Checkmate

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘I can’t get up there . . . I can’t . . .’

  Her agitation was delightful, but this was no place to provoke it further. He said briskly:

  ‘Of course you can. I’ll help you. I feel much better now.’

  He went first and told her where to place her hands and feet. Occasionally when he looked down to see how she was getting on, he had a glimpse of her face; it had a terrifying rigidity as though some very strong emotion had paralysed her features. The ascent was arduous. Afterwards he felt that he would sooner climb the North face of the Eiger in a blizzard than do that short haul up a Cornish cliff again. But at last they were safe. She lay in the heather and he knelt beside her, observing the rise and fall of her breasts, the straining of her ribs, and other enchanting manifestations of distress. He waited, marvelling at his self-discipline and hoping that it might be rewarded by some more positive sign of feminine weakness such as tears. Eventually she raised herself on one elbow and looked at him.

  ‘You can climb!’

  The words were spoken with concentrated ferocity. Her pride had been hurt and humility was not one of her virtues: it was not one of his either, so he sympathized with her.

  ‘I’m sorry, please forgive me.’

  He held out his hands, meaning to help her to her feet; but she was up in a second, standing well back from him, her hands clenched at her sides. He got up slowly and came towards her; he could see that she was very angry and he half expected that she would strike him. But she had been reared in stony ground; displays of emotion were forbidden to her and she had learnt no gentle way of releasing her feelings. She stood in front of him, her body contracted as though in the grip of cramp, her face pale and lightly filmed with sweat. In spite of her grim struggle for self-possession she began to tremble.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said soberly. ‘I’m so very sorry.’

  She was ashamed that her body should betray her. In this bewildering way, and the kindness of his tone only exacerbated the sensations which tormented her. She turned and ran through the heather. He followed her along the side of the stone wall until she turned the corner; he waited to hear the front gate close behind her. He did not hear it, and when he came to the front of the house he saw her in the distance running towards the moorland. He did not attempt to follow her. She needed her solitude. He stood in front of the house looking at its stone walls, his own face every bit as unrelenting.

  Chapter Four

  It took news a long time to reach the Jorys. Their contacts with the village were few and not conspicuously friendly. So no one attempted to tell Silas that a stranger had appeared in the village asking questions about Melita. Several people made sure, however, that Rhoda Penryn knew. Rhoda was the natural link between the village and the people at the farm.

  But Rhoda on this occasion was capricious. She often went up to the farm on a Sunday, but this week she made gardening an excuse not to visit her relatives. She kept an eye on the road, however, as she cut the lawn and weeded the borders. But as she was not up at six-thirty in the morning, she did not see the man all that day. At chapel in the evening, she half expected him to appear, but again there was no sign of him.

  She met him in Trewellian High Street just after she left school the next day. She had been looking in a dress shop window and when she turned away, he was walking towards her.

  ‘Where did you spring from?’ she asked. She was sure that he had not been there a moment ago.

  ‘I’ve been to the library.’ He took a book from under his arm to prove it.

  ‘The library is the other end of the street. Where were you a moment ago?’

  ‘Hiding in a doorway, waiting to pounce on you.’

  They had walked some little way along the street by now and afterwards she could never remember just where it was that she had first seen him.

  ‘Have you departed from Polwithian?’ she asked.

  ‘No. I’m on my way back. Do the buses get crowded?’

  ‘Sometimes. Can I give you a lift?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  She looked at him in exasperation.

  ‘I believe you really were waiting for me.’

  ‘Would that be so terrible?’

  She turned away, annoyed at the feeling he aroused in her.

  ‘If I’m going to give you a lift, you can buy me a cup of tea in exchange. I always leave school with a splitting headache.’

  ‘What do you teach?’

  ‘Juniors.’

  ‘I meant your subject.’

  ‘In a junior school,’ she said severely, ‘you don’t specialize, you teach the whole ruddy curriculum.’

  ‘That must be most exhausting. You shall certainly have a cup of tea.’

  The tea-shop was on the corner of the street. ‘Mind your head,’ Rhoda said as they approached the door. ‘And mind the steps, too. This is genuine fifteenth century.’ She led him through the tea-room, conscious of interested glances from two fellow teachers. There were french windows at the back and one table on a small terrace. The table was rickety and the chairs were dusty and marked with bird droppings, but it was pleasant in the late afternoon sun. And she really could not have sat with him in that confined, low-ceilinged room.

  ‘I’ll tell the waitress we’re out here,’ she said.

  He was studying his book when she returned.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  He handed it to her: it was an old history of the district.

  ‘And what do you hope to get from this?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m interested in the old Cornish families.’

  ‘Meaning the Jorys?’

  ‘Among others.’

  ‘If it’s the landed gentry you’re concerned with, Cornwall can’t compete with other counties.’

  ‘I’m sure it could compete in character.’

  ‘Character or no character, you won’t find anything about the Jorys in that volume. They never made the history books. As a breed they were far too concerned with their own internal wrangles.’

  The waitress came with the tea. Rhoda poured.

  ‘You can’t convince me that you are interested in the history of the Jorys.’ She could not let the subject rest although she suspected that it would be wiser. For one thing, she was by now as curious about him as he was about the Jorys.

  ‘Not the history, perhaps,’ he agreed. ‘But the present family interests me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why not? They interest most people around here as far as I can gather.’

  ‘That’s natural. They are a survival of the past, the last of a big moorland family. But their activities wouldn’t interest a stranger. They haven’t done anything spectacular except own land and lose it. Land is all that the Jorys care about.’

  ‘Are the other branches of the family still in the area?’

  ‘No. There’s just the Polwithian family now.’

  ‘That seems complicated enough.’

  ‘Oh, it’s quite simple really.’ She had no idea why she was talking so much, except that there was no harm in telling him the family background. Perhaps in return he might give away something about himself.

  ‘One need only go back to my great grandfather to sort out the present issue of Jorys,’ she began. ‘He was called Charles and he had two sons, Edward and Martin. Edward fell from his horse on to his head—exit Edward. His wife faded away within a year, leaving two children, Hester and Celia. Celia was my mother. The two orphans were brought up at the farm with Martin’s own children, Matthew and Arnold. My mother married Rufus Nancarrow and quietly opted out of the Jory affairs. Hester married Matthew, a match much favoured by Martin. Hester was strong and Martin thought that she would stop Matthew, who was a pretty pedestrian sort of character, from getting the farm’s affairs into a mess.’

  ‘The farm passed to Matthew, then?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Arnold was “sickly”—it was always referred to in hushed tones and I have never been sure what ailed him. He married
, however, a nondescript creature from Helstone. They had one daughter, Catherine. Arnold died when she was five and his wife also faded away. The Jory wives are not fortunate, you observe.’

  ‘Hester?’

  ‘Ah, but she was herself a Jory.’

  She found herself waiting; but this time he did not mention Melita. Instead, he said:

  ‘You have forgotten to mention Anna.’

  She picked up the teapot and poured herself another cup of tea. He watched her add a dash of milk, take one lump of sugar, stir deliberately.

  ‘Am I being snubbed?’ he asked.

  ‘You are being warned off.’

  ‘A sure way of arousing interest.’

  She gave him a long, level look.

  ‘Has anyone ever tried to do you a serious injury?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And they didn’t succeed? It’s an unjust world!’

  ‘I spent four months in hospital on one occasion.’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Oh, you’re not invulnerable physically, I can believe that. But I doubt that your feelings have ever suffered much.’

  He was slow to answer and she knew that this time she had scored.

  ‘You’re adept at changing the subject,’ he said.

  ‘Praise from a master!’

  ‘We were talking about Anna.’

  ‘No.’ She got up. ‘You’re quite wrong. Anna is the one person we are not going to talk about.’

  ‘What is so exceptional about Anna?’

  ‘Why, the fact that we are not going to talk about her, of course.’

  He followed her to the car. On the journey back to Polwithian he was unusually silent. She had gained the initiative and he did not like that.

  She dropped him at The Cod and Lobster. There had been something exhilarating about their exchange and she found herself thinking about him a lot during the evening. He was not the vacillating type and he had been in Polwithian for three days. If he was really interested in the Jorys, he would not wait much longer before visiting the farm. She wondered what the folk there would make of him.

  The wind stirred uneasily in the chimney and a shower of grit fell into the hearth. The woman rose from the couch and brushed the grit under the grate. She straightened up and for a moment her face was reflected in the speckled gilt mirror above the mantelpiece. Her face was bloodless and the pale gold hair was drawn back so tightly as to create a momentary impression that her head had been shaved. The eyebrows were very faint, the eyelids were heavy and had no eyelashes and this gave to her face an Oriental impassivity.

  She turned away from the fireplace. Her dress was grey and severe as a nurse’s uniform; it was more closely moulded to her body than one would have expected. She went across to the window. The evening sky was darkening to violet; it had been another hot day, but stormy. The straggling shrubs bent and twisted before the wind and twigs were scattered across the lawn; the cedar swayed and a fringe of branches swept the lawn. The only still thing was the black bundle dumped on the garden seat. The woman’s lips moved, she said, ‘As if it wasn’t bad enough, without this wind . . .’ She turned away from the window and picked up the book she had left lying on the couch. There was another gust of wind and more grit fell into the hearth. This time she did nothing about it.

  Some ten minutes later there was a knock on the front door. The woman looked up; her eyes went to the heavy serpentine clock on the mantelpiece, the hands pointed at ten to nine. She stared at the clock as though it was registering something quite incomprehensible. The knock was repeated once, twice, louder and more insistent. Footsteps crossed the hall, rather reluctant steps. The front door was opened, there were voices; then Silas Jory appeared in the drawing-room doorway, his face more crumpled than usual. He glanced evasively round the room and did not look directly at Catherine as he spoke.

  ‘Catherine, it’s our solicitor . . .’

  ‘Our solicitor! At this hour! Old Mr. Corder must have gone out of his mind.’

  ‘It isn’t old Mr. Corder.’

  ‘What do you mean, Silas?’

  He looked at the carpet, as though ashamed of what he had to tell her.

  ‘It isn’t Mr. Corder. It’s a stranger. Mr. Corder sent him here.’

  Catherine was quite still while her mind grappled with the enormity of an unexpected caller.

  ‘I put him in the dining-room,’ Silas whispered.

  Catherine went past him into the hall. The door of the diningroom was shut. She stood looking at it for a moment or two as though expecting it to tell her something, then she walked slowly towards it. Silas watched her but made no attempt to follow. He was the wreck of a big man. The years had worn him down and his old grey suit hung loosely on his broad frame; even his legs had shrunk so that the trousers concertina’d around his ankles. This falling away of flesh was most evident in his face which, with its pained, bloodshot eyes, resembled that of a despairing bloodhound. In the dim light, the eyes peered anxiously at Catherine.

  Catherine opened the door. The room smelt musty as though the windows were never opened; it faced north and the windows took the full force of the wind. The man was sitting on the heavy dining table; he was in shadow, but she could see that he was a big man. There was a smell of tobacco and whisky.

  Catherine stood in the doorway, her hands clasped together. A fly crawled on to the collar of her dress, settled for a moment and then crawled on to her neck. She did not appear to notice it. The man eased himself off the table.

  ‘Mr. Corder sent you.’ Her tone was incredulous.

  ‘He suggested I should see you.’

  His voice was deep and had a most unpleasant rasp to it. Catherine clenched her teeth.

  ‘I hope it’s not an inconvenient time.’ He did not sound apologetic. ‘I could come back tomorrow.’

  ‘Certainly not!’

  ‘In that case, we’d better talk now.’

  He held out a card for her inspection. She read the name on the card: Richard Oliver. There were other words, but her eyes seemed unable to focus on anything but the dark hairs on the back of his hand. A branch of creeper tapped incessantly on the window and beyond the moorland was desolate in the twilight. Catherine said:

  ‘You had better come into the other room.’

  Silas was still in the hall. He followed them into the drawingroom.

  Catherine did not ask the man to sit down since he would not be staying for long. She could see him better in here. He had a swarthy skin, a hooked nose and an arrogant mouth; his eyes were dark velvet without the softness. A man like this was capable of anything, of one thing in particular.

  ‘Obviously there has been a mistake.’ Catherine’s voice was tight as a drawn thread. ‘We have no business in hand with our solicitor. In fact, we haven’t seen him for several years . . .’

  ‘But I have business with you.’

  She stared at him, but said nothing. A woman who could say nothing at such a time was rather remarkable, he thought. He turned to Silas: Silas was not cast in the same mould.

  ‘You are Silas Jory?’

  ‘Yes.’ Silas looked defensive, as though afraid the admission might cost him something.

  ‘Then it is to you that I should be talking. I came in connection with your wife.’

  Silas blinked rapidly and put a hand over his mouth as though shielding the lower part of his face. It was Catherine who answered.

  ‘He isn’t married.’ She met Richard Oliver’s gaze with bland assurance. ‘His wife deserted him years ago.’

  ‘I am a solicitor representing her family.’

  ‘Her family! But they are in . . .’

  ‘Syria.’

  ‘Do you know how long ago it was that she left here?’

  ‘About eighteen years.’

  ‘And these extraordinary people have shown no interest in her all this time and now . . .’

  ‘They are old. The old become sentimental.’

  She smiled, but her eyes remained
quite blank. ‘You expect me to believe that?’

  He said smoothly, ‘It will make things much easier if you try.’

  Silas muttered, ‘It’s getting dark. I’d better light the lamp.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Richard Oliver turned to him. ‘This must be painful for you.’

  Silas backed away, looking furtive.

  ‘Wounds heal in eighteen years, Mr. Oliver.’

  Catherine’s voice was like ice. But she had used his name. He was no longer a person who could be dismissed in a matter of minutes.

  Silas disappeared in search of a lamp. Richard Oliver looked round the room. The furniture was old and heavy, the springs were broken in one of the easy chairs and the covering of the couch was frayed. It wasn’t just the upholstery that was in a bad way, though. There was a bowl of fruit on a table in the corner and in the middle of the bowl was a suppurating pear. He could smell it from where he stood. He went to the window. The garden was familiar, the lawn, the cedar, the wicker seat . . . He stared, intrigued, as the black bundle on the seat began to move.

  ‘My aunt is crippled with rheumatism.’

  Catherine had joined him at the window. His arm brushed against her shoulder; she shivered but did not move away.

  ‘There is nothing much that she can do now. So she sits out there day after day. It’s very sad.’

  The black figure began to crawl across the lawn, bent almost double, it looked like a gigantic crab. In the fading light the impression was menacing rather than pathetic. Catherine opened the french windows, but she did not go out to help her aunt. The wind invaded the room, billowing the curtains, ruffling the pages of Catherine’s book. Silas had returned with an oil lamp. He, too, stood by the window. Richard Oliver moved to a position where he could observe Hester Jory without himself being seen. Her niece, however, protected her from surprise. When the old woman had dragged herself to within a few yards of the house, Catherine called out:

  ‘We have a visitor.’

  The old woman was too absorbed in the struggle to move her limbs to attend to anything else; but when at last she reached the french windows, she stopped on the threshold.