by MARY HOCKING
Isobel called from the landing, ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘You’ve been in there such a long time.’
‘I don’t want to be stiff after all this unaccustomed exercise.’
‘As long as you haven’t got the water too hot.’
He turned on the hot tap and she went away, apparently satisfied by the sound of running water.
He relaxed again and thought about Phoebe. In her presence one must never relax. Casual conversation was impossible, one had to choose one’s words with care because she took every remark, however trivial, personally; whether the subject was the cold autumn, the food in the canteen, or the state of the nation, Phoebe contrived to relate it to herself. After Madge Conroy had commented on Sir Keith Joseph’s speech exhorting the nation to look to its moral fibre, Phoebe murmured, ‘I’m afraid Miss Conroy thinks I am rather amoral.’ When Tom said that the canteen food was completely lacking in imagination, she said, ‘Yes, I’m afraid I’m very unenterprising. Living alone, one gets like that.’ In spite of her humility, she saw herself at the centre of everything.
‘Your world,’ Tom told her, ‘is a very small place and there is only you in it.’
‘How marvellously you put things,’ she answered admiringly. ‘I could never think up a remark like that, however hard I tried.’
‘You underestimate yourself to such an extent I suspect you must enjoy it.’
‘Yes, you’re right. All my pleasures are warped.’
She was adept at giving a final twist to his more scathing remarks, as though rewarding a promising pupil. Since his conversations with her he was becoming more abrasive in his dealings with his fellow officers; when he went to committee meetings he amused himself by imagining the comments she would have passed had she been at his elbow, and sometimes he spoke these comments out loud to startling effect. In the evenings, and at week-ends, he invented conversations with her. But he could not make her speak convincingly. Perhaps. . . .
‘Tom, you have run off every bit of hot water! Did you know that?’
‘I’m getting out now.’ He was not sure whether Isobel had gone away or whether she was still in the corridor, and so, reluctantly, he got out of the bath. He was rather shaky and had to sit on the bath stool while he was drying himself.
After supper, he felt trapped in the sitting-room with the drawn curtains shutting out the night, and he said that he must go out to post a letter.
‘The post will have gone by now,’ Isobel said.
‘I’d better do it while I remember.’
When he returned, he could not settle to anything and made excuses to go from one room to another. Isobel said he was like a cat on hot bricks. The only place which held him for any length of time was the landing. This was a big, square area large enough to have formed another room on one side, a corridor led off it to the main bedrooms and bathroom, and on the other side, a narrower corridor led to what had once been the servants’ quarters. When they first moved to the house Isobel’s mother had been alive and she had occupied the servants’ quarters. It was unnecessary for them to live in such a large house now. He thought about this as he stood on the landing. There was an impressive oak chest, beautifully carved, on which Isobel had placed an arrangement of chrysanthemums, the first of the winter flowers; the chest was flanked by two high-backed oak chairs which they had picked up in a sale before prices of second-hand furniture soared. A small fireplace in one corner added to the impression of a place which expects to be used. He could imagine that people might have congregated here in previous centuries, talking and drinking. Now it was just an empty space which was difficult to heat. It was also rather dark, the only window being of stained glass. There were two wall lamps fixed where the gas brackets had once been; Isobel had wanted a big central light but he had resisted this. He sat on the edge of the oak chest and looked around at the chairs, the stained glass window, the side lamps, the dark corridors; he had the feeling that there were more people about tonight. Several of the rooms were unused now, so they couldn’t complain if other people took them over, and so far they had kept themselves to themselves; but sometimes, in the way that a wispy line will trail across the eye, one might glimpse a shadow flitting across the corridor. None of them ventured out here: the landing was the centre of the house, whoever held the landing was in command. Was that fantastic? Why should it be? ‘Life is a macabre affair,’ Phoebe had said.
Isobel called from the foot of the stairs, ‘Is that radiator warm?’
‘I’m not near the radiator.’
She came up the stairs, one hand on the banister rail, looking up at him uncertainly. She is following me about, he thought; anyone would think there was another woman up here. Isobel went over to the radiator and placed one hand on it; while she took its temperature she smiled at Tom in the uneasy way that people smile when they are doing something silly but can’t help themselves.
‘Why are you standing up here?’ she asked.
‘Can’t I stand up here if I want to?’
‘It seems an odd place to stand.’
‘I rather like it.’
‘It’s more than I do. I hate those dark corridors.’ She bent down to make sure that the tap at the side of the radiator was turned on. ‘The heat’s not coming through.’
‘I’ll see to it later.’
‘I’d like it on before we go to bed, please Tom.’ She was very anxious. ‘This landing is so much at the heart of the house, if it’s not warm nothing else will be; we might as well turn the central heating off.’
‘If we have a very bad winter, we probably shan’t have central heating anyway. We shall have to collect our own kindling, like Good King Wenceslas.’
‘Let’s not meet trouble half-way.’
‘I think that may be the best way to meet trouble.’
She gave her vague, preoccupied smile and went to the head of the stairs where she waited for him to come down with her as though she thought he might get up to mischief if left on his own.
On Sunday she wanted him to come to church with her.
‘I don’t often ask this of you,’ she said.
He could hardly quarrel with this statement since he could not remember her ever having made an issue of churchgoing before; but he might reasonably have asked why there should be any urgency now, except that he could think of several good answers to that question, not one of which he wanted to hear. He had had three affairs over the years since he married Isobel, but they had not seemed to impinge on his relationship with her and he had never felt very guilty about them. Yet now, whenever she interrupted his thoughts about Phoebe, he felt as guilty as if he was a secret drinker and she had caught him with the bottle to his lips; he was by turns angry and effusive.
He agreed to accompany her to church with what he thought was a good grace, and she rewarded him with one of her more meditative looks.
‘Now what’s wrong with that?’ he demanded.
‘With what?’
‘I say “yes”, to oblige you, and you give me a look as if you think it’s the church plate I’m after.’
‘You had better put on your overcoat. The heating hasn’t been very good these last few weeks.’
‘You have an obsession about the cold.’
They arrived at the church early and Isobel knelt for so long that Tom wondered what it was that so exercised her spirit: he could only assume it was himself. The thought of her having a long dialogue with God about him while he sat by was intensely irritating. It was insufferable that people should pray for each other. He thought of all Isobel’s failings which he might have reported to God had he been uncharitably disposed.
During the brief sermon he counted the votive candles from left to right and from right to left; for some reason the numbers wouldn’t tally and he began to worry about his poor co-ordination. When the time came he went to the communion rail because he thought that if he refused he might seem to be making a gesture which Iso
bel would interpret in her own way. Afterwards, it occurred to him that he had made a gesture anyway, and he was not happy about that.
One way and another it was a bad week-end and he was glad when Monday came.
The pressure of work increased week by week because, as well as having to contend with the impending reorganisation of local government, he was the officer primarily concerned with the reorganisation of secondary education. He had been in the habit of taking work home with him; but lately he had decided that it was more sensible to stay at the office, since this meant that he had all the files he required at his disposal and those not immediately to hand could be found by Phoebe Huber.
On Monday evening Norma Rossiter, who had been attending a committee meeting, saw the light in his room and came in to talk to him. She ignored Phoebe, but the next day at a meeting of section heads, she said loudly, ‘A word in your ear, Tom. Don’t keep the Huber female working late. She’ll give you the impression she is revelling in it while behind your back she is touting for sympathy from all and sundry because you are a slave driver.’
‘I don’t keep her late. The choice is hers.’
‘My dear man, don’t give her a choice!’ Norma took him up sharply. Usually she did not pursue this kind of discussion because she was not sufficiently interested in other people to be very observant about them: Phoebe Huber, however, had driven her to observation. ‘She’s the kind who collects her own faggots and puts a match to them.’
Her remarks found little favour with the men in the room, all of whom would have sided with submissive Phoebe Huber in any dispute she might have had with the bullying Norma Rossiter.
‘Let’s face it, old man,’ Phillimore said afterwards to Tom. ‘Women don’t know how to exercise authority. It was the same thing during the war, the Waaf officers. . . .’
That evening, in order to demonstrate how easily he carried his authority over this particular member of his staff, Tom said to Phoebe, ‘You don’t have to work late, you know.’ He was sorting through some notes which he intended to dictate to her when she had indicated her willingness to stay, and it came as a surprise when he eventually looked up to see that she was putting on her coat. She left the room without a backward glance.
When they met in the urinals the following day, Edgar Holmes said to Tom, ‘Miss Huber came to see me this morning. She is most upset because she is afraid you are not pleased with her work. Apparently you dismissed her rather abruptly yesterday evening.’
‘Am I supposed to think about that little bitch’s feelings every moment of the day?’ Tom retorted angrily.
‘No, no, of course not; I know how busy you are. But be patient with her, there’s a good chap. I’d be at my wits’ end if you refused to have her.’
‘You could always have her yourself, since she chooses to come running to you with her imaginary grievances,’ Tom said as they walked down the corridor together.
‘I couldn’t have her,’ Holmes pointed out. ‘I’ve got Miss Merredew in with me.’ Miss Merredew was a sallow dishevelled woman with a fearsome temper who, had she not touched some spark of compassion in Holmes, would certainly have been put on indefinite sick leave. She was one of a long series of unfortunate women whom Holmes had befriended and from whom he seemed to derive a satisfaction which was necessary to him.
‘Well, don’t encourage Phoebe Huber to come to you with tales,’ Tom said grimly. ‘Or you may end up with her and Miss Merredew in your room.’
He decided that the most dignified way of dealing with the episode would be to avoid any mention of it and to convey his disapproval by adopting a cool, reserved attitude to Phoebe Huber. In the event, he behaved like a petulant schoolboy for the rest of the day.
He was working on a report on the introduction of sixth form colleges when the doors along the corridor slammed, footsteps hurried past his room, someone called out ‘Quick! The lift’s coming.’ Marsden had said only the other day that things had changed since he was a junior clerk. ‘Now, at five o’clock the place clears as quickly as if there was a bomb alert.’ Phoebe, at least was in no hurry; she was tidying the papers on her table by the window for perhaps the fourth time. Tom reached for the minutes of the joint consultative committee and began to read them, occasionally making pencil notes of no great significance in the margin. Phoebe opened one of the drawers in the table and drew out a bunch of keys which she examined for some minutes, apparently having difficulty in selecting the one she required; eventually she went to the filing cabinet and pulled out one drawer for no better reason, it seemed, than to ensure that its contents were undisturbed. She walked back to the table and jingled the keys a bit more before putting them away in the drawer. After that there was silence for what seemed an appreciable time. Then her chair scraped back and a shadow fell across Tom’s desk. He looked up.
‘Would coffee be an idea?’ she asked shyly.
‘You mean you are prepared to rifle the general office store?’
‘I brought some, in a thermos.’
‘Black, I trust.’
‘Of course. And I brought sugar lumps, too.’ She smiled, but tentatively, as if he was a doubtful-tempered horse whose reaction even to something as tempting as sugar lumps should not be taken for granted.
‘That would be very acceptable.’ He had a headache, so it seemed sensible to be gracious.
She disappeared in search of cups; it seemed that clean ones were not to hand, for after a time he heard the rattle of crockery as she walked down the corridor. The Women’s cloakroom was at the other end of this wing of the building, on the second floor, so she would be gone for a few minutes. He felt rather uneasy about this. It was quiet now; the heating had been switched off and the room was chilling rapidly. He was already feeling cold and this made him reluctant to move, so he sat gazing moodily at the switch to the electric fire which was on the opposite wall. The great empty shell of a building disquieted him. Houses, when the owners are out, still retain the feeling of human occupation; but sitting here it was as if the people who worked in this building were only a figment of his imagination and had gone away to some place from which he would never be able to assemble them again tomorrow. And if he could not put them together again tomorrow it would be no use anyone talking to him about reality.
He picked up his pen and tried to concentrate on writing the report on sixth-form colleges. The County Council had been considering the reorganisation of secondary education for years, putting forward first one scheme, then another, according to the politics of the party in power. The process would never stop. He would be sitting here in this hollow building for the rest of his life writing about the reorganisation of secondary education. There was a curse on him. It had been put on him so long ago that he could not remember what it was he had to do to release himself. He picked up his pen and wrote ‘Once upon a time. . . .’
Phoebe came in and switched on the electric fire. He said, ‘I’ll dictate this. It will be quicker.’ He could hardly wait for her to pour coffee and settle herself with notebook, and pencil.
‘Once upon a time,’ he said, ‘there was a County Council which had forty secondary schools to care about, and of those forty schools, thirty were “modern” and ten were “grammar”. And as we all know, just as money tends to go where there is money, so it is with gifts; and the gifted children went to “grammar” schools which gave them every opportunity to increase their gifts. The other children, and there were many of them, seventy-five per cent of each age group, went to “modernland” which is a dark, hopeless place where the outcasts of the educational system go.
‘And then, a miracle happened. A Council was elected which had a vision. The members of this Council cared about the many children who languished in modernland, and it saw how to rescue them. It didn’t have a wand to wave, but it worked its miracle by the use of one magic word—for words are very important and have always opened doors. This word was “comprehensive”. Members of the Council held great public meetings at w
hich they breathed this word to parents who received it joyfully (except for the grammar school parents who were not joyful people). Members told parents that “comprehensive” meant that all the good things would be shared out equally and no child would be left out; beautiful new buildings would arise and the dark, ugly buildings would be swept away. But the Department of Education and Science, while it cried “Alleluia!” to the sharing, was very sad because it could not make any money available for the beautiful new buildings. And as beautiful buildings require money, as well as words, the sharing would have to take place very, very slowly.
‘Then, at a time when only the bad things had been shared out, there were held local elections. And behold, a new Council was elected. Now this Council was very far-seeing, and it saw that the comprehensive miracle was a black miracle which would spawn a monstrous King Kong of a building rising from a concrete jungle and crushing all who came in its embrace. Of course, the new Council knew that it must prevent this fearsome thing from happening. But in order to do this, it must find a magic formula of its own; and it had to think very carefully about this because it was a wise Council and it knew that good magic can never be hurried and that any sudden change is bad for children. There never was a time when people cared so much about children.