The Benefits of Passion (3 page)

‘Well,' said Muriel. ‘If we could just gather our thoughts together . . .' There was a corporate rustle of clothing as people straightened up from their prayerful positions.

‘Whose turn is it to lead us next week?' asked Dave, as he got up to put the kettle on.

‘Annie's,' said Ingram, looking up from his Filofax. He was the only one who kept a record of these things, so there was no arguing with him. Annie imagined a petty triumph in his voice. She had her plan ready, however. The next session was going to be called ‘Learning from the Quaker tradition', and they would all sit in silence for forty-five minutes.

‘Actually,' said Isobel, ‘I've got a suggestion. I've got tickets for
King Lear
at the Theatre Royal next Thursday. Why don't we make that our session for the week?'

The group, apart from Ingram, fell on the idea with enthusiasm. Isobel began gazing out of the window, her foot tapping silently as though she were bored by their gratitude.

‘Is it a matinée performance?' asked Ingram.

‘Evening,' replied Isobel.

Oh, help, thought Annie, seeing what was coming.

‘Well, I see no reason why we should forgo Annie's contribution,' said Ingram. ‘We could meet as usual, and then go –'

‘Certainly not.' If it hadn't been Isobel speaking, the interruption would have seemed rude. ‘One or the other.'

‘
King Lear
,
King Lear!
' chorused the group.

‘Unless Annie's already prepared something,' said Muriel, always quick to spot a potential cause of hurt.

‘No, no,' smiled Annie. Dave began to pass round cups of ideologically sound coffee.

But Ingram was not beaten yet. ‘Well, perhaps Annie – as a former English teacher – could prepare a response to the performance for the week after?' His gold-plated fountain pen stooped like a bird of prey over his Filofax. Why does he have to act as though he were our tutor all the time? ‘Themes of atonement in
Lear
?' Annie resented his thespy abbreviation of the play's title. He probably referred to
Macbeth
as ‘the Scottish play', too.

‘Oh, lighten up, Ingram,' said Dave. ‘Let's just enjoy ourselves for once.'

Ingram clapped his Filofax shut with a shrug of goodwill. Annie pictured him lightening up as if buoyed by helium, rising to the ceiling and bobbing there against the plaster – ‘Help, help! Pull me down, someone!' – while the rest of them drank their coffee and ignored him.

Outside the cathedral bell began to chime for Evensong. It nagged away like her conscience. How long will you go on living a lie? How long? How long? But it was all too huge. Her faith was not a worn-out dress she could simply discard. It would be like trying to set aside the earth she stood on. All at once she could not bear to remain in the same room as the rest of them.

‘I'll see you in chapel.' She backed, smiling, out of the door and hurried to her room to write till it was time for the service.

Isabella's view that all clergymen were wankers had not been challenged by her encounters with the college chaplain. He was not bad-looking – tall, dark and thin with round glasses – but Isabella knew she could never think well of a man who sat with one leg wound right round the other and both hands clamped between his thighs. She was, however, prepared to issue a small quantity of charm now that she wanted something from him. Not the full a-thousand-ships quota, but certainly enough to send a couple of smallish fishing smacks slithering down the slipway. With this in mind she went to the trouble of finding out his name before going and knocking on his office door.

He rose politely to his feet as she entered.

‘I hope I'm not disturbing you, Tim.' She cast him a three-dinghy-launching smile.

‘No, no. Not at all. I was just . . .' He waved at a chair. ‘Won't you . . . ?' They both sat. ‘So how can I . . . ?'

By finishing a sentence, for a start, thought Isabella, but before she could speak he sprang to his feet again.

‘Tea? Coffee?'

‘Coffee, please.' Was he always this twitchy, or was it just the shortness of her skirt? She wriggled it an inch or so back down her thighs with a little squirming movement. He fiddled violently with the coffee machine, then sat down again.

‘So, um . . . what can I do for you, um, Isabella?'

Well, um, full marks for knowing her name. She crossed her legs. His glance ricocheted away.

‘I'd like to borrow a Bible.'

‘Certainly.' He was on his feet again. ‘Which version?'

Isabella paused, thrown off course for a minute. Tim hovered in front of his shelves. Surely there was only one Bible? She took a wild stab. ‘The traditional one.'

‘Ah, the King James, you mean.' He handed her a black volume and she flipped through, peering at the tiny print. ‘A bundle of myrrh is my wellbeloved unto me,' read Isabella. ‘He shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.' She snapped the book shut in shock.

Tim sat down again. He had a concerned look on his face. ‘Can I ask . . . Is this a . . . well, a spiritual quest?'

She saw he had slipped into professional mode. ‘Oh, no. A carnal one. I'm trying to seduce a priest.'

‘Ah, and you're doing some background reading. Good.' Isabella stared. He was supposed to blanch in horror. He had even stopped umming. ‘Do you have a particular priest in mind?'

Well, she thought, looking him over with surprised interest. He was young and male. And he had that Everest-like quality of being there. She decided to give him the full battleships-away! treatment.

‘I
did
have someone in mind, but now I've met you I'm not so sure . . .' She recrossed her legs at him and fluttered her eyelashes.

He sighed gallantly. ‘Is he here in Cambridge?' She nodded, sensing that the conversation had a firm hand at the helm and was heading rather boringly back to port. ‘A chaplain or something?' The coffee maker was starting to pop and bubble. ‘Tell me all about him.'

Encouraged by having such a nice responsive audience, she poured out the whole story as they sat drinking his surprisingly good coffee.

‘Well, if he's an ordinand he should be easy enough to track down,' said Tim. ‘There are only two Anglican training colleges in Cambridge.'

‘I'm shocked!' said Isabella in glee. ‘You're a priest and you're assisting me in a premeditated act of fornication.'

He shrugged as though implying God moved in mysterious ways. ‘So what's his name?'

‘He won't say. It begins with B. – B. Hardstaff.'

Tim's collusive smile vanished. ‘Not Barney!'

Isabella was on him in a flash, clutching at his arm. ‘Barney? Barney? That's his name? You know him?' He escaped across the room. ‘Tell me!' She pursued him to his noticeboard where several photographs were pinned. He pointed to what seemed to be a picture of a school First XI cricket team.

‘Is that him?'

‘Yes!' Younger, but clearly the same man, sitting in the captain's place with a clutter of trophies at his feet. On his right-hand side sat Tim. ‘Oh, you were at school together, then? So which college is he at?' But Tim was standing on one leg looking thoughtful and starting to um at her again. ‘Look, you may as well tell me. I can find out easily enough now you've told me his name.'

‘Um . . . yes. True. Well, Latimer Hall, then.'

Isabella hugged herself and giggled. She cycled past it most days. Brace yourself, Barney Hardstaff.

Tim was looking even more worried. He stared at the floor as though scanning around for a safe place to put his hovering foot. She felt a sudden qualm. ‘What's wrong?'

‘It's just . . . Um, what do you know about him, exactly?'

‘Nothing. Only that he's gorgeous and sexy and I want him.' She thought for a moment, then added, ‘And he's very stubborn.'

‘Ah!' said Tim, seizing on this as though she were a dim pupil who had unexpectedly come up with the right answer. ‘Extremely stubborn. It's just that you're so
wonderfully
enthusiastic, Isabella. I wouldn't want –'

‘Oh, don't worry about me, Father. I won't be disappointed.'

‘Well . . .' He looked doubtful.

‘Look, I know he's into all that celibacy crap, but I mean, honestly! Come
on
, Tim. All that went out with the Reformation, didn't it?' He didn't reply. ‘Oh, don't tell me
you're
celibate?' she said impatiently, seeing his expression.

‘Well, yes. For the foreseeable future, anyway.' He was standing on one leg again as though his whole life were one long balancing trick. ‘Until the Church changes its mind about the likes of me.'

‘The likes of . . .' Oh, God. He's gay. She had some vague recollection of being told this before, but she hadn't been paying attention. She blushed at the memory of all her superfluous leg-crossings. Bloody waste of time all that was, she thought. ‘You mean you manage without sex?
Totally?
'

‘Now why should I tell you that?'

‘You must do
something.
I mean, you must . . .' Isabella caught herself and converted the gesture into a vague wave of the hand. ‘Ahem. Tell me about Barney.'

Tim scratched his head. ‘Well, I've known him half my life, and when Barney says no he means it.'

‘Hah! Fifty quid says I get him into bed by the end of term.'

‘Done,' said Tim, holding out his hand with such alacrity that she hesitated.

‘Done. And don't you bloody well warn him!'

‘I wouldn't dream of it.'

She eyed him doubtfully. Supposing he was right? Well, you may know Barney, she thought with a smile, but you don't know
me.
She turned to leave. ‘Thanks, Tim.'

‘Let me know how you get on.'

‘Or off.'

He laughed, and she went back along the corridor with the Bible in her hand, wondering how it would all turn out.

Not that Annie was sure she knew that, either. Her own life was slipping out of control, and now her imaginary world was displaying similar tendencies. Nice young chaplains coming out unexpectedly, Isabella getting tiresome. This is supposed to be escapism, thought Annie. I'm supposed to be in charge here. The bells chimed seven, and she leapt up. Damn. I've completely forgotten to go to chapel.

CHAPTER 3

Annie's alarm went off at six a.m. She washed and dressed before settling down to read her Bible and pray as she did every morning. It was what was known in evangelical circles as a Quiet Time. Well, it was quiet. It was a time. But Annie knew that it did not count as a Quiet Time in the proper sense, for instead of studying and praying, her thoughts roamed around freely.

That morning she found herself reflecting on prayer itself. When she was a child, God had always been someone who must be placated. Every night she did her best to please him, searching the crannies of her mind for sin, worrying about like her mother with a duster. First there were the big blatant sins to deal with – lies, disobedience – which lay like clods of mud on the carpet. Then there was pride, a fine film of dust over all her good deeds. But, oddly enough, what troubled her most were the old sins. They had all been confessed long ago and washed in the Blood of the Lamb, but the stains still remained, faint yet stubborn, as though the Blood were an inferior washing powder incapable of shifting deep-down dirt. Impossible. The fault must lie in the application. Perhaps if she had the faith to believe she was truly forgiven, then she would feel spotless. ‘
Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow
,' promised the Good Book, sounding rather like an advert for biological. More faith. That was what was required. Like more elbow-grease. Only that made faith perilously close to Works, and nobody would be saved by their Works. Annie's heart had been washed a thousand times, tumbled wearily round in the drum of confession every night, but it was still grey. On the Last Day, when all laundry would be held up to the light, Annie knew hers would fail the whiteness test. But what was she meant to do? You weren't supposed to wash your own things – that was the error of Rome. God of his free grace did it for you. But why did free grace seem to leave grubby collars?

This must have been in part what drew her to Anglicanism. It relieved her of the terrible burden of keeping on the right side of God. The Anglican Church year rolled on regardless of her spiritual state. Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, the long green weeks of Trinity, all revolving calmly round like the eternal spheres. After years of bobbing about alone and terrified in her little dinghy, it was a relief when the great Ark of Salvation hove into her view. You hardly felt the pitch and swell on a deck that broad.

Her concentration was broken by the sound of Edward's brogues clumping down the corridor to the bathroom. She could also hear voices, the sound of running water and a chain being flushed. This had to be the grimmest aspect of college life, the communal bathing and bowel moving. There were plywood partitions, of course, but in Annie's unfortunate imagination they all washed and shat as though the huge old bathroom had never been divided up. This was the real reason why she got up so early – not piety so much as an attempt to avoid coinciding with her colleagues on the early-morning bathroom run. A very lower-middle-class hang-up. She didn't even have the proper vocabulary for it, still accidentally saying
toilet
when flustered, and feeling her common origins showing like a petticoat beneath a skirt hem. Edward could boom words like
crap
in his posh voice, but she was always at a loss. Shit was far too rude, defecate too medical, and as for
number twos . . .
The process had not been referred to at all in the Brown household, even when someone had galloping diarrhoea and could be heard lunging into the smallest room and voiding themselves in wild spluttering explosions.

This coyness made it all whoopingly funny for Annie and her older brother and sister as they were growing up. They were even more prone than most children to snort with suppressed mirth if anyone broke wind. Laughing at such things was strictly forbidden, which spelt hours of prolonged agony for the Brown children. The toilet was situated above the dining room and every last splash and droplet was clearly audible to the family gathered round the table below. ‘I'll just go and make myself comfortable,' the visiting preacher might say right before Sunday lunch. The Brown children would hum the tune of the Sunday School offertory hymn, ‘Hear the Pennies Dropping', trying in vain to disguise their hoots as coughs and being sent from the room in disgrace before the final crescendo when the refilling cistern howled like a werewolf and all the pipes shook.

When adolescence arrived their hilarity gave way to excruciating embarrassment. Annie's sister Dawn found it all unendurable. She had got on and out and up as fast as possible, ditching her vulgar chapel background with its brown suits and forest-glade air fresheners, reincarnating herself as a journalist under the name Hermione. Silly, said Mrs Brown. Dawn's a perfectly good name. You'll always be Dawn to us. They were not on speaking terms. Annie called her Hermione to her face, but always thought of her as ‘Damn', after an unfortunate spelling mistake by their brother Colin who was slightly dyslexic and apt to muddle up his Ms and Ws. Damn now lived in London in a terrifyingly smart flat done out in shades of string white relieved by the occasional splash of cardboard beige. She worked for a snooty magazine, damning other people's taste in interior design, having resolved to have nothing in her house except what she believed to be fashionable and knew to be expensive. Annie had sent her a crocheted crinoline-lady loo-roll cover as a house-warming present and received no reply.

Annie would never be as grown up as Damn. She still found herself betrayed into unseemly mirth on bathroom matters. There had been one dreadful occasion in Coverdale: she was seated ready to pee when someone shifted slightly in the cubicle next to her. All wee-power abruptly deserted her. Then there was the sound of a page turning. Oh, no! It was probably Edward. He was known behind his back as the Bishop of Lewes (pronounced wrongly) for his long daily occupancy of this particular stall. Annie could almost feel the radiant heat of his body glowing through the plywood. Her own face burned as she pictured corduroy trousers round ankles, Bible commentary on hairy thighs. Oh, come on! Pee. Pee. She tried to conjure up images of plunging waterfalls, cascading mountain streams, dripping taps even, but to no avail. There was a sniff from two feet away. In desperation Annie put her fingers in her ears, fearing she was about to hear grunts followed by a sigh of satisfaction. ‘Hear the pennies dropping,' she hummed mentally. I can't possibly go out without weeing at all. He'll know I haven't. Suddenly she was seized with the urge to make a loud farting noise. A real six-lagers-and-a-Vindaloo style fanfare. She sat with her hand clamped over her mouth, trying desperately not to laugh.

‘Is that you, Annie?' came Edward's voice from beside her.

Horror! ‘Yes.'

‘What are you giggling about?'

‘I can't
go
with you sitting there!' Annie wailed. She pulled the chain and fled. Later, when she met him in the street, he laughed and called her a funny girl. He was clearly puzzled by the whole incident. But, then, he had been to boarding school.

Isabella wouldn't be at all fazed by bodily functions, decided Annie. It was one of the reasons she liked her. Isabella had all the directness Annie lacked. Barney wouldn't be disconcerted, either. Annie wondered briefly if she had borrowed a bit of Edward here. Her characters were a magpie's hoard of stolen bits and bobs. An eyebrow here, an accent there. But what never ceased to amaze her was the way these cobbled-together creatures would stand up and live lives of their own with very little reference to her.

Barney was a good example. She had first seen him, as Isabella had, walking through the catalogue room of Cambridge University Library. Big, blond and beautiful, minding his own business. Not being Isabella, however, she didn't pursue him, but went on looking things up in the catalogue instead. She had seen him only once more, crossing John's playing fields in cricket whites one June lunchtime. She didn't even know his name, but now there was Barney, kitted out with a whole existence – home town, upbringing, family, education, vocation. He was more real than the blond stranger striding past her one June twelve years earlier.

*

Isabella set off for Latimer Hall at lunchtime the following day, intending to track down Barney and compel him to come to a May ball with her. It was a bright and breezy day, which fitted her mood perfectly. She had spent the morning revising, and her mind buzzed with fragments of Shakespeare's sonnets as she cycled along. Isabella was neither a very diligent nor a very brilliant scholar, but she had tremendous self-belief which kept her skating with great speed and flair over the thinnest of academic ice.

‘“Unthrifty loveliness!”' she recited as she hurtled over Clare bridge, ‘“Why dost thou spend upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?”' She felt at one with the Bard in her pursuit of golden obstinacy, although more confident in achieving her goal than he appeared to have been.

She reached Latimer and chained up her bike. In the big arched entrance she stopped someone and asked where Barney's room was. G-staircase. Isabella set off across a wide grassy quad with Victorian red-brick buildings standing graciously round it. Some students were playing croquet on the lawn and there were a lot of mothers and toddlers roaming around.

Her heels clipped demurely down the long path. She was wearing a pretty dress with a blue pansy print. Exactly the thing for visiting a clergyman-to-be in, except that on windy days –
whoops! –
the skirt would fly up round her ears like Marilyn Monroe's on the subway grille. Under this she was wearing a slight hint of knicker and the kind of stockings which were supposed not to need a suspender belt but which usually did. ‘Hold-ups' they were not. That, however, in Isabella's book, was the whole point of them.

She reached G-staircase. There was a list of names and room numbers at the foot of the stairs.
Barnaby Hardstaff.
She felt a flutter and began to climb. It was quiet. She glanced at the closed oak doors as she passed, wondering what effete clerical types were cringing behind them. When she found Barney's room she paused and listened. He was there! Brushing his teeth by the sound of it. She knocked and went straight in. He was at the sink, back to her, stark naked. Isabella let out a shriek. He turned, toothbrush in mouth.

‘Barney! You're
huge
!' Her voice echoed round the stairwell. She was outside before she knew it, staring at the firmly closed door. Bugger. She tried the doorknob and heard the sound of the catch being dropped.

‘Let me in, Barney. Please. I want to talk to you.' She knocked. No answer. There was a quality to the silence which convinced her that other people were listening behind all those closed doors. She dismissed the idea of wailing,
I think I'm pregnant!
‘Barney, I want to ask you something.'

The door opened. He'd got his cricket trousers on. She ducked under his arm and darted into the room before he could stop her.

‘The answer's no,' he said.

‘You don't know what the question is.' She perched on the edge of his desk and admired his torso and chest hair.

Surprise me, said his expression.

‘I've been reading the Bible,' she improvised, as he pulled on his shirt. ‘I'd no idea it was so complicated. I keep getting all confused. Will you explain it to me?'

His lips twitched as he struggled to remain serious. ‘Why not ask your college chaplain? That's what he's there for.' He reached for his pullover.

‘Please, Barney. I'm sure you're really good at it.'

‘I'm sure Tim is, too.'

‘But he's gay.'

His head emerged through the pullover neck, smiling. ‘I thought we were talking about Bible study, Isabella.'

‘Of
course
we are. So you will, then?'

‘No.' There was silence as Isabella rethought her tactics. He was putting on his socks. She looked round the room. Books, sports stuff, beer cans. A bachelor's room. It smelt of Imperial Leather soap. The window looked out over Newnham. Some girls were sunbathing on a flat roof. Good God. One of them was –

‘There's a nude woman out there!' she said.

Barney glanced. ‘So there is.' He picked up his boots calmly.

‘What kind of man
are
you?' He was smiling again. ‘Oh! You knew. I bet you've spent the last hour leching!'

‘No, I haven't.' He had a foot up on the desk chair in front of her and was tying his laces. ‘She's only been out there ten minutes.'

Hah! ‘So you admit you're interested in women?'

‘I wasn't aware I'd denied it.' I'm just not interested in you, his tone implied. He was lacing the other boot now. We'll see about that. She hitched up her skirt and began adjusting her stockings. His bent head was just inches from her thighs.

‘The buggers work their way down when I walk,' she explained innocently when he looked up at her.

A second later she was studying the outside of the locked door again.

‘Let me in, Barney.' She rattled the knob. ‘I promise I'll be good.' There was no answer. She decided to play to her unseen audience. ‘Oh, come on, Barney. You can't possibly waste an erection like that. It's sacrilege! I'm sure God wouldn't want you to.'

The door opened abruptly. She leapt back in case she had pushed him too far. He came out with his cricket bat, looking completely unconcerned, and headed down the stairs. She scampered to keep up with him, heels clacking on the wooden steps.

‘Barney, will you come to a May ball with me?'

‘No.' They were at the bottom.

‘Why not?' No reply. He began striding across the quad. ‘Please.'

‘I said no.' When Barney says no, he means it.

‘Why not? Have you got someone else? Is that it?' Still no answer. She tugged at his arm. He stopped.