by MARY HOCKING
It was then that Louise joined in. ‘Yes?’ she said, in that deceptively quiet manner women adopt when they are ready to pounce. ‘If it is serious, what then?’
‘Then I should feel I had to do something.’ Guy made a lame attempt at hauteur.
‘And what would you do?’
Guy and Terence exchanged a look of wry, masculine fellow-feeling. Louise said more loudly, ‘I want to know what you would do, both of you. What are we all going to do?’
‘I said I would do something if it was serious,’ Guy said coolly. ‘But I am not convinced that it is. The police have interviewed Jacov, just as they interviewed other people who might have some knowledge of Angus.’
‘Jacov isn’t other people.’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Nothing more is likely to happen.’
‘It doesn’t matter what happens! It’s what he fears might happen that matters.’ She turned her head away sharply, pressing her hand against her mouth in the manner of one fighting to contain sickness. Terence was perplexed. Usually Louise had no qualms about expressing her feelings, and it was most unlike her to halt in mid-attack. She said, her voice muffled, ‘He must be in a dreadful state, and he’s all alone.’
Guy said spitefully, ‘I doubt very much that Jacov is ever “all alone”. Don’t you agree? Answer me!’ To Terence’s intense embarrassment he flicked out a hand and buffeted her on the side of the head. Then he gave a nervous neigh of laughter and looked around, startled eyes daring anyone to suggest he had raised a hand in anger. It seemed an inappropriate moment for horse-play, Terence thought.
Her response, too, was strangely unfitting. She lowered her head, her face flushed, the features loosened in abandonment which invited a further attack. As Terence looked at her bowed shoulders, something stronger than embarrassment overcame him. He was torn by sadistic excitement at seeing this woman, whose physical assurance he had always feared, at last broken and submissive; and a chivalrous longing to go to her and raise her up, not gently by the shoulders, but roughly taking hold of her hair and drawing her to him. He felt himself both wife-beater and rescuer. She shuddered, and the tremor went through him like an electric shock. Every nerve in his body jumped, and as he sat, hands clenched over his genitals, he was astonished that they took no notice of his condition.
Suddenly she recovered herself and, looking up, shook her hair back from her face in a characteristic gesture of assertion. ‘And what is he going to do for Christmas?’
Terence, taking the challenge to himself, said hoarsely, ‘I didn’t think to ask. We had a lot of other things to talk about. It didn’t come up.’
She said softly, ‘He can’t be alone at Christmas.’ She reached out a hand to touch Guy on the knee. ‘Not at Christmas. He must come with us.’ She looked at Guy, appealing and intimate. He was unmoved, while Terence could hardly control his limbs.
Guy said sullenly, ‘That is for your mother to say. The house will probably be full.’
‘No, it won’t. Mother had been expecting Ben and Alice, but they are going to Falmouth. And, anyway, if she says she can’t have Jacov, then we must stay here.’ She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder in animal abasement, appealing to something more than his compassion. ‘We can’t leave him alone at Christmas, now can we, love?’
Guy looked down at the carpet, resentment pulling at his face so that all the good nature was stretched out of it. Louise watched him pityingly, her face close to his, her breath warming his ear. She was so strong, so sure of her power, and yet so open that it seemed a man might do anything with her. No one spoke. Her hand moved on his thigh. Terence could bear this no longer. He jerked himself to his feet and croaked, if your mother won’t . . . can’t . . . put him up, he can come to us.’
Their gratitude was overwhelming.
As they stood at the door when he left them, Guy clamped an arm around Louise’s waist in a gesture which had more in it of possession than tenderness.
Terence walked part of the way home. When he had gained some sort of discipline over his body, he fell to wondering how he was going to explain to Claire that he had more or less invited Jacov for Christmas. And also, come to think of it, that he had forgotten to take the tickets.
‘I thought you were having coffee together, not lunch,’ she greeted him ominously.
But when he had explained, she said, ‘Of course he will have to come. It will only be one extra. As for the tickets, we’ll have to pick them up at the box office on the night. I can’t think why we didn’t arrange to do that in the first place. There was no need to get yourself in such a lather.’
So, unable to relieve the tension within him by having a row with his wife, Terence went to bed with a bad migraine. When at last he had stopped being sick, he slept. And dreamt of a bland, ageless mask made of marzipan, with fluid eyes already dissolving the upper cheekbones. He wanted to staunch this process of decay, but a crowd of people surged out of a theatre and separated them. He ran through streets and down alleyways. From time to time, in unexpected places, the mask appeared briefly and then dissolved. He was never near enough to make contact. More and more people crowded the narrow streets, so many people one could not hope to single out a particular face. Yet there it was, swinging from an inn sign, hanging from a lamp-post. And, in the end, he found that he was no longer trying to reach it, but running away, hoping never to see it again.
Chapter Sixteen
Alice and Ben were going to Falmouth because Granny Tippet was ill. Judith, who had seen her a week earlier, had reported she was rallying, but by the time Alice and Ben arrived it was apparent she meant to die.
‘She has set her mind to it,’ her daughter, Grace, told them. ‘The doctor says there is nothing wrong with her, except that she doesn’t like old age.’
‘Isn’t there anything he can do for her?’ Alice asked.
‘He pretends to give her medicine. But when Charlie went to see him, he said, “If she feels this is her time, you should let her go.” ’ Grace’s face screwed up in misery. ‘I don’t want people saying we didn’t look after her.’
‘If you were to insist on her going into hospital and being messed about, people would say you should have let her go when her time came,’ Ben said.
‘I couldn’t insist, anyway. My mother is as self-willed as ever. We wanted to move her into our house – we felt that was the least we could do. And Charlie and Prue offered to have her. But she says she wants to die in her own home. Which means we’ve all got to take turns in being down there with her, day and night. It’s not that I begrudge the time. But we’ve got the house full for Christmas. The family always come to us because our house is so big. And they expect me to cope with that and Mother as well. I said to Prue the other day, “It will be me that will go, not her!” ‘
‘Ben and I will do the night duty,’ Alice said.
It was not onerous. Obstinate she might be, but when it came to her dying. Granny Tippet was content to go as quietly and unobtrusively as possible. Her children and grandchildren dutifully clustered round her bedside and, when she was conscious, she accorded them a weary courtesy, dragging herself reluctantly from the first of the Last Things to show an interest in the little affairs with which they sought to brighten her dwindling. But the effort was beyond her strength and she realised that at last it was no longer required of her. She watched the faces blur and become confused with a feeling very close to joy.
Once when he was with her, Ben said, ‘I followed your advice. Do you remember? You gave me a cutting about a man in prison? I am doing something about him.’
She looked at him, wondering who he was, and said, ‘Did I?’
‘You’re a wise woman.’
She gave a little smile at that, like a pleased child.
Alice sat holding her hand, not talking to her. Ellen, knowing she was kin, sometimes called her Judith, sometimes Elsie or Flora. ‘She’s very mixed up as to the generations!’ Alice whispered to Ben. But to Ellen, life now seemed n
o more than the passage of a day: a morning of preparation for an afternoon’s activity, followed by an evening for reflection.
The family insisted that Alice and Ben must get out as much as possible during the day. Alice was glad of the opportunity. This time together to which they had so looked forward was, in fact, proving difficult. Ben saw no reason why the marriage ceremony should be regarded as a watershed.
‘I’m not saying it doesn’t mean anything . . .’
‘It’s a sacrament – it means everything or nothing.’
He was taken aback by such intransigence on an issue on which he, not usually one for half-measures, was prepared for compromise.
Alice had grown up in the belief that she had something precious to bestow, a hidden treasure to be safeguarded. Ridicule had undermined this belief, but not fatally. The confusion of war had given rise to doubts and temptations to which she might have succumbed had the occasion presented itself with sufficient immediacy. But somehow the belief had held. Even if she was aware that she might have over-valued chastity, she could not subscribe to the view that it was of no significance. Now her attitude was strengthened by a measure of practicality. Fear of impending loss had given a sense of urgency to her relationships with Gordon and Ivor. She had wanted to pluck the flower in season before it withered. Marriage had not been a matter to which she had given serious thought because – in spite of Gordon’s promises – she had not in either case considered it a reality. Ben was different. She saw her union with him not as a series of satisfactions, but as a relationship which could only be worked out over a long period of time and this early stage of preparation was necessary and precious.
‘It’s the way I am,’ she said. ‘If I had started from a different place, perhaps . . .’
‘All right, all right!’ he said crossly. ‘Just so long as you don’t think I shall respect you more for it.’
‘Get right away from Falmouth,’ Prue advised, seeing how tense they had become.
So three days before Christmas, they set out early one morning, Alice in borrowed oilskins and Ben wearing two of Joseph’s old jerseys. They took the ferry to St Mawes and from there they hitch-hiked. Cousin Silas had offered the loan of his car, but they had preferred the freedom of travelling without knowing where they might end up.
They ended up at Kiberick Cove. It was a bright, windy day with a chaotic sky. Sturdy bands of strato-cumulus to the west were interspersed with dollops of fair-weather cumulus; while to the east, ribbed scales of altocumulus attempted to introduce some kind of pattern. As they walked up to Nare Head the wind was so strong that Alice had from time to time to stop and turn her back to it in order to gain control of her breathing. Ben breasted the gale with confidence.
On the far side of the Head, in sight of the cove, the wind was less violent. Alice said, ‘We’ll have you steaming along Offa’s Dyke in the spring!’
‘Yes, the last two months have made quite a difference.’
‘Well, go on; I was hoping for a mention.’
He screwed up his eyes, appearing to give this consideration. ‘You may well have made a small contribution.’
She turned to thump his shoulder and caught one foot on a stone. He tried to right her as she stumbled and lost his balance. They collapsed, panting on the grass. Arms wrapped around each other they thrashed about, not very effectively, Alice’s oilskin making those squeaks which set the teeth on edge. He said disgustedly, ‘It’s like trying to make love to a Skipper’s sardine!’ He kissed her on the mouth and cheeks. ‘Or Lot’s wife. Did you know you were encrusted with salt? The fate of those who turn aside having once set out.’
She rolled over on to her stomach and looked out to sea. ‘Isn’t that the Gull Rock?’ She pointed to the reef which had been the death of so many seamen. ‘My Great Uncle Will went down on the Hera.’
‘This coast seems to have accounted for quite a few Tippets if your grandmother is to be believed.’ He began to take the wrapping paper from their packed lunch. ‘Will you eat, or are you going to observe a period of mourning?’
They ate and then walked on towards Kiberick Cove. The sea heaved up moving mountain ridges, white-crested, with long creamy streaks in the troughs. Great cones of foam rose to mark the place of concealed rocks. The tide was not yet full and the sea was only now finding its way into the hollows beneath the boulders. It gurgled and gulped as if it was unstopping hidden soakaways. Seaweed swayed this way and that as waves broke into the still pools left from the last tide.
‘I got carried away once when I was bathing,’ Alice said. ‘Fortunately, it was an incoming tide and it spewed me up on the shore.’
‘A more friendly shore than this?’
‘Yes, only sand.’
When they tired they lay down again, the wind shrieking above them. Below, the sea raced across the beach, its lofted turrets crashing just short of the base of the cliffs, breaking the images of sky and cloud into a myriad fragments and dancing them about in currents which ran hither and thither between the rocks.
They lay watching and making plans.
‘Will you stay with the LCC?’ Alice asked.
‘For the present. But I hope this work I am doing on people imprisoned without trial may lead to something.’
‘How could we possibly influence things which happen so far away?’
‘They influence us. Why do you think your Education Committee is considering changing to oil-fired heating in its new schools?’
‘That’s commercial.’
‘And so, you can bring in sanctions if you don’t like the way your trading partner behaves.’
‘Open all your prisons or we won’t buy your pineapples?’
‘Something like that.’
‘We didn’t get Hitler to release many people, did we?’
‘We didn’t try.’
‘If it was there for the trying . . .’
‘There is only the trying, Alice.’
She sat up and the wind tore through her brain. She could hear the boom of the sea on rocks and the grinding rattle like a thousand chains being dragged as the waves receded only to gather their forces for a renewed attack. The sea had its own awesome rhythm, but looking down at it boiling and bubbling in the rock hollows, there seemed more of madness than order of any kind.
Ben said, ‘When the Council is planning something to which people have strong objections, the one thing which seems to give councillors pause for thought is when their mail bag is heavy with complaints. I’ve wondered whether that might work. Hundreds of thousands of letters from people all over the world, showing that they do know of the existence of a condemned man, and care what happens to him.’
‘The letters to councillors are from potential voters, Ben. It makes a difference.’
‘I’m not so sure.’
She did not see how anything could come of such an enterprise, but she liked the determination in him. Her father had spent much of his life hammering on closed doors.
‘I’ll do your typing,’ she offered.
‘You’ll be typing your novels and helping to pay the mortgage.’
‘No. I’ve decided I’m not a novelist. Once I start something big – and even a short novel seems big to me – I lose control of events and it begins to meander. I’m better with things small – the world in the palm of one’s hand.’
‘Is there a market for short stories?’
‘Is there a fee paying audience for your prisoners anonymous?’
‘This disregard for the morality of the market place is all very fine; but I don’t know that we can afford so much nonconformity in one family. Think of our six children.’
‘I daresay local government will keep our feet on the ground, to say nothing of our noses to the grindstone.’
The waves were breaking against the base of the cliffs now and the roar of the sea was continuous. Alice, secure in the knowledge that there was shelter, warmth and food not far away, experienced a thrill in witnessing a struggle whic
h had gone on day in, day out, long before the first man set foot on this land.
‘Do you think of your father when you look at this sea?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘I think of my Great Uncle Will.’
‘He was a sailor. My father was a journalist who made the mistake of booking a passage on the Lusitania.’
‘They were both shipwrecked.’
She contemplated shipwreck and how it might be contained within the formal structure of the short story. Yet by its very nature it confounded formality. To get the real feel of a shipwreck, one must allow the sea to tear one’s work to shreds; just as it smashed the little toys men launched on it, reducing the work of all the craftsmen which had gone into their building to so much driftwood.
‘How absurd we are, venturing on to that chaos in such hopelessly fragile craft!’ she exclaimed. ‘Why did the first people ever do it?’
‘Perhaps because fear was an accepted part of their lives? Wild animals on land, and forests full of evil spirits. The sea was just another kind of risk.’
‘But at least they knew where they were on land . . .’
‘If you keep on asking yourself where you are, you’ll never take a step, much less push out a boat.’
How unpredictable he was, with his plans for helping men who were beyond help, and yet so unprepared to risk his mind on even the smallest flight of the imagination! I shall find him maddening and abrasive, she thought. And I suppose I had better not dwell on that, or I shall never marry him.
‘Are you going to risk your fragile craft down yonder?’ he asked.
‘Not now, not at high tide!’
‘I meant at Portloe harbour where, with any luck, we might get tea.’
‘You have no soul.’
‘In an hour’s time, if we stay here, you are going to be insisting you can’t possibly set out for Falmouth until you have had tea. And by then it will be too late.’