Angels and Men (40 page)

May sat up and blew her nose.

‘It'll be all right,' said Mara, feeling totally inadequate. ‘Everything seems worse at exam time.'

‘I know. I'm just being silly. I wish I was more like you. You're so clever. You always seem in control. And you've got the best-looking men in college running after you.' Mara disclaimed. ‘It's true. And you're beautiful.'

‘Actually, according to Andrew, I've only been beautiful twice this academic year. He says the rest of the time I'm indescribably plain.'

May giggled and wiped her eyes. ‘He said that? Is that why you smacked his face?' Mara sighed. Too much to hope that the whole college wasn't discussing the incident. The phrase ‘Kindly conduct this altercation elsewhere' had passed into legend.

‘No. That was for something else.'

Before May could pursue this there was a knock on the door. The devil himself. He came in grinning and handed Mara a note. The Principal's reply.
My dear Andrew
, it said.
Your note was unnecessary. I have known you too long to harbour any doubts about the depth and sincerity of your regret
. Mara laughed out loud and Andrew whisked the letter back before May could read it. He looked down at her and raised an eyebrow.

‘Not working, little one?'

May blushed. ‘I was just going,
actually
.' She left with a fair assumption of nonchalance.

‘Be kind to her,' Mara said.

‘I am. In my way.'

‘She's in love with you.'

‘And with you.'

‘
What
?'

‘Oh, just a schoolgirl pash on the young Latin mistress, that sort of thing. Don't let it worry you.'

‘Don't be ridiculous!'

‘She adores you. Thinks you're wonderfully cool and aloof and beautiful.' Mara's hand flew to her mouth. Suddenly it sounded possible.

‘Oh, God. What am I going to to do?' He smiled his hateful smile.

‘Be kind to her, Princess.' He made himself some coffee while her mind tangled itself helplessly in the web of attractions that seemed to weave her group of friends together. ‘She'll grow out of it,' he said, sitting down beside her.

‘It's not sexual, though.'

‘Isn't it? But then, the line's so blurred,' he said, trailing a finger down her bare arm. ‘Don't you think?' She looked at him in dismay as a new thought formed. Then she saw he was laughing at her.

‘Will you stop arsing around?' she said.

‘No. Will you come and live with me in Oxford?' There was a pause as these words sank in.

‘What? What do you mean?'

‘I've decided to accept the research fellowship after all. Accommodation is part of the deal, and I want a flatmate.'

‘Why are you asking me?'

‘It's part of my long-term plan of humanizing you.'

‘Why – but – um . . .' She put her hands over her mouth and laughed. ‘How much a month?'

‘Nothing. I get it rent-free. But if you'd prefer me to fleece you, I will.'

‘What's in it for you?'

‘I need an Aunt Sally. My psychological well-being suffers if I've got no one to victimize.' She realized she wasn't going to extract a serious answer from him.

‘But aren't you worried I'll bugger up your morning routine?'

‘I'll be issuing house rules, Princess. No banned substances, no answering back, and don't bring home any muscle-bound brickies.'

‘Unless it's your birthday, and they're giftwrapped.'

‘You cheeky bitch.' He stood up to leave. ‘Let me know. Oh, this came for you, by the way.' He handed her a letter. The handwriting was unfamiliar. ‘From the prodigal.'

Johnny! She flinched. Andrew laid a hand briefly on her shoulder and left. She tore the envelope open.

Dear Mara,

I'm sorry for what happened the other night. I didn't come round with the intention of trying my luck. I suppose I should have left as soon as I realized how drunk you were, but old habits die hard. I did warn you what I'm like. Anyhow, I'm sorry. It's not your fault I'm in a mess. I'm at the friary now trying to sort myself out, but I'll be back on Saturday. Will you come and talk to me? Forget what I said at the time. I don't really blame you.

Johnny.

She read the letter again, and then a third time. She could hear his voice speaking as she read, and tears of relief poured down her face. He was sorry. He didn't blame her. She raised her head and looked at the swimming green of the trees through her tears. I do still trust him. Oh, don't let me be wrong. The letter sounded so genuine, he might almost have been in the room pleading with her. Today's Monday, she thought. Five days till he comes back. She looked up at the blue sky and her heart mounted up on wings till the City lay spread beneath her like a child's toy. If I'm wrong now, then God help me. God help me.

CHAPTER 24

She woke in the sunlight to hear a robin singing down on the riverbank. The bells chimed six and Andrew's words came back to her: ‘You are responsible for how you deal with what's happened to you.' Perhaps he was right? She was wasting her life ‘hating and blaming'. She had assumed that by renouncing her faith she put herself for ever beyond the pale, outside the fold. But now it struck her that the fold might be far larger than she had supposed, and that she might, in fact, still be inside it. Well, I'm not bloody well going to church, she thought. She listened to her tone. She sounded like an angry child being bribed with a present:
I'm not opening it. I hate you all. I don't want it!
She smiled. Someone somewhere was laughing at her again.

She got out of bed and crossed to the window. Three days till Johnny came back. Her stomach tightened. She'd have to go and talk to him. She could picture his anger if Andrew got there first with his version. The wind ruffled the leaves of the copper beech on the riverbank. What was she going to say to Johnny? Her mind went over his letter again for the thousandth time. Doubts had started to creep in.
I
don't really blame you
. What was that ‘really' doing in there? It implied the opposite: he
did
blame her. And maybe he was right to do so. To her dismay, her thoughts kept slithering back to that night. Those hard, slow kisses, his hand up between her thighs. A voice whispered, You should never have stopped him.

I can't face him, she told herself. Watching his hands as he lights a cigarette, knowing what those fingers have done to me. And to all the other women before me. When he grins at me, I'll think he's remembering. ‘Mmm, mmm. Not as cool and sophisticated as you like to think you are, young lady.'

Later, as she sat at her desk working, she found herself thinking, I can survive. Only another few weeks and I'll be painting in Oxford and I'll never have to see Johnny again. She had accepted Andrew's humanitarian offer, and later that morning she was going to go and break the news to Dr Roe. She intended to write up her MA and submit it, because she found it impossible to abandon something she had undertaken to do. But after that . . . freedom. Would her friends all think her mad? Would her parents say ‘rather disappointed, but if that's really what you want to do, darling, then you must do it, of course'.

How do I know I'm right? she asked herself. As she wondered, a picture came into her mind. It was her moorland. She had not seen it for months. There was the dark winter heather and the pale sky leaning on the hillside. The earth beneath seemed to crackle faintly with expectation. The curlew's cry. Soon it would be spring. This is what she'd paint first. She saw the canvas. Two-thirds dark for the steep moor and stream, then the top left-hand corner white for the sky, as though it had been torn back to let the light through. She held the picture in her mind. Strong diagonals, dark, light, dark, light. Space and depth and movement. It shone for her as though it was lit up from behind.

Does art have to be selfish to survive? she wondered. She remembered herself as she was when she first arrived in the City, vowing to remain alone and have no friends. She did not wish herself back. Maddy and May, Andrew, Rupert. Johnny, even. Well, if you invite people in, then they can't be blamed for making themselves at home.

She set off early for her tutorial, intending to wander along the riverbank and plan what she would say. She took her sketch-book to show Dr Roe. After a good deal of heart-searching she had decided not to tear out the pictures of Andrew she had done during the Easter vacation. Dr Roe would have to form her own conclusions, she thought, running down the flight of steps that led to the Principal's study. As she passed his door, her conscience began to crackle like a Geiger counter. She had never apologized. She carried on and the crackling doubled. She sighed and retraced her steps. With a bit of luck he'd be out. But when she knocked, he called her in. She entered red-faced with her sketch-book clamped to her chest like a breastplate. The Principal raised an inquiring eyebrow.

‘I came to say sorry about the other night.'

He inclined his head. ‘Thank you, Mara.'

There was a silence. Was that it? Should she just turn round again and blunder back out? But by then she had already paused long enough to suggest that she had something else to say. She cast about desperately. He was not helping, and it occurred to her that he might be paying her back for all the times she had done the same to him.

She hit upon a handy idea: ‘I also came to say goodbye. I'll be leaving at the end of this term. I've decided not to do a PhD after all. I'm moving to Oxford, where I'm going to paint.'

‘Ah, yes.' He leant forward with interest and motioned for her to sit. ‘I'd gathered that you were good at drawing.' She sat down and gawped at him. He gestured apologetically. ‘One tends to hear these things in my position.' Hah. One bloody well tends to ferret them out, you mean. ‘A courageous move,' he said in a drawing-out-the-interviewee tone. She made no response and after a moment he took a pair of half-moon glasses out of his breast pocket and put them on. ‘It's good to take stock now and then. Do a personal audit, as it were, and be prepared to ask whether a complete change of direction might be called for. I try to make a point of asking myself that from time to time.' He lapsed back into silence, resting his elbows on the desk and joining his fingertips prayerfully. Mara saw the ghost of a mitre shimmering over his head. He roused himself. ‘However, as often as not it's simply a case of waiting for the right thing to come along.'

‘Or the Right Reverend thing,' agreed Mara.

He looked at her over the top of his glasses for what felt like twenty seconds. ‘I think I'm going to forget you said that.' She hung her head, biting her lips in a desperate attempt not to laugh. When she looked up again, she saw a gleam of amusement in his eyes. He reached out and said, ‘May I?' For a wild moment she thought he was asking for her hand to hold or kiss. Then she realized with a blush that he was indicating her sketch-book.

She was so flustered she unfused it from her chest and handed it over. The nude pictures! Well, sod it. Let him think what he likes. He adjusted his glasses and opened the book. She watched his face as he turned the pages. He was far too civilized to betray shock or surprise. He was looking with careful interest, sometimes smiling in recognition or amusement at the various students and City scenes she had captured. He was nearing the end. Pictures of Andrew sitting in his armchair reading and ignoring her. She had spent a couple of hours the previous night doing them. The Principal looked up and removed his glasses.

‘Very good indeed. You have a real gift.' She mumbled something and began twiddling her plait. He put his glasses back on and leafed through the book again. ‘What a wonderful record of the summer term. I think, however . . .' He removed his glasses and folded them carefully. She watched as his hand hovered with them above his pocket, and willed him to put them in. ‘I think the pictures of Andrew are in a different class. I don't pretend to be a judge, but there's a certain detachment in the others. They're shrewdly observed, but . . .' – he unfolded the glasses again and made as if to put them back on – ‘there seems to be a deeper level of insight and observation here. Possibly a greater emotional engagement?'

She blushed. This was what she had been attempting, but she was surprised it showed so clearly.

‘Well, he's a good friend, I suppose.' The Principal inclined his head at this muttered declaration. It sounded so inadequate that Mara added: ‘Actually, we're going to share a flat in Oxford.'

‘Aha,' said the Principal with a smile. ‘A fate you both richly deserve.' He rose to his feet. She got up too. ‘Well, Mara, I shall follow your progress with interest. I'm sorry we're losing you, but I wish you every success. I've very much enjoyed having you as part of the college.' She flushed, thinking she detected irony. He put out a hand. She fumbled one out in return and he shook it warmly. ‘Go well. God bless you.'

He really meant it, she realized. On impulse she said, ‘Would you like a picture for your wall?'

‘I'd be delighted, Mara.' He had to say that, of course.

She opened the book. Which one, for God's sake? After a moment's dithering she tore out the last picture in the book. Andrew reading. She thrust it at the Principal and escaped. As she ran down the stairs she imagined him peering at it through his glasses and thinking, Oh, dear, how unfortunate. Still, we can always put it in the box room, I suppose.

Mara met Dr Roe coming out of a meeting in the professor's study. They walked up the stairs together in silence. She could see that her tutor was upset. When they were in her room, Dr Roe said without preamble, ‘This is awful. One of our First Years is going to fail her prelims completely. She hasn't turned up for any of her papers. Apparently the Lord told her not to.' Joanna. ‘I can't believe anyone would do that. It sounds like . . .
fanaticism
. Like something out of your thesis. I gather it all started in a prayer meeting in your college. Did you go?'

‘No.'

‘People passing out and speaking in tongues and so on. You'll have heard about it, I'm sure.'

‘A little.'

‘And the Maths department's hopping mad because one of their brightest Second Years is barely answering a single question in his exams. Which they seem to think is
our
fault in some way, because he's a friend of hers.' Not the gorilla, thought Mara in dismay. ‘What do you make of it all?'

‘The same old story. Renewal spilling over into fanaticism.'

‘Ah, so there's such a thing as genuine renewal, but it gets out of hand?'

‘Maybe.' Do I believe that? ‘Or else people exploit it for their own ends.'

‘Yes,' said Dr Roe. ‘I taught her, you know.'

‘Joanna?'

‘Yes.' There was a silence.

‘What did you . . . make of her?'

‘Nothing. That's just the problem. She always seemed . . . not sly, exactly. Evasive. I never felt I was making any kind of real contact with her. It was as though there was something
missing
. A sense of reality, maybe.'

‘No. It's a different reality.'

‘Go on,' prompted Dr Roe.

‘A different universe. This world is just the stage for spiritual warfare. We're living in Armageddon. And she's the focal point for all the action.'

‘That's what she thinks?'

‘I'm guessing.'

‘Delusions of grandeur. Isn't that a symptom of schizophrenia?'

‘Possibly. I don't think that's the problem, though.'

‘What is it, then?'

‘Attention-seeking. On a cosmic scale.'

‘Ah. Thank you. That's helpful. It's a pity it's outside your period, or you could include a chapter on it,' said Dr Roe. ‘Anyway. Do sit down. Coffee?'

Mara nodded. She was surprised Dr Roe had confided in her. Maybe we could have been friends, she thought, now it was too late to do anything about it. As the kettle boiled, Mara tried to remember the first sentence of her prepared speech, but before she could find her starting place, Dr Roe spoke.

‘I'm afraid I've got a confession to make, Mara. I'd have told you earlier, only nothing was certain. I've been offered a post in Oxford, starting this October.' Mara smiled. ‘I'm really sorry to mess you around like this, but I do hope we can work something out. Maybe –'

‘It's OK,' interrupted Mara. ‘I came to tell you I've decided not to do the doctorate after all. I'm going to paint.' She felt her smile broaden. ‘In Oxford, in fact. I'm sharing a flat with a friend.'

‘Oh, wonderful!'

Mara shrank back slightly from her tutor's enthusiasm and said frigidly, ‘I intend to finish the MA, of course.'

‘Well, I'd be delighted to carry on supervising you informally.'

‘Thanks.' She really seems pleased, Mara thought.

Dr Roe made coffee, and Mara noticed she was glancing at her sketch-book. ‘Oh, I wanted you to see these.' She handed it over awkwardly. ‘If you're interested.' Stop begging for affirmation, she told herself.

‘I'd love to.' She watched nervously as Dr Roe opened the book. There lay Andrew in all his glory. ‘Oh – Andrew Jacks!' she exclaimed. ‘I wondered if you two knew each other.' Mara stifled a gauche explanation. ‘His brother's an old friend of mine.' She smiled down at the picture and shook her head. ‘That boy. He's
so
beautiful. How do you know him? Through college?'

‘His room's next to mine.'

Dr Roe turned a page. ‘I first met him when he was about fifteen. He used to come up to Oxford to see Alex.'

‘What was he like then?'

‘Oh, terrifying. Sophisticated. Incorrigibly gay, of course. He loved shocking people. Especially me,' she added with feeling. ‘I was a terribly naive eighteen-year-old. I can remember one party in particular. I must have spent about half an hour talking to this incredibly beautiful girl in a black leather miniskirt. Andrew, of course. I wondered what Alex was smirking about.' Yes, oh yes! ‘I still couldn't believe it when I was told.'

‘You don't have a photo, by any chance?' Dr Roe laughed and shook her head.

‘He swans in here periodically and criticizes my taste. Calling me “Jane”, like that, as if it were in inverted commas. I wonder why I put up with it.' Dr Roe continued turning the pages, smiling as the Principal had done at the pictures of the cathedral and the students.

‘Actually,' said Mara, ‘he's the one I'm sharing a flat with.'

Dr Roe looked up. ‘You are? Wonderful. So he accepted that research fellowship, then. I wasn't sure he could bear to be at the same university as Alex.' This was an angle on Andrew which had intrigued Mara before.