INDIFFERENT HEROES

by MARY HOCKING

‘We don’t talk about them at all.’

  Her parents could not seem to understand that the progress of the war was not a topic of conversation if you were actually engaged in fighting it.

  Her remark made a greater impression on her father than she had imagined. ‘She is right, of course,’ he said to Judith after she had left them. ‘We are becoming obsessed with the war.’

  ‘You could leave the ARP,’ she suggested.

  ‘Don’t be facetious.’

  He determined that during his working hours at the school, and on duty at the ARP post, he would discourage too much talk about the news of the war. It came as a surprise to him to find that, once he himself desisted, there was a marked change in the level of discussion. In a very short time, he learnt that at night, on the pretext of fire watching, the town hall was turned into a kind of harem for the benefit of one of the chief officers; and that a fellow warden had a list of houses which he visited regularly in search of unexploded bombs. ‘Pretty tricky some of them – judging by the state he’s in when he comes back!’

  And, in my own way, am I any better? he asked himself, as he walked home from school one warm spring evening. All my energy has gone into hearing: I listen to the news, I listen for the siren, the planes, the swish of bombs coming down, the sound of falling masonry. I no longer see what is around me.

  He looked around him. And there it was, a luxuriant world of blossom and tender green through which he passed day after day without noticing! It did not bring to his mind lyric poetry, it pierced him in the genitals. He stood in the middle of the road, gasping with shock. I have missed something, he cried; not now, but all my life! Before the bombers, there had been other irritations; always there had been something buzzing around in his mind. ‘I have been a contentious man; forgive me!’ he said to the cherry tree. ‘What am I to do about it?’

  He walked on, throbbing with the pain of this awakening. Year after year, he thought, this glory has unfolded before my eyes, and I have not allowed myself time to feel and respond. I am in too much of a hurry always. And immediately his mind rushed to take charge of this situation before it got out of hand, questioning, analysing, seeking to construct a new way of living which he would test, expound, and then be hurt and angry if others failed to grasp its significance. Oh God, he groaned, I am too contentious! Heal me!

  He rushed to tell Judith, but she was out driving an ambulance. He closed the side gate, and then let Rumpus into the garden. He played with an old bone until the dog’s hysterical gratitude abated; then he sat on the bench under the oak tree, and Rumpus sat panting at his feet. Here were the springs of my life, he thought, looking up through the tracery of leaves. The temple of the living God. Why have I not seen this before? It is because of my sin, my besetting sin of contentiousness. Well, at least I may have saved my daughters from that – by bad example. How often he had heard Judith say warningly, ‘That’s a Fairley failing. Watch it!’ But had she meant this particular failing? Had she, with her unanalytical mind, been able to pinpoint it? His thoughts began to race. He groaned, and Rumpus nuzzled against him. ‘At this rate, I shall destroy what peace there is out here, old boy!’ He looked at his hands, clenched as so often; felt the tautness of lips, the stiffness of stomach muscles. ‘We shall have to do something about this; but we’ll give you a drink of water first, shall we?’

  But he did not move. He sat in the garden until at last the peace did seem to calm his fretted mind. The darkness came. The siren wailed. Rumpus deserted him, and went to quake under the kitchen sink. He heard the bombers coming over, but he remained at peace.

  He had just begun to believe he had achieved a new state of life when Mrs Vaseyelin knocked on the front door.

  All his devils returned to tear at him as he listened to Mrs Vaseyelin explaining, as though it had never happened before, that she could not find her front door key.

  ‘Come into the dining room,’ he said. ‘You can turn out your handbag, and then I expect you will find it’

  She turned out her handbag. Neither of them really expected she would find the key. Her hands were shaking and he realized this must be very humiliating for her, with him standing by like the schoolmaster he was. Suppose she broke down and said she could not go on any longer? It was becoming apparent that this was the case, but he did not want the full realization to come to her while she was in his house. He recalled that there was brandy in the cupboard under the stairs where they had put their iron rations. It was only to be used when needed for medicinal purposes, of course; but this could surely be counted such an occasion. He found tumblers – it would seem boorish not to join her – and poured what he took to be the correct amount, the equivalent of a glass of sherry. He found dry biscuits, put them on a tray, and presented his offering to Mrs Vaseyelin. She sat up very straight- backed, and bowed her head before extending her hand. He was surprised, looking at her, that the mere sight of the brandy should be so therapeutic.

  He had chosen to remain in the dining room, which was a more formal setting and one which, he hoped, would not encourage her to linger. But he had, of course, already encouraged her. She sat, cradling the tumbler in the palms of her hands, warming the brandy; while he wondered what had led him so suddenly to eschew the total abstinence he had practised all his life. Mrs Vaseyelin looked as near to being happy as he had ever seen her. She began to talk about the past.

  ‘When I am young – you understand?’ Mr Fairley acknowledged the possibility of Mrs Vaseyelin’s youth with a courteous nod of the head. ‘I visit an aunt in St Petersburg. There is some sort of wine, prepared especially for her – I think you call it a cordial?’(Mr Fairley took her word for this.) ‘It was . . . ach! an abomination; pink, very heavy and so sweet! It stick to the teeth. Always, I am given a glass as a special treat – you, also?’

  ‘Mine tasted of liquorice,’ Mr Fairley recalled.

  ‘Once when I visit my aunt, there is this foreign woman with her – a very old actress, who is long past famous. Her face . . . so made up!’ Mrs Vaseyelin threw up her hands and the brandy rocked about in her glass. ‘You do not imagine her face, the make-up is thick as syrup. While this woman talks, I empty my glass into what I think a flower pot. But it is this actress’s hat. And when she puts on the hat, the cordial runs down her face. All that pink stickiness mixed with that syrup make-up. It is like sunset, all the colours of . . .’ She paused and Mr Fairley said, ‘the spectrum.’ She nodded.

  ‘I run out of the room. They think I am terrified; but I am laughing. I laugh so much – oh, how I laugh . . .’ She stared at the brandy, enormously surprised by laughter.

  Mr Fairley, looking at her, realized what an opportunity he had missed. There, living next door to him, was this woman, who must have the most interesting memories of Imperial Russia, and all they ever talked about was locks and bolts! All that must change. How constantly life presented new opportunities! No more contention. He would listen to this woman; day by day, he would draw her out, bring her back to life. Yes, yes, that was it! Resurrection. That was it! They would ask her in to supper. Judith must arrange it. Undoubtedly she had done more interesting things than pour sticky liquid into other people’s hats. This was only a beginning.

  When they had finished their brandy, he fetched his screwdriver while Mrs Vaseyelin waited for him in the hall. They walked down the drive and into the Valeyelins’ garden. The brandy glowed within them and Mrs Vaseyelin, perhaps still thinking of the naughtiness of her youth, watched unconcerned while Mr Fairley inspected the front door lock. The thing to do was to try to lever the door open, but this was not immediately clear to him, and in any case the screwdriver was not the correct implement. He tried inserting the tip in the keyhole. The brandy had not made him any more dexterous, and he was having some difficulty when the bomb came down. Mr Fairley, who had pushed at so many doors during his life, now found them all open to him and passed through, taking Mrs Vaseyelin with him.

  The burial service was held a few days later. B
en had obtained leave to attend, but Guy was already at sea, his destination unknown. The mourners could have wished for more male voices to swell the singing as the coffin was carried slowly down the aisle.

  ‘And so beside the silent sea

  I wait the muffled oar;

  No harm from Him can come to me

  On ocean or on shore.

  ‘I know not where his islands lift

  Their fronded palms in air;

  I only know I cannot drift

  Beyond His love and care.’

  Near the back of the chapel Alice saw Irene and Daphne standing side by side, both tearful. She recorded with detached interest that crying at funerals is apparently one of the things which friends do for one another. Even Daphne.

  Louise walked immediately behind the coffin, beside her mother. Judith moved with care, as though the very act of walking was unfamiliar and would take some time to master. Her surroundings also seemed unfamiliar; at each step she advanced further into a strange landscape. It was as if it was she and not Stanley who had died. The streets and shops, the passers-by, were no longer invested with reality; their existence had depended on her authentication, and now that this was no longer forthcoming, they ceased to have any identifiable form or function.

  Three cars were drawn up to the kerb. Judith and Louise got in the first car. Aunt May was waiting on the pavement with Grandmother Fairley in her wheelchair. The old woman’s younger daughter, Meg Braddon, stood beside her, trying to look at once detached – because she was not a believer – and sorrowing, because she was concerned about her mother, even if she hadn’t liked her brother all that much. The impression she in fact created was her habitual one of a person striving for order in a high wind. Ben and Harry Braddon helped Grandmother Fairley into the car. She flopped on the seat, gasping, ‘Oh Lord! Lord!’ Aunt May said, ‘You’ve been very brave. Mother.’ The old woman turned away from her daughter. ‘You’re a silly woman. May. Always were.’

  The rest of the mourning party stood on the pavement, leaving until the last minute the time when they must observe one another’s grief at close quarters. They were waiting for the minister. A dog trotted between

  them, sniffed around the car, and cocked a leg against the front wheel. He had rubbed up against paintwork and had a red streak on his side. Claire was reminded of another paint- marked dog to whom her father had always referred as ‘the green dog’. She wept, and Ben comforted her. Alice stood apart. A youngish man, who had been one of Stanley Fairley’s sea cadets, spoke to her. ‘He was a great man, your dad. Kept us boys off the street.’ Alice could see his adam’s apple working; he was evidently very distressed. She looked at the men standing, bare-headed, hunched into their coats as though it was winter; and she was surprised to realize that these men had loved her father.

  They had loved him for his faults, rather than the virtues he so longed to possess. His intemperate nature, his rash declarations and subsequent humiliating retractions, his frequently misplaced enthusiasm, and his vulnerability, had endeared him to his fellows, most of whom risked rather less of themselves in the day-to-day business of living. His unceasing struggle to live the Christian life in an unchristian world, was an inspiration. They applauded his refusal to give up.

  Most of the women, other than his family, had found him an abrasive, angular man. They whispered surreptitiously while they waited, and studied the faces of Judith and the girls to see how they were taking it. Mrs Immingham, who had lost her only joy to the Fairley family, experienced a sense of quiet satisfaction, as though the bomb had been the instrument of divine justice. She thought how heavy Judith’s features were – now that all her liveliness had deserted her, the woman was really quite ugly.

  Louise called to Alice, ‘Go and see if Mr Hurrell is coming.’ She thought he was absent-minded enough to forget that the service was only partly completed. Alice went back to the chapel to find the minister. The small, bare room was almost empty now, but one person was still sitting hunched in the back pew. Alice was surprised to see that it was Jacov. He wept, and something other than grief seemed to flow from him and darken the area around him. It was the crying of one who will never be comforted. It seemed odd, when one considered the terrible things which had happened to his family, that he should be so affected by the death of his next door neighbour. She stood hesitant in the presence of this desolation so far beyond her understanding. The minister, coming out of the vestry at that moment, went to Jacov and put a hand on his shoulder. Alice said, her face averted, ‘Please tell him to come with us. There is room for one more in our car.’

  The minister joined Stanley Fairley’s Sussex relatives, the Brad- dons, and Mr and Mrs Immingham in the third car. The cortege set off.

  Jacov said tonelessly, ‘He was my first English friend.’

  Claire looked out of the window. Last week her father had been with them, and now he had gone. It did not seem at all credible; the whole

  episode was as ridiculous as if he had disappeared in a puff of smoke, like a genie in a pantomime – the kind of event which could only happen on stage, where unlikely things are allowed because people suspend disbelief. In her mind, she ran through the events of that dreadful day, thinking that if only she could make a small alteration at some point, none of it would prove to have happened. He would be restored to them. For Claire, as for the others of her family, the battle to accommodate loss had begun. The mind had arrived at the scene of the disaster, but the feelings were a long way behind. It would be some time before the whole person could be assembled again.

  The sun came out as the procession made its way towards the grave. The cemetery was hemmed in by industrial buildings in one of which men could be seen working at machines, while in another a woman in an overall turned the handle of a duplicator. The sun shone on the glass windows, on the concrete, the gravestones and the weeds breaking up the surface of the path. There was not much in the way of vegetation, only holly seedlings and a stunted hawthorn, now in full flower.

  It was noon; there was no softness of shadow, the graveyard was all light. But this light gave no warmth to stone, aroused no sensual pleasure as it touched the skin. It was at once penetrating and detached; showing up with equal clarity the weeds growing in the cracks of uncared-for tombs and the threadbare assumption of pious solicitude.

  ‘May light perpetual shine on them . . .’ The words came to Alice with new and disturbing significance. Opposite to her she saw Mrs Immingham, every vestige of conventional regret stripped from the puffy face so that she stood transparent in her jubilation. It was as though this was all there was of her; while, near by, Ben was nothing but his anger. And Claire, Louise . . . ? Alice closed her eyes because she did not want to see this light shining on her sisters. It was there behind her eyeballs; there was no escape from it. Light perpetual . . . Oh, poor Daddy! Nowhere to turn, no corner in which to escape from this relentless enquiry. The light broke up the ordered surface of her mind; she tried to assemble scraps of comfort, but there was nothing there, not one shred of comfort. Whatever Death and Resurrection were about, they had nothing to do with comfort, and the hope that our loved ones are around us, lurking somewhere just out of sight. She had never thought about light in this way before – yet what else discovered the dark deed, laid bare the secret sin, unmasked the false and broke down the last defences? The newly dead must be totally occupied trying to shield themselves from light perpetual.

  Louise stood with her head held high, eyes shining, remembering the words the minister had spoken in the chapel: ‘As gold in the furnace hath he tried them, and received them as burnt offering. And in the time of their visitation they shall shine, and run to and fro like sparks among the stubble

  . . .’ Yes, yes! she thought, that is what I wish for him. It seemed that he was still with her, that this was the last thing she had to do for him, and that it must be done well. The fire seemed to leap in her, too. ‘. . . and such as be faithful in love shall abide with him: for grace
and mercy is to his saints, and he hath care for his elect.’

  While they shovelled the earth over the coffin, she felt his spirit rise into the light. As soon as the service was over, she walked among the people, thanking them, as he would have wished. This was his day, and nothing must be neglected. Personal grief could wait until tomorrow.

  Ben said, looking across the bleak little cemetery, ‘I hope all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.’ He flung the remark out as a challenge rather than a pious hope, as though anticipating opposition and giving notice that he was himself prepared to do battle with whatever Force might seek to deny Stanley Fairley this tribute. Alice was repelled by his anger. She felt that he was using her father’s death to satisfy some need in himself, just as Mrs Immingham had. She avoided him.

  Judith looked at the wreaths, mechanically reading the messages. The funeral director said, ‘I will let you have a list of names,’ and she thanked him. Jacov came to make his farewell.

  ‘I felt he held the world on his shoulders,’ he said.

  ‘I think he would like to have done,’ she acknowledged drily.

  ‘You will come back with us, won’t you, Jacov?’ Alice asked politely.

  ‘No. They will be upset if I am away long.’

  Alice had a momentary vision of him and his brothers standing around the coffin, silent, while candles flickered. She must have seen such a tableau in a painting – or perhaps a Russian film? She walked down the rows of tombstones to where Louise was talking to the minister.

  ‘Have we done anything about Mrs Vaseyelin?’

  Louise said, ‘Yes, I’ve seen to the flowers, and I shall go to the funeral.’ She sounded competent and cheerful. Alice stayed with her because she knew that Louise was self-sufficient enough not to demand a similar response from her; whereas Claire would expect the echo of her own sobs.

  They walked back to the waiting cars; Louise and Alice pushing Grandmother Fairley’s wheelchair, while Judith walked behind with Aunt May and the Sussex relatives. Alice could hear the Braddons trying to persuade her mother to go down to Sussex.