by MARY HOCKING
Mary Hocking
THE MIND HAS
MOUNTAINS
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
To Norah
Oh the mind, mind has mountains;
cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed.
Hold them cheap
May who ne’er hung there.
Chapter One
There was a mist over the hills on this autumn evening. The hills to the west were bare and usually had a good, strong outline, like the haunches of a satisfied beast stretched above the valley. The nearer hills had been developed as an afforestation estate and the trees were planted in the straight lines so essential to the official mind. On a clear day the forest looked as though a steel comb had been raked through the trees; but this evening the mist had drawn the trees close together and the forest looked impenetrable.
The village lay in the valley between the hills. Two miles away the main road provided what, for most people, was the boundary of civilisation. The winding lane which led to the village was narrow enough to daunt sightseers who doubted whether there would be adequate turning space. There was justification for this pessimism, for the lane, having grudgingly served its purpose as a lifeline, stopped abruptly just short of the church. Beyond the church a few tracks climbed the hills and a rather better-defined path led down to the river.
Although it was only late September there was a rasp in the air this evening that was not entirely due to woodsmoke rising from a bonfire. Tom Norris, who had intended to go for a walk by the river, turned back at the end of the village street. There were only a few cottages in the street, most of the larger houses stood farther back at the end of cart tracks which their owners, who were not hospitable folk, had made no attempt to surface. There was no one about in the street. The bus service had been cut off several years ago and since then the village had reverted to the isolation it had known most of the years since Domesday. But now the villagers had television to keep them in touch with the outside world. Tom could see the weird blue light flickering in one or two front parlours as he walked towards his own house which was the largest house fronting the street and had once been the rectory.
He did not go in at the front door because he had forgotten his key and did not want to annoy his wife, Isobel, still further by bringing her out of the kitchen where she was baking cakes for one of the many functions she helped to organise. He walked down the side of the house. There were two large lawns, one at the side of the house and one at the back. The area to the side was his garden. Isobel’s garden was well-cared for, but his had given way to the pressure of nature and was almost beyond reclamation. Isobel said that the roots of the trees would get in the drains. When he said, ‘I expect there were trees up against the house when it was built,’ she retorted, ‘But there weren’t any drains then.’
Tom went into the scullery and spent some time scraping mud off his boots; not that Isobel fussed about this sort of thing, she was a country woman and a keen gardener.
When he came into the kitchen she had her hands in a bowl of flour and said, without turning her head, ‘You didn’t go far.’
‘Just to the end of the street. There’s quite a nip in the air.’
‘They say the wolf is back.’
He remained in the doorway, not facing her. ‘Is this the right kind of terrain?’
‘Right kind of terrain, what do you mean?’ Her hands were busy with the flour, working it into a dough. ‘A wolf doesn’t need a particular terrain, does it? What do you know about the wolf? You just say that kind of thing to evade anything unpleasant.’
‘I just wondered . . .’
‘There isn’t any point in wondering. It’s happened. We have the wolf in residence again. Can’t you accept that?’
‘In Northumberland, perhaps. Not here in Sussex.’
‘It won’t be long. It’s getting colder. You said yourself you couldn’t remember autumn setting in so early before.’
He stood looking at her back, watching her elbows moving and the pressure of her hands on the roller, light but firm, very sure of their purpose. Suddenly, she turned to him. ‘Tom! What are you doing standing there all this time! You make me nervous.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He went into the sitting-room and turned on the television. It worried him, this talk of the wolf. Later that night, lying awake in bed looking at the blurred moon through the window pane, he couldn’t recall which of them had first mentioned the wolf. He could not even be sure that the conversation had actually taken place.
Chapter Two
It was certainly a cold autumn. The next day there was a fine powdering of frost on the grass slopes around South Sussex County Hall; and that was almost unheard of, for County Hall was about as far south as one could get in Sussex. It was built on a headland and had fine views looking out to sea. The staff did not like it because it was situated midway between Brampton and Squires Bay and the women could not get any shopping done in the lunch hour and the men couldn’t get a beer. But it had the advantage of being too inaccessible to attract people with small grievances; only the really dedicated neurotics made the journey to County Hall to present in person the results of their investigation of traffic noise on the Brampton relief road, or to complain that Shaun’s teacher wouldn’t let him go to the lavatory except at break periods.
Inaccessibility, however, was its eventual downfall. The geographical county of Sussex was divided into three administrative counties. East, West, and South, and it was generally acknowledged that this was one administrative area too many. The Southern Counties Commission, whose function it was to recommend what changes were necessary to improve the local government structure in the South of England, had little difficulty in deciding that the administrative area which could be eliminated with the least fuss and bother was South Sussex. Events fully justified this decision. There were few members of the public prepared to fight for the retention of South Sussex County Council; even although the alternative now offered would provide them with County Halls even more remote, these were situated in towns, and at Chichester and Lewes one could at least have a cup of coffee to pass the time until the bus was due. In winter the gales almost swept one over the cliff at the bus stop outside South Sussex County Hall. The staff said they lost some of their most awkward customers that way. Such witticisms repeated by loving relatives had not endeared the officers to the people whom they served, and it was now too late to represent themselves as hard-working men and women destined for the scrap heap after years of devoted service to the people of South Sussex.
Many of them, of course, had worked hard and honestly, and had a record as honourable as that of many factory and shipyard workers whose redundancy would have been the subject of public outcry. But it is generally agreed that officials do not feel or suffer as other men. So no one gave much thought to what effect it had on staff to work for years in an authority which is a long time a-dying, and where no one is at any pains to let them know what their future will be, or whether indeed they have a future.
The future of the buildings was also uncertain, even at this late stage. Various suggestions had been made, including adaptation as an open prison or a teachers’ training college; but neither the Department of Education and Science nor the Home Office showed any enthusiasm at the prospect of taking over a vast Victorian Gothic struct
ure with a formidable maze of draughty corridors in which junior clerks had lost themselves for hours on end and prisoners and student teachers might be expected to disappear for ever. There had even been talk of pulling the buildings down; but while local government officers might be expendable, strong forces could be summoned to defend so notable a piece of Victoriana. It seemed safe to assume, therefore, that the buildings would remain until they were claimed by the even stronger forces of wind and sea which tirelessly gnawed away at the chalk cliffs and had made considerable gains along this stretch of coast during the last ten years.
The buildings were well-maintained and presented a confident, if rather forbidding, aspect; it seemed impossible as one walked across the forecourt, vast as a parade ground, to imagine that anything could ever change here.
Inside the main door, on this particular morning, the hall porter was standing by the lift shaft presiding over the usual early morning controversy.
‘Why is it that there are always three lifts in service in the middle of the morning when no one needs them, but only one first thing in the morning?’
‘Overcrowded, sir. People will push in, and then . . .’
‘But if you had all three lifts working, there wouldn’t be any need for people to push.’
‘One has broken down and one’s out of service for maintenance. Must have them maintained, sir.’
‘It doesn’t seem to make much difference, does it? They break down just the same.’
‘They’re old, sir.’
‘Well, I still don’t see why they can’t have their maintenance check in the middle of the morning. . . .’
At this point the surviving lift came haltingly down and there was a surge forward; the lift, however, proceeded down to the basement and the hall porter, who foresaw more unpleasantness than he had stomach for, retired to his cubby hole.
The people who crowded into the lift when it appeared again were bound for the fourth floor and upwards; the lift did not stop at lower floors when there was only one lift in service. The second floor workers had already made their way up the winding stairs. The third floor workers, having farther to go, conserved their energies and took the steps slowly, fulminating against the liftmen or the County Council according to their political persuasion. A little pale sunlight shafted through the well windows without doing much to disperse an air of gloom which the interior of the building possessed. The County Architect had insisted that the paintwork should be battleship grey throughout because this was the only way to give an impression of light and air; but it wasn’t a light and airy building and two coats of battleship grey had done nothing to change that.
The doors leading off the stairwell to the main floors had glass panels at the top through which one glimpsed long corridors bare of adornment save for the occasional noticeboard or fire extinguisher; the doors leading off these corridors were closed and although clerestory windows had been provided very little light penetrated since the occupants of the rooms had found it necessary to pile box files against the glass. The impression gained, at this level, was of an organisation dedicated to carry out its work with the discipline and stark sense of order normally only to be found in the more austere monastic communities. But when, on this particular morning, the doors leading to the third floor corridor were pushed back by the first batch of stair-climbers, one seemed to enter a nightmare world in which starkness had surely led to madness. Ranged against the skirting board were drawers which had been removed from filing cabinets; sacks filled with torn paper; piles of yellow-covered reports bearing such titles as County Council Budget 1960-1961, Report of Chief Education Officer, 1959; a tumbling heap of red, hardback books with Religious Syllabus in gold-lettering on their faded spines; and, standing on end, leaning against the skirting-board, like tombstones in the educational graveyard, copies of the Growther Report, the Newsom Report, the Plowden Report, and, yellow with age, the Hadow Report. Not one member of the staff who entered the corridor paid any attention to these items, but threaded a way between or over them as though the surmounting of physical obstacles, no less than administrative ones, was a normal part of the local government officer’s life. Doors were opened, revealing sometimes a similar chaos beyond and sometimes bland good order. By the time the last of the stair- climbers had come into the corridor, one or two women had appeared wearing overalls and had seated themselves cross-legged by one heap or another, like beggars taking up their station for the day. One such creature spoke to a man as he hurried unheeding by:
‘Do you think we need keep all these copies of the nineteen- forty-five Development Plan, Mr. Spiers?’
‘No comment,’ Mr. Spiers sang his reply, ‘We are just good friends.’ He waltzed into a room further down the corridor and shut the door. His questioner said, ‘Bugger you, then!’ and began slowly to tear a blue-covered document in half with so much relish one might then have expected her to eat the pieces.
A second lift was back in service by the time Tom Norris arrived.
‘Aren’t you the lucky one!’ the Development-Plan tearer said as he passed her.
‘My car wouldn’t start.’
‘Neither would the lifts.’
He said, ‘Ah well, the last shall be first . . .’ and stepped round her to a door bearing a plaque which read, T. Norris, Assistant Education Officer, Schools.
His desk was as cluttered as the floor of the corridor, but there was evidence that someone of a determined character had endeavoured to impose order on chaos by arranging the papers and files in piles, some neat, some precarious. Norris sat down and looked at the pile immediately in front of him. A note attached to the top file said, ‘Here are the papers for the meeting of Heads of Primary Schools. Don’t forget to tell them they must get through all three eleven-plus papers before half-term, will you? Otherwise the Selection Panel won’t have finished by “D” day!’ Norris closed his eyes. After a time he put his elbows on the desk and his hands in front of his face; thus shielded, he peeped between his fingers at the desk, looking first to one side then to the other. To his left was a bundle of letters and memoranda which had arrived in the morning’s post and which, since they had found their way to his desk, probably raised matters of policy, or were more than usually abusive. To his right was a larger pile with a note in red on top, ‘I found these in your pending file!!’ Farther out, on the periphery, he could see a stack of minutes and reports of various committees, each of which was marked with flags bearing notes in red in the same resolute hand. Norris took his hands away from his face and swivelled his chair so that he was facing away from the desk towards the window.
His room had a north aspect and looked out over the Downs. Wars had been waged over who should have the rooms facing the sea; even the status of chairmen of committees was affected by this issue and the chairman of the schools sub-committee always grumbled to Norris about how cold the room was, hoping to spur him on to put up a more determined fight. The chairman found it annoying that while Norris was not resolute enough to get himself a south-facing room, he was not weak enough to be dominated by his chairman. ‘I don’t know if he even listens to me half the time,’ he had complained. ‘Don’t know what to make of the man.’ Norris had a long, thin, lantern-jawed face in which sadness and naïveté, wisdom and wry foolishness, combined to produce a quizzical pensiveness which appealed to women. He seemed one of those gentle, amusing men who stand perpetually on the fringe of life, waiting for the show to begin. But he was forty-five, and to wait so long without being pushed willy-nilly into the arena is a feat demanding some little power of resistance, and there was at this moment a complicity of eye and mouth which could have denoted obstinacy or selfishness. As he looked out of the window he was wishing he had exerted himself to get a south-facing room. But, until recently, he had liked the view and had found it quite credible that the psalmist should raise his eyes to the hills in hope. He twisted his head to one side, trying to view the hills from a different angle. He had the impression they had
moved even nearer. Perhaps it wasn’t so fantastic; after all, if the sea could make inroads. . . .
When Madge Conroy, his senior administrative assistant, came into the room and saw him gazing at the hills, it was of his work as a children’s writer that she thought. ‘Trying to dream up a Watership Down?’ she asked sympathetically. ‘Well, why don’t you? It would be better than transferring to East Sussex, wouldn’t it?’ She was a staunch, stocky woman who played hockey for the County. In her view, only a little application was required to score a goal, and she assumed that the same held good for the writing of a best seller.
‘Alternatively, I could become a hippie,’ he said.
She studied him, narrowing her eyes as though trying to visualise this prospect. He was clean-shaven and wore his straight, yellowish hair short of scarecrow-length. Nothing of the hippie in his appearance, she decided. But as well as being a children’s writer he was a poet, and poets are notoriously unstable. The only objection she could offer with confidence was, ‘You’re too fastidious. They don’t wash.’
‘They tell me you soon get to like your own odour.’
‘Really? Well, before things get too rank around here. . . .’ She faced him as though taking up an attacking position before goal. He reached defensively for a pencil.
‘Now, the selection procedure! When are we going to have talks with East and West Sussex? They’ll be taking over half-way through the allocation procedure. Has that really got through to them? They do realise we still have the eleven-plus, I suppose? . . .’ Her voice faded out and then came back loudly; it was as though there was a faulty valve somewhere in his head. ‘. . . boarding school parents want to know what the position is going to be about their grants. Will the new authorities honour our awards? What happens. . . . Heads are getting desperate about the Supplies Department; they hated it when it was set up, but now they can’t think how they are going to survive without it. And they’re just as worried about the Visual Aids Centre because. . . .’ The audio aid in his head wasn’t working again. ‘. . . At last, they’ve sent us forms to fill in stating where we want to work. I don’t suppose you’ve had one because you’re destined for higher things. But the trouble is—and when I say trouble, that gives you no idea of the gloom and despondency that has been caused by this one little form. . . . If we put down “area office” as our first preference, does that spoil our chances . . . only be a few posts at area office level . . . what happens if we have to go to County Hall and it’s only our second choice. . . .’