The BRIGHT DAY

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘Is anything happening there, Martin? We’ve got an urgent news item waiting.’

  He had to admit that nothing was happening.

  But then a raggle-taggle group of youngsters came to the end of Pont Street. One of them, a long-haired lad with a gay impudent face, had a tambourine, and he was an artist: he saw the expectant faces, the unused props-fire engine, ladder, television cameras-and the street beneath the window, waiting like a stage for something to come to life on it; and he made his contribution. Raising his tambourine, he began to sing:

  ' “I danced in the morning

  When the world was begun

  And I danced in the moon

  And the stars and the sun. . . " ’

  He moved through the crowd and people made way for him.

  ‘ “And I came down from Heaven

  And I danced on the earth,

  In Bethlehem

  I had my birth. . . " ’

  The constable said to Lomax, ‘We only need Brighton to send the dolphins now!’

  People in the crowd began to sing and clap their hands. The young man and his followers had reached the police barrier. Cope said, ‘Marvellous! Marvellous! Just when something was needed.’ He leant out of the window and shouted imperiously, ‘Let them through! Let them through!’ The police humoured him to the extent of letting the young man through the barrier. He pranced beneath the window, shaking his tambourine and singing:

  ' “Dance, then, wherever you may be

  I am the Lord of the Dance, said he. . . " ’

  ‘Come on, Hannah!’ Cope implored. ‘Come on! Sing!’

  ‘No!’ But she felt a terrible desire to become a part of his madness. She tried to think of Will, but this no longer helped. She clenched her teeth and repeated his name over and over in her mind, but it didn’t work. He was sane but it didn’t make her sane. Her legs were beginning to shake and soon the shaking spread up her thighs.

  Cope said, ‘Sing! Sing!’

  The young man swayed, side to side, back and forth, arms now extended wide, now raised high above his head; in the cramped room. Cope gyrated, feet stamping, head nodding more and more vehemently to the beat of the music as though it was something with which he must contend, an issue to be settled once and for all. He cried, ‘Sing! Louder, louder!’

  Hannah had lost control over the lower half of her body; urine was running down the insides of her legs, but the worst thing of all was the shaking which was so violent it seemed that every bone was working loose. The singing of the crowd grew louder. The young man’s head lolled back, rolled forward, the shoulders hunched, braced, every muscle in the writhing body jerked and quivered. Cope banged the butt of the rifle on the floor, louder and louder and louder, but still he cried wildly, with as much despair as exultation, ‘Louder! Louder!’ Neil was wiggling the toes of his left foot and repeating ‘one little piggy went to market’. The young man with the tambourine sang, ‘I’ll lead you all/Wherever you may be/I will lead you all/In the dance, said he. . . .’

  Hannah stretched her arms out in front of her. She was not aware of what she was doing and was surprised to see them there, the fingers straining as though trying to grasp something; although the strain was intense, the arms were not shaking. She stared at the hands, the fingers within an inch of deliverance. She gathered all the strength that was in her, drew a long deep breath and held it; then, as the fingers clawed, she felt in her stomach the pull of something small but strong as a core of steel. There was one moment of tremendous effort and then she seemed to float free of the force of gravity. She was high up, looking down on Cope, quite dispassionately, and seeing that he was driven by impulses beyond his control and would probably kill her. She was not afraid, because she was outside the action which was not relevant to her; the only source of danger was Hannah Mason and once she was reconciled with this creature there was no one else she need fear. All this seemed to be laid out beneath her like a picture and at the same time it was like music in perfect harmony, and as she looked and listened, marvelling, she thought that she had overcome the world and would not have to return to it; but no sooner had thought begun to form in her mind than she felt herself spinning down.

  Outside, the volume of sound swelled in spite of a policeman shouting through a loud hailer, ‘People’s lives are in danger, will you please. . . .’ His voice was drowned in the singing. ‘I danced for the fishermen/For James and John/They came with me/And the dance went on. . .

  Hannah took her place in the room again. She felt as though she had missed a reel in a film but that it didn’t matter very much; she did not think that the policeman or anyone out there could help her. She was on her own and it was as well to know it. She sat down at the table. There was a sheet of paper in the typewriter. She thought that perhaps she should demonstrate that she had no part in what was going on around her. Automatically, her fingers typed “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.” This was not very inspiring, but before she could type anything else Cope had come up and was looking over her shoulder at the typewritten words. He said, ‘I don’t think I can have this,’ quite mildly, as if he had caught her playing about in class. Then he hit her a great blow across the face and said, ‘Get out! And dispose of that disgusting creature over there while you’re about it!’ Something clattered on the floor. The policeman was shouting through the loud hailer again. Cope rushed to the window and leant out. ‘Let them sing! Everyone must sing!’

  Hannah looked down. The front door key was at her feet. She regarded it warily because hope could be dangerous to her; already her knees were beginning to shake. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, testing that core of steel in her stomach. It held. She was no longer so disinterested as in that one supreme moment, but she felt calm. She picked up the key and went across to Neil. ‘We’re going now.’ She was afraid he would not move and she knew she could not lift him. She came closer and whispered, ‘Come on. This little piggy is going to market.’ At this, he got to his feet where he remained, holding one shoe in his hand. She guided him to the door. Cope was singing:

  ' “I danced on a Friday

  When the sky turned black -

  It’s hard to dance

  With the devil on your back. . . " ’

  They were through the door; in front of them the window-less stairs were dark. She did not dare to put on the light in case it distracted Cope. Moray shuffled, feeling for each tread like a blind man.

  ‘ “They cut me down

  And I leap up high –

  I am the life

  That’ll never, never die. . . " ’

  They had sung it twice. Would they begin once again, or would they stop? She did not dare to hurry Neil in case this frightened him and he refused to go on; but if they delayed too long the music might stop. She was convinced that Cope would do something terrible when the music stopped.

  ‘Shoe’s tight.’ Neil leant against the wall, whimpering. ‘Foot’s gone to sleep.’ Hannah concentrated her mind on Neil’s foot. It was important not to think in terms of escape; the next step on the stair was all that mattered. She bent down and unlaced his shoe, jerking it off while he swayed against the wall and giggled. When she had the shoe off, he went down another two steps and said, ‘No. Still asleep.’ There were three more steps; she ran down them and flung open the door. There was a great gasp and the singing stopped. Lomax and a constable started towards her and a shot rang out. Lomax and the constable ducked back. Hannah ran up the stairs and pulled Neil down; he stumbled and she half¬dragged him across the threshold. Someone shouted to her, ‘Stay there! You’re out of his range there.’

  A girl was screaming. The crowd had moved back when the shot was fired, but someone had remained behind, crumpled on the ground beneath the window; Hannah could see his arm flung out, fingers still holding the tambourine. Lomax and the constable began to edge their way towards him. There was silence now. And blood, more blood than Hannah would have believed possible. F
rom the window, Cope watched motionless. Lomax and the constable reached the young man; the constable took off his jacket and laid it over his head and shoulders. Then Lomax and he crawled on towards Hannah and Moray. The constable said, ‘Edge into the doorway of the bakery, just in case. . . .’

  From the opposite building, the chief constable exhorted Cope to throw down his rifle. Whether he did or not, no longer mattered; they were going to get him now one way or another. The light was going. In the dark, men would edge along the wall and get in through the open door. He could wait for that, or come down now; he had that much choice. He came down. He ran into the road, zigzagging in the direction of The Warren. Two shots were fired and then he was too near the crowd for the police to risk another shot. The crowd scattered, as far as was possible in that confined space, and the way was clear for him. He was in The Warren. The police made no effort to stop him. There were only three ways out of The Warren, and the other two had been sealed for some time.

  In the radio car, Martin Penny was saying, ‘There are going to be a lot of questions which will have to be answered. Why was Cope ever allowed to reach the office, and having reached it, why. . . .’

  ‘And, Martin, there’s going to be a few questions for Neil Moray to answer, surely?’

  ‘The way he looked when he came out, George, it will be some time before he answers any questions.’

  The police were moving in on the Pont Street entrance to The Warren. They were armed and accompanied by dogs. There was no way out for Cope, but it would take time to comb the narrow alleyways and shops.

  ‘He used to come in to buy prints,’ a young woman was telling Basil Todd. ‘I always had a strange feeling about him. . . .’

  A doctor knelt beside Hannah murmuring persuasively. He wanted her to go to hospital; Moray had already been taken away.

  ‘It’s all over now,’ the doctor soothed.

  ‘But it isn’t. I must stay to the end. Please!’ She had to know how it ended, she couldn’t have Cope left loose in her mind. ‘I’ve tried so hard to be good,’ she pleaded. ‘Please let me stay.’

  Will said, ‘Let her stay.’

  Someone put a rug round her shoulders. She sat in the doorway of the baker’s shop and Will sat beside her. If she lay on her back, she would have a fine view of the sky, all those red giants and white dwarfs. . . .

  The crash of breaking glass.

  ‘He won’t come out alive.’ A woman’s voice. ‘They’ll see to that.’ A stirring in the shifting sands of pity.

  Searchlights had been switched on. The Warren was like a glass labyrinth. Cope showed little awareness of his pursuers, although for a time he evaded them effectively. It was the antique shops which drew him and he broke into one after another, hurling himself through panes of glass, breaking with his bare hands every mirror, every showcase, until his hands were hewn so lumpishly out of shape as to be useless; and still he went on, thrashing about with his feet, as though he must destroy his own image wherever it appeared. The cramped passageways facilitated obstruction and his pursuers were hampered by pyramids of splintered wood and broken glass. He still had some advantage over them when, at the end of a blind alley, he broke into a clock shop. Here, the fine sweep of destruction which had carried him forward was fragmented by the meticulous precision of the smaller timekeepers. He blundered from one to the other of these exquisite things, hurling them to the ground and stamping on wheels and springs as though he feared the intricate mechanism might have power to reassemble itself. Around him, the larger clocks continued with unvarying busyness, second hands described their inexorable circles, pendulums swung unremittingly, pulses beat to well-regulated measures. His own rhythm was fractured, his movements uncoordinated. The staring dials seemed to grow in number and to close in on him, until at last a heavy grandfather clock bore down on him, and, burying its great benign face in his, held him prisoner with a delicate frill of glass around his neck. Although the police shouted at him not to move, he struggled violently to free himself from this strange embrace and one of the jugular veins in his neck was severed.

  It was quiet. In Pont Street voices petered out. A discarded ice-cream wrapper skittered briskly along the gutter, a black cat strolled across the road. People watched the alley which led into The Warren, dim turnip faces upturned to the light of the street lamp. A child began to cry. Then, farther away, a long, low ‘aaah!’ swelling and dying away. Someone shouted, ‘They’re taking him out of the Villiers Street entrance!’ People began to run, pushing and shoving. Hannah bowed her head on her knees.

  Voices again.

  ‘You’re going to have something to tell your pals after this holiday, aren’t you, lovey?’

  ‘It’s too late. They’ve gone now. You wouldn’t have liked it anyway. Messy.’

  ‘If only someone could have talked to him.’

  Hannah said, ‘I am going to lie on my back.’

  There was a swathe of sky above, stretched between roofs and chimneys; a crescent moon snarled up in fairy lights and stars tangled in wire; television aerials sailing down the Milky Way, a whole fleet of them. . . .

  Will said, ‘You must come now.’ The ultimate gentleness which cannot be denied. She sat up reluctantly while the street with pallid lamps and dark disfigured buildings pitched into view and the ground rocked beneath her. She held Will’s hand as the world settled again, a poor tatterdemalion gathering its threadbare rags about it. She felt herself being drawn towards it, but not quite inside it yet.

  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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  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus Ltd 1975

  This edition published 2016 by Bello

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan

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  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.co.uk/bello

  ISBN 978-1509-8195-91 EPUB

  ISBN 978-1509-8195-77 HB

  ISBN 978-1509-8195-84 PB

  Copyright © Mary Hocking 1975

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  author of this work has been asserted by him in

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