A Particular Place Page 19

  He had never before felt such desperation at being thwarted. For some time he stood by the door, looking out because he dared not turn inwards. He took hold of the handle and shook it. He had a vision of his own face, hideously distorted, eyes protruding, lips bared, like a gargoyle spewing out venom. He looked up at the stained glass windows which contained figures of saints, imperviously benign, each with one hand uplifted in blessing. Rage and panic were so strong that he turned and blundered down the aisle towards the chancel steps where there was a heavy stool. He found himself facing the crucifix. It stopped him, but he did not fall to his knees; instead he turned into the lady chapel and sat down, trying to compose himself to wait. His heart thumped and he found it difficult to draw breath; his hands were sweating. This was ridiculous. In an hour and a half the choir would arrive for practice. There was no reason to believe that they would discover their vicar dead of suffocation. He thought of the longest poem he had ever learnt, which was ‘The Battle of Lepanto’, and began to recite. It imposed its own strong rhythm on his mind and kept the panic at bay. He was repeating – in word and heartbeat – ‘strong gongs groaning and the guns boom far’ for the eleventh time when the organist arrived early for choir practice.

  ‘I got shut in the market cross once,’ he said sympathetically, noting that the Vicar seemed in a pretty poor state. ‘Gives one an awful feeling of claustrophobia, doesn’t it? And the worst of it was that I could smell the food cooking in the Indian restaurant. You could have knocked on one of the windows on the north wall, someone in the street might have heard.’

  ‘I was afraid of breaking the glass,’ Michael said hoarsely.

  He walked slowly back to the vicarage, breathless and shaking. He wondered how he was to explain his condition to Valentine, but as it turned out she had some story about sewage to relate.

  ‘You’ll miss John Cleese,’ she said when they had finished their meal.

  ‘Will I?’

  ‘You’ve got Desmond Treglowan coming in ten minutes.’ She poured coffee. ‘Do you remember when we had that woman staying with us at Oxford who was going through a crisis of belief and she came across us convulsed over the attempts to dispose of the dead body at Fawlty Towers?’

  He stirred his coffee. ‘I had forgotten about Desmond. I haven’t thought what I am going to say to him.’

  ‘Better ask questions and let him do the talking in that case.’

  As he sat opposite the youth in his study, Michael experienced the listlessness he had felt many years ago at college when he had been expected to discuss any difficulties he might have with his spiritual adviser, and had been unable to think of a thing to say. And it hadn’t been the case that he did not have any difficulties. He had realized then that once one can articulate a problem it is half-way to being solved – the other person is merely a sounding- board for one’s own ideas.

  He recalled that Charles had reported Desmond’s mother as saying that he had an alternative life on offer – the loving Christian community. He could not remember a time when he had felt less able to measure up to that challenge.

  Desmond, who did not mind himself being responsible for long silences but did not much like them to be caused by other people, said, ‘I’ve read these books’ and shoved them into Michael’s hands. Michael, unprepared, dropped both books. After a confusing scuffle which just avoided head-butting farce, they righted themselves and Michael flipped through the pages of The Star Thrower to give himself time to recover his equanimity.

  ‘A man of some passion, Eiseley,’ he said, ‘filled with an awe in the face of Nature and its mysteries which most of us Christians have lost.’ He looked out of the window. ‘I suppose our landscape is wrong, so small and domesticated . . .’

  ‘Yes, that is precisely how I feel about him,’ Desmond said eagerly. Michael was taken aback: the purpose of this meeting was not that they should agree with each other but rather explore their differences.

  Desmond, elaborating the theme, was already some way from the small and domesticated, speaking of Eiseley’s acceptance of the unpredictability of the universe as though he was the only man to have made this discovery.

  Michael said, seeking to get the discussion back on the rails, ‘All scientists would accept some such description.’

  ‘But most of them don’t apply it to life as ordinary people live it.’ As Desmond talked he raised his eyebrows so high they seemed in danger of disappearing in the brush of tow-coloured hair, a feat which plainly startled the wide, colourless eyes. ‘Most scientists seem unaware of the weather in the streets, holed up in their laboratories. The people who have really let the darkness in in this century have been artists and writers. You don’t get protestors starting riots and hurling bricks when the Royal Society meets, and daubing walls. The censor doesn’t get busy.’ Desmond’s Adam’s apple bobbed about and he looked as agitated as a boy soprano who finds his voice breaking in the middle of a crucial aria.

  ‘And this darkness – it appeals to you?’

  ‘It’s there, isn’t it, whether it appeals to me or not. It seems a good place to start – with the darkness, I mean.’

  Michael looked at the book again. This was not quite how he had expected this talk to go. For him, it was the pain in Eiseley which communicated itself; he liked the man because he believed in the pain which drew him to life’s failures. He had thought that perhaps they would talk about Eiseley’s deaf-mute mother, the isolated prairie artist, and that this would then lead to a delicate exploration of Desmond’s own feelings about his father’s desertion. He perceived it was not going to be as simple as that.

  He turned the pages of the book. ‘Certain coasts’, someone, not Eiseley, had pronounced of Costabel, ‘are set aside for shipwreck.’ Eiseley had said, ‘with increasing persistence I had made my way thither.’ And then, ‘Perhaps all men are destined to arrive there as I did.’ The idea that shipwreck is inevitable at some time in one’s life released in Michael a sudden gush of warm, unfocused anger. He said, ‘This sort of thing is all very well, but in life one must be positive and buoyant. Too much concentration on our wounds can lead to psychological sickness. It is impossible for people to go through life avoiding acts of betrayal and even cruelty.’ His blood was pounding.

  Desmond said, ‘Yes, I see that.’ It was apparent he thought Michael’s anger both surprising and inappropriate.

  Michael put down the book. ‘Let’s forget about Eiseley, shall we?’ He made an effort to compose himself. ‘It seems to me that it is the day-to-day patterns of life with which most of us need to be concerned. Ideas which a brain like Eiseley’s can encompass are too vast for most of us, our minds can’t accommodate them. We have to concentrate on the here and now of life.’

  ‘I don’t seem able to see any day-to-day patterns,’ Desmond said. ‘It’s all too close and muddled.’

  So this is what it all boils down to, Michael thought impatiently. Eiseley’s main attraction for Desmond is that the man was a solitary and what intimations of immortality he had came from encounters with animals rather than human beings – a man most at ease at some distance from his own species. He said, ‘You can’t escape, Desmond. Even the remotest tribe in Africa will have a pattern to its life. There is a pattern to life.’

  Desmond said, ‘Nature is a pattern.’ He drew the back of his hand across his mouth, tugging down the lower lip as though seeking to slow down the torrent of words. His voice was sharp and staccato when he continued. ‘You talk as if studying the patterns of Nature is some kind of retreat, a running away from life. But it’s not. The awareness of animal life, a knowledge of rock and stone and desert places, is genesis.’

  Michael was aware of being involved in a struggle for authority. He said, ‘To live outside the human pattern is to be mad, Desmond.’

  ‘But anthropology is a study of patterns, isn’t it?’

  ‘If you are prepared to accept it as a discipline, yes. But if what you are after is a kind of emotional satisfaction,
if you entertain some idea of examining ancient skulls in the hope they may eventually reconcile you to what goes on in the human heart, then you will be disappointed.’

  Desmond stared at him, looking as unemotional as a camel.

  ‘Have you considered that it may be here, in the place with which you are familiar and of which you have some understanding, that you have to begin your search for a meaning in life?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I really think.’ Desmond spoke brusquely; but it was no longer the awkward brusqueness of the adolescent, it was the voice of a man who feels that enough of his time has been taken up. ‘I think that if God created the universe, he should blow a whistle at half-time and then we would be expected to find our way back to our beginnings, bearing with us the knowledge gained during the first half. That’s about the only idea which really excites me.’

  Valentine must have left the sitting-room door open; Michael could hear her laughing at John Cleese, genuine delight in the sound. Here in the library it was getting dark, which was apt enough, he thought grimly, since he found he was unable to speak of the ideal of the loving Christian community to this young man. He said wearily, ‘You are not alone in that view. Others have been haunted by the need to find a way through ancient tracks. It’s not an idea which is new to me, Desmond, although I suppose I would express it differently, seeing it as man’s eventual return to God at the end of his long journey of discovery, bringing with him all the fruits of human consciousness. But whatever words we use, religious or otherwise, the quest is a perfectly honourable one; though I fear it may present greater perils . . .’

  And yet, was it really more perilous, the lonely Odyssey, than the rooted life within the human stockade? He was still thinking of this after Desmond had gone and Valentine had left camomile tea and biscuits on his desk and departed upstairs.

  Desmond slept well that night but Michael not at all. The boy is too sensitive, he thought, flinching from the direction in which his thoughts constantly led him. True, his father had abandoned him and his mother might now be contemplating another unpromising relationship; but the daughter had survived relatively unharmed. The boy’s reaction was abnormal – a flaw somewhere. But why had he felt so uncomfortable during this talk about the patterns in life? The path to the desert had never been a source of fear because he knew that it was not for him. Something else had disturbed him. Here, that was what he had said; it was here in the place with which Desmond was familiar that he should try to find his pattern in life. We have to concentrate on the here and now of our lives.

  Here. Here for Michael Hoath was this bed in which he lay beside his wife. He looked at the patterns of light and shadow made by the moonlight in the room. They always slept with the curtains drawn back because he felt suffocated in dark enclosed spaces. Valentine preferred a dark room. The nightingale was singing in the graveyard. It was many years since a nightingale had nested there and now people often came at night to listen to it. Valentine was upset by this invasion of the graveyard because she was afraid that louts would destroy the nest. The darkest, deepest place in the wood was where she would have the nightingale make its nest. The forces of destruction seemed to her stronger than beauty. He had raised himself on one elbow as he listened to the nightingale, and now he looked down at his wife. It was not Valentine’s cares which slept but the will and the facade which the will held in place during the day had peeled away. The nose thrust up like a beak between the sightless eyes, the lips parted in a silent cry, and anguish loosed the jaw. In the moonlight the face seemed ravaged by strain and stress and long unrest.

  When he lay back he felt as if a leaden weight had been laid over his heart. He tried to bring his mind to the aid of his labouring lungs, setting his own will to work, attempting to conjure up a self-justifying picture of the Valentine who was so deeply hurtful; he reviewed all that she had neglected to do, the small rejections, the many refusals to respond, the lack of spontaneous warmth. But in spite of all his efforts, it was the good things which crept out of the shadows as he looked at the moon-washed face. He remembered the daily acts of service which he took for granted because hers was the kind of giving which disdains display and brushes gratitude aside; her moments of light gaiety, her tenderness. Yes, tenderness. When they made love he wanted flame to consume them and then she always failed him; but sometimes when he was tired and felt defeated she surprised him with a brief, radiant tenderness, fading fickle as a dawn dream when he tried to capture it. Now, when he least wanted it, this fitful tenderness was an added torment to bear.

  The nightingale sang on and he was dizzied by the thought of all the energy thrilling through that tiny cage of bone, hour after merciless hour. In the morning he had an appalling headache.

  Chapter Ten

  A new day, Hester thought, as she stepped out of the house carrying her small case; even at my age a new day is exciting. She was glad she had decided to walk to the coach. A paper boy went up the path to Charles’s house whistling; his bicycle was propped against the gate and in the sunlight the spokes of the wheel shone like a great flower. At the bottom of the hill a young man waited for the bus, leaning relaxed against a lamp-post, no pressures on him yet, life unfolding ahead of him, the vistas ever widening.

  As she watered the garden earlier she had been quite overwhelmed by irrational happiness. Crustacea, soil, trees, sun and water, she had chanted as she sprayed the roses, a whole world went to the making of me. This was going to be a good day – not one of her ‘as flies to wanton boys’ days.

  She still felt good about life even when she got into the coach and saw that the seat beside Laura Addison was empty. As Hester approached her, Laura said gratefully, ‘I was saving this place for you, of course,’ and Hester knew that she had been watching people pass her by. There had been a party game when Hester was a child – ‘Come and sit on my chair,’ people had chanted when you were allowed into the room; if you sat on the wrong chair, you were tipped off it. She could remember the hurt as she went from chair to chair, dreading that none of her friends had chosen her, that the chair reserved for her was in the hands of a kindly adult who had probably said, ‘Well, if no one else is having Hester Pascoe, I’ll have her.’ On such despised kindness Laura Addison had had to depend all her life. One must remember, Hester told herself, that a whole world went to the making of Laura as well.

  ‘Now, you are the expert on this,’ she said. ‘So I shall look to you to keep me in good order.’

  Laura tittered happily. ‘I’m afraid some of us are going to be more difficult to keep in good order.’ She tilted her head towards the front of the coach where Andy Possett was sitting beside Norah Kendall.

  Michael called them to attention and they composed themselves as he began the prayers for the journey. He had reached the final prayer when Laura began a fierce scrabbling in her handbag.

  ‘ “. . . within you to keep you, before you to lead you, behind you to guard you . . .” ’ Laura was becoming frantic. Hester whispered, ‘Turn it out in your lap.’ Laura did this and two biros, a frozen cologne stick, sun-glasses and a rosary fell on the floor of the coach. ‘ “And may the blessing of Almighty God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit come upon you and remain with you for ever.” ’

  There was a murmur of Amen and Laura said tearfully, clutching the rosary, ‘I have forgotten my Kwells.’

  ‘Perhaps we could stop near the chemist in Station Street,’ Hester suggested to Michael.

  ‘We’re not going that way.’

  ‘I can run to Boots,’ Alan Judge, a perpetually eager young man, volunteered. ‘It won’t take long.’

  ‘Go easily,’ Norah called out to him. ‘It’s very hot already.’

  But he was much too excited to heed her and shot off down the street, a short, pudgy creature pounding legs not designed for speed.

  ‘How that boy does love to show off,’ Laura said to Hester.

  In ten minutes he came into sight again, face glowing like a beacon.
Everyone cheered and clapped as he arrived at the coach in a state which suggested one of the casualties in a marathon staggering into the nearest ambulance, rather than the image he had hoped to present of one whose fingers touch the tape.

  The driver started the engine and the coach moved off. Alan gasped and wheezed alarmingly and a tin of Refreshers was passed down to him from a well-wisher at the back of the coach. Laura swallowed two Kwells and wiped her watering eyes. Mr Pettifer explained to the deputy organist, Ewan Hughes, that Mrs Pettifer had had to stay behind to look after the house. He spoke as though this was the very first time this had happened, although everyone knew that Mrs Pettifer had not left the house for a single night since she returned to it from their honeymoon in Bere Regis. The divorcee, who had surprised everyone by her decision to come, took out a copy of John Robinson’s The Human Face of God. Michael edged down the aisle handing out a leaflet he had prepared giving details of the programme on arrival at Walsingham.