The Benefits of Passion (26 page)

‘Mum –'

‘Promises are all very well. If he was a decent man he'd have married you by now.'

‘What's so fucking wonderful about marriage?' muttered Will.

‘Will,
please
.'

‘Disgusting language!'

‘Mum! If you'd only –'

‘Well, it's your business, Anne. But I must say, I don't know how you put up with him. I suppose it's the
sex
.' Mrs Brown spat the word violently. ‘Sex isn't everything, you know, Anne.'

Will took the receiver from Annie and laid it down softly on the bedside table. He began kissing her tears away. ‘Forget her,' he whispered.

Annie could still hear her mother's voice ranting away tinnily five minutes later. Will was on top of her parting her thighs.
All very well, but what if . . .
Annie fumbled round and replaced the receiver.

CHAPTER 24

In contrast to Annie's parents, Mr and Mrs Penn-Eddis responded with joy to the news. They were much too civilized to express any dismay that their eldest son had impregnated an ordinand. Annie was cordially invited with Will to attend the Penn-Eddises' fortieth wedding anniversary party. The prospect filled her with dread. She suspected that they would prove to be one of those highly competitive and fearsomely gifted families that flourished in North Oxford, and that she would be completely out of her depth. They would wonder what Will saw in her, although they wouldn't dream of asking.

Her morning sickness gradually subsided and Annie began to feel brighter, although a vitriolic letter from her mother cast a blight over her life for several days. ‘Your father wants to make one thing clear,' wrote Mrs Brown. ‘You're not welcome in this house until you get married. He's a deacon, you know. What will the church think?' There were two whole sides devoted to Will. The language was so violent that Annie went as far as shredding the letter and dropping it in the bin. Her mother's vicious words continued to stab away in her mind.

But at least she had caring, accepting friends. Isobel and Muriel visited one afternoon, bringing with them tiny baby clothes. Annie fingered the little vests incredulously. They really believe I'm going to have a baby, she thought. Muriel asked various midwifey questions about blood pressure, and Isobel remarked that Annie was very brave.

‘I don't feel brave,' confessed Annie.

‘But you're going through with it,' said Isobel, turning slightly pink. ‘A lot of women wouldn't.'

Afterwards Annie pondered this. She had assumed that for Isobel there would be no question of abortion. Bravery was neither here nor there; one just got on with it.

Ted phoned a couple of times to chat. Annie was glad he'd be living in Bishopside next term. He had received a letter from Edward, who was spending the summer in Uganda. Ted was angry with him for being so judgemental. ‘I hope he doesn't take such a hard line when he's in a parish,' he remarked.

Ted's daughters sent her a version of Marvell's ‘To His Coy Mistress' (‘Had we but wormwood enough and tin,/ This crab apple, Lady, were no criminology'). They also sent a collage of Will assembled from a body-building magazine, a gardening catalogue and a detail from a postcard of the Cerne Abbas giant. It was called ‘Dr Sex Does The Garden'. Annie giggled and left it lying around for him to find.

She knew her mother's accusations had riled him. He reiterated his belief that marriage was an outmoded institution, but was doing everything he could to set Annie's mind at rest. She was overwhelmed by the speed with which he was making over his worldly goods to her. Every day there were new forms to sign, new cheque books arriving. Everything was in their joint names, even the house and the cottage. She tried to reciprocate by putting his name on her savings account, but he refused to sign the form.

‘You can take me to the cleaners if I bugger off with someone else,' he said. ‘Reassure Mother on that score.'

But Annie felt crushed by it all. She couldn't bring herself to spend any of his money, despite his insistence that it was now hers as well.

‘I feel I've got no right to it,' she told him.

He was reading a novel and giving her about an eighth of his attention. ‘Mmm.'

‘It's all so one-sided if you won't take my money. What am I giving you?'

‘Your lovely self,' he drawled.

‘Seriously, Will. I feel bad about it.'

He put his book down. ‘You're giving me my child.'

‘That's nothing,' she said crossly. ‘I can't exactly help it, can I?'

‘You could spit in my face and have it aborted.'

‘Don't!' she cried. ‘That's hateful, Will.'

‘Then don't say it's nothing.' He returned to his book.

After a moment she gave up and opened her notebook to remind herself where Barney and Isabella had got to. She had just lost herself in their honeymoon when her book was thrust aside and Will was on his knees burying his head in her lap.

‘Will! What's wrong?'

His fingers gripped hers tightly as though she might slip away from him. He tried to speak but couldn't. She watched helplessly. Then a sick possibility occurred to her: some other woman had done that to him – spat in his face and got rid of his child.

‘Bad memories?' she asked.

He nodded against her stomach, still clinging to her. After a while he sat up and sighed. ‘Ancient history,' he said. ‘Just . . . Oh, just some woman I lived with in London. Years ago. The most god-awful relationship, looking back, but somehow I couldn't seem to extricate myself. I did in the end, of course.' He fell silent.

‘Was she pregnant?'

‘I don't know. She claimed she was. Faxed me at work with the news she'd had my disgusting foetus aborted.'

‘Will!'

‘Yeah. That's about the level we'd reached.'

‘I'm truly sorry.'

‘Well.' He shrugged. ‘As I said – ancient history.' She put her arms round him and hugged him tight.

‘Um, I know you find it difficult, but do you have anyone you can talk to? Are you still seeing –'

‘My father confessor? Yeah. Once in a while.'

‘He's a therapist?'

‘Of a kind. He's a Franciscan.'

‘Not . . . not Gabriel? That's who the Warden sent me to see.'

‘Shit!' He was furious. ‘So the bastard's heard both sides of the story.'

‘He's nice!' protested Annie.

‘
Nice?
He's got the manners of a fucking rattlesnake. He spots a weakness, then
voom
!'

‘Well, he was kind to me.'

‘Hah.'

Annie remembered suddenly how Gabriel had laced his hands together like two halves of a puzzle. She found it reassuring that there was someone who knew them both, whose mind encompassed both their stories.

Will hugged her close again. ‘I need you so much, Annie.'

This admission was worth more than all his worldly goods. Annie had never felt needed before in her life. At best she'd felt tolerated, provided she didn't make a fuss. Her spirits rose.

She was still lonely, however. Church had not provided the immediate circle of friends she had been expecting. The congregation was friendly but she found no real kindred spirit. There was some comfort in attending worship again, but it was also painful. She felt left out and judged during communion as the rest of the worshippers went up to the altar. Each week she was surprised by the pang of regret she felt that she would never be a minister herself.

Will showed no interest in going to church with her, and she hesitated to suggest it. He would hate it, Annie felt sure. She guessed his taste was for sung eucharists in exquisite cathedrals. Johnny's informal style was stamped across the liturgy and even Annie, who had a professional interest in these things, never felt quite safe. You can't do that! You can't say that! she kept wanting to cry. But he seemed to get away with it. The congregation accepted him and he was achieving the impossible: getting some of the ‘unchurched' into church.

But each Sunday was harder than the last. ‘Don't go if it makes you feel miserable,' snapped Will. Johnny was aware of her feelings, however. He invited her round to the vicarage. Annie wondered if this was just a pastoral chat or whether she would be introduced to his wife who never went to church. Perhaps she was about to meet the friend she needed so badly.

It was early evening. As she walked across Bishopside she tried to picture what Johnny's wife might be like. ‘Curvaceous blonde' sprang somehow to mind. Someone with the same unabashed attractiveness as the vicar himself. An unmistakable modern boxlike parsonage came into view. It was the only detached house for miles around and Annie found it mildly shocking to come upon it like this after streets of terraced housing and council flats. She rang the doorbell. She had just begun to ask herself if she'd got the wrong day when she glimpsed movement in the hallway. The door opened and a tall thin woman waited with an unfriendly stare.

‘Um, hello,' said Annie, her eyes veering away from the woman's nose ring. ‘I'd arranged to see your . . . the vicar.'

‘He's not in.'

Annie hesitated. ‘Um . . . I'm afraid I'm a bit early.'

There was a silence.

‘You can come in and wait, if you like,' said the woman grudgingly.

‘No, no. I'll come back later.'

The woman appeared to have some swift debate with herself. She opened the door a fraction wider. ‘No, come in.'

Annie crept over the threshold. ‘Thanks. If you're sure . . .'

The woman turned and Annie followed her, envying the long thick black plait that hung down her back. She led Annie through to the sitting room and gestured for her to sit. Annie watched another fierce inner struggle take place. The woman had an oddly expressive face with intense pale grey eyes.

‘If you're busy . . .' began Annie, guessing what the struggle was about. The woman was evidently tempted, but not quite rude enough to abandon Annie.

‘Do you want a drink?'

‘Um, just water, if that's not too . . .'

She had already left for the kitchen.

Annie looked round the room. It was crowded with vivid bursts of colour. She ran her eyes round greedily after the austerity of Will's décor. Rich brocade curtains and cushions, huge brass candlesticks, dark carved wood – had someone been pilfering from the church? The plants were so vast that a machete would come in handy for reaching the bookshelf. There was a sumptuous savagery not usually encountered in a vicarage. It was curiously at odds with the dour brooding abstracts on the walls.

The woman came back and handed Annie a glass of water. ‘He said he'd be back at five,' she said abruptly. It was nearly six.

‘I'm sorry if I've interrupted anything,' said Annie.

The woman gave a twitching shrug and began pacing the room and glancing out of the window. Annie sipped the water and watched her. She was wearing faded jeans and a paint-stained black T-shirt. Was that a tattoo on her upper arm? Her feet were bare. A strand of silver hair began at her forehead and Annie could follow it weaving in and out down the length of the plait. She began to feel sure she knew her from somewhere. Hair like ebony, skin like snow. Someone in a fairy tale. She was not exactly beautiful, but Annie couldn't take her eyes off her as she moved edgily round the room. The silence was starting to get awkward.

‘I'm Annie, by the way,' she tried.

‘I know.'

Silence again. I must introduce her to Will, thought Annie. They'd get on like a house on fire.

In the end a grumpy admission was forthcoming: ‘I'm Mara Johns.'

‘Oh! You were at Cambridge.'

So what? said Mara's expression.

‘I think we were in the same college. In a different year, though.'

‘I don't remember.'

This promising avenue of small talk was cut off abruptly. Annie sipped her water again. Oh, well. So this wasn't the bosom friend she'd been hoping for. It was a warm close afternoon and she was feeling drowsy. She battled with a yawn.

‘Sorry,' she said. ‘I'm always sleepy at the moment. I'm pregnant.'

‘I know,' said Mara again.

‘Do you have any children?' asked Annie, beating the silence back valiantly.

‘No.' This was clearly a blunder. Mara was biting her lip and tugging at a strand of her hair.

Annie coloured. ‘Um, so what do you do? I mean –'

‘Paint.' Mara jerked her head at the dour pictures.

‘Um,' said Annie. She tried to summon an intelligent response. ‘I'm afraid I'm pretty hopeless at abstracts.'

‘I do other stuff, too.' She pointed to another bit of wall.

Annie turned. It was a pencil drawing of two young men. She crossed to take a better look.

‘Oh!' exclaimed Annie. ‘Wonderful. Are they brothers?'

‘Yes.'

Annie studied them. They were undeniably beautiful. The older stared out in arrogant contempt, the younger in smug, cat-like self-satisfaction.

‘Do they like it?' she asked.

‘No,' said Mara. Annie glanced and caught a broad toothy smile. It was instantly suppressed.

‘Does it have a title?' asked Annie.

The smile flashed again. ‘“Big Shit and Little Shit.”'

Annie giggled.

‘They're William's cousins,' added Mara.

‘Really?' Annie studied the picture in surprise. There was a likeness. The older brother, particularly.

‘I knew them in Oxford,' said Mara.

‘Do you know Will's family, then?'

‘A bit.' Then she scowled as though she'd been betrayed into silly chattering.

‘Have you done any others I could see?' asked Annie.

Mara muttered something. At that point they both heard the front door.

‘Sorry sorry sorry!' said Johnny as he came in. He shot himself in the head with an imaginary pistol. ‘The late Johnny Whitaker.' He grinned at Annie. ‘Hello, flower. Has she been looking after you?'

Mara was wearing a no-sex-for-two-hundred-years expression.

‘You'll not believe this,' said Johnny, slipping out his dog-collar and undoing a few buttons. ‘I'd've been on time, only –'

‘Don't even bother,' Mara said as she left the room.

‘Fetch us a beer, pet,' called Johnny after her. A door banged. ‘Lovely girl, my wife. So how's Annie?' He laughed at her anxious face. ‘Don't worry. That's mild. She must like you.'

‘How can you tell?'

But he only laughed again, and began asking her how she was settling in. She decided to take her cue from him and regard Mara's behaviour as ordinary. They talked for a few minutes, then to Annie's astonishment Mara came back in and handed him his beer. ‘Aw, thanks, sweetie.' He caught her fingers and smiled up at her.