LOOK, STRANGER Read online

  ‘When I was head of Greighton Manor School, I always advised the Governors against any form of advertizing,’ Miss Draisey said. ‘I used to say, the product advertizes the school.’

  ‘You mean your gels?’ Colonel Maitland asked, putting a rubber band round a packet of five-pound notes.

  ‘Indeed.’ She bent towards him and Donald Jarman thought for a jubilant moment that she was going to dig the old man in the ribs. ‘And we were never short of pupils. Never!’

  ‘But we are short of church members,’ Jarman said. ‘That must mean there is something wrong with our product.’

  ‘I don’t feel there is anything wrong with you and me, do you, Colonel?’

  ‘We’re getting on a bit, my dear,’ he said philosophically, writing figures on an envelope. ‘We’re getting on a bit. How much have you got there, Donald?’

  The next Sunday was Low Sunday and Vereker, in common with most other clergymen, was well aware what that meant in terms of congregation. He went visiting again. This time he went to the area between the fairground and the new block of holiday flats where the poorer people in his parish lived. At one time this had been a pleasant neighbourhood consisting of well-built terraced houses each with gardens back and front. But some of the little terraces had been pulled down to make way for the new flats, and then the fairground had completed the breakdown. Now the houses stood in twos and threes and the place had the gap-toothed look of the bombed sites he had seen in pictures of war-time London. When Vereker first saw the area, he hoped, being something of an optimist, that here he might find that the people had been drawn together by the disaster that had befallen them, that they would have established a community life of a kind, coarse, rough, perhaps, but real. It wasn’t like that. Some of the men were out of work, others were waiting for the blow to fall. There was resentment about the Common Market, capitalism, the unions, the Socialist right and the Socialist left, but no one had anything positive to say about the situation. After supper, the men went to the pub, or to the working men’s club near the harbour, or they sat at home dully watching television. Here, as elsewhere on the island, people stagnated. When asked whether they would come to All Hallows most of them said ‘no’ and when asked why, they said that the church was not for them. The Anglican Church, he was told time and time again, was a middle-class institution.

  Occasionally, however, he had a sensation that a signal was being sent out, very faint, overlaid with the meaningless noises he and others were making. ‘Help me! Help me!’ the signal said. The need could not be defined; it was simply there in a troubled eye, in the silence after the voice gave up its struggle with words. Vereker dared not say too much to these people because the signal was so weak and he was so unsure of himself. He could only say, ‘Come to All Hallows. At least, give it a trial.’

  In Virginia Close, the trial was over and the case had been lost. They were polite, they poured sherry and gave donations, one or two offered him a day’s sailing; but as far as they were concerned, the Church had outlived its purpose. They were sophisticated people, moderate and sceptical, and they had outgrown religion. If there had ever been a voice inside them that cried out for help, they had rationalized it away. When he left, they would turn on the television and settle down to watch a play about the struggle of the working classes, written by a member of the middle-class. Class. Class. Always class. There weren’t any people in England, only members of classes dying behind their stockades. England had no breadth; he felt it crowding in on him, over-peopled and cramped, bedevilled with intricate, baffling complexities which can only ravel up existence when people are closely confined. Yet there were depths. Suddenly, without warning, they were there at your feet, black, bottomless, terrifying; you skimmed along on the surface thinking you were managing pretty well, then suddenly the ground had shifted and you had stepped into a well.

  He had this feeling particularly strongly when he visited the rural part of his parish. It was a grey day with a wrinkled sky and water lying in the furrows of the fields. There was a screen of poplars shielding a big, square old house which was in a shocking state of disrepair but still retained a weary air of breeding. A little further on there was an even larger house sprawling behind unkempt hedges. He had never met the people who lived in this little pocket which lay away to the east of Carrick Farm. As he walked along the road one or two cars went by, travelling fast, and a boy on a motor bike who rode as if he had far to go. They made a noise and churned up mud, but they did not impinge on whatever life went on in this place.

  He called at both the big houses but got no answer. At the first, he was astonished to see a goat peering from one of the ground floor windows. At the other house, an upper window was occupied by a tattered red setter who watched him sympathetically but showed no sign of rousing such of the inhabitants who might be hidden in the more remote regions of the house. Further down the road, there was a row of farm cottages which, he had been told, were no longer attached to a farm; they had the look of places which have outlived their usefulness. He worked his way down the row.

  The people who lived in this row were tenants, and the owner, knowing that the property was scheduled for demolition, had refused to carry out repairs; the sentence of death hung over Mutton Row. But in spite of cracked plaster and rotting window frames, life lingered obstinately, and dingy curtains, a pot of African violets, a packet of Daz on a window sill, gave evidence of human occupation in all save the last cottage. Here, Nature appeared to be doing the work of the demolition men unhampered by any effort on the part of the occupants. Not only was plaster cracked and woodwork rotten, but all the windows were broken and so many tiles were missing from the roof that one suspected a more profitable use had been found for them elsewhere. Only the sound of a child crying indicated that the place was inhabited. The front door swung open into the living-room when Vereker touched the knocker. Something not human scuttled across the uncarpeted floor. As far as he could see there was no furniture in the room except for a settee resting against the far wall; it had one leg missing and the stuffing was ripped out of its belly. There was a smell of bad drains and damp which would have been a good deal worse had the place not been so thoroughly ventilated.

  The woman came down the stairs and Vereker announced himself while she was still in deep shadow. ‘My parish church?’ There was triumphant malice in her voice; too late, he recognized his erstwhile squatter. ‘You and God weren’t bothered with me when you talked to me last time, were you? Couldn’t get rid of me fast enough.’

  ‘I’m afraid there wasn’t room in the vicarage.’ The words had a dismally familiar ring.

  ‘There was room for the Anguilos, though. Didn’t tell her to fuck off, did you?’

  The curtains of the house next door parted and a white, ferret- face peeped out, topped by a wounded head bound in gauze and malformed by curlers.

  ‘I can understand how you must feel,’ Vereker mumbled.

  A child had been wailing from somewhere above for several minutes and she went to the foot of the stairs and shouted, ‘Are you going to shut up?’ The wailing continued and she ascended three steps. ‘You know what I promised you!’ The child hiccupped a few words, incomprehensible to Vereker, but apparently understood by its mother who said, ‘Well, you can’t. So shut up. See?’ She came down the stairs and renewed her attack on Vereker.

  ‘God? Is He still around, then? Does He get out much, or do you keep Him locked away in the church? I’ll tell you one thing, for sure, I’m not coming to church; He can make a home visit. Maybe then He’d do something useful, like getting us rehoused. Even Dr. Leishner does a home visit sometimes, domiciliary he calls it, because he’s a psychiatrist and “home visit” wouldn’t sound important enough for him. How do I go about getting a domiciliary from God? Do I have to do it through you? That won’t do me much good, you’ve already turned me out of the vicarage. What did He say when you reported that to Him? Well done, good and faithful, is that what He said? Well done
, good and faithful, we don’t want a load of rubbish like that at the vicarage!’

  ‘Mrs. Peters. . . .’

  ‘Can He hear me? Will He strike me dead?’

  ‘Mrs. Peters, God isn’t. . . .’

  ‘It’s what He bleeding well is that interests me.’

  Vereker, who found this a difficult problem at the best of times, said feebly, ‘God does hear you, Mrs. Peters.’

  ‘So does the housing manager, but he doesn’t do anything. We’ve got no lighting, no running water, and he tells me it’s dangerous to use an oil stove. It’s dangerous to live, mate, I told him. If God can sort out the housing manager, I’ll come to church.’

  At this point, rescue came in the form of Mr. Peters who walked down the row looking about him with an air compounded of surprise and condescension, as though he was coming to such things as fields, trees, cottages, for the first time and thought them well enough made. He almost overshot Mutton Row, but checked himself at the last minute and eased his way between Vereker and Mrs. Peters as though neither of them existed. Mrs. Peters grabbed his arm. ‘What do you think you’re going to do, then? Lie on that couch all day, like you did yesterday? Not in here, you’re not! This isn’t the national health.’ He took no notice of her. He had a high- coloured, remarkably unlined face, and blue, unblinking eyes fringed with thick brown eyelashes; a scar ran from his left temple to the side of his mouth: it was a face like a cracked china doll. Vereker didn’t think Mrs. Peters would ever get much change out of him. He had, however, diverted her attention and while she was fulminating against the health service, and Dr. Leishner in particular, Vereker turned away.

  The Low Sunday attendances were better than usual, but Vereker was not encouraged. He had come badly out of his meeting with Mrs. Peters and this disturbed him. ‘I should have accepted things as they are instead of meddling with people I don’t understand,’ he thought.

  One day he spoke of this to Zoe Lindsay. She moved about the house so quietly during the mornings that he was seldom aware of her, but at eleven o’clock she always brought him a cup of coffee and two digestive biscuits.

  ‘That coffee is a life-saver!’ he said on this particular morning. ‘I don’t seem able to get going today.’

  ‘Are you writing your sermon?’

  ‘It would be truer to say I’m not writing my sermon. How can I preach to people I don’t understand? What have I to offer them?’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  For a moment he thought she was swearing in a quiet, unemphatic way; then he realized she was answering his question.

  ‘You know, people have odd ideas about Americans.’ He was thoroughly irritated. ‘They think we all belong to some crazy sect or other, hot gospellers, shakers, you name it, we belong! Well, I don’t belong. I can’t just stand up in front of people and offer them Jesus Christ as though He was this week’s bargain buy!’

  He wished he hadn’t started this conversation and hoped she would go away now, he had his sermon to finish and his coffee was getting cold. She remained, however, seated on the library stool, her expression meditative, faintly puzzled, as befits the seeker after knowledge. Vereker found her disturbing, the living embodiment of that depth which he found so black and incomprehensible.

  ‘Who is He?’ she said in that quiet, uninflected voice. ‘I go to church every week and I take communion, but I don’t meet Him.’

  ‘Did you ever speak to Roberts about this?’

  ‘He told me it would help if I kept repeating “I believe, help Thou my unbelief”. But it hasn’t really got anything to do with believing. It’s a question of meeting. I don’t ever meet Him.’

  It was difficult, in her case, to know exactly what was meant by meeting. Vereker, with the nuns in mind, wondered how best he could elicit some information as to her state of mind. While he was deliberating she unfolded herself from the library stool and went quietly out of the room. Vereker drank his lukewarm coffee and reflected unhappily on the fact that it was not the people he did not understand, it was their questions. Then he thought: but why should I worry, since Zoe Lindsay is probably mad and Mrs. Peters is certainly disreputable; and, in any case, questions about the nature of God are best left to theologians. He picked up his notes and tried to concentrate on his sermon, but he was thinking: that other question, “Who say ye that I am?” is that to be left to the theologians?

  How can a twentieth century priest answer that? he thought. There are no words with which to strike the image. What does it mean today to be a good shepherd, a true vine, to be “king”, “master”, “lord”? There are no archetypes today, only case histories.

  That evening, he said to Donald Jarman, ‘I’d like to have a meeting in the church hall, an open meeting, with a theme.’

  ‘The role of the Christian in a secular society?’ Jarman suggested, with a hint of weariness.

  ‘I thought of something simpler than that – “Who is Jesus?”.’

  ‘People may find the “who is” a little disconcerting. It does rather suggest that this is an open-ended question.’

  ‘If they think it’s a closed question they can come and say so. Will they?’

  ‘Yes, I think they probably will. Our folk wouldn’t have come for Roberts; but you’re an American and a bit of a novelty. The Pentecostals will come, expecting some kind of a revelation, again because you’re an American and they believe revelation is your speciality.’

  ‘How will people like Colonel Maitland react?’

  ‘If you really want to do it, persuade the other chaps, Agnew at St. Luke’s, and the Methodist and Baptist ministers. When they have agreed will be the time to tell the p.c.c’

  ‘What do you think yourself?’

  Jarman thought for a moment, his strange, triangular eyes and thick jowls giving him the look of a mastiff anticipating some good red meat. ‘I think it will be interesting.’ Vereker wondered how the Roman Jarman would have viewed the circus.

  Things worked out much as Jarman had predicted. The main objection came from an unexpected quarter. Nancy said, ‘You’ll never get the English working classes into church if that’s what you’re after. They fell for it once, they won’t again.’

  ‘How do you mean, they fell for it once?’

  ‘Well, with John Wesley and people like that.’

  ‘But Wesley did a lot for the working class, surely?’

  ‘He made their lives tolerable by giving them an outlet for their emotions, and telling them they mattered to God. So they kept quiet and allowed themselves to be exploited. God lined up with the people who enslaved the working classes and the working classes aren’t going to forget that in a hurry.’

  Vereker was silent. Nancy said, ‘I don’t want to hurt you, but I think you ought to know that I don’t believe in God. And if I did believe in him, he’s so awful I wouldn’t be able to worship him.’

  She regarded him expectantly; she had come to a halt and looked to him to recharge her batteries. After a moment, he said, ‘I couldn’t worship that god, either.’

  ‘Well, aren’t you going to tell me about the God I should worship?’ she challenged. ‘Tell me about Him. Come on, I’m listening.’

  But she wasn’t listening; and it wasn’t God she was ranting about, it was her earthly father, Matthew Vereker. She was growing away from him and this was the only way she could find of telling him. ‘Here are the things that are precious to you, take them; they’re not mine and they aren’t of any value to me. What I want from you is my life; you’ve had it in your keeping too long.’ That was what she was saying and it should have been said years ago. He just wished it didn’t hurt so much.

  When the hurt eased a little he was able to assure himself that he was a sensible parent who saw his daughter reasonably objectively and knew her weaknesses. Life could be dangerous; it wasn’t safe for anyone as unprepared as Nan to go striding into it with such inadequate weapons. She ought to wait a little, sort herself out a bit, grow some more. He wondered whe
ther he should talk to her about it, and it seemed that she would have welcomed this because he saw more of her than usual in the next few days and he guessed that she was frightened. She took every opportunity to pick a quarrel with him; but he could tell that rather than trying out new ideas on him, she was inviting him to reassert his authority. The main subject of her conversation was God, God Almighty, God the Father. Vereker listened to her, sometimes he asked questions, but he did not argue.

  On the night of the meeting, she said, ‘Don’t expect me to come.’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t come.’ Vereker was short of patience.

  ‘You don’t want me?’ she asked in surprise.

  In truth, he did not want her this evening. He was nervous about the meeting and wished he hadn’t called it. Nancy’s presence would be an unnecessary complication. But he saw that he could not tell her this. Although she thought it natural that she should make a life of her own, she would be shocked at the idea that she could be excluded from any part of his life. He resorted to guile. ‘I shouldn’t come yet awhile, anyway. Only a few people may turn up and things probably won’t get going for the first half hour.’

  Word had got round, however, that some form of American “spectacular” was being given a trial run in All Hallows. By the time Nancy arrived the hall was full and several people, including Tudor, were standing at the back. Tudor was too far away for her to join him. She wondered why he had come. In the last row a girl with a pile of frizzed brown hair was saying to the man next to her, ‘You have to be joking!’

  ‘I tell you this is going to be good. I went to the Pentecostals last week. By the end of the evening the old daisy next to me was acting like she was transmitting the Fifth Gospel.’

  ‘I don’t care about the Fifth Gospel.’ Her voice was a notch higher. ‘I’m not going to spend the evening here.’

  ‘Fuck off, then,’ he said indifferently.