by MARY HOCKING
‘I go for a walk every afternoon,’ she snapped, ‘as well ’ee knows with Eleanor sitting with her nose against the window all day long.’
‘But it’s so hot today.’ Amy did not waste time defending her sister. ‘Shall I walk up the hill with you?’
‘Why aren’t ’ee in the shop, then?’
‘It’s Wednesday,’ Amy pointed out.
‘I thought early closing was Thursday.’
‘They changed that years ago. To fit in with Trewellian.’
‘And why should we have to fit in with Trewellian?’
‘I don’t know. I couldn’t see it myself.’
They stared at each other, momentarily in sympathy. Amy said: ‘Everything changes . . . That man said Polwithian hadn’t changed, but we could tell him better than that, couldn’t we?’
‘Man?’
‘Why yes? Hasn’t he been to see you? Eleanor thought she saw him go up the road to the farm the other day.’
‘There was a man came. But he was a furriner.’
‘He’d been here before, though; years ago. So he told me.’
The sun was strong on Amy’s face, but the blood was so thin now that she no longer felt the heat. Only the light hurt her eyes. She put up a hand to protect them.
‘My sister said she saw him go up there again this afternoon. I wonder you didn’t pass him.’
Hester said nothing and Amy, who had had a good view of the moors from her sister’s back window, went on:
‘Maybe you went along the moorland road a bit?’
There was a seat with a fine view across the moors. Old Hester spent more of her time sitting there than she did walking nowadays.
‘Always fond of the moors, weren’t you?’ Amy said. ‘Too bleak for me. Inhospitable country.’
She wondered whether she had said too much, the Jorys being inhospitable folk. Perhaps she had. Old Hester said abruptly:
‘I best be getting back.’
‘It’s been good to see you. Must be near on nine months since the last time we met.’
Amy looked at her wistfully. There weren’t many people left in Polwithian to talk to about the past, which was the only really interesting thing. Amy wished she could offer tea, but she could not imagine Hester in her little back parlour.
Hester was already walking up the hill, Amy forgotten. The sun was still very hot, but on the moors purple shadows were beginning to eat into the bright day. Hester looked up at the headland. The farm was hidden from view, but she could see the top of the cedar, its branches fanning out gracefully. It seemed a long way away.
She tried to hurry and this exhausted her. She was trembling all over when she reached the house and she could not open the front door. So she went round the side of the house and in the garden she saw them lying in the shade of the cedar.
Anna heard her; Anna’s ears were sharp. She got up and came hurrying across the lawn.
‘I haven’t put the kettle on yet, Grandmother.’
She was anxious to be away. Hester snatched at her wrist, the pulse was racing.
‘Not so fast, me lover. Is that someone with ’ee. Sun’s so bright, I can’t see.’
Anna turned her head to glance back. The dry earth had left its imprint on her cheek and a twig tangled in her hair.
‘Mr. Oliver came to see Catherine.’
Hester looked at her dress, it was not very crumpled. A kiss in the sun, no great harm in that; but kissing was a beginning. Anna said:
‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
She went into the house. Hester waited while Richard Oliver came leisurely across the grass.
‘I was supposed to meet Miss Catherine,’ he said. ‘But there seems to have been a misunderstanding.’
She looked at him and he returned her gaze steadily; it was Hester who turned away. He followed her into the house. Anna had laid cups on a tray: three cups. Hester sat in a high-backed chair that was usually reserved for Catherine who liked uncomfortable chairs.
‘Pull the curtains,’ she ordered.
The sun was all right when the blood was hot and the flesh not withered and dry, but now she hated it. Richard Oliver pulled the curtains; a muted ray of light came through the parting, apart from that the room had a dusty, twilight look. A fly beat against the glass, then zoomed into the centre of the room and settled on the dish of over-ripe fruit. Hester Jory crouched in the chair, breathing heavily like an old, sick animal. Anna came in with the tea on a tray.
‘We seldom have visitors.’
She spoke as she came through the door, as though he was awaiting her entrance, as though there was no one else in the room.
‘Let me help you.’
He took the tray and placed it on the table in front of Hester. They stood one on either side of her, performing their age-old ritual as though she were no more than a worn-out husk insensitive to what went on around her. Anna poured the tea.
‘That is for Grandmother.’
She looked at him and held his eye for a moment. Oh yes! Kissing was only a beginning for Anna. Old Hester, who had not been thrust into the background in her own home for a long time, said:
‘I want more water in that.’
She reached for the hot-water jug. He held the cup for her, still looking at Anna. Hester’s crippled fingers closed on the handle of the jug, the swollen wrist jerked and the boiling water went over his hand, stripping skin from seared flesh.
Chapter Six
‘Oh God, we pray for those who are not among us today . . .’
Gabriel looked through his fingers and did a quick survey of the pews to see who was the guilty party. When Mr. Marsden prayed for those who were not at the Wednesday prayer meeting he was not referring to illness or death, which were excusable, but to those ‘for whom the idle pleasures of this world are a sore temptation’.
It wasn’t Mary Gregory. Gabriel had passed Mary and her boy-friend as he came to the chapel; but idle pleasure would not be Mr. Marsden’s term for what Mary was doing on the beach now. It couldn’t be Rhoda, because she did not come often and Mr. Marsden had lost hope for her. And no one would pray for Anna with Catherine Jory sitting there in the front pew looking as though so much weal and woe had befallen her during the last week that she was having a hard time telling God all about it in the one hour that was allotted to the prayer meeting. No, it must be Mrs. James who had developed the habit of going to the Bingo Hall in Trewellian and calling in at The Cod and Lobster for refreshment on her way back.
‘. . . and bring their wandering footsteps home at last.’
Gabriel wondered what would happen if God obeyed his instructions and Mrs. James began to weave her way uncertainly up the high street to the chapel. I should get up and shout Hallelujah! when she came in, he told himself hopefully.
Mr. Marsden sat down and after a decent interval Mr. Carver got up. Mr. Carver always waited until the end of the prayer meeting.
‘Dear Lord God,’ he addressed God with great emphasis in a voice that made Gabriel think of thick black treacle, ‘We have come into your house and we have complained of this and that, we have told you our troubles and our disappointments, we have filled this precious hour with the rumblings of our discontent. And we have not thanked you for all your goodness and loving kindness to us and to all men. For the gift of this day, whatever it may have brought; for ears to hear and lips to speak and, most of all, for eyes to see all the splendour of this land of ours . . .’
Gabriel writhed as Mr. Carver proceeded to take the congregation on its weekly trip through the highways and by-ways of Polwithian. He had heard it often enough, but it never failed to embarrass him so much that he could scarcely bear to remain in the chapel. He muttered under his breath ‘Shut up, you stupid sod!’ over and over again until at last Mr. Carver finished:
‘Teach us to be grateful for the evidence of your goodness which we see burgeoning around us; teach us to render praise with a full and joyful heart.’
There were a few
‘Amens’ and then silence. It was difficult to follow Mr. Carver and the prayer meeting usually broke up soon after he had congratulated God on nature. Only Catherine Jory would have the nerve to follow him, Gabriel decided. But she never prayed aloud; presumably her prayers were on too high a plane to be shared with others. Nevertheless, she looked so intensely devout this evening that Gabriel watched her expectantly. He did not notice old Miss Causer get up and he was surprised when she began to speak in a shaking voice:
‘Dear Lord Jesus, you have taught us by your example that we should love one another, but this is not easy and some of us have failed.’ Her hands gripped the pew in front. Her sister was staring at her as outraged as though Amy had appeared stark naked in front of the congregation. ‘Here in this little chapel built to your honour and glory, the stranger should be welcome. But we are a small community and it is hard for us to accept those whose ways are not our ways. Instead of opening our hearts to the stranger in our midst, we have hardened them, we have allowed our prejudices to blind us to the good in others, and we have inflicted pain. We ask your forgiveness.’
She sat down to the most dead silence that Gabriel had ever experienced. Then, to his utter amazement, his father said: ‘God, we have been justly reminded of our need for forgiveness. May we all examine our hearts this coming week.’
People went out quickly afterwards. Gabriel had the feeling that something very dramatic had happened. Catherine Jory helped to create this impression; there was something painful about her implacable composure, one could feel the strain on the muscles. Outside, Gabriel heard Eleanor Causer talking to her sister.
‘Whatever made you do such a terrible thing? Didn’t I tell you that there must have been some kind of trouble up at the farm this afternoon?’
‘It wasn’t terrible . . .’
‘Praying for a man you hardly know!’
‘A man!’ Poor Miss Causer was so agitated that her false teeth nearly slipped out and she clapped a hand to her mouth to settle them. ‘I wasn’t praying about a man! I was thinking of Melita . . . She had been very much on my conscience these last few days!’
‘Catherine Jory didn’t think you were praying about something that happened eighteen years ago, you can be sure of that!’
Eighteen years! Gabriel was furious that Miss Causer had not been speaking of the present, it took all the drama away from the incident and made it ridiculously unimportant. Eighteen years, more than his lifetime; and it had taken old Miss Causer all that time to discover that she had done something wrong! What good would her remorse do now?
He went up the high street and turned into one of the narrow side streets. Here, old cottages stood close together; although they had been brightened up with coloured doors and window-frames, their basic instability was revealed in cracked stonework and crooked walls. A woman was standing in the doorway of one of the cottages shouting threats at an unseen child; in several windows Gabriel could see the eerie blue light of a television screen. At the end of the row of cottages there was a waste patch full of nettles and rubbish, then a small farm which as a child Gabriel had always regarded as the last outpost of civilization. Beyond, the moorland stretched to the horizon. He wondered whether he would find Anna out there. He knew that something unpleasant had happened at the farm and Anna often escaped to the moors when she was upset. It was the one thing that they had in common. He desperately wanted to find her; since the man arrived in the village he had had the feeling that there was not much time left for him and Anna.
After the heat of the chapel it was good to be free. Good to be free of God, too. When Mr. Carver spoke of the beauties of nature he never mentioned the moors which were too stark to be reconciled with his cosy image of the creator. Gabriel liked the moors for this reason. They were an escape from God, guilt, and punishment, the awful Trinity which had dominated Gabriel’s life.
Tonight, however, he did not head for the moors at once, but made his way along the back of the village and began to climb the hill that led to the headland. This way he would have the best chance of meeting Anna.
He did not meet her. But as he passed Rhoda’s cottage on his way back, he saw Rhoda moving about and he could tell by the way she turned her head from time to time that there was someone with her. Perhaps it was Anna. He was comforted at the thought that Anna was safely occupied with Rhoda.
‘A sorry tale! But you’re not the first man to get into trouble in a garden.’
Rhoda secured the bandage and went to the sideboard to fetch brandy. He looked pretty rough, she thought, drawn and white about the mouth. Anna’s first aid attempts had been well-meaning but ineffective; it must have been painful to have the hand redressed so soon afterwards.
‘You’d do well to see a doctor,’ she told him.
‘There’s been enough trouble for one day, without setting the whole village talking.’ He drank the brandy in one gulp.
‘People will talk anyway.’
‘But they won’t know what happened.’
‘That will make it all the more interesting.’
He groaned. ‘I don’t mind for myself, but what will happen to Anna?’
‘Very little. She doesn’t go into the village a lot, and Hester, Catherine and Silas will be too busy quarrelling among themselves to take much notice of her. Anna has never been treated as a person of much importance.’
‘Even by Hester?’
‘By Hester least of all. If a son had been born to Silas I think Hester would have strangled it with as little compunction as if she was drowning an unwanted kitten. But Anna she can tolerate quite easily.’
He held out his injured hand. ‘Then why this? It was deliberate, there’s no doubt about that.’
Rhoda shrugged her shoulders. ‘You make it your business to provoke people, and Hester reacts more strongly than most of us to provocation.’
‘In what way have I provoked her?’
‘You have invaded her home. Strangers aren’t welcome at the farm, particularly those who come telling unlikely stories.’
‘Unlikely?’
She leant forward. ‘Tell me about Melita’s parents. I’m interested to know what they are like. I had somehow got the impression from Melita that they were dead.’
‘I don’t know them. My firm has merely instructed me to act for them.’
‘You have a very unprofessional way of going about it.’
‘I was certainly unprofessional today,’ he admitted. ‘And I regret it bitterly, for Anna’s sake.’
‘As long as you continue to regret it, she won’t be much hurt.’
‘I was a fool. An utter fool!’
She looked at his face and something that she saw in it aroused an old insistent ache inside her. The window was open; it was a hot night and the smell of the shrubs was strong. It would be wonderful out on the headland now, a night for foolishness. Her fingers tightened on the arms of her chair. Not this man, she repeated to herself, not this man, don’t ever imagine it could be him . . .
‘You knew her mother?’
It was not for facts that he was curious, his tone told her that. She closed her eyes and forced her mind to wander back over the years. It was not difficult with the smell of verbena coming in through the window.
‘She was one of the loveliest things I have ever known. So effortlessly lovely. I never understood those lines about the lilies of the field until she came here. She didn’t wear exotic clothes and she was meek in manner. When she came to the chapel I don’t suppose that she wore perfume. But I could smell it just the same. And the hall was hot and full of blinding light. No one worshipped when she was there.’
‘Yet she was very close to the reality of the Bible stories, surely?’
‘She may have been. Our thoughts weren’t. Oh, you mustn’t think us too narrow and puritanical; the Cornish are a robust folk and they’re not squeamish. But you can’t understand what it was like to sit with her in that bare, enclosed hall. It wasn’t just that she was so alie
n, you must remember that she was a Moslem. And this made her presence particularly disturbing. I used to find myself wondering what she made of our austere service; and then I discovered not what she thought of it, but what I thought of it. Not all the discoveries were pleasant.
‘You would have been . . . how old?’
‘Sixteen.’
‘You’d have made those discoveries anyway, one way or another.’
‘Intellectually, yes. It was much more devastating to make them emotionally. But as you say, I was at an age when the world was there to be dissected. It was harder for the older people; the things that we believe in middle life are the things which are fundamentally important to us.’
‘Why did she come to the chapel if she was a Moslem?’
‘She agreed to learn about the Christian faith and she went every week to be instructed by Mr. Harkness. But it was all as irrelevant to her as a pagan ritual, I’m sure of that. She submitted because Silas required it of her.’
‘That sounds rather unpleasant.’
‘No. She made submission an act of grace.’
He looked at her in surprise. ‘You really were fond of her!’
‘She was the most completely loving person I have ever known. But her love was not slavish, and neither was it blind; in many ways she was more perceptive than a Western woman. I think she knew how weak Silas was.’
‘And yet she left him and her child.’
Rhoda said drily, ‘There are some things a woman can’t be denied for ever. At least, not if she is to remain a woman.’
She let the silence that followed this remark drag on, silence was dangerous at such times and danger was sweet. But he came relentlessly back to the one thing that was of importance to him.
‘And Anna? Is she like her mother, do you think?’
‘Anna is quite unlike Silas, you can see that for yourself. But I have never been sure in what way she resembles her mother. I have often thought that I shall never know this until she has known a man.’
The smell of the verbena was intolerable. Rhoda got up and took his empty glass.