AN IRRELEVANT WOMAN

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘That’s sick!’

  ‘However high up the hill you go, you won’t get away from the twentieth century.’

  ‘Which is on its way out, anyway. There’ll be different patterns of living in the twenty-first century.’

  Stephanie, recalled to the reason for this visit, asked, ‘What does Mother say about all this?’

  ‘She’s not very pleased; but she couldn’t say much, could she, considering . . .’

  Stephanie looked around her unhappily. ‘It seems Piers and I are going to be the only members of this family who are making any sort of attempt to come to terms with the real world.’

  ‘Someone has to shift the centre of the real world.’ Katrina stood up, holding the pea shells in her apron. ‘Cheer up! Think of all the lovely holidays Marcus and George will have at our farm while you and Piers go off to the Greek islands to recharge your batteries.’

  They had lunch in the garden, a cold collation set out on an old trestle-table. It seemed easier than gathering round the dining-room table as though they were still the same family. But there was no escaping the moment when they must come together in the sitting room or the awareness that this was the last time they would gather here. The discussion was inevitable. But it was not this enterprise, foolish or inspired, which troubled them; it was that most delicate of all human operations, the severing of bonds. Although Janet seemed composed, there was in her eyes something of the defiance of the child who knows it must walk away; while the children expressed the pain of letting go. Murdoch’s face was aged by a sadness which he now accepted as a permanent part of life to be accommodated without fuss or dwelling on particular hurts. To some, he might seem diminished, but others would recognise in him that ability to give sympathy and understanding which comes of valuing the essential separateness of each other individual. Of all the people present, he was the one who set himself to listen.

  ‘I’m just surprised,’ Stephanie began, because she had not the nerve to wait for others to speak, ‘that you could do all this without consulting any of us except Hugh.’

  ‘They didn’t consult me,’ Hugh said. ‘They instructed me. Which, of course, is only proper,’ he added in case he might have sounded hurt.

  ‘But you minded.’ Stephanie was not prepared that anyone should be miserly with feeling at this time.

  ‘Yes.’ He looked at her with distaste. ‘I minded.’

  There was an uneasy pause. In the past, when they had been parents and children with roles written for them by the archetypes talk had come easily. Now they must speak for themselves and listen to replies from people who had become strangers.

  It was Piers, whose problems were of a different nature, who began. ‘Suppose we talk about what it is that you intend to do. You are proposing to move into this house on the heath and establish some kind of community there. Is that the idea?’ He had had no difficulty in arriving at this conclusion since it was something which he had once envisaged doing himself.

  ‘Not a community, no.’ Janet sought words as though this was an exercise in naming. ‘A staging post, I suppose you might call it.’ Stephanie felt her mother would have liked to be doing something – arranging flowers, perhaps – while she talked, to illustrate her detachment.

  ‘But you have no qualifications,’ Piers said.

  ‘We are not going to treat anyone. We shall offer food and shelter – or board and lodging, if you prefer it. I have had quite a bit of experience in that.’

  Piers said impatiently, ‘But why here, in Dorset?’

  ‘Because we are here.’

  ‘I assume you intend to render some kind of service, not simply to set yourselves up in the roadhouse business?’

  ‘Yes.’ She seemed reluctant to be tied down to any very specific description of her intention. ‘We shall take people for whom there is nowhere else to go.’

  ‘And how many of them are there in Dorset?’ he said scornfully.

  ‘You mean you don’t think there are people who sleep rough – tramps, drop-outs, disaffected teenagers – in Dorset?’ Janet asked.

  ‘Not in comparison.’

  ‘But leaving aside comparisons?’

  ‘Well, I suppose there must be some,’ he conceded. ‘Yes, of course there must be. A few.’

  ‘We couldn’t cope with more than a few,’ Janet said. ‘I got so depressed talking to Patsy about all the things which are wrong in the world. And then I began to see that anyone is going to be unhappy who spends so much time brooding on things which they can’t alter and so little on what it is in their power to change. For me, any venture has to be small.’

  Malcolm, silent in his corner, comforted himself with the reflection that this was remarkably like the last act of a Priestley play. Soon, after everyone had had their say, the curtain would come down and all that would be required would be for them to step forward and take a bow. It would all be over. Then, with any luck, they would find themselves playing something more congenial.

  ‘All this upheaval!’ Stephanie was intent on prolonging the scene. ‘For something that hardly seems worth doing.’

  Murdoch said quietly, ‘But if it is all that we can do, isn’t it worth doing?’

  She was silent, remembering her own conversation with Dr Potter. The voice came to her now quite clearly – ‘Whereas at this private clinic you see people whom you do understand and whom you feel you have a chance of helping? If this is where your particular talent lies, I see nothing wrong in that.’ A disturbing thought occurred to her. She said, ‘I’m not at all sure you can do this on your own without professional advice. And what will you use for money?’

  ‘We shall have professional advice,’ Janet said. ‘And I think the money may be forthcoming. In fact, we believe we might be funded by some sort of trust . . .’

  ‘I knew it! Dr Potter! That woman is behind this! She has always been able to raise money for unlikely ventures.’

  ‘She thinks there is a need for this kind of place up and down the country,’ Janet said. ‘And we shall try to be as self-supporting as possible . . .’

  ‘You and who else?’ Stephanie demanded. ‘Where are your helpers to come from?’

  ‘We have one or two already. Patsy and . . .’

  ‘I should have thought that set the seal of doom on this silly undertaking,’ Stephanie said bitterly.

  Murdoch said, ‘We have reached an understanding. Patsy is prepared to make a few small concessions as regards timekeeping while we have agreed to accept that the area in which she can operate successfully is limited and not to press her beyond those limits.’

  ‘And Ann Bellamy is going to do the secretarial work,’ Janet said. ‘Then, if people stay with us for long, we shall ask them to do some work on the land . . .’

  ‘So you are thinking in terms of a community?’ Katrina said.

  ‘That might grow out of it. But the really important thing is that they should always be free to stay or to go, to leave and to return.’

  Stephanie said, ‘They will take advantage,’ and Janet replied, ‘We hope so.’

  There was a pause. Janet, who had found this more difficult than her composed manner might have suggested, got up and went to the window. Malcolm’s eyes followed her. The turning of the leaves reminded her of the time of her life; she had been prepared for that, but not for how small the garden seemed.

  Malcolm said, ‘Why shouldn’t we all give you a hand?’

  Janet drew in her breath sharply, remembering the fierce joy she had once experienced looking out from this window at her children each separately engaged, yet held together within the border of flowers. She felt again the longing to enfold them in this quiet, safe place.

  Stephanie said, ‘Make it a family undertaking? I suppose, between us, we can muster a good many of the appropriate skills.’ She felt a quite dizzying release from pressure as she thought of the corner she and Piers might occupy.

  ‘You already have a solicitor,’ Hugh pointed out.

 
‘Assistant cook?’ Malcolm made a supplicating gesture with steepled hands. For a moment he saw them all close together, drawn into that brightly-lit area where the stage hands had laid the furniture on the square of carpet and where all the action takes place; what happened beyond – the dusty floorboards, the wings, dimly-lit by a blue lamp in the stage manager’s cubbyhole – a shadowy unknown.

  Stephanie summoned psychology to her aid. ‘And you wouldn’t need to get rid of the house. Because, don’t you see, it must be this house. If we are to put things right – and I think this is what is troubling you, our almost incestuous concern with family – then it needs to be put right here, where things first began to go wrong. We have to take the things which were good and hold on to them fast. We mustn’t run away and think because we are somewhere else we can be somebody else, that we can start afresh without a past. It has to be here.’

  Murdoch, who had been watching Janet, said quietly, ‘I think we need to sleep on this.’

  He knew his own mind and that night he slept heavily. But Janet drifted between dream and waking, scarcely knowing which was which. She saw Malcolm gliding across the lawn; a tray balanced on one outstretched palm, he approached a figure seated beneath the apple tree, a half-turned figure whose identity was not clear. It was a tranquil scene, bathed in pale-lemon light which gradually turned to gold, yet she woke frightened. Stephanie loomed over her offering comfort and advice. ‘She is very bossy,’ Piers said. ‘But let her be. She is fulfilled now.’ Janet turned on her side. Hugh was in the box room, working at a desk, while his children played outside on the lawn. The room was small, cramped. She said agitatedly to Murdoch, ‘We must get a bigger room for Hugh.’ She went into the hall and stood looking up the stairs. ‘Katrina!’ She woke murmuring the name. Katrina should be here, she thought, to make the circle complete. With her woman, if need be . . . I have always got on well with other women, so why not? What other women? She gazed up at the ceiling. What woman, other that Deutzia, has there been for me to get on with? Trying to find this other woman she drifted into sleep.

  It was autumn. She could see excited faces in flickering firelight. There was a huge bonfire in the garden and Murdoch was bending forward, roasting chestnuts. She shouted to him to be careful, frightened again. The sparks glowed in the darkening sky. There were frosty stars.

  ‘It’s going to be a cold night,’ she said. ‘We must go into the house now.’ They came close about her into the house and shut the door. The windows were patterned with frost but the faces of her children, red as so many robins, gave warmth to the house; and behind the children she saw the faces of Murdoch and her mother and father, her brothers and sisters . . . I have everyone I have ever loved here, she thought and she clapped her hands and cried out, ‘I have never known such happiness.’

  Somewhere, the dog was barking. Fear in the sound. Malcolm went out to him, came running back, screaming, ‘There’s a man on the bonfire.’

  She was screaming now. ‘It’s straw. It’s all right, I tell you. It’s only a straw figure that they sacrifice.’

  She was outside and alone. Gone were the frosty stars; the whole sky was alight and the roar of the flames drowned all other sound. At the heart of the fire it was not the straw figure blazing, but the tramp. She wanted to run but her feet would not move and she watched until the body was totally consumed and all that remained was a huge, disfigured face.

  ‘It won’t work, will it?’ Katrina said the next morning when they were all together after breakfast.

  ‘It’s going to make you ill, you know that?’ Stephanie said to her mother.

  ‘I had a bad dream.’ The memory of it marked her face; she looked years older.

  ‘Even if you don’t want us to help, at least you could keep the house,’ Stephanie persisted. ‘For our sakes.’

  ‘Or find a place in town where you will be more accessible,’ Piers said.

  Murdoch intervened. ‘It wouldn’t work in this house because you would all think of it as your home, which had been temporarily invaded. And I don’t think the kind of person we could help would come to town – townspeople wouldn’t like it if they did.’

  ‘But this is a very narrow range of people you can hope to do anything for,’ Piers protested. ‘You’re not going to be able to cope with drug addicts or anyone who needs specialist attention. It’s going to whittle down to a handful of misfits and tramps. And there are millions of people in need!’

  Murdoch shrugged. ‘If we start thinking in terms of millions we shall never do anything.’

  Janet said, ‘I shall feel we are lucky if we have a handful of people in a year.’

  ‘It’s all so pathetically unreal!’ Stephanie pleaded with her.

  Janet turned away. ‘Life is real wherever people are living it.’

  ‘But what will it lead to, Mother? Just another commune at the most.’

  ‘And another and another and another.’ Katrina had been won over – but then she was up in the clouds somewhere on Cheviot. ‘It could be a way forward, the way of living in the future.’

  ‘It won’t last,’ Piers said sadly.

  ‘Perhaps we set too much store on things lasting?’ Murdoch got up and Humphrey padded hopefully to the door. ‘It may be that we should accept that the most that can be asked of any venture is that it should serve a good purpose. In time, something else may be required as new problems demand different answers.’ He held out a hand to Janet. ‘But for now, this is our answer.

  Later, Hugh wrote in his diary, “When I was a child I was loved and cherished, but as I grew older I saw that this awareness of being loved came to me when we children had our mother or our father to ourselves. When they were together they unconsciously excluded everyone else. There was one fire which burned in our house at which the children could never warm themselves. Lately, planning this new venture, they had seemed more absorbed in what was going on around them than in each other and I had thought they were drifting apart. But this morning, watching as they left us to set out on their walk, I saw that I was wrong. They walked a little apart and seemingly occupied with their own thoughts, but only people who have great trust in each other can do that. They are together but in a different way. And now there is another fire, but this time all that prevents me from sharing its warmth is myself.”

  ‘If they were doing something significant, I could understand it,’ Stephanie said to Piers when they went for a last stroll in the evening. ‘But it is such a small step they are taking.’

  ‘Small steps may be all they are capable of.’ He sounded more envious than disparaging. Perhaps he regretted having set himself aims beyond his capabilities.

  They walked slowly down the drive. The gate swung on rusty hinges, the SOLD board shifted in the hedge.

  They had come here so often for rest and a brief forgetting of the strain and stress of what they would continue to regard as real life, and had left refreshed and better able to face their coming trials. They had spoken of Janet and Murdoch with affection, agreeing that ‘the twentieth century has passed them by’ and had thought of the house as a place out of time. They had been grateful that it was there, somewhere to which they could always return. Where would they go now?

  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, I
ndifferent 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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  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus Ltd, 1987

  This edition published 2016 by Bello

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan

  20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.co.uk/bello

  ISBN 978-1509-8197-13 EPUB

  ISBN 978-1509-8197-37 HB

  ISBN 978-1509-8197-44 PB

  Copyright © Mary Hocking 1987

  The right of Mary Hocking to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted by him in

  accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.