WELCOME STRANGER Page 6

  ‘You can’t carry it up there.’ He looked at her, outraged eyes making it plain that what was beyond him was out of bounds for her, too.

  Alice stiffened. ‘No, I’ll be all right.’

  ‘It’s a steep climb. You can’t possibly manage it. That can is quite heavy now.’ Outrage had given way to that special kind of pleading which works on the premise that if a statement is made with sufficient assurance the other person will not have the insensitivity to challenge it.

  Alice picked up the can and began to walk up the lane. After a few minutes, she was aware that he was following her; she walked faster, her heart pounding not so much with exertion as anger. ‘I suppose he expects me to go at his pace,’ she thought. ‘But there are limits to how much one humours him!’

  In the woods, night rose from the ground in holes of darkness, while above the tops of the trees smoke twisted briefly and was lost in the greying sky.

  Claire, looking beyond the wall where Alice would set her story, said, ‘What an awful place.’

  The unknown attracted Alice, who was not primarily eager for answers – she had been presented with plenty of answers in her childhood and had not found them nourishing. Mystery drew her, not always comfortably, beyond the edge of vision. Edges gave Claire vertigo.

  Terence patted her shoulder comfortingly. He wished that they could at least have turned the car so that they looked down towards the farm. He regarded Nature, when uncultivated by man, as essentially hostile. ‘I wonder they don’t build up here,’ he said resentfully. ‘With so many people needing homes, we can’t afford this kind of waste.’

  ‘Where would they get work?’ Austin asked, tapping his fingers on the wheel.

  ‘I’ll have to get out,’ Claire said. ‘It’s awfully bad for me to be shut in here all this time.’

  ‘You’ll catch cold,’ Terence warned.

  But she insisted on getting out, and stood with her back to the wall, from where she could see that all too soon the lane dissolved in shadow. The air was cool and seemed to have travelled a long way across nothingness.

  Austin watched Terence’s efforts to soothe her with wry sympathy, but he made no attempt to help. Terence would have to shield Claire for the rest of his life, so the sooner he learnt how to set about it, the better. Austin’s first wife had been an anxious creature, approaching childbirth with fear as though there was something in life itself which might destroy the new life within her. Many people had said that the son was like her, but Austin had thought that though the boy was sensitive, his was a more robust spirit. Whether he had been right, he would never know now. Why, he asked himself, why? He had not thought enough about this loss, had put it away for safe-keeping, something to be attended to another time because one must not fuss. These deaths are something that happen in wartime, to be expected . . . And this acceptance was taken for mute courage. But what was it that had happened? A young man, gentle, rather dreamy, who might – or might not – have made a living as an engraver had been blown to pieces on a beach, leaving behind him a few poems illustrated with scenes of summer hedgerows and birds in spare, winter trees. In the name of God, why should it happen?

  ‘What will we do if they don’t get petrol?’ Claire asked.

  ‘I’m sure they will.’ Terence was more resolute than he felt. ‘I don’t see anyone refusing Alice!’

  ‘Oh?’ Claire was not comforted by this. Praise given to someone else diminished her; she felt it physically as if something had been extracted from her own body to feed another’s. ‘Well, you don’t know Alice. She isn’t a bit reliable. For one thing, she doesn’t have a sense of direction. And for another, she gets distracted very easily. Just now, she is probably mooning over the view instead of getting back here as quickly as she can.’

  At this moment, Alice came into view, walking very smartly as if to disprove any tendency to distraction.

  ‘All’s well!’ she announced triumphantly.

  An optimistic asssumption. Until this moment, they had seemed to be walking on eggshells; now that they found themselves on firm ground, resentment could no longer be held in check. Claire was furious with Austin for not getting out of the car immediately he saw Alice. Being somewhat in awe of her stepfather, she addressed her irritation to Terence. ‘Well, don’t just stand there! The petrol has got to be put in. That was the whole point of the exercise.’

  Terence, who was riot sure whether the Rover received petrol in the back, front, or side, turned back to the car. Austin got out leisurely and took the can from Alice.

  ‘Where is Ben?’

  ‘He’ll be here any minute. I got worried about Claire so I hurried a bit.’ Her gleaming pink face was evidence of this.

  While Austin fed in the petrol, Terence stood beside him, one hand stroking the bonnet, rather as if the car might take fright and stampede.

  Ben came slowly towards them, exhaustion and humiliation making his appearance spectral in the waning light. ‘I’ve been examining the path,’ he said. ‘It’s not going to be easy to back her down.’

  ‘I shall guide him,’ Terence said.

  ‘You don’t know anything about cars,’ Claire called anxiously.

  ‘My father had a car.’ He went on less truthfully, ‘And I often navigated for him.’

  Alice tried to make her peace with Ben. ‘We’ll sit inside. I think we’ve earned a rest, don’t you?’

  ‘I told you I had been examining the path. I shall help Terence to guide Austin.’

  Austin got in and started the engine. ‘It’s just possible I shall be able to manage without assistance.’

  But as neither Terence nor Ben was prepared to join their womenfolk, the journey began with Ben to the left of the path and Terence to the right, each giving instructions. Alice thought it was like one of those strenuous male duets in opera where the tenor and the baritone contend for dominance. At some stage, the contention reached a crescendo during which Terence became particularly excited and, shouting to Austin that he was to take directions from him, leapt to the right to illustrate what was required and tripped over a boulder. In the moment before he disappeared from sight, he seemed to have as many thrashing arms as a starfish. Austin stopped the car, muttering under his breath, ‘For the first time I have an unimpeded view.’ Alice was convulsed with laughter.

  Terence reappeared, crawling, his glasses hanging from one ear. Ben went and stood over him, as though examining an unfamiliar species of fauna.

  ‘What are they playing at?’ Claire was mystified.

  Alice went into further paroxysms. Austin got out of the car and joined Ben. They both knelt beside Terence.

  ‘He’s hurt himself,’ Claire said soberly. ‘My poor love! It was my fault for being so beastly to him.’ She got out of the car and went to Terence, leaving Alice to compose herself.

  Terence had broken his ankle. For the remainder of the journey, Ben sat in front with Austin while Claire, who had become surprisingly matronly, soothed Terence. Alice made herself small and inconspicuous, as befitted one who had behaved like an over¬tired child.

  That night, Claire nursed Terence while Ben had nightmares as he tried to drive a truck through glutinous jungle mud, all the time belaboured by a guard shouting ‘Speedo! Speedo!’ Judith and Austin indulged in mutual recrimination – she accusing him of behaving irresponsibly and he insisting that her children were impossible. Alice, with the writer’s horrid gift of detachment, had shuffled off the cares of the day, and was sitting at the desk she had sworn she would never be able to use.

  It had just this minute occurred to her that her story must be told with clarity and simplicity because it was for children. She had not realised until now that she must write for children, who were the true inhabitants of the world of the imagination. At the beginning of the story the children came upon a cave up in the hills where a group of people, quite unlike the people of their own time, lived under the symbol of the fish. Subsequently, the children would search for the cave but never fi
nd it again; although, in the end, after many adventures, they would find the symbol quite by accident on an old stone unearthed in the garden of their own home. She had the beginning and the end, and was discovering that the real test is how one deals with the gap in between.

  Chapter Four

  On a bright May day, the Drummond family had one of its rare reunions. To celebrate this – or, as Angus Drummond put it, to heighten the bizarre nature of the event – Mrs Drummond arranged a trip to Kew Gardens. ‘Bunny does so love to get out,’ she explained. During the course of an inactive service in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, Drummond had only once been to sea. Unfortunately, on this occasion the ship was torpedoed and he had sustained an injury which paralysed him from the waist down. He had been a good-looking man, bestriding his hearth in the manner of a rakish country squire rather than a London banker; but now his body was heavy as lard, his face purpled with rage and strong drink. Mrs Drummond, who had been a meek, genteel woman, always ailing, had gained new zest for life each day of his illness.

  Angus had invited Irene Kimberley to join him on this expedition. ‘Though I warn you it will be fraught with danger.’

  ‘It’s difficult to imagine what ill could befall anyone at Kew in lilac time!’

  ‘Let me tell you that on our only childhood trip there, my father threatened to drown Cecily in one of the ponds, and then insisted on spending a long time in the hothouses where I was sick and my mother fainted. The only survivor, as usual, was my sister Daphne.’

  Irene knew more about the Drummond family than Angus realised. She and Alice had been friendly with Daphne at school. Although invitations to Daphne’s home had been rare, there had been one occasion when they had gone there to play tennis and had witnessed a particularly unpleasant scene between Mr Drummond and the unfortunate Cecily. Irene had no difficulty in visualising his behaviour in the hothouses.

  Angus did not usually talk much about his parents. So when he wryly suggested he would welcome her support on this occasion, she was delighted, imagining it to represent a new stage in their relationship. She paid particular attention to her appearance, eventually deciding on a lime-green linen dress which looked both cool and refreshing, and would no doubt have the same therapeutic effect as an application of eau de Cologne. Eau de Cologne was impeccably feminine, and she was aware that at times Angus winced from the keen edge of her mind.

  They were to meet on Kew Green. When Angus and Irene arrived. Daphne and Peter Kelleher were already waiting.

  ‘Mother not here yet?’ Angus asked Daphne, who smiled in reply. He turned to Irene. ‘My mother, as you no doubt recall, tends to be late.’

  ‘She has a good sense of timing,’ Daphne said, ‘Never arrive before your audience.’

  She made the statement quietly and without bitterness. Facts unpalatable to most people seemed to give her little trouble. A small, compact young woman, she still retained something of that schoolgirl mischievousness which makes every day seem glowing. Yet Irene thought that since she married she had become rather formidable. Or was it that as one gets older one realises that the ‘funny ways’ of one’s companions are not superficial accretions, like a boil on the chin, but an integral part of the personality? Had they been right to laugh because Daphne supported Mosley and imagine she would shed such notions along with her lacrosse stick? If they had been mistaken in her, so had the school staff, whose only reservation had been that she failed to make the exertion necessary to outshine her companions. She had been accepted as a good all-rounder, equally able in the classroom as on the games field, but with a tendency to laziness. She had seldom bothered to rebel. Yet one had sometimes been aware that rebellion was not necessary for her because she did not take the school seriously. Certainly, she had found nothing there of sufficient importance to compromise her.

  ‘There!’ Daphne said. ‘Perfect timing!’

  Her mother had arrived, sitting well back in the driving seat of the car and holding the wheel as if it was a bowl of flowers which she had yet to decide where to place. Unfortunately, her judgement was faulty and she bumped the curb. Her husband shouted, ‘That’s the only bloody tyre you haven’t ruined!’

  Cecily darted from the car like a frightened rabbit, and was immediately seized with a fit of sneezing which rendered her incapable of helping in the business of transferring her father into his wheelchair. She lived at home in order to assist her mother, but Nature, recognising her inadequacy, had presented her with a series of minor ailments which effectively protected her from exploitation.

  ‘Family only!’ Mrs Drummond sang out gaily as the others moved forward to assist. ‘Angus and Daphne are so good at this.’ Neither, in fact, had found the time or the opportunity to acquire this particular skill.

  Peter Kelleher stood to one side without protest. Irene, who had only met him briefly, studied him with interest. There was little chance of his resenting scrutiny since he seemed unaware of her presence. Really, she thought, he is just how an explorer should be, rough hewn in stone – or perhaps too pinkish for that – rough hewn in terracotta. The kind of sculpture one might expect to come across in a wild, alien region, with eyes focused on some feature of the landscape a vast distance away; in this case, the gasworks on the far side of the river. Irene did not think he was deliberately rude. When she spoke to him he answered her with courtesy, peering at her as though wondering what life could be like down there. She supposed that birds came into his line of vision more often than people.

  ‘You are living in Norfolk now,’ she said, in the absurd way in which one tells a person something which cannot have escaped his notice.

  He admitted gravely that this was so, and went on to tell her about the house which they had bought near King’s Lynn. He had almost exhausted its possibilities by the time Commander Drummond was settled in his wheelchair.

  As they walked into the Gardens, Daphne said to her husband, ‘My father is so unspeakably awful now. I suppose in some ways, he always was, but he had a certain grandeur. Why did he let this happen to him? Why didn’t he kill himself?’

  ‘You have the morality of an ancient Greek,’ he told her, not joking. He was a man who made few jokes.

  The Drummond family had been linked to the practices of the ancients by more than morality. Daphne said, ‘Thank you for coming with me. I couldn’t have come alone.’

  He had no intention of allowing her to do this, or anything else for that matter, alone.

  At first, all went well. The lilacs were at their best and Mrs Drummond quoted the poem in a high, fluting voice. Commander Drummond said the smell made him puke. Cecily began to sneeze and he shouted to her to get out of the way if she couldn’t control her disgusting habits. She sat on a seat and wept.

  ‘Should we stay with her?’ Irene asked Angus.

  ‘I think it’s mainly the sneezing. She’s a rather moist person altogether.’

  Irene, who was constantly being told how much she missed as an only child, counted her blessings.

  Peter and Daphne, who had fallen behind, now caught up with them. Mrs Drummond refused help with the wheelchair. ‘You go on,’ she said. ‘Don’t wait for us.’ They took her at her word, glad to have the opportunity to talk among themselves.

  Daphne told Irene about her new home while Peter and Angus talked about their wartime experiences. Kelleher had spent some time in Yugoslavia, a lonely and often dangerous mission for which he had volunteered because it offered the solitude he needed. Angus, with no illusions of being master of his fate, had gone where he had been sent. Even now that the war was over, habit made them careful of what they said. Angus mentioned a few of the people he had known, but Kelleher, whose most memorable experiences involved places and animals, did not respond.

  They walked up the broad avenue towards the pagoda. Behind them, they could hear Commander Drummond complaining, ‘What is the point of the thing if you can’t go inside it.’

  ‘It provides a focal point.’

  �
�What do you mean, focal point?’

  Mrs Drummond, who was not sure what she meant, said, ‘Now, you mustn’t tire yourself, Bunny.’

  Daphne said to Irene, ‘I want to have Alice to stay.’

  ‘She would like that. You and she were so friendly. She misses you.’

  Commander Drummond said, ‘Well, don’t say things you don’t understand. Even if you are a fool, there is no point, focal or otherwise, in advertising it.’

  ‘What became of that fellow Alice was so fond of out in Alexandria?’ Daphne asked.

  ‘Gordon was killed.’ Irene did not add that Alice had found out, after his death, that he was married.

  ‘I’m sorry about that. I always thought Alice would marry before any of us. What about you? Anyone of interest?’

  ‘There’s no one in particular at the moment.’ Irene hoped she conveyed that there was no shortage of unparticular men.

  Angus said, ‘I still find I have nightmares because I repeat an item of news and then can’t remember where I picked it up; whether it was just a newspaper story or top secret. My mind worries away over this kind of thing all day.’

  ‘So long as you don’t get involved with my brother,’ Daphne said. ‘He’s a nice enough old thing, and I’m fond of him; but he’s not the sort of man who is any good for a woman.’

  ‘I’ve never given it a thought. We both like music’ Irene put up a hand to admire a rhododendron bloom and yellow pollen dusted her bare arm.

  Cecily appeared, running down a path through the shrubbery, pink-faced and panting. She joined her mother and father, attempted to help push the chair, and was repulsed.

  ‘I wish she would go off and live somewhere on her own,’ Daphne said. ‘They don’t need her. My parents have never been so involved with each other as they are now!’

  Irene, not knowing how to reply to this, looked at her watch. ‘Half-past three. Would tea be an idea?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Let’s wait another quarter of an hour before we suggest it. Then, with any luck, we shall be able to go home. And after a dutiful half hour or so, it will all be over.’