A Particular Place Page 7

  To pass the time, he played a game he had recently devised to help him get to sleep. His taste in furniture was expensive and he had no means of indulging it other than fantasy. It was pleasant to drift into slumber contemplating an exquisite walnut secretaire. Now, he amused himself by refurnishing a room. There were one or two good pieces in this sitting-room which he had inherited from his great aunt, and he would be reluctant to part with them; as the room was small, this limited the possibilities. So he addressed himself to the Georgian house belonging to the head master. Its present contents were altogether too intrusive – one had the feeling the furniture had chosen the people. In twenty minutes, he successfully refurnished the morning-room but found the result less satisfactory than he had anticipated; there was something missing which fidgeted at the edge of his mind – the pictures, perhaps? or flowers? Since this was only a game it was puzzling that this elusive lack – he was sure it was a lack and not an error of judgement – should be so disturbing.

  He moved his shoulders uneasily and realized that a draught was blowing into the room from the hall. Mrs Quince must have opened the study window; she had told him more than once that the house needed a good airing. As he hurried into the hall, Mrs Quince called out, ‘Some of yur papers blown out the winder.’

  He was scrabbling about in the front garden when a voice certainly not Mrs Quince’s said, ‘Someone’s masterpiece blowing on the wind.’ He looked up and saw Valentine Hoath standing by the gate, a piece of paper in her hand.

  Her hand was long and white, the ivory wrist so small that as he stretched out his own hand he was shocked by an impish desire to encompass it with thumb and forefinger.

  ‘My lecture on Anna Karenina,’ he said breathlessly.

  ‘Really? When?’

  ‘Next Thursday evening. In the United Reformed Church Hall. I hope you will come?’

  ‘I don’t know about that. I’m playing Hedda Gabler. Should I confuse myself by considering Anna Karenina?’

  ‘She is the most beautiful woman in all literature,’ he said, gazing at her.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ She chose to take this as a rebuke. ‘And so young.’

  ‘I would have said you were far more suited to play Anna than Hedda.’

  ‘Oh really, Charles!’ She gave a light, contemptuous laugh, yet he was sure she had never before called him Charles. ‘Passionate women are quite beyond my range, let alone my comprehension.’

  ‘It is the passion, of course, which creates her beauty. The actual description of her . . .’

  They stood for some minutes one on either side of the gate in the gusty wind discussing Anna and passion.

  ‘Interesting that the way out for both of them was death, isn’t it?’ Valentine said. ‘Perhaps one is fortunate not to have a passionate nature. Or do you think it was the authors’ way out? After all, what do you do, left with a passionate woman on your hands at the end of your major work? In real life there must be a few passionate women around who have survived into old age.’

  ‘They usually seem to attach themselves to artists. But I think perhaps it is a mistake to regard Hedda as passionate. Is it impertinent to ask how you will play her?’

  ‘Previous rather than impertinent. In fact, I was just going to talk to Hester about it. Hester is so frank. If she thinks I can’t do it, she will say so.’

  He was silent, feeling rather irritated that she should consider Hester to be an appropriate judge of such matters. In his experience, people who wrote seldom knew much about literature. The wind blew one short, dark curl across the line of her cheekbone.

  ‘I see your azalea is out,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. We face south.’

  ‘It’s really very pleasant up here. I hadn’t realized. It was January when we came and everything so very drear.’

  ‘You would like it here,’ he said, and thought in dismay – ‘What an odd remark!’ He was glad that she seemed not to have heard.

  ‘I can see Hester at the window, obviously saying to herself “Why doesn’t the wretched woman come in, since she has decided to spoil my morning.” Do you think Hester says something cruder than “spoil”? I suspect she does. I will leave you to Anna Karenina.’

  He bowed. ‘I shall hope to see you next Thursday.’

  She smiled as though it was something she just might consider and turned towards Hester’s house.

  How good the air was, he thought; but sharp as a blade grazing his ears. He found he was trembling slightly. He returned to the house where all was now quiet. He put the papers back in his study which smelt strongly of Mrs Quince and furniture polish. He would have to defer further work on his lecture until the afternoon by which time he might feel more composed. A cup of milky coffee awaited him in the sitting-room and he could tell from its bleary appearance that it was cold. It was unlike Mrs Quince to depart so noiselessly. He walked to the window and saw that she had taken a cup of coffee to the boy Desmond who tidied up the garden. They sat side by side on the garden bench, not communicating, like Henry Moore figures.

  ‘I know you don’t like me,’ Valentine said to Hester as soon as she sat down. This was her habitual preface to confidences. Hester did not, in fact, dislike her, but had come to accept the formula as one which gave some kind of security to Valentine. So she merely said, ‘Well, that is the way you like to see it.’

  ‘I’m not very good with people, I know that.’ She seemed to be picking up the threads of an interrupted conversation. ‘But we have had several moves since we were married and I don’t think I can be accused of creating ill-feeling in our various parishes on anything like the scale of more devoted clergy wives.’

  Hester poured coffee and waited.

  ‘What would you say if I told you I had offered to take that wretched women’s group off Michael’s shoulders?’

  ‘I should be surprised.’

  ‘Michael was more than surprised. He didn’t think I could do it. I told him “It’s not a question of doing anything, just listening.” That, I may say, is what he feels unable to do.’

  ‘But he always seems so good at listening.’

  ‘Not on all occasions. He gets very upset when he sees women trying to usurp the man’s role. He seems to feel they will do themselves, not men, an injury. He has never been able to talk to me about it – no doubt because it is tied up with ideas about motherhood, a role I have been unable to play.’

  ‘Perhaps not motherhood generally, Valentine. His own mother . . .’

  ‘Anyway, I didn’t want to argue with him. I was afraid I might sound like Norah Kendall. Though I don’t think I could achieve quite that mixture of provocation and servility. It comes of being a nurse, I suppose. She is so conditioned to male dominance, poor thing, and being married to that awful man has made her so scratchy. She can’t make up her mind from one moment to the next what role she is playing.’

  ‘There has always been a provocative side to Norah. There wasn’t much love on that farm and I think it was her way of drawing attention to the fact that she had needs as well as the animals. But she knows she must have a discipline to live by and I suppose that explains what you call her servility.’

  ‘She is one of those women who are arch with men.’

  ‘She has a difficult personality; a tendency to trip people when they are not looking, then she makes up for it by a rather unconvincing show of humility.’

  ‘Michael feels I shan’t be any match for her in that group. Can you imagine it? My attempting to match myself to Norah Kendall!’

  ‘I have to say, Valentine, that I like and respect Norah Kendall.’

  Hester looked the epitome of an affronted maiden aunt. It was all Valentine could do to refrain from laughing. ‘Really, Hester,’ she said lightly, ‘what you see in that woman is beyond my comprehension.’

  ‘In order to get time alone to do one’s work one has, as a writer, to create an image which is, I suppose, fairly formidable.’ Valentine, who had come to talk about herself, was a
stonished that it was Hester who now seemed to be the subject of discussion. ‘A lot of people find me daunting. There are times when I wish it were otherwise. Norah has never been daunted, even as a child who always came to me for Sunday lunch – she sang in the choir and it was a long way back to the farm and back again for Evensong. She allowed me my black moods and I didn’t fuss about her table manners.’

  ‘Yes, well, I can see you have known her a long time.’

  ‘Later, she became a nurse and had to impose a discipline on a naturally unruly personality. So she, more than most, understands my problem.’ This must be age catching up with Hester, Valentine thought; how else could she go on and on in this agitated way about something so peripheral as her friendship with Norah Kendall? ‘Moreover, she is quite capable of holding her own with me. Over the years we have established the only really easy relationship I have here.’ Hester did not add ‘and you, coming so lately, are not going to threaten it,’ but the sense of something under threat was conveyed to Valentine.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear! I can’t think how we got to be so excited about this. As for the group, Norah Kendall can have the running of it and welcome. I shall sit back and observe. Their talk quite fascinated me. As a study, of course. I think it might help with Hedda.’

  How I do let my feelings run away with me lately, Hester thought. And it seems all she wanted was to talk about how to play Hedda!

  ‘Michael thinks I am eminently suited to play Hedda, did you know? A woman who commits suicide because she can find no use for herself.’

  ‘Michael admires your acting ability and Hedda is a particularly testing role.’

  ‘Charles Venables dismissed her – not passionate, just useless. Even dry old Charles has no use for a woman who is not passionate.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have thought he had much use for a woman outside the pages of a book.’

  ‘But I should like to know what it is that I am being told about myself in being cast for this role.’

  ‘For Heaven’s sake, Valentine! If you had been cast for Lady Macbeth you wouldn’t think people were telling you you were a potential murderess.’

  ‘No one would cast me for The Lady. Do be sensible, Hester. I came to see you because you are always so frank. What is your view of Hedda? I see her as caught in a world where a woman had to be exceptional to break free – and she was beautiful but not exceptional. I am beautiful but I cannot use the fact that I am not exceptional as an excuse because I live in a world where women have quite a lot of freedom.’

  ‘I must have missed something – what is it that you are supposed to be excusing?’

  Valentine turned her head away, looking out of the window where the boy Desmond was now working on Hester’s garden. She said, ‘My marriage.’

  What a sad little story it is, Hester thought, the one about the person who brought her harp to a party and no one asked her to play! Yet how preferable are harpists to people who bring their hoops and jump through them one after the other. As far as I am concerned, at any gathering of mine, harps may be brought and played but hoops must be left outside.

  ‘All this talk of freedom,’ Valentine was saying, her eyes strained as though there was something out in the garden they were unable to bring into focus. ‘I don’t understand it. When I married it seemed to me to provide a kind of freedom, a right to a certain separateness. But I can see that some people might think of it as a form of protection, a shelter, even.’

  ‘We all need protection of a sort. As for separateness, my writing keeps me a little apart from people.’

  ‘But then there isn’t one particular person from whom you are not supposed to be too far apart, is there?’

  ‘No.’ A shutter came down over Hester’s face.

  ‘I have always considered that it should be possible to be both sheltered and distanced. In fact, I find excessive closeness rather abhorrent. I am all for a little distance – “For the pillars of the temple stand apart. And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow” and all that. When Michael asked me to marry him I made it quite clear that I must have space around me. One sees more of one’s husband as a vicar’s wife than is often the case in marriage – all those shared meals, for one thing. He quite understood. As you know, he fell in love with me when he saw me play Beatrice in an amateur theatre festival and I certainly thought he would make a much better Benedict than the pompous young stockbroker I had to play opposite. We married three months later, as you undoubtedly recall, since I got the distinct impression you thought it a question of marry in haste and repent at leisure. He has kept to his part of the bargain and has never expected me to become swamped by parish affairs.’

  ‘So?’

  Valentine’s face assumed the haughty expression with which she contemplated the undesirable, whether in the wardrobe, cellar, or the darker recesses of her own mind. ‘I wouldn’t want to feel in debt, to be thought to have cheated. It was quite unsettling to listen to those young women doing their emotional accountancy, calculating the credits and debits of their sexual experience, making sure of their dues. It seemed to reduce marriage to a rather sordid little swindle.’

  They were silent for a few moments, then Valentine said quietly, ‘I found them very destructive – quite elemental, really.’

  ‘Better destructive and elemental than passive, wouldn’t you think?’

  Valentine said, ‘Yes, of course. I am superficial. I do know that.’

  Hester had the feeling that this was what she had been trying to say all the time, some kind of necessary confession.

  They talked of other things – the vicarage garden party, public lending right, the pleasures of a fuchsia hedge. Valentine said, looking out of the window again, ‘That boy is talking to himself.’

  ‘To the wistaria, I expect. He seems to have an affinity with growing things. I took him because I thought he needed help, but he is so good that it is I who need him now.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Shirley Treglowan’s boy.’

  Valentine looked at him with interest. Michael was calling on Shirley Treglowan this very morning to discuss this lad. She said, ‘Oh, that harpy!’

  ‘I don’t think she is – not that I wouldn’t welcome a harpy or two in our midst.’

  ‘He is making faces at us.’

  ‘I’m afraid he does that rather a lot. But I think it means something this time. I had better go and see.’

  It was the kind of cue Valentine seldom missed. When she had gone Hester went out to Desmond. ‘You must learn to communicate verbally,’ she said. ‘It will be expected of you at university.’

  They discussed the staking of peonies.

  ‘You won’t be able to stop pulling those faces if you aren’t careful. You ought to see someone about it.’

  ‘I’m all right. I know a hawk from a handsaw.’

  ‘Very clever. But look how he and his family ended up.’ She pulled out a seedling foxglove. ‘Would you like that, Desmond? Elsinore translated to your own home, bodies strewn about you – your mother, father, sister, perhaps?’

  He looked at her, his face still for once, and she saw that he simply did not know the answer.

  ‘The things I do, it makes me blush to think of them.’ Shirley Treglowan moved a rack on which clothes were drying away from the one armchair. Michael sat down and she went into the kitchen soon returning with two cups of coffee which she carried to the door into the hall. ‘Turn down that noise, Tracy,’ she shouted. ‘What did I buy you those earphones for?’ She handed one cup to Michael Hoath. ‘Where was I?’

  ‘Blushing,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘Oh yes. It’s only that I’m so hustled all the time and everything gets jumbled up and then I just jump, without looking, you know what I mean?’

  ‘Perhaps an illustration might help.’

  ‘I’m not a fool. It’s just that there’s never the time to get myself composed before things start happening. I always seem to come in half-way
through – like people at the theatre who arrive late for a Pinter play. Not, of course, that it makes much difference with Pinter if you don’t come in at the beginning. But usually it helps.’

  Michael Hoath said, ‘Yes, indeed.’ Outside the branches of a lilac tree were thrashing about and the last of the blossom floated against the window pane. He had the sense of a strong wind blustering through his mind, shredding what ideas he had about this situation.

  ‘If only I had time to compose myself.’ The brown eyes looked at him, eager for understanding. He was himself a person who constantly reached out to others and he liked this eagerness in her. He inclined towards her, his free hand clenching and unclenching on his knee. He prayed that he would not fail her. ‘Everything seems constantly to be falling apart around me and I like order. I make sure I have order in my classroom. I’m not one of those teachers who can’t keep control. But when they are all on top of each other screeching there isn’t time to sort out who did what to whom. I just plunge in and take one of them by the scruff of the neck – it always works. But it’s not all that effective outside the classroom situation.’

  ‘Has anything particular happened?’ he asked, hoping to pin down one coherent statement before it billowed beyond his grasp.

  Shirley thought about the scene yesterday – Desmond sitting there where the Vicar was now, listening to the transistor.

  ‘Filth!’ she had shouted and switched it off. ‘I don’t want to listen to any more of that filth!’ She bit her lip. ‘I’m not sure I can tell you about this.’

  ‘Take your time.’ He was glad of the respite.

  She reviewed the scene.

  ‘It’s not filth. It’s the news, Mum. It happens.’

  ‘Now, you listen to me. Your sister came home today saying something dreadful about Pete Atwood. You know him? That fellow who’s always doing things for people, mending their cars . . .’