by MARY HOCKING
‘She gives miles of space and good, clean air,’ Murdoch said. ‘That’s enough to be grateful for.’
‘You don’t seem to me ever to have been in need of space – you have it around you in your own home.’
‘It’s the writing,’ Murdoch said. ‘I have to walk and walk and walk before it lets go of my brain. That is why I usually walk on my own in the afternoons.’
‘You mean you can’t put it to one side?’
‘No, not that. How can I explain?’ Usually he did not try. Today was different for both men. ‘Can you imagine your head as a balloon into which too much air is being forced, bringing on a bad attack of pins and needles? Something like that.’
‘Frightening, surely?’
‘It’s gone on for a long time without anything blowing up. But you never know. By the time I reach this spot it has usually worn off.’
‘It hasn’t today?’
‘It wore off some time ago. But then it wasn’t so bad to start with. Perhaps because I am only revising.’ He was puzzled.
They sat on a grass tussock when Piers became tired. ‘You never thought of doing anything else?’ Piers was envious of so given a life.
‘I considered the priesthood.’
The casual revelation came like a blow in the breast to Piers. ‘I never knew that.’
‘It was a long time ago, before the children were born. Janet and I had begun to attend the Anglo-Catholic church and I was very taken with it.’
Piers remembered the agonies he had gone through when he lost his faith. All that time, Murdoch had said nothing, offered no sympathy, given no hint of understanding. Admittedly he had not been critical, either – he had not involved himself in the affair. Piers said bitterly, ‘I don’t think you would have made a very good priest.’
‘That was the general conclusion.’ Murdoch was amused.
‘You offered yourself?’
‘I did.’
‘And you were rejected. Perhaps they did not think you would be very good at communicating with people.’
‘On the contrary, it was what I would communicate which troubled them.’
‘A matter of belief?’
‘I have always found this word belief difficult,’ Murdoch answered easily, just as though Piers had had no problem in this area. ‘I tried to explain to them that I had a profound respect – awe might have been a better word – for the Mysteries, that it was my understanding that one should ponder them in one’s heart – like Mary – throughout one’s life. I would never have said that I disbelieved. I don’t have any problems about saying the Creed, which I think of as repeating the great beliefs of the Church in the hope that I may grow in understanding. That seems to me all that is asked of one in the Creed. A commendably humble attitude, wouldn’t you say? And one surely acceptable to God. But my interlocutors demanded something rather more. And I was unable to say, in the manner in which they wanted it said, that I believed in the Virgin Birth, the Divinity of Christ, the Resurrection – or, for that matter, the Transfiguration. For some reason I didn’t have any difficulty with the coming of the Holy Spirit. But comparative orthodoxy in so far as one member of the Trinity was concerned was not enough to satisfy them.’
‘I can see it wouldn’t have been,’ Piers said drily.
‘And yet now, many years later, I find that I am able to accept things which at that time were veiled in impenetrable mist. It is still a bit misty, of course – it always will be.’
‘And what would you have said to parishioners who had problems of belief?’
‘Told them not to worry. That worry was the worst thing. A sin. That one should just look upon one’s difficulties, whatever they might be – the Virgin Birth, the Divinity of Christ – as a rock which one was unable to climb so one just found a way round it. Later, one might look back and see that it had become a part of the landscape.’
‘That doesn’t seem a very solid foundation for belief of any kind. If there is so little you can hold to, one would have thought you might as well be a Humanist.’
Murdoch threw a stone for Humphrey. ‘Humanism I find altogether too fanciful. And it ducks so many questions, doesn’t it?’
‘You would have little difficulty in becoming a priest now,’ Piers said angrily. ‘In fact, I should think you would be quite acceptable. There is only one position which wouldn’t be open to you after the Durham experience. But no one would care much what you believed if you were tucked away in a cathedral close or a Cambridge college.’ He hated men who had relinquished their beliefs while managing to hang on to the material rewards – hated them and envied them. He had enjoyed everything about the life of a clergyman except God. But he must have certainty, had demanded a sign and none had been given. Now he was left with nothing but a feeling of rejection. He hated the Church because it laid down beliefs which he could not accept and even more he hated it for allowing heresies to flourish within it. Most of all, at this moment, he hated his father-in-law.
‘Did it ever occur to you that you might have been able to help me?’ he asked savagely. Then, meticulous in all things, he must qualify this statement – even anger could not be allowed a clear run. ‘Not that you could have done. But did it occur to you that you should try?’
‘I can’t say that it did.’
‘You were quite unaware of what I was going through?’
‘The intellectual process, yes. I was unaware of that.’ He sounded as though he thought this unimportant.
‘There wasn’t any other process. It was purely a matter of the intellect.’
Murdoch said, ‘Well, you are out of it now. So what are you so angry about?’
‘At the moment, I am angry with you.’ Piers turned his head away.
Murdoch said, ‘Go on. There are things which need to be said.’
‘You are the kind of person who makes me believe in the need for war, earthquake . . .’
‘Pestilence, famine,’ Murdoch nodded.
‘Something in which all men have to share, whether they like it or not. We don’t share our comforts, our joys, we keep them to ourselves.’
‘Not entirely true. The great violinist, doesn’t he share? But I see your point.’
‘We all live separate lives in the Western world, we value privacy, individuality . . .’
‘You don’t think you could scale this down a little? Become less apocalyptic?’
‘I am not very good at hand-to-hand fighting.’
‘You’re not very good at personal abuse, either.’
‘I don’t want to abuse you.’
‘For God’s sake, man! There is nothing you want to do more at this moment. You are just afraid I might be better equipped than you.’
‘You undoubtedly are!’ Piers’ anger flamed up. ‘But even so, you are safe. You won’t need to use your weapons, no one will expect it of you. You are a non-combatant – the artist, the person too valuable to be put at risk. You have been exempted from the human condition. And don’t tell me, don’t tell me!’ He held up a hand although Murdoch had not threatened to interrupt. ‘That is exactly what I would have liked for myself. But I have no gift.’
‘Not for teaching?’
‘Least of all for that! I hate the little perishers.’
‘Do they know that?’
‘I hope not.’
‘Mightn’t it be better if they did know?’
‘It wouldn’t be better if the Governors knew. At our school there is an undeclared war between staff and pupils; the Governors pick their way between the belligerents talking about dedication and caring. Not education, mind you. That was accepted as a lost cause a long time ago.’
Murdoch sat, arms hunched around his knees, smelling warm ferns, feeling the heat of the sun between his shoulder blades.
Piers said, ‘We are breaking up. Society is breaking up!’ He got to his feet. ‘Well, that’s the news from the Front today.’
Stephanie wrote to Hugh, ‘I think we left things in rather bette
r order. Mother got up on Sunday and actually managed to cook supper. It took for ever and she almost gave up when she discovered that I had moved the position of the table (we ate in the sitting room so that it was all more intimate and she had left the little table against the wall where we should have been terribly cramped). I realised how very fragile she still is, unable to adapt to any variation in her plans, however reasonable. But the meal was good. She seemed exhausted afterwards and went to bed. But I am hoping it is a beginning.’
Chapter Eight
‘Don’t you love me any more?’ Murdoch asked. Over the last months he had been very patient, accepting that sex – that great cure of headaches, nervous debility, rashes, depression, all woman’s little ills – could not reach her malady. But even so, he was wounded in his manhood and needed occasional words of reassurance. Janet was sorry for him in a sick, irritated fashion. She said, ‘I shall always love you,’ in the manner in which she might have repeated the Lord’s Prayer, unaware of a single word she was saying. Had he asked, ‘Don’t you feel anything for me?’ the answer must have been a simple ‘no’. He went away, looking dejected as a child who cannot understand that favour may momentarily be withdrawn without a change having taken place in the state of loving.
‘I let go of my children,’ she had told Dr Potter, who had visited her the day before. ‘They walked away and I let them go. It was in the nature of things, their going. I may have been diminished – Stephanie’s word – but I did not allow grievance to take root within me – Stephanie’s words.’
‘Yet you sound aggrieved.’
‘Why won’t they let go of me? Why do they talk about me, criticising, analysing and yet still demanding the old comforts be available whenever they need them?’
‘Most people are inconsistent because they live in two worlds – at least two, some have more than two. Your husband is in his study now, trying to throw off his pain by immersing himself in his other world which is always there waiting for him. Your daughter, Stephanie, is probably interviewing a client at this moment and her husband will be playing his role in school.’
‘Edward,’ Janet said. ‘He calls himself Edward at school. And Malcolm is probably one of those dear friends setting themselves to the breach. He had hoped to play King Hal, poor Malcolm!’
‘Your older son will be lost in litigation and your younger daughter in her studies. Each one of them has an alternative world in which they can shelter until the emotional storms die down. But your work and your emotional life were inextricably linked. Take away the value from the one and you strike at the other.’
Janet lay back visualising a series of alternative worlds all equally grey and toneless.
Dr Potter said, ‘But I would hesitate to suggest that you should fragment your life.’
‘Then what is the answer?’ Janet asked listlessly.
‘Oh, answers, answers, answers! I know nothing about answers. If you want an answer, it will have to come from you.’
When Dr Potter was leaving Janet had asked, ‘Will you be coming again?’
‘I don’t see why not. I come out this way to see my egg man. Not that I like eggs myself, but my young women seem to want them.’
‘Your young women?’
‘I run a hostel, a halfway house, or whatever misnomer you like to give it.’
‘Please come again.’
So long as Dr Potter was seeing her they would leave her alone, imagining that at least something was happening – happenings of whatever kind being preferable to inactivity in their view. She did not in fact think that Dr Potter was doing her any good, but she no longer felt threatened by her. Dr Potter said she would come again and Janet had the sense of some kind of wickedness in which they both shared.
Of course, she had not taken too seriously all this business about the departure of the children and its effect on her emotional life. That, no doubt, was a contributory factor, but such had been woman’s lot over the centuries and woman had survived. Woman was very tough. No, something else had happened.
She now had a recurring dream. She was in a city in the late afternoon. It was already dark and there were lights in the tall buildings which rose on all sides. But she was on the outside and as she walked she looked in at lighted windows where people moved to and fro performing an incomprehensible shadow play. She was filled with yearning but could make no sense of what she saw. The buildings did not appear to have any entrances, only windows. A few days after she saw Dr Potter she woke from a dream which had been more frightening. She had not known, as she hurried along the street, whether she was seeking a way out of the city, or a way into one of its buildings; she only knew that there was an increased urgency. Not much time left for you, she had told herself.
She woke shivering. It was just after seven and she switched on the radio, wanting to hear a human voice. As she listened, she realised she knew what it was she had to do.
Soon after eight Murdoch came in with her breakfast. She ate it and waited until he came and took the tray away. Then she got out of bed and went to the window, looking out over the garden. When the children had gone the figures in the foreground had moved away and the eyes had been drawn beyond the space which they had occupied. It was out there, beyond the hedgerow that the trouble lay.
She dressed quickly, feeling energy building up explosively in her veins, sending the blood racing in her head. She went down the stairs and Murdoch, whose hearing seemed to have become very acute as his concentration lessened, opened the study door.
‘I must get out,’ she said to him. ‘If I’m not allowed out on my own I shall get worse and worse. I have to get out.’
‘It’s raining,’ he said.
‘I won’t melt,’ she said.
His reason told him it was a mistake to let someone so sick go wandering off on her own. But reason can cripple and he let her go. He followed at a distance. Humphrey padded beside him and then catching Janet’s scent loped forward. Murdoch called him to heel and Humphrey came back at once, his tail wagging uncertainly, perhaps under the impression that this was a new kind of game.
There was no sound but the steady drumming of rain and the squeak of oilskin as Janet walked.
Raindrops glistened on briar roses and she thought how as a child she had loved everything that glistened! And then, when she got older, looking at the Christmas tree, she had said, having learned in her wisdom to discriminate and reject, ‘It’s only tinsel.’ Oh to be attracted once more by the shining, the glittering and the gaudy! To be thankful for all things bright and beautiful whether roses in hedgerows or azaleas in suburban gardens where every plant knows its place, for moorland purple with heather smelling of honey and vivid, red cataract of rhododendron over stately wall, for lichen, moss, velvet, satin, damask curtains, burnished copper, lustres, rubies, cherries, for all the fripperies, gewgaws, spangles, for all that glitters whether gold or brass, impure or incorruptible!
She was shaking with excitement, words tumbled through her mind and half-finished sentences came staccato from her lips. This would not do. She had some way to go yet and the power within her must be conserved until she reached her destination. She walked more soberly for a time.
The rain had cleared when she came towards the heath. Over the hedgerow loomed a birch, a leaning gossip nodding to a neighbour across the lane. Light shone brightly through the lifting clouds and she saw all the colours – swathes of green turf bisecting rough brown of gorse, still yellow-flowered at the tips; the reddish brown of last year’s bracken beneath the brilliant green of young ferns and seedling trees; and in the distance land rising in a patchwork of terracotta, dark chocolate, saffron, and beyond yet another ridge with hobbled trees sown into scrub and gorse.
There was a warm breeze and on either side as she walked the branches of the little larches bobbed up and down like swimmers treading water. Birds fluted. Her face was flushed, her breath came light and eager as a child’s. Hope buoyed her up, her feet barely seemed to touch earth.
She came to the main road and found it empty. A caravan of hippies had invaded the county and, miles from this spot, the police had blocked the road. She had heard this on the news in the morning when she switched on the radio in the hope that some comfort might be provided by the thought for the day. ‘Will they go to join in this battle?’ she had wondered, ‘My tramp and the lad at the fairground?’ And then, quite suddenly, she could see the house from which they would set out. Of course! It was the old inn at which she and Murdoch had been for drinks on many a summer evening. Murdoch had told her, months ago, that the owners were selling it. It was, he had said, reading from the local paper, too far from the main road to attract the travelling public and there was practically no local trade. The owners had said, optimistically, that it would make a very pleasant family home if people did not mind being ‘a bit isolated’; alternatively, it might appeal to a community of some kind. Janet was sure that it had now found a community of some kind.
On the far side of the road a worn signpost pointed to a track few would follow today, or any day. The narrow road had long been replaced by the main road across the heath and the grassy banks had spread, the tarmac had broken up and it was now little different from the old cart tracks. Above her as she walked the larks were singing and she was up there, too, up, up, up high in the sky, every nerve in her body tingling.
She had forgotten how far the inn was from the main road. By the time she came in sight of it her legs were shaking and the little sobs of ecstasy began to sound more like distress signals – only there was no one at home to receive them. She was right outside her body, floating.
The inn was a wide-fronted, two-storey building, plain, with good sash windows and a small, unpretentious porch. Once it had had a kindly aspect, but now, empty and uncared for, there was a certain grimness about it. There was no sound from within as Janet walked towards it. They had gone, then, to join the hippies, or on purposes of their own. As she stood looking at the building she felt a fluttering in her breast as though a bird had landed there and now folded its wings. Feather by feather she felt the folding of the wings. Perhaps she had been wrong and this was not the place of which the boy had spoken? It no longer seemed to matter. She could not remember why she had been so exhilarated by this discovery or what she had thought could be made of it. Although the bird was still now, the dizzying spiral into darkness which had previously followed the folding of the wings had not begun. She had come so far and must go on. Life is an act of faith, each step a venture into uncharted territory, she thought, stepping across the threshold.