Angels and Men (28 page)

They drove without speaking, both staring stubbornly ahead. This felt familiar as well. She remembered the long silent feuds at the farm. Most families specialized either in short sharp rows to clear the air, or week-long smouldering silences. Her uncle's family was equally at home with both. It provided a stark contrast to her mother's family, where people were calm, rational and urbane, and there was no bawling and blaming. No wonder I'm so screwed up, she thought, with a dual heritage like mine. She stole a glance at her father's scowling profile, and to her surprise he pulled over abruptly and stopped the car.

She tensed herself for another diatribe, but all he said was, ‘I'm going to have to ask you to drive. I can't see properly.' She went cold. Words like ‘brain tumour', ‘stroke', bubbled up into her mind.

‘Why? What's happened?'

‘Migraine,' he said, getting out of the car.

They swapped sides.

Mara started the engine.

‘I get them, too.'

‘You do?'

She felt his surprise. God, how much more do we have in common that we don't know about? She drove the last couple of miles home.

‘What do you usually do?' she asked as they pulled up at the vicarage.

‘I try to ignore it.'

He's worse than I am. They went into the house and he put the roses on the kitchen table. She stood irresolute. The silence had been broken without the fight being alluded to.

‘Can I get you anything?' she asked, feeling a little shy.

‘A cup of tea.' He sat down and closed his eyes. She put the kettle on, wondering whether he really wanted tea, or was only trying not to crush her. He had his back to her, and she watched him, and could see the tension visible in every muscle of his neck and shoulders. ‘You should go and lie down,' she wanted to say, but surely this would make him snub her. If they were different people, she might have given him a shoulder massage to unknot the tension and soothe it away. But they never touched one another. She could reach out her hand now and lay it on his shoulder. But she pictured him jumping in surprise, or turning round to see what she wanted.

The kettle boiled and she made the tea. When she turned back, he had his head in his hands. She put the mug gently on the table beside him. He looked up, and for a second she thought he was going to take her hand.

‘Thanks.' She was standing near enough for him to reach out if he wanted to, but he made no move.

‘Can I do anything else?' she asked.

He drew the cup towards him. ‘No. Thanks.'

There was a silence. Mara could hear someone practising the organ in the church. Her father stood up and made as if to move. Then he stopped.

‘You could talk to your mother,' he said abruptly.

‘
Talk
? I do talk to her!'

‘She says she's tried, but you just cut her off.”

‘But . . .' That's not fair! She's the one who won't talk. Was this how she saw it? He turned to leave. ‘I'll try,' she blurted out to his back.

‘Thank you.'

She listened to his footsteps going back to his study, feeling like a wounded child. Why does he have to be so hard? Why won't he touch my hand, even? Because he's like you, said a voice in her head, he thinks you'd only snub him.

It was not until the evening that Mara found the opportunity and the courage to do as she had promised. Her mother was rolling out marzipan on the kitchen table for the simnel cake. She looked up and smiled, but Mara thought she could detect a nervous cheerfulness in her manner.

‘You know, it bothers me each year. How
do
you divide a lump of marzipan into eleven equal pieces?' She laid the circle of marzipan on the cake and began to press it down. ‘I always end up with one apostle bigger than the others.'

‘Well, why don't you divide it into twelve and then just eat Judas?' Her mother put on an expression of mock horror. ‘Or you could make him into a cross for the middle,' added Mara piously.

‘You do it.' Her mother handed her the remaining marzipan and Mara divided it up. There was a silence as they made the eleven apostolic blobs. Mara rolled out Judas and began to make him into an ornate Celtic cross. She sensed that her mother was about to
talk
and resolved not to cut her off again.

‘I hear you and Daddy had words.'

‘Did he tell you that?'

‘He mentioned it.' Her mother was fixing a blob into place with a dab of apricot jam. ‘But I overheard Mavis Malaprop muttering to the others in the baptistery this morning.' She giggled at the memory. Mavis's words were treasured up to become part of vicarage folklore. ‘She said, “There's been a fricassee at the vicarage.” ' The two of them had to stop work for a moment while they recovered from their laughter. ‘What were you arguing about?'

‘Oh, nothing, really. I didn't want to go to the doctor's,' said Mara.

‘Oh, darling!' said her mother a little crossly. ‘You really must get something for that cough.'

‘It's all right. I went. He gave me some antibiotics.'

‘Good.'

‘He also gave me a little lecture on birth control.'

‘And did you
want
a little lecture?'

‘No. But he seemed to think I was sitting there trying to pluck up courage to ask him.'

‘Well, you might have been, I suppose.' Mara had only told her this as an amusing anecdote, and was frustrated that her mother was taking it seriously.

‘Well, as I've no intention of sleeping with anyone at the moment . . .'

‘Intentions,' said her mother, ‘are a notoriously unreliable form of contraception.'

Mara bent over her marzipan cross in embarrassment, realizing her mother was referring to her own experience. But wasn't this an opportunity to
talk
? ‘What did Grandma and Grandpa say when you told them you were pregnant?' she asked, continuing to embellish the cross with close concentration.

‘Mummy was wonderful. She went with me to tell Daddy. He just said “Ah”. I can remember the silence, the old clock ticking majestically. At last he said, “And have I met my future son-in-law?” The terrible thing was I had this overwhelming urge to laugh.' So that's where I get it from. Mara pictured the scene. The Bishop in his study, the disgraced daughter biting her lips. Mother being wonderful.

‘So there was no question of your not marrying him?'

‘Oh, no. But then, I wanted to. Passionately.' Mara felt herself blushing. ‘He was so different from all the other young men one met. They were all so . . . I suppose I went up to Cambridge wanting to escape. I loved my parents dearly and I know I probably made them rather unhappy. But home was . . . stifling.' By now they were both fiddling industriously with the marzipan. ‘Things don't always turn out as you imagine, I suppose.' They lapsed back into silence.

‘What will you wear to Rupert's?' asked her mother. Mara glared at her, the train of thought being all too apparent. Her mother laughed. ‘Apropos of nothing.'

‘I haven't decided. Look,' she said, showing her mother the finished cross to distract her.

‘Darling, it's wonderful! You're so clever.' Mara watched her transfer it carefully into the middle of the apostles, then put the cake into the Aga to brown. ‘Now, how about some coffee?' She put the kettle on. They sat at the table.

‘I was only nineteen when you were born,' said her mother.

Nineteen! Don't cut her off. Say something. ‘It must have been . . . difficult.'

‘Yes. I never finished my degree. Morgan was sitting his Finals when you were born. Then he taught Classics for a couple of years at a boys' school. It was all rather . . . Money and so on. He wouldn't take anything from Mummy and Daddy, of course. After that he started his training for the ministry. I wasn't much help to him, really.' There was a long silence. Her mother went bravely on. ‘I had post-natal depression, you see.'

Mara forced herself to follow. ‘Yes. You said.'

‘Well, to start with it was post-natal psychosis, actually.' Terror sang through Mara's veins. ‘It's a chemical thing. Hormones, I think. It's just one of those things that sometimes happens. You had to be taken away. For your own sake. Your father took you to Huw and Susan.'

I don't want to know
. But her lips spoke anyway: ‘Why? What about Hester? Where was she?'

‘With me, in hospital. The psychiatric ward.'

‘Why couldn't I go with you?' Who was asking these questions?

‘I was ill, darling. I got terribly confused. I thought you were someone else's baby.'

You rejected me! Say it. Just say it! And all my life since then you've been trying to make it up to me. But you never will. Nothing you do will ever make up for that
. She looked up and saw her mother biting back the tears. For a moment she felt the words would burst out of her, but then the rage passed.

‘I seem to have survived,' she heard herself say.

Her mother wiped her eyes. ‘Oh, darling. I'm sorry.'

I'm the only daughter she has now. The thought of Hester rose up like another unscalable peak. Had they climbed this high only to gain a view of further ridges stretching out beyond one another into infinity? Mara reached out and took her mother's hand.

‘We'll probably be all right.' They dried their eyes. ‘Although I don't think that cake will be.'

Her mother leapt up and rescued it. ‘I forgot the coffee, too,' she said. They sat drinking and chatting in the warm kitchen. As they talked, Mara could sense they were skirting round the foothills, sizing up the task which lay ahead. They were still sitting there an hour later when her father came into the kitchen in his cassock.

‘I'm going over to the church now,' he said.

Her mother stood up. ‘I didn't notice the time,' she said. ‘We've been talking and doing the cake.'

Mara felt her father glance at her, and cringed in case he said something approving; but when he merely looked at the cake, she felt a surge of hurt disappointment. Nothing I do is ever good enough for him.

‘Mara made the cross,' said her mother. Her father nodded.

‘Very good.'

‘You don't even like marzipan,' Mara burst out. I'm behaving like a five-year-old, she thought.

He stared at her. ‘My appreciation is aesthetic, not culinary.' There was a pause. He sounded like Andrew.

‘I'll go and get my coat,' said her mother. ‘Why don't you come with us, Mara? You always used to love the Easter vigil.'

Mara looked away in embarrassment. ‘No thanks,' she muttered. ‘I'll stay here.' Her mother disappeared, but her father remained in the kitchen. Was he going to say something? Perhaps he thought she was cutting her mother off again. She looked at him defiantly, and found she couldn't read his expression. Maybe he was about to bawl, ‘Get off your arse and into that church!'

Suddenly his lips twitched. ‘ “Ignorant Welsh peasant”?' he said, as though her words had only just at that moment filtered through into his consciousness. He shook his head and left the room, but she thought she saw him smiling as he went.

They had gone. Mara picked up the cake and took it through to the pantry. On the shelf there was a bowl of dyed eggs for the Sunday school children. On impulse Mara picked out a pale blue one and took it back to the kitchen. She found a black pen and began to decorate it. Her parents' initials began to form on the egg's smooth surface. It's years since I did anything like this for them.

The service would be well under way by now. She pictured the dark church, and the one point of light – the paschal candle. Then the time would come for the reredos to be opened. A sudden blaze of gold.
He is risen!
All the lights coming on together. She continued to draw the intertwined letters, thinking of the two different families which had combined to make her what she was. The minutes slid by. Hester and I used to sit at this table every Easter doing this. She was so lost in her work that at one point she looked up to admire Hester's egg, and saw only the empty chair.

In the church the service was ending. She heard the organ playing the Easter hymn:

    
The strife is o'er, the battle done.

    
Now is the victor's triumph won.

    
O let the song of praise be sung.

    
Alleluia!

She bent her head again and continued drawing through her tears.

CHAPTER 19

This joyful Eastertide, away with sin and sorrow
, sang Mara's mind. It had been raining, but now the sun had tempted her out to wander along the footpaths around the village. The middle of Easter week. A warm wind was blowing and she felt as though her soul was coming out of hibernation. In her mind she was high above the fields, striding across the blue heavens in her seven-league boots. Hester and I used to climb the highest hills on stormy days and leap into the gusts of wind. She felt so close now that Mara could almost have reached out and held her hand.

She paused for a moment. Isn't this what we always called the Primrose Path? She looked about her, and sure enough, there were the pale clusters of primroses along the hedge. She gathered some for her mother, as she and Hester had always done, and continued along the path. It led to the bottom corner of the churchyard. How many years was it since she had gone in there? Three? Nearly four? She had never visited Hester's grave. Perhaps today was the day? There was the old iron gate. It squealed as she opened it and entered. It had all seemed like a joke at the time – gathering together, weeping, putting a cold body in a box into the earth. Mara had not gone to the funeral. Despite her mother's bitten-back tears. What was the point?

She walked between the rows of graves. Her eyes sped swiftly from one to the next until her sister's name leapt out. The letters were still too new and sharp. Hester Johns. Her dates. The words of Julian of Norwich:
All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well
. The sunlight was shining on the wet grass and on the trees and hedges. The wind stirred. It might be a stranger's grave, and yet it was Hester's body lying down there under the turf. Mara let her eyes roam over the gravestones all around. What would this quiet scene be like on judgement day? She saw it busy, like a Stanley Spencer resurrection, with people clambering stiffly from their graves as though the long sleep of death had been a nodding off in a suburban lounge.

She sat down and leant her back against Hester's stone, closing her eyes. The sun warmed her face.
The trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised
. We shall be changed. All around the graves will split open with a sound like rifle shots, like kernels bursting, unable to hold in the new life any longer. Sown in dishonour and weakness, raised in glory and power. Sometimes she caught glimpses of it, seeing the knots and tangles on the back of the tapestry and making a wild guess about the other side. Impossible to convey, though. Heaven always lost something in translation.

If only Hester were here. Oh, Hester. Why did you have to go and drown? The tears began to run down her cheeks. Ten years from now she knew she would no longer feel like this. The white stone would be mildewed, the letters a little blurred. If only it were all over. But there was only one way out: on through the middle, one foot in front of the other until at last it was all behind her.

She opened her eyes and jumped to see a clergyman standing a few yards away from her. Some kind of aggressive explanation rose to her lips, but she saw that he had not yet noticed her, but was staring intently at some point over to her right. She sat very still watching him. He was oddly dressed. Almost theatrically. How many clergymen still wore frock coats, for goodness' sake? He must be one of those tiresome poseurs who joined the Church because they liked the dressing up. But he hardly looked the type. His face seemed gentle and serious. He was about forty, dark hair just turning grey, not particularly tall. Her father would probably know who he was. What was he staring at? She was about to turn when he roused himself and walked smoothly on between the gravestones. He disappeared from her view behind one of the ancient yew trees.

Mara stood up and stretched. Rising up from the grave, she thought. She looked back at the headstone one last time. All will be well. She knew her mother believed this devoutly. On impulse Mara bent and laid the primroses on the ground. Her mother would see them and guess that she had been at long last to see the grave, and her optimism would be rewarded. Maybe all would be well. She would certainly be glad that Mara was unbending. The thought almost prompted her to pick the flowers up and toss them away. Why is it always ten times harder to do what you want to do, when you know other people are wanting you to do it? She headed back to the vicarage.

The kettle boiled and Mara made two cups of coffee. Her mother was out, but her father usually emerged from his study at about this time. When he did not appear, she began to wonder whether she should take it to him. She remembered her mother's injunction: ‘Never disturb Daddy when he's in his study.' Oh, for God's sake, she thought, putting the mugs on a tray. She went to his door and knocked. He called her in. She had not set foot in the room since Christmas Day when she had rung the doctor.

‘Coffee,' she said, putting the mug on the desk. The egg she had decorated was sitting beside his glass paperweight. He sat back a little and looked across at her expectantly. Was he waiting for her to go?

‘Have a seat,' he said. She sat down suddenly in astonishment, almost as though he had pushed her into the chair. They drank their coffee in silence.

‘Who's the nineteenth-century clergyman prowling round the graveyard?' she asked, for something to say. He stared at her in complete amazement. She blushed, realizing what he must be thinking. ‘I went to see Hester's grave,' she muttered. Now he could tell mother. The parental cup runneth over. He nodded, as though he were thinking of something else.

‘So you've seen old Simeon?'

‘Simeon?'

‘Simeon West. Yes. Well, well.' He shook his head. ‘Did he frighten you?'

An escaped lunatic? That might explain the clothes. ‘He didn't see me.'

‘What was he doing?'

‘Well, staring at something. Then he walked off.' Her father was nodding as though this was what he had expected. ‘He seemed a bit strange, but not
frightening
.'

‘I know, but some people just find the idea frightening. He was incumbent here in the 1820s.'

Her mouth fell open. ‘You mean – you're joking!' I've seen a ghost, and I didn't even realize. She heard herself giggle. Her father was twisting his coffee mug round on the desk trying not to smile. ‘Shouldn't you exorcize him or something?'

‘Tidy him up? He seems pretty harmless.'

‘I thought you didn't believe in ghosts.'

‘I don't. I think he's a sort of memory attached to the place.'

‘What sort of a memory? How can you
see
a memory you don't have?'

He shrugged. ‘Do you have a better explanation?'

‘Have you seen him, then?'

‘Once or twice. Usually round this time of year.'

She watched as he began to leaf through a pile of papers on his desk. He pulled something out and passed it to her. It was a homemade Easter card.

‘This is very good,' she said in surprise. It was an angel, drawn, as far as she could tell, with a wax candle. A landscape of fields and hills had been painted over the top in water-colours, so that the angel seemed to be transparent, hovering in the foreground. ‘Did one of the Sunday school do it for you?'

‘Open it.'

She did.
To Daddy with love from Mara
. She stared in disbelief.

‘When did I do that?'

‘When you were about seven or eight.'

And he'd kept it all those years. He reached out and took it back, and she knew that the moment had come to ask him what she had always wanted to know. Quickly. If she stopped to think, her courage would fail.

‘You remember the time I tried to kill myself?'

‘Yes, Mara.'

Her face burned. ‘Yes. Well, what made you come back?'

He began twisting the mug round again, carefully, as though the action required his full attention. ‘I suddenly knew something was wrong. Terribly wrong.' He cleared his throat. ‘I left the curate in charge and ran back.' She saw him picking up his skirts, stumbling through the churchyard with terror in his eyes, stole flapping wildly.

‘I'm glad you did.' It had taken her seven years to say it.

‘Hah.' He smiled suddenly. ‘You were hopping mad at the time.'

She smiled back, and suddenly they were struck by shyness and drinking their coffee again.

Her father was the first to break the silence. ‘What was so terrible – why – what made you do it? I never understood.'

She saw her fingers smoothing the plush of the armchair neatly all in the same direction. He deserved a real answer. She forced her mind back through the years.

‘Nothing had any point. It was all empty.'

‘But why?'

‘I don't know.' Try. There must have been something. ‘I suppose I couldn't stand it when Dewi disappeared. Not knowing if he was dead, even.' She rubbed the plush back the wrong way, and began to draw stripes across it. ‘I suppose he was my hero. And school was awful. Nobody liked me. I always felt that you . . . that everyone . . . that Hester was the favourite one. I tried to make a list of reasons for living. Only I couldn't think of any.' She sensed him twitch as if in pain. There was a long silence. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Her finger trembled as it drew.

‘Hester wasn't the favourite one, you know.' She ducked her head.
We love you both just as much as the other
. Her parents had always said that, but she had never been fooled. He cleared his throat and said something in Welsh, then broke off, seeing her expression. ‘Sorry. I was saying I didn't know you'd taken it so hard. About Dewi, I mean. If it's any comfort, he's alive still. He rang here a couple of months after he disappeared.'

Her heart leapt. ‘Where is he?'

‘He wouldn't say. Afraid I'd tell his father. He just wanted his mother to know he wasn't dead.' Was that some kind of relief? It had all gone on so long she could no longer feel anything. ‘I always thought Huw was too harsh on that boy,' her father said. ‘Trying to make him something he wasn't. It's not as if it's a matter of choice, that kind of thing. That's where Huw and I differ. I swore I would never treat you the way my father treated us. Someone somewhere has to break the pattern.'

Her hand paused in its movement. So this was what lay behind his cold self-control. He had vowed she would not suffer as he had done. But he had made her suffer in another way. They were too alike, and in rejecting so much of himself he had ended by seeming to reject her. ‘You tried too hard,' she wanted to say.

‘The trouble with being a parent,' he said, ‘is that you only get one go at it. If you get it wrong, then that's it. No second chances.'

‘And with being a daughter.'

‘True.'

We used to speak Welsh together. Until the time he said it wasn't fair on Hester because she couldn't understand. They finished their coffee. That's why I've forgotten it all. To spite him. She looked up and caught his eye flicking away from the clock on the wall behind her. He wanted to return to his books.

‘I'll let you get on,' she said. I sound like a parishioner. She put the mugs back on the tray and headed for the door. She turned back and saw him already opening a book.

‘I normally take sugar in my coffee, by the way,' he said without looking up.

‘Then why didn't you say so? You've got a tongue in your head.'

She saw him grinning as he bent over his book again. And that, she thought, closing the door, would do very well as a family motto:
Why didn't you say so?
She saw it under a coat of arms. Two mules pulling stubbornly in opposite directions.
Cur ita non dixisti?

Mara was sitting on a bench in the vicarage garden enjoying the late afternoon sun. The image of old Simeon gliding between the graves filled her mind. Maybe she had been hallucinating? Or else she could have drifted asleep and dreamt the whole thing. A dream fuelled by forgotten anecdotes of the local ghost. Unless he really was a lost soul in need of his namesake's
nunc dimittis
. She shivered. Better to agree with her father. Old Simeon had done this so often in his lifetime – walked in the graveyard; paused, lost in thought; moved on – that he had worn a groove in the history of the place. Maybe in centuries to come people would see a tall girl sitting weeping on a bench near where a vicarage once stood. She wiped her tears away.

In a moment she would have to go back indoors and see if her mother needed any help. Her parents were going away that evening on holiday, and her mother was in the throes of her pre-holiday ritual. Her guiding principle was: maximum pleasure for others at maximum inconvenience to herself. Ironing, packing, baking, stocking the freezer. She didn't trust Mara not to live off whisky and Bath Olivers while they were away. Footsteps came up behind her and Mara sighed. And now she'll be bringing me a cup of tea. But before she could turn round she felt a hand on her shoulder and someone's lips at her ear:

‘I bet you thought you were safe, Princess.'

Andrew! She was on her feet, unable to keep a stupid broad smile off her face.

‘What are you doing here?'

‘I've come to spoil your vacation.' If she had been a hugging sort of person – she folded her arms self-consciously.

‘Your mother's making tea and suggests in the meantime you show me the church.'

Mara scowled. She had not set foot there for years, as her mother well knew. ‘You don't want to see the church.'

‘Of course I do. Come on.' He clicked his fingers at her as though she was a dog being taken for a walk. ‘It's got some of the finest medieval wall paintings in the country.'

He set off. Was he serious? Well, she supposed someone as fear-somely cultured as he is would be interested in churches. He waited for her to catch up and linked his arm through hers. She was smiling again.