LOOK, STRANGER Page 21

  The meeting ended shortly afterwards. Vereker and Colonel Maitland were the last to leave. As they closed the vestry door behind them, the old man said to Vereker, ‘Think you’re wrong, y’know; I think there may be trouble.’

  ‘Then why did you come to my rescue when I was making such a mess of things?’ Vereker asked him.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He hesitated, his eyes screwed up as he looked at the street lamp, blurred in the grey evening drizzle. ‘You’re a good man, best we’ve had here since young Penn, and that’s a long time. A very long time. So I couldn’t let you down, could I?’

  Chapter Fourteen

  There was a white frost on the roofs of Carrick Farm when Tudor returned. The sky was a brittle egg-shell and smoke rose straight from one of the chimneys. There was not a breath of wind. In the front garden, the leaves on the shrubs were curled up and there was frost on top of the gate posts and along the rim of the stone wall. It was half-past three in the afternoon, so the temperature would probably fall sharply soon and it would be a cold night.

  Tudor paid the taxi-man and pushed open the garden gate. The doctor had not wanted to discharge him, but suddenly he could not stand it any longer. So he was home before Zoe had expected him. She would apologize because there were things she had meant to prepare for him which she hadn’t got round to doing yet. He looked forward to being unforgiving. Even now, he had not in his heart fully accepted that she was finished with him.

  The first thing he saw when he stood at the front door, key in hand, was a note attached to the letter box. It read, “Fred, could you leave the groceries in the garden shed, please. Key under the flat white stone.” Tudor wondered what was the point in leaving the key under a stone if she was going to announce its whereabouts in a note attached to the front door. He let himself into the house.

  He knew that this was going to be a bad moment for him, so he did not stand about in the hall thinking how silent the house was or anything silly like that. Instead, he put down his zip-bag and went straight into the breakfast-room. It had been the breakfast- room chimney which was smoking. This was a room they seldom used and he thought she had been foolish to light a fire there. To his surprise, however, he found that the fire was drawing well. This was not the only surprise. She had turned articles out of the rooms which had been her retreat, her bedroom, her studio, and scattered them about the corridors and living-rooms. The sewing machine was open in the breakfast-room with a pattern for a kaftan beside it. A length of cotton hung over one of the chairs; the design was a fretwork of amber and olive green. He remembered her buying the material years ago; he had said he did not like it when really what he did not like was the fact that she had an eye for design and he had not. He had nagged about the material week after week until in the end she had put it away unused. Now, seeing it flung across the chair, he told himself that she had turned it out in a flagrant attempt to hurt him.

  He went back to the hall. She must have been out sketching more than he had realized during the summer; there was a series of sketches on the staircase wall, pictures of village life which were full of a vitality the village itself now lacked. The door of the sitting-room was ajar and he could see several sketches in there, too; he went into the room and examined them. They were mostly sketches of children and animals which had the same vitality as the village sketches; some of the sketches of the children, had, also, an unmistakable tenderness.

  He went back to the hall for his zip-bag. Her Wellington boots were standing in the corner, thickly coated with mud, and there was a basket beside them full of teasels. Honesty and cape gooseberry branches had been propped up in the bucket which served as an umbrella stand. Her gardening gloves and a pair of secateurs were on the window ledge together with a half-finished flower arrangement. He went into the kitchen to make himself tea. The same evidence of activity greeted him there. The ironing board had been set up and a stack of curtains was in the wicker basket ready to be ironed. A cake was standing on a rack on the table and there was a bowl beside it, covered with a cloth; he lifted the cloth and dipped a finger absently into the icing mixture.

  He made tea and walked from room to room, cup in hand, looking at the cheerful chaos created by a woman he did not know. The thing which most impressed itself on him was the craze to make things which seemed to have seized her, clothes, flower arrangements, the cake. . . . He went back to the kitchen and looked in the freezer; it was packed with pies, brawn, pâté, pastry, fruit flans. He felt weak and went up to his room, meaning to rest. She had put one of the damned flower arrangements on his bedside table. At the sight of it, he sat on the edge of the bed and began to cry. Soon, hatred replaced the agony of grief. It was cruel to have put this beastly thing in his room, an overflow of her “making” in which he was included incidentally. If she had excluded him that would have shown that she had considered him. He lay on the bed until the tears petered out, leaving him hollow and listless which was worst of all. He could not stay in the house. It was nearly four o’clock. As far as he knew, nothing happened anywhere on the island at four o’clock on a Saturday. Nevertheless, he must get out.

  He took the cup down to the kitchen. He could not bear the smell of cold tea or the stain it left on the cup, so he washed the cup and put it on the draining board. While he was doing this, the telephone rang. He was on his way to answer it when it occurred to him that the caller might be Nancy. If she had telephoned the hospital she would know that he had discharged himself. He stood by the telephone, looking at it until it stopped ringing. He did not analyse his reaction; he simply knew that it would be a mistake to lift up the receiver.

  As soon as he was outside in the lane he heard the singing. He had not realized that they came to the priory grounds on Saturday afternoons now that it was too dark to meet there in the evenings. He turned towards the singing. His mind began to nag angrily at the people who were there and the nagging brought a respite from the deeper pain of the loss of Zoe. Before he joined the fringes of the crowd, the singing had stopped. Over the heads of the people in front of him he saw Milo standing on one of the broad, broken pillars. He was shouting: ‘Once I was on acid,’ which Tudor knew was not true, although he had undoubtedly smoked pot like most self-respecting youngsters of his age. ‘But now,’ Milo went on, ‘I have found something that burns deeper than acid, I have found Jesus Christ.’

  Tudor said to the man standing next to him, ‘Do you think that Jesus Christ knows that this site is needed for homeless families?’ The man looked startled and then embarrassed; he said, ‘Is it really? I didn’t know. . .’ and moved a few paces away. Tudor made good the ground between them. ‘Do you think Jesus Christ would be interested?’

  ‘Interested in what?’

  ‘In the plight of the homeless.’

  The man said, ‘Yes, yes,’ tetchily and craned his neck to see if he was missing anything out front.

  A well-dressed matron was talking about the permissive society which was undermining the fabric of civilization. According to her, the nuns had come to warn people to turn from the excesses of permissiveness before it was too late. After talk of discipline and re-dedication and a hail of alleluiahs, there was a song about coming to Jesus breathed over a microphone by an intense young woman who looked as if she wanted to eat every member of the audience. Tudor saw that one or two people were leaving. He stationed himself by the gate which opened onto the footpath leading to the seafront. The crowd was singing:

  ‘When I needed a neighbour, were you there, were you there?

  When I needed a neighbour, were you there?’

  ‘I wonder if I could interest you in a scheme to provide for homeless families on this site?’ Tudor said to the first group to arrive at the gate.

  ‘Sorry. We want to get to the car park before this lot turns out.’

  Tudor put his question more directly to the next arrivals, a woman and three teenagers. ‘What are you doing for the homeless?’

  ‘I haven’t got a spare room, if
that’s what you’re after.’ She urged the youngsters towards the gate. ‘How many homeless people have you got in your house?’ she shouted over her shoulder.

  ‘When I needed a shelter, were you there, were you there?

  When I needed a shelter, were you there?’

  Tudor said to a middle-aged man and woman who had come up to the gate looking guilty as though they were creeping out of a cinema before the national anthem was played, ‘What do you think Jesus would have done about the plight of homeless families on this island?’

  ‘He’d have thought it was a bloody disgrace!’ the man said vehemently.

  ‘Thinking wouldn’t have cost him anything. What would he have done?’

  The woman tugged at the man’s arm and whispered, ‘Come on, Daddy; don’t get in an argument now.’

  The man looked over his shoulder to see how many people were behind him. ‘Sorry,’ he said to Tudor. ‘We’ll never get on the bus once the crowd breaks up. Anyway, it’s your councillors you want to get after. They’re the fellows who ought to be doing something. You give them a good rousting, and the best of luck to you!’

  ‘Wherever you travel, I’ll be there, I’ll be there,

  Wherever you travel, I’ll be there,

  And the creed and the colour and the name won’t matter,

  I’LL BE THERE!’

  Tudor produced an envelope and a pencil from his pocket. ‘I am collecting names for a petition for this site to be used to house homeless families,’ he said to the people who were now coming past him in greater numbers.

  ‘Never sign petitions,’ one man said brusquely. Two women said that they would sign and did so. He asked them if they would be prepared to collect other signatures for him. They said no, they didn’t think they could do that and looked anxiously over their shoulders to see whether the crowd was breaking up yet.

  The crowd sang “At even e’er the sun was set” before it finally disbanded. By this time, Tudor had ten signatures. The reason that people refused to sign was not simply that they were in a hurry; most of them resented him. He represented the very thing they had come here to escape from, the nasty, grubby human mess. ‘Wherever you go,’ one woman said bitterly, ‘there’s always someone standing around trying to make you feel wretched.’ Another woman accused him of using the homeless for propaganda.

  ‘What are you doing about it?’ asked a young man with a voice to match his immaculately tailored suit. ‘Writing a few tear-jerking paragraphs for the local rag?’

  ‘I’m a social worker.’

  ‘Are you? Then in that case, you’re the chap who should be solving the problem, not standing here asking other people what to do about it. Stop wasting public money putting Pakis up in five-star hotels, for a start.’

  Tudor was warmed by these rebuffs which he needed as some people need kindness. They don’t want their new-found togetherness splintered, he thought as more and more people went by; they have those bright unhinged expressions on their faces which are worn by people from the Herrenvolk to the Orangemen who think they have a date with destiny. The thought sent the blood surging through his veins.

  It took nearly half an hour for the site to clear. Milo had long since come down from his pillar. Tudor decided it was time to have a word with Milo.

  Miss Draisey, for different reasons, had also decided it was time she had a word with Milo. Tudor set out before her, so he had his word first.

  There was one light in an upstairs room at the vicarage. Perhaps Nancy was reading in between making telephone calls. Tudor walked quietly round to the back of the house and looked down into the basement. Mrs. Anguilo was at the sink and the two girls were sitting on the table, swinging their legs and shoving each other with their shoulders. Tudor went down the basement steps. Mrs. Anguilo must have seen his shadow on the wall because she came running out, her arms soapy up to the elbows.

  ‘Mr. Vereker is in the church,’ she said.

  ‘It’s Milo I’m looking for.’

  ‘He’s doing his homework.’ She pointed to a door to the right. ‘He’s working very hard. He stays up half the night.’

  Tudor waited for her to go back to her washing before he opened the door.

  The room was small, ventilated by a grid, and Milo was stretched out on a camp bed reading by the light of a naked light bulb. He looked up, startled, as Tudor came into the room. His face was tired and strained; a poor little waif, he seemed, very different from the orator of the priory site.

  ‘Don’t get up.’ Tudor found a packing case and dragged it to the side of the bed. ‘It’s time we had a talk.’

  Milo flicked his tongue across his lips. He looked uneasy, if not actually frightened.

  ‘I thought you were still in hospital,’ he said.

  ‘I came out this afternoon. It’s a wonder I didn’t have to go straight back. I nearly burst a blood vessel watching your performance on the priory site.’

  ‘You nearly did that once before.’

  It wasn’t the reply Tudor had expected. He had almost forgotten that there had been a witness to the confrontation in the church. But now, in Milo’s eyes, he saw his action reduced to an inept, lunatic gesture devoid of significance. ‘You know why I did that, don’t you?’ he shouted. ‘To save you.’

  Milo gave a short laugh and Tudor struck him across the face. ‘To save you! I had to do it to save you. You stupid little fool’ Milo said, ‘All right; so I’m saved.’

  Tudor hit him again.’

  Milo picked up his book. ‘I’d like to get on with my homework. Do you mind?’

  ‘It’s your extra-curricular activities I mind about. You will have to stop this business, Milo.’ Milo raised his eyebrows, Tudor, provoked beyond bearing, caught him by the shirt front and held him against the wall; he hit him three times, hard. ‘All right?’

  Milo put the book to one side with the air of someone whose ability to suffer the insufferable is being eroded. ‘When I stole from the youth club, you didn’t beat me up, did you? You lent me money out of your own pocket. When I was on drugs, you found me an accommodating doctor. And when I had Jenny Britten, your advice was to try for someone a bit more mature; so I got myself Ella Packer with your blessing. Something really horrendous has to have happened for you to shout “stop!”.’ He hunched up on the bed with his feet tucked up in front of him, his back against the wall.

  Tudor said angrily, ‘The sort of things you did before were. . . .’

  ‘A healthy acting-out of my aggressive impulses?’

  Tudor dived at him and Milo shot his feet out catching Tudor in the stomach. Tudor reeled across the room just as Mrs. Anguilo held the door open to admit Miss Draisey.

  ‘The health service is a disgrace!’ Miss Draisey boomed as Tudor hunched against the wall, too winded to speak. ‘You should never have been discharged from hospital in that condition.’ She looked at Milo’s bruised face. ‘Now, you come along with me, young man, and we’ll make some nice strong tea.’

  ‘I can do that,’ Mrs. Anguilo protested.

  ‘Yes, my dear, I know you can; but I want Milo to do it. You stay here with our poor friend.’ She pushed Mrs. Anguilo into the room and jerked her head imperiously at Milo who followed her with alacrity.

  ‘It looked to me as if there was an argument going on,’ she said as he handed her the tea carton.

  ‘Not with him.’ Milo was despondent. ‘With him I can only argue with my feet.’

  Miss Draisey said to Milo’s sisters, who were standing goggling stupidly, ‘Now I think it would be nice if you two gels went and helped your mother to entertain Mr. Lindsay.’

  ‘In that hole!’ one of the girls protested.

  ‘If you don’t want to do that, then you must go for a nice walk.’ She pushed them towards the door.

  ‘It’s cold!’ the other exclaimed, even more shrill.

  ‘Then you’ll have to walk briskly. It’ll be very good for you.’ She watched them as they slouched out. They were both dark an
d sallow; no doubt they took after the Anguilo side of the family.

  Milo, who was depressed by the speed with which he reverted to his former unregenerate self in Tudor’s presence, had seated himself at the table. Miss Draisey studied him while she waited for the kettle to come to the boil. ‘I hope you never do that sort of thing with your boots on.’

  He said, ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘Even without your boots, it’s no way for a preacher to behave. Even a pop preacher.’

  He smiled at that; he had that mischievous smile which is very attractive and not a little corrupting. ‘Oh, Delphina, Delphina!’ Miss Draisey turned her head away and peered unwisely into the spout of the kettle almost blinding herself.

  When the tea was made, she said, ‘Now, I’ll just take this tray into your mother and then we can have tea, too, because I’ve come to have a chat with you.’

  She returned a few moments later. ‘Mr. Lindsay has gone. But your mother has your sisters for company and they will all be quite comfortable in there for a little while.’ Milo sipped his tea and Miss Draisey, who for so long had not looked at him because she was afraid of what he might do to her, watched him and was still afraid.

  ‘What do you know about yourself?’ she asked. ‘How much has your mother told you?’

  Milo gazed at her over the rim of the cup, thinking that this dotty old thing had come to tell him the facts of life.

  ‘She must have told you something,’ Miss Draisey persisted.

  What did she think his mother could have told him? Facts had always eluded his mother; she had never accepted her pregnancies and was still bewildered by her children.

  ‘Did you, for example, know your father?’

  Milo said ‘No’ because it was impossible to separate the intermittently glimpsed man from his mother’s fantasies.