by MARY HOCKING
‘Quite honestly, old man, I think you could have done what he asked. A damn nuisance, I grant you that; but a local government officer is first and foremost the servant of his committee.’
‘That’s blasphemous.’
‘I think you have things a little out of proportion.’
‘Long live disproportion!’
Members were now in the corridor, fumbling along the walls, making their way to the main staircase. Phillimore said uneasily, ‘It’s black as pitch.’
‘I thought fighter pilots could see in the dark.’
‘This is serious. They’ll go down those stairs like a lot of lemmings. If someone has an accident you may be had up for manslaughter.’
‘Only if it’s fatal.’
There was a noise immediately above them, and quite suddenly they realised that a break-away group had made its way to the back stairs. For a moment a match flickered and then went out. A voice said disconsolately, ‘Last one.’
On the landing below there was a window facing the well of the building. It did not give much light, but it would be risky to pass in front of it. They hunched against the wall. Above them, the Chairman said as he began the slow descent, ‘This country is grinding to a halt.’
The County Treasurer’s representative sang, ‘ “Change and decay in all around I see. . . .” Woops!’ He lost his balance and clutched the banister rail.
‘. . . sour milk three days running,’ the Vice-Chairman said, ‘and now it’s the dustmen. . . .’
‘ “Oh, thou who changest not, abide with me.” They sang that when the Titanic went down.’
‘They sang “Nearer my God to thee” when the Titanic went down,’ Hillman said querulously.
‘Oh well, same difference.’ The County Treasurer’s representative crouched down close to Phillimore; he flicked at a lighter and eventually managed to produce a weak flame which Phillimore immediately blew out. This depressed the County Treasurer’s representative. ‘I haven’t been too good lately,’ he confided as he shuffled forward, feeling for the next step. ‘I get these dancing lights in front of my eyes. . . .’
‘Abortion, homosexuality, licentiousness. . . .’ Hillman enumerated the symptoms of decline for the benefit of the Chairman.
‘. . . and a tingling in my finger tips. . . .’
‘Worse than that,’ the Chairman said grimly. ‘You wouldn’t credit some of the cases that come before the bench from the farming community.’
‘. . . friends’ house, they had blue water in the lavatory. Gave me a dreadful turn. . . .’ The County Treasurer’s representative put his hand across Norris’ mouth.
‘Losing its moral fibre. . . .’
‘Rubbish everywhere!’ The Vice-Chairman kicked Phillimore’s hand out of the way. ‘Mounds of it, more and more each week. . . .’
The Chairman missed his footing and stumbled down three steps. ‘Lack of discipline, no sense of responsibility,’ he said sharply.
Norris whispered to Phillimore, ‘The Battle of Jutland must have been just like this.’
‘ “Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene: one step enough for me. . . .” ’
The voices grew fainter.
‘Whether we haven’t lost the will. . . .’
‘ “Ye have plowed wickness, ye have reaped iniquity.” ’
‘Do you know, something BIT me up there!’
‘Typhoid outbreak. . . .’
Phillimore said to Norris, ‘Did you bite him?’
‘Just a friendly nip.’
The building had become quiet. Phillimore got cautiously to his feet. ‘Someone is bound to telephone the electricity board. We must switch on before anyone arrives to investigate.’
They edged their way slowly down the stairs. Norris said, ‘I couldn’t have done what Hillman asked.’ He no longer sounded so sure of himself. ‘I haven’t that much time to spare. But one can’t reason with Hillman. Can’t you understand that? Once you are pushed beyond reason, this is the only thing to do.’
By the time they reached the basement where the switch room was located he had become exhausted and it was Phillimore who actually switched on the electricity, winding a handkerchief round his hand before touching the lever, and feeling like a member of a resistance movement.
Norris blinked in the light and looked at the sacks of confidential waste piled high on all sides, waiting to be incinerated. He said despairingly, ‘This can’t be all there is to life. There has to be something else.’
Phillimore wiped the handle of the switch room door. He had always suspected the resistance movements of being anarchical and he felt profoundly uncomfortable.
Norris said, ‘If there isn’t anything else, I think I’d as soon be mad, wouldn’t you?’
Phillimore said, ‘In my view, old man, you are mad.’
Chapter Nine
Tom had been going slowly round himself for some time. This morning he saw himself as a hump on the ground which was being circled by a wild animal who was trying to find a way in to the hump. He wanted at one and the same time to find a way in for the creature and to keep it at bay. The desires balanced each other and the hump lay still as death, waiting for the contest to be resolved.
It was the woman who held the pass. She was out in the corridor now. The door was open and he could hear her talking to another woman about the marking of the independent schools’ test papers which was carried out in the Schools Section. Tom hoped she would not allow herself to be decoyed away; he could not manage without her standing guard.
He listened to the two women.
‘Please let me give you a few examples.’ It was wonderful the intensity with which Phoebe could invest the most trivial discussion; now it was as if a life depended on the correct marking of test papers, an error in which might consign a child to outer darkness. ‘In the Verbal Reasoning test, there is this question in which two words in a sentence have to be repositioned in order to make sense of it. If you follow me?’
‘I follow you.’ Madge Conroy, mundanely concerned with her own work load, was barely civil.
‘The sentence is “There are difficult many too questions”; and the right answer is “There are too many difficult questions.” But I’ve got one answer that reads, “There are questions many too difficult.” Now that seems much more imaginative to me, it has the rhythm of poetry and . . .’
‘Mark it wrong,’ Madge Conroy snapped. ‘Anything else?’
‘Yes, quite a lot. You did tell me I had to be very careful when you gave me the papers to mark.’ The nerves twanged as Phoebe maintained a delicate balance between distress and determination. ‘There is this question where there is one set of words—“morning, bird, early” and another set—“moon, dark, late” and two words have to be underlined, one from each set, which are opposites in meaning. Now, I have “early” and “late” as the answer.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘But one boy has put “morning” and “dark” and there’s nothing wrong with that, is there?’
‘They’re not exact opposites,’ Madge Conroy said tersely. ‘ “Light” and “dark”; “morning” and “evening”.’
‘But I like “morning” and “dark”—it speaks to my subconscious.’
‘It’s the right answer you need to be concerned with. Never mind about the subconscious.’
‘And then, in the English paper,’ Phoebe was speaking faster, but she was in command as she performed an intricate dance around Madge Conroy, ‘there is one question with a series of sentences with two blanks in each sentence, and five pairs of words are given from which one pair has to be chosen which makes sense of the sentence. . . .’
‘I am familiar with the English paper.’
‘Well, the one which particularly bothers me is “Simon was a kind blank boy, but his brother was moody and blank.” And the answer is “Simon was a kind, friendly boy, but his brother was moody and sulky.” ’ The dexterity with whi
ch she articulated her confusion was impressive. ‘But surely it could also be “Simon was a kind, likable boy, but his brother was moody and gay.” After all, this is the nineteen-seventies.’
‘The compilers of these tests do not ascribe the meaning you have in mind to the word “gay”.’
‘But this little boy may have it in mind, mayn’t he? We don’t know what goes on in the poor little sod’s home, do we?’
‘Over three thousand children took these tests. Are you suggesting we should go into the home circumstances of each child in order to decide how he might interpret each subsection of each question?’
‘. . . and anyway, even if you don’t approve of that use of the word “gay”, moody people can be ordinarily gay on occasions, that is what is meant by being moody, surely; some of us have swings instead of being the kind of people who go through life flat as pancakes.’
‘I think perhaps it was a mistake to ask you to work on the English and Verbal Reasoning tests. I’ll give you the Arithmetic test instead. You won’t find that so difficult.’
‘Because there is only one possible answer in Arithmetic?’ Phoebe’s voice swung up and down two octaves. ‘I’m not inflexible. What right have they to assume that a child comes from the kind of background where only one meaning attaches to a word, and that the meaning they consider respectably heterosexual. . . .’
‘You have to be able to use your judgement in marking test papers.’
‘. . . and they have no time for poetry, no sense of mystery ‘I’ll give you the Arithmetic test.’
‘I don’t want the Arithmetic test. I’m no good at Arithmetic. I hate Arithmetic. AND I DON’T BELIEVE THE ANSWERS! I think that at infinity it is very unlikely that one and one make two!’ Phoebe rushed into Tom’s room and flung herself whimpering on the floor where she burrowed under the table for her handbag.
Madge Conroy stalked into the room and began to collect the test papers. She said contemptuously, ‘Pull yourself together and stop making that disgusting noise.’
‘You hate me!’ Phoebe peered at her round a table leg. ‘You resented me working in here, I’ve tried so hard to please you, but nothing I can do is right for you. . . .’
‘Get up, you silly bitch!’
Phoebe squatted on her heels and rocked to and fro, whimpering.
‘I suggest you both behave like grown women!’ Tom shouted louder than either of the two women. ‘You, take those tests out of here. And you, stop making that infernal din!’
There was a moment of complete silence. Phoebe’s face went grey and Madge Conroy’s scarlet. Then Madge Conroy said, ‘I’ll collect the tests later.’ She went out of the room, slamming the door hard. Phoebe snatched two or three preparatory breaths and then let out a long howl like a wounded animal. She got to her feet, handbag clutched to her breast, and dashed from the room still howling.
A few moments later, while Tom was savouring this spirited exhibition, Norma Rossiter walked into the room. ‘I was on my way to see you when I met our friend,’ she gloated. ‘So it’s happened to you as well. It wasn’t just Nasty Norma who caused all the trouble.’ She sat in the easy chair. She had become rather gaunt lately and there seemed to be a growing discrepancy between her face and its make-up, as though a mask was slipping out of place. She spoke more stridently than ever. ‘There’s an optimum time during which the Huber can behave like an adult; if she stretches herself beyond that the effort is altogether too much for her and there is an explosion. She’ll cry all day now—in the cloakroom, because there it will be noticed by the maximum number of people.’
‘Oh no, she won’t!’ Tom retorted vigorously. ‘I shall send her home.’
‘She won’t be able to get home in that state.’
‘I shall drive her home. That would seem to be reasonable, don’t you think? I have “driven” her to this, so I will complete the process by “driving” her home.’ He emphasised this by beating a triumphant staccato tattoo on the table.
‘How masterful you have become!’ Norma jeered. ‘A pity we live in such civilised times, otherwise you could have driven her along with a switch. But never mind, there are still ways of having fun with a switch, aren’t there?’
He stared at her blankly.
She said, ‘You did cause that black-out the other night, I take it?’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘I recognised the style. You ripped out the telephone cord in that call-box, remember?’
‘No,’ he said indifferently. ‘I had forgotten that.’
He would take Phoebe Huber home! For some time he had been tormented by the fact that part of her life was unknown to him. He was jealous of the past, but he could do nothing about that; what was really intolerable was that there should be parts of her present life from which he was excluded. He needed to see her at home and he had tried to work out ways of doing this, all of them devious, whereas what had been needed was forceful action driving straight through all the stupid social conventions.
‘. . . in the confusion I mistook Hillman for the Assistant Treasurer and I told him he was the biggest bottom-pincher in the County!’ Norma Rossiter was saying. ‘So, you see, you owe me a favour.’ Tom looked at her angrily. Pauses were like those gaps one thoughtfully leaves on a motorway, only to have them filled by impatient motorists. So, now, others constantly leapt into his precious silences.
Norma went on, ‘When I go for interview, I shall be expected to have views about such things as integrated studies, and I remember that you did quite an interesting report on that some time ago. I’d like a dozen copies, please.’
‘I’ve no idea where it is,’ he said impatiently.
‘Come on, Tom! You’ve got to buy my silence with a dozen copies of that report.’
‘You’d better ask Phoebe Huber when she has recovered. She is the only person who knows where to lay a hand on any of the old reports now.’
‘One copy will do for the present, but I must have the rest by the end of this week. So don’t do anything very terrible to the Huber, will you? Not that I imagine she presents much of a temptation.’ He did not answer and she went on, ‘Talking of temptation, how is Beth Vernon these days?’
‘Beth Vernon?’ He flicked Beth to one side.
‘For a local government officer you’re extraordinarily indiscreet. She takes a part-time sculpture class at Brampton Art College and she’s been talking about you and your ungracious behaviour to one of her students, and one way and another the Principal has got hold of the story.’
‘Does he want to borrow one of my reports?’
‘Don’t be silly. I just thought you would like to know.’
‘Thank you for telling me.’ He eased his chair back and stood up. ‘Norma, as you are so concerned about my reputation, could you go into the ladies’ cloakroom and tell Phoebe Huber I must see her at once.’
‘She won’t come.’
‘Tell her that if she doesn’t come I shall ask Edgar Holmes to transfer her to another section. Say that I was talking to him on the telephone when you left the room.’
‘My dear chap, why don’t you just. . . .’
‘You are leaving the room, aren’t you?’
‘All right, Tom. All right. Just make sure I have copies of that report, won’t you?’
After she had gone he paced up and down the room, barely able to control his impatience. The telephone rang and he snatched up the receiver. ‘Just on my way out, sorry.’ He put it down before the caller had time to speak.
It seemed impossible that only a month ago he had sat here, listening patiently to staff complaints, being courteous to time- wasting telephone callers, dealing meticulously with letters, reports, statistics, interviewing irate parents, calming anxious head teachers, pacifying impatient councillors. Madge Conroy had said he was the only senior officer who still passed for normal. And all that time he had felt nothing; he had thought he must be ageing prematurely and that feeling had withered away.
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nbsp; How could he have guessed that within so short a time he would experience this excitement, this irritation, this extraordinary exasperation which everywhere and at every moment pricked, harrowed, goaded him to life? Perhaps it was not what most people would regard as pleasant, but what did that matter? It is not how one feels that is the important thing, but the fact that one does feel: if you sing in the morning like a lover or snarl like an angry dog, what matter since each is a demonstration of the ability to react to life? And when two people are so aware of each other that every conversation has a pattern as intricate as the moves on a chessboard, what does it matter if the words exchanged be bitter, loving, kind or brutal, so long as they are an acknowledgement of the reality of the other’s being? I am, because you are!
He walked to the window, clenching his hands and trying to calm himself. She was the life giver; she had touched a side of him that had never been touched before. We try to emulate good people, we strain to raise ourselves to their level; but the dark forces call forth something from the very depths of our being and it is not a question of emulation, it is as though a sleeping self, a strong, fierce, unimagined person, has been brought to life. Yet he knew that if, at this moment, he demanded an encounter with the woman who had worked this miracle, he would find himself left with Phoebe Huber in her grey woollen cardigan fluffed with much washing and smelling of soap powder. Painful though it was, he must move very carefully towards the woman in the strong room, and when he had reached her, and only then, might he dare to look beyond to the woman on the landing. It was no longer a question of risking disappointment: if he lost her now, having come so far, he would have done an injury to himself the consequences of which he did not like to contemplate.
The telephone rang again, and at that moment the door opened and she came into the room. She walked to the telephone, moving stiffly like a puppet, and picked up the receiver. While the person at the other end of the line spoke, she looked obliquely at Tom from beneath red, puffed eyelids.