Checkmate

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘Who tells you these things?’ Catherine sounded disdainful of such sordid details. ‘Gabriel, I suppose.’

  ‘Everyone knows.’ Anna put her spoon down and her elbows on the table, her fists pressed against her cheeks. Catherine stared bleakly into the darkness beyond the flame’s orbit. Hester’s spoon scraped the sides of the bowl; wasting food was the only sin which Hester recognized. Richard Oliver turned his stool sideways so that he could stretch his legs; as soon as Hester had finished eating, he lit a cigarette. There was sweat on his forehead. He looked across at Anna, but she would not look at him.

  The wind was stronger. It tore at the trees in the garden and caused havoc in the village with dustbin lids and loose tiles: but the people at the table in the farmhouse were held in the stillness at the storm’s centre. Catherine poured coffee.

  ‘I’ll have mine black, please,’ Richard Oliver said.

  ‘You won’t sleep,’ Hester told him. The light picked out the gaunt cheek-bones, but the eye sockets were dark tunnels at the far end of which a last ember burnt, ‘We go to bed early here.’

  It was nearly eight o’clock. He looked down at the cup stirring the brown sugar. Eight o’clock. It was a very long time since he had been incarcerated in a room for this length of time; nights were too long that began at eight o’clock. He remembered the terrible torment of childhood, lying imprisoned under the eaves while the night world came to life beyond the window-pane.

  ‘You made enough fuss about staying here,’ Hester said. ‘Now you’ve got your way, you’ll have to live our way.’ She laced her fingers round her cup and held it to her lips, drinking and cooling the coffee loudly at the same time.

  He looked at the moths beating against the window, trying to get in to singe their wings in the candle’s flame. While he absorbed this lesson in self-destruction, Hester drained her cup to the dregs.

  ‘Don’t know that we can spare a candle,’ she said. ‘But you’ll not be afraid of the dark.’

  ‘In the war,’ Catherine said, ‘we sometimes ran out of candles. We had to go to bed at four in the winter.’ It had not troubled her; little enough happened to her between waking and sleeping.

  ‘We never went as long without cream, even in the war,’ Hester grumbled.

  ‘The doctor says you shouldn’t have cream,’ Catherine told her.

  ‘No cream!’ Hester’s eyes rolled upwards, invoking the pity of whatever gods there be for the vast emptiness of old age. Catherine got up and began to clear the table. Anna left the room.

  ‘Ain’t she going to wash up?’ Hester demanded, coming back sharply to mundane matters.

  ‘She’s better out of the way tonight.’ Catherine barely allowed the words to escape before her mouth shut tightly; she looked as though nothing more could be wrung from her though she be put to the rack.

  ‘Not much harm in washing up,’ Hester said. ‘It’s idle hands that make the trouble.’

  She looked at Richard Oliver. The windows were misting over and the room was moist from the steaming coffee; the sweat was running down his face and the shirt was clammy across his back. He got up and said to Catherine:

  ‘May I help you?’

  ‘Don’t come near me!’

  Hester went to a cupboard from which she emerged holding a battered biscuit tin.

  ‘I’ll bid you good night,’ she said to Richard Oliver.

  He held the door open for her. As she passed him she gave him one of her dark, unfathomable looks, a mixture of malice and regret and something else, not definable. He turned back to the kitchen. Catherine was standing by the sink; she had stacked the crockery, but she was not attempting to run the hot water. One hand held the edge of the draining-board while the other ran up and down her thigh; the friction between dress and slip produced a rustle that suggested that the slip was made of taffeta. Catherine in a taffeta slip! It was impossible to visualize it, Richard Oliver thought; yet the waist was narrow, she had long legs and slim, fine-boned ankles.

  ‘Why have you never escaped from this place?’ he asked.

  She turned, her hands clasped. ‘Escaped?’ The eyes were at their most blandly serene.

  ‘Don’t stand there folding your hands like a nun!’ he said angrily. ‘You’re a woman. What was it that kept you here? Silas? Did you hope that he would marry you?’

  ‘How vulgar you are!’

  She walked slowly across the room and took the cloth from the table, folding it carefully as though it was made of the finest lace. ‘You really are an extremely vulgar man!’ She stretched her arms wide, holding the cloth; she had long arms and a high bust and the posture showed both to advantage.

  ‘I have the usual desires and impulses,’ he retorted. ‘If that is your idea of vulgarity, then I am vulgar.’

  She went to a tall dresser close to him and opened a drawer. She laid the cloth in the drawer and smoothed it with her thin, white hands. Her face was smooth as ivory.

  ‘What is it to you?’ she said softly, ‘whether I escape, as you put it, or not? What concern is it of yours?’

  ‘I’m interested in people.’

  She shut the drawer and turned to him; she was very close, her chin tilted back, eyes half-closed, lips slightly parted. She was standing between him and the door; if he wanted to leave the room he would have to brush her aside.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have interrupted you.’

  She moved closer and the front of her dress rubbed against his shirt.

  ‘And now that you have done it?’

  He put up his hands and she was suddenly hard against him, her breasts taut and insistent beneath his fingers. A triumphant smile touched her mouth. He said quietly:

  ‘May I help you with the washing up?’

  For a moment she was still, then she jerked back her head and spat at him. He did not move a muscle until she turned and walked across to the sink; then he went out of the room into the hall.

  He realized, standing there, that he had never known complete darkness before. It was as though the lid of the world had snapped over his head and he was trapped in Pluto’s kingdom. Catherine, washing up in the kitchen, was a million light years away. He stood quite still; no action occurred to him because in this complete isolation action seemed irrelevant. One acted only in relation to other people, one went towards them or turned away from them, but when they were not there one’s sense of purpose was destroyed. Near by a clock was ticking, unsteadily, as though its mechanism was impaired by rust. Would it have sounded any different, eighteen years ago, on the night when Melita came through this hall for the last time? Was it any different in fact now when time also had become irrelevant, when there was no ‘now’? The darkness hung heavy on his eyeballs, it deadened his brain, it lay like lead across his shoulders. He had cigarettes in his pocket and a lighter, but these would not resolve anything; the darkness was too strong. And then, behind him, there came a breeze and he felt a tingling sensation in the back of his neck. A door must have opened. He had the sense that someone was standing close to him, the tingling sensation in his neck was strong as an electric current. He turned round, or at least he supposed he turned round, his feet rotated, but nothing changed; there was no crack of light. And yet he had felt it; he rotated again and now something had changed. In the distance, above him, a strange green light glowed: the moon had come up behind the stained glass window. Every nerve in his body concentrated on that green light: the degree of concentration that could be achieved when there was no distraction was astonishing. The beam of light was strong as a climber’s rope; if he held to it he could haul himself out of the darkness. He was aware once more of the breeze that seemed to twist and turn around him before it died away.

  The moonlight was stronger now, and he could see something humped on the window seat. He moved forward cautiously until he came to the foot of the stairs. Hester was sitting so still that for a moment he wondered if she had had a stroke; a shaft of light distorted by the coloured glass
touched the side of her face so that cheek, jaw and one eye were illuminated in a hard, jade light. He went up the steps towards her.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

  She started violently at the sound of his voice and muttered:

  ‘Someone left a door open down there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They must have done. My candle went out.’

  He picked up the candle from the window seat and lit it for her with his lighter. He offered her his arm, but she snapped:

  ‘I’ve managed every night for more than seventy years.’

  He went ahead of her. He felt that her eyes were watching him; but when he turned at the top of the stairs he saw that her head was bent forward as though she was peering into the hall, trying to catch a glimpse of something that still lingered down there.

  He did not go to his room. He crossed the landing and ascended the stairs leading to the attic rooms. There was a light under the door facing him at the top of the stairs. He knocked and said softly, ‘May I come in, Anna?’

  She did not answer. He gave her a moment to compose herself and then opened the door. She was sitting by the window; she was still wearing the black dress, but from her waist there fell a drape of crimson silk edged with gold brocade. Behind her, the window was open and the wind caught the end of the silk so that it billowed around her. He stood on the threshold, astonished. She said in the clear, authoritative tone she had used when she first met him:

  ‘Come in, if you’re coming. But close the door quickly.’

  He closed the door. She picked up the silk and he saw that she was stitching the edging of gold brocade.

  ‘Is it a dressing-gown?’ he asked, rather at a loss.

  ‘It’s a dress.’

  She held it up, a brilliant, shimmering shift, ankle length but slit high up one side; it looked dated, but in the way that things do which are coming back into fashion. He looked round the room. There was an open trunk against the far wall. He went across to it and saw that it was full of pieces of material, all brilliant colours, turquoise, orange, emerald, no pastel shades.

  ‘How do you get this material?’ he asked.

  ‘Rhoda gets some of it for me, and I buy bits and pieces at sales and from the gypsies on the moors.’

  ‘May I?’ He picked up a stole which was a patchwork of gold, green and purple.

  ‘This is one of your secrets, is it?’ He could not imagine that she ever had a chance to wear these garish things.

  She came across to him and laid the dress on top of the other things, folding it with tender care. It occurred to him that she had kept this secret from her grandmother and Catherine not because it was a sin but because it was a joy.

  ‘How long have you done this?’

  ‘Ever since I was a child. I dress in them sometimes.’

  She took the stole from him and held it over her head, letting it fall in loose folds to her shoulders, and suddenly she was every child’s dream of a woman in an Arabian fairy story. Seeing her young, expectant face framed in the rainbow hood, he felt sad for her because life would never be as exciting as she wanted it to be. He wondered if she would ever settle for reality.

  ‘Does Rhoda encourage this?’ he asked.

  ‘You sound like a schoolmaster.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He was startled to find that he felt like one, the staid, responsible kind.

  She put the bright stole away and pulled down the lid of the trunk; she remained kneeling on the ground beside it and he knew that his response had hurt her.

  ‘Do you imagine that your mother dressed like this?’ he asked.

  She looked up at him, hostility hardening her face.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about my mother.’

  He sat on the bed.

  ‘Come and sit beside me.’

  She hesitated.

  ‘I won’t hurt you, Anna. You believe that, don’t you?’

  She did not look as though she believed him, but she came and sat beside him.

  ‘Catherine has told you why I am staying here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It must seem very strange to you. And there is nothing I can say that will make things easier. All I can ask is that you should trust me. Will you try to do that?’

  Her eyes had the terrible clarity of someone who has not yet learnt to lie. He took her hand and said softly, ‘I will never hurt you, Anna. I swear that.’

  She said, ‘How can you know?’ Promises like that were for children, and she was not a child any longer. He sat holding her hand and trying to think of something else to say.

  ‘Don’t think about this too much, Anna; don’t try to puzzle things out. Will you trust me to that extent?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Her voice was flat, uninterested, as though she had exhausted the possibilities of trust. It began to seem less important to him, feeling her hand waiting in his. After all, he had destroyed her magic, had made her shut it away in a dusty trunk to be discarded with other childish things; surely, in that case, he should initiate her into the realm of adult enchantment. But he knew that in doing so he would lose his own freedom and he was not ready for that. He got up and went to the door. She sat on the bed, watching him. She looked so desolate that his heart ached, but not enough to risk his own. He covered his retreat by saying:

  ‘If ever anything happens to upset or to frighten you, will you come to me, Anna?’

  She said proudly, ‘I am not easily frightened.’

  As he went out she watched him and her face looked as though something inside her was breaking apart. He listened outside the door for a moment, but she did not cry.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The wind sent the dark clouds scudding across the sky like the remnants of a defeated army. It slashed and tore great rents in the uniform grey. And then quite suddenly the violence was over. The sky was a tranquil blue and the trees were still and composed as though confident that nothing would ever touch them again. Rhoda went into the garden to inspect the damage: two rose bushes down and a pillow-case from someone else’s washing line in the middle of the lawn. She walked across the grass and picked up the pillowcase which smelt fresh as things do which are left to dry in the air. Nevertheless, it was muddy and would need washing again. The rose bushes would not mend so easily. She was inclined to hope for them, however, because this was the first day of the summer holiday and a hopeful time; a long easeful period of peace. If she had had her choice, she would have been a lotus eater.

  She was sorry when she saw Catherine coming down from the farmhouse. Catherine believed that any form of relaxation was sinful. Her opening remark, however, had the virtue of originality.

  ‘Who is it who takes the roofs off houses?’

  ‘Asmoday?’ Rhoda hazarded. It was a quick reply: the thought must have been waiting just beneath the surface.

  ‘He is staying with us.’

  Rhoda opened the gate and let her into the garden, bidding adieu to those long, easeful summer days.

  ‘I’ve found a pillow-case.’

  She held it up as though Catherine might be expected to claim it. As a distraction it did not work well: Catherine was long past such mundane things as pillow-cases.

  ‘You’d better come in and tell me about it,’ Rhoda sighed.

  Inside, in the sitting-room, she looked at Catherine and thought, ‘Oh dear! She is really ill.’ How long had it been going on, this deterioration? It was hard to tell. When we see people often we become a part of their illness; Catherine had been evading reality a long time and she had taken her relations part of the way with her. But now, sitting by the window in the unrelenting light, her sickness was etched in every line of her face. And yet, it was not the lines so much as their irrelevance that was really disturbing; Catherine’s face had always been mask-like, but now one suspected that the mask concealed nothing, that Catherine herself had gone away some time ago. The untenanted head turned to Rhoda, the dry, scaly lips moved, ‘Something ter
rible is going to happen,’ they said, but the eyes were like clear glass with nothing behind them.

  ‘It will if you go on like this,’ Rhoda said. It was the kind of bracing remark one made when inadequate parents complained of their children’s delinquent tendencies; it had no meaning for Catherine. Rhoda tried to make her point more explicitly. ‘If you believe in catastrophe, you make it happen.’

  ‘I have no beliefs,’ Catherine said. ‘God is dead.’ And then, as though dissociating herself from any connection with other modern philosophers, she said, ‘No, not dead. He has changed sides. Or perhaps he was always evil. Why did we ever believe he was good?’

  ‘I have my bad moments, too.’ Rhoda tried to make light of the subject. ‘But when I open the door on a day like this I feel reassured.’

  But Catherine never opened doors; it was no use emulating Mr. Carver and preaching the beauties of nature to Catherine. But it was no use trying to laugh off her strange remarks, either. Catherine had spent her life in close pursuit of God and if she had turned against him now, it was serious, a crack in the foundations. The thought brought Rhoda back to Asmoday.

  ‘Whatever did you mean when you said that “he” was staying with you?’

  Catherine looked at her; her lips moved and it seemed to Rhoda that she tried to speak but could not bring out the words.

  ‘Do you mean Richard Oliver?’ Rhoda asked bluntly.

  Catherine pressed her hands together; if she had been a Roman Catholic she would have crossed herself.

  ‘Well, he’s not the devil,’ Rhoda said briskly. ‘He’s too vulnerable. But why do you say he is staying with you?’

  Catherine told her.

  ‘And you believed him?’

  Catherine’s face seemed to change. There was someone in residence at last, but not the person to whom Rhoda was accustomed; this person was sly and decidedly unwholesome. Rhoda said:

  ‘We’ll go back to the house and sort this out.’

  ‘It isn’t him.’ Catherine was not much impressed by Rhoda’s masterfulness.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s something in the house. Some kind of totem that attracts evil.’