WELCOME STRANGER

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘I’m not all that struck with moving out of London.’

  ‘You might at least look at this cottage.’

  She laughed. ‘I’ll go and spit over the hedge, if you like.’

  In the study Austin said to the author, ‘It seems fine to me, except for this fellow Allenby. Rather a cold fish, I thought.’

  The author, who regarded Allenby as a sensitive, profoundly feeling man, and moreover the pivot of the whole book, was filled with a sense of the futility of all artistic endeavour. It was while he was summoning his resources to meet this criticism, that the telephone rang. Austin went into the hall, delighted at having made his escape. Although a perceptive critic, and an excellent editor, he had little talent for buoying up the spirits of his authors, many of whom regarded him as a cold fish.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said to Judith who had come out of the dining¬room.

  ‘I expect that is Alice, to say they are all thinking of us.’

  ‘Then she can convey that happy thought to me,’ he said firmly, and picked up the receiver. After a moment, he cradled the receiver beneath his chin and said, ‘It is Claire, ringing from the house next door.’ He listened briefly and then said jovially, ‘You needn’t have waited. We finished some time ago . . .’ A further pause, and then, ‘I see.’

  ‘What has happened?’ Judith asked sharply, unduly subject to misgivings since receiving the news of her mother’s death.

  He waved a hand at her irritably. ‘Look, my dear, is Terence there? Well, let me speak to him.’

  Louise joined her mother. ‘What’s going on?’

  Austin stood, uncommunicative, gazing at the wall in front of him, until there were noises at the other end of the wire. Then he said, ‘When did this happen, Terence? And how?’

  ‘At least they are both alive!’ Judith said. Guy joined them, a nut held in the claw of a nut-cracker. It was apparent to all of them that, serious though the matter might be, it did not affect the twins. Austin’s manner was too businesslike to suggest a tragedy of that dimension. Eventually, he said, ‘Now, don’t do anything at the moment . . . Yes, I can understand how you feel, but I don’t think you should go on your own . . . Yes, I know Aunt May will be with the twins, but I still feel . . . Now, look, I will come up tomorrow – I think I can manage to get some petrol – and we will all go together.’ After a little more discussion, he put down the receiver.

  ‘It seems that, on his way to Claire and Terence this morning, Jacov Vaseyelin tried to commit suicide.’

  Louise put her hands over her face and blundered into the kitchen. Guy looked down at the nut in his hand, and then slowly cracked it. Judith said, ‘How?’

  ‘He threw himself on to the District Line, but he fell between the live wires.’

  She gave a little bark of laughter, and then shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. But it is so like him.’

  ‘You mean he made a practice of it?’ Austin was angry with her.

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘He’s ineffective.’

  Louise called from the kitchen, ‘Is he badly hurt?’

  Guy juggled the empty shell of the nut in his hands, wondering where to put it.

  Austin said, ‘He’s unconscious. Concussion.’

  Judith said, ‘Then how . . .?’ and he cut her short, ‘Do you think we might sit down to discuss this – that is, if you can spare the time?’

  She turned away and went into the drawing-room. The author, who had been hovering in the doorway of the study, whispered to Guy, ‘Is it bad news?’

  ‘I’m afraid it is.’

  The author said under his breath, ‘Oh dear, what a nuisance!’ Guy strolled across to the oak chest where there was a bowl of nuts. He could not decide whether to join Louise in the kitchen, or Judith and Austin in the drawing-room. He helped himself to a brazil nut. James appeared at the window, making signs to indicate that he and Catherine were going to walk the dog. Guy made signs indicating that he would join them.

  In the drawing-room, Judith said to Austin, ‘How did they find out he was going to Claire and Terence?’

  ‘Apparently he had told the police where he was spending Christmas Day. It seems they had been to see him again about Angus Drummond’s disappearance. He was very upset about it.’

  ‘How pitiable!’ There was more exasperation than compassion in the comment. She walked to the window and rapped her knuckles on the sill. ‘But even allowing for that, how would the particular policeman who dealt with this attempted suicide have known? They can’t have circulated his whereabouts to all the police stations in London, surely?’

  ‘No.’ Austin stood with his hands in his pockets, looking into the fire which needed attention. ‘Unless he was followed. How damnable!’

  She turned to him in surprise. ‘You’re just like Stanley! This is how he would have taken it.’

  ‘Any liberally-minded person would!’

  ‘You are reacting as though it was something you had read in the Manchester Guardian. In fact, that is how you react to most things.’

  ‘While you?’

  ‘Oh, I am one of those maddening women who are never objective, who always sees things personally. And in this case, it is personal.’ She drummed her fist on the sill. ‘These Vaseyelins! They have no right to ingratiate themselves into other people’s lives.’

  ‘They have so few rights. You can’t deny them that.’

  ‘I would deny them anything!’

  He thought she had the look at this moment of one of those pioneer women defending the frontier – all that was needed was a rifle across her knees. While deploring her sentiments he found himself more than ever her admirer.

  ‘There is something else that is worrying you?’ he hazarded.

  ‘How will the children feel about this?’ She was looking out of the window where the day was already beginning to dwindle. A rime of frost was forming on the fallen leaves on the terrace, and the paving stones glinted as though sprinkled with icing sugar. She screwed up her eyes, trying to put herself in the minds of her children who, at this moment, were so much a part of her and yet as different as creatures inhabiting another world. ‘They always had this feeling that something ought to be done about the Vaseyelins. Alice was for ever on at me to include Katia in all our family gatherings.’

  ‘Has he no family—Jacov?’

  ‘Brothers in Canada, and a father who lives in one room somewhere or other in London, and plays the violin in the streets.’

  ‘Hmm . . .’

  She said, without turning round, ‘Where is Guy?’

  ‘I think I heard him go out.’

  ‘So long as he can’t hear what we are saying.’

  He came to her and put his arm round her waist. ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘I have sometimes suspected that Louise and Jacov were lovers.’ He closed his eyes on the laughter which threatened them. Given Louise’s strong sexuality, a lover was only too likely, but he could see that this was not something which Judith would take lightly. And if it was Jacov, then indeed there was no cause for lightness.

  She sat on the window seat and rubbed her hand to and fro on the worn cushion. ‘I know my daughter. She won’t desert him. She will imagine that she can look after Jacov, and make this move to Lewes, and reconcile Guy to it, and keep the children’s interests at heart – and all while she is carrying a child! I haven’t had time to tell you that.’

  ‘Guy’s child?’

  ‘Yes, thank goodness. She seemed sure of that – sure enough to be angry with him. But it would make no difference whose child it was; she would think that simply because she willed it, she could make it work, and she would wreck all their lives.’

  Austin was not convinced that lives were wrecked so easily; on the other hand, he had to admit that he tended to judge complex situations rather in the manner of an editor – to be accepted if the author brought it off. Judith’s might well be the surer judgement. He walked across to the fire and squatted, poker in hand, dubiously
contemplating how best to bank it up.

  Judith went on, ‘And if it’s not Louise, then it will be Alice and Ben, or Terence and Claire, that it will fall on. And they are young and still have a lot to learn about each other without taking on Jacov Vaseyelin.’

  Austin was suddenly aware that his own involvement in this might be greater than he had imagined. He said bracingly, ‘I think we are jumping rather far ahead. He will probably be quite all right after a week in hospital.’

  She shook her head. ‘No. He won’t be.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘When we first came to Pratts Farm Road, I made up my mind I wasn’t going to be involved with the Vaseyelins. But they just hung on.’

  It was an irrational statement, yet it had an inner logic which was uncomfortably convincing. Austin squatted quietly, the poker between his knees.

  She said, ‘More than any of the others, I was the one who wanted to avoid involvement with the Vaseyelins.’

  Austin ran his mind back over the words he had used not ten minutes ago, counting their cost. She turned to look at him. ‘Could you bear it?’ He looked up, refusing to find words for her. She could hardly bring herself to say it, but if she was going to do it, she must certainly say it. ‘Could you bear to have him here?’

  He said stubbornly, ‘We’ll see if it comes to that. It may not.’

  ‘But could you bear it?’

  He laid the poker down in the hearth. ‘There may be a continuing police involvement. You would have to be prepared for that.’

  She shrugged this aside. ‘That would be the least of it. You still haven’t answered my question.’

  Austin, who had been verbally committed to liberalism for most of his life, could see no way out. He cheered himself with the recollection that once, a long time ago, he had agreed to have a man who had just come out of prison to stay. In the event, the chap had gone somewhere else. Jacov, no doubt, had plenty of theatrical friends who would come to the rescue – theatre people being so notably warmhearted.

  ‘Of course,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not sure that I can.’

  He realised then how daunted she was. He went to her and she put her hand in his. ‘He frightens me. The whole family frightened me. That was why I didn’t want to become involved with them.’

  This is really going to happen, he thought. So far in their marriage they had found sufficient shared pleasures to satisfy them and where they had differed they had been able to go their separate ways without much resentment. There had been little to threaten their union, no pain and anxiety to deliver those hammer blows which can sever or weld together. Still scarcely able to credit it, he said, ‘We shall manage.’

  Late that night, while Austin was raking out the fires, Judith went into the garden. There was a hard frost now and the grass was silvered. The moon was up and she could see the dark swell of the Downs. The house was quiet, settled amid its orderly lawns and well-trimmed hedges. Beyond, other houses were dotted here and there as the centuries had discovered a need for them. It was all rather haphazard, because here things had happened slowly, giving people time to adapt themselves and their land to change. Some violence there had been – to the Cluniac priory in Lewes, the destruction of which Austin, not a Christian, had told her was a crime. But enough of the past remained to give a sense of continuity. She had accepted this scene as a pleasant backcloth to her new life, but now it seemed to have a greater value. This can’t all pass away, she thought, looking towards the great yew trees which formed a sheltering wall around the old church.

  She went slowly back to the house and moved from room to room, collecting crumpled napkins and nutshells, righting cards which had fallen, finding glasses put down in unlikely places, making minor adjustments to the fir cones and dried flowers with which she had decorated the dining-table. In the drawing-room, she paused in front of a photograph of Austin’s son, taken, she judged, at that unreachable stage which some young people go through, his eyes looking beyond the photographer to a future which was not to be his. Yet, the expression told her that he knew better. At that age, of course, they always did.

  She picked up the photograph, studying it for some objective truth. Austin had lost a wife and a son; Jacov Vaseyelin had lost a mother and a sister – well, two sisters, one of whom he scarcely remembered. Why all the fuss? What was the difference? Austin had probably cared more deeply for those whom he had lost. The difference, of course, she thought as she put the photograph back in its place, was this house, this village, this country; this unending tapestry into which each life was woven, grief and joy, love and rejection among its coloured threads.

  Stanley would have been surprised that she should have such thoughts. She had never had his respect for the past in terms of tradition, but she had always had a strong awareness of the need for personal continuity. When during the war they had turned out the loft, she had been the one who had been disturbed to see the small family treasures cast on the scrap heap.

  She thought of her own children. If she could take the burden of Jacov from her, Louise would manage. The changing moral climate would suit her, particularly as she thought she had invented it. She would grow – was already growing – into one of those rather too generous, pear-shaped women, always in season; yet maintaining her own idiosyncratic, but unyielding moral steadfastness. Alice would always make life more difficult than it need be, but she, too, had a certain buoyancy which would keep her afloat, like a minesweeper clearing a passage for herself through doubts and questioning. My poor Claire! she sighed. She will have the hardest path. She no longer believes in her country, and she has lost that far country to which, as a child, Stanley taught her to look. She and Terence must carry the world on their shoulders. And which of us can do that?

  She went into the hall. The house creaked as the cold got into its joints. Austin had opened the trap door into the loft and put a paraffin stove beneath it in the hope that this would prevent the water freezing. The only result was to send a bitter draught along the passage and down the stairs. Judith crossed to the study – a room very much Austin’s, but which Stanley would have loved could he have afforded it. So much patient scholarship which people like herself took lightly, or derided! She went to draw the curtains and saw that the glass was patterned with an intricate filigree of frost. She turned back to the room which looked comfortable in a musty way, the chairs hollowed, the arm-rests worn, the carpet pitted where the library steps had taken Austin’s weight. Some things must change, of course, she thought. But others we shall hold on to. We, too, shall be wise in our generation. We must be.

  That night she lay awake, wondering in which room she would put Jacov Vaseyelin.

  At the beginning of January, Austin and Judith stayed for several days with Louise and Guy in Holland Park. The whole family, including Ben, gathered together on one occasion to discuss the future of the Holland Park house. After they had talked, they switched on the wireless to listen to Mr Attlee who, unnecessarily as far as they were concerned, warned of communist danger to democracy:

  ‘A hundred years ago, the year 1848 saw Liberals and Socialists in revolt all over Europe against absolute governments which suppressed all opposition. It is ironical that today the absolutists who suppress opposition much more rigorously than the kings and emperors of the past masquerade under the name of upholders of democracy. It is a tragedy that a section of the movement that began in an endeavour to free the souls and bodies of men should have been perverted into an instrument for their enslavement . . .’

  ‘I wonder if the Drummonds are listening to this,’ Alice said.’

  ‘I met Cecily in Richmond the other day,’ Claire said. ‘She told me her parents never mention Angus. Her mother took everything that belonged to him out into the garden and burnt it. She said she didn’t want a trace left of the son who had dishonoured his father. The police were furious!’

  Louise switched off the radio. ‘We don’t want him maundering on at us, d
o we?’

  ‘Ever since this wretched business, I’ve been aware of how often the subject of communist infiltration crops up,’ Alice said. ‘And it would he quite easy to imagine the remarks slanted in my direction. I can understand how people like Jacov develop a persecution complex.’

  ‘There are probably a lot of other subjects that crop up regularly which you don’t take to yourself,’ Ben said.

  ‘That’s just what I’m saying. You don’t listen before you . . .’

  ‘It’s the same with Freud. If you start from the assumption that all pointed objects . . .’

  ‘Well, I don’t start from that assumption . . .’

  ‘The Jews have a ready-to-hand persecution complex,’ Austin said.

  While they were arguing, Jacov opened his eyes and looked at the night nurse who had just come on duty.

  ‘Well now!’ she said. ‘It’s nice to have your attention.’

  He hastily closed his eyes. But it was too late. The first contact had been made. The next day when Austin and Judith went to see him, he was sitting up. ‘He hasn’t spoken yet,’ the nurse told them. ‘But he is with us.’

  ‘You won’t be able to stay here indefinitely,’ Austin said to him. Jacov still showed no intention of conversing, but it seemed likely that not only could he hear but he could comprehend. In which case, it was time to give him something to meditate upon. Judith said, ‘It will probably take you a little while to get over this, and Austin and I would like you to stay with us.’

  Jacov turned his head away and studied the pattern of the cubicle curtains indifferently.

  ‘So that settles that,’ Austin said.

  Over the last nine days, nurses had soothed, persuaded, cajoled. Louise had come and tried unsuccessfully to convince the ward sister that a cure might be effected if only they would play Mozart to him day and night. Visiting actors had wrought surprising variations on the theme of the sympathetic friend, much to the appreciation of the ward at large. The best performance of all had been given by Count Vaseyelin. The chair by the bedside was closer than he had ever been to any of his children and he had veered away from it, preferring to walk up and down the ward, tossing his leonine head so violently it seemed in danger of breaking free from the skeletal frame, and weeping for his dead wife and daughters, until the ward sister had asked him to leave. Jacov had remained impassive throughout. Now, disconcerted by the abrupt change of treatment, he spoke for the first time. ‘I should be a nuisance.’