AN IRRELEVANT WOMAN Read online

  Mary Hocking

  AN IRRELEVANT

  WOMAN

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  To J. Neville Ward

  Chapter One

  The house stood high above the village and at a sufficient distance to discourage those whose pleasure it is to drop in on neighbours. An untidy hedge overhung the narrow lane so that passage was not easy and the chance passer-by was afforded only a limited view of ancient chimneys and mossy, tiled roof. To anyone sufficiently determined – and prepared to brazen disapproval – to push hard at the dilapidated wooden gate, a curve in the rough drive would still deprive him of a full view of the house. If such an intruder were to venture on, he would soon come upon a rambling sixteenth-century house which, though plainly habitable, did not appear to have suffered much in the way of modernisation.

  On this particular day the intruder was not of a kind to concern himself with the upkeep of property. As he looked across the wide green lawn his eyes did not dwell on clumps of clover or unkempt bushes, but focused on the bird table which was well-provided with nuts and strips of fat. The intruder continued up the path.

  It was April and the day, although early, was already warm. Crocuses were unfolding in flower borders and beneath the trees on the lawn. A few elderly garden-chairs had been left out all night, collapsed against the wall by the french windows. From the far corner of the house came the clatter of pots and pans. He walked in that direction.

  Through the kitchen window he could see a woman standing in front of an oven. As he watched, keeping well to one side, she pulled on a pair of oven gloves and stood poised. A look of uncertainty came over her face which, for no apparent reason, changed rapidly to one of dismay. And worse. In this unguarded moment the woman’s face betrayed the naked terror which might be occasioned by coming without warning, in a nameless place, to the edge of a precipice; or by being confronted in one’s own household with a forgotten, long-locked door behind which may lie ultimate chaos, a rotting human corpse, or an equally defunct mouse. The woman opened the oven door and peered inside. Whatever she saw did little to reassure her and after a moment, during which she made no attempt to touch, or indeed to examine, anything, she closed the door and remained crouched forward, dark head bent.

  She appeared to recover after a few seconds and straightened up. Now that the terror had left her, the face composed itself to present a woman in middle life in whom the perceptive observer might still discern the child lingering behind the adult façade. A kind of deliberate absentness in the large grey eyes verged on the fey – one might imagine her to be willing either her own disappearance or that of the oven and its contents; but the firmly rounded chin gave notice that she was accustomed to command whatever forces troubled her, while the wry lines about the mouth were evidence of a humour which should surely have enabled her to answer what challenges life, let alone her kitchen, presented to her.

  She looked down at the oven gloves, as though surprised to find them on her hands. The oven door was opened again and this time the meat dish was pulled forward and the sizzling joint expertly scrutinised before being returned and the heat adjusted.

  The kitchen window was open and for a moment the room was full of bird song. Then the shadow of the tramp fell across the open doorway.

  ‘Could you cut my bread for me, missus? My knife ain’t sharp enough.’ He stood quietly, patient rather than deferential, as if he had been waiting all night unwilling to risk disturbing anyone until he saw that the door was open.

  ‘What a start you gave me!’ The response was made in the manner of one who says, ‘You frightened me’ in the hope of thereby disarming any intention to frighten. She took the bread from him. It was dry enough to break, no need to cut it. But if she was suspicious, she did not show it and as she walked to the table she turned her back on him, preferring risk to rejection. After she had cut the bread she buttered it and put thick wads of ham between the slices.

  ‘You can stay in the outhouse if you like,’ she said.

  ‘No. I’ll be on my way, missus, thank ’ee.’ He had been looking round the room, not angry or wistful, just curious. Perhaps he had wanted to see what it was like inside a house on Easter morning.

  The woman watched him walk away. She had offered him the outhouse as if he was a stray cat. ‘I should have asked him to eat with us,’ she said aloud. ‘But he would have been even more embarrassed than us . . . Or would he?’

  From the interior of the house came the sound of raised voices discussing acid rain.

  The kitchen door opened and an elderly woman floated in, an illusion much aided by a flimsy, flouncy elegance of dress reminiscent of the early Thirties, a period in which the wearer would have been at her most attractive. She stood by the kitchen table, fanning herself with a lace handkerchief, blue eyes blinking from a crumpled face.

  ‘Janet, how do you put up with Patsy?’ The handkerchief waved aside any answer. ‘I know you think I am intolerant, but you don’t live among them. Believe me, it’s like being surrounded by the Pilgrim Fathers and not being one of them, I am an outcast, my dear, I slink into my house with my white bread hidden at the bottom of my shopping basket. And worse than that, I’m a carnivore among the herbivores. I tell you, this new secular puritanism invades every part of life. If we have a rainy day they are all out the next day, not weeding, but looking for the effects of acid rain. That’s what she is on about now. A few moments ago it was Barclay’s Bank. “You don’t bank at Barclay’s,” she informed me. “Barclay’s is for daubing red paint on.” They will be having their own version of those awful Puritan names soon – Green Peace Jones, I-went-to-Greenham-Common Smith, Organic Potato Browne – with an ‘e’ because they’re very middle class, just like the rest of us.’

  Janet had by this time moved to the sink and was wringing out a cloth as though determined that not one drop of moisture should be retained by it. She said, ‘I think Patsy is a good woman.’

  ‘Haven’t you been listening to me? Of course she’s a good woman. That’s what is so intolerable. It makes me understand why the Christians got fed to the lions.’

  ‘Patsy’s house is terribly untidy.’ Janet made a small, deprecating gesture as though offering a modest gift. ‘And she makes an awful mess of her relationships.’

  ‘Yes, that is a comfort. But not to you, I suppose.’

  ‘I was very upset when Hugh had to leave her, naturally.’

  ‘Then why do you put up with her?’

  ‘I like to see my grandchildren. Surely you can understand that, Deutzia!’

  The sharpness of her tone surprised Deutzia who backed away to the kitchen door. ‘Where are they, by the way?’ She peered into the garden. ‘She is talking of going soon.’

  ‘Hugh has taken them for a walk.’ Janet let go of the cloth which fell into the murky waters of the washing-up bowl. ‘They won’t be staying for lunch, I’m afraid. Poor Hugh!’

  ‘So I shan’t be seeing Hugh if he doesn’t come back soon.’ Deutzia examined her wristwatch, holding it up ostentatiously to the light. ‘I was so hoping for a glimpse of him. As you know, he is really my favourite.’

  Janet retrieved the cloth and dealt with it briskly. ‘We aren’t often together as a family now, Deutzia – otherwise I would ask you to stay to lunch.’

  ‘How ruthless you are, Janet. I can’t think of anyone else who would so speed a departing guest.’
/>   ‘I didn’t ask the tramp to stay.’ She hung the cloth over the cold tap. Her mind wandered into the garden. ‘If I could turn him away I suppose I must be ruthless.’

  ‘I hardly see a connection between myself and a tramp!’ Deutzia looked more attentively at her companion, disconcerted by this strange intervention.

  ‘I run away from people like him; but this is my house so I couldn’t run away.’

  ‘Are you feeling well? Even from you this is rather odd.’

  ‘Did you know that Patsy goes into town twice a week to work in a canteen for the homeless?’

  ‘I knew she did something or other.’ Deutzia was irritated by the reintroduction of Patsy, a subject which she had now exhausted. ‘You must find it very tiresome – her doing voluntary work, I mean, when she could be helping to support herself and the children.’

  ‘I went with her once or twice. You wouldn’t recognise her there. She is so much more effective than in her own home.’

  ‘No doubt she is well supervised.’

  ‘And she is so good with even the strangest people. She never gets her reactions wrong – it’s as though she breathed with them. But I couldn’t cope with it.’

  ‘They are hardly your sort of people, are they, my dear?’

  ‘I don’t know what is my sort of person. And anyway, it wasn’t that. It was the end of the afternoon, when we were clearing up – we had to leave the hall as we found it . . . Some of them would help us to fold up the trestle tables. And then, when we had it all straight, they would just go away, very quietly. By the time Patsy and I left it would be dark and bitterly cold. I thought: where have they gone? Patsy didn’t seem to ask herself that. But I couldn’t think of anything else. I used to lie in bed, listening to the wind, wondering. I only went twice.’

  ‘That nice man who manages the County Hotel told me it is quite impossible to get staff these days because people won’t work unsocial hours. I’m sorry for anyone who is homeless, of course, but if they won’t work . . .’

  Janet was staring into the garden; her face had the drawn, puckered look of a short-sighted person straining their eyes. Deutzia thought perhaps it was a little vain of her not to wear glasses. Janet said, ‘What goes on out there, beyond that hedge? I have no idea.’

  Deutzia said kindly, ‘I think you are a little run down. And, of course, it must be so quiet here now, with Katrina at college and Malcolm having left home at last, I thought you were going to have trouble there, although I didn’t say anything because I know you think I like to interfere. But I was very relieved when this repertory thing cropped up. Not that it is what one would have wished for him, of course . . .’

  ‘He was such fun to have about the house, dear Malcolm!’ Janet seemed lost in contemplation of the garden. ‘So many different roles in one day. I do miss him.’

  ‘Darling, you mustn’t let yourself repine. The important thing is to keep doing things. I have had years to find that out since Herbert died. It is so important to be active.’

  ‘My husband hasn’t died, Deutzia.’

  ‘Murdoch does die to the world in some strange way during the greater part of the day, doesn’t he? So you must make your own life. And that doesn’t mean going to dreary canteens with Patsy and morbid things like that. Now, did you look at that programme of art lectures that I dropped in on you? I know several people who go. It’s not too intensive and afterwards they have a nice tea. The meetings are held in different members’ houses, some of which are quite delightful. One or two I have always wanted to see.’

  Janet, who was still looking out of the window, spoke loudly as though she was addressing not so much an unseen audience as a court which might be judging her. ‘I am not artistic.’

  ‘You know, my dear, age gives one certain rights. And I think I can take it upon myself to tell you that you have rather got into a habit of sacrificing yourself. Now that all the children have gone, you must get away from here more often. It’s not as though Murdoch needs you – shut away all the time writing.’

  ‘I am the keeper of his peace,’ Janet responded as if she was quoting.

  ‘And you have done it so well all these years that you don’t really need to spend any time on it now. People know that they must never telephone him during the morning, that they shouldn’t call on him in the evening, and that if they call in the afternoon he will be out on his walk. Even I, who have known you all these years, hardly dare to call. I was not at all certain of my reception this morning even. Easter morning . . .’

  Janet said, ‘Yes, Easter morning, even then . . .’

  ‘It isn’t always easy for me. I am not unaware that Murdoch finds me tiresome.’

  ‘That isn’t true.’ Janet responded with a flash of real concern, though on whose behalf was not clear. ‘I can’t think of anyone whom Murdoch finds tiresome.’

  ‘Because you take the burden from him as soon as you think he is threatened. Only last week, when I was trying to show an interest in his writing . . .’

  ‘Reading his books is the only way to show an interest.’

  ‘You know that I never read anything but biographies.’

  ‘Murdoch doesn’t mind your not reading his books, Deutzia. But he doesn’t know how to answer when people ask him if he writes in his dressing gown and that sort of thing.’

  ‘Then you should try to bring him out more. He might get on television if he was prepared to talk about how he writes rather than what he writes. It does seem extraordinary that he is so famous and people hardly know what he looks like. I pointed him out to Althea when she was staying with me and she said, “The Murdoch Saunders!” quite reverently. One interview with Melvyn Bragg would probably be worth more than all those literary prizes.’

  ‘I’m sure it would! Murdoch never wins the prizes which bring in much money.’

  ‘Money is not to be sneered at, Janet. I often wish I had a little more. I should so love to go on that Greek cruise Mona went on. Not that I should have wanted all those lectures. She came back more exhausted than when she went. But even if I can’t afford a cruise, I expect I could manage a week abroad if you fancied that, now that you will have more free time. Anyway, think about it, my dear . . . Although I get the feeling you haven’t paid enough attention to know what it is that I am suggesting. Is there someone out there?’

  She came to the window but saw only the hawthorn hedge, its intricate pinkish-grey mesh of branches studded with little green rosettes and, beyond, spring wheat sprouting on balding fields. ‘It’s a bit late, this year,’ she said sadly. She was old and a tardy spring mattered.

  The kitchen door opened to admit a woman who wore clothes which proclaimed that she would not wish to be seen dead in anything which fitted her. The purple skirt was too wide across the hips and the uneven hem trailed about her ankles, as muddied as her boots. The pink shirt sloped, shoulder seams just above the elbow, cuffs at finger-tip level. Both shirt and skirt were generously creased. Cleanliness, however, seemed to be important and had obviously preceded the creasing process. She ran a hand through tangled dark hair and said, ignoring Deutzia, ‘I’ll be going now, Janet. I expect I shall meet Hugh on the way. I’ll bring the children round on Friday if you don’t mind having them while I’m at Greenham.’

  ‘Yes, all right. Patsy. I’m sorry you’re not staying now.’

  ‘Hugh has had them all the morning. I am sorry you are cross.’

  ‘I didn’t say I was cross.’

  ‘I can feel that you are. But it’s much better for them to see us separately.’

  ‘Did you bring your car?’ Deutzia asked hopefully.

  ‘That old banger?’ Patsy appeared to resent the suggestion that she might own anything which answered the description of car. ‘I only use it because there are so few buses into town.’

  ‘What about Greenham?’

  ‘We are going by coach. You could come, too, if you liked, Deutzia.’ She made the suggestion without a hint of provocation.

 
‘I’m’ afraid I’m too old for that sort of caper, my dear. Not that I mean to criticise. I did some funny things when I was young.’ Something ingratiating had crept into her manner. ‘At least we can walk back to the village together. I like a little company – particularly on Easter Day.’

  ‘I shall be going over the hill. I expect that is where Hugh has taken the children.’

  They walked into the hall together, interrupting a scene between two small children and a tall, flaxen-haired woman with the implacably patient air of an oracle waiting the moment of pronouncement.

  The younger child was howling, ‘You promised we would see Sam.’

  Patsy said, ‘I’ll go and head them off, Steffie. If they actually see one another we shall never prise them apart.’

  ‘You could stay to lunch.’

  ‘It’s far too much for Janet.’

  Stephanie regarded her with raised eyebrows. ‘Really, Patsy! If it suited your purpose you would stay. After all, you don’t think it is too much for Mother to have them while you are at Greenham.’

  Patsy looked genuinely surprised. ‘I hope I haven’t upset anyone?’

  ‘Only Hugh and your children and my children . . .’ Her youngest child slapped her leg and howled, ‘I hate you!’

  ‘You are overtired, Marcus. You weren’t in the least interested this morning when I told you you were going to see Francesca and Sam.’

  ‘You were cross with us because we weren’t interested,’ the older boy pointed out.

  His mother turned on her sister-in-law, imperiousness getting the upper hand of patience. ‘Patsy, if you are going . . .’

  ‘Well, I am certainly going.’ Deutzia was fretted by this scene. ‘I’m at the age where I find raised voices very upsetting. Now, where is my coat?’

  When this was produced for her, she draped it round her shoulders and stood testing the air on the front doorstep. ‘Your mother has thrown me out,’ she said, laughing lightly.

  Stephanie, who had now picked up Marcus and slung him over one shoulder, said, ‘Well, don’t take it to heart, Deutzia. You have known us a long time.’