THE SPARROW

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘And what do you think about all this?’ Rutledge demanded.

  Wilson, now in a panic, had no idea to what he was referring. Jill came to the rescue.

  ‘He’s much too tired to think.’

  ‘Tired? A young fellow like him?’

  ‘He offered to sweep the front down this afternoon and then discovered it meant doing half a mile of pavement as well!’

  ‘I’m glad someone around here has a sense of citizenship,’ Rutledge commented.

  The vicar said sharply:

  ‘I resent that.’

  Rutledge wagged a finger.

  ‘I mean it, Vicar. I speak my mind, always have and always shall. I don’t think much of this law-breaking and when adults start encouraging kids to cock a snook at the law of this country, I think it’s a damned disgrace.’

  The atmosphere had suddenly become much less comfortable. Wilson felt, deep in the pit of his stomach, the first twinge of the familiar fear. The sooner they got off this topic the better.

  ‘It is a serious thing,’ the vicar agreed. ‘No responsible person would argue with you about that.’

  ‘Ralph has a great respect for authority and the law,’ Jill put in.

  Wilson found Rutledge leaning towards him with a light; the man had become suspiciously friendly. He whispered: ‘ “Ralph”! If it was my niece she would get a smacked bottom for that.’

  ‘We all of us respect the law,’ Jill went on. ‘That is why . . .’

  ‘Rubbish!’ There was a roughness in Rutledge’s voice that had not been there earlier. ‘Look at those kids who were up at the juvenile court the other day for beating up the night watchman down at old Forster’s place. They were nuclear disarmers!’

  ‘You can’t win campaigns if you limit your members to the pure in heart.’ There was an edge to the vicar’s voice. ‘Every cause has its riff-raff.’

  ‘Mightn’t it be better, in that case, to start with the riff-raff? Get rid of the violent element in your own backyard before trying to clean up the whole world?’ The vicar and Jill spoke at once, but he raised his voice above theirs. ‘You’re never going to have peace on earth if you don’t have people who respect law and order. That’s where the church comes in, helping ordinary men and women and keeping out of things that don’t concern it.’

  ‘That seems to me a kind of blasphemy,’ the vicar thundered.

  ‘Blasphemy, is it!’ The back of Rutledge’s neck went red.

  ‘I can’t see why it’s blasphemous, darling,’ Myra cut in sharply. ‘After all, all sorts of honourable people have to be non-combatants, surgeons and . . .’

  ‘That is an absurd analogy. The surgeon is concerned with life and death . . .’

  ‘Doesn’t that apply equally to you?’ Myra’s voice was higher and her face had a pinched look. ‘I should have thought . . .’

  Wilson was beginning to get that suffocating feeling he had had in his cell the first few nights when he heard the key turn in the lock. Rutledge had edged himself almost off his seat in his agitation. Sarah was watching him uneasily as though fearing that he was about to launch a physical attack on her uncle.

  ‘Did Christ stand aside?’ the vicar asked.

  ‘From politics, yes,’ Rutledge answered. ‘ “Render unto Caesar . . .”.’

  ‘This isn’t a question of politics! Man is in danger of destroying all that God has made, and you expect His church to stand aside?’

  ‘I expect His church to get on with its own job.’

  ‘This is its job, the one supreme . . .’

  ‘But there are other dangers to the church besides the bomb. Indifference, surely . . .’ Myra was now trying desperately to introduce a more reasoned note, but Rutledge shouted:

  ‘Are you telling me that everything, all other duties and responsibilities, must take second place?’

  During the few seconds’ silence that followed, Wilson felt they must all hear the thudding of his heart. Frank Godfrey looked confidently at his friend; Myra’s gaze had no confidence, only a deep fear. The vicar raised his eyes and fixed them on a point above the heads of the people in the room.

  ‘Everything.’

  His face seemed suddenly to glow with an inspiration which admitted no doubt. The inflexibility was a little frightening; it aroused a defensive desire to find a chink in the armour. Rutledge said:

  ‘That’s something between you and your God, Vicar. Always supposing you consult Him.’

  The random thrust went home; the vicar’s expression did not change, but the eyes darkened. Wilson wanted to get out of the room before something irrevocable was said, but social barriers as relentless as the locked prison door prevented him from making his escape. Rutledge said hoarsely:

  ‘I didn’t want to say this to you, but . . .’

  A chair overturned. Sarah was standing up, her face very white. She turned towards Rutledge, made one of her most hideous faces and rushed out of the room.

  III

  Frank Godfrey came into the kitchen where Myra was making more coffee.

  ‘What was wrong with Sarah?’ he asked.

  ‘She says her tummy felt bad. But she seems to be all right now.’ She poured milk into a saucepan and went on unhappily:

  ‘I don’t know what to make of Sarah. She used to be so self¬contained, nothing seemed to touch her.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘She reacts to things more, but in a defensive way. We’ve had a good deal of door-slamming and foot-stamping in the last week, and a couple of tearful outbursts. I don’t know why. I never do know why with Sarah. I try to find out. Perhaps I try too hard.’

  ‘I shouldn’t pay much attention to it, if I were you,’ Frank murmured, with memories of his own children. ‘Sarah is too walled-off from other people. This may be the sign of some kind of a break-through.’

  ‘It seems to me more like the sign of a break-down. I don’t think I could bear that . . . added to everything else.’

  He watched her as she walked across to the gas stove; she was so very thin now, he could see her shoulder blades outlined sharply through the light jersey-cloth dress.

  ‘I’m sorry Rutledge hit so hard at Ralph, Myra. It must be distressing for you.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Little things like that don’t trouble Ralph. It would have mattered once; but now I believe he rather enjoys unpopularity.’

  He came across to her, uneasy at the bitterness of her tone. He knew that she still loved Ralph; one saw it in her eyes as she watched him. But he knew, too, that strange things can happen when love is stifled.

  ‘He has a lot on his mind, Myra; you have to be even more patient and forbearing than usual.’

  ‘I’m not a very forbearing person, Frank.’ Her mouth quivered. ‘Lately, I find myself saying unkind things deliberately to hurt him. But even that doesn’t have any effect. We seem to get further and further apart. Ralph takes his politics so intensely seriously, while I find that as the years go by I seem to care less and less what happens to the world.’ She flicked the gas pistol at one of the gas rings which popped noisily. ‘You see? Nothing in this house works properly because we are so busy trying to ward off Armageddon.’

  The wind was getting up and a cold draught of air from the ill-fitting window agitated a paper doily on the table. He picked it up and then stood holding it, rather at a loss.

  ‘All marriages have their difficult periods, Myra.’

  ‘Even with you and Edith?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  She was standing quietly now with her head bowed over the gas stove. She seemed to make an effort to put bitterness aside.

  ‘It is as though he had left me and gone to some other place where I can’t follow him. Perhaps it is that in the quest for goodness a stage is reached where . . . where human love seems wrong? Is that possible, Frank? I think I read somewhere that as people come nearer to God they loosen their bonds with their dear ones.’

  ‘Possibly.’ There was a trace of asperity in his
tone. ‘Though I must say it is a theory I find hard to follow.’

  She laughed shakily.

  ‘I remember once, when we had been particularly at odds with one another, Ralph gave me a book to read—Le Milieu Divin by Teilhard de Chardin. It was all well above my head, and instead of helping me to understand it made me more bewildered than ever.’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’

  As he looked at Myra’s face he remembered how enchantingly mischievous she had been as a young woman. Now, in the glint of the eyes there was a suggestion of mischief of a less innocent kind; and the lines of laughter at the sides of the mouth had a sour twist. The thought flashed across his mind that there was nothing quite so terrifying as to witness the slow destruction of one human being. She saw him looking at her.

  ‘I’m not really a suitable partner for a saint, am I, Frank? I need a solid, earthly affection centred round me.’

  ‘We all need that.’

  ‘Sometimes, with Ralph becoming more and more remote, and Sarah not wanting me, I feel so useless and neglected. Even Jill is growing away from me. We used to have such fun together. But now she has suddenly started to idolize Ralph, and because I am sometimes critical of him, she begins to see me as a carping wife. We are becoming wary of one another. I seem to be losing so much. It makes me desperate, and when you’re desperate you start to claw at things.’

  They stood watching the milk beginning to creep up the sides of the saucepan. He said uneasily:

  ‘What do you mean “claw at things”?’

  ‘I get a dreadful desire to injure . . . because at least people notice you if you injure them.’

  ‘They do indeed!’

  She took the saucepan up and poured the milk into a jug. He wheeled the trolley forward for her.

  ‘How well Edith has trained you!’ she murmured.

  ‘I can even wheel it without spilling anything.’

  He demonstrated as far as the kitchen door, and then hesitated.

  ‘You know, Myra, I think this desire to injure is perfectly natural. I feel it very strongly in myself sometimes. Only . . . don’t do it, will you? Do something silly and spectacular instead.’

  ‘Like buying a new hat, or changing my hair style?’

  They both laughed and, having over-simplified matters to their mutual comfort, left it at that.

  The restoration of comfort had obviously been the aim in the sitting-room as well. Jill was sitting quietly in a chair staring into the fire, while Rutledge and Ralph discussed church affairs with the heartiness of men bent on appeasement. Only Wilson, sitting so far back in his corner that he might have been trying to dissolve into the shadows, seemed uneasy still. As the trolley was wheeled in, Rutledge was saying to Ralph:

  ‘What about this young man here? Didn’t you tell me he had been in the navy?’

  They both turned and looked at Wilson.

  ‘If you won’t come and do the work yourself, you might at least give us this young man!’

  Ralph responded with his ready, forgiving smile, and eager to seal the bargain turned to Myra.

  ‘Rogers is moving and we shall need help with the youth club. Rutledge is suggesting that Keith might be our man.’

  Myra did not reply. Rutledge moved his chair closer to Wilson; Ralph went across and stood by the young man’s side. Wilson was not enthusiastic, he made a lot of weak excuses. Jocularly, but relentlessly, the two men continued to press him. As Frank Godfrey approached the group with coffee cups, Wilson glanced up.

  ‘Surrounded on all sides, eh?’

  His mouth twisted in a sarcastic smile; after that he seemed to go slack and his face set into a mask of indifference. Frank, himself no stranger to weakness, recognized the last resource of the cornered.

  ‘Youth work isn’t for all of us,’ he said tentatively.

  ‘Exactly!’ Rutledge snapped up the remark and turned it adroitly. ‘There aren’t many suitable people. And with this lad’s experience in the navy, he’d be ideal.’

  Wilson did not answer, but he looked at Ralph who answered his mute appeal by saying gently:

  ‘I have every confidence in you.’

  Wilson muttered, ‘All right’ between clenched teeth.

  ‘And we’ll let him handle the Easter pageant, too!’ Ralph offered in a happy excess of generosity.

  Later, when Rutledge had gone and Wilson and Jill were washing-up in the kitchen, Myra said to Ralph:

  ‘It was a mistake to decide the youth club business without letting Rutledge know about Keith.’

  ‘The boy’s only a first offender, isn’t he?’ Frank said. ‘If he was an old lag it would be different, but . . .’

  ‘And Rutledge knows about Spencer and it doesn’t worry him,’ Ralph pointed out.

  ‘Exactly! He knows about Spencer.’ Her voice had suddenly taken on its sharpest edge and both men winced. ‘Why can’t you descend from the clouds, Ralph, before you do any serious harm? Try to see people as they are. Rutledge isn’t ungenerous. But he can’t bear being left in the dark about things. He’s not nearly so proud of being a self-made man as he makes out, and he thinks you despise him.’

  ‘But he isn’t likely to find out about Keith,’ Ralph said wearily. ‘It will be much better to let the boy prove what a useful sort of chap he is. Rutledge will accept it better then.’

  Myra shrugged her shoulders. There had been enough argument for one evening and so she let the matter rest there. They sat quietly for a while, listening to the wind tearing at the house. Once Frank went to the window and drew back the curtain; the pane was glazed with ice.

  ‘I hope the pipes won’t freeze,’ Myra murmured.

  IV

  In the kitchen, Wilson was getting behind with the wiping-up. ‘You’re better with a shovel,’ Jill teased.

  ‘Consider my background,’ he retorted.

  She scraped at the milk saucepan with more energy than was required and said lightly:

  ‘Wouldn’t it be more sensible to forget it?’

  ‘Yes, yes. How silly of me!’ He was heavily sarcastic. ‘That’s Lesson One, isn’t it?’

  She turned, surprised, letting the saucepan slip back into the bowl.

  ‘Lesson Two, I suppose, is “Give him something to occupy his mind in those dangerous leisure hours”.’

  She pushed back a tuft of hair with a moist forearm and regarded him warily, as though a pet dog had suddenly turned nasty.

  ‘I think that’s a rather silly attitude.’

  ‘I’m sorry! I’m terribly sorry! Don’t let me seem ungrateful. I’ll run the mothers’ union, too, shall I? As well as the youth club and the bloody Easter pageant.’

  ‘You could have said if you didn’t want to do it.’

  ‘Christ!’

  She presented him with her back and attacked the saucepan again. He continued to rub at one of the saucers with a very damp tea-cloth. After a while, she said in a careful, reasoned tone:

  ‘You do have to integrate yourself again, you know. And surely this is a good way? After all, Ralph said you had excellent reports from your head master and from your officers in the navy. You were . . .’

  ‘Form captain, prefect, chairman of the debating society, leading seaman in charge of a watch, promising candidate for a commission.’

  ‘Well then, you had a gift for authority . . .’

  ‘And would-be journalist. Don’t forget that! All set to put the world to rights from an office desk.’

  ‘I don’t see the drift of all this.’

  She emptied the bowl and began to wring out the dish cloth. He watched her moodily; his fire had extinguished itself now and he looked merely wretched.

  ‘Don’t you think that perhaps there is something wrong with people who want too much authority over others?’

  She draped the dish cloth across one of the taps and said firmly:

  ‘I think you’re dramatizing yourself.’ She looked at the clock. ‘I also think it’s time Ralph ran me back to the fla
t.’

  But later, as he lay in his room listening to the onslaught of the wind, he knew that he had not been dramatizing himself. The youth club. He tried not to think about it, but as he lay in the darkness he felt the fear rising from the pit of his stomach. How could he refuse without betraying to them the chaos that he tried to keep hidden even from himself? He hated them. The thin veneer of gratitude cracked and the pent-up resentment gushed out. The bloody do-gooders! Interfering, inexperienced meddlers full of undisciplined good-will primed with a smattering of psychology picked up from books and lectures. He damned them for their good intentions, their clumsy attempts at rehabilitation.

  ‘You do have to integrate yourself again,’ she had said.

  But not this way. He could never cope with this kind of responsibility again. ‘But you were all right once,’ they would say. ‘What you have done once, you can do again. It is like learning to use a limb which has been out of action for a long time. . . .’ But suppose the limb was not healthy, the poison still at work? He turned over and buried his face in the pillow and the fear came crawling up his body again. ‘What you have done once, you can do again!’ Did no one understand? She certainly didn’t. ‘You had excellent reports from your head master and from your officers in the navy.’ Only the Teddy boy might have told a different story.

  He was suddenly aware that he was lying half-naked on the bed. He pulled the clothes over him, but he could not get warm. ‘Bloody do-gooders!’ he muttered again. He wished he could savage once and for all their snivelling pity, break free of their demands. He wanted to go down into the shabby sitting-room and smash up the furniture, take their tinny old car, get drunk, do a couple of jobs. That would teach them to control their transports of good¬will! He nursed himself to sleep, planning the outrages he would commit in order to spite them.

  Chapter Five

  I

  Rutledge did not believe in wasting time; so on the following Wednesday on his way back from the bank he called at the vicarage.