MARCH HOUSE Read online

  ‘Think this London business over carefully,’ he said. ‘Don’t do anything hasty.’

  I knew then that I would have to go soon. The strain would be intolerable for us both if I stayed. I must get in touch with Hilda and find out when I could move into the London house. The telephone was ringing and Stewart went into the house to answer it.

  ‘I’ll put the mower away,’ I called after him.

  I put the cut grass and the mound of fallen leaves on to the compost heap and then walked slowly round the flower beds picking up a few of the leaves which had escaped the rake. This had been my task as a child, not always then enjoyed. But in future a scattering of autumn leaves, the smell of compost, would fill me with happiness; just as I would recall with a particular thrill the moment when it was discovered that the rain had stopped and we could now go for a walk, although at the time I had been reluctant to go out into the still-dripping lane and had only begun to enjoy myself when we were some distance from the house. Some joys had been immediate, though: the evening primrose shining in the dusk and the night smell of honeysuckle. I faltered, made uncertain as I so often was at the thought of joy, and told myself that I was behaving like Garbo in that old film where she walks round the room saying goodbye to the furniture.

  I put the rake and lawn mower in the shed; then, reluctant to return to the house, I walked to the front gate and leant over it. The sky was a darker blue now and the evening star was out. I looked over the fields and saw the distant trees furred by mist and I recalled how several weeks ago Stewart had recounted a piece of information he thought I would find amusing. It seemed that Miss Maud had a man living with her; he did not go out much, but the milkman had had a glimpse of him. ‘It’s probably that brother of hers,’ the woman in the village shop had said. ‘He’s come home from abroad,’ and she had added darkly, ‘perhaps he had to.’ Nothing had happened subsequently to give rise to speculation and by now interest had died down. Once, the vicar’s wife saw the man walking in the lane late one evening; he turned his head away without answering her ‘good evening’. There had seemed to be something faintly familiar about him, but she had been unable to place the memory.

  The rest of the week-end passed uneasily. Stewart was restrained. I had become an uncertain factor in his life; Eleanor was now more committed to him. I could see him working out his options in a way which would at one time have seemed to me to be chillingly calculated. Eleanor’s words about my mother came to me. ‘She always decided what she wanted without considering what was available to her.’ Perhaps a measure of practicality was no bad thing in dealing with the business of life.

  I left home the following week and went to live in Hilda’s house in London. Stewart and Eleanor planned to be married early in the spring. It would be barely a year since my mother died and the village church held too many memories for Stewart, so they decided to be married in London. By Christmas, Eleanor had left her job and was spending much of her time redecorating my old home, while I was redecorating the upper floors of the London house. I had some strange moments while I worked in that house. It did not immediately become home to me as I had hoped it would; it felt alien, a place that had belonged to a lot of people over the years in which I would always be a visitor. I cheered myself with the thought that it would only become home to me when it was home to others. I had been in touch with the Principal of a nearby college which ran courses in English for foreigners and had arranged to provide accommodation for four students. It seemed sensible to take lodgers for whom someone else could vouch until such time as I had become wise in my chosen way of life. I got a lot of pleasure imagining how the house would come to life when my extended family moved in and the dream world of the girl in the attic came true.

  There were times, however, when I was afraid I had embarked on something which would prove too much for me. The weather was bad, it rained a lot; I found that I was not very good at painting and I hated the preparation, all the rubbing down and scraping and infilling. I had a part-time job in an employment agency and although I enjoyed this I got very tired, getting back to the house at two o’clock in the afternoon and then working on the decorating until late into the night. But there were rare moments which made up for all this. Occasionally, the gloom cleared and the world seemed radiant; I would stop on my way to the kitchen to get more white spirit, and I would look out of the window on the half-landing at that moment when the light changes and the sun comes out after rain. I had the sense of a reality which was usually obscured here where I lived in my half-world. At such moments I wondered if progress is really the journey from one place to another, or is it that we are always in the same place and the changing intensity of light is our journey? Then the radiance would pass, the glass would be smeared and darken again, and I would find that part of a window frame had rotted away.

  By April two of the rooms were ready and my first lodgers were a middle-aged Epyptian man and a Dutch girl. The day after they moved in, Stewart and Eleanor were married.

  The wedding was attended by about a dozen people. A fairly subdued affair, I thought, feeling subdued myself. Stewart and Eleanor made their vows with sober understanding of their meaning, and so concentrated was their attention on the words that one could not doubt their steady resolve to fulfil their commitment. I had not been prepared for this, but it was good to know they intended to be mature and responsible. It was when we were out of the church that I was really surprised. They paused briefly in the porch and looked at each other in such an odd way that a shimmering reminder of youth seemed to flit briefly across their faces. They themselves appeared unaware of anything inappropriate and walked slowly down the drive holding hands, as though they were young.

  The reception was held at a hotel in Westminster. Eleanor did not move about at the reception, but stood, passive yet indefinably powerful, letting people come to her. This is how she will live in the future, I thought; life will flow to her and she will accept what it brings. How unpredictable people were! I had imagined her being bossy, organising Stewart, and me being called in as occasional peacemaker. Before she and Stewart left she kissed me and assured me that I could come home whenever I chose. ‘It will always be your home, Ruth.’ She spoke warmly because she felt secure; but neither of us now believed that I would ever make my home there again.

  Afterwards I walked through St. James’s Park. I was free as I had never expected to be free. So. I was over thirty, unmarried, childless, and with no career prospects, but with a home and rooms to offer. No doubt at times I would be sad and frightened and think I had made a mistake; but it seemed that joy and pain were interwoven, a part of the genetic code of our becoming. I knew something of pain, but the difficult thing was to believe in joy.

  A bird was singing, telling of spring, and I felt an ache in my heart as I listened. Why should spring always remind us of time that has run through our fingers? Perhaps the bird was not saying, ‘It was, it was, it was.’ Suppose it was saying, ‘It will be, it will be, it will be’? As I stood on the bridge looking towards the turrets of the Admiralty, I decided to make an act of faith. It was surprising how much resolution was needed to say, ‘This is where I am and so it shall be good.’ Immediately, I wanted to hold my elbows tight against my sides and hunch my shoulders. But I didn’t. As I walked on over the bridge, I spread my arms out and let my coat fall loose so that the sharp spring air made me tremble.

  Mary Hocking

  Born in London in 1921, Mary was educated at Haberdashers’ Aske’s Girls School, Acton. During the Second World War she served in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (Wrens) attached to the Fleet Air Arm Meteorology branch and then briefly with the Signal Section in Plymouth.

  Writing was in her blood. Juggling her work as a local government officer in Middlesex Education Department with writing, at first short stories for magazines and pieces for The Times Educational Supplement, she then had her first book, The Winter City, published in 1961.

  The book was a success and ena
bled Mary to relinquish her full time occupation to devote her time to writing. Long before family sagas had become cult viewing, she had embarked upon the `Fairley Family’ trilogy – Good Daughters, Indifferent Heroes, and Welcome Strangers – books which give her readers a faithful, realistic and uncompromising portrayal of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary times, between the years of 1933 and 1946.

  For many years she was an active member of the `Monday Lit’, a Lewes-based group which brought in current writers and poets to speak about their work, an enthusiastic supporter of Lewes Little Theatre, and worshipped at the town’s St Pancras RC Church.

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  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus Ltd 1981

  This edition published 2016 by Bello

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  ISBN 978-1509-8197-13 EPUB

  ISBN 978-1509-8197-13 HB

  ISBN 978-1509-8197-13 PB

  Copyright © Mary Hocking 1981

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