by MARY HOCKING
The old man who had been a Congregational minister was praying. She heard him say: ‘Help me to understand, dear Lord Jesus. Help me to understand.’
But some things are beyond understanding, Helen thought. She turned into the corridor. It was dark, but at the far end where a door stood ajar, a faint pencil of light streaked the blackness. She leant against the wall and closed her eyes. Her body no longer seemed to be her own; she observed its symptoms with a terrible, detached clarity. The first aching tenderness had gone, and now fire raged within her, threatening annihilation, its flames fanned by fear. The desire for fulfilment and the dread of loss fused into one searing agony. Loss. An iron cramp contracted the muscles of her throat. It would be the ultimate denial; as the arid years withered away she would become dry as a thorn. And yet she found, as she opened her lips to pray, that she could not pray for Paul Daniels’s safe return, nor will him to stand aside; to do that would be to cripple his spirit to satisfy her need.
‘Oh God,’ she said, ‘into Thy hands I commend his spirit.’ But she prayed, too, obscurely and without words, that her love might be strengthened that it might comfort and sustain him.
She began to walk down the corridor towards the thin line of light. When she went into the information office she saw Mr. Clare standing by the window.
‘What is happening out there?’ she asked.
‘The fires are dying down and it seems quieter. Apart from that, we have no recent news.’
‘But the people out there, our own people? What will happen to them?’
A young man hurried in with a message. Mr. Clare read it; as he put it down he said quietly:
‘If they have any sense, they will come here at once.’
In the distance a clock chimed the quarter hour: a quarter past six.
II
The streets seemed quiet now, Paul thought, as he leant on the parapet of the bridge. But the night was wild. For the first time in many months the water rushed against the stone piers and from the dark hills above there came the muffled thunder of the waterfalls. The wind was strong and he was glad of the feel of it against his face. He glanced at his watch, but it was smashed and he noticed that the strap was cutting into his swollen wrist. The wrist hurt abominably. He turned to go, but at the end of the bridge he looked back once, because this was a view of the city that he had always loved. He could see the dim arch of the bridge, the black water racing beneath, and beyond the gaunt outline of the hills with here and there a lamp burning in windows at which people waited.
As he walked towards the narrow streets which led back to Government Square, he heard running footsteps. Someone stumbled against him.
‘Mr. Daniels, Mr. Daniels!’
It was Maria Anas. She swayed in front of him and he put out his hand to steady her.
‘My son. Have you seen my son?’
He flinched from the anguish in the woman’s voice. ‘Perhaps your husband . . .’
‘My husband has not come back.’ The words dropped like stones into the darkness. ‘He is a man; if he wants to fight I cannot stop him. But Ilya is twelve only.’
She turned away. Paul said desperately: ‘Mrs. Anas, I should wait in your home.’
Her voice was bitter. ‘Home?’
She ran towards the bridge, shouting ‘Ilya, Ilya.’ She was crossing the bridge when he last saw her, still running, and the echo died in the narrow street: ‘Ilya, Ilya.’
As Paul walked along the Avenue Kapitol the cathedral clock chimed four. The glow from the fire had almost died out of the sky and a thin drizzle of rain was falling. The avenue seemed deserted. He was nearly at his hotel when he heard quick footsteps. He turned, alarmed, and felt something sharp against his cheek. A stone clattered to the pavement. He ran back and trapped his assailant against the high wall outside one of the hotels. As he looked down in the dim light thrown by one of the street lamps, he saw a grimy, anxious face peering up at him.
‘Never meant to hit you,’ Ilya muttered.
Paul shouted: ‘Go home! You should be at home in bed.’
The boy drew back, bewildered at the depth of feeling in the man’s voice; he put his hand in his pocket and drew out a slip of paper which he thrust at Paul.
‘My father sent me,’ he said.
‘To me?’
The boy nodded.
There were only two words on the slip of paper: ‘Help us’. Ilya rubbed his hands together and blew on them, he stamped his feet, which were damp because his shoes were thin. In the distance a heavy vehicle rumbled down Martin Zinnemann Street and, much further away, a train whistle sounded, one long, thin call dying abruptly in the night. Paul stared at the paper; his jaw had dropped slightly and the boy thought he looked foolish, almost vacant.
‘I know what they want,’ he said eagerly. ‘They want you to help with the radio. Mr. Lawrence said that you were made for the job.’
Privately, Ilya doubted whether Mr. Daniels, who looked rather as though he were going to cry, would be much help.
‘Is there an answer?’ he asked, a little contemptuously.
‘Not now.’ Paul’s voice was thick. He screwed up the paper, and added savagely: ‘And you can tell your father that when I do give an answer, I shan’t be such a fool as to send a message through you. Now, go home to your mother.’
Paul went up to his room. He did not turn on the light but sat in the armchair near the window; he took out his cigarettes and fumbled for matches, his movements slow because of his weariness and the pain in his injured hand. When he got the cigarette going, he leant his head back and stared out of the window.
In the morning the onlookers would start making for the Embassy; a withdrawal would take place across a frontier of the mind. It was a wise and honourable course. Nothing could be done by any individual, or by any group of individuals, which would materially affect the course of this struggle; the most that the stranger could be expected to do was to stand aside and bear as true a witness of events as lay within his power. This was no time for irresponsible heroics.
He accepted all this: there were other choices, for other men. But he was no longer an onlooker. It was not simply that he had allowed the General to die; he had become involved long before that, so long ago that he could not remember when it happened, and he was too tired to search back over the years for the moment when he had ceased to be free. He had no illusions of a crusade, he had no enthusiasm for the task which lay before him; he had, indeed, barely strength enough to make his decision and nothing left to spare.
He thought of Helen. Only yesterday he had felt himself torn between the city and Helen; but now the two had fused together and he saw that he could not fail the city without destroying his love for her. He wondered whether she would ever understand this; perhaps it was because he was so exhausted, and needed her so much, that he began to feel that she was near him.
III
The hands of the clock on the bookcase stood at ten to six. Paul had been tidying up reports and doing other last-minute jobs; now he moved stiffly from his typewriter and went to the window. His room was thick with cigarette smoke and it occurred to him, belatedly, that fresh air would be a good idea. He sat on the window seat, his fingers groping awkwardly for another cigarette. There was a full moon and although it was hidden by a veil of cloud the night was light. He could see the tall, bare trees and the grey outline of the houses opposite. The thin drizzle of rain was still falling. He sat with a cigarette between his fingers, listening. It was quiet. He closed his eyes, wishing that the pain in his wrist would ease; immediately, his thoughts began to jumble and soon his head dropped forward.
The minutes passed. A gust of wind rattled the catch of the window and a night bird flew from a near-by tree with a whirr of soft wings. The light in the room dimmed and then came on again; the clock on the bookcase ticked steadily.
Suddenly, Paul’s head jerked back.
Far away on the Senka road there was a long, low rumble which might have been thun
der, but which was not thunder, and looking out in that direction Paul saw a flash of light spark into the sky, and then another, and another, until the sky to the east was lit almost continuously with a brilliant, flickering light. The cathedral clock chimed the quarter hour: a quarter-past six.
A shell whined overhead. There was a splintering crash; the window slammed to and glass shattered on the carpet. Paul grabbed the sheaf of papers beside his typewriter and cursed at his injured hand as he struggled clumsily into his overcoat. The walls of the room seemed to contract as another shell landed near-by. Paul went to the door. He paused and glanced quickly round the room, wondering if there was anything of importance which he had forgotten. It might, he reflected grimly, be some time before he would return. Doors banged along the corridor and feet pounded on the stairs. The building shuddered and one of the ornate chandeliers crashed to the stone floor of the foyer. Now there was darkness. Paul had to grope forward, no longer certain of his way. A group of people were huddled on the front steps, their faces still stupefied with sleep. He pushed past them.
Outside, the twilight air was raw. Voices cried out, feet stumbled on the pavement; in the distance there was a staccato rattle of machine-gun fire and nearer the church bells tolled incessantly. The shelling was continuous now, a monstrous orchestration of destruction. A line of army lorries moved slowly down the avenue. There were civilians among the soldiers, young and resolute, as they clasped unfamiliar weapons in determined, inexperienced hands. Dust choked the air, and a dark cloud of smoke was billowing westwards, driven by the wind. To the east, beyond the nightmare lights, the dawn was breaking; the first razor slash across the sky’s grey face.
In a brilliant stab of light Paul saw one of the hotels nearby tremble and then disintegrate as a child’s pile of bricks will suddenly subside. The slow disfigurement was beginning, and already his own feet faltered on a path spiked with broken glass. He was walking towards the city and the Embassy buildings lay behind him. He glanced at them once, but he did not turn back.
Mary Hocking
Born in London in 1921, Mary was educated at Haberdashers’ Aske’s Girls School, Acton. During the Second World War she served in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (Wrens) attached to the Fleet Air Arm Meteorology branch and then briefly with the Signal Section in Plymouth.
Writing was in her blood. Juggling her work as a local government officer in Middlesex Education Department with writing, at first short stories for magazines and pieces for The Times Educational Supplement, she then had her first book, The Winter City, published in 1961.
The book was a success and enabled Mary to relinquish her full time occupation to devote her time to writing. Long before family sagas had become cult viewing, she had embarked upon the `Fairley Family’ trilogy – Good Daughters, Indifferent Heroes, and Welcome Strangers – books which give her readers a faithful, realistic and uncompromising portrayal of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary times, between the years of 1933 and 1946.
For many years she was an active member of the `Monday Lit’, a Lewes-based group which brought in current writers and poets to speak about their work, an enthusiastic supporter of Lewes Little Theatre, and worshipped at the town’s St Pancras RC Church.
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Copyright
First published in 1961 by Chatto & Windus
This edition published 2016 by Bello
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