AN IRRELEVANT WOMAN

by MARY HOCKING

  She turned her head away. ‘I shall be all right once we are there and I have seen her. I shall know what to do then. It’s the uncertainty I can’t stand.’

  ‘Mightn’t it be wise, just this once, not to do anything?’

  ‘And who would take charge if I did that? My father? And even if he was different, and capable, that would still be unthinkable. He has just begun his revise.’

  ‘That could wait.’

  ‘Think what the world would have lost if Hardy had put his books to one side to comfort Mrs Hardy.’

  ‘Mrs Hardy would have gained.’

  ‘My father is a genius. You don’t understand about genius.’

  The road had been climbing and now they came to heathland. Ahead a signpost standing at an angle where only one crossbar was visible, looked like a gibbet. A big black bird was perched on it. Beyond lay miles of sour grass rising to distant indigo crags. Purple clouds massed overhead.

  Piers said, ‘It is so beautiful in autumn when all the heather is out.’

  ‘I’ve never liked moors.’

  ‘This is only heathland.’

  She closed her eyes. ‘That, too. It makes me think of the Brontés, coughing themselves to death.’

  ‘The price of genius, no doubt.’

  ‘I don’t think I am going to be able to cope with this weekend if you are going to get at me all the time.’ She counted slowly up to three hundred, telling herself that by this time they should have turned off the heath road, but when she opened her eyes it was still all around her, this seemingly limitless space. ‘I think perhaps I am mildly agoraphobic,’ she said.

  ‘A little while ago you were uneasy about the enclosed valleys.’

  ‘And mildly claustrophobic, too.’

  He said, to distract her, ‘Did Murdoch understand about being a father?’

  It was not a question which Stephanie found disturbing so she considered before answering. ‘He was always there, by which I mean there was no gap in our lives. I remember very clearly one thing which happened when I was quite small. There was a big do at the church – I’ve forgotten what it was all about, if I ever knew. For the early part of the service we children were hived off into the church hall so that we wouldn’t get fidgety. Then, at a certain stage in the proceedings, we were returned to our parents. Only I couldn’t find mine. I was terribly frightened. The church was full and all the people seemed tall as trees. It was like one of the nastier fairy stories and I was the child lost in the wood. I set up a terrible howling. When we were talking about it years afterwards, Mother told me that my cries seemed to echo round the church and she could not tell where the noise was coming from; but Daddy was like a bird with an in-built radar system. Quite suddenly he was there, in the aisle, with his arms outstretched to me. He behaved as though there were only the two of us and the rest were just trees.’

  Piers said, ‘Hmm.’

  ‘So if I ever got lost in a wilderness like this, it is to him that I would call out, not Mummy.’

  ‘Or your husband.’

  ‘One tends to regress at such times.’

  ‘I sometimes get the feeling you don’t really like your mother.’

  ‘Piers, I shan’t tell you these things if you make such a nonsense of them.’

  Later, when the heathland lay behind them, they turned off the main road on to a sunken lane which twisted down, wooded hills rising steeply to one side. Below, in shadow at this time of the afternoon, lay the village, not much more than a hamlet with a few houses unevenly distributed along a winding street. The gardens sloped down to a small stream, placid between green banks. At the far end of the village they came to a bridge beyond which the narrow lane climbed to a grassy plateau. Stephanie said, looking back at a dour little house now softened by massed daffodils, ‘I wonder what made Deutzia come to live here.’

  ‘I suppose she wanted to be near her children and this was the only place she could afford.’

  ‘The children are some distance away and she doesn’t see much of them. She should have stayed in Kew and kept the family home going.’

  ‘Even after the family had gone?’

  ‘Children need somewhere to return to. And, anyway, Kew would have been so useful for them, easily accessible to London.’

  ‘I don’t think Deutzia sees her role in life as being useful.’

  By the time they arrived at the house the sun had come out and it was fine and warm, but Stephanie felt a familiar tension stretching her forehead which warned her that the day was not to be trusted. Janet was in the garden wearing an Indian cotton dress and a large hat which she might have borrowed from Deutzia. The dress smelled of moth balls. She was quiet and shy when she greeted them, like a child who knows it has been naughty. Yet there was a gleam in the demurely glancing eyes which made Stephanie feel that she was obscurely pleased with herself.

  Murdoch said, ‘She spends a lot of time in the garden now,’ and pointed to a trug. They all looked at the trug as if it was a toy. Stephanie saw a few clippings in it – rather half-hearted a collection for a morning’s gardening, Murdoch looked at them as though anticipating words of encouragement. It was almost, Stephanie thought, as though he was colluding with her mother.

  ‘Have I seen that dress before?’ she asked.

  ‘I wore it to your wedding.’

  Stephanie said, ‘I will make tea for us,’ and ran into the house. After a few minutes Piers followed her. He found her standing in the kitchen, hands clasped across her breasts,

  ‘Whatever is wrong?’

  ‘That was cruel, cruel!’ He stared at her blankly and she stamped her foot. ‘Can’t you see? She put that dress on on purpose.’

  ‘What purpose? To remind us of our wedding day? Is that cruel?’

  ‘To go back nine years without warning . . . like plummeting down in a lift.’

  He turned his head away, pulling at his ear lobe. ‘I was intensely proud and happy on my wedding day. I could scarcely believe it – this radiant girl was marrying me!’

  Stephanie said unsteadily, ‘And now?’

  He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I didn’t know the half of it then! But I wouldn’t change you.’

  Murdoch came to the window and said, ‘Janet would like to have tea in the garden. She seems to like being out-of-doors. We had breakfast in the garden. And lunch.’

  They had tea in the garden and later they had supper in the garden. By this time the light was not good, large bruised clouds crouched above the valley and it was becoming very chilly. Stephanie, controlling an impulse to run out into the lane and run and run and run, said quietly, but firmly, ‘Should we go indoors now, do you think. Mother? You will get cold out here.’

  Janet smiled down at her hands and, noticing that they were blue, rubbed them together, pausing every now and again to examine the palms. Murdoch went into the house and came out with a travelling rug which he laid gently around her shoulders. He performed this act in a manner which was at once comic and intensely sad and, perhaps because of the outdoor setting and the impending storm, Stephanie was reminded of Lear’s fool. Unthinking, she slipped into the role of poor Tom.

  ‘Won’t you please come in, Mummy,’ she pleaded, sitting at Janet’s feet, ‘because I am getting cold.’

  Janet darted her a look of malicious glee as though seeing through this inept performance to something hidden behind it. Stephanie was left sitting on the ground feeling rather idiotic. Piers, looking at his wife, recognised his own rising panic when confronted with a youth whom he could neither persuade nor control.

  ‘She is just being mischievous,’ Stephanie said, righting herself, taut with anger.

  For half an hour they took it in turns to plead, cajole, reason, browbeat, all to no avail. Thunder rolled in the distance. ‘If it pelts, what are we to do?’ Stephanie quailed at the thought of manhandling her mother into the house and doubted whether either of the men would prove very effective in such an emergency. But as the first heavy spots of rai
n began to patter on the leaves of the apple tree, Humphrey appeared. He was obviously deeply distressed. He walked ponderously across the lawn, sat down in front of Janet and placed a rough paw on her knee, snagging the fine cotton of the dress. She looked into his eyes and said, ‘Haven’t they fed you?’ Then she got up and accompanied him into the kitchen where a tigerish tabby was pacing to and fro, little pink mouth opening and shutting in silent complaint. ‘Oh, my darlings!’ Janet crooned. ‘My poor darlings!’

  After she had fed the animals Janet became commendably submissive and suffered Stephanie to put her to bed. As she lay back against the pillows, she said, not quite ingenuously, ‘I am your little girl now, aren’t I?’

  Stephanie went down the stairs and interrupted the two men, who were talking about Murdoch’s book. ‘You had better go to bed soon. Daddy, We don’t want her to get disturbed again.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  She turned to Piers. ‘We shall have to stay the night now. So could you get the case from the car.’

  When they had gone, she regretted having despatched them so summarily. The washing-up had been done, by whom she could not imagine, and she herself had made up the bed in the room which had been hers ever since, at the age of twelve, she had rebelled against ‘always being in charge and not having anything to show for it’. Alone in the pretty room under the eaves, Katrina had cried for a week. But Stephanie had been resolute, convinced that she had mastered the process of growing up. Now, standing alone in the hall, she said aloud, ‘I tried to separate too soon.’

  She went into the dining room and crossed to the window. Lightning ripped across the sky and all the house lights went out. Thunder fulminated around the house and then went grumbling away over the fields. The rain poured through the leads in the windows, but by the time Stephanie had felt her way into the kitchen and returned with towels, it had eased. She laid the towels along the window sill and made her way to the front door. As she looked out Piers came round the side of the house, carrying a case. She could hear but not see him and for a moment an absurd fear seized her – suppose this was not her husband but the tramp of whom her mother had spoken on Easter Day?

  ‘Where have you been all this time?’ she asked crossly when she had established that it was indeed Piers.

  ‘In the car. I didn’t see any point in getting drowned. Have the lights gone?’

  ‘Yes. I expect a cable has come down.’

  They stood in the porch, smelling the wet earth and listening to the constant patter as raindrops fell from the eaves. At first there was utter darkness and then the clouds parted and they saw the outline of trees and hedge. Stephanie said, ‘Well, that’s over.’

  Piers said, ‘A spring shower.’

  Janet appeared better in the morning. She was up early and seemed to have prepared breakfast much as usual. Before she left Stephanie made her father promise to see the doctor again. ‘Tell him he must give her something to help her to relax. Not that I approve of drugs as a rule; but it is no use telling someone to take things easily if they are wound up like an alarm clock.’

  As they drove away she said to Piers, ‘I hope he will go to the doctor. If he doesn’t I shall have to take a few days off and sort things out.’

  ‘I expect he will. All this must be interfering with his work. He has written a book about the Falklands War. Did you know?’

  ‘We shall have been overtaken by more recent escapades by the time that comes out.’

  They were nearing the village now. ‘We had better not call on Deutzia,’ Stephanie said. ‘We don’t want to be inveigled into taking her out to lunch because of the electricity failure.’ They came to the bridge. The stream rushed beneath, almost level with its banks.

  ‘I wonder if we should have stayed a bit longer,’ Stephanie said. ‘I could have seen the doctor. He lives in the village although his surgery is in town.’

  ‘Perhaps we are making a bit too much of all this? After all, what does it amount to? Janet is a bit weepy.’

  ‘A little more than that! Refusing to come indoors last night!’

  ‘You said you suffered from claustrophobia.’

  ‘That’s true. But she isn’t herself. At least . . .’ Stephanie frowned, displeased at making such a naive statement. ‘She isn’t the self we all know and love.’

  ‘She is overtired and weepy and claustrophobic. So she wouldn’t seem like Janet to us, would she?’ He elaborated this particular consolation before it could get away from him. ‘People aren’t themselves when they fail to be what we expect them to be. And we expect Janet to be – well, not easily tired or given to weeping.’

  ‘Yes,’ Stephanie said. ‘Yes . . . I daresay . . .’

  When they reached the heath, she said, ‘I wonder if that tramp had anything to do with it – or gypsy or whatever he was. If he was.’

  ‘Translation please.’

  ‘On Easter Day. Do you remember my telling you? She seemed troubled about it. I think I shall tell the doctor. Or I could tell Daddy. He has quite a rapport with the gypsies. Romanies, he calls them.’ She shivered. ‘A breeze is getting up.’ She wound up the window. Piers laughed, and they said in unison, ‘ “There’s likewise a wind on the heath”.’

  Chapter Four

  Murdoch sat at his desk. It was the first of May and a bright, sunny day which anticipated the summer, Matilda sat by the open window keeping watch for the house martins which were nesting in the eaves. Humphrey stretched out on the rug, nose twitching as in his dreams he chased through corn fields. It was peaceful. Katrina had come for the weekend and she had taken Janet on a shopping expedition because ‘stocks have got a bit low’. Before she left she had put a packet of cheese sandwiches and a vacuum flask of coffee on Murdoch’s desk. ‘You won’t need to move out of the room all day now!’

  ‘I always walk in the afternoon.’ He had been surprised. ‘Had you forgotten?’

  She had not forgotten, she had been making a protest. He had not understood, but after she had gone her anger stayed on in the room and he was unable to concentrate his mind on the Falklands war and its aftermath. Stephanie’s comment that ‘We shall have been overtaken by more recent escapades by the time that comes out!’ would have had little meaning for Murdoch. He did not choose a subject because it was topical. He did not, in fact, have much say in the choice of subject – it was presented to him. Nothing, however, was being presented to him this morning.

  Perhaps coffee would provide the necessary stimulus. He put out a hand for the vacuum flask. The hand remained poised above it. His lips moved, releasing the stream of obscenities which had sometimes surprised, and endeared him to, his agent while leading others to account him coarse.

  Patsy came to the window and pushed her head past Matilda’s. ‘I know you are working,’ she said, as though the acknowledgement cancelled out the interruption. ‘But I’ve brought your supper.’

  He came to the window and saw that a large iron casserole rested on one hip. The children stood beside her, gazing up. ‘Is Humpy there?’ Francesca asked.

  Murdoch took the casserole from Patsy. It was heavy, but not, he suspected, by virtue of its contents. Humphrey was now demanding to be let out. Murdoch opened the door and Humphrey preceded him to the kitchen where Patsy and the children awaited them.

  ‘And what is it this time?’ Murdoch asked, putting the casserole down on top of the gas stove. ‘Stewed thorn leaves?’

  ‘You went off for days with the gypsies. That should have taught you something.’ Patsy was not in the least resentful of this lack of gratitude. The broad planes of her face were made for impervious magnanimity.

  ‘Romanies are good poachers. There was more than the fruits of the hedgerow in their billycans!’

  ‘It will be good for you. You are beginning to get paunchy, Murdoch.’

  ‘That’s beer, girl! Not good, red meat.’

  ‘Lay off the beer, then. I’ll bring you a herbal brew.’

  ‘I couldn’t let you do
that. Patsy.’

  ‘It’s no trouble. I like to share.’

  ‘Then share this lovely morning with my dog. He needs a walk.’

  ‘Janet not here?’

  ‘She is shopping with Katrina.’

  ‘Perhaps they took Deutzia with them? I called on her but she was out.’

  ‘Do you feed Deutzia as well, you noble girl?’

  ‘Oh dear no! Deutzia is quite capable of feeding herself. And, anyway, she wouldn’t appreciate it.’

  ‘And I do?’

  ‘No, but you are disadvantaged, Murdoch. So I do it for you just the same.’

  There was a wail from the garden and Patsy went out. Soon Murdoch heard her say, ‘Samsara, don’t make such a fuss.’

  ‘Samsara’ was for Murdoch’s benefit, to remind him of the perfidy about which Patsy had been so forgiving. Patsy and Hugh had had considerable difficulty in choosing a name for their son. Patsy maintained that she had accepted Sam on the understanding that the full name should be not Samuel but Samsara which, she said, was a Buddhist term for “the flow of the stream of being”. Hugh said he had simply given up arguing with her. Patsy insisted that it was not until the baby was being sprinkled with water that she had realised what was intended. Only her love for the child had prevented her from tugging it out of the arms of the vicar as he pronounced the name Samuel. Hugh said they had both been present when the vicar was given his instructions with the utmost clarity. This had been, if not the first, then the most significant instance of the imbalance in the marriage which was subsequently to cause so much unhappiness. Hugh was intelligent, wary, given to analysing any situation in which he found himself before taking even the smallest step. Patsy was impulsive, emotional and prone to react with hostility to any form of abstract reasoning. Moreover, she assumed that her dear ones thought as she did on all issues which were important to her and she was capable of putting the wrong construction on discussions which to most people would have seemed capable of only one meaning.