Angels and Men (36 page)

The blackbird was still singing in the garden below. Mara crossed to the window and looked down. It was getting dark. She wondered whether the same problem was being dished up again and again to every generation of her family until someone at last solved it. She heard her father's voice: ‘Someone somewhere has to break the pattern.' I can do it, she thought with a sudden hardening of her heart. I'm good at this. Renunciation, despair – my most familiar sustenance.

CHAPTER 22

The birds were singing outside when Mara woke. She went across to the window. It was a fine mid-May morning. She looked down at the steep bank. The river was almost screened by leaves now. Who would believe it could get this green? As she watched she could feel a thought twitching in her mind. Something about today. Something special. Then she laughed. My birthday. I'm twenty-two. She flung the window up and sat with her arms on the sill looking out. What a blue, blue sky. The whole world looked rinsed and sparkling. Hester used to call this birthday weather. Mara tensed herself, waiting for the rush of pain at this thought, but it did not come. Instead she felt strangely happy, as she had done that windy day at home in the vacation. Hester might have been just across the landing in another room, about to come in and say happy birthday and sit with her watching the beautiful morning. Mara had been dreading this day. The first birthday alone. Maybe these stretches of glee would go on occurring from time to time, like unexplained remissions in a long illness. Or else the wound was beginning to heal. She stood up and went to take a shower. No use picking at the scab to see if it would still bleed.

The hot water beat on her face and ran down her body. Her hair grew wet and heavy, sticking to her back as she began to wash it. A good bright day for drying it, anyway. A good day for many things. No. She thrust the thought of Johnny firmly from her mind. She had been avoiding him for a couple of weeks now, and she knew he had noticed. Once he had blown her a lascivious kiss across the theology section of the university library and laughed out loud when she stuck up two fingers in return. People had turned to see what was happening, and she had ducked between the rows of bound journals and hid.

The thing she hated most was the sense that she was no better than Joanna in all this. What
had
Joanna been up to that night, exactly? She ‘had only wanted to talk to Johnny', according to Rupert, who had done what Johnny asked and got rid of her.

Mara winced at the memory of the verbal flaying she had once received from him. His words must been been effective in this instance too, since Joanna was no longer trying to climb into Johnny's trousers and establish the Kingdom of God there. She was pursuing the friendly gorilla instead, the one that Mara had washed up with at the college ball. Poor boy. He had been won over by Joanna's special ministry to Jesus College, and now spent long hours closeted with her in intense prayer, waiting for the fire of God to fall. He had clearly proved more pliable than Johnny.

Mara smiled as she stepped out of the shower. She knew her caution was probably unwarranted. Other than teasing her, Johnny wasn't going to take advantage of her accidentally disclosed lust. Mara repressed a voice in her mind which sighed, Unfortunately. She wrapped a towel round her head and went back to her room. No, he was altogether too . . . well, ‘decent' had to be the only word. Decent, my arse, said the fishwife. About as decent as a prize bull after a winter in the barn. Nonsense, retorted Mara. Now, what am I going to wear today? Something a bit special.

She went to the wardrobe and drew out another of Aunt Judith's dresses. Cornflower with a hint of lavender, she decided. The soft cotton was sprinkled with tiny white polka dots. It had a full skirt and a wide belt of the same material. She began whistling as she towelled her hair dry.
Now is the month of maying, when merry lads are playing
. A fist hammered on the wall.

‘Shut up, you stupid bitch. I'm trying to sleep.'

She glanced guiltily at her watch. Twenty to seven. She had forgotten how thin the wall was. As she ran her fingers through her hair, to separate the curls out, an interesting thought struck her. She had heard a wide range of instructive things through that wall, from obscene language to sixteenth-century Spanish motets, but never the sound of bedsprings
in extremis
. Either Andrew did whatever it was men like him did – which she could never quite bring herself to imagine – elsewhere, or he was as chaste as she was. Hmm. Elsewhere, presumably. But where? Not public conveniences, surely? Not someone as fastidious as Andrew. But this might be another failure of the homophobic imagination. Or the female imagination. She began to whistle again as she wondered.
Each with his merry lass, a-sporting in the grass
. Another exasperated sound from the other side of the wall silenced her. A moment later Andrew came into the room in his silk dressing-gown.

‘Right. I'm awake, so you can bloody well make me some coffee.' He sat on the desk scowling into the sunlight. Mara put the kettle on with a smile. ‘What are you so cheerful about, you cow?' Shall I tell him?

‘It's my birthday.'

‘It is? Why didn't you warn me? Happy birthday. How old?'

‘Twenty-two.'

He got up and hugged her. ‘Why didn't you tell anyone?'

‘I don't want any fuss.' He laughed and kissed her cheek.

‘Too bad. I'm going to take you out to dinner. Not tonight, though. I've got a concert.'

‘Or tomorrow night. Aren't we supposed to be dining on High Table?'

‘Shit. I'd forgotten.' He sat on the desk again. ‘You'll hate it, you know. We're supposed to be the Principal's model postgrads and impress the old farts from the college council.'

‘Maybe I won't go.'

‘Yes you bloody well will. If I'm going, you're certainly not getting out of it.' He pointed at her dress suddenly. ‘I recognize that. Part of the mad aunt's wardrobe.' She whirled round for him and he nodded in approval. ‘It needs a wide-brimmed hat. White.'

‘There wasn't one.' She paused, and looked at him. ‘I thought you were too drunk to remember anything.'

He was smiling his hateful feline smile. Surely he couldn't remember posing nude for her? No. Impossible, or he would have demanded to see the pictures by now. She began spooning coffee into the pretty blue and white mugs her mother had bought for her. When she turned round again Andrew was leafing through her sketch-book.

‘Give me that!' she cried. He pushed her away.

‘Just checking to see if you've done anything new since I last looked.'

‘You sneaky, slimy little git!'

‘You shouldn't leave it lying around.' But her anger had already dwindled. She stood plucking at her dress, watching fearfully as he turned the pages. ‘Can I have this one?' It was the picture of Johnny stripped to the waist.

‘No.'

‘Cow.' He continued to leaf through. What did he think of them? Her heart thumped. At last he looked up. ‘This is what you really want to do, isn't it?' Her hand fumbled in her damp hair. She nodded. ‘What's the problem, then? You don't have to do a PhD, you know. Grant applications aren't the law of the Medes and Persians.' She could feel her hand starting to tug at her hair. He was watching her in amusement.

‘Yes, but I ought . . .'

‘You believe in a very strange god, Mara.'

‘I don't.' She felt insulted. The god she so faithfully didn't believe in wasn't at all strange.

‘You don't think irrational sadism is an odd quality for the Divine Being to possess?' She looked blank. ‘Listen. God creates a woman and gives her the ability to draw like an angel. He fixes it so that there is nothing in the world she would rather do than draw, then he damns her in perpetuity if she picks up a pencil.'

Mara stared at him. He's right. That is what I believe. She turned away and faced the window in amazement. She saw the beautiful morning, heard the birds singing on the riverbank, the bells chime. Someone somewhere was laughing at her. She put her hand over her mouth to stop herself joining in. It was a theological gaffe of stupendous proportions. So that was the angel's message. For an instant she saw it again in her memory, like sunlight flashing off a distant window, the fierce eyes, the wrathful joy. Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, you fatheaded finite fool. How can you even have thought it? She remembered Andrew's earlier words: What if there's another kind of God? Gracious, slow to anger. She heard herself laugh.

‘I don't believe this,' said Andrew. ‘It's seven in the morning, and we're talking theology. Give me my coffee, for Christ's sake.'

It had turned into a hot day. After lunch Mara sat with Andrew in the shade of the cherry tree on Coverdale lawn. She was wearing a white broad-brimmed hat which Andrew had bought for her as a birthday present. He was tucking cherry blossom into the petersham trim. She sat patiently. There was a clack of croquet balls from the next lawn behind the high wall, and up above the swallows dipped and nattered. It was the blissful hour before exams or revision started again for the afternoon. At any moment Maddy and May would appear, wailing, ‘Oh, God – I couldn't answer a single question!' and then waste the whole afternoon in post-mortems.

‘There,' said Andrew at last. He held her at arm's length. ‘You look beautiful.' She felt herself flush with pleasure.

‘You said that to me once before.' She knew as she spoke that she would regret it.

‘It was true once before.' He picked up the book he had brought with him and opened it. ‘The rest of the time you just look indescribably bad-tempered and plain. Like a partially resurrected Jane Morris with a hangover.' He lay down and rested his head in her lap.

‘But that's twice in one academic year!' He ignored this quip. She looked down at him, enjoying the black of his hair against her blue dress. His eyelashes flickered slightly as his eyes moved across the page. Pity she didn't have her sketch-book.

‘You're beautiful all the time,' she said. He made no reply, taking it as his due, but she knew he was waiting for the sting in the tail. What would annoy him most, she wondered idly. A bee droned past them.

‘In a slightly prissy Little Lord Fauntleroy kind of way.'

She yelped as he pinched her leg. He continued to read, and she tilted her head back and looked at the blue sky behind the blossom. Anyone could be beautiful on a day like this. Even the students leaping and catching their frisbee seemed more lithe and graceful in the sunshine. Mara watched them as they played. Creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life. She looked down at Andrew again.

‘What kind of God don't you believe in, then?'

‘Any kind.' His eyes continued to travel down the page.

‘Be more specific.'

This made him look up disdainfully. ‘You, my girl, are philosophically crass. A discussion of qualities pre-supposes existence. I'm an atheist.' He returned to his book. ‘And don't wheel on the ontological argument.'

Mara watched as a small shower of petals fluttered down from the tree. She could never quite remember what the ontological argument was. It was like the spare keys to the house: important, but forever being mislaid. Andrew was smiling as he read. He knows I don't know, she thought.

‘I've got a theory about your atheism,' she said.

He read on as though he had not heard. She was beginning to feel like Miss Bingley in
Pride and Prejudice
remarking on the evenness of Mr Darcy's lines. She watched one of the young men leaping for the frisbee, but it floated up high on some unknown path of its own and lodged in the branches of the hawthorn tree. A different shower of petals fell. Various missiles were hurled up, but the frisbee was stuck. It hung there, pale yellow, like some strange fruit amongst the blossom. The fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, thought Mara, watching their attempts to dislodge it.

‘What's your theory about my atheism?'

‘It's not as rigorously intellectual as you pretend. I bet it's rooted in something deeply uncool, like personal experience.'

He sat up and treated her to his most unpleasant stare. ‘Are you gambling on the chance I won't make you cry on your birthday, Princess?' Aha. She must be close to the truth.
I can't believe in a God who would let this happen
. Something as unsophisticated as that? ‘What sort of “personal experience”?' She heard the insulting inverted commas. The death of his friend. She dared not say it.

‘Something to do with the Church? Maybe you were molested by a priest.' At this point they saw Johnny walking towards the group under the hawthorn tree. They watched him in silence for a moment as he talked with the other students.

‘You never know,' said Andrew thoughtfully. ‘That might drive me straight into the bosom of Anglicanism instead.' He turned and looked at her. ‘It would depend on the priest.'

‘Stop drooling. Anyway, he's not a priest.'

‘No, but he will be. Don't get your hopes up.'

She blushed. Some such thought had been lying around unacknowledged in the back of her mind. If he doesn't get ordained, then maybe . . . Andrew grinned, seeing his bolt hit home.

There was a cheer from the other end of the lawn. Mara and Andrew turned back. Johnny was standing on the top of the high wall, sure-footed and fearless against the sky.

‘Over there,' called the students below, pointing to the frisbee.

‘I see it,' he said. He began to walk towards the hawthorn tree, keeping his audience entertained with a pantomimed tightrope walk and a spoof commentary on his progress. Impersonations of several well-known sports commentators carried across to where Mara and Andrew were sitting, and even Andrew was betrayed into a smile. Johnny reached the tree, leant out and retrieved the frisbee, then sent it whizzing back to its owner. After a brief conversation with the croquet players on the other side of the wall, he leapt back down amidst laughter, cheers and cries of ‘Don't do it, John!'

‘Jesus,' said Andrew in disgusted admiration. Johnny caught sight of them. Oh, God, he's going to come and talk to us. Her heart began to race as he crossed the lawn to where they were sitting. Bad enough to face him alone, but infinitely worse with Andrew's eyes on her. Fortunately a distraction arrived at that point in the form of Maddy and May. They swooned down theatrically on to the lawn and howled about the brutality of the exam system. Johnny laughed at them and sat down. May stationed herself close to Andrew and began to make a daisy chain.