Angels and Men (2 page)

At about eight she sat back and told herself to do what she had been avoiding. Go and ask for that book. She had looked for a particular volume in the college library only to discover that it had been taken out by one of the tutors in Coverdale Hall, the City's Anglican theological college. Mara had realized to her dismay shortly after arriving that Coverdale was not only next door to Jesus, but it was actually part of the same foundation. Was there no escaping the long arm and limp wrist of Anglicanism? Her door swung shut behind her.

I hate going to meet people, she thought as she ran down the stairs. Even the simplest utterance seems to take on a peculiar ring. The more I try to be normal the more dangerous I feel, like Morgan le Fay interrupting a sherry party. She passed through several corridors, moving, she supposed, roughly parallel to the street outside. This must once have been a series of different houses. She thought of the previous occupants – what if they had looked up from their papers in the breakfast room one morning and seen into the future? Dozens of strangely dressed young people appearing suddenly through one wall, hurrying past, and vanishing through another. Up another set of stairs she went, peering at doors until she found one which said ‘Rev. Dr James Mowbray'.

‘Do try to be nice, darling,' pleaded her mother's voice in her mind. Mara knocked. Someone called her in, and she entered the flat. It was like the study of some eighteenth-century intellectual. Her glance took in green walls with framed prints, faded rugs, rank on rank of books, and an old brown globe. A man stood under a light like a portrait of himself, an old seafarer, maps and charts about him. Outside the wind was a restless sea. He greeted her inquiringly. On the sofa facing her was a young man. A flash of recognition – the man in the cathedral.

‘How can I help you?' Dr Mowbray asked. The young man burned on the edge of her vision.

‘Do you have
Seven Reasons why God Used Dwight L. Moody
?' A pause.

‘Not off hand.' She saw he was laughing at her. A snarling look came across her face.

‘It's a book.' All the time the young man was lounging on the sofa. She could see the insolence of his posture without looking at him, and his presence somehow made it impossible for her to be
nice
.

‘Yes. I'm sorry. I have the book. And you, I take it, would like to borrow it. Let me see – you're one of the new postgrads, aren't you? Women and sectarianism?' She inclined her head.

‘Well,' he began when she said nothing. The word teetered. He sprang on to a secure phrase: ‘And how are you settling in?'

‘All right.' Another silence yawned like a mineshaft. He looked around as if wondering where the next piece of solid ground might be. Why did he remind her of an old sea captain?

‘And your name is?'

‘Mara Johns.'

‘Mara,' he confirmed. ‘I'm James Mowbray, and this is . . .' He stopped in the act of turning to the young man on the sofa. She could see a sentence forming in his mind as clearly as if he had a cartoon thought-bubble drifting out of his head.
You must be Morgan Johns' daughter
, it said. Her expression became very nasty indeed.

‘You must be' – and, catching sight of the expression, he changed tack – ‘a person in your own right.' A rare smile flashed across her face. It vanished just as suddenly.

‘I'm Morgan Johns' daughter,' she said.

He laughed. ‘Yes, I'm afraid I realized that. How is your father these days? A bit of a lone voice crying in the wilderness, I'd have thought. High churchmen in
favour
of women's ordination are a rare breed. I've just read his latest article.' He paused, perhaps to see if she had any comment to make, then leapt on to another solid-looking idea: ‘He and I were at theological college together, you know.'

She made no reply. The conversation disintegrated beneath him, and they stood in silence. She could see he wanted a cosy chat about the Johns family and she dared not encourage him.

‘Well, well, well,' he said at length. ‘We have met before, actually, only you won't remember it. You would have been about seven. It was in Lyme Regis.'

Suddenly she remembered and spoke involuntarily. ‘Do you have a boat?'

He smiled. ‘I used to have a very small yacht. No longer, sadly. Yes. You were wild about the sea.'

She could hear the ropes slapping on the masts all around, each giving a different note, as though they were bells not boats rocking and cockling on the waves. Her face softened at the memory. I was going to run away to sea.

‘You grilled me on the names of the sails on square-rigged vessels,' Dr Mowbray continued. ‘I was a sad disappointment to you.' She hardened herself and there was another silence.

They stood for a while. Then, having clearly just asked himself ‘Where were we?' Dr Mowbray said, ‘I'm so sorry. This is John Whitaker. Training for the ministry here at Coverdale Hall.'

Mara turned at last to look at him. He made no effort to stand, merely gave a slight ironic salute and smiled at her. She stared briefly, then looked back at Dr Mowbray. Good God. Not my mental picture of an ordinand.

‘If ever you're locked out of your car, John's your man. I'll get that book for you.' Dr Mowbray walked towards a shelf and began to run his finger along the spines.

What's this? thought Mara. An ordinand with a shady past? She couldn't prevent herself sneaking another glance at the young man. He was ready for her, and winked. She looked away again, flushing angrily.

‘Do you have enthusiasm?' asked Dr Mowbray.

Enthusiasm? ‘In my way.'

‘The book – oh, ah yes. Very good.
Touché
.' He handed her a volume.
Enthusiasm
, she read on the spine. Ah. She bit on a smile. This was going to be one of the problems with having read English and not theology. She had done as much frantic reading as she could over the summer, cantering briskly through centuries of church history, slowing to a trot over rocky doctrinal countryside, collapsing at last in despair in the vast trackless wastes of German liberal protestantism. Despite all this, parcels of unexploded ignorance lay concealed on all sides. Even the most innocent-seeming question – Who is so-and-so? – could go off in your face. You might be asking the equivalent of ‘Who is Shakespeare, exactly?' Or, on the other hand, the unknown theologian might be an obscure Restoration dramatist, as it were, that nobody could expect you to know about. Dr Mowbray continued to hand her books. Out of the corner of her eye she thought she could see the young man grinning. Maybe he had seen through her. Or maybe he was amused at the number of books she was now holding. This thought seemed to strike Dr Mowbray.

‘Well, I'm sure that will keep you going for a few days.' He smiled. ‘Would you like some coffee?'

‘No thanks.' She began to make a move towards the door.

‘Sure? Well, give my regards to your father when you next speak to him.'

When they serve ice-cream in hell. She gave a nod. Why wouldn't he let her go? He was like the person who keeps raising points of information when other people want the meeting to finish.

‘And to your mother, of course.'

Another nod. Yes yes yes.

He walked with her towards the door. ‘Does your father still have his legendary violent temper, I wonder?'

Her hand was on the handle, but this brought her back sharply. ‘No,' she said in astonishment.

‘Really?' He seemed surprised himself. ‘He had the worst temper I've ever come across.' The words ‘present company excepted' seemed to hang in the air unspoken. Mara's glance darted involuntarily towards the man on the sofa again. He was lighting a cigarette, and appeared to be paying no attention.

‘I'm afraid Morgan-baiting was something of a college sport,' went on Dr Mowbray. ‘To see how quickly he could be made to explode. He was always so passionate about everything.'

Mara stood as still as a stone. Why was I never told this before? Why have I always been made to feel like a changeling? In her mind she heard the adult voices: Why can't you be nice like Hester? . . . What a face! . . . Dear me, what a naughty temper. I don't know where she gets it from.

‘I've never heard him raise his voice.'

‘Well, people change,' said Dr Mowbray. His tone had a summing-up quality.

‘Thanks for these.' She made a gesture with the pile of books.

‘You're welcome. If there's anything else . . .' She had the door open. ‘It's been good to meet you, Mara.' She could leave. But no – one small item of any other business to finish. He dropped his voice, and began to say, ‘I was sorry to hear about your –'

‘
Thank you
.' She snuffed out his sentence.

Instantly the young man's attention was on her. This was what she had been dreading. Dr Mowbray eyed her cautiously.

‘Goodbye,' she said before he could try again. She left the two of them with a surprised silence twanging in the air.

Forget it. Forget it, she told herself as she made her way down the stairs. She went out of the back of the building and began to walk along the terraces and through the gardens that ran behind the college. The sky above the rooftops was a deep dark blue, and a cathedral tower was just visible beyond the chimneys, ghostly in the floodlights. She hugged the books in her thin arms. Something like glee seized her. She could drop the books and, raising her arms, be lifted on the steady wind, treading higher and higher until she looked down on the City twinkling beneath her. Tree shadows danced on the walls. She heard the water running over the weir deep in the river, over and on and out to the distant sea. Some of the college windows were lit up, bright as pictures on a black wall. As she walked, the sound of music came from various rooms.

She entered the hallway and passed through a group of students as they exclaimed and talked. I might be a ghost, she thought. What a strange twilight realm we postgraduates inhabit. Pale figures haunting the libraries long outside term-time. She began climbing the stairs leaving their voices behind. This hall must have been majestic once. The frou-frou of long-gone petticoats rustled in her mind. Maybe she would meet her fellow ghosts one day on these steps. A Victorian maid, the one who polished these banisters a hundred years ago. We would stare at one another, wondering who was haunting whom. Mara stood feeling in her pocket for her keys, balancing the pile of books with her chin. There was a sudden noise as someone came out of the next room. She looked up to see an entirely different manifestation confronting her: a dark young man with a look of languid contempt on his face.

‘Jesus Christ. Another bloody woman.'

She straightened up slowly and stared into a pair of cold grey eyes. No need to be
nice
here. One of her fellow postgrads? He looked about twenty-four or -five.

‘I came back thinking I was on an all-male corridor, and what do I find? It's overrun with
girls
, buggering up my morning routine and clogging the bathrooms with their toiletries and tampons.'

She continued to stare at him, fixing her eyes with offensive blankness on the bridge of his nose.

‘Let's try and understand one another, shall we?' he continued. ‘
That
'
–
pointing at a door – ‘is the bathroom I intend to use. You
girls
can use the other one.'

She raised an eyebrow and let her gaze travel down to his feet, then back up to his face. He was around six feet tall, about her own height. He looked tailored and expensive from black hair to black brogues. The statement was unambiguous: Don't fuck with me – you're not in my league. Her eyes rested on him a while longer, then she turned indifferently and put her key in the lock. The last glimpse she had was of his astonished face as she closed him out. A smile struggled on her lips. She stood looking at the door. Was he standing staring at the other side of it, thinking – what would he be thinking? Why the hell didn't she say anything? Or: Stuck-up bitch! She heard his footsteps walking away at last, then going into the room next door. So she was stuck between him and the field mice. Some music began to play. Tallis, she thought. How inappropriate. She tried to picture Sue from the Christian Union inviting him to a tea party. Then an idea occurred to her and a smile burst out before she could stop it. The joker that had arranged this menagerie of a college had been uncertain about her. Somebody had looked at her and not known whether she would prove to be a field mouse or a half-starved feral mink.

CHAPTER 2

Mara lay on her back with her hands and ankles crossed like a stone effigy on a tomb. The cathedral clock had just struck half-past two. Am I going to hear every bloody quarter of the whole twenty-four hours? At once she tried to unknot her impatience and soothe it away. ‘Just think nice thoughts, darling,' her mother used to say. It was never that easy. Take counting sheep, for instance. As a child she had never understood why people did this. The sheep kept wandering about the hillside, disappearing behind rocks or making stupid rushes towards the stream until she was ready to dance with frustration. Stand still while I count you!

Instead she began to imagine a hillside bare of sheep. It was moorland dark with heather under a late-winter sky, white and low, pressing on the earth. Maybe it would rain. A touch of mildness was in the air – surely the spring would not be long? Listen to the stream over the stones, hush, hush; hear the wind rattling a sigh through the dead heather. Then with outstretched arms she rose into the sky, the moor wheeling and sliding away beneath her. Soon it will be spring . . .

In the last moment before sleep came, her mind was full of voices speaking Welsh, her uncle's family murmuring words she almost understood, a language she could speak in her dreams but forgot when she woke.

She was in a dark house with many rooms. Their doors were locked. On and on she walked, looking for her sister's baby. Why wouldn't her legs work properly? Each step was harder than the last. Come on, she urged herself, forcing one foot in front of the other. Here was a door. She tried the knob. It opened and she entered a room. In the corner was a cradle. She struggled over to it and looked inside. There was a mound under the cover – the baby was there. She pulled back the blanket and there lay a doll's body, its head missing.

Dear God! She sat bolt upright with the sweat pouring off her. The bell chimed five. Gradually the horror receded. All hope of sleep was gone, but she lay down again anyway. Just forget it. It's only a dream, she told herself. You know that. Her breathing grew steadier at last. Quarter past five.

By half-past she had given up and was pulling some clothes on. She wrapped her black wool clerical cape around her. It had belonged to her grandfather before he was made bishop. She made her way quietly down the stairs then out on to the dark street. The wind had dropped. Nothing. She began to walk along the cobbled street away from the cathedral, down towards the old bridge that spanned the river. Her footsteps sounded as she walked past the college buildings. Their eyes were closed and dreaming as the revolving stars slid across their panes.

Soon she was standing on the high bridge looking downstream, a watchman on a city wall longing for morning. She hugged her cloak around her. In the distance she could see street lights on another bridge, with their partners shivering on the water below. The weir rumbled on like one eternal wave breaking on the shore. When would all this pass? The bells chimed quarter to six. They sounded different out there, cold and clear.

Then came the distant whine of a milk-float as it toiled up a street over to the left. It stopped with a rattle of bottles. The world was waking up. Maybe that was the first hint of dawn in the east. Her eyes could just make out the dark shape of the cathedral as it loomed over the City. She leant forward and rested her arms on the stone parapet of the bridge, and gazed at the black towers.

They grew more distinct in the gathering light as she watched, quarter by quarter, until behind her on the river she heard the call of the first cox as a college eight pulled towards her on the water below. At this she crossed over to the other side. They came steadily on, with a ghostly underwater crew keeping time upside down beneath them. The tips of the blades met, then skimmed back through air or water. The boat passed under the central archway below her. Now that it was light she could pick out a fisherman sitting patiently on the bank. A seagull circled slowly. All around her the colours gained in intensity; the white of the bird, the dying blaze of the trees, red or gold against black bark, and the green of the undergrowth along the banks. She sighed. Another day.

The crew had turned and was sliding back up river. ‘One! Two!' roared the cox. ‘Eyes in the boat, men!' crackled a voice. She turned and saw someone cycling along the bank with a megaphone. The boat emerged through the archway down below. This time she could make out the faces twisted in exertion as they pulled away from her. Mad. But they at least had some reason to be out in the cold. The sun began to touch the cathedral walls and the highest treetops and she wandered back for college breakfast.

The noise of voices and clashing crockery filled the dining-room. Mara felt stupefied by it after the silence of the morning outside. Mercifully there was a ‘quiet' table where the antisocial or overhung could breakfast without the threat of conversation. She carried her toast and coffee over to it, draped her cloak over the chair back, and sat down. The smell of bacon and eggs hung about. She could pick out the new First Years as they wandered uncertainly in. Spoons clattered in bowls. Before long Mara was joined by the polecat from the room next door. He was wearing the same supercilious sneer that he had turned on her the previous night, drinking his coffee and looking around the room in disdain. Caffeine alone could not mitigate the outrage of having to breakfast in a zoo.

Mara sat drinking and watching those around her. From the doorway came the sound of hearty conversation. Some young men in tracksuits entered. Their faces were red with fresh air and exercise, and their voices had not yet lost their outdoor loudness. One threw his head back and roared, beating his fists on his chest like a gorilla.

‘Shut up!' snarled the polecat. Silence fell. The gorilla hung his head and slunk off. It was a while before conversation returned to normal. Well, well. Who was this man who must not be crossed? Mara went to get another cup of coffee, flicking him a contemptuous glance as she passed. His eyes narrowed. When she got back, he had gone.

She sat again and resumed her watching. Before long she saw the tall red-head and the china doll at the far side of the room. There was an air of mischief at their table. ‘Shut up!' barked a voice. The red-head. Everyone laughed, for it was a very fair imitation of the polecat. Mara felt her lips twitch. A pity she hadn't dared to do it while he was still in the room. She drank some more coffee. The field mice crept past and smiled at her. She nodded at them. Then from across the room she saw a pair of big blue eyes fixed on her. She stiffened. The china doll had recognized her. Mara saw her lean across and say something to the red-head. Before they both had a chance to look at her, and perhaps come across for some kind of introduction, Mara left the hall.

The common room was quiet. People sat reading newspapers or opening their post. There was an occasional yawn, or the sound of a newspaper being batted into shape, and now and then a murmured comment. In one corner a girl sat filling in the
Times
crossword. It was little Sue from the Christian Union. Mara felt a twinge of guilt and picked up another paper and began glancing through it. Before long the red-head and her friend came in. Mara continued reading, alert to their movements, but the two of them settled on the other side of the room without appearing to see her.

After a moment she put down the paper and went across to the pigeon-holes to see if there were any letters for her. The polecat came in. People seemed to flinch a little. His glance swept around the room. He was looking for something –
The Times?
Yes. He located Sue in the corner filling in the crossword and bore down on her. She looked up at him, read the expression on his face, and thrust the paper towards him. He seized it, and after a glance, held it up between finger and thumb.

‘What,' he asked, ‘is
this
?' The attention of the whole room was on him. Mara put the letters back, folded her arms, and watched. The girl looked like a rabbit that sees the hawk and forgets how to run.

‘The crossword,' she said desperately.

‘I know that, for Christ's sake.' He waited. The whole room waited.

‘Is this going to happen every day?'

‘I was only . . .' Mara thought there were tears in Sue's eyes. Was no one going to do anything? She looked around. People were buried unconvincingly in their papers. Who the hell does he think he is? The hair on the back of her neck began to prickle. He's no worse than you are, her conscience accused.

‘If you want to deface a paper, I suggest you confine yourself to one of the
tabloids
.' With that, he crossed the room and sat down. Utter silence.

‘What a wanker,' said Mara, and walked out of the room. The silence, broken only by her footsteps, lasted the full length of the corridor until she reached the stairs. Then came the sound of laughter. The red-head, followed after a moment by everyone else. In her mind Mara heard the satisfactory sound of an arrow whizzing with a thud into its target. Twang! She strode up to her room.

High up on the tower's face the men were working. The City lay spread like a map beneath them, narrow streets with tiny people going back and forth about their business. Students streaming over the bridges, off to libraries and lectures, and the shoppers milling in the marketplace. The men toiled on, whistling in the wind and hearing the crooning pigeons that clustered in the stone crevices all around. The clock chimed three, and a pigeon took off, glided down, then landed on the builders' sign halfway up the scaffolding. It sidled along the top and began preening itself.
Allinson, Whitaker & Sons
, said the letters.

Back down in the college Mara sat at her desk working. She heard the bells and leant back and stretched. From the other side of the wall she could hear classical music playing. She bared her teeth in a death's head grin, picturing the polecat sitting at his desk facing her only feet away in the next room. The half-expected confrontation – face thrust in hers:
Bitch! –
had not occurred. Maybe he was biding his time. There had been something odd in people's faces at lunchtime. She had the feeling that word had got round. That's her – that's the one who called whatsisname a wanker in the Junior Common Room. What
is
his name? she wondered now, but could not be bothered to go and look at his door to find out. Instead she reached for a pencil and her black book.

A face flowered in the centre of the page. A jester, perhaps, or the Joker from a pack of cards. She continued drawing. Around the face danced a circle of morris men. They always made her want to cry as a child, for all their bells and pig's bladders and silly antics. Maybe it was the music. The trailing ribbons furled and unfurled until a wheel of dancers writhed around the Joker.

Her pencil continued to scratch, leaving behind another ring of tiny characters. They looked like figures from the margin of a medieval manuscript. Round the wheel they trudged with their buckets and ladders and tools. The cathedral builders. And outside them, so faint they could hardly be seen, were the seraphim. Each had six wings, burning, burning, and the wings of one touched the wings of the next and the whole wheel spun in fire around its focus.

Mara stared at what she had drawn. It depicted the ultimate silliness of the universe. This was how the world had seemed to her since she had turned her back on her faith. And yet she had a recurring sense that it all meant something, that it was worth working, building cathedrals, and that the whirling chaos was enclosed in the wings of the watchful seraphim. Ah, but that could be the last trick of all. At the very end your fingers would turn up the Joker again. But did it matter, even? Life might be everything, or it might be nothing at all.

There was an abrupt knock. Mara jumped. The Christian Union again? She sat motionless for a moment, tempted not to answer, but curiosity eventually drew her towards the door. She opened it, and there stood the red-head and the china doll.

‘Do you have any milk?' asked the red-head. Was this a gambit, a sort of borrowing-a-cup-of-sugar from the new neighbours?

‘Yes,' Mara said, watching them carefully.

‘She has milk,' said the red-head in an undertone to her friend. She turned to Mara again. ‘And do you have any tea?'

Mara's hand quivered to close the door. But no, she would just see what they were up to. ‘Yes,' she answered, a hint of nastiness creeping into her voice.

The red-head turned to the other again and whispered, ‘She has tea as well!'

The china doll widened her blue eyes. ‘Tea!' she breathed.

What were they playing at?

‘How very odd,' said the red-head, ‘because we have cakes.' She held up a box.

‘And biscuits,' said the other, showing the packet.

‘I have a terrible sense of foreboding,' continued the red-head. ‘It's almost as if
something is about to happen
. Do you think this strange coincidence of tea things is significant?' She turned to her friend. ‘I sense an impending tea party.'

They both turned to Mara and asked, ‘What do you think?'

Mara stood and considered. She could close the door in their faces, or open it and let them in. If she let them in, nothing would ever be the same again. Fear touched her. Shut the door! But a memory rose up and swallowed her mind; and there she was again, aged fourteen, turning the corner in the grounds of the clinic, the stitches still prickling in her slashed wrist. Sunlight was slanting down through the trees with smoke from the bonfire hanging in its shafts, and in that moment came the thought:
I choose to live
. This was another such moment. She opened the door.

‘Oh frabjous day!' exclaimed the china doll, and the two of them burst in. Mara watched their gaze sweeping around looking for clues or demonstrations of her personality.

‘But you've done nothing to your room!' protested the red-head. ‘No pictures, no plants, no nothing.'