A Particular Place Read online

  ‘Do you think it is possible that when we look at her we see something we have lost? We have become so clever, so tutored, so self-aware’ – a hint of mockery in the tone suggested she might not be including herself in this examination – ‘that we can’t find our way back to our more unconsidered – intuitive, I suppose you might say – beginnings?’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ the college lecturer dismissed Valentine with contempt. ‘I think the old Countess had the measure of her – “She must show herself something out of the way.” ’

  Valentine had no mind to be thus dismissed. ‘Or perhaps,’ she said, appearing to reflect, ‘it is that women secretly detest the rare ones among them who can win the adoration of men without effort – quite spontaneously.’

  Charles was reminded of his occasional attendance at the golf club functions at which he had noted that women were quite indulgent of flamboyance, sexual expertise, even a little piracy, but were sour about the president’s wife, a Botticelli Venus to whom all eyes were drawn. ‘The silly cow doesn’t know how it happens, let alone what to do about it!’ As though it was like having a fortune and not investing it.

  ‘And as for being “a person who rises above the sordid” – I think that was what you said?’ Valentine turned courteously to the woman behind her. ‘Do many women enter into intrigues which they can see from the beginning to be sordid, even today?’

  The woman, who felt herself impaled on Valentine’s lofty brows, muttered, ‘I don’t know that the word intrigue applies any more in that context.’

  ‘But sordid does. Personally, I find myself totally in sympathy with Anna – in this respect, at least.’

  ‘I can’t understand her leaving her son, though,’ Shirley Treglowan said, holding the straw bag tightly to her breast. ‘I can’t understand any woman leaving her children.’

  ‘It happens all the time.’ The college lecturer smiled condescendingly at Shirley.

  ‘Yes, I know all about that.’ Shirley bridled. ‘You see plenty of that teaching, believe me, and you see what it does to the kids. They didn’t ask to be brought into the world, poor little buggers.’

  Across the room Valentine smiled at Charles. A meeting of true minds, he thought. The evening had not been a total failure.

  Hesketh Kendall was sitting at the back of the hall next to Hester who had come in late. Charles wondered what he had expected from the lecture. Whatever it was, his glum expression suggested he had not found it.

  When the discussion was finally brought to a close and Charles had been duly thanked, coffee was served. Charles, finding himself standing beside Hesketh, said, ‘I hoped you might have defended my client.’

  ‘If I took any brief, it would be Vronsky’s. I can’t understand why the poor fellow should get such a bad press. After all, he gave up his career for the woman and it must have been hard for him when she started whingeing.’

  Hester thought that had there been a suitable weapon to hand Charles might well have assaulted Hesketh Kendall.

  Near by a man was saying, ‘No one hates change more than your countryman. Khrushchev couldn’t get the peasants to change any more than Levin could.’

  A woman said, ‘No, no, he detested women! At least he kills off Anna cleanly, but look what he did to Natasha.’

  As they left the hall, Hesketh Kendall said to Charles, ‘Why not a lecture on Mrs Gaskell? Now, there is a woman one can be comfortable with.’

  ‘I can read Mrs Gaskell on my own,’ Shirley Treglowan said to Charles. They seemed to have found themselves alone in the car park. The mist had not come up from the river and it was a warm, scented night. Charles, fidgeting with his car keys, supposed he would have to offer her a lift. He thought it unmannerly of Hester to have departed with such alacrity, taking Valentine with her. He had himself intended to offer Valentine a lift. ‘But I need help with Tolstoy otherwise I miss so much. You wouldn’t think of taking a small class? I’m sure there would be others who would be interested. We could do Dostoevsky, too.’

  ‘Can I give you a lift?’

  ‘I’ve got my bike, thanks just the same.’

  He was so relieved that he said, ‘Yes, I don’t see why not, provided there are sufficient people who are interested. We might even take in Turgenev.’

  Chapter Six

  ‘Have you come to convert me?’ the old woman asked Michael Hoath.

  He had come to see her because her daughter had said that her mother was dying and would like to receive a call. The old woman’s head was bald and fragile as a bird’s egg, the eyes receding into the sockets were no more than a glimmer at the bottom of a well. She looked as if she was indeed dying, but she gave no indication of welcoming the attentions of her parish priest. He said, ‘No, Mrs Merrivale, I have come to see if there is anything you need.’

  ‘Well, there isn’t. Not from you.’ She moved a claw fretfully towards the chair beside the bed. ‘But you had better sit down and take the weight off your feet since you’ve come.’

  He sat down and waited.

  She had reached the stage where the burden of consideration for others could at last be shed and she took her time before she said, the phrases separated while she paused for breath, ‘We have a difference of opinion on the matter of religion, Vicar, and I have the advantage of you because I am soon to discover which of us is right.’

  ‘If you do make a discovery, I shall be the one who is right,’ he pointed out.

  Her hands plucked at the sheet. ‘How intolerable to think that if either of us is to be in a position to say “I told you so” it must be you.’ This thought exhausted her for some moments, then she went on, ‘The only way religion could be made bearable would be that at the end a voice would assure me, “You were absolutely right, Gertrude Merrivale, not to ingest all that codswallop.” ’ Even in extremity the pauses were well chosen. He recalled that she had been an actress.

  He said, ‘When it comes to the matter of codswallop, you may well be right.’

  The lids drooped over the drowned eyes. ‘Don’t patronise me.’

  ‘I am far from patronising you. I have enough troubles of my own with religion.’

  ‘Don’t unload them on me.’

  ‘It doesn’t leave us much to talk about. Would you like me to go? I don’t want to tire you.’

  She rolled her head to one side on the pillow; he assumed rather than saw that she was looking at him. ‘You wouldn’t care to give me a large overdose of those pills?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I thought not. Then I think you had better go.’

  When he reached the door, she said in a stronger voice, ‘What would you do if you wanted a way out of all this and they wouldn’t let you go?’

  He thought for a moment, his hand on the door handle. Downstairs the radio was on and he could hear someone reading the shipping forecast. He came back and sat down beside her. ‘I remember an old priest whom I knew years ago. He felt he had come to the natural end of his life. So he just refused food, gently and without fuss. He was very frail and ill and he went quite peacefully in a few weeks. You could refuse to drink as well, but that would be more difficult.’

  ‘Turn my face to the wall?’

  ‘To God.’

  ‘You’d best be gone. I’m tired. Don’t look so miserable, you’ve done your best.’

  The daughter was waiting at the foot of the stairs.

  ‘I’m afraid she hasn’t much use for me,’ he said. ‘But if you want me to come again, I will, of course.’

  What was I about in there? he asked himself as he went into the street. Doing unto others as I would they should do unto me when my end comes, I suppose. We should be allowed to go when Death comes for us without having the medical profession trying to intervene. But to go unbelieving?

  He walked slowly down the terraced street. It was a warm early summer evening. Light sparked from the roofs of parked cars and there was a hothouse smell of geraniums. Yet he had an impression of all-pervading
greyness. I can’t solve these questions, he thought wearily, they are beyond me. He prayed for the old woman, a dry empty prayer from a dry empty spirit.

  His childhood had been happy but since then some essential ingredient had been missing from life. He had not had much success in his ministry. Preferment did not bother him, but he cared deeply about his ministry. Now, it seemed to him that he was doomed to fail in this, the most important part of his life. The number of communicants at St Hilary’s was low in comparison with his previous parish and the congregation was elderly. Recently a few younger women had started to come to church including, rather to his surprise, the divorcee who had been so articulate during his meeting with the women’s group. But he felt nervous about this development, unsure what the church had to offer such women. The Parochial Church Council was dourly concerned with the maintenance of the fabric. Much could be put down to the long illness of his predecessor, but the dispirited, defeated air was reflected in the town itself. It had a quiet, rather sad aspect and it seemed to him the people had no fire in their bellies. He was by nature an ardent, hopeful man, eager for challenges, who might have done rather better in the mean streets of Brixton; but that very same nature made him dependent on the responses of others, too much in need of warmth and appreciation. The challenge of indifference – the quiet rebuff, the turning away from the outstretched hands, the sour response to the opening of the heart, ate away at the very root of his strength. And it wasn’t as if he was very successful in his personal life. The treacherous little thought slipped into his tired brain before he could guard against it.

  He was late at the church for Confession. Often no one came so it might not matter. But as he opened the porch door he saw that a woman was sitting at the back, head bowed. After the bright sunlight the church seemed very dark and moments passed before he could see clearly. Faint light shafted from the south and the lazy movement of a branch beyond the window sent green ripples across a pillar. The woman who was waiting tilted her chin as people do sometimes when they are swallowing a particularly indigestible thought. He recognized the distinctive head of Norah Kendall, the meagre knot atop the upswept hair, a style which Valentine said did not suit her because the hair was so fine and she was too old for the wispy look to be becoming. On this occasion, however, the light was kind to her, restoring the straggling pieces to something of an earlier glory. He felt guilty because he had forgotten that he had asked her to see him here, but he had had a busy day and there was nothing to justify the feeling almost akin to dread which the sight of her aroused in him. He had suggested that she should come here because he did not want her to get into the habit of calling at the vicarage. Now perhaps he must pay for this lack of charity. For some reason, he did not announce his presence in speech but sat down beside her.

  She did not look at him immediately but turned her head towards the south door, looking out to the graveyard, a hand cupped lightly across her lips while she composed herself. He waited. When eventually she faced him there was no hint of the archness which made her seem a rather tricky woman.

  ‘I couldn’t do it,’ she said simply. Her face – and it did indeed seem to be the whole face that was under pressure – crumpled. But she meant to control herself and did. She repeated with a dull exhaustion which shocked him, ‘I couldn’t do it.’ She might have been given some physical trial which had left her drained and defeated.

  At first he could not remember what words of his had provoked this reaction which seemed so inappropriate to anything he could have intended. She went on, ‘I tried. I wrote three letters to Samantha and tore them all up. I even got as far as the pillar box with one of them. But I couldn’t go through with it.’ She said no more, but bowed her head and looked down at her hands in her lap, inert in failure.

  In that moment he knew instinctively that there had been too much failure in this life. The signs of strain and weariness, lightly etched on the face though they might be, were unmistakable and should have told him that here was a woman living beyond her spiritual capacity, daily giving more than she could afford. Why had he not realized that for her it might be costly to lead what he, in his arrogance, dismissed as a limited spiritual life? He saw, as if it was a physical thing, the burden which this woman carried, a burden in excess of her strength which she had nevertheless borne into her forties without allowing it to break her. And the effort was not permitted to show; dignity was precariously retained and the face she turned to the world was more remarkable for good humour than martyrdom. How was it that he had not seen this? Why had he allowed his mind to concentrate on the negative aspects of an undoubtedly complex and troubled personality? Instead of offering consolation, he had lectured her and told her where her duty lay. The memory filled him with disgust and self-loathing. How could he begin to make amends? He knew only too well that once make a criticism which wounds, nothing said subsequently – more important though it may seem to the speaker – will have any effect; however positive and glowing with warm appreciation the tribute offered, to the victim it will be seen merely as the sugar coating to the bitter pill. He had found out in his own life that barbs go deeper than ever Cupid’s dart.

  On an impulse, he said, ‘Why don’t we go into the graveyard and talk about this? I may well have been the one who was wrong.’

  She looked taken aback and not entirely pleased, as if he had presented her with an unmerited gift which she would not know how to use. Then she got up and walked towards the door into the graveyard and he followed. He had it in his mind that he should talk to her informally, not in his capacity as a priest. He remembered, as he stooped to cross the threshold, that moment many years ago when the family G.P. had turned away from his swivel chair and come to sit beside him to talk as a friend about his dear mother’s illness.

  There were bottles of coke and potato crisp packets in the grassy moat in which the church walls were now sunk. He knew that one or two people came to hear the nightingales but did not like to think that the graveyard offered other night-time attractions. He hoped this litter could be laid at the door of the choir boys.

  The graveyard was not easy of access, having the church building as the northern boundary and high walls which separated it on two sides from the back premises of neighbouring shops and on the south side from the vicarage garden. As a result chance passers-by scarcely registered its existence. It was no longer used for burials and now resembled a small secluded garden with its tall trees and grassy mounds. Only a few ancient graves, the inscriptions on their headstones almost indecipherable, bespoke its province.

  The trees provided a welcome shade on this warm evening. Michael Hoath and Norah Kendall sat on a bench beneath the great cedar. A low bough had recently been lopped and the smell of cedarwood brought to Michael’s mind an old carved box belonging to his grandfather which had seemed to him as a child to release into the fusty suburban room the magic of some far place. The smell, or the peace of the garden, seemed to have a healing effect on Norah, for she sat with eyes half-closed, breathing more steadily. She was wearing a blue shirt and a dark blue skirt which gave the appearance of a uniform. Even now, more relaxed as she had become, there was the suggestion of a person nodding off while on duty.

  ‘Were you nursing right up to the time of your marriage?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘I had cancer – a mole in my side. I was lucky, but it seemed to take a lot out of me at the time. I had to give up nursing. I was doing parish work when I met Hesketh.’

  ‘You have had a lot to contend with.’

  ‘The cancer was bad luck; but make no mistake about it, this hump on my back which I carry around,’ she tapped her shoulder blade, ‘that is me. My father was an unsuccessful farmer – he would have been unsuccessful at anything he attempted, he just happened to fail on the land. He could never see any job through. I don’t think he was lazy physically, the mental energy gave out. I’m much the same. I’ve done better than him and my brothers because I chose an occupation where my du
ties were laid down very specifically and there were people around to crack the whip when my powers of application failed.’

  ‘Your parents are still alive?’

  ‘No. My father died of cancer. My mother died of looking after him, only she lingered a long time. I looked after her – not very praiseworthily. She adored my brothers who stayed away when she was ill. We didn’t get on well and we were up to each other’s tricks. Patient and uncomplaining, I was not! I suppose that was one of the reasons why I married Hesketh, to prove to myself that I could care for another person satisfactorily. He had charm and he gave the appearance of being a well-balanced person, which I needed. He had work which he seemed to relish and which – so I imagined – would prevent his leaning too heavily on me. It seemed to be one of those situations where it would be hard to fail. But I’m good at extracting failure from any situation.’

  They talked about her marriage. She spoke with none of the edgy defensiveness which so often marked her manner, quietly and with a sad humour. ‘Why I should think I could provide more easily for two than for one, I can’t imagine.’ Then, after a moment’s reflection, she corrected herself. ‘It isn’t only that I can’t cope, it’s that I expected the wrong things. I thought that love would come from caring. I had missed out on the love that is supposed to hover over our cradle and still thought I might get it. It was selfish and immature and quite unrealistic, but that was what I hoped for. Unfortunately, Hesketh wants a great deal of mothering. He isn’t much interested in love – or sex. That may be my fault, of course.’

  They began to talk more generally about the mistakes which are made when people in their hunger for love take a wrong turning in their lives. They admitted that there was no innocent party, that choices are usually dictated by self-interest, that a burden can deliberately be placed on the one who cannot respond and was not, in any case, a party to the dream. He said, ‘It is wilful flouting of what in our deepest hearts we know to be the truth.’ His face became quite cavernous and his eyes had that intense eagerness which made him so vulnerable and which Valentine dreaded because it meant that he was about to offer her something precious which would inevitably turn to dross in her hands. It was that same ravaged look which presaged in the pulpit the sermon about the love of God in which he believed so passionately and to which most of his congregation were quite indifferent. On these occasions he seemed to Valentine like some carving of a gaunt, mythical creature from whose ever open jaws water gushes out, endlessly wasteful, and the congregation were like right-minded sightseers, turning away, unimpressed, thinking of important things like Peace and South Africa and whether the coach-driver would have managed to park in the shade. ‘And when we flout our own truth,’ he said, ‘we flout God, because He is that truth. If we grow away from the love of God we grow away from our true self and we become malformed, like a tree which hasn’t enough light.’