The HOPEFUL TRAVELLER Read online

  Mary Hocking

  THE HOPEFUL

  TRAVELLER

  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

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  To Pat

  Chapter One

  Peace is a particular kind of chaos: so Kerren thought as she walked down Holland Park Road. She had five shillings in her pocket and this meagre sum had to last her the rest of the week. Always before there had been authority of some kind to stand between her and the prospect of starvation: parental authority had dwindled marvellously with the advent of war, but the navy had taken over, providing food, lodging and work. Now there was nothing. She was free. She passed a cafe and a smell of fish and chips wafted up from a grating. A wave of dizziness came over her. She bent back her little finger, a trick she had learnt to avert faintness on the parade ground. The pain cleared her mind. She hurried on, past a cigarette kiosk, and turned from the murky yellow light into the darkness of a side street. She hoped that Cath would provide a good meal.

  In spite of her hunger, she felt the usual excitement as the character of the neighbourhood began to change. Cath lived in the part of Holland Park that precariously retained its dignity. Kerren loved the tall houses with their crumbling porticoes. She was convinced that behind the long, sash windows a life went on that was stimulating and brilliant. She had made a great assault on London since she arrived from Ireland ten days ago; she had tramped the City and West End in search of work, she had been to all the free art galleries and she had stood at the back of several theatres, she had eaten in dingy foreign cafes, anxiously studying the menu for the cheapest dish. But exhilarating though all this was, the quiet streets and squares off Holland Park had given her the most pleasure. She walked in them during the cold winter evenings trying to get her circulation working before she went to bed. The curtains at the windows were often drawn back with a fine disregard for the insignificant passer-by, and this was the thing more than any other that Kerren loved about peace, this opening out of the private world, the interior light flowing into the streets again. The rooms in these houses were high-ceilinged and spacious; she could see book-lined walls, the mellow beam of a standard lamp on polished wood, the crystal radiance of a chandelier. These still-life glimpses gave her a feeling of repose in the midst of this frantic city, a sense of tranquillity miraculously preserved through all the clamour of war.

  Not that she clung to the past. The future was important and she was desperate to conquer it. Cath was a help in this. She had already had three jobs and lost them and she had made a lot of peculiar friends, all of whom talked as though they had a monopoly of understanding of the post-war world, where it was going and why. Kerren wondered whether any of these people would be at Cath’s tonight.

  She came into her favourite square. It was terraced on three sides by early Victorian houses; in the centre were bushes, trees and shrubs dark as a forest furred by the cold January haze; on the far side was the main Holland Park Avenue. The juxtaposition of the old and the new pleased Kerren; the busy road seemed to emphasize rather than to detract from the serenity of the square. Cath’s house was in the middle of the north-facing terrace. As she approached it, Kerren was pleased to see that the lower floors were in darkness although there was a light at the top. This meant that Mr. and Mrs. Norman were out. Cath’s parents were the most stultifyingly conventional people that Kerren had ever met and in their presence she seemed unable to formulate one normal, acceptable sentence. They in their turn regarded her with a bewildered, wary anxiety as though an obstreperous but harmless leprechaun had been introduced into the house. God, may they not be in! she prayed as she stood with her hand on the gatepost. The gate itself had gone, Cath’s father had sent it for scrap during the war and the gap still marked his patriotic gesture. Kerren went up the steps to the front door. She knocked, her heart beating faster. Mrs. Norman could not bear it if a knock was not answered immediately and as her incessant household duties meant that she was never available to do this herself, her voice could usually be heard rallying the other members of the household. Tonight, there was a blessed silence. Kerren rang the bell. Somewhere at the top of the house a door opened and soon Kerren heard Cath’s firm tread on the stairs.

  ‘Is that you?’ Cath called from the other side of the front door.

  ‘It’s the Ghost of Christmas Past,’ Kerren answered.

  A bolt scraped and the door swung open.

  ‘There’s been a man going round the square,’ Cath explained. ‘I thought you might be him.’

  ‘Hard luck.’

  ‘I should hate anything like that.’ Cath shot the bolt again. ‘I don’t mind giving myself to a man, but that . . .’

  Kerren agreed that it was nice to have the option. She hoped that Cath was not going to get intense before the food was prepared. Cath went up the stairs and Kerren followed, sniffing hopefully. As they turned the corner of the stairs to the first landing, Cath said:

  ‘I hope you aren’t hungry.’

  ‘I’ve starved all day.’

  Cath laughed because Kerren often said silly things that were not meant to be taken seriously. Kerren, after all, had a widow’s pension to supplement her earnings so Cath assumed that she was doing rather well.

  ‘Mummy and Daddy have gone out,’ she said, leading Kerren up the second flight of stairs. ‘So I prepared a meal in my room and I got sick of carting stuff all that way.’

  She flung open a door revealing a long, low room that ran the whole length of the house; it was sparsely furnished and had the appearance of a studio. Kerren loved it and was very envious of Cath, but this evening she had eyes only for the table pushed against the window. At least it was laid for supper, Kerren could see bread and tomatoes.

  ‘Are you cold?’ Cath asked. ‘I could make soup, I suppose.’

  ‘Not if you have to go all that way for it.’

  If one chose, for private reasons, to go hungry, one must not make a practice of living on one’s friends.

  Kerren took off her coat and inspected herself in the long mirror on the wall. She had only a small speckled mirror in her room and so this was like renewing an old acquaintance. Her heavy tweed skirt had swung round so that the pleats were in the wrong place and she straightened it, reflecting that she had lost quite a bit of weight. The room was cold. Kerren pulled down the sleeves of her green jumper and thought that it was a pity that as well as being exciting London was so uncomfortable. Her hair, which she was growing, had escaped from the coil at the nape of her neck and straggled rather wildly round her pale, puckered face. It was a good thing that Mr. and Mrs. Norman could not see her.

  ‘Are your folk playing Bridge?’ Bridge, Kerren knew, was an after-midnight affair.

  ‘What else? They never go out otherwise.’

  Cath lit a cigarette and let it hang from her upper lip while she stood frowning down at the gas fire. Kerren, sensing that she was about to discourse on the way that her parents had changed since the war, said quickly:

  ‘It was nice of you to go to so much trouble, Cath.’

/>   ‘Trouble?’

  ‘The food.’ Kerren walked purposefully to the table and made a show of admiring the plate of Spam and tomatoes.

  ‘I’ve given up potatoes.’ Cath joined her. They sat down, one on either side of the window. ‘All those years of starchy food have played havoc with my figure.’

  ‘It was terrible, wasn’t it? Shall I cut the bread, it’s nearer to me?’

  ‘I’m not eating bread, either.’ Kerren cut a thick wedge and Cath said, ‘That’s bad for you.’

  Kerren spread margarine thinly over the bread. Cath looked at her watch.

  ‘I’ve got someone coming later. We’d better talk now, he’ll do all the talking when he arrives.’

  All Cath’s men were talkers. She was the kind of girl to whom a man unburdened himself, solid, with a homely, currant-bun of a face. At first, the men had talked and held her hand and she had comforted them. It was Derek Mason, the squadron CO., who had discovered that she was good for other forms of comfort. He had left his mark, Kerren thought sadly, reaching for a tomato. Cath’s black woollen dress fitted too tightly, no doubt it was pre-war and she had put on weight since then; but a scarf would have alleviated the perils of the scooped neckline.

  ‘Do I know him?’ Kerren asked.

  ‘He’s the Jugoslav I told you about.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t going to see him again.’

  Cath surveyed the wall beyond Kerren with an expression of stubborn misery as though she had been singled out for some very special form of torment, and Kerren guessed that the affair had gone beyond the point of no return. It was irritating to discover that when one came up against people who were leading unconventional lives they didn’t seem interesting, only drab and a trifle stupid. Cath began to give details of her seduction which seemed to have been rather violent. All Cath’s lovers were violent. Kerren looked at the last piece of Spam and wondered whether her conscience would allow her to take it. She took it and proffered advice in return.

  ‘Don’t racket around too much, Cath.’

  ‘Men only want the one thing.’

  Cath put her elbows on the table and leant forward; she had a well-developed bust and the effect was pure Restoration, yet her solemn face still looked more appropriate to a Salvation Army bonnet than anything else. She said, ‘Oh, I know that you had something very special with Peter, but . . .’ She did not finish the sentence, either because she did not know what it was that Peter and Kerren had had or because Peter was dead and one should not speak ill of the dead, especially in front of the widow. ‘But that was an exception. It’s a mistake to have illusions about men. I’ve lost every illusion I ever had.’

  She was as intensely cynical as she had once been idealistic. Cath never did things by half-measures. Kerren unwrapped a scrap of silver paper and found, as she had hoped, that it contained a scraping of processed cheese. Cath went on:

  ‘Life is a pretty bloody business; we’ve had a bloody war and we’re due for an even bloodier peace. But you learn from it. Don’t expect anything, just accept what there is while it’s there and don’t waste time asking questions because the answers won’t make sense anyway.’

  Kerren thought that this was all a bit pretentious since Cath had not really had much experience of war and had lost her illusions when she fell in love with a married man.

  ‘You’re letting this thing with Derek Mason get out of proportion,’ she said. ‘All men aren’t brutes.’

  ‘Men only want the one thing,’ Cath repeated.

  She looked out of the window again, not as though she was looking from the security of her home but as though the world was a strange one in which she was no longer at ease.

  Kerren sat back. She had indigestion because she had eaten too fast, but she felt less hollow inside and, in spite of Cath’s gloom, rather well-disposed to the world.

  ‘I’ve got a job,’ she announced.

  ‘You should have said at once! Tell me about it.’

  Cath prepared to listen with her usual intense concentration. The trouble was there was nothing tremendous to tell. Kerren could understand why some men preferred to divert Cath’s intensity to other channels.

  ‘It’s nothing exciting, just something to keep me going until the right job comes along.’

  Cath nodded; they both realized the importance of finding the right job and, in spite of Cath’s disillusion, they both believed that it was there, waiting for them somewhere round the bend of time. They also accepted that all the routine workaday jobs were not for them.

  ‘It’s in the local library,’ Kerren said.

  ‘That’s marvellous! You’re bound to make a success of it because you know so much about books. They’re lucky to have got you.’

  Cath glowed with enthusiasm. This steadfast belief in the exceptional virtues of her friends was one of her most lovable characteristics. She could be candid to the point of being hurtful, but basically one always knew that Cath was on one’s side.

  ‘I started yesterday,’ Kerren said.

  Cath did not ask about pay, money was not important to her because her people were comparatively well-off. It had become rather more important to Kerren since she had had to provide for herself, but she appreciated Cath’s attitude and thought it a sensible one.

  ‘Are you still working?’ she asked.

  Cath had recently started in a Bond Street jewellers. Kerren could not visualize her there and was not surprised when Cath answered:

  ‘I was sacked this morning. A glossy individual came in – you know the kind, perfumed hair and padded shoulders – his lady friend’s ear-rings needed to be repaired. They were pearls, minute things, I couldn’t hold them properly.’ Cath’s hands were square and blunt-fingered, they had been capable when she was an air mechanic but they were not suited to fine work. ‘One of the bloody things dropped down the front of my dress and Madame came in while he was retrieving it.’

  Kerren put her head back and crowed with laughter. When she stopped she found Cath staring at her; at first she thought she had offended her, then Cath sighed, ‘Oh Kerren! Your laugh takes me back.’

  They sat for a moment, remembering the cabin at night, the circle of chairs round the smoking stove. How they had blasphemed about service life then!

  ‘I’ll get something that suits me eventually,’ Cath said.

  The war had left them dissatisfied, hating the humdrum day-to-day existence, despising conventional people. Enthusiasm and a determination not to conform were not marketable assets, but they had yet to discover this and they laughed as Cath recounted, ‘I told the girl in the employment agency – “nothing clerical or nine-to-five” – and she looked at me as though all that was left was the streets.’

  ‘You’ll find something,’ Kerren assured her. ‘It’s just a case of sticking out for what you want.’

  They stacked the crockery and Cath said, ‘I’ll wash it one of these days.’ The sordid aspects of service life had nauseated her, but now it seemed important to affect a certain sluttishness as an indication of her contempt for her mother’s all-consuming concern with good housekeeping. From the clutter at the bottom of a cupboard she produced a saucepan and Kerren said:

  ‘How marvellous! Are we having coffee?’

  ‘I’ve got a gas ring. I can’t think why I didn’t warm up some soup on it.’

  The same thought had occurred to Kerren. In spite of the bread and Spam she felt a great need for something warm inside her. Cath put the saucepan on the table together with a tin of powdered milk and a jar of coffee. While she was opening the tin of milk the Jugoslav arrived.

  He was over six foot, all bone and sinew. There was an aura of violent energy about him, one would never be sure whether he was going to throw himself into a chair or out of the window. In the event, he threw himself on to the divan and glowered at the two girls. He had a face well-suited to this occupation, strong, implacable bones, a wide gash of a mouth and, most disconcerting of all, deep-set eyes of a partic
ularly brilliant blue. Kerren reflected that she would be terrified of becoming involved with him: Cath was moving in dangerous waters, this was no playboy Derek Mason.

  Cath introduced him as Jan ‘because his real name is unpronounceable’. This did not please him and Kerren, who would have resented being deprived of her own name, felt an unexpected sympathy for him. He would have to put up with jokes about his name for the rest of his life. How maddening to be a refugee!

  ‘Tell her about your escape, Jan,’ Cath said as though she was persuading a dog to perform a favourite trick.

  ‘I forget it,’ he said sullenly, and then, unable completely to renounce a chance to dramatize himself, added, ‘There have been so many escapes in my life.’

  Kerren said, ‘Hard luck,’ and began to talk about ‘Les Enfants du Paradis’ which she had recently seen. Jan was not a talker in the way that Cath’s other men had been; he had an Olympian air of being apart from the discourses of lesser mortals. Nevertheless, by a series of impatient interruptions he managed to dominate the conversation.

  ‘He is not good, this Barrault,’ he announced fiercely. ‘Oh, as the clown he mimes well enough.’ He hunched his shoulders and mimed condescending approval. ‘But when he is playing straight, he is nothing.’ His shoulders sagged, all the breath drained from his body. ‘Nothing.’ He withdrew from the arena, but remained watchful as a tiger poised for his next pounce.

  Cath said why was it that clowns were so terribly sad and Kerren began to talk about Chaplin. Jan intervened to tell them that Chaplin was born in London.

  ‘Yes,’ he repeated as though they had expressed surprise. ‘He was born in London, I am assured of this.’

  Many of his pronouncements ended in this way, as though he had access to an impeccable source of information. In the same way he would catch a name in their conversation and say, ‘Ah yes! He is known to me,’ as though conferring social acceptability on the person concerned. Social acceptability seemed to be very important to him. When Cath mentioned a near neighbour, a widow of a city magnate, he became suddenly uneasy; this was someone of whose social cachet he could not be sure. He said vaguely, ‘Ah yes, yes. Mrs. Mitchelson.’ Apparently seeking solace his eyes wandered to the saucepan; then his head jerked sharply away as though he himself had been guilty of a social impropriety. Kerren noticed how pinched his face was about the mouth.