by MARY HOCKING
‘He is doing an arts course,’ she said. ‘I insisted on that. I told him “the arts will give you something to take through life with you”.’
‘What, for example?’ Daniel asked.
‘Well . . . poetry . . .’
‘Scientists can read poetry.’
‘But they never do.’ She was as resolute as if she had conducted a survey on the matter.
Dorothy put a cup of coffee in Daniel’s hands and said, ‘Tell us about Africa.’ She was determined he was not going to start interfering with Giles’s education on the very night of his arrival.
The result of her inquiry was astonishing. It was as though a wound had been opened. Daniel bled Africa. Passionately, obsessively, objectively, in turns lyrical and crisply analytical, alternately detached and partial, sometimes dramatic and often humorous, he talked about the people, the primitive life, the tribal customs, the evolving states, the new social structures, the political confusions; about the landscape, its breadth and sweep, the evenings under starlight, the blazing noondays; he told of the discomforts, the ventilation troubles in the laboratory, the supplies which failed to arrive, the irritation of having a mosquito inside the net; he spoke of the exhilaration, the freshness of life in a country where civilisation had not staled; he described the flora and fauna, the people – always he returned to the people who were a delight and an exasperation and possibly more dear to him than his own children. It had been the most terrible shock to him to be turned out of this country with which he had completely identified himself and to which he had imagined he belonged and had as much right to inhabit as anyone else. It was apparent, after the first quarter of an hour of this outflow, that Daniel had been waiting for the opportunity to unburden himself of his feelings about Africa and that all he required of his wife was that she should listen.
Erica listened. At least, she let Daniel’s wounded words flow over her and as she listened great peace descended on her: the bitter confrontation, the agonised explanations, the ugly demands, the accusations and recriminations, the more deadly request for sober assessment and reasoned discussion . . . all were to be deferred, she saw them whirled away on the gusts of Daniel’s lamentations. When at last it was possible to make comments, she dared to say casually, I must go and put the electric fire on in your room.’ He said, ‘Yes, yes . . .’ and went on talking Africa to Dorothy. When she returned, he was saying:
‘London was so grey. I hadn’t remembered it being so grey. And frantic. A city in the grip of a neurosis . . .’
‘I’d never heard that neurosis was caused by the weather,’ Dorothy said.
‘But the people! The people were grey, too. In Africa, everything is colour and . . .’
Erica said, ‘I wanted to make sure the bed was properly aired because the room hasn’t been used since Aunt Susan slept in it last Christmas.’
Daniel stopped talking. Erica’s heart missed a beat. He looked down at the carpet, his elbows on his knees, his wrists dangling limply, an expression of great sadness on his face; but whether this was occasioned by the loss of Africa, or the sudden realisation that he had been banished to the spare room, was never made clear because at that moment Emma arrived.
Erica hurried into the hall and gripped Emma by the shoulders. ‘Darling, I want you to be calm and sensible about this,’ she said breathlessly. ‘There is no need for any drama, you understand?’
‘What’s happened?’ Emma’s voice spiralled. ‘Is Daddy dead?’
‘No. He’s here.’
Emma swept past her mother into the sitting-room. She dispensed with the problem of greeting a father who was a comparative stranger by catapulting herself into his arms so that neither of them had to trouble with the awkwardness of speech. It was very affecting, and Dorothy had to admit that Daniel managed it rather better than might have been expected, responding warmly but without losing control of himself.
Conversation was not so easy. Emma sat on the floor. She separated a lock of hair and wound it round and round her forefinger as she talked.
‘How did you come? By train? That would be the seven-fifteen from Victoria, I suppose?’ Her eyes shone and she spoke in a soft, breathless voice as though the details of Daniel’s journey were uniquely fascinating. Had he arrived on a broomstick it could have had no more magical effect on his daughter. ‘They used to have a dining-car on that train, didn’t they, Mummy? But they took it off. There was quite a fuss about it—like Larry Olivier and the kippers.’
Daniel said, ‘Larry Olivier?’ and she explained.
‘I don’t think he liked kippers himself,’ Erica said. ‘It was just the principle of the thing.’
Emma tossed her hair back and carefully separated another strand for winding.
‘There was a buffet on the train,’ Daniel said. ‘I had a ham roll.’
Erica, feeling this was enough excitement, said, ‘You must be tired. I think we should all have an early night.’ She looked dubiously at Emma, anticipating argument. Emma, however, was ready to be persuaded; the strain of sustaining so much happiness was beginning to tell on her. She bade them goodnight, kissing each in turn, and they heard her singing as she went up the stairs.
‘She’s very lovely,’ Daniel said. He sounded a little apprehensive, perhaps wondering whether he could maintain life on a level with so ethereal a daughter.
‘She certainly behaved very well,’ Erica said.
Giles managed less well. His father’s homecoming was a shock to him and he showed it. He was wary, resentful, and deliberately off-hand. He went to bed at his own suggestion.
‘He is going through an awkward age,’ Erica explained. The explanation was automatic since she had been giving it ever since Giles was eight.
‘Has he been to a fancy dress party?’ Daniel asked tentatively.
‘No,’ Erica answered. When Giles first appeared in the purple suit with the pink silk cravat she had complained that he looked like something out of The Student Prince, but now she said, ‘They all dress like that.’
‘They like colour,’ Dorothy supplemented. ‘The same as the Africans.’
It was by now nearly midnight and the night hush had descended, there was a feeling of intruding on the privacy of the house when one stirred. Erica said, ‘We’ll have a nightcap.’ She went out to draw the curtains in all the downstair rooms while Dorothy poured whisky. They had consumed quite a quantity of whisky. Daniel said, as Dorothy handed him the glass, ‘It’s been a long time.’ He looked into the glass and nodded his head. ‘A long time. Didn’t she think I realised that?’ He sounded tired and perplexed, but not as though he blamed anyone for what was lacking in his homecoming. In this respect, Dorothy was reluctantly compelled to admit that he had shown some restraint if not actual dignity. He sipped the whisky and looked at the heavy velvet curtains. ‘I feel shut in. I think I’ll stretch my legs for an hour or so.’ He made it sound like a few minutes, as though he had a different time scale to other people, and Dorothy had a vision of him striding across a map of England, one foot on the Downs, the other hovering over the Black Mountains.
‘If you want a walk,’ she said, in a brisk attempt to cut him down to size, ‘you can go up to All Saints’ Church, at the far end of this road, and you will find a footpath to the side of it which leads across the fields.’
‘Thank you.’
‘But it has clouded over now and you won’t see well. So be careful you don’t turn an ankle.’
He accepted this statement with some surprise. He had come from a world in which there were few white women and none in a position to give him orders. He regarded his sister-in-law warily, much as he might examine a new species whose properties boded no good for mankind.
Chapter Four
There was a powdering of frost on the roofs of the houses in Bates Yard when Dorothy drew back the curtains. It was very still. The water in the lily pond immediately beneath her window was dark, shadowed by the wall of the house and the small statue looked gravely
down, reflecting no image. Farther away to the north, Dorothy could see fields, a few cotton-wool trees and cattle paddling in ground mist. The Downs were only a shadowy line on the horizon. It was the same view she had always seen on a misty morning; and yet it was different, not quite what it had seemed, as though it might have been playing a trick on her all these years. Why should this familiar landscape arouse these not entirely pleasant speculations? It was Daniel’s fault. Science has evolved through magic and the witch doctor. Daniel had reverted: he had bewitched everything and everyone around him.
Dorothy opened the window wider, the air had a sharp, frosty tang which she found invigorating—though goodness alone knew, she was in no need of invigoration! She leant out of the window, not to enjoy but to declaim belligerently, ‘Here are hills, valleys, fields, trees, hedgerows . . .’ Factual, all of them, factual. Scientists like facts, don’t they? Scientists are the people who know all the answers. Yet over the past week it was she and Erica who had been insisting on facts, defending them, clinging to them. Daniel was the one who was prepared to kick the facts around; he questioned everything and didn’t seem interested in answers except as an intermediate stage between two questions!
Something, a bird-dropping, a small stone, plopped into the pond, and immediately ripples fanned out. Light travels like that, in waves: light is a discontinuous phenomenon. Damn Daniel! And time? Is time discontinuous, too? Is it really linear? Erica thought it was.
‘Time is past, present and future.’ Erica found time quite straightforward; it carried one from birth to death and then switched off when it had deposited one in eternity, about which she did not know a great deal although she believed in it very firmly.
It was so strange to them all, except Emma, this world of science in which people not only see things differently but use a different language to describe what they see. Erica, in particular, was entranced.
‘I feel as though a fourth dimension has been discovered,’ she said.
‘Time is the fourth dimension,’ Emma said, and that started the discussion on time.
They had long discussions on all manner of unlikely subjects; they sat up late at night, talking about things which once they would have thought incredibly boring, such as the nature of matter. Dorothy’s fingers strayed across the solid wood of her dressing- table. Does one ever come to the end of things, is there a piece of matter so small it cannot be divided? Emma was happy and demonstrated this by shouting and table-thumping; she was particularly animated about such things as DNA and the irreversibility of the genetic code transmitting system.
‘Does it matter whether whatever-it’s-called is irreversible or not?’ Erica asked.
‘Not if you want to go back to the jungle.’
Erica thought this was silly and abusive, but she continued to be fascinated by what she insisted on calling her ‘new dimension’. She was even moved to make small experiments. Under Daniel’s guidance, she observed the behaviour of a lighted candle. Dorothy could see the two of them now; Erica wide-eyed and wondering as a child at its first performance of Aladdin, Daniel fiercely concentrating as though willing her into making some marvellous discovery which would transform her whole life.
‘There is an immediate, slightly oily smell,’ Erica said. ‘The flame is spearlike and blue just round the wick . . . now it is becoming brighter, but opaque, although there is a central area which is not opaque – incidentally, the smell has gone now. The flame is lengthening and the candle is warm at the top, still cold most of the way down . . . There is a hollow forming which is holding the liquid wax . . .’
Dorothy watched some of the liquid wax dripping on to the morning-room table and reflected that this was all very painful. Looking back on the scene now, she found it even more painful. There was a childish ingenuousness about it, but they were not children. What did they think they were doing? Erica was accepting a diversion; anything which diverted her from the main problem posed by Daniel’s return would be welcome. But how long did she think she could get away with this? And Daniel? The evangelical fervour with which he spread the scientific message seemed sometimes to have a hint of desperation about it; as though, being dispossessed of Africa, he now clung to science as to a raft. But the raft was not enough, he wanted company in his fight for survival, so he tried to haul Erica aboard. ‘This is something we can share together,’ he seemed to be saying. Was he trying to recapture something, to salvage a marriage which had foundered years ago? There had been a moment, looking at them, their faces intent above the candle’s flame, when Dorothy had understood what had been the initial attraction for each of them, Daniel so zealous, Erica so willing to be impressed. Dorothy moved away from the window. She said aloud, ‘It won’t work.’ She put on her dressing-gown and went down the corridor to the bathroom. ‘It may have worked so far,’ she said, as she ran the water, ‘but it won’t last.’ She was uneasily aware of sourness in this reflection, the resentment of the person who has so far been disappointed in her worst forebodings.
Daniel was a strong personality, there was no denying that. In spite of his rather clownish angularity, there was about him a sense of having arrived somewhere, of knowing what was in his shell, of how to make use of the various bits and pieces with which he had been equipped, to assemble them into a formidable whole. He had made quite an impact. Already, he had broken the close circuit of their lives. They looked at one another each morning at breakfast and congratulated themselves on being rather exciting people who had embarked on an adventure outing. Even Giles, who had originally announced his intention of having nothing to do with his father, participated with vehemence if not verve. ‘But it won’t last,’ Dorothy repeated grimly as she soaped herself. ‘We are what we are.’ Or, at least, she supposed this was true: it no longer seemed quite so easy to make definite statements of this kind.
When she went down to breakfast half an hour later, she discovered Erica polishing the morning-room table.
‘That candle wax has left the most awful marks,’ Erica complained.
‘That will teach you to dabble in science.’
‘It’s worth a bit of elbow grease,’ Erica said cheerfully. ‘I find it so uplifting.’
‘What has uplifted you particularly?’
‘There was our talk about religion last night.’
‘But Daniel is an atheist.’
‘He thinks he is, but he’s not really. You only have to listen to him to realise that.’
Daniel had a reverence for life which Erica had no difficulty in transforming into reverence of the kind with which she was more familiar. However much Daniel might talk about the need to experiment and analyse, Erica saw scientific discovery as the result of divine intervention; God making himself known in the cathode and the test tube.
‘But he did say that the scientist was unable to discover any evidence of an influence at work outside the system,’ Dorothy reminded her, quoting, ‘ “whether it be the cell, the atom, homo sapiens, or the cosmos”.’
‘But he wasn’t being cynical,’ Erica pointed out. ‘He spoke very responsibly.’ In her view, all responsible people were religious. She made one last assault on the table and said, ‘ “Seek and ye shall find”.’ She was deeply moved at the thought that the scientist had at last come out of his little glass laboratory to study the mystery, rather than the origin, of life, and she was convinced that he would eventually provide irrefutable proof of the existence of God and Life Eternal. She stood back, pushing a hand across her damp forehead. Sometimes lately she had felt a bit worn down. The children criticised everything and the news was always bad; life didn’t live up to what one had expected of it. There were uneasy moments. It was a great comfort to her to know that the scientists were on their way, marching to the rescue with banners flying.
Dorothy said, ‘I’ll do the toast. I suppose Mother will have breakfast with us?’
‘She has every day so far.’
‘I don’t know what’s come over us all,’ Dorothy sa
id, as she sliced bread. Alone of the occupants of the house, she had not come under Daniel’s influence and saw little in him to admire. She regarded him as a crude, naïve creature, totally unaware of the nature of the society which he had invaded; he would become tangled in its complex web, and when he realised what was happening to him, his only recourse would be to hack his way out. ‘And Heaven help us then!’
Breakfast passed without the need for help of any kind. Everyone was present; it was a long time since the family had so regularly sat down together for breakfast. Daniel had been up since six, walking round the town. He had been ceaselessly energetic since he arrived and had walked round the town at all hours as though there was some treasure it might yield up if taken by surprise.