The BRIGHT DAY

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘That’s the last thing I want.’ But Moray’s tone suggested he had given it some thought. He began to list his reasons for rejecting the idea, more for his own satisfaction than Cope’s. ‘There’s no organisation here to speak of as yet. I’ve made a few useful contacts in the town, but they need to be followed up, nursed, and God knows when I’ll get the time for that. Then there are the issues I raised at the election, I’ve got to try to work out the best way of doing the things I promised. Some of them are so complicated, it needs a research unit working on them full-time! Planning. . . .’

  The telephone rang. It was maddening for him, just as he had worked his way round to the thing which was really worrying him. Cope studied him as he dealt with the call, a reminder that he was to speak at a meeting sponsored by The Downland Association. He was tired, the slight twitch of his left eyelid was more pronounced than usual this morning, but he had too much respect for his caller – or himself – to betray weariness; although his manner was restrained, he managed to inject some interest into his words. He gives just enough, never an ounce more. Cope thought; I wonder whether he deliberately paces himself. How far could he go if he was really extended?

  Moray put the receiver down, made a note on a pad in front of him, and said, ‘I’m not very happy about this scheme of Heffernan’s.’

  Cope said idly, ‘Or was it Heffernan you weren’t keen on? Tycoons are seldom likable, that’s why they get to be tycoons. But you don’t need to worry too much about the impression Heffernan made on you. His scheme isn’t a projection of his personality, he’s not Mario. Other people will have worked the scheme out for him.’

  Moray said stubbornly, ‘He looked at me as though I was one of his possessions.’

  ‘That’s his way. In his eyes, people are either for him, or against him; there is no such thing as non-alignment.’

  ‘No one,’ Moray said, ‘has ever behaved as though they possessed me.’

  It must have been a devastating confrontation. For a moment. Cope could barely control the desire to laugh at the picture conjured up.

  Moray went on, ‘It made me wonder about his methods. I think we shall need to investigate his scheme very thoroughly.’

  ‘You’re a damn liar!’ Cope thought. ‘You’re not thinking about the scheme even now. You are still suffering under this assault on your ego.’

  ‘I’ve never committed myself to Heffernan’s scheme.’ Moray had been a member of parliament for just under a month, and already he was learning his lessons. ‘I went through my speeches last night. I was very careful what I said on the subject.’

  ‘You said,’ Cope reminded him, ‘that the proposals for the development of the West Front should be considered coolly and objectively and not simply dismissed out of hand as some interested parties would like them to be.’

  ‘That is just what I propose to do. Consider them coolly and objectively.’

  ‘Not all of your meetings were cool and objective. I remember one at which someone accused you of defending the scheme in order to make capital out of Ormerod’s difficulties. You replied, if you remember, by giving a number of reasons why you thought the scheme might be of advantage to the town. This was a matter which came up several times at question-and-answer sessions. You were asked to elaborate on your previous remarks. The next time you were asked to elaborate on your elaborations.’

  ‘The reasons I gave were quite valid.’

  ‘You don’t think they suggested that you had already given very careful consideration to the scheme? I’m only mentioning this because if you withdraw now that is what people will say.’

  ‘Are you saying I have committed myself to something from which I can’t withdraw?’ Moray asked stiffly.

  ‘Don’t let’s put words into each other’s mouths,’ Cope laughed. ‘You can always withdraw from anything.’

  Moray bit his lip; the conversation had passed beyond the point where it would have been wise for him to object to the use of the word ‘withdraw’, it showed how easily one could be put in a false position.

  ‘People have a tendency to think life is much simpler than it really is,’ Cope said. ‘Expose a man, and people will imagine that everything with which he is connected is contaminated; conversely, the things which he attacked must be good. It would be quite a tricky operation to convince people that Ormerod was right to attack the West Front development without making it seem that you were wrong.’

  Moray looked ahead of him. The shutters were down, his face expressed very little. He said, ‘You examined the scheme in some detail, didn’t you? It was one of the matters I left to you.’

  ‘It was, and I did. I thought it was good. I still think so. It’s a little frightening, of course; nothing on this scale has ever been planned over here. But it’s all perfectly feasible.’

  ‘Feasible as an engineering project, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. It’s been done elsewhere. Tokyo.’

  ‘Tokyo!’

  ‘In miniature, of course.’

  ‘It will dwarf the town!’

  ‘We shall have a Scotney Upper and a Scotney Lower – Scotney Supra, if that sounds more picturesque.’

  ‘It sounds dreadful either way.’

  ‘I told you there would be lower and upper levels for the shops and . . .’

  ‘I imagined it as something like Chester. . . .’

  ‘Why borrow from the past? This is a twenty-first-century development.’

  ‘You should have told me all this.’ Up to this point, Moray had avoided recriminations. Now he looked very straight at Cope; there was a momentary glimpse of a man Cope hadn’t yet encountered. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I thought I told you quite a lot about it,’ Cope replied blandly. ‘I didn’t have any doubts. I put it to you the way I found it – exciting. I still find it exciting.’

  Moray looked at him as though for him, also, this was an encounter with an unknown person. His momentary firmness foundered. ‘I should have gone into it myself, of course. But it wasn’t one of the main issues for me; I never meant to talk about it so much, but there was all that trouble about Ormerod, and at each meeting it seemed necessary to say just a little bit more. . . .’ There were beads of sweat on his forehead, not from the heat, which hadn’t yet penetrated the room, but panic.

  Cope looked at him, fascinated. It is happening to you! he thought. To you of all people, Neil Moray! You, too, are looking back, cool and full of wisdom, to a time when you were fighting tooth and claw – well, not tooth and claw, perhaps, but as near as your kind will ever come to it. And now, in a totally different climate, you are being called to account. What can you say? That they wouldn’t have voted for you if you had behaved as you are behaving now, cautious, noncommittal, weighing every word. . . . You wouldn’t have anything to answer for, because you wouldn’t be a member of parliament. Just as I wouldn’t be alive if I’d bothered myself about the Sermon on the Mount. All that is for saints, and you’re not a saint, Neil Moray. But now is the time to find out just what you are.

  He said cheerfully, ‘Don’t worry. You can wriggle out of it, I expect.’ Neil winced. Cope went on, conjuring up a picture of the kind of politician most abhorrent to Moray, ‘Make an honest confession that you were mistaken. Be manly about it, don’t beat your breast. It may take a bit of time to live it down, but if the scheme doesn’t catch on, you may yet be heralded as the man who saved the town. And time is on your side. People have short memories.’

  The telephone rang, which was a good thing as he was beginning to run out of clichés. Cope answered it so that Moray might have time to reflect, perhaps even to see himself as a political cartoonist might portray him. Ridicule would come hard to one of Moray’s sensibilities.

  ‘Speaking. . . .’ Cope was perched on the edge of the table, now he eased round slightly, his back to Moray. ‘I’m sorry, this must be a very bad line. Who did you say?’ He screwed his face up and pressed the receiver to his ear. ‘Yes, I did hear, but it
is a bad line . . . Well, that wouldn’t really be the answer, because I’m engaged at the moment . . .Yes, if you like. You know the number, don’t you? Nice to hear you. ‘Bye.’ He put the receiver down delicately, as though it was made of cut glass.

  Moray said, ‘Whatever pressures may be brought to bear,’ he looked at Cope coldly, ‘I can’t commit myself to this unless I am satisfied that it would be right for the scheme to go forward.’

  Cope shrugged his shoulders. ‘Let it ride awhile. There’s a long way to go, it may founder quite naturally.’

  ‘No.’ Moray shook his head. ‘The further I go, the harder it will be to turn back.’

  ‘Look, you’re not the only person involved in this!’ Cope laughed. ‘You didn’t launch the project and you weren’t responsible for selling it to people in the first place; and as for the final decision, that nests with the Borough Council, the Department of the Environment. . .’

  ‘From my point of view I am the only person involved.’

  ‘You don’t mind if I say that sounds a trifle priggish?’

  Moray said levelly, ‘Perhaps I am a prig.’

  What have we here? Cope wondered. A bloody martyr? Moray’s face had a bilious hue. Cope watched him collecting papers together; he didn’t look as if he would enjoy gathering his own faggots. Better let him alone for a time, a night or two examining what details of the scheme were available might do more than anything else to moderate his idealism. He said, ‘Shall I give you my own papers? They are probably out of date, these schemes change so rapidly, the last drafts I had were numbered eighteen!’

  Moray said stiffly, ‘If you would.’

  He waited, holding to the shreds of his dignity, while Cope searched in the filing cabinet for something that would really give him a fright. He made a practice of keeping even the most incriminating documents in the office so that Moray would never be able to plead ignorance.

  Cope had quite forgotten about the telephone call by the time he returned to his basement room in the evening. He had bought fish and chips on the way and he was just emptying them out of the greasy paper when the telephone rang. He picked up the overflowing plate and carried it to the instrument. It was Pauline Ormerod.

  ‘You’re still around, then?’ he said. Either she could take it that he thought she had been the one to cool off, or that he was supremely indifferent, it didn’t matter which.

  ‘Yes. But you’ve got what you wanted, haven’t you?’

  ‘If I say “no”, you’ll be offended; if I say, “you always gave me what I wanted”, you won’t like that, either.’ He took a chip and wished he had had time to put salt on the plate.

  She said, ‘If I say you took what you wanted, you won’t think I’m talking sex, will you?’

  He put the plate down on a chair beside him and said, ‘Just at the moment, I’m rather at a loss, so you keep talking and I’ll tag along.’

  ‘I’m accusing you of burglary.’

  He laughed. ‘What am I supposed to be after? That bead curtain you wear for a necklace, or the sheepskin coat with the mange on the shoulder?’

  ‘The papers about Geoffrey’s dealings with Mario Vicente.’

  ‘Well, well,’ he said softly. ‘And you sound quite sober, too.’

  There wasn’t much steam rising from the fish now, a few more moments and the meal would be quite uneatable; the sight of the food slowly congealing on the plate filled him with revulsion.

  ‘. . . typed it on the typewriter in Geoffrey’s study . . .’ she was saying.

  ‘Look, Pauline, if you want to work something out of your system, that’s all right, go ahead. Talk to me as much as you like, but don’t make a fool of yourself in public, will you, love?’

  ‘I’ve told someone already.’

  ‘You are trying, as they say, to arrest my attention.’

  ‘William Lomax.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Don’t worry. He didn’t believe me, at least, I don’t think he did . . .’ Her voice trailed away, for the first time she sounded very much the person he knew, he could imagine her mind back-tracking over the interview . . . My God! She had told Lomax!

  ‘Perhaps we should talk about this before we both end up in court?’ he suggested idly.

  ‘Nothing you could say – or do – would change my mind.’

  ‘As you please. But you’re not going to help Geoffrey by getting yourself involved in a slander action, are you? I don’t suppose he wants all the muck dredged up again.’

  ‘It would finish Moray.’

  ‘Pauline, be sensible! Of what are you going to accuse me? Making off with your husband’s private papers while I was having an affair with you? Do you think anyone would believe it was necessary for me to resort to burglary?’

  ‘I told you the combination of the safe.’

  ‘Good grief! I don’t remember us having that kind of conversation.’

  ‘You said you were getting one for the office, it had to be a small one because there wasn’t much room, and the combination had to be simple because your secretary was a simple girl.’

  ‘And you reeled off the combination of your safe, did you?’

  ‘I was reeling anyway that night.’

  ‘But your memory is now sharp and clear.’

  ‘I knew I shouldn’t have done it at the time. I was sick the next morning.’

  He pushed the plate away from him. The smell was beginning to fill the room, he hadn’t had time to open a window.

  ‘Well, now, what are we going to do about this? Do I go to my solicitor in the morning? Or would you like to hear about my alibi first? It’s up to you, only hurry, because I have to get something out to the dustbin.’

  ‘Maybe you hired someone else to break in.’

  ‘Maybe, maybe. Which story are you going to settle for?’ He wondered which story she had told Lomax.

  ‘You won’t talk me out of this,’ she muttered.

  ‘Look, Pauline, I don’t give a damn what you say about me. But I can’t land Moray in this. If you believe I would go so far as to steal those papers in order to get him elected, you can’t think I won’t fight this.’

  ‘Oh, what the hell. . .’ She sounded completely flat. Her energy had always died suddenly.

  ‘Suppose we talk about it tomorrow evening?’ He didn’t sound enthusiastic. ‘I must go now. This room smells like a fried fish bar – cold fried fish.’

  ‘Did I interrupt your meal?’

  ‘Not really. I hadn’t started.’

  ‘Where shall I meet you, then?’

  ‘Same place? Or do you feel it will be haunted by our former selves?’

  ‘I don’t think I’d have much trouble laying those ghosts.’ She put the receiver down. She hadn’t specified a time; he would have to get there early in the evening and wait. He got up and went across to open the window; the air wasn’t all that sweet, Mrs. Simpkins’ cat had seen to that. He carried the plate outside, the sight of it filled him with blinding fury; he threw the plate and contents into the dustbin. A puny gesture for so large a rage.

  He went back to his room and lay on the bed, looking up at the cobwebs in the corners and around the lampshade. Moray, Pauline, Lomax. . . . He saw them all like figures on a chessboard. Pauline’s move had been badly timed. ‘What’s to do?’ he said aloud. His stomach gave him the answer. He went out and had a good meal. First things first; feed the inner man and the rest will take care of itself. But it wasn’t as simple as that. As he walked back through the streets, cool after the bright day, he felt energy beginning to build up within him. By the time he got back to his room, his pulse was thudding and when he lay on the bed every nerve in his body twitched; he twisted and turned all night, his mind racing. He was on a train; through the window he could see the telegraph poles striding by in the other direction. He began to count them, his eyelids twitching as they went faster and faster.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘I shouldn’t have come,’ Hannah said, as she studied
the menu. Whether the remark was occasioned by the price column, the weight of the menu itself, or a revaluation of her acceptance, was not clear.

  She had met Lomax at the week-end. The encounter had not taken place on the seafront on Sunday, but on Saturday at the exhibition of Surrealist painting in the municipal art gallery. Lomax had been sitting on the floor. It was extremely hot in the gallery, which had only very high windows, all of which seemed to be not only closed but securely bolted. Seats were only provided for the attendants. Lomax looked very small and brittle, a twig of a man. After making one or two comments to him about the paintings, Hannah began to feel rather foolish standing over him, so she joined him on the floor. She still felt foolish, but she was more comfortable physically.

  ‘I can see that this must be a psychologist’s paradise,’ he said. ‘Or his hell, perhaps – but then I always feel that both hell and paradise are pleasing to the psychologist, don’t you? Hell more so, probably, it gives him more work.’ He was sitting with his chin on his knees gazing up at a bland still-life of bread, cheese, wine bottle, grapes, and a human torso which had had either gravy or dark brown blood poured over it. ‘But I can’t say it appeals to me very much.’ He looked, she thought, as incongruous as some of the paintings.

  One or two people edged round them, pretending they weren’t there; others walked over them as though they really weren’t there.

  ‘No wonder dogs look so anxious in a crowd,’ Hannah said.

  ‘It’s not really a crowd. I doubt if they will make much money out of it. The weather forecast is good for the rest of the month.’ He sounded indifferent, both to the prospect of good weather and the financial problems of the art gallery.

  Hannah watched people standing in front of the pictures; some looked amused as though they shared a private joke with the painter, some frowned angrily, a few were frankly puzzled. Close by, a young woman furtively eased a frock clammily clinging to her back while she listened to a long dissertation from her heavily bearded companion, and an elderly woman fanned herself with a guidebook. Hannah felt happy, like a child at a party who has won the treasure hunt and can relax, assured of reward, while the other contestants rush round seeking clues. She took off her shoes and put them in her lap.