Checkmate

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘What utter nonsense!’

  Catherine looked at her, that sly look again.

  ‘Why do you never stay long in the evening when you come to the farm, Rhoda?’

  ‘Because you go to bed so damned early.’

  She went into the hall, tidied her hair in the mirror and put on a cardigan; it was as well to go into the attack looking as self-possessed as possible. Catherine had not moved when Rhoda returned to the sitting-room; she was looking into the corner of the room and her lips were moving as though she was talking to someone. Whatever she was saying, it was not pleasant; her lips mauled the unspoken words.

  ‘You stay here if you like,’ Rhoda said loudly. ‘Make yourself a cup of coffee. There are some biscuits in the tin.’

  ‘There’s no point,’ Catherine said in a tone which made it clear that she was not referring to coffee and biscuits. ‘You won’t make him go. Something holds him there.’

  ‘Money, from what you’ve told me.’

  ‘Silas didn’t have enough money to make it worth his while.’

  Catherine gave Rhoda a shrewd look; then the sly person took over and contact was lost.

  ‘People do amazing things for very little reward sometimes,’ Rhoda pointed out.

  Catherine shook her head. ‘It isn’t money. It’s Anna. Anna called him. I think she’s a witch.’

  ‘Oh, Catherine!’ Rhoda laughed in spite of everything. If anyone looked like a witch at this moment, it was Catherine herself. ‘You make coffee and leave this to me.’

  She walked up to the farmhouse in the bright, clear light. The grass was green after the rain and the air smelt of moor and sea. It was not a day to believe in evil. Richard Oliver was in the garden talking to Hester and Anna. Hester was in her accustomed place on the wicker seat, the cedar shading her from the sun. Richard and Anna were sitting on the grass. It looked a pleasant domestic scene from a distance, but when she came nearer she realized that they were arguing.

  ‘I’ve offered to do some gardening, but Mrs. Jory won’t let me,’ he said as she came across the grass towards them. He smiled at her, apparently confident that she would accept his presence.

  ‘If you displace anything in the house or garden I’ll have the police in.’ Hester sounded as though she was invoking the plague.

  ‘Have them in anyway,’ Rhoda advised. ‘He’s an impostor.’

  He looked at her, still very much at ease; but his eyes were cold as steel held against her face.

  ‘Tell us about Melita,’ she challenged.

  ‘But I have already told you,’ he said equably. ‘Don’t you remember?’

  ‘Told me?’ she faltered.

  ‘Why yes. Didn’t you tell Anna years ago that you had received a letter informing you of Melita’s death? I wrote that letter—who else?’

  Rhoda said, ‘You devil!’

  The humour of the remark did not immediately occur to her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘Our lies always find us out in the end,’ Rhoda said. ‘Why anyone doubts that there’s a pattern in life, I can’t imagine.’

  ‘You mustn’t be bitter,’ Amy chided gently. She put another aster in the bowl and said, ‘ “God works in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform”.’ Whether she was referring to the flowers, or to Rhoda’s problem, was not clear.

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ Rhoda sighed. ‘It’s man who buggers everything up.’

  The silence which greeted this remark brought her back to the present.

  ‘I’m sorry, Amy. I can’t think what came over me.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not shocked, my dear.’ Amy’s kind face was set as pink blancmange. She picked up the bowl with unsteady hands and moved out of the vestry into the chapel, leaving a trail of water to mark her distress. Her voice, came echoing from the empty chapel. ‘But I think we should remember that we are in the house of the Lord.’

  Rhoda sat at the table in the vestry; when Amy came back, she said to her:

  ‘We’re a lot of hypocrites, aren’t we? Oh, not you; you’re one of the righteous whose souls liveth for evermore. But the rest of us. We come here each week and pray and sing and use a lot of time-worn phrases that don’t have any relevance in our ordinary lives. It’s a wonder we’re not all schizophrenic.’ She picked up a gladiolus and split the stem with a pair of scissors before putting it in the vase in front of her. ‘I suppose the trouble is that some of us are schizophrenic.’

  Amy sat opposite her. ‘My dear, if all that you have told me is true, I think you should go to the police.’

  Rhoda stabbed at another gladiolus. ‘I should. Can you tell me why I don’t?’

  Amy looked down into her lap and did not answer.

  Rhoda went on, ‘I can tell them that this man claims to be Melita’s lover and that he also claims that she was pregnant when she left here. I can say that he is imposing on the family for what he can get out of them. It sounds ugly, doesn’t it?’

  Amy looked at her and Rhoda saw her own fears mirrored in Amy’s eyes.

  ‘Yet he seems to know so much,’ Rhoda said. ‘I suppose we ourselves have told it to him, bit by bit.’

  There was silence. Rhoda gathered up the pieces of stalk and leaves and sat holding them in her hands. Light slanted through one of the high windows in the chapel and sent a dust-speckled beam probing the threshold of the vestry. Amy said in a low voice:

  ‘She was pregnant.’

  Rhoda stared at Amy while the implication of the words seemed to press in on them in the small, windowless room.

  ‘She came to me.’ Amy’s voice trembled. ‘You’re right; things catch up with us in time.’ She frowned, perplexed that she, too, should have been caught in time’s trap.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with you,’ Rhoda said comfortingly. ‘You were quite outside the Jory affairs.’

  ‘Then why did she come to me?’

  ‘Because you’re kind.’

  ‘I wasn’t kind to her.’

  ‘What happened?’ Rhoda prompted.

  Amy looked at the wall opposite, at the narrow shelf and the row of dusty hymn books; the beam of light which had crossed the threshold was more sharply angled now, illuminating part of the wall where the dark paint was peeling away revealing the plaster beneath. She said:

  ‘It was a wet evening, but sultry. I remember it was so hot in my parlour that I didn’t like to close the window in case she fainted. She was so pale. The rain was coming on to the window sill and wetting the curtains. Oh dear, oh dear! I can see it all now.’ The damp lace curtains brought the scene to mind vividly. ‘She had such enormous eyes, do you remember? I always found them fascinating because when I looked into them I had the feeling of being submerged in a deep, dark sea. It was a very restful sensation, but not quite right; it was as though all sorts of things that mattered were slipping away and one was glad to loose one’s hold on them. That sounds very fanciful. But our beliefs can be hard to live with and although we know we have to renew the fight each day, we are tempted sometimes to drift . . . It’s very wrong, of course, very wrong . . .’ She paused, her brow wrinkled unhappily; she was old and ready for the tide to bear her away. Rhoda waited a moment and then said softly:

  ‘That was how you felt this particular day?’

  ‘Oh no! That was the dreadful thing. Her eyes were quite desperate that afternoon. I said to her, “My dear, what is it?” and she said, “I’m going to have a baby.” She sounded so tragic, as though she was announcing some terrible event. I sensed that there was something . . . not quite right . . . but I said, “That’s not so very bad, is it?” I tried to sound calm and reasonable, but I couldn’t seem to reach her; it was as though another person that I didn’t know had taken possession of her, there was no recognition in her eyes, only terror.’

  ‘Did she say that it wasn’t Silas’s child?’

  ‘I didn’t ask her. She sat there, waiting. She wasn’t an emancipated woman; there were some things she could not speak about. I think she
wanted me to put them into words for her. But I couldn’t, I couldn’t! It wasn’t that I was squeamish; I was brought up to treat certain subjects with reserve, of course, but that doesn’t mean that I have no understanding.’

  ‘Quite,’ Rhoda murmured, rather at a loss.

  ‘But this . . .’ The right words failed Amy, as perhaps they had failed her before. She merely said, ‘You see, I had lived all my life in Polwithian and I knew by then that I was going to live the rest of my life in it.’

  Rhoda, who did not see, said, ‘You felt this would affect you personally?’

  ‘There are some things it is better not to know, otherwise life becomes intolerable.’ Amy spread her hands out on her lap and examined the network of veins that were like tracings on an old map. ‘Perhaps I was wrong; but I’ve always tried to keep out of trouble. It’s important in a village, otherwise you can live for years in an atmosphere of hate and mistrust until you haven’t any friends left. I had my sister as an example of that.’

  ‘But you weren’t involved with Hester or any of the people at the farm,’ Rhoda said. ‘The Jory family’s affairs have never tangled with those of local people.’

  Amy did not speak, but she looked. And Rhoda remembered all the times in her youth when older people had looked like that, their lips twisted wryly, their eyes conveying the message that there were some things the young had yet to learn. It was getting dark in the little room, the beam of light was fading; but as Rhoda looked beyond Amy at the half-open door to the chapel, she suddenly saw the meaning of all this with great clarity.

  ‘The minister!’ she said. It was as though he had been there in the shadow, waiting to be brought into the picture, the last thread in the pattern.

  ‘I thought you knew.’ Amy was reproachful, feeling she had been tricked into confiding too much. ‘There was a lot of talk at the time.’

  ‘Yes, I knew that; but I thought it was the kind of thing that people say about ministers who have no woman about the house. They always used to say that the rector at Trewellian never confirmed the girls until he had had them confined.’

  ‘I never heard that,’ Amy said, distracted.

  ‘But you thought it was true of Jonas Harkness?’

  ‘I didn’t know.’ Amy looked round the room, trying to find something to busy herself with. ‘I didn’t know at the time and I didn’t want to know.’

  ‘So what did you do?’ Rhoda persisted, sensing that Amy was now intent on evading her.

  ‘I gave her some sensible advice.’ Amy was talking fast; putting up a barrage to screen herself from Rhoda just as she had screened herself from Melita. ‘I told her to go to the doctor and make sure; women can become hysterical and imagine all sorts of things. I said that if she found she was really going to have a baby she should try to get away somewhere and have a rest. The tensions in the house were affecting her and she would feel quite different when she had had a rest.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  Amy picked up the scissors, a piece of wire mesh, and a vase that had not been used. She looked at these objects in a preoccupied way as though their disposal represented an important problem from which she must not on any account be distracted.

  ‘What did she say?’ Rhoda persisted relentlessly.

  ‘She said that I was right,’ Amy addressed the wire mesh, turning it over wonderingly in her hand. ‘That to go away was the answer.’

  ‘Did she sound sad?’

  ‘No. She sounded very resolute.’ Amy had discovered that the cupboard was the answer to her problem; she went to it, followed by Rhoda. Amy deposited the scissors and the vase in the cupboard; then the impetus seemed to desert her and she remained staring down at the wire mesh in bewilderment. ‘I was a little dismayed when I looked at her; her face was like marble, very beautiful, but not like a living thing. I wanted to help her then, but it was too late; I don’t think anyone could have reached her.’ She turned the piece of wire mesh over again; the problem of whether it was worth keeping or not suddenly seemed too much for her and she thrust it at Rhoda. ‘I don’t know what to do with this stupid thing!’ There were tears in her eyes.

  Rhoda dropped it in the vase and shut the cupboard door. Amy turned away and went back to the table; she picked up her handbag and took out a handkerchief to wipe her eyes. She said quietly, ‘Sometimes I’ve wondered whether I made her go away with that man.’

  ‘And do you still think that Mr. Harkness . . .?’

  ‘Not after what you’ve told me. She was pregnant by that man.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that.’

  ‘It’s the obvious answer.’

  Amy snapped her bag shut and looked round the room to see whether she had left anything behind, then she went to the door. Rhoda followed, carrying the vase of gladioli. The chapel looked harsh and unforgiving in the grey light. Rhoda put the flowers on the Communion table where they made a savage splash of colour. Amy walked to the edge of the platform and hesitated, complaining, ‘I hate these steps.’ Rhoda came forward and took her arm.

  As they walked down the side aisle. Amy said, ‘Her going was very convenient. It spared everyone a lot of trouble.’

  ‘I expect you’re right.’ Rhoda said to comfort her.

  When they got to the door, Amy said.

  ‘You go on. I think I’ll sit here for a while.’

  Rhoda hesitated and then left her. As she went out she saw the old woman sitting with her head inclined, one hand across her brow, the fingers resting against the closed eyes. This attitude of prayer was typical of non-conformism, Rhoda thought, with its uneasy mixture of devotion and stalwart iconoclasm that would never permit complete submission, even to God. Amy would have been much happier if she could have made her confession meekly on her knees and found absolution before she rose to take up the burdens of the day. As Rhoda walked along the high street, past the familiar shops where people who had made last-minute purchases lingered in doorways exchanging the day’s gossip, she realized that she was in the same position as Amy.

  She was glad to leave the village street behind. It was a splendid evening. The sun was setting behind furred bars of cloud and the sea was red as blood. Nature made a mock of time, Rhoda thought, it never repeated itself; each sunset was a first death, each dawn a new creation. For some reason, this lofty thought served only to remind her that it was not simply that one had to live the rest of one’s life in Polwithian: one had to live with oneself. She walked past her cottage to the brow of the hill; beyond the Jory farm she turned away from the headland on to the fringe of the moors. The wind was strong up here and seemed to blow from all directions so that there was no escaping it; she was glad of her leather jacket and tweed skirt. She walked for some time without thinking and when she turned round there was no sign of the farm or the village. She stood with her fists pushed into the pockets of her jacket while the wind tore at her hair and made her eyes water; it had caught her across the shoulder blades and her back ached. But she could not turn back until she had decided whether to return to the cottage or to get the car out and drive to the police station at Trewellian. If she told the police, she would put a machine in motion which she had no power to control. The whole unhappy history of Silas and Melita would be dredged up, old rumours revived, there would be whispering, recriminations, perhaps tragedy for people like Jonas Harkness. Would this serve any useful purpose? Wouldn’t it be wiser to sit back and let things drift? And yet, in spite of the nightmare confusion, there was an underlying sense that a pattern was emerging which would work itself out as surely as the sun would finally go down in that feverish western sky. She began to walk slowly through the bracken, her head bent against the wind. She would not go to the police yet; she was aware that she had not really found out why she would not go, but she called it wisdom and thought of other things. Should she go to the doctor and ask him to get Catherine away because Catherine was the person who seemed most immediately in need of rescue? But it would take only a little pressure to s
end Catherine over the edge. Whoever does that, may it not be me! Let someone else have that responsibility. She did not think about Hester: Hester could look after herself. But Anna, what of her.?

  The sky overhead was pale turquoise and the evening star had appeared; in front of her, the moorland was black and had nothing of the magic of the sea at night, no light glimmered on its level expanse although she could hear the bracken move drily in the wind. And yet it was lovely in a forlorn way, this little wilderness that had escaped man’s hunger for domination. She looked at it, trying to be honest about her own hunger. All the time that she was thinking, her eyes were straining in the gloom, hoping to catch a glimpse of Anna returning from one of her solitary walks. When Anna returned from these walks she often came to Rhoda’s cottage; they had tea and toast sitting on the floor in front of the fire. But tonight there was no sign of Anna, there was only the wind and the smell of evening. Bitterness, held in check since the day she knew that her husband was dying and would never give her a child, overwhelmed her. The terrible, irreconcilable anguish seemed to rend her body; she fell on her knees, rocking to and fro, scratching her face and hands in the bracken. The noises that she made were not recognizably human.

  Later, when she returned to the cliffy path, she did in fact meet Anna who was walking slowly towards the farm with Gabriel. Gabriel said to Rhoda:

  ‘We heard something out there.’

  ‘Some creature caught in a trap,’ Rhoda answered briefly.

  ‘There aren’t any traps on the moors,’ he pointed out. But Rhoda had walked away.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ he asked Anna.

  Anna was not listening, she was looking up at the sky.

  ‘I can see the Plough,’ she pointed.

  She had seen the Plough often enough before, but everything was new to her lately, Gabriel had noticed. Beauty seemed to pierce her in the way that his father said grief pierced the Virgin Mary. Gabriel was acquainted with the idea of grief, but unaccustomed to rapture. He found Anna very uncomfortable to be with, in spite of the fact that she was much kinder to him. He was shrewd enough to realize that the kindness was one manifestation of a change that had taken place within her and was in no way personal to him. This change had made Anna a much warmer person; the warmth expressed itself physically, making her skin glow and brightening her eyes with a tremendous expectation, a wonderful awakened trust in life and all it had to offer. ‘It’s so exquisite,’ she had said once, bending over a wild rose picked from the hedgerow; she had pointed out to him each perfectly shaped petal delicately held together at the centre. ‘Such perfection!’ she had said. ‘And one tearing gust of wind could destroy it.’ She looked awed by such majestic profligacy.