THE MEETING PLACE

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘She may be maundering, but she is working at the same time, and her stitching is improving.’ To the prioress’s mind, being able to do two things at once denoted a certain intelligence, particularly when one of those things involved somewhat complex forays into the past.

  Dame Ursula, who found the creature a sore trial, ventured to say, ‘Her wits are so addled I doubt she ever knows where she is at any one moment.’

  The prioress correctly interpreted this as a hint that it was of little advantage for the creature to be here at Foxlow Priory. She said, as she had said before, ‘God has sent her to us to look after.’

  The prioress had a strong, intelligent face and a manner that, ever since she was a girl, had conveyed the impression that she saw much around her that could be re-ordered with advantage. She was a woman possessed of great powers. When she first entered the priory in 1473 she had hoped that in this closed world of women she would have the opportunity to exercise these powers. Twelve years had gone by and her hopes had not been entirely realised; she felt cramped at Foxlow. The advent of the madwoman had been welcome to her: a challenge with which she might confront her nuns and shake them out of their complacency.

  When the madwoman had appeared one morning, dancing down the village street and shrieking curses at any who ventured near her, the villagers had run to the priory for help. Prioress Winifred, who had advanced ideas, allowed her nuns to go outside on errands of mercy ‘for so many others go outside on worldly missions, it were a pity for the good to hold back’. When the appeal came, therefore, she sent Dame Priscilla and Dame Ursula to observe the unhappy creature.

  The madwoman was a fearsome sight. At first glance, she appeared to be of more than normal stature, but this impression was due to the wild mass of hair that made her seem at least a foot taller, while the odd twigs and foliage that festooned her person added to her girth. She jigged about in her ragged clothes and flapped her arms like a flightless bird.

  The two nuns stood with gravely folded hands and wondered whatever they were to do. The madwoman advanced cautiously, like a wary animal, head to one side. Dame Ursula closed her eyes, but Dame Priscilla, her flat face peering from her cowl like a little owl, sensed that there was no need of fear. The madwoman halted within three feet of the nuns; she folded her hands and closed her eyes. She found this mimicry excessively funny. Her lips trembled and tears ran down her face; she bent over, hands clutching her stomach, and laughed so violently that Dame Ursula thought she must rupture herself Dame Priscilla, however, had the strange experience of feeling that she had entered into the madwoman; she too had danced down the street only to find herself confronted by two strange creatures dressed all in grey with solemn faces and piously folded hands. She began to laugh and at this the madwoman stretched out her hands towards Dame Priscilla. Then, as the nun moved forward, she stepped back, and so they proceeded step by step down the street until poor Dame Ursula thought they would walk off the edge of the earth leaving her to face the villagers and the angry prioress. She decided she had no option but to join this strange procession.

  They came to the end of the village where the street petered out into a small copse; here the madwoman stopped. Her gaiety dropped from her, as though it were a mask she had cast aside. Her stripped face was so desolate that Dame Ursula shivered, but Dame Priscilla said bravely, ‘My child’ (which was absurd for she was the younger by many years), ‘tell us your trouble.’

  The woman said in a voice soft as the rustle of dry leaves, ‘They have taken my children. My children have been killed.’

  Dame Priscilla stepped back, her courage unequal to venturing into the wood if there were children but lately murdered there.

  But the woman’s mood had changed again, and now she looked about her in bewilderment. ‘I know not how I came here.’

  All the life had gone from her and Dame Priscilla was able to lead her docilely down the village street and through the priory gates.

  ‘It is God’s will that she should find peace,’ the prioress had pronounced. ‘He has sent her to us and we must care for her.’

  They allowed her to stay in a niche in the outer wall of the chapel, little bigger than a kennel, where long ago an anchoress had lived. She seemed to settle there. When the fit was not on her, she was no trouble to anyone. Now, she was singing as she stitched. ‘A length of green say, I asked him to bring me a length of green say.’

  ‘Hush,’ Dame Ursula admonished.

  ‘But I’m singing to my lady.’

  ‘That is blasphemous.’

  ‘She come to me, my lady comes to me. She’s very beautiful and she has a long lavender robe and it shimmers ever so slightly when she moves. She makes a record of me in a book; I see her look into my eyes and then she writes my thoughts in the book.’

  Dame Ursula made the sign of the cross. Surely this image of the Holy Virgin making notes about the thoughts of such as Joan Mosteyn would convince the prioress that she had made a mistake in bringing the creature into the priory. She found the prioress’s expression hard to read.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘The small cove was deserted, most people having decided it was too cold for sitting on the sand. There were no bathers – this jagged, rock-strewn coast delivered its own warning only too effectively – but a continuous trickle of people made their way to where, at the foot of the rocks, a path curved out beyond the promontory into the next bay. Carrying babies, wheeling push¬chairs, leading dogs, in high-heeled sandals, slacks, cardigans, old and young, they clambered on to the path, walking past the sign that said, ‘This path is covered by the incoming tide’. Children explored the caves in the massive cliffs or paddled in the pools left over from the last tide, emerging joyfully covered in green slime.

  ‘What will happen to them?’ Clarice asked the old man who had lit his pipe and was settling down for one of the few remaining entertainments provided free.

  ‘They’ll come back, squeaking and squawking, those that didn’t get too far; those that go right round into the next bay will find there’s no way out there and they’ll come scrambling back, cross about spoiling their shoes. Some of the ones that climbed’ll maybe get up on the headland, though it’s all of seven hundred foot, so they’ll need to know what they’re about – others’ll just have to wait.’ He chuckled over his reminiscences of the unfortunate. ‘Notice is clear enough; ain’t nobody they can sue.’

  Beneath the cliffs, rocks lay strewn across the cove, many weathered smooth; here and there little islands of sand remained. Clarice could see that it was possible to walk out across the rocks to where the sea was coming in with every appearance of leisure, flicking out an occasional foam-coated tongue and then retreating as if it had changed its mind. She reckoned she would be safe out there provided she watched the danger spots where a sudden inrush might be made.

  ‘You see that reef,’ the old man pointed, reading her mind. Clarice located the reef, a long line of rock gnarled as an old tree trunk with a bit chipped out in the middle. ‘Once that gap’s breached, tide’ll come in fast.’

  It was twelve o’clock, two hours since she had announced that she needed a day off. The director had been too dumbfounded by the boldness of this assertion to argue. Undoubtedly, it was the only day off she could hope for, so the best use must be made of it, she told herself sternly, as she began to make wary progress, her eye on an island of sand around which the sea was already moving stealthily. She soon found that she could manage perfectly well, and, pleased at her agility, stepped easily from one rock to another. For a moment, when she reached her goal, she felt exhilarated. Boulders formed a circle round the patch of sand, turning it into a miniature cove; she found a rock with a little hollow in the centre, folded up her anorak, and sat on it. She ate sandwiches, drank coffee from the flask provided by the farmer’s wife, and watched the beached boats that waited for the water to lift them. After a while, she had to climb on to a higher boulder a little nearer the shore. Around her the sea gently, a
lmost imperceptibly, explored its familiar channels. She thought that further out one rock might have disappeared, but the reef was still there, the gap unbreached, water lying smooth as glass on either side of it.

  She reflected.

  It had been necessary to get away. This business with the ghosts had been a shock, a salutary reminder that things had been moving out of true for some little while, and there was something in the atmosphere of the house itself, a disturbance she had never expected to feel again, that compounded her unease. She needed time away to consider. It might well be necessary to leave with apologies all round; plead poor health, humiliating though that might be. She was, after all, no stranger to humiliation. But to decide one must clear the mind, break the obsessive rhythm that takes over in times of stress.

  Somewhere on her journey to the farm, the sensible, no-nonsense Clarice whom she had presented to the outer world for the last twenty-five years – her up-front woman – had finally slipped away and now she seemed to stand at some distance, like a figure on the shore watching as a ship moves out to sea . . . Clarice tasted salt on her lips; the little wind stirred up by the incoming tide fingered her hair, not like the wind on the moor, tearing on its way somewhere else, but a small, personal caress, intimate and teasing. She experienced that feeling of the sea within her that can come after the first plunge when one gives oneself into this other element, a loosening and shifting as taut muscles relax.

  What was it she had intended? To clear her mind, free it from the obsessive rhythm, that was it, was it? She laughed aloud and rested her head on her knees. She had actually come here, of all places, to get away from ghosts! If it had been a mistake to come to the moor, it had been an even greater mistake to come to the sea. Or, viewed from another angle, she raised her head and looked beyond the bay to the open sea, a natural progression. It depended on which way you thought you were travelling.

  One summer she had taken a cottage on an island in the Hebrides, and he, Robert Havelock, the only significant he in her life, had joined her there. It was a risk, but they had got away with it. Not that she had cared about risk by then, but it mattered to him. He had more to lose; while she had no reservations, had nothing that she withheld from him. She travelled light at that time, free of all constraints. A college friend, one of the two people who knew of their affair, had told her she was mad. ‘You’ve landed a plum headship and now you start an affair with one of the governors! And you know who will suffer if you’re found out. He might have to resign as a governor, but that won’t cost him much. It’s always the woman who pays.’

  But what had payment to do with this joy that filled her life? Whether the situation was fair on her – or on his wife, for that matter – was irrelevant, a question she had never considered. Her friend told her she had lost her pride, and perhaps she had; but it seemed she had found a better kind of pride, a pride and a pleasure in giving. Never had she held her head so high, or her eye been so bright and challenging. The friend said she was wanton, and if showering all one’s blessings on a loved one was wanton, if that was what it was to be wanton, then she was wanton. Nor had she ever regretted it.

  He was the one who was more torn and she had loved him for that, loved him for the conscience that tormented him and the weakness that made him unable to live up to his own ideals. He never excused himself; that she would have despised.

  Now, with every gentle thrust of the sea, he came back to her, with each soft, ingenious infiltration, he moved within her again. It wasn’t even a coming back; this was not the past recollected in tranquillity, this was the past happening within the present.

  While the sea made its inroads she experienced again the whole of her love affair with Robert Havelock, as if it had been crystallised in concentrated form, waiting this moment when the crust should be broken. When she looked at the wavering rocks now covered by water, his face surfaced like a blurred image in a crowd suddenly clarified in close up. He was there before her as he had been at the stuffy governors’ meeting when their eyes met in that look of complete understanding that can suddenly surprise two strangers. Afterwards, it seemed that the whole of their love and their parting had been made known to her in that moment. Certainly she had always realised she would lose him, though she had no foreknowledge of the way of it.

  She liked a man to be strong and sure of what he believed, even if she didn’t agree with him. In this, Robert had resembled her father, and he, too, was influenced by his background. Underlying his gentle courtesy and his unfailing consideration for others, was the fierce loyalty of the clan. It was loyalty rather than principle that touched the deepest chords in him, though she had not at first understood that. His concern for the feelings of his tiresome wife she had respected, seeing in it the expression of the gentler side of his nature. He had married a woman of great beauty and scant intelligence; with the passage of the years the beauty had faded and a certain stubborn stupidity had replaced what had once appeared as airy inconsequentiality. He bore his disappointment with patience and good humour, aware that the initial error of judgement was his. This mixture of strength and gentleness in him overwhelmed Clarice. He, who could be so resolute, would go to infinite trouble to avoid giving unnecessary pain, and over inessentials he was always ready to give way. He had a long patience that she envied. Combative to a degree, ready to waste energy debating a trifle, Clarice had learnt much from Robert Havelock that had been of invaluable help to her in her profession.

  ‘Learn from the sea, headmistress,’ he had said, as they sat by the rocky shore of the island. ‘If it can’t take this boulder by storm, it will go round it, build up its forces elsewhere and then eventually submerge it.’

  ‘It’s had millions of years to do its work,’ she had retorted. ‘I reckon I’ve got ten years.’ That had proved an over-estimate.

  ‘Even so, you mustn’t fight each engagement as if it were the last battle. If you lose over something you regard as important, withdraw, reform, come back at a later stage when they aren’t expecting another onslaught.’

  ‘Why did you appoint me? I hardly fit the mould of a famous girls’ public school, do I? Not even a convert to orthodox education.’

  ‘We had decided we needed to inject new life into the sluggish bloodstream and . . .’

  ‘No, you. Why did you want me?’

  ‘You woke me up, gave me a shock the moment you came into the room. I thought, if she can do that to me, she’ll stir things up here. After all, that was what we were looking for, a challenge, a touch of abrasiveness.’

  Spray blown on the breeze touched her cheek and, looking down, she saw that the sea had surrounded her little circle of sand and was already trickling between the rocks. The gap in the reef had been breached. She stood up, her knees shaking, and saw water running all around her. The breeze matted her hair with salt and stung the nape of her neck when she bent to take off her shoes. She tied the laces together and slung the shoes round the strap of her backpack, then she turned up the bottoms of her trousers and began to wade among the rocks; but although the water was still shallow there was a strong pull and several times she nearly fell. Everything was blurred and she could no longer see where to tread with safety. By the time she hauled herself on to the path, her feet were bleeding.

  Two women, wading in high-heeled sandals, came past her as she limped along. One of them, nearly in tears, complained to the other, ‘But it doesn’t come in in a straight line.’ Oh, the unfairness of life, Clarice thought. The old man with the pipe ignored her as she passed him. He had thought better of her.

  She stuffed the paper napkin which had been wrapped around the sandwiches into one shoe and some tissues into the other to form a padding for her injured feet and made her way painfully to the car park. As she took lint and adhesive bandage from the first-aid box, she was grateful for these small wounds that with any luck would engage her mind on the return journey. No wonder penitents went barefoot. Much better than lying on a psychiatrist’s couch regurgitat
ing past errors.

  But it wasn’t wounds or past errors that kept her company on her journey. As she drove out of the long combe and saw above her a line of purple trailing a border of chequered green fields, she had again that sense of everything beginning to fall away from her of which she had complained when she was on the hill above the old mine with Alan; and, as the path climbed higher and higher, the more it seemed to her that this was irreversible, a condition which would not be altered by a change of landscape. The option of packing and going back to what had been home was not open to her. The path twisted and turned and the hunched shoulders lost their chequered green border.

  The fear that had gripped her yesterday, when she read those words written in the diary, returned, chilling her to the bone. All around her now a dark moss green expanse stretched to the horizon. Colour was fading from the sky, which had become a pale egg-shell blue, infinitely cold. And suddenly, out of that desolation, emerged the figure of a woman walking, a long pole across her shoulders like a yoke with bundles attached to it. Clarice stopped the car and sat watching as the woman approached. There was no greeting, she had not expected one. As she went by, Clarice thought, ‘The madwoman through the ages, tattered clothes and birds’ nest hair; she’s been around ever since exiles sat down to weep by the waters of Babylon. But the last time I saw her, she was younger, I’ll swear to that.’

  The sky was deep porcelain now and the moor a brown shadow. Clarice said, ‘All right. I’m making too much of her; she’s a tramp, an old bag lady. But the other woman, she is real. In her world, which isn’t my world – at least, I don’t think it is, although I’m no longer very sure – but in whatever world she has her being, she is as real as I am.’