Cold Hand in Mine: Strange Stories

'Aren't we all?' The cheap words had sprung to her lips on some volition of their own.

'Yes, Mrs Hughes. Indeed, we all are. Indeed.'

Rosa said nothing. She felt that any words she could find would be likewise unworthy of her; would show her in an unjust light. It was a long time since she had conversed with any 'educated person'.

'Perhaps I might sit beside you for a moment?'

Rosa nodded and, as one does, drew the skirt of her coat more closely to her.

'And what was your life before you came here? If you care to speak of it, of course.'

'For the last eight years, I was a secretary. Then the manager sent for me and told me I was past being a secretary with that company, but that he had arranged for me to be transferred to the handling side. I said No.'

'I am sure you were wise,' said the man. 'And what happened to you before the last eight years?' Both of them were staring straight ahead across the pulsing, empty sea.

'Before that I was seeing more of life.'

'Did you prefer that?'

'No,' replied Rosa. 'I disliked both times,' and, when he said nothing, she spoke again. 'Who are you?'

'I am the curate in charge of your parish. I too am retired, but I come here every autumn in order to permit your rector to rest. He is very elderly, even more so than I am, and, alas very infirm indeed, as I expect you know.'

'No,' said Rosa, once more defiant, as always when confronted with any kind of official demand. 'I don't go to church.'

'Possibly not,' said the man. 'But then you have no need to.'

'I wonder how you know,' said Rosa, cheaper than ever, and misunderstanding.

'You already live in a holy place.'

'What's that?' asked Rosa, her heart in a sudden vice.

'I myself should not dare to live there.'

'Tell me,' said Rosa, with all the stolidity she could muster. 'What exactly is there that I should be afraid of?'

'It is not a matter of anything to fear in the usual sense. It is a spiritual matter.'

'As how? I don't know about such things.'

'Oh,' he said. 'Where were you educated?'

'In a convent,' she replied, more quietly. 'But I've long ago forgotten everything I was taught.'

He replied in a murmur, as if to himself. 'I can hear the beating of your heart.'

But having said that, he said nothing more, while Rosa sat waiting, almost peacefully, for whatever might befall.

'I come here daily,' he said in the end. 'I like to contemplate the immensity. There is a lack of immensity in the world. Do you find that also?'

'Yes,' said Rosa. 'I suppose I do. But I don't look very much for it. I don't look very much for anything.'

'It is perhaps odd,' he continued, 'that we have not met until now. I believe that you too walk along the cliff.'

'Yes,' said Rosa. 'And I may have passed you without noticing. I do that often.'

'I think I should have noticed you' he said, as if seriously thinking about it.

Rosa noticed that upon the grey sea was now the beginning of a black shadow.

'This,' she remarked, 'is when my mother would have said 'The days are drawing in'.'

'Yes,' he replied. 'Soon we shall have to light the lamp before tea-time.'

A sea bird descended from the blackening clouds, screaming and searching.

'You haven't told me,' said Rosa. 'This thing about changing the porters. People seem to keep talking about it. It sounds rather pointless to me. And, anyway, it doesn't happen. I've been there nearly a year and it hasn't happened yet, as far as I know.'

'Perhaps you have not known what to look for and to listen for. The porters are changed very quietly. No one speaks. No one grumbles. Surely you have not been given the impression that they go by shouting, like a trade union march?'

'I have to admit,' said Rosa, taking the plunge, 'that I never heard about it at all until this morning, and then only from my char, if that is what I should call her. She said the great thing was if I did hear anything, not to look for what it was.'

'It is a disturbing sight for those unaccustomed to death and the hereafter: which is most of the world around us, as I need hardly say. I think that you are one, Mrs Hughes, who could not only listen and look, but kneel and touch with impunity.'

'Do I really want to?' asked Rosa, turning to him completely for the first time.

'Oh, yes, indeed, Mrs Hughes,' he replied. 'To kneel and to touch are the proper practices of the pilgrim. That must be one of the things you have temporarily forgotten.'

'As with saints and relics and so forth?'

He smiled at her for the first time.

'But what should I get out of it?' She blushed. 'No, I don't quite mean that. What I mean is why me? Why should I be supposed to do it more than another?'

'Because, Mrs Hughes, your whole life has been a quest for perfection. You have always been concerned only with perfection, and as in this world there is no perfection, you are sad. Sadness can be a very special — shall I say, concession?'

'I am sure the nuns used to tell us it was a sin.'

'As with so many things, it depends upon what kind of sadness it is.'

'Do you know,' said Rosa impulsively, 'I'm not sure that you haven't changed my entire afternoon!'

'Where you now live,' he replied, 'there was for centuries a shrine with an image; and before that, probably on the very same spot, another image, very different and yet in important ways just the same; and, before that — who knows? — perhaps the goddess herself, in propria persona, if you will permit the words. Needless to say, no one could behold the goddess herself in her grove and continue to live. That is possible only when the divine is provisionally mediated into man.'

'For a clergyman you seem to take stock in an awful lot of different gods.'

'There is only one.'

'Yes,' she said. 'I see that too. At least I do now. You seem to make me understand things that I never understood before. And yet you don't say anything that's in the least new.'

'Daily life is entirely a matter of the pattern men and women impose upon it: of style, as the artist calls it. And the character of that pattern is very important, as day follows day. None the less, reality lies far behind, and is unchangeable: is ritual, in fact. It was of reality, I suspect, that your charwoman was speaking — perhaps gossiping. Reality is often dangerous, so she was cautioning you to avoid it.'

'And you?'

'I advise you to advance towards it. When you hear the faint sounds I spoke of, throw open your door and see what there is to see. Fall upon your knees and stretch out your hand, as I said. And of course be prepared for a big change; something indescribable, unpredictable.'

'I have no idea what you are talking about,' said Rosa slowly.

'Few have. My general reputation in the parish is that of a complete visionary. I am said to go around upsetting people. Not that many care one way or the other.' On the instant, he rose to his feet. 'But now I must return to them. I am very glad indeed to have met you, Mrs Hughes.' As he could not lift his hat, he waved it vaguely around. She had a few seconds in which to examine his full face closely.

'I understand almost nothing you have said, ' Rosa repeated. 'And yet you have made me feel much better. Thank you.'

She would have gone after him along the cliff path, had he proposed it, but he did not. He merely bowed slightly and strode rapidly away. For a minute or so in the dusk, she could see his long black shape flickering and capering like a scrap of burned paper blown along by the wind, but soon he was no longer visible.

A heavy raindrop fell upon the back of her left hand. She looked up. The sky was now really black, with a