WELCOME STRANGER Page 12

  ‘Are you really telling me that you think that young person in general purposes section should be paid as much as my Miss Adlam?’

  ‘Well . . .’ The Assistant Education Officer backed towards the door. ‘I can see an argument for it.’

  ‘Let us hope that none of the members of the staff sub-committee can,’ Miss Bruce said to Mr Hadow.

  The Education Committee had larger issues to meditate upon. At this unpropitious time, London County Council had released details of its scheme for the reorganisation of secondary education, which involved the establishment of County High Schools for up to 2,000 pupils. This created quite a flurry of invective in the offices of the West London Authority, where it was considered that schools for 2,000 were much too large. The Ministry of Education, however, favoured the London County Council in this, as in many other matters.

  Alice, reading proofs of her book under cover of the draft Development Plan, wondered if any of this mattered now that the new ice age had come. Although pleased about her book, it was people who she anticipated would bring her happiness; and people seemed to be eluding her, when not actually moving away from her. She had imagined that having a book published would involve her in a social whirl of parties and had visualised herself dining with the famous in Hampstead. But so far she had not had so much as a sherry and a dry biscuit. True, she was going to stay with Daphne and Peter Kelleher in Norfolk in March, so her social life was not without pleasure. But, while she looked forward to this, she was aware that it was a diversion. She could not spend her life on the fringes of other people’s marriages. But how was she to spend it?

  The relationship with Nicholas Medd, her art teacher was not developing. She joined the Overseas Club, and enrolled at the City Lit. for a class in French. The answer might well be that she must travel; and in order to get a job abroad, it would be useful to be proficient in at least one foreign language. When she had improved her French, she might take up Spanish. She read the situations vacant columns as she would study a menu to see what tempted her. She was not called for interview; which was hardly surprising, as she was not measuring herself up to the employers’ requirements, but rather examining them to see what they offered in the way of opportunities for travel, excitement (newspaper offices rated high in this category), and the chance of meeting interesting people (anything at the BBC). Her situation seemed desperate.

  She struggled through snow to theatres; in the lunchtime, she trudged determinedly to exhibitions at the Tate or to the National Gallery, arriving exhausted and with only time to look at one or two pictures; she re-read a novel by Hermann Hesse, who had been awarded the 1946 Nobel Prize for Literature. But nothing could ameliorate the misery of an eight-hour day in the Education Department; she was wishing her life away at an alarming rate.

  She wondered whether Guy felt the same. He was always very tired when he returned home and Louise was the one who had to deal with all the household problems. He grumbled that she ‘never sat down for five minutes’ and ‘never kept her mind on any one thing’. On the rare occasions when he was called upon to do two things at the same time he became confused and aggrieved. There was a particularly trying episode one evening when his mother telephoned while he was clearing snow from the entrance to the coal shed.

  ‘She says they are frozen at the main,’ James told him.

  ‘What am I supposed to do about it?’ he asked angrily.

  ‘She wants to know if you can go round there this evening.’

  ‘I can’t leave this to speak to her.’

  ‘You could tell me,’ James suggested.

  ‘But how do I know whether I can go round there until I’ve finished here?’ he stormed. ‘How do I know?’

  James retired and soon afterwards Louise came into the yard. ‘I’ve told your mother you will come if you have time.’

  ‘I’m not going to have time if I’m not left alone to do this, am I?’

  ‘It’s a pity he hasn’t got a more interesting job,’ Alice said to Louise when they were washing up later in the evening, and Guy had departed for his parents’ house, shouting over his shoulder, ‘I’ve brought work home from the office. I shall probably be up half the night after this!’

  ‘You may not think his work interesting, but Guy probably does,’ Louise was quick to defend him from what she saw as implied criticism.

  ‘I don’t see how anyone can be interested in figures.’

  ‘It’s no use doing what other people think of as exciting, if you don’t find it exciting yourself. Cooking can be more rewarding than climbing a mountain – or writing a book – if it’s cookery that moves you. And I daresay the same applies to figures. No one is meant to be a failure.’ Louise looked challengingly at Alice, who had been thinking in terms of her own failure, not Guy’s. She went to the larder to collect scraps of fat and bread for the birds.

  Alice accepted this criticism. She had been brought up to believe that whatever you do, you must do well and cheerfully. At the Winifred Clough Day School for Girls great emphasis had been laid on this, and on the value of service to others. She was one of the school’s failures. Unable to make the best of the small change of office life, and with no desire to serve the community, she was, it seemed, selfish, dissatisfied, pleasure-seeking; a person who considered herself set apart from the ordinary run of people, yet with nothing to show in the way of worth, let alone outstanding talent.

  Louise, coming back from the snowy garden where she had filled the birds’ tray, said, ‘Not everyone is made for the heights, you know.’ She was troubled about Guy, who spent a lot of time with clients who were elderly and impecunious. She guessed that the firm had given him its lame ducks because no one else had the patience to deal with them. But how long would it be before they began to complain that his financial contribution did not justify the amount of time he spent on these clients? He would take it very hard if that happened. She realised, none better, that the tools with which Guy tackled life were fragile.

  Alice went slowly up to her room, a leaden weight in her stomach. Louise was right, of course. A great many people spent their days doing work they found boring and uninspiring. But she had never thought she would be one of them.

  Icicles hung from the inside of her window sill, but in the bowl on the dressing table, hyacinths thrust up pink and unconcerned from their green shield. Outside, the lights from street lamps splashed on the snow; a wind was blowing and the canopies of snow breathed and rippled as though something was living within them. Night gave magic to the scene, hiding the sick sky.

  She would not conform; she would not believe that boredom was to be her lot. So, she must resist. She would not buy a season ticket, and from now on she would vary her route to the office, even if the journey sometimes took longer. At all costs, she would not establish a routine.

  One other change she effected about this time. On Sundays, instead of going to the Methodist chapel, she attended an Anglican church in Notting Hill. The vicar was reserved and a little aloof; not a cold man, but one who held certain matters to be his own and no one else’s business. Time-wasting callers at the vicarage were not always made to feel welcome. Although he was capable of deep feeling, this was not constantly on display and He was considered to be unfriendly. He could be candid, but not in the gauche way which enables people to say affectionately, ‘he has put his foot in it again!’ His bursts of candour, sudden and unpredictable, frequently broke through a man’s guard. These characteristics had earned him the reputation of a man not entirely to be trusted. He was an important influence in Alice’s life because he stood at the point at which she had arrived, a signpost in a time of need.

  ‘However dark things may seem,’ he said one week in his sermon, ‘little rays of light and understanding will break through. Perhaps this is all there will ever be, all we have a right to expect. But so long as we are open to receive them, that is all that matters. Whatever happens, we must never shrug our shoulders and say, “Well, I had such dreams
and nothing came of them; but things haven’t been so bad, I’ve got along somehow.” You must never do that to yourself. Delve into your despair and rage against it, rather than that. But never subscribe to the doctrine of the littleness of life.’

  Alice delved into her despair: daily, quietly, persistently, she raged against the littleness of life in the West London Education Authority. And she kept herself in a state of readiness. The worst thing which could happen would be that she might accept her situation, so that when the chance came to break free, she could no longer take it.

  Chapter Nine

  Towards the end of March there was a slow thaw. Life would become more bearable and it would be easier to travel. ‘So,’ Daphne said to Peter, ‘Alice will becoming. And I have asked Angus and Irene and Ivor as well. That will solve our outstanding hospitality commitments.’

  ‘Are we committed to Irene?’

  ‘She is my friend.’

  ‘I thought Alice was your friend.’

  ‘Alice is my particular friend.’

  ‘I had no idea there were these grades of friendship.’

  ‘Does it matter? If there are several people they will spread themselves about and you won’t find it so irritating.’

  In the event, there was less time for irritation than one might have foreseen.

  To her disappointment, Alice had to work on the Saturday morning and so could not accept Angus’s offer to take her by car. Car journeys were a rarity and she would greatly have enjoyed the opportunity of exploring unfamiliar territory. Railways bisected land unnaturally, whereas roads wound their way through the heart of the countryside. Alice was much taken with getting to the heart of things.

  The train, on this occasion, provided plenty of opportunity to study the countryside, stopping for long periods at isolated level crossings while the wind moaned in the telegraph wires and drove misty sprays of snow against the windows. The snow was melting and the fields were ribbed with dark mud. Here and there a cluster of houses and a church had that look which, seen from a distance, buildings so often have in a flat countryside of being dumped arbitrarily without regard to their surroundings. A long ditch kept the railway line company. It was almost full of water and Alice wondered idly what would happen when all the snow had melted. It seemed likely that this section of the line would be flooded. The thought that Nature might provide her with a few extra days’ holiday was not unpleasing.

  As the line came close to the coast she had a glimpse of the sea, a bubbling mercury beneath a violet sky. It was late afternoon by the time King’s Lynn was reached. Alice was able to recognise Peter Kelleher from the snapshot which Daphne had sent to her. He was standing by the ticket barrier greeting a man who must have travelled by the same train. She waved and walked towards the two men.

  ‘Ah, Alice!’ Peter Kelleher said, taking her suitcase to give himself time to remember her surname. His memory still failing him, he indicated the other man and said, ‘This is Ivor.’ The man thus addressed was too amused by his friend’s predicament to attempt a more formal introduction. Nevertheless, there was no doubting his interest as he looked at Alice. Seldom, she felt, had she made such an immediate impression on anyone. She was not sure, however, that this was a cause for self-congratulation. The eyes which examined her might be making notes for a portrait which would not necessarily – be flattering, or even recording a description of her to be circulated later. She wondered if he was a policeman, but decided that he was more likely to be involved in the overthrow of law and order than its maintenance. As they walked to the car she realised he was lame.

  She hesitated by the car, waiting to be told where to sit, and wondering whether the back or the front would be easier for him. In the event, she sat in the front while Ivor stretched out sideways in the back. She guessed he had not suffered some temporary injury, since no explanations were given. Men were usually only too willing to tell you if they had broken an ankle at rugger. A cloven hoof, perhaps? She felt uncomfortably aware of those eyes behind her.

  ‘I don’t know whether you have been here before?’ Peter Kelleher asked courteously as they drove out of the town.

  ‘I’ve been to Sheringham.’

  ‘You know something of East Anglia, then. But you will notice some differences in our part of Norfolk.’ He began to talk about the Viking raids in the Dark Ages. Alice thought he was not unlike a Viking himself. One could imagine an axe being used in the hewing of those features. She was cold and hungry after the train journey and perhaps this accounted for the discomfort she felt in the company of these two men who seemed to her in some inexplicable way to be violent. She could not think how to respond to Kelleher, but as he seemed content to continue his exposition without any encouragement from her, she fell to staring out of the window at the landscape which was unbelievably watery. Kelleher pulled into a hedge to allow a farm lorry to pass; a spume of spray in its wake covered the car windows. Later, when the windows were clear again, and Kelleher was talking about the wool trade in the Middle Ages, she saw that the snow was still banked high along the hedgerows, but to the south there were trees with their roots in slag-grey water. They came to a lane which was completely waterlogged and Kelleher had some difficulty turning the car. He was obviously used to overcoming difficulties, and soon they were on a road which the slush had not yet turned into a river.

  ‘I shouldn’t think these fields could absorb much more water,’ Ivor said.

  ‘We’ll have to hope there is no more rain. The Ouse is very high.’

  Although it was getting dark there was a strange green light which wavered and rippled across the fields. Kelleher had completed his brief survey of the general historical background of East Anglia, and was about to deal with Norfolk in particular, when they came to another lane which was waterlogged. This time they had to turn back. After several miles, Kelleher found a lane which he considered passable. Soon, however, the car wheels stuck fast in thick mud. Kelleher, glancing down at Alice’s shoes, said, ‘You had better stay here.’ She felt she had failed a test. He and Ivor got out and gathered twigs and branches from the hedgerows which they made into a kind of cradle embedded in the mud. Eventually, after some spade work, the wheels moved again.

  It seemed a long time later that, at the end of a very long lane, Alice saw a dim light shining from the window of what she took to be an isolated farm. Kelleher said, ‘Daphne has opened the gate. Good!’ Daphne was waiting in the porch, wearing trousers and muddied Wellingtons. Kelleher drove the car up to the porch so that Alice should not spoil her shoes. In some respects, he would be a meticulous host.

  ‘I’ve obviously worn the wrong clothes,’ Alice said apologetically.

  Daphne embraced her. ‘You mean to tell me you didn’t bring your swimming costume? You’re here at last, that’s the important thing.’ To Alice’s surprise, the room into which the front door opened was lit by an oil lamp. Daphne picked up her case and made for the stairs. Another lamp somewhere above cast a pallid light on the treads.

  The stairs creaked alarmingly and some of the boards were spongy beneath Alice’s heel. She gained the impression the house was not only old, but decrepit. At the end of a dark, low-ceilinged passage Daphne opened a door into what, at first sight, seemed to be a large closet lit by yet another lamp. ‘We shall have spent more on lamps than the house soon,’ she said. ‘But it has been fun collecting them. This one is particularly pretty.’ Alice edged into the room. There was barely space for the two of them. ‘It’s a bit poky, I’m afraid. We haven’t really got room to house so many people. Angus and Ivor are bedding in the sitting-room. There’s not much in the way of washing facilities, either.’ She indicated a ewer and basin on a small table wedged beneath the tiny window. ‘We don’t have running water, let alone a bathroom. As you can see, we have no electric light.’

  ‘And the lavatory?’

  ‘Outside the kitchen. There’s a po under the bed. Should I have told you all this before I asked you to stay?’


  ‘Of course not!’ Alice contrived to sound undismayed. In normal times, she would have been entranced; but in this weather she had looked for all the comforts of home at the end of her journey. She said, ‘Irene and I could share if that would help.’

  ‘Her room isn’t much bigger than this.’ Daphne laughed. ‘The house is tiny. This is what comes of marrying a man who would be perfectly happy to spend his life in a tent.’ She had the look of a woman who has found the companion of a lifetime.

  ‘I want to hear all about it,’ Alice said, more eager than envious, because if this could happen to Daphne, there was hope for her.

  ‘Yes, but not now. The dinner has suffered one or two setbacks as a result of the time it took Peter to get you here. And if there is one thing we are fussy about, it’s our food! So we’ll talk later. The weather being what it is, we shall have hours and hours to exchange news while the men go floundering about in the mud.’

  ‘I haven’t brought trousers, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh, I shall change for dinner. We are nothing if not inconsistent. I must go. I’ve left Irene slaving in the kitchen and she may have done something dreadful by now. She has no idea about cooking, did you know? She is barely to be trusted with boiling an egg.’ She went out. Alice looked round the room. There was no dressing-table and no place to hang clothes, but she was used to living out of a suitcase. What did trouble her was the appalling smell of damp plaster. She went to the bed, drew back the covers, and sniffed. The smell was here, too, only with the difference that the main ingredient was damp flock. I slept in the desert, she thought, so I suppose I can manage here without coming to any harm, as long as I wrap up well. She had brought a raincoat with her; if the worst came to the worst, she could put that on top of the mattress.

  She decided to go to the lavatory without more ado. The ground floor consisted of one room, the kitchen area being confined to the short stroke of an L. Irene greeted her with a roll of the eyes. A pewter-coloured cat with white paws was in possession of the lavatory seat. The wind rattled the latch and screamed through the cracks around the door.