Angels and Men (10 page)

The afternoon slipped away and darkness began to creep over the City, mild, with a hint of coming rain. Up on the windy station above the town students were waiting for trains from the south. They wandered nervously up and down the platforms. Had they been wise to invite that woman, this man, as a partner? Down in the streets below others sat in hairdressers' and barbers' as the night pressed in on the warm salon windows. Would the wind undo all the good work? What if this last-minute haircut was a disaster? And back in the college complex negotiations went on over bathroom rights. From steamy doorways came the smells of honeysuckle and passion-fruit. Watery footprints, powdery footprints.

Mara decided after a fierce inner debate that she would not join Rupert and the Someone-Somethings at the ball. Not if Johnny would be there. If people were talking already, this would make them talk all the more. ‘I hear you've got a thing about him.' Good God. Who'd been saying that? Nobody could know. Unless – had he realized? She blushed in mortification at the thought that it might have been Johnny himself, talking to Nigel the way she supposed men did over a pint. She had seen them in the bar together. Well, the black dress would hang undisturbed in the back of the wardrobe. She turned to her books, but her thoughts were interrupted repeatedly. But if you could go – in another life, in another world – who would you go with? The voice nagged away as she worked.

The Scriptures, the millennium and the role of women, she thought, gritting her teeth. She made notes to herself about the Second Coming. What difference did it make to believe the Parousia was imminent? Was this conviction a mental assent to a calculated date? Or was it essentially an experience? And if it was an experience, did it lead to new ways of interpreting the Bible? Or did the method of biblical interpretation determine the nature of the experience? But as she thought about these things, they ceased to be academic questions jotted in her spiky handwriting. She was seventeen and back in the stifling room above the village library.

A summer evening. The windows were all open, but no breeze seemed to be able to find its way in. She was sitting beside Hester. There he was, the leader, whose name she still could not bring herself to form. She heard his voice.

‘I have crucified the flesh with its passion and desires, says St Paul. And this is what we must do, brothers and sisters. We must crucify the flesh. God is calling you to nail your pride to the Cross. To nail your intellect to the Cross. He has many blessings he's just waiting to pour down upon us – eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man what God has in store for those who love him and are called according to his purposes, says the Word. But he's not going to give us these blessings unless we humble ourselves before him, brothers and sisters. Unless we let him sit in judgement on us, rather than sitting in judgement on him – questioning his will and his word in our boastful human pride . . .'

And suddenly she had thought, If this is the will of God, I want nothing more to do with it. The atmosphere seemed to crush her and at last, unable to bear another moment, she had walked out, shaking off Hester's hand and refusing to look into her hurt eyes.

The fields were beginning to turn as she hurried the two miles home. Out here the wind was stirring and she paused to watch it pass in silvery waves across the barley. All she could hear was a lark high overhead and the whispering field. For a moment she was at peace. Later she regretted leaving so quietly. Why had she not shouted – prophesied – ‘If this is your God, I don't believe in him!'

The hair on her scalp was crawling at the memory. Why was I taken in even for a moment? What
is
the abiding attraction of revivalism? Mara thought of the countless surges of enthusiasm down the Christian centuries, wave after wave breaking across the Church. And each time it seemed new. This time it's the real thing, the converts always thought. And that
was
how it had seemed. The Church of the Revelation offered everything that was lacking in the empty high-church rituals she had grown up with. Spontaneity, lay ministry and, above all, real tangible proof of God's presence: speaking in tongues, prophecy. And healing. Not just those unprovable God-healed-my-bad-back miracles, but at least one miracle that defied even her hardened scepticism. That girl with a bad leg from her class at school. Beverley. She had always been excused PE and was often away from school for long periods having yet another operation to correct her limp. And then one night she had stood up in the meeting and danced. Healed. Doctors had been baffled. The local paper had done an article on it, with a photograph of Beverley posing awkwardly with a hockey-stick.
‘Now I can join in at games like the other girls,' says sixteen-year-old Beverley
. Where is she now? wondered Mara. Had she ever made sense of that miracle? Would it shield her from loss of faith, or would it still bind her to the sect long after she had begun to doubt?

No wonder I believed, thought Mara. Nothing like that ever happened in my father's church. She pictured him, a distant robed figure way up at the high altar, his back to the congregation as he elevated the host. Suddenly it struck her that she had joined the sect to punish him for all the times he had turned his back on her. It had made no difference, though. She knew he was opposed to everything the Church of the Revelation practised and preached, and yet he had never remonstrated with her. Was it out of love that he had left her the freedom to choose? She would have felt more loved if he had raged and forbidden her.

But she caught her mind back from these speculations. She was not intending to include modern examples in her thesis. It was to be a historical study. Any insights she gained would be in the realm of the intellect, not the emotions; and this was the proper sphere of understanding. Perhaps later she might be able to apply her discoveries to her experience and impose some order on the chaos of feelings. Her eyes began to stray to her black book, and then to the drawer where her angel picture lay folded. She had not added to it since that first night. Why not? Because it was associated in her memory with Johnny Whitaker's accusations. Having identified this as the reason, she jerked the drawer open, took out the picture and unfolded it.

Angels and mad aunts. She began by drawing clouds in the spaces between her earlier pictures. On one particularly menacing cloud she drew her mother and grandmother. They were attaching a silver lining to the cloud as though they were hanging Sanderson curtains in a vicarage sitting-room. Above them hovered the words of Julian of Norwich:
All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well
. Despite so much evidence to the contrary. Despite the fact that this world is a place where the innocent are deceived and the good die unhappily. And she folded away the picture abruptly, wrapping up the image which had slid into her mind – Hester in the rocking chair, her hands cradling her stomach, rocking, rocking for hour after endless hour.

Music started up in the dining-room two floors below. It was so loud that Mara could feel as much as hear it as the bass notes shook the foundations of the building. The ball had begun. Voices came up from the terrace, and Mara went to her window and looked out. The first couples were wandering on the lawn with their cocktails. The white of dress shirts gleamed, changing colour in the flashing lights. Her ears caught another sound: even above the immense noise came the sound of the bells, aloof, as though they came from another world far beyond all this. Seven-thirty. It was time to go down to the kitchens.

The grand staircase seemed to be reliving some of its past. Surely it was made to be glided down in silk or taffeta. Mara felt like a servant trapped upstairs long after she should have been sweating in the kitchens. The corridors were growing crowded, and yet the atmosphere still seemed tense. Perfumes and aftershaves filled the air. People were too clear-eyed and sober. The bared shoulders and elbows looked awkward. But the first drinks would take the edge off things, and then the college would be a magical place full of sparkling lights and beautiful people. Mara slipped through the door and down the steps to the kitchen.

Over by the sinks stood the other student who would be washing up. As she approached, Mara saw him pulling on a pair of rubber gloves and flexing his fingers as though he were a battlefield surgeon about to saw off a leg. Almost at once a parade of dirty crockery descended to them on trolleys to be sorted and fed through the machines, casualties of the warfare of feasting – sherry glasses, side plates, dinner plates, dessert bowls. The air was filled with clanking and swooshing, while from overhead came the sounds of music and footsteps as the unseen couples surged along corridors. Mara could see the tops of the chefs' tall hats as they passed backwards and forwards shoving large trays into ovens and hauling them out. The waste disposal unit gargled like a fat idol bellowing for more as the scraps tumbled down its metal throat. The work seemed endless – plunging cutlery into steaming sinks, stacking dirty plates on racks, unloading clean dishes. Just as Mara was wondering how much more there could possibly be, a lull came. They were between sittings.

Mara leant against the sink while the other student talked. He seemed to regard her as a neutral presence, an honorary male, perhaps? At any rate, he appeared to need no help from her in keeping the conversation running smoothly. She looked round the corner and saw the two field mice folding paper napkins into fans and putting them into wine glasses.

A shout heralded the arrival of the next lot of dishes. The machines swished and steamed, and the young man talked on above the din. He was the one who had bellowed like a gorilla one breakfast, Mara remembered suddenly.

In the second lull Nigel brought them a bottle of wine. Condensation formed on the glasses as he poured. He handed them each a glass.

‘Don't say I never give you anything,' he said to Mara. Strands of her hair were escaping and corkscrewing up into curls in the steam. She pulled at one to straighten it. The wine was blissfully cold.

‘Look at her,' said Nigel suddenly to the gorilla. ‘I'll never understand women. The ones with straight hair spend a fortune having it permed, and the ones with curly hair try to straighten it.' The gorilla focused on her with intelligent interest. ‘Why don't you wear it loose?' persisted Nigel. He turned to the gorilla. ‘Don't you think she'd look better with her hair loose?'

The gorilla considered the idea with surprise, as though he had been called upon to judge the merits of a length of slub silk. ‘Yes. Much better.'

The arrival of the last lot of dishes prevented Mara from replying. She scraped platefuls of leftovers into the bawling metal god and continued the argument in her mind. I tie my hair back because I don't want to conform to some male ideal of femininity. Then why do you grow it long? Because it's cheaper and simpler than getting it cut every couple of months. She stared at the swirling prawns and melon. There was something else at work in her mind, she had to admit. Part of her was proud of her hair, that it grew so long and extravagantly. She kept it bound up, her secret, like the strength of Samson. Or was it really the hair of Rapunzel, which one day would bring the prince climbing up to her chamber?

At last it was all over. The chefs had gone and the machines dwindled into silence. From above came the music, shrieks and thumping feet. Mara and the gorilla looked at one another in the quiet kitchen and smiled.

‘I wonder if we can go?' he asked. To the ball, the ball! whispered a voice in Mara's head. But she remembered that she was not intending to join in. Nigel appeared.

‘Oh, I see. Stopped work already, have we?' He scanned the room for some incomplete task, an unwiped surface, a stray fork.

‘We've finished,' pointed out the gorilla.

For a moment it seemed that Nigel would be forced to agree; but then he said, ‘What about the floor?' Dismay on the gorilla's face. ‘Oh, it's all right. I'll do it. Go on. Bugger off. Enjoy yourselves.' Nigel dismissed them like a bad-tempered fairy godmother worn out by a thousand ungrateful Cinderellas. ‘Go and buy her a drink,' Nigel told the gorilla.

‘Um . . .' The gorilla had clearly visualized a better way of spending the evening.

‘Ignore him,' said Mara, and the gorilla flashed her a smile and disappeared.

‘Got other plans, have we?' asked Nigel with a knowing look and, finding this did not bring a response, added, ‘He was upstairs in Coverdale dining-hall last time I saw him. He's finished work, so this could be your lucky night.' Mara simply turned and walked out, leaving Nigel to push the mop wearily about the floor.

Back in her room Mara stood and stared at the books and papers on her desk. The music below pounded on. It would be impossible to concentrate. Or to sleep. No wonder the polecat had disappeared to Oxford for the weekend. She might just as well go to the ball. Stuff the lot of them. They can think what they like. She would just wander about and watch people, then slip away again. Her pulse quickened as she went to the wardrobe and drew out the black dress. She would try it, and if it looked stupid, well, she had lost nothing. She had never intended to join in, anyway.

But as she slid the dress on she knew. It was perfect. Was this how Aunt Daphne had looked? Her reflection stared back at her and she watched her hands unravelling the long plait as though it were some other woman's hands and hair a long time ago. She shook her head and the curls writhed out. I look like Medusa. Or a dead woman. I'm too pale. She coloured her lips and outlined her eyes; she pulled on a pair of long black gloves, gave herself one last look in the mirror and left the room. The thought of Jezebel filled her mind, painting her eyelids and calling from her high window. One final revelling in her power before the eunuchs came and cast her out, down to the stones below.