by MARY HOCKING
A great swathe of mist had banded across the distant hills so that only their tips appeared now, lightly stencilled on the sky.
Alice said with all the enthusiasm she could muster, which was not much, if you feel as strongly as that about it, I am sure you should carry on.’
He, too, stared at the misty hills. After a few moments, during which Alice felt droplets forming on her eyelashes, he said, ‘I have been wanting to tell you about it for so long.’
Her interest kindled quite miraculously. ‘I should like to know much more about it. I hope you will show me . . . well, whatever it is . . . letters, or reports, or . . .’
They continued their walk. Ben said urgently, ‘You can understand now why I get so fed up with people who want to come and bury themselves in places like this. The sort of people who go through life afraid of change; protecting a cherished view – of society, family life, whatever matters to them – screening it from the wind, shoring it up against settlement. Petrifying themselves in their own past.’ He made a dismissive gesture in the direction of the valley. ‘But I don’t think they are like that,’ Alice protested. ‘They want I the country to be enduring, a place where they can find peace and contentment. And I can understand that. I don’t know that I would want to live in it myself – at least, not until I was old. But I want it to be there when I need it.’
‘But is that how we find peace and contentment?’ He stopped abruptly. ‘I would have thought we find it in ourselves – or in one other person.’
After a pause, they began to walk again. Alice, treading warily, said, ‘That’s putting quite a weight on another person.’
‘It would have to be a special person.’
She said breathlessly, ‘It is very beautiful, you must admit that. So strange in the mist. Do you think that perhaps if I was a painter I wouldn’t project my hopes and longings on the landscape? That I would see it as it is?’
‘Artists select the angle that suits their particular vision.’
Somewhere across the fields a barn owl hooted and Alice said, ‘I wonder what he sees?’
‘A hedgerow full of shrews, I expect.’
‘You’re unromantic.’
‘No. I was hoping you were going to ask me what I saw.’
It was quite a few moments before she did ask him.
‘I see you. In everything. All the time.’
As he put his arms around her, Alice had a feeling of enormous relief that something that seemed to have been so long in rehearsal had at last come right.
Guy and Louise, who usually slept heavily after making love, were wakeful, each absorbed in their own thoughts. Guy, imagining them to be in sympathy, said, it’s very peaceful, isn’t it? I would rather like to live somewhere like this. On the outskirts of a country town, perhaps, in an old house with a decent-sized garden.’
‘And who would do the gardening?’
‘I expect I could turn my hand to it.’
‘You mean you would turn the earth over now and again.’
‘We could have a wild garden – that’s acceptable in the country. And the children would love it.’
‘You can’t have a wild garden on top of a wilderness, sooner or later you don’t see the dividing line.’
‘I wasn’t talking about wilderness,’ he said irritably.
‘You said you would like to live somewhere like this, and this is wilderness.’ She gestured towards the window. ‘All those trees, just waiting to take possession of this clearing.’
‘Oh, I see.’ He had thought of living near Tunbridge Wells, somewhere in the Ashdown Forest. But he had regarded the trees as picturesque fixtures; he had no wish to throw down challenges to the forest.
Louise not only knew his methods of approaching a difficult subject, she could read the signs of the oncoming depression which was beginning to cloud his nature. She said, ‘What’s this all about, anyway, this talk of old houses and country towns?’
‘Oh, nothing.’
He went to cover like a frightened animal, and she lay beside him, hardly less frightened. He had been heartrendingly attractive when he was a boy, possessed of that particular freshness and tentative charm which does not travel well in adult life and tends to leave a person insubstantial as an unfinished portrait, a speculation never followed up by the artist. She had ignored all the warnings of older people and had given herself to him. Now she was not disposed to blame him. It was not so much that he was weak, as that he seemed not to have been provided with very adequate means of self-defence. In which case, the impulse to run away was wisdom of a kind. But she had not foreseen that he would arrive so soon at this point. Her own crises came like great tides; she felt their surging within her body and was ready for them. She was not ready for this. She felt as if the roots of one of the trees had descended on her like a giant hand, pushing her down into that mound of dead leaves whose smell seemed to fill the room. However hard she wrestled and twisted she would never break free; and even if, pinioned though she was, she won a breathing space, she would never gain complete release.
Long after Guy was asleep, she heard Alice and Ben come back and wondered what they had been up to. She did not think Alice would go too far. Although she did not repent of, or regret, her own sexual escapades, she tended to take a severe view of the lapses of others. There was nothing hypocritical about this, only a failure to understand that she did not have a monopoly of emotional integrity. She was very fond of her sister, but still saw her as she had been at school, a nice, solid pudding of a child, untutored in the ways of the world. After a time, she got up and went to investigate the sleeping arrangements. She found Alice already asleep in the other room, while Ben had bedded down in the dining area.
She went to the outer door and listened to the unfamiliar sounds in the wood, the scurrying in the undergrowth, the sharp cry of terror.
In the first morning light she got up and dressed; and went out to where the wood dwindled into pasture land. As she walked she did not analyse her feelings or try to construct avenues of escape. Although she was no stranger to her impulses, she had little facility for stringing her thoughts together. It was the functioning of her leaden body which occupied her as she struggled with the intense difficulty of co-ordinating limbs and pumping air in and out of lungs. That rooted hand still pressed on her head and shoulders when she returned.
Alice and Ben had prepared breakfast by this time. Guy said sulkily, ‘You won’t want to walk now.’
‘Yes, I shall. I’ve got up my appetite for eating and walking.’
Alice was spilling happiness over the porridge she was stirring and Ben had a spurious air of being interested in everything and everyone while really paying no attention to anything that was said. They were both well content to do the washing-up again.
As they prepared for the walk, Guy said to Louise, ‘We mustn’t leave too much to them.’
‘They won’t mind. Hadn’t you noticed?’
‘Noticed?’ He was intent on watching her put up her hair. She had adopted this style some time ago and it suited her. But he had preferred the loose, soft waves which had half-concealed her face and given her an air of mystery – a style which had also made her look more girlish. Now that the hair was swept up and back, one was made aware of the features: the tip-tilted nose delighted, the brilliant, forthright eyes challenged attention, but hers was not the fine bone structure which defies the years, and one also noticed the heaviness of the jaw and the thickening of the neckline. There was no doubting that this was the face of a woman. The beautiful girl had gone and would not linger to be glimpsed sometimes on the edge of vision. Guy preferred to think of his wife as a girl.
‘At least you can let your hair down on holiday!’ he protested.
‘I’m over thirty now. I don’t put in for ingenue parts in the theatre, so I’m certainly not going to play them in real life.’
‘Always the theatre.’
‘You used to love it. You wanted to be an actor.’
But he had not loved it since he had realised that he was not good enough to act professionally.
‘Jacov was saying only the other day that you never come to see him,’ she said, pinning the last coil in place.
Was there an element of challenge in this reference to Jacov.’ If so, he came nearer to answering it than usual. ‘I didn’t know you had seen Jacov recently.’
She waited. She would not volunteer information, but she would answer honestly anything which he chose to ask. Guy said jokingly, ‘I’m not sure I approve of that.’
‘I have known Jacov longer than you. It was through him that we met.’
And more than that. They had made love that first time in the basement of the Vaseyelins’ house. Mr Fairley had always blamed Jacov for Louise’s seduction. Guy, confused by conflicting emotions, could not bring himself to say any more. But he comforted himself with the reflection that Jacov belonged in the theatre and that whatever passed between him and Louise was probably as unreal as the charades the Fairleys had always loved. He was coming to see, even if he did not quite understand, that Louise must be allowed her charades because there was more danger for him in interference than acceptance. But later, when they were walking in the Chilterns, and Alice and Ben had fallen behind, he said, ‘You won’t play an ingenue any longer because you are not young enough; yet you played Marcelle in Asmodée, and she was older than you.’
‘Ah, that’s different. Plenty of meat in older women!’
He screwed up his mouth fastidiously.
Behind them, Alice and Ben were marvelling at the way life worked itself out – a mixture of fairy tale and detective story, the threads of magic industriously woven into their separate lives so that, to the eyes of an outside observer, the outcome must always have been apparent, their eventual coming together inevitable. A fairy godmother, or chief inspector, might have seen that once the importance of all the clues had been assessed and placed in position, there was only the one solution. Why, even at birth they had been related – but not too closely – so that they shared a common heritage. They eulogised Cornwall and the sea, and spoke with affection of Joseph and Ellen Tippet. Alice thought, but did not say, that she could see how Gordon and Ivor had been a part of the pattern; while Ben silently accepted the need for his unhappy love affair with Daphne Drummond.
‘I told Geoffrey all about you,’ he said. And it was true that he had spoken of her once or twice.
‘When I was in Cairo I thought how wonderful it would have been to share it with you.’ She had had him particularly in mind because Jacov, who was out there with a touring company, had been unable to summon sufficient energy to take her to the Pyramids.
They had not then thought of each other in terms of love and marriage; but this they now perceived had always been their intention, though veiled from them until they should become ready for each other.
They were climbing a plateau overlooking the Vale of Aylesbury. Ben was beginning to find it necessary to stop quite often to admire the view; and Alice readily accommodated herself to his pace.
Guy, a good walker, was enjoying himself. The height, and the wide sweep of the land, lent him power and he became daring. ‘It was an odd sort of play, Asmodée, didn’t you think? There were some things in it I didn’t like at all. Do you know the lines that stick in my mind? Blaise saying, “I won’t tolerate anyone else having an influence over someone I care for. It’s revolting to me. Like dirty fingerprints on a clean sheet of paper.” ’ He gave a keen thrust to the other man’s lines which he could never allow his own deliveries. But there were always dangers in talking theatre to Louise.
‘Really? A typical masculine sentiment. Do you remember Valentine in Love for Love? “You’re a woman—one to whom Heaven gave beauty, when it grafted roses on a briar. You are the reflection of Heaven in a pond, and he that leaps at you is sunk. You are all white, a sheet of lovely spotless paper, when you first are born; but you are to be scrawl’d and blotted by every goose’s quill.”
‘Can you imagine a woman ever saying that to a man? If a woman finds a man has been unfaithful she is supposed to accept it as natural to the species, not maunder on about spoiling white paper. And as for looking in ponds, my, impression is that men more usually see their own reflection there.’
They had reached the plateau while they talked, and at this point Alice and Ben caught up with them. The matter was not discussed again.
Ben was very shaky, and Alice said, ‘I think we’ve both had enough.’ It pleased her to sacrifice her own enjoyment in order to protect him; but she was a little irritated when he said, if Alice doesn’t feel she can go any further, I’ll walk back with her.’
It was evening when Louise and Guy came slowly down the blunt hill above the village. He knew that he had little time at his disposal. ‘Let’s sit down for a moment,’ he said. She sat, parting the grass with her fingers, watching the little insects which she had disturbed come boiling to the surface.
‘I have been thinking that perhaps we ought to move,’ he said. ‘A small country town would be a nice place for the children to grow up.’
‘What about your job?’ She looked at him in the direct way he always found discomposing. ‘Is there something wrong?’
He turned away, and she observed the lines of strain in his neck, the nervous movement of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed his pride. If she was aware at that moment of his weakness, she saw his need even more clearly.
‘I’d prefer to leave before I’m asked to.’
‘If they can’t appreciate you, you certainly better had!’ she cried warmly. ‘But do you think it will really come to that?’
‘There have been hints lately.’
‘It’s not fair, when you work so hard. I suppose it’s a question of money – you don’t bring in enough to satisfy them.’ She spoke with contempt for financial acumen.
‘I’m afraid I’m a bit slow, too.’ He groped for her hand. ‘Oh, my darling, I’ve let you all down very badly.’
‘You’ve tried. No one can do more than that.’ For a moment or two she was silent, thinking of the children who would have to leave school and friends, of Jacov who would drift out of her life, and of her husband. ‘But if we must, we must.’ She had always made her decisions quickly, if sometimes unwisely. ‘The question is, where?’ She would bargain about this. ‘I’m not going to be buried in some dreary little market town.’
‘View!’ she exclaimed scornfully when he mentioned Shaftesbury. ‘We’re not moving for the view! I would settle for Primrose Hill if we were.’
‘What then?’ he asked uneasily.
‘I need something to do, Guy. The children will be at school all day. And we don’t want more children – or do we?’
He hesitated. On his return from the war he had resented the place which the children had established for themselves in her affections and from which he felt himself excluded. He had not wanted more children. She, aware that the coming of a child who would experience no long separation from its father, might further alienate him from Catherine and James, had accepted his decision. But now, still thinking of that isolated house in deep country, he remembered her in the days when she was carrying Catherine and had been at her most dependent, and it seemed to him that another child might mean that for long, luxurious years he could store all his treasures in one safe, secure place. ‘I’m not sure . . . A new way of life, and a new life . . .?’
He looked at her and flinched from what he saw. The eyes are the only window of the being encased in its structure of flesh and bone. Yet one would have thought these to be the least suitable of features to express that inner being – as little capable of signalling a myriad changes of mood as two poached eggs! By what miracle of veins and nerves the eyes responded, Guy did not know. What he did know was that they were the surest heralds of Louise’s feeling, impeccably distinguishing the spark of anger from the sparkle of laughter, the drowsy stupor of love from the lethargy of boredom. But the
sign he found most disturbing was when he saw no light in them; then they registered a displeasure that went deeper than anger into some profound regret. At such times, he feared she had discovered that secret vice which he suspected in himself without having any idea what it was. He did not perceive that these moments most often coincided with a situation in which he betrayed his need to possess her completely. On such occasions he could always convince himself that he was expressing the full extent of his love which demanded that everything must be shared between them, something for which she must surely be grateful rather than angry. Nor would he ever acknowledge how deeply he resented the very idea that she might have an existence separate from his.
He turned from her gaze and dug the toe of his boot into the stony soil. Another child would not be a solution. Her energies would be diverted at a time when he most needed her. But what would happen if she became involved in a life outside her home? For a moment, the risk of moving seemed too great.
‘We’re a bit young to find a safe haven, aren’t we?’ She stood up, brushing at her skirt, and they walked down to the village. ‘If it’s got to be done, then let’s make an adventure of it.’
He took her hand. ‘As long as I’ve got you, I can do anything.’
‘Then you don’t need to go to Shaftesbury for the view,’ she laughed, refusing the sentimental declaration he craved because she had already given enough.
He pursed his lips. ‘I did think of Ludlow.’
‘But we don’t know anyone within hundreds of miles of Ludlow.’
‘There’s Sussex. But you probably don’t want to be so near your mother.’