LOOK, STRANGER Read online

  The old man, who had rambled a bit, sat down. There was silence again, and then a younger man began to speak. Daniel sensed a certain ease of timing in his delivery, an unfaltering turn of phrase which suggested that he was not unaccustomed to extempore prayer. It was relaxing to listen to him, there was no fear that he might slip beneath one’s guard. But why should one be on guard? Why did other people’s convictions seem so abrasive? Was it possible that Erica felt this need to defend herself when he propounded the second law of thermodynamics? When he and Emma talked about the genetic code, did Erica feel threatened, as he felt threatened now? Erica: how little he had thought of her over the years; and indeed, how little he had thought of her since he came home. He tried to think of her now, but with no success. She was a stranger. In fact, she was more remote than a stranger. When one meets a stranger, the very strangeness makes an impact and one is left with a definite impression. He could think of people whom he had met only once of whom he had more understanding than he had of his wife. He worried about Emma’s needs: when had he given a thought to Erica’s needs?

  The young man sat down. The silence lingered on. A shaft of sunlight slanted through one of the side windows and somewhere out of sight a blackbird was singing. No doubt the blackbird, too, was passing a message, but to Daniel his song was pure joy and he wished it might continue undisturbed by any other testimony of grace. Then a woman to his left rose to her feet. She put her hands on the pew in front of her and he saw that they were trembling. ‘Dear Lord Jesus,’ she said in a voice so low it could not have reached the front of the chapel, ‘we pray for those in our midst who are in distress of mind and spirit. For those who answer the call of conscience and find they are forsaken and abused of men . . .’ Emma drove one clenched fist into the palm of the other hand, the knuckles showed white. She is praying for me, Daniel thought, this old woman who knows nothing about me, is praying for me. He was angry as though he had been abused. He looked down at his big, bony hands and saw the fingers knotted tight, the bones gleaming brutally while the old woman talked tremulously of love. He reminded himself that he was here because Emma loved him. He gritted his teeth and suffered their prayers. There was no doubting their sincerity; the words might form themselves into clichés, but the feeling behind the words was intensely real and it bore down on him heavy with hope. Sweat trickled between his shoulder blades, he felt exhausted as though all his strength was being sweated out of him. He contrived not to hear much of what was said by the last two speakers, although he heard a reference to the strengthening of family ties and the renewal of love which filled him with longing for Dorothy. The meeting closed at a quarter to four. The congregation rose to sing the final hymn, ‘Immortal love, for ever full, for ever flowing free . . .’

  The congregation sang loudly, and with feeling, and none more so than Emma. Daniel could tell from the way she produced her voice that all her tenseness had gone. While the prayer meeting lasted, she had seemed remote from him as a nun locked in a cell, but now she looked up at him and smiled radiantly as she sang:

  ‘ . . .

  And faith has still its Olivet

  And love its Galilee.

  ‘The healing of His seamless dress

  Is by our beds of pain;

  We touch Him in life’s throng and press

  And we are whole again.’

  She, indeed, seemed whole again. He had been wrong to worry about whether her prayers would be answered, it was the doing and not the praying which had been important to her. She had been through this dreaded experience for his sake: for his sake, she had submitted to pain and humiliation; for his sake, she had driven herself to the edge of faith, and whatever happened now she would feel she had not failed him. If God failed him, that was another matter. He moved towards the end of the pew. The sidesmen had opened the doors and Daniel could see sunlight spilling on to the pavement. He experienced a feeling of release as he stepped into the street.

  As they walked slowly through the town, Emma said, ‘Did you hear the blackbird singing? It was beautiful, wasn’t it?’

  They were very close to each other now: a beautiful moment, something to be remembered always. Daniel felt a craven reluctance to spoil it, but he said:

  ‘Did you pray for your mother?’

  After a pause, Emma answered, ‘No . . . at least, I prayed for all of us, so that includes her.’

  ‘A sort of package deal?’

  ‘That sounds horrid!’ She was distressed that he of all people should be so insensitive, and at this of all moments.

  ‘Mightn’t she have her own separate needs?’ he persisted.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Then, shouldn’t you pray for her separately?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  She sounded indifferent; but he could tell that her euphoria had evaporated and he knew he had made his point and that it would remain with her, as irritating as a piece of grit beneath an eyelid. He also knew that she was disappointed in him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Towards the end of August the weather began to change. There were one or two thunder storms which brought little rain and did not at first bring the temperature down; but gradually, so imperceptibly one scarcely realized what was happening, summer waned. Then, one night the temperature dropped over twenty degrees and when Nancy woke in the morning there wasn’t a vestige of summer left. Something else had arrived, unpacked its goods and taken possession, something with its own individual colour, taste and smell. Autumn had come. Nancy liked the word autumn and had looked forward to the season. But it would be a short autumn this year, winter was already waiting in the wings.

  Zoe telephoned. ‘You’ll be wanting to light your fire soon, I expect.’

  ‘Will we?’ Nancy thought this business of the fire was childish, but she agreed to help her father collect the logs. It was increasingly important to make him happy in small ways since sooner or later she would have to tell him that she would not be coming back to Coopers Town with him.

  Zoe arranged for them to collect logs from the woods owned by Mrs. Mace Cholmondley, an elderly recluse, who lived in one of the large country houses which Vereker thought of as being in the deep heart of the island. Mrs. Mace Cholmondley instructed her game-keeper to see about the logs. The gamekeeper was an old man of ninety, nearly blind and stone deaf; the most lengthy part of the whole enterprise was explaining to him what was wanted. Nancy felt sorry for her father who had bought an axe and borrowed a Land-Rover only to find that the afternoon’s chief exercise was to consist of shouting and miming for the benefit of this gnarled old man who seemed to be gradually turning into a tree.

  When eventually they arrived at what had been referred to as a clearing – although there was in fact more clearing than wood-the logs had already been cut and were waiting collection just as they would have been if they had bought them from Thomas Haines and Son in Marine Parade. Nancy made much of helping to hump the logs and shouted things like ‘mind away there – Timber!’ to give her father some of the atmosphere he was missing. When they had finished, and the loading took them all of fifteen minutes, he dusted his hands and looked out between the sparse trees at the fields and not very distant houses. ‘Of course, it’s such a little island,’ he said. He sounded as if it had shrunk since he came to it.

  Zoe had asked them to tea because they would need refreshment after their arduous labours. As they drove up the path to Carrick Farm it was already dusk and the air had winter’s breath on it. The sitting-room Curtains had not been drawn and as they glanced towards it they could see warm light leaping on the long wall. ‘She’s lit a fire for us!’ Nancy was amused at her father’s delight, but when they were hunched comfortably in the sitting-room warming their hands while Zoe prepared tea, she did admit that there was something especially hospitable about lighting a fire for guests as opposed to flipping a switch; and when her father insisted on building an intricate pyramid of coal on top of the blazing logs she was quite concerned l
est he should destroy the magic and disgrace them both.

  Later, she watched the darkness deepening outside the window and reached for the last piece of toast with a feeling of well-being. The room itself darkened and shadows flickered and hunched on the walls as one or other of them moved. Zoe and her father talked, the firelight warming their faces so that one could almost imagine that they were looking into a splendid future just as she herself was. She felt extraordinarily happy. A fire was indeed a wonderful thing! She remembered the comforts of childhood; coming home on cold afternoons, her father taking off her boots and warming her toes with his fingers, her mother bringing her hot lemon and honey when she had a chill. Perhaps she would soon be performing these little acts of love for a child of her own.

  She had not told her father yet that she was going to marry Tudor. There was no need to rush things: she would hug her joy to herself for a little longer. She stretched her legs out in front of her and half-closed her eyes. The flames had eaten into the pieces of coal and strange faces were appearing. She watched, entranced. She would be twenty soon and youth was slipping away. She must make the best of what was left to her. She would join in this game, collect the logs, light the fire, build up a pyramid of coal; she would make tea for people who had been out in the cold and have hot soup ready for her father when he came back tired after an evening meeting. She felt drowsy and eased back against the crumpled cushions. She decided she wasn’t going to make a career for herself after she married Tudor, she didn’t want to be a thinker, an instructor, an adviser, she was going to be one of the small-time givers of homely warmth and comfort, the toast-makers of the world.

  She wondered where she and Tudor would live when they were married. She was happier than she had ever been in her life; so happy in fact, that there was something a little unreal about it and she could not quite envisage their future together, buying houses and planning a family. The coal shifted in the grate and the faces in the fire changed. It was all a matter of time; she and Tudor would grow into loving, a step at a time.

  The next day it began to rain. Tudor was fretful when Nancy visited him. He had written a letter about the use of the priory site to the local paper but it seemed to have had little effect. The archaeologists and the conservationists had made the pattern a little tidier by closing their ranks. Wenfield had agreed to the continued use of the site for hymn singing and had himself attended one or two gatherings, looking genial. The property development company had produced a model designed to show that the proposed luxury hotel would not encroach on the ruins; and a considerably less modest scheme showing every square foot of the site taken up by one structure or another had been leaked to the press.

  Day after day rain poured from a grey, wrinkled sky and water lay in the furrows of the fields. The local church leaders breathed sighs of relief, thinking that this would see the end of an outdoor activity which was beginning to affect church attendance. Yet still people came once a week to the priory site; they came in raincoats, anoraks, sou’westers and thigh boots, dragging small children and accompanied by older children who did not need to be dragged because they enjoyed the novelty of being out with their parents. Many came from the mainland. People seemed to enjoy the meetings more now that they no longer represented a holiday pastime. Jarman went down to the priory site one evening to see what it was all about. He reported his findings to the parochial church council when it met to consider a call from the rector of St. Luke’s for united action to meet what he termed a “growing threat to true religion”.

  Jarman said, ‘There, poised on one of those broken pillars was young Milo, looking uncommonly like a pagan god in modern dress; but the crowd attended to what he had to say as reverently as if he was the prophet Elijah. He said that the Holy Spirit led the nuns to this island to found a priory; the nuns were explorers of the unknown. The Holy Spirit was working in us today, telling us that we, too, must move out into the unknown. Then he raised his arms above his head and shouted, “The time is NOW” and people groaned.’

  One or two members of the parochial church council groaned and a leather-faced farmer pronounced, ‘It will run amok if it isn’t put a stop to.’

  ‘Like the charismatics.’ Mrs. Hooper spoke the word “charismatic” in her most doomful voice.

  Reproachful glances were cast at Vereker. He had preached a sermon the previous Sunday in which he had said, ‘I can’t pretend that I am in sympathy with the charismatics, but neither can I bring myself to dismiss them. We have pared down our faith until there is nothing in it which could be objectionable to anyone or of much interest, either. Can we be surprised that people cry out for something more?’

  The members of the parochial church council now looked at Vereker as though by refusing to condemn the charismatics he had landed them in this trouble with the Holy Spirit. Jarman, in particular, was displeased. Jarman liked religion with the dangerous quality taken out of it, a religion which upheld man’s law and order as distinct from God’s. Vereker said, looking at Jarman, ‘Something new may be stirring here, the Church could make a great mistake opposing it.’

  Jarman said, ‘I have the feeling that something rather old is stirring, that what we are seeing is just another attack on institutionalized religion. Personally, I believe in institutionalized religion.’

  Mrs. Hooper said, presumably referring to the charismatic movement, ‘It’s the work of the Devil!’

  Miss Draisey said in the voice of one introducing a little reason into the debate, ‘What is worrying is that some of the people who are running these prayer meetings and discussion groups are totally unqualified. It could do a lot of harm. Heresy is very difficult to put down.’

  ‘Yet I think the enthusiasm may be the important thing,’ Vereker said gently. ‘God will take care of the heresies.’

  This caused a little buzz of conversation. The farmer did not think much of that kind of enthusiasm; his cows pastured in the priory fields and one had already been injured by a jagged beer tin left lying about after one of the meetings. Miss Draisey explained about heresies and said that she personally was not happy about Teilhard de Chardin. Donald Jarman eased back in his chair and studied the wall, estimating how much money it was going to cost to repair the cracks which were appearing at the sides of the window. Mrs. Hooper was deeply troubled. Life was precariously balanced on the edge of nastiness and the nuns were proof of it. She could not have argued this but she felt it in her stomach and the feeling was more convincing than any argument.

  Vereker said quietly, ‘I’d like to think that some of the people who attend these meetings will come to All Hallows, and we shall be able to hold out a hand and lead them on to the next stage in their journey. We all need help in passing from the emotional honeymoon period into marriage; into a state where we have to come to grips with the business of living with other people, of putting into practice day by day and minute by minute the command that we should love one another.’

  He had overdone it now, he realized unhappily. Mrs. Hooper’s eyes had glazed over; he doubted that she had heard anything after the word “marriage”. Old Colonel Maitland had his head on one side and was studying Vereker like a bright, intelligent bird. In Jarman’s eyes something flickered; although the face was expressionless, Vereker knew that inwardly Jarman was laughing fit to burst. And, indeed, when the meeting was over, Jarman clapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘We’ll have to make a book of your sayings, Vicar; you’re almost as good at the game as that old heathen, Chairman Mao.’ Miss Draisey sat with clasped hands, studying her swollen, arthritic knuckles and thinking perhaps of Delphina whom she had failed to love.

  ‘Christian love is difficult,’ Vereker said. ‘We shall help them and in doing so we shall ourselves be helped.’

  He could not reach Miss Draisey any more than he could reach Mrs. Hooper. It was too much to ask; a lifetime of trying to love and failing to love and at the end of it all, the unknown, unknowable God. He felt inadequate and defeated.


  ‘Now, what is happening on the priory site? Think we’ve got to ask ourselves that, haven’t we?’ Colonel Maitland was talking. ‘Lot of people go along there on a Tuesday evening to sing hymns. Soon won’t be able to do that when the clocks go back. As well as the hymn singing, one or two people stand up and say a few things which may seem a bit silly to some of us. No harm in that. Politicians do it all the time. What are we objecting to? Got to be clear about this, y’know, otherwise we’re going to make fools of ourselves. Things may get out of hand, but there’s been nothing amiss so far. Just what do we think we can do about it? Go along and tell ’em all to go home? It won’t wash, y’know. Better to hold our fire for the present.’