Angels and Men (24 page)

CHAPTER 16

Mara sat up in bed. Today was her last day. She was returning to college. Her mother, alerted by the Principal, was driving up to collect her. How can I face her? I must get up and go out, she decided. One last walk to try to prepare myself. She pushed the covers back.

It was a mild day. She went out of the house and made her way up the drive towards the road. The sound of a hymn being sung in the chapel floated out to her as she passed. It was a Lent hymn, and after a moment the familiar words went through her mind:

    
Lord Jesus think on me,

    
And purge away my sin.

    
From earthborn passions set me free,

    
And make me pure within.

Earthborn passions. Passionate lust or passionate anger. By thy cross and passion, good Lord, deliver us.

She reached the end of the drive and turned along the narrow country lane. The first signs of spring were visible in the hedgerows – coltsfoot, celandines – and she could hear the early lambs bleating in the distance. Her mind had gone back repeatedly to her conversation with Johnny by the river, worrying at it (sex? anger?) until she was no longer sure what he had actually said, let alone what he might have meant by it. Something caught her eye in the undergrowth. The first violet, she thought with pleasure, but when she stopped and peered more closely it was only an old scrap of chocolate wrapper. How could a man as good-looking as Johnny be attracted to her? Was it possible? Her heart was beginning to race at the thought, when the truth hit her like a glass of cold water in the face. The risk for him lay in her circumstances, not her attractiveness. He would be all too well aware of the potentially explosive situation they were in. Her grief, his kindness. Too many clergy had found themselves enmeshed like this: something that began as pastoral concern flaring up into fornication or adultery. She forced herself to examine her motives and found that they could not bear such scrutiny. Her mind squirmed.

She began to walk on again. I'm like Joanna, she thought with loathing. I'll have to keep him at arm's length from now on. Just when I was getting to know him at last. It's not fair. She felt a tear creeping down her cheek and she smeared it away angrily. Well, it's March now. By the middle of June it'll all be over. Three months, then I'll never have to see him again. I can survive till then. Some remote part of her exhaled as though with relief. Why do I find sex so disgusting?

Her two encounters so far had both conformed unhappily to the Hobbesian view of the life of man: nasty, brutish and short. The first time especially. Fifteen was too young. Despoiled. Deflowered. Good words for it.

Someone's party. She had tagged along with Hester, resolved to lose her virginity to find out what all the fuss was about. ‘Why don't you and me go for a little drive, darling?' Car pulling into a dark lay-by, sticky vinyl seats, steamed-up windows. She was too terrified to say she'd changed her mind. ‘What's the matter with you, for Christ's sake? Relax, darling.' Sweaty hands wrenched her open as though they were jointing a chicken, as he drove his thing into her. Mara's flesh recoiled from the memory.

The second time should have been better. A good-looking third year in her first week at Cambridge. An argument in the college bar about feminism. He had followed her back to her room spitting with rage. ‘You know what you need, don't you?' And she had replied coolly, ‘OK, then. Do it.'

They faced one another in silence.

‘OK. Get on the bed.'

Mara was unsure, looking back, who had been calling whose bluff. She had disguised her fear as contempt, and this had completely unmanned him. He had scarcely managed three thrusts and an apology. They avoided one another for the rest of the year. What a pitiful tally. A crow cawed from a dead elm as though it were laughing at her. It would be different with Johnny, though, whined a voice. No it wouldn't, she said to it. I'd probably still panic and freeze up.

The road ahead curved along the side of a hill. She followed it, and as she rounded the bend, the whole landscape suddenly opened up in front of her. She stopped still in surprise, watching the sunlight and clouds chasing over the rolling hills. For one dizzy moment she could almost feel the earth whirling under her. If only I could, now, fling the road away under my feet and hurl myself into the waiting sky. She stood, head back, eyes closed. Some thought was coming upon her. She felt it gathering itself, and then it burst into her mind. I want to paint this.

She took a deep breath. I remember this point. It was always like this – the moment of conception, when you believe this time you'll really achieve it – walk with the angels on the wings of the wind. But even as the brush touches the canvas, you have failed. The vision is dragged down by the oil in its feathers. She wondered if it had been this – the repeated striving and failure – that had driven her to turn her back on painting.

Memories of school jostled in her head. She could almost smell the classrooms and feel the stifling boredom. Art lessons had been a liberation. In the sixth form she spent all her free time in the art room. She saw herself again, painting huge canvases while the Third Years pored over cheese-plant leaves or halves of red cabbage. Only the art teacher had any idea what she was trying to do. Everyone else thought it perverse that someone who could draw so well should want to paint abstracts.

Another memory. She was in the office of Mr Doncaster, the head of the sixth form. ‘And you'll be applying to Art College, of course.' It had not even been a question. Mara had gone into the room uncertain, wanting to discuss the decision which was tearing her apart, but instead she heard herself say: ‘I want to read English at Cambridge.'

A short, barking laugh from Mr Doncaster. Now at last came the teacher's chance for revenge. He had suffered too many years of mute insubordination from this difficult girl. ‘I doubt you're really up to Cambridge. Your A-level predictions are nowhere near good enough. Go away and think about it again.' So she went away and applied directly to a Cambridge college and talked her way into a place. This had redounded to the greater glory of the Bulbourne High School for Girls, and she had never been forgiven for it.

The sound of a curlew rose up in the distance. She stood a moment longer watching the sunlight and the shadows chasing across the hills. Maybe I made the wrong choice. For the first time she let herself wonder whether the satisfaction of settling a score with a hated school was enough. Something in her said it was not. Well, I can live with the consequences of my wrong decisions. She set off again, climbing a stile and beginning to walk impatiently along a footpath. I still intend to have a successful academic career. I made that choice, and I'm not going back. I'd sooner drop litter. She cursed herself, seeing how her mind kept sneaking back to Johnny.

Back at the friary, the car park and entrance hall were full of people. She caught snatches of conversation as she made her way through a crowd which she realized must be a group of curates arriving for post-ordination training. I'm glad I'm leaving, she thought, running up the stairs and leaving the laughter and in-jokes behind her. There was something overpowering about large numbers of clergy in a confined space – like fifteen prima donnas in a stuck lift.

It did not take her long to pack and soon she was sitting on the edge of her narrow bed wondering when her mother would arrive. She felt as though she were waiting to go into an exam hall. Their next meeting would be crucial. It would decide whether they would go on with the polite lies and silences or at last let the truth in. It waited like a dark stranger in a dim hallway. What eyeless sockets lay concealed? What face half eaten away by disease? Better to throw the lights on and know the worst. After all, it might prove to be nothing but an old cassock hanging on a hatstand.

She got up and crossed to the window, too nervous to remain sitting any longer. The wind was stirring the branches of the chestnut trees which surrounded the house. I suppose I ought to go and say thank you to the monks. She was embarrassed at the thought. Who was in charge? The Abbot? The Father Superior? She'd heard the monks talking about someone called Tom as though he might be the head. My God, what about
paying
? How much do I owe them? She had no idea, and for a moment she was paralysed by the fear that she could not afford it; but then the mental picture of her mother's cheque book and fountain pen propelled her out of the door and down the stairs.

The main hallway was quiet. Mara was hovering there when one of the brothers appeared. Seeing her uncertainty, he stopped.

‘You look lost. Can I help you?'

‘Um . . . yes. Is Tom the –'

‘Tom's the guardian, yes. Did you want a word with him?'

She nodded, and the monk set off down the corridor motioning her to follow. As she walked, she was aware of a nagging guilt that she had been so self-absorbed during the weeks she had spent in the friary. She was shown into a room where a grey-haired monk was sitting at a desk. He smiled at her and rose to his feet.

‘Tom, Mara would like a chat with you.' With these words the first monk left. He knows my name, thought Mara as the door closed. Maybe they all know all about me. Tom gestured to a couple of armchairs and they both sat down. A mistake. She had only intended a brief conversation. A clock ticked on the mantelpiece. She cleared her throat.

‘I really only came to say thank you for letting me stay here. I'm going back to college today.' She was trying to make her voice sound pleasant yet not confiding, but her tone was at odds with the old armchair. Its sagging springs and escaping horsehair seemed to say, ‘Relax. Spill the beans.' She was sitting stiffly to combat this impulse. ‘I think it's been a valuable time.' She heard her stilted words and saw Tom incline his head. He looked relaxed, and yet she could tell he was listening with his whole being, aware of every tone and gesture and hidden clue. His silence drove her into the classic error of blurting out more: ‘I feel . . . fortified.' It sounded so odd that she clamped her mouth shut, resolved to say nothing else.

In the end he spoke: ‘You're feeling fortified.'

It was a pleasant voice, and she would have liked it, had she not spotted that he was using that bloody non-directive counselling technique. It had always driven her mad to hear her own words batted straight back at her. She felt that look coming over her face.

‘Yes,' she said perversely. ‘I'm feeling fortified.'

If it had sounded peculiar the first time, now it seemed preposterous. They fell into silence again. The clock ticked. He was watching and waiting. The silence went on until she began to feel wild and strange. She had a sudden urge to bowl him a bouncer: I think I'm in love with you. Then she remembered why she was there. She cleared her throat again.

‘The other thing is, I was wondering how much I owed you? What your rates are, I mean.'

He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Well, I wasn't thinking of charging you, exactly.' She blushed. ‘How about a contribution? I can certainly let you know our rates. Anything you might like to give us towards that amount would be fine.'

‘The problem is I don't actually have my cheque book with me, but if I could . . .' She fumbled to a stop. Money was almost as embarrassing as sex.

‘Send us a cheque, then. No problem.'

Now was her chance to rise and leave with another polite thank you, but she continued to sit. Silence opened up between them again. She saw Tom's right hand move to the cross he wore round his neck. The fingers closed around it, and she knew that this was a mute prayer. Her eyes remained on his hand, waiting for it to move. With each tick of the clock the stillness in the room seemed to intensify. Outside a robin sang.

‘Mara, what do you want?'

‘Nothing!' The word shot frightened out of her.

‘What do you want, Mara?'

Freedom. To be free of all this guilt and fear and shame. To be absolved.

The ticking of the clock grew louder and louder in her ears. She watched as slowly his fingers uncurled from the cross. He raised his hand and pronounced the absolution. The familiar words slid over one another like pebbles worn smooth by centuries of tides. She felt her lips whisper ‘Amen' and her hand moving to cross herself before she could stop it. A great sigh left her, as though her soul had been dislocated for years and had at last been slipped back into joint. For a moment she sat still in wonder, then a sense of outrage seized her. How dare he do that without asking? He had tricked a response out of her, meaningless as a knee-jerk in a doctor's surgery.

She stood up angrily and turned to leave; but she had only taken two steps when she leapt back with a cry. Tom was beside her in an instant. The room seemed dim and she groped for his arm.

‘Did you see that?' She could feel her brain gibbering.

‘See what?' Her mind was still squeaking with terror when to her amazement she heard herself laugh. It seemed to come bubbling up from a forgotten spring. ‘What did you see?' asked Tom. The laughter died back down again. Tick, tick, said the clock.

‘An angel.'

They stood looking at one another.

‘Do you want to tell me about it?'

She shook her head, and he continued to watch her. Was he afraid she was mad?

‘I've seen it before,' she heard herself gabble, as though this would reassure him. For a moment the memory of it made her quiver. The terrible countenance, eyes burning with wrath and fierce joy. Very cautiously she turned her head round, but there was nothing there, just a shaft of sunlight coming through the narrow window. She turned back to face Tom again.

‘I'll be all right,' she said.

His fingers were curled round the cross again, as though he were consulting God to see whether to believe her. Then he smiled and stretched out his hand. He seemed to be welcoming her back. Part of her rebelled, yet in spite of herself she reached out her hand. He grasped it.