromising relationship; but the daughter had survived relatively unharmed. The boy’s reaction was abnormal – a flaw somewhere. But why had he felt so uncomfortable during this talk about the patterns in life? The path to the desert had never been a source of fear because he knew that it was not for him. Something else had disturbed him. Here, that was what he had said; it was here in the place with which Desmond was familiar that he should try to find his pattern in life. We have to concentrate on the here and now of our lives.
Here. Here for Michael Hoath was this bed in which he lay beside his wife. He looked at the patterns of light and shadow made by the moonlight in the room. They always slept with the curtains drawn back because he felt suffocated in dark enclosed spaces. Valentine preferred a dark room. The nightingale was singing in the graveyard. It was many years since a nightingale had nested there and now people often came at night to listen to it. Valentine was upset by this invasion of the graveyard because she was afraid that louts would destroy the nest. The darkest, deepest place in the wood was where she would have the nightingale make its nest. The forces of destruction seemed to her stronger than beauty. He had raised himself on one elbow as he listened to the nightingale, and now he looked down at his wife. It was not Valentine’s cares which slept but the will and the facade which the will held in place during the day had peeled away. The nose thrust up like a beak between the sightless eyes, the lips parted in a silent cry, and anguish loosed the jaw. In the moonlight the face seemed ravaged by strain and stress and long unrest.
When he lay back he felt as if a leaden weight had been laid over his heart. He tried to bring his mind to the aid of his labouring lungs, setting his own will to work, attempting to conjure up a self-justifying picture of the Valentine who was so deeply hurtful; he reviewed all that she had neglected to do, the small rejections, the many refusals to respond, the lack of spontaneous warmth. But in spite of all his efforts, it was the good things which crept out of the shadows as he looked at the moon-washed face. He remembered the daily acts of service which he took for granted because hers was the kind of giving which disdains display and brushes gratitude aside; her moments of light gaiety, her tenderness. Yes, tenderness. When they made love he wanted flame to consume them and then she always failed him; but sometimes when he was tired and felt defeated she surprised him with a brief, radiant tenderness, fading fickle as a dawn dream when he tried to capture it. Now, when he least wanted it, this fitful tenderness was an added torment to bear.
The nightingale sang on and he was dizzied by the thought of all the energy thrilling through that tiny cage of bone, hour after merciless hour. In the morning he had an appalling headache.