The Benefits of Passion (5 page)

At last she spotted her bike against the crowded railings. God, I hate it when people park their bikes on top of mine. She struggled to untangle the pedals and handlebars. Some thoughtless, selfish bastard. ‘Some
man
,' she muttered, seizing the crossbar and tugging it away from hers. Both bikes crashed to the ground and lay on the pavement with a wheel whizzing round.

‘
Shit!
' She aimed a kick, then stopped. They were chained together! She looked up, and there was Barney.

‘Barney!' She remembered belatedly that he must never know how she felt. ‘Unlock your bloody bike, will you?'

‘No.'

‘Yes.'

‘Only if you have lunch with me.'

‘What? But I – you –'

‘In Latimer. Not very exciting, I'm afraid.' She gave in and smiled. Why bother to pretend the sun shone from anywhere other than out of his gorgeous backside?

‘I'd love to.' He was smiling back into her upturned face. The busy marketplace surged on around them.

‘How was it?' he asked.

‘How was what?'

‘Your exam.'

‘Oh! Terrible.'

People were tutting and trying to get past them and the fallen bikes. He bent and unlocked his chain. ‘Stop looking at me like that, Isabella.'

‘Why?'

‘Because you're only going to be disappointed.'

Her smile wavered. ‘I am?'

‘Yes. I happen to know it's only corned-beef salad.' Her smile burst out again and she bent to pick up her bike. ‘Nice dress, by the way,' he said. For a second she thought he was looking down the front of it, but he couldn't have been, of course. They began to cycle to Latimer. The warm breeze tugged Isabella's skirt and lifted her hair from her face. She might have been flying. They stopped and waited at the red lights. Isabella couldn't help blurting out: ‘I thought I wasn't ever going to see you again.'

‘Why not?'

‘Well . . . I thought you were kind of mad . . .'

He turned and looked at her. ‘Mad? At you? Isabella!'

Her heart was racing. His eyes, his voice, his smile – endless possibilities hinted at, then instantly denied. ‘I bet you're magnificent when you're angry.'

‘Mm. I think you're safe. I have a very, very long fuse, Isabella.'

‘I
know
you have, Barney. Although size isn't meant to be important, of course.'

His lips twitched. ‘And it burns very, very slowly.'

‘Good. I like a bit of staying-power in a man.'

He lost the battle against smiling. ‘You're impossible.'

A car horn honked impatiently behind them and they set off again, laughing.

‘How old are you, Barney?'

‘Twenty-seven.'

‘I'll be twenty next month,' she supplied, when he failed to ask. They turned into Latimer Hall Road. A woodpecker thrummed deep in a walled garden as they drew up outside the college. The sound seemed to echo for joy in the woods.

Isabella felt uncharacteristically self-conscious as they entered the dining hall and joined the lunch queue. Perhaps it was the throng of chomping vicars-designate, or the po-faced clerics staring down at her from the portraits on the walls. She began to wish that her dress had something by way of a back to it. Barney, as he stood behind her waiting for his corned-beef salad, could have trailed a finger down each vertebra of her tanned spine. She felt as though the whole room was glancing at her in disapproval. At any moment someone might block her path like a guard outside an Italian cathedral and tell her to cover herself. There was nothing for it but to brazen it out. She turned and smiled up at Barney over her shoulder.

‘You're not a vegetarian, are you?' he asked.

‘God, no.' She flared her nostrils at him. ‘I need my meat.'

His lips twitched again. ‘Isabella, if you don't behave, I'll turn the fire hose on you.' He gave her a push, and she scuttled to catch up with the rest of the queue.

They collected their salad and sat down. Barney introduced her to the men already sitting at the table. She saw at once that they could only be priests in the making: nice, but drippy. Still, they were dealing out copious amounts of interest and attention, asking her all about herself and how she knew Barney. He was sitting opposite her, watching. Before long she began to feel like Scarlett O'Hara at the barbecue. She fluttered her eyelashes at him – Why, fiddle-dee-dee, Ashley Wilkes! – and finished her salad in a welter of male admiration.

‘And where do you worship?' asked the man on her left, proffering the fruit bowl.

‘Where do I what?' She took an apple and began to polish it on the front of her dress. ‘Oh, church, you mean. I'm afraid I'm a bit of a pagan, really. I don't go unless it's a wedding.'

A series of glances were exchanged around her like a coded message. After a moment she deciphered it. They thought Barney was trying to convert her. Hah! Was that why he was being so friendly all of a sudden? She looked at him and he raised an eyebrow.

‘Barney's trying to convert me,' she said, deciding on a pre-emptive strike. ‘Without much success, so far, I'd have to say. Which makes us quits, because I'm trying to –'
FIRE HOSE!
said Barney's fulminating glare. ‘– I'm just trying to understand it all. You know, God and everything.' Whoops! She looked around to see if anyone had noticed. Her words seemed to have provoked an unnerving professional silence. They waited respectfully for more, and to her horror she found herself starting to witter about the Ten Commandments, and her granny dying, and what are we all here for, anyway?

‘And what about all the suffering in the world? If there is a God, how come he lets wars and famines happen?' But it had begun to feel as though there was one, after all. One who liked her enormously and was terribly interested in her, but who didn't approve of her one little bit. He was looking out at her through their eyes. She sank her teeth defiantly into the apple as they explained the concept of free will to her.

After the meal Isabella was pressed to join them in a game of croquet on the lawn. She intercepted a not-quite-Christian stare from one of the women nearby and was therefore about to accept when she remembered Camilla. She'll still be waiting in college for me, thought Isabella guiltily.

‘I'd love to, but I've got to go and get pissed.
Drunk
, I should say,' she amended, catching Barney's eye. ‘Well, not drunk as
such
. Just a couple of glasses. You know, end of exams and all that. Everyone does it . . .' she heard herself pleading. I can't believe I'm doing this. I don't have to explain myself to a bunch of sanctimonious celibate gits. ‘Well, 'bye, everyone. It's been nice meeting you.' She waggled her fingers at them and set off. Barney fell silently into step beside her like the wrath of God.

‘Thanks for lunch,' she said, as they reached her bike. ‘Can I come again next term?'

‘No.' He smiled at her stricken expression. ‘I'm afraid I won't be here.'

‘But – Why won't you?'

‘I'm getting ordained. I'll be a curate in darkest Hertfordshire by then.' It felt like a slap in the face.

‘Well . . . congratulations, or whatever.' I'll never see him again. She was sucking her hair and trying to blink back the tears. ‘Can I come with you and be your concubine?'

‘No.'

‘Why not? They had concubines in the Bible. Oh, please. I'll cook for you. I'll iron your cassock, even.'

‘Surplice.'

‘Surplus to what?'

‘No,
surplice
. The white nightie thing. That's the one you iron. Cassocks you just dry-clean and hang up.'

‘Bugger the laundry,' she said impatiently. ‘I
love
you, Barney.'

‘Mm. You said.'

‘Yes, but now I really mean it.' She could have shaken him in frustration. ‘It's true. I'd do
anything
for you, Barney!'

‘Really?'

‘Truly.'

There was a thoughtful pause. ‘How about a blow-job?'

‘
What?
' She stepped back in shock. ‘Did you say – Barney, do you have any idea what that means?'

‘Why? What does it mean?'

‘I don't believe this!' She felt herself getting redder by the second. ‘It means . . . well, oral sex, for God's sake.'

‘It does?'

‘Yes. Oh!' He laughed as she made to punch him. ‘Bastard. You aren't supposed to have
heard
of things like that, let alone know what they mean.'

‘Why not?'

‘Well, you're practically a vicar.' He was grinning at her. Isabella was by no means as experienced as she would have liked everyone to believe. She pushed her hair back from her hot face and aimed for a casual tone. ‘And, besides, it's a disgusting practice – like picking someone else's nose.'

He considered this. ‘More fun, though.'

There was a short silence. Her bluff had been well and truly called, and she cast about for a cool exit line. None suggested itself. ‘Well, I'm late. I'd better go.' She undid her padlock.

‘Did you find a partner for that ball, by the way?'

‘Oh, no problem.' She made an airy gesture and was about to get on her bike.

‘And will you behave yourself?'

‘What's it to you?' He waited. His patient silence goaded her into saying, ‘I doubt it. I expect I'll get pissed. Or laid. Both, probably. They tend to go together.'

He shook his head. ‘You're worth more than that, Isabella.'

‘Fuck you!' she exploded. ‘No, I mean it.
Fuck you
. Don't you dare tell me how to behave! Who the hell do you think you are?' He walked off without a word. Oh, no! she wailed inwardly. ‘Barney. Look, Barney, I'm sorry.' He disappeared back into the archway. She let her bike crash to the ground and chased after him.

‘Now what?' he asked, when she tugged at his arm.

‘I don't mean to be like this. Honestly. It just sort of happens . . .' The sentence tailed off miserably.

‘Some things are like good wine, Isabella. They improve with keeping.'

‘What about Beaujolais nouveau? You drink that the minute you get your hands on it,' she pointed out.

He was trying not to smile again. ‘True. But I'm a claret man. I prefer something a bit more mature.'

‘Oh,
thanks
. You'll wait for me to grow up, will you?'

He touched her lips briefly with a finger and smiled. ‘Well, you never know.'

She watched him walk back down the long path and join the others playing croquet. The woodpecker's drum sounded hollow as she cycled away.

CHAPTER 5

It was Thursday afternoon again. Annie looked out of her window. There was a yellowish tinge to the clouds and she wondered whether it was going to snow. On her desk lay the notes for an essay. The navel-gazing session had been cancelled in favour of
King Lear
, but Annie was not about to waste the gift of two hours on the Shape of Modern Liturgy.

It was the evening of the ball. Isabella and Camilla were standing in front of the big mirror in Camilla's room wearing identical slinky dresses. This was deliberate, of course. The only difference was the colour. Camilla, being blonde, was in black, while the dark-haired Isabella wore white. As they pouted and busied themselves with their make-up, Isabella couldn't help feeling she'd got the short straw. Camilla was already tall and slim enough without the benefit of black. White could be so fat-making. Isabella scrutinized her own slim form for bulges. Still, it set off that exam-revision tan she had worked so hard on. Camilla began applying some lipstick. Isabella had just recounted an edited version of her lunch with Barney.

‘All that play and still no score,' marvelled Camilla. ‘Here, put some of this on.' She handed Isabella the lipstick.

‘Slut red. I like it.' There was a silence as Isabella painted her lips scarlet, and tried to muster the right casual note to tell Camilla the whole story. ‘He asked me for a blow-job, actually.'

‘Yeah?' Camilla was pulling on her long black gloves, unmoved by this revelation. ‘They all do, sooner or later.'

‘Sure,' mumbled Isabella, as she blotted her mouth on a tissue. They did? ‘But he makes this great thing about being celibate.'

‘Well?'

‘Well, what?'

‘Did you oblige?'

‘No-oo. Gravel drive, you know? Plays hell with a girl's knees.' She tossed the screwed-up tissue towards the bin and hoped she wasn't blushing. But when she slid a glance at Camilla's reflection she met an amused stare.

‘Let's face it, child, you've never done it.'

Isabella grimaced. ‘Nah. Never fancied it.'

Camilla laughed and put a long black cigarette into her predictably long black holder. ‘Send him round to me.'

‘Over my dead body.' There was a hostile silence; then Isabella abandoned pride in favour of gleaning a little information. ‘It's just that . . . I mean, what do you
do
exactly, when – when – you know?'

‘Spit or swallow, little one,' drawled Camilla, lighting her cigarette.

Annie shut the book with a guilty giggle. I can't write that! The scene had been inspired by an occasion when she and Isobel had shared a mirror as they prepared for the college ball. Annie owned no make-up and was borrowing some of Isobel's. The colours were all wrong for her freckled skin, and she could never apply make-up without feeling like a six-year-old raiding Mother's dressing table. Not that Mrs Brown ever wore it. It was sinful. The only woman in the Bible who wore make-up was Jezebel, and we all know what sort of woman
she
was. The Brown girls were forbidden to touch the stuff. Annie accepted this meekly, and to that day found bright lipstick faintly shocking. Damn rebelled, though. Annie could still remember the long bitter eyeshadow wars that raged throughout her adolescence.

Isobel had worked in the mirror with cool efficiency. Annie watched her sidelong as she blended exactly the right amount of blusher into her hollowed cheeks. The pinnacle of Annie's cosmetic ambitions had always been to apply mascara without getting a black line across the bridge of her nose when doing the left eye. She'd never mastered the professional backhanded method Isobel was so casually employing. Annie stared at her reflection. Her brown eyes looked rounder than ever – like a startled marmoset. The scene Annie had just written was her revenge on Isobel. She could always repent and cross it out later.

It was just that Isobel was so frostily perfect. Her dark blue silk dress had been simple but stunning. Annie had given up trying to look conventionally beautiful, much to her mother's disgust. You look like something the cat's brought in, Anne. Why don't you wear something smart for once? You've got plenty of nice things just hanging there in your wardrobe. If you're not going to wear them you should take them down to Oxfam. And look at your hair. You've really let yourself go.

Annie had ditched her teacher's image along with the job. All those polite skirts and V-necked pullovers. Beige and grey, like her life had been. These days her only sartorial rule was to wear what she wanted, regardless of what it looked like and whether other people thought it was appropriate. Her clothes came from charity shops and jumble sales, or from dark little shops reeking of patchouli. All her skirt hems drooped. Her sweaters were vast and had unravelled cuffs. Nothing went with anything else. Army surplus with sequinned velvet. Tramps' coats with silk stockings. Perhaps it would have worked if Annie hadn't lacked that special ingredient – self-belief, perhaps? – which synthesized random garments into a fashion statement. Most of the time she knew she just looked odd. Edward called it her Orphan Annie look and it annoyed him almost as much as Ingram's hair. Ted had teenage daughters and found it normal. He had only commented on her clothes once. She remembered him saying, after looking thoughtfully at her most wildly unravelled pullover, ‘Don't go near any working machinery while you're wearing that, will you?'

Her choice of outfit for the ball had been a little black cocktail dress. Late Fifties or early Sixties, low cut and exquisitely tailored – four pounds from Save the Children. When she had tried it on in the shop it had seemed quirky and slightly risqué; but standing beside Isobel's dark blue silk, Big Mistake seemed nearer the mark. Whatever was Edward going to say?

Annie was going to the ball with him because he was trying to escape the attentions of an eager undergraduate who had – through no fault of his – got hold of totally the wrong end of totally the wrong stick. Annie could be counted on not to misconstrue his gallantry.
Thanks
, darling. Annie had tugged futilely at the front of her dress to make it plunge less, suddenly fearing that Edward would prefer whoomfy taffeta to exquisite tailoring and quirky
décolletage
. Oh, no! His feet coming along the corridor. A knock. She opened the door and he took two clear steps back, astounded.

‘Gosh, Annie.
Curves
.'

She wrung her hands, looking at his dinner suit. ‘Is it too awful? I don't want to let you down.'

‘Turn round.' She obeyed. ‘I
say
, Miss Brown. Those aren't stockings, are they?'

‘Oh, no! They don't show, do they?' She tried to wriggle them up, but it proved impossible without hoisting her skirt. ‘Oh, help. What am I going to do? I should have bought tights, only I hate wearing them.'

‘I could lend you some,' offered Isobel politely, coming to the door with the little evening bag that matched her dress.

‘No, no!' protested Edward. ‘She wouldn't
dream
of troubling you.' And to Annie's amazement, he swept her up in his arms and made off with her down the corridor like a caveman. Isobel stared after them in fastidious disapproval. I may be gone some time, Annie wanted to call to her, but had not dared. She was saving the line for her novel.

From that moment on Annie had her work cut out. It was all she could do to prevent Libby from knocking Edward flat, sitting on his chest and licking his face. He was flirting outrageously. He pulled Annie on to his knee and fed her strawberries, letting her run her hand through his short brown hair. But he misbehaved so impeccably that there was never any real danger of her misunderstanding him. She was a super Christian girl, but she was not the future Mrs Edward Hunter. Annie was aware that he had had a little conversation with himself:
Q
. Do I want this woman to be the Mother of my Children?
A.
No.
Sadly.
Therefore, no entanglements. But poor old Libby couldn't grasp this.

After it was all over Annie lay awake till dawn. The taste of strawberries, his strong arms round her. It was so long since anything like this had happened to her, since she had been kissed. Edward's goodnight kisses had been enthusiastic but chaste – mwah! mmm-wah! – planted one on each cheek, just brushing the corner of her mouth. And then to round things off – mmwah! – a firm kiss on the lips. His Imperial Leather soap, his hard smooth chin. Libby howled from her cold kennel outside.

Heigh ho.

Well, what am I going to wear tonight? She decided on her long green crushed-velvet dress. It had come from a Scouts' jumble sale and she suspected that it had once been yellow, only someone had tried to dye it blue. She loved the gentle mottled effect that had been achieved. That dress looks like an old dishrag, Anne.

Would it be warm enough, though? she wondered. The fabric was panne, light as a bird's feather. It was the kind of thing she'd worn in her teens when she had been a tempestuous Pre-Raphaelite poet with clouds of raven hair every night as she fell asleep. Maybe she could wear her baggy chenille sweater over the top. It was dark blue-green. Rookwing. Annie was as colour-conscious as Dr Mowbray. It came from all those hours she had spent as a child poring over her mother's wool catalogues, running her fingertip over the yarn samples and drinking in jade, moss, aquamarine, twilight. Colour had flooded her parched imagination.

Mrs Brown's choice in clothes and interior design had been governed by the twin principles of economy and serviceability. Colour schemes were a silly extravagance. Their home was a battleground where ugly browns slugged it out with orange and maroon. Annie and Damn were mocked at school for their strange clothes. One day, when her parents were out, Damn had thrown the ghastly curtains, carpet and bedspread out of her bedroom on to the landing and painted the walls, furniture and floorboards white. White sheets for curtains and bed cover, white pleated filepaper for a lampshade.

Annie had accepted the violent swirls and dinginess with an outward submissiveness, but in her heart she treasured up all the gems of the New Jerusalem, turning them over and over and watching them flash. Jasper, sapphire, chalcedony. Sardius and chrysolite. Jacinth. Amethyst. Damn would have found the Holy City incredibly tacky, but Annie's soul was ravished by colour. No wonder she had been drawn to Anglicanism with all its jewelled windows and winking brass.

After a moment her thoughts returned to the rookwing sweater folded in her chest of drawers. It was new and expensive – one of her rare Isabella-type purchases. ‘Chenille comes from the French for caterpillar,' read the accompanying rhetoric on the label, ‘because that is exactly what it is like.'
Exactly what it is like
. Annie was enchanted by the notion that her sweater could be weaving a cocoon for itself in the dark of the drawer, and might one day burst out and flutter away across the university on petticoat wings. She looked at the dull sky out of the window and saw the first flakes of snow whirl past.

The cathedral clock struck the quarter hour. There had been a time when the sound had quivered in her very marrow. She had fallen in love with the City at first sight, with its steep riverbanks and towering cathedral. Even the cold air had seemed to teem with promise when she came up on interview. Now it oppressed her. The streets and buildings had a mad claustrophobic intensity. They were dwarfed by the cathedral, belted in by the tight loop of river. Annie longed for the wide fields and huge sky of Cambridge. Each time she travelled north again after the vacation her heart sank when the cathedral appeared. It rose up out of the horizon like a shark's fin above the waves, full of silent menace, making her feel that God was out to get her. If ever she strayed above her ankles into the sinful tide –
VOOM!

Anyway, she thought, shaking off such ideas, tonight would be fun.
King Lear
was not everyone's idea of fun, of course, but they couldn't know what it meant to her to go to the theatre without fifty teenage girls. She'd be able to enjoy the play for once without fearing that someone would get lost, or drunk during the interval, or put on too much make-up on the coach beforehand, or wave at lorry drivers out of the rear window. And Edward would be coming, which would be nice. He had consented to join them since the group was actually
doing
something for once.
And
they would be joined by Edward's doctor friend William, whose cottage Annie had once stayed in with Ted and his family.

Annie had been curious to meet William Penn-Eddis for a long time. His cottage had been so fearsomely well furnished and decorated that even Damn would have found nothing to shudder at. It was not full of other people's discarded three-piece suites and divans, as Annie had anticipated and, indeed, would have found quite reasonable. Everything was discreetly new. There were no frills or horsebrassy knick-knackery, and no colour to speak of. It made Annie want to toss a crimson silk cushion aggressively on to the ivory sofa. Whoops! There goes my glass of burgundy on to the oatmeal carpet. All in all, the place seemed to be crying out for an axe murder to be committed in it.

Annie smiled. She knew a great deal about Dr Penn-Eddis, considering she had never met him. Edward prayed for him regularly in their Coverdale prayer meeting. William had once been a keen Christian of the same hearty evangelical Boys' Public School Camp kind as Edward, but he had gone off the rails. Annie knew all this because Edward's prayers were always superbly informative, tactfully filling God in on the biographical details of the person being prayed for. Annie pictured the archangel Gabriel riffling through a card index and trying to locate the relevant soul for God while Edward was saying, ‘And we pray for Hugh, an old Etonian, now working as a missionary in Uganda . . .'

‘Hugh Duncan. Got him!' Gabriel would say, plucking the card out triumphantly and handing it over. ‘Born in Amersham, Bucks, nineteen fifty-two.'