LOOK, STRANGER Read online

  Further down the road, beyond the bungalows and the new development, big-bosomed houses bedecked with gables and wooden balustrades billowed onto the street, each hoisting private hotel notices. These buildings belonged to a more expansive age and at one time had probably stood in their own grounds. No doubt the coming of the bungalow estates had seemed as odious to their owners as the town houses must seem to the bungalow dwellers. Perhaps the town-house buyers would come out of it best. At least they wouldn’t have anything to lose; everything that could happen to this area would have happened with their advent.

  To his left, the road curved out of sight so that the promised right of way was hidden from view. He followed the curve of the road and stopped, surprised by what he saw. The road had became a narrow lane meandering between tall hedges, and opposite to where he was standing there was a white five-barred gate with a stile beside it. The gate was padlocked and there was enough barbed wire festooned about it to make it seem as though some kind of trench warfare was going on in Helmsley. On the other side of the gate he could see a track running down the side of a barley field; beyond was pastureland with cows, and then marshland running out to the sea. It was a different world, existing simultaneously, but separately from the world of the new Helmsley. The people lived in their respective camps and it didn’t look as though any fraternizing was encouraged. This is bad, he thought as he climbed the stile.

  He got down from the stile without impaling himself on the barbed wire and set off across the field towards the trees he had seen from the vicarage window. The chimneys of Carrick Farm were clearly visibly now and he forgot about the two Helmsleys in the more immediate problem of Miss Lindsay. He must see Miss Lindsay and find out what it was that ailed her; those two women had made it quite clear between them that something ailed her. He didn’t mean to have Nan saddled with another invalid, however pitiable. ‘Miss Lindsay, now that I’ve seen the house I think maybe we’ll manage without troubling you too much,’ he rehearsed as he walked.

  In the event, the rehearsal was unnecessary because there was no answer when he knocked on the door of Carrick Farm. It was a long, low house and it was only too easy to look in at the windows. At first, Vereker looked through the small window to the side of the door. He saw a square, dark hall with wooden beams sagging beneath the weight of the ceiling; to the left several doors led off the hall and on the far side was a staircase with predictably worn treads; immediately opposite the front door was a brick fireplace, the grate stuffed with what looked like paper wrappings left over from last Christmas. Guiltily, he picked his way along the front of the house, treading carefully on the springy turf. The garden was his idea of an English garden, with its deep green lawn and haphazard flower beds, and he didn’t want to disturb any precious part of it. He stood on tiptoe and looked through a narrow window into a small room with a table just below the window sill stacked with files, typewriter, copy paper and two unwashed cups. Vereker moved on to a more generous latticed window which revealed a sitting-room. Vereker loved sitting-rooms and this was the sitting-room of his dreams. In spite of his intellectual pretensions, his was a simple soul which cried out for just the rumpled comfort this room offered. It had at least one deep winged armchair where a man could rest both limbs and head while he contemplated next Sunday’s sermons, it also had a sofa long enough to stretch out on if a man fancied an afternoon nap after he had written those sermons. He hadn’t much experience of the kind of chairs a woman preferred. Alma having spent so many years on her back; but he could imagine her as a young woman curled up in the capacious velvet tub affair, or sitting on one of the big cushions that were scattered around the floor, firelight playing on her face. As he gazed at the fire in the big hearth, the flames sputtering from the pyramid of logs, he felt suddenly desolate. He turned away from the house and made his way across the lawn in the direction of a small orchard.

  He fought the desolation as he walked through the orchard and was saved from defeat by his first glimpse of the priory ruins. The right of way from the church would have led him to Carrick Farm via the priory, but Mrs. Jarman had turned him in the direction of Virginia Close. No doubt she had her reasons. Someone had certainly made a good job of ruining the priory; it was possible to make out a doorway here, the base of a chimney there, an archway or two which might or might not have been a part of the cloisters, but to his untutored eye this was all that was identifiable. He sat on the chimney base and wondered idly what the island had been like when the nuns lived there.

  Beyond this field the marshes ran out to the sea; he could see water glinting in the sun and a few sailing boats bobbing about. It would be nice if Nan could get in with some youngsters who would take her sailing. Friends had told him that Nan ought to have a change, that she was becoming withdrawn and needed to get right away from Coopers Town. The opportunity to do this exchange with Roberts had seemed God-sent; but more recently he had had doubts. Perhaps he should have sent her to his cousin in California, encouraged her to start a life of her own instead of shackling her to him? The trouble was that neither of them had felt they could bear to lose the other so soon after Alma’s death. They weren’t companionable, just unable to get along without each other.

  The sun was pleasantly warm but not uncomfortable. He listened to the scuttering of rabbits in the long grass, the chirp of birds, the rustle of the wind in the trees. It should have been peaceful but, perhaps because of the nearness of the marshes, there was a rather unpleasant smell which he soon found oppressing his spirits.

  He got up and retraced his steps. As he went past the front of Carrick Farm he saw a woman watching him from a first floor window. He only had time to see the oval of her face before she withdrew into the shadows; there seemed little doubt that she had been in the house all the time. He was too ashamed at the thought that she had probably witnessed his behaviour to question hers. He retreated hastily towards “new” Helmsley.

  Chapter Two

  It was nine-thirty, so she had missed breakfast. There was a notice stuck to the back of the door which gave the times of meals: breakfast was between eight and nine. This business of serving meals at set times and firmly closing the pantry door in between was one of those quaint English customs no one had told her about. Another custom was that beds were made up-or stripped down, as the case might be-while guests were having breakfast. At eight-fifteen a woman had come to do the bed, only to find it occupied by Nancy Vereker. Nancy’s offer to make the bed herself hadn’t been well-received. The woman had said she would come back later and she had given Nancy a look which made it clear she had fouled up her entire morning.

  Nancy put one arm over the side of the bed and hauled up the eiderdown. There was no central heating and the morning air was cold as if it had come straight out of the ice-box. She would lie here for another ten minutes while she got warmed through again; then she would go into town and see if there was some place that served coffee after nine in the morning. She didn’t think she could organize herself for the journey to Helmsley without the stimulus of coffee. She propped herself up against the pillows and set to work filing her nails.

  Now that she was sitting up she could look out at the sea if she chose. ‘I hate the sea,’ she said aloud, as though someone had contradicted her. But in spite of this protestation she very soon put the nail file down on the bedside table and stared out of the window at the blue-green mass. She had seen it heaving about just like that through the porthole while the Irish steward relieved her of her virginity. She closed her eyes and waited for her body to give some sign that it, too, remembered his exploits. Nothing happened.

  It seemed that every generation had its myths: hers was sex, and she had just exploded it. Friends had assured her that she couldn’t savour anything in life without sex: music, art, literature, dancing, even eating and drinking, couldn’t be experienced fully by a virgin. But breakfast had tasted much the same après sex, and she had still been afraid of diving into the pool. Far worse, her confiden
ce was as impaired as ever: she hadn’t found it any easier to mix on equal terms with the other youngsters on the boat, she still felt a resentful muddle when she was with her father, and she was going to be quite unable to cope with getting herself and their luggage to Helmsley Island. She had lost her innocence but she didn’t seem to have acquired anything to replace it.

  It wasn’t even as if she had enjoyed the experience. Worst of all, she didn’t think the steward had, either, because he hadn’t bothered her after that one occasion. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and felt for her slippers. The bathroom wasn’t as bad as she had anticipated and the water was hot; she felt better when she returned to her room. Even if the experience hadn’t been all she had expected, at least she had got it done; she wouldn’t ever be sorry about that. She was in line with all the others now.

  But the others got more fun out of things than she did. They really enjoyed sex, just as, when they were younger, they had really enjoyed their love affairs with other girls. She had had Angela Parrish. Her parents had not approved of Angela; but the attitudes of her companions were more important than her parents’ views and she had persisted with Angela although their loving had never got beyond putting their arms round each other’s waists in the playground and pinching each other in the wash-room. She wished she could get the knack of enjoying experience.

  She sat on the stool in front of the mirror and had a good look at herself. Her face, like the rest of her, was small. People had always commented on how small she was; she had small bones and a small frame, she was small in every way it was possible to be small. ‘A bright little bird,’ her mother had called her. ‘My Nancy bird.’ Nancy brushed her cropped chestnut hair, trying to make it lie down like a sleek cap round her head, but it bounced up wirily. She spent hours trying to create a different personality for herself by changing the way she dressed and doing something about her eyebrows; but in the end her hair always defeated her efforts. She wondered if a person could ever become mature with hair like hers.

  So many of her friends had become mature. She had watched it happening to them, seen them settling into their skins, each day they added a line to the portrait until it became formidably clear and bold. Whereas she was one person one day and another the next. Although she was nineteen she looked fifteen and sometimes acted fifteen. Her mother’s illness had retarded her emotional development; yet she sometimes had insights beyond her years. One way and another she was as mixed up as it was possible to be.

  There was the sound of voices in the corridor. It was ten past ten and other guests were departing. The woman would come back to do the bed any minute now; if it had not been for her Nancy would probably have remained staring in the mirror most of the morning, wondering what she was to do about getting herself and the luggage to Helsmley Island. The night before she had told her father, ‘Leave it to me. I’m not a child.’ When he had tried to give her advice, she had interrupted, ‘You want to do all my thinking for me.’ So he had gone early this morning, leaving her to do her thinking for herself. Or had he? Perhaps he had left a message for her downstairs telling her the times of trains and explaining that he had ordered a cab to take her to the station. Fortified by this thought, she dressed quickly, finished packing, and was ready to leave the room when the bed-making woman returned. She carried her cases down to the hall and saw that her father’s cases were already stacked beside the front door. The proprietress was welcoming new arrivals and a cab driver was waiting to be paid.

  ‘You’ll need a taxi, won’t you. Miss Vereker?’ the proprietress said and signalled to the driver.

  ‘Did my father leave a message for me?’ Nancy asked anxiously. But the proprietress was too busy with the new arrivals to pay attention to her. The cab driver said, ‘Central Station?’ and picked up her cases without waiting for a reply. When they arrived at the station, she overtipped him to such an extent that he summoned a porter for her.

  The porter, a depressed man with a running nose, asked Nancy where she was going.

  ‘Helmsley Island.’

  ‘Helmsley Island! You won’t get a train direct to Helmsley Island.’

  ‘How will I get there?’

  He told her that she could take a train to some place the name of which she did not catch and from there she could hire another cab; or she could go by coach, but that would mean three changes and the coach drivers might not be too pleased about all that luggage.

  Nancy, who was ready to abandon the whole project if he would go away and leave her alone, said, ‘Well, I’ll think about it, thank you very much.’

  A train came in on platform three and the porter went in search of better-motivated travellers. Nancy sat on the largest of the cases. Nearby a man and a boy were talking in front of the entrance to platform three; it was hard to guess the boy’s age because he had one of those pinched faces that change little from youth to old age.

  The man said, ‘There’ll be someone to meet you at the other end.’

  The boy said, ‘I’ll have jumped out by then.’

  As Nancy looked at the thin, bespectacled boy she was aware of an almost total deprivation which turned her heart. The boy’s companion, apparently unimpressed by the suicide threat, said:

  ‘Try to write a few lines to your mother.’

  ‘Much she cares!’

  The arriving passengers had alighted now and the first few carriages were empty. The man put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and propelled him gently towards the ticket barrier. Nancy, moved by a wretchedness greater than her own, walked to the barrier and stared across it at the man and the boy. The boy had a mulish expression clamped on his face but it was plain that he was unable to offer effective resistance; when the whistle blew and the train moved off, he would, be on it and would remain on it until he reached the station where someone was to meet him. How awful life was! She stood at the barrier repeating under her breath all the four-letter words she could call to mind. The boy was too preoccupied with his misery to notice anything extraneous but after a time the man glanced across at her. So far she hadn’t paid much attention to him, but she took stock of him now. His tall, thin figure gave the impression of being cast in something more unyielding than flesh; he reminded her of one of those emaciated Giacometti figures. He had wiry brown hair, just short of shoulder length, and was dressed in an old blue sweater and brown corduroys; but in spite of his casual appearance there was a professional aloofness in his attitude to the boy which suggested he was performing a task for which he was paid.

  The whistle shrilled. The man gave last-minute instructions to the boy, a porter walked along the train slamming doors and Nancy turned away unable to watch as the train moved out. She sat on one of the cases and shed a few tears for the wickedness of the uncaring world.

  ‘And what were you muttering about?’ a voice asked. ‘And why the tears?’

  ‘I was damning you to hell for being so cruel to that poor boy.’

  She realised with a start that she was talking to another person and looked up. His narrow face was deeply tanned and his blue eyes were so pale that they looked as though the sun had bleached them. It was the pale eyes that held her attention, so cool and appraising in that thin, brown face. ‘I wouldn’t trust him,’ she thought. In that fleeting moment when she judged him unreliable, she also sensed that he was not a happy person, that there was something unresolved about him which might be his undoing. She saw all this quite clearly, and then the impression splintered and she was never subsequently sure what she thought about him.

  ‘Life has been cruel to that boy.’ He looked down at her in amusement. ‘Life is cruel, don’t you know that?’ His eyes focussed on the cases and he bent forward to read a label.

  ‘You’re going to Helmsley Island.’

  ‘There isn’t any way of getting there,’ she answered dejectedly.

  ‘Six days out of seven you’d be right. But today I had to see that poor little beast off on his way to school.’ He stopped, tantali
singly, so that she was forced to ask:

  ‘Are you going near there?’

  ‘I live there.’

  ‘You live there!’

  He laughed. ‘It’s not as rapturous as all that.’ He made her feel self-conscious; she could not bring herself to ask if he would take her to the island. Perhaps he realised something of this because he became more business-like. ‘Let’s see if we can find a porter.’

  In the car he introduced himself as Tudor Lindsay and she told him that she was Nancy Vereker.

  ‘I guessed that. Only a preacher’s daughter would damn anyone to hell these days.’

  ‘Do you go to the church?’

  ‘No, I do not!’ He sounded quietly savage and this greatly impressed her.

  ‘If you don’t go to the church, how did you know about me?’ she asked timidly. ‘I mean, that my father was a preacher. . . .’

  ‘Because Helmsley is one of those old-world islands on which no stranger can set foot without all the locals knowing about it; as you walk along its quaint cobbled streets everyone will give you the time of day; and Mrs. Gubbins in the post office will tell you all the village scandal because she opens all the mail.’ He gave her a sideways glance. ‘Wasn’t that what you were expecting?’