by MARY HOCKING
Mr. Routh raised his head and looked at his wife, his face full of shining wonder. He reached out a hand to Constance, eager to share this precious moment. But Constance was standing by the window, her back to the room. After a moment, she opened the french windows and went into the garden.
Margaret said, ‘I will go.’ She went out of the room.
Owen moved after her. Mrs. Routh said, ‘I don’t think she is going to need you any more, Dr. Lander.’ He stopped, facing her. For a moment I thought that he was going to shout at her and I was sorry, because I could see that she was prepared for this and would enjoy a battle with him. But he seemed to lose his energy and with it his taste for the fight. He looked for so long at her face that he might have been studying a portrait, trying to read the artist’s intention by an examination of the firmly moulded flesh, the invincible line of cheekbone and jaw, the candid eyes and the resolute mouth; but whatever that intention was, it defeated him. He shook his head wearily and turned on his heel. She watched him go out of the room, an incredulous expression on her face. ‘What an insufferable man that is!’ She raised a hand to her cheek as though he had spat at her. I followed Owen out of the room.
Margaret was sitting on the stairs and he was sitting beside her. She said, ‘I thought it would all be over when Timothy came back… . I thought that if I could just hang on until then, it would all be over, things would fall into place. But we’re back at the beginning.’ She sounded like a patient who has had a cancer operation only to discover that the pain is still there.
Owen said, ‘You must go away. Have you got a friend you can stay with?’
She shook her head.
‘There must be someone. Think about it. You must go.’
She said, ‘Yes. I must go. I can see that. They will be better off without me.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘No, no. It doesn’t upset me. I’m rather glad to have got them out of the way.’ The remark was made without bitterness. She had, over the last months, cleared away a lot of clutter from her life, and she was glad to be left with the single problem of Margaret Routh. She got up unsteadily, holding on to the banister rail.
‘You had better take two of your sleeping pills,’ he said.
She looked at him thoughtfully, but did not say anything.
‘Shall I come up with you?’ he asked uneasily.
‘No. Don’t worry about me. I shall be all right now, I promise you, Dr. Lander. Thank you for being so kind to me.’
‘There’s no need to be so elegiac about it!’
She laughed ‘I’m not going to put an end to myself. You can rest assured about that! This “questing” mind of mine doesn’t in fact adventure very far. But there is one thing about coming back to the beginning, isn’t there? It gives one a second chance.’
We watched uneasily as she went up the stairs.
Owen said to me, ‘Any time when I show signs of thinking myself infallible, just say “Margaret Routh” to me, will you?’
‘I think you managed very well,’ I said.
‘I’d have done equally well if I’d been blindfolded,’ he retorted. ‘I must go back now. I’ve got surgery in half an hour. Keep an eye on her for me. And if she seems at all unwell, send for me.’
Shortly after he left, the telephone rang. The first press call. Mr. Routh made a statement. ‘I do not propose to say anything about this case. But I will say that our son has our complete support.’ He sounded quiet and dignified, and he stood very erect as though honouring the flag of his faith.
We had high tea. Margaret did not appear, and I thought it was sensible of her to keep to her room. I called to her that I would bring food up to her on a tray, and she said, ‘Thank you.’
Mr. Routh talked a lot during the meal. ‘The finger of scorn will be pointed at all of us. I, in particular, cannot hope to escape, I have spoken too harshly in condemning others to expect that they will spare me. Nor would I wish to be spared. I shall not be ashamed to suffer with Timothy. Indeed, I feel responsible for what has happened to Timothy. I am a member of the generation which shaped his world, which bequeathed him the greatest weapon of destruction that has ever been known and then lost interest in it. I am the citizen of a country which has turned in upon itself, to which the only reality is class warfare, the great tragedy, the private soldier at the mercy of a brutal sergeant; the epic adventure, the grammar school boy headed for the top! How can we, who have turned our back on atrocities, who have been blind to aggression, deaf to the cries of the tormented, how can we dare to make moral judgements? We have forfeited our right.’ He was repointing the wall he had built around himself, filling in the cracks, it was fascinating to watch him at work. ‘No wonder the young want to take the reins out of our hands! My son is doing that, am I supposed to be ashamed of him? No! I would rather, yes, I would rather that Timothy had taken this admittedly misguided path, than that he had been indifferent, concerned only with materialistic success and the values of the acceptance world. I am proud that instead of being a young man on the make, my son is an emotional, fallible, flawed human being!’
Mrs. Routh looked out of the window while he was talking. There was a little patch of late sunlight and Saul was lying in it, his tail twitching slightly as though in his dreams he was once again a young dog chasing rabbits; the birds were singing in the trees in the orchard. Mrs. Routh looked as though she was listening not to Mr. Routh’s words, but to a melody which still lingered in the air, faint and sweet. There was an expression of such sadness on her face as I have seldom seen.
Mr. Routh said, ‘I am talking too much.’ He put his fork down; his hand, resting by the side of his plate, was trembling. ‘I talk so much. I can see that Timothy must have felt that one must act… .’
Constance put out her hand and laid it over her father’s.
When the meal was over, I took a tray up to Margaret’s room. She was not there. Drawers were open, and an examination of her wardrobe revealed that clothes and a suitcase were missing. She had left no note.
We had a conference about it at which Owen was reluctantly included. Constance was insistent that we should ignore her absence, she was much better and could look after herself now. ‘In fact, that is what she is doing. She has no intention of going into the witness box and she has gone to earth until all the unpleasantness is over.’ Owen, however, insisted that the police must be notified at once.
‘This is my fault,’ he said to me. ‘I made a terrible mistake in telling her to go away at a time when she was so upset.’
‘She would have gone anyway,’ I said.
But he never accepted this.
The police were not amused. Nevertheless, a description was issued and an appeal for her to return was broadcast. During the next day, the police arrested the other men concerned in the case; the press laid siege to Baileys and Saul bit a cameraman; friends telephoned assuring Mr. and Mrs. Routh of sympathy and support.
At night, we hoped that Margaret would return, but she did not come. Time passed. The police were busy taking statements, there were lengthy discussions with the Rouths’ solicitors. Margaret, it seemed, was well out of it. It was only when it was realized that she had withdrawn all her money from the savings bank that the search was intensified. By that time it was too late. She was already on her way to Khatmandu.
Timothy eventually came up for trial and managed to convince the jury that he had been foolish rather than criminal. He was given a sentence of two years. Mr. Routh resigned from the Inter¬Church Race Relations Committee, but he engaged even more energetically in public controversy of all kinds. People marvelled that he could give so much to public life at a time when his personal life presented him with such heartbreak. In all that he did, his wife supported him quietly and steadily.
Timothy, who had a sense of self-preservation, eventually married the proprietress of a seaside hotel at Ferring, an ebullient, robust woman who worked very hard for both of them. She liked to have a man aroun
d and he had security of a kind; on this level, the marriage worked. They had two children, but as the hotel background was not ideal for children Constance adopted them and had great joy of them. When the Rouths’ financial position became difficult, she gave dancing lessons. She worked hard all the hours God gave and I know of no happier woman. Owen had by this time moved to a practice in Lewes, and had it not been for Constance, we should have lost touch with the Rouths. But she comes to see us often, bringing the children to play with our children.
Margaret has never returned from Khatmandu. She writes regularly to her parents, letters that are dutiful rather than loving. Mr. Routh is extremely proud of her, but Mrs. Routh seldom mentions her. She also writes to me, not personal letters, but day-to-day accounts of her life at the school in Khatmandu, a record of unquestioning labour among a people to whom she is devoted but with whom she seems to find difficulty in identifying herself. Now, as I re-read these letters, they seem to reveal an aching loneliness of which I was not immediately conscious. She is like her father in that she can be moved by a cause, but not by the individual; but she has something he lacks—tenacity, perhaps, durability, a divine obstinacy—some quality which will enable a person to remain steadfast to the end.
I believe she is a saint. But Owen does not agree with me. He thinks it is Constance who is the saint.
Mary Hocking
Born in London in 1921, Mary was educated at Haberdashers’ Aske’s Girls School, Acton. During the Second World War she served in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (Wrens) attached to the Fleet Air Arm Meteorology branch and then briefly with the Signal Section in Plymouth.
Writing was in her blood. Juggling her work as a local government officer in Middlesex Education Department with writing, at first short stories for magazines and pieces for The Times Educational Supplement, she then had her first book, The Winter City, published in 1961.
The book was a success and enabled Mary to relinquish her full time occupation to devote her time to writing. Long before family sagas had become cult viewing, she had embarked upon the `Fairley Family’ trilogy – Good Daughters, Indifferent Heroes, and Welcome Strangers – books which give her readers a faithful, realistic and uncompromising portrayal of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary times, between the years of 1933 and 1946.
For many years she was an active member of the `Monday Lit’, a Lewes-based group which brought in current writers and poets to speak about their work, an enthusiastic supporter of Lewes Little Theatre, and worshipped at the town’s St Pancras RC Church.
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First published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus 1972
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