by MARY HOCKING
‘What about all those silks and satins?’ Richard asked to draw her attention back to him.
‘I don’t need them now.’
Her assurance unnerved him. He turned away and himself examined the cedar and the deepening blue sky. Anna shut the case, turned the key. Now it was she who watched Richard. The familiar features, under close scrutiny, gave hints of complexity; the mouth was wide and generous, but the jaw was arrogant and there was a certain inflexibility in the high cheekbones. How much would he give, this dark, alien stranger? How much would he ask? She shivered, like someone poised between despair and ecstasy on the edge of a dark sea.
She got up and joined him at the window. Mist was curling across the lawn and to the west nothing was clearly discernible yet. By the time the moors were bright, she would be gone. ‘I shall miss all this,’ she sighed. But regret was ephemeral and by the time he had turned to look at her, her face was joyful.
‘There are things I shall have to do before we can leave the country,’ he warned.
‘And then you will be able to start again,’ she said, easily dismissing his commitments.
‘I shall have no choice,’ he answered drily.
She made no comment. The local police had been told what little they needed to know: that a woman, never very sound in mind, had taken her life and that her aunt had had a stroke as a result of the shock. This seemed to Anna to be sensible, but it presented Richard with a conflict of loyalties which she did not understand and had no intention of trying to understand. He had played a part and he had not taken her into his confidence, now he must see that side of it through alone. She was not curious about his past.
‘The time will go quickly,’ she said.
After all, it could not take long to resign from one’s job.
‘We could be married in London,’ he said.
‘No.’
‘Where then?’ he turned to her impatiently. ‘We must . . .’
‘There is no must.’ She faced him, smiling, gentle, adamant. ‘Don’t look so dismayed! I’m coming with you, that’s all that matters.’
‘But something must be settled!’ he protested. ‘I’m leaving a lot behind me, everything in fact.’
‘I must have time.’ She was quietly unmoved by his sacrifice. ‘I know that I love you, but I don’t know whether that has anything to do with marriage. I don’t understand about marriage. And there’s a lot I don’t understand about love. Don’t you see?’ She looked at him, radiantly expectant. ‘It’s all a part of the adventure.’
‘And if you find you don’t want marriage?’
‘Ah, then . . . Who knows?’ She stretched out her hands to him. ‘I risked everything when I came back to you from the island. Now you must take a risk for me.’
He took her outstretched hands. What else could he do?
Anna closed the window and drew the curtains. Richard took her case. As they went down the stairs Anna thought of her mother, and at the same time she thought of all that lay ahead of her: “. . . Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense, myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices; a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon . . .” They crossed the dark hall; a shaft of sunlight pierced the gloom and then the door closed behind them.
For a while after they had gone there were vibrations in the air. Hester, lying in her bed, was aware of the interplay of light and shade on the ceiling and walls, but gradually the space in the room lost its volume until finally the variations of tone dissolved in a grey vacuum. The waves of sound died into stony insensibility. Dust settled in the arteries of the house.
Mary Hocking
Born in London in 1921, Mary was educated at Haberdashers’ Aske’s Girls School, Acton. During the Second World War she served in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (Wrens) attached to the Fleet Air Arm Meteorology branch and then briefly with the Signal Section in Plymouth.
Writing was in her blood. Juggling her work as a local government officer in Middlesex Education Department with writing, at first short stories for magazines and pieces for The Times Educational Supplement, she then had her first book, The Winter City, published in 1961.
The book was a success and enabled Mary to relinquish her full time occupation to devote her time to writing. Long before family sagas had become cult viewing, she had embarked upon the `Fairley Family’ trilogy – Good Daughters, Indifferent Heroes, and Welcome Strangers – books which give her readers a faithful, realistic and uncompromising portrayal of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary times, between the years of 1933 and 1946.
For many years she was an active member of the `Monday Lit’, a Lewes-based group which brought in current writers and poets to speak about their work, an enthusiastic supporter of Lewes Little Theatre, and worshipped at the town’s St Pancras RC Church.
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Copyright
First published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus Ltd, 1969
This edition published 2016 by Bello
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
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ISBN 978-1509-8194-47 EPUB
ISBN 978-1509-8194-23 HB
ISBN 978-1509-8194-30 PB
Copyright © Mary Hocking 1969
The right of Mary Hocking to be identified as the
author of this work has been asserted by him in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Note
Acknowledgements are made to W. H. Auden
and Faber & Faber Ltd. for permission to
quote on page 127 two stanzas from Mr.
Auden’s poem ‘The Witnesses’, whic
h appears
in his COLLECTED SHORTER POEMS,
1927–1957.