Angels and Men (8 page)

‘Sorry,' said May unrepentantly. She and Johnny eyed one another.

‘What about tea?' asked Maddy, bursting in on the silence she was unable to bear. ‘That universal remedy to all wrongs, that
panacea
. A Greek word,' she said, turning to Joanna, ‘meaning “universal remedy to all wrongs”. Who'd like some?'

‘Please,' said Johnny.

Mara's attention had been diverted, so she had not seen how the staring match had ended. May was looking nonchalant – but was she blushing? Something had passed between the two. She looked at Joanna.

‘So you've done Greek?' Joanna asked Johnny. Yes, she had seen something she did not like (a blown kiss?), and was now bending his attention back to herself, thought Mara.

‘For his sins,' said Maddy, not allowing this to happen. ‘And what a lot of Greek he has done. Tea, Joanna? Mara?'

Mara declined, and stood up to leave. As she was crossing the room, she saw Johnny give her a meaning look. I want a word with you, it said. She ignored him, and left. If it was that important, he could come and find her later.

As she climbed the stairs back to her room, she began to doubt her own assessment of Joanna. Perhaps she was so jaundiced by her previous encounters with the charismatic Christians of the sect that she automatically tarred them all with the same brush. The girl might simply be unfortunate, not sinister. A fellow lame duck. She tried to remind herself that fundamentalists were not a subhuman life form. Plenty of students were unsettled by the implications of their academic studies. And plenty more were attracted to attractive men. She went over to her window and looked out, thinking she would never know objectively what the girl was like. Maybe all she could see in Joanna was her own projected fears. The night was dark. It was Hallowe'en, and the lit-up windows across the river gleamed like jack-o'-lantern eyes.

CHAPTER 6

The days of early November passed by. Most of the leaves were gone from the trees. Big black crows like tattered clergymen congregated in the empty branches, and the students went about in overcoats they had borrowed from their fathers. Some of the coats had walked around the City twenty-five years earlier when they were new and smart. Now the voice of fashion had resurrected them to walk along the same streets again.

Mara was wearing her grandfather's long black cloak. The wind blew and the cloak swirled, slowing her progress. As a child she had held the sides of her coat out like wings on days like these, half believing the wind would pick her up and whirl her away. In her mind's eye she had learnt to walk along above the rooftops, seeing the world spread out on all sides. I'm losing the knack, she thought. An empty can went clattering down the street. Other people tie me down. But it won't be much work to cut myself free and dance off across the sky. I'm only here for a year, after all. I will keep all these people in my memory like a trunk full of
things
in the attic. A sudden gust of wind whisked her hat away, and she chased it as it rolled along the gutter. It came to rest outside the door under Maddy's and May's window as though it was
meant to be
. She had been intending for several days to visit her friends.

She entered the room. There were books lying open, but she had found Maddy and May at that awkward time of a student's day when it was too late to get in a really good afternoon's work, but not late enough to abandon all pretence of working altogether. Her arrival solved the dilemma.

‘Time for tea!' May went to fill the kettle. Maddy rolled over on the bed with a yawn among musical scores and sheets of manuscript paper. Mara sat down, craning her neck to read the title of the book which Maddy had just let slide on to the floor.
Stormy Summer
by Margaux Spreadeagle. She gazed at Maddy in disdain.

‘Oh, get that bloody superior expression off your face,' said Maddy, looking, Mara thought, like someone on a diet caught in the act of eating a whole pound of Belgian chocolates. ‘I suppose you've never read a single romance in your life.' This was a clever move, Mara realized. Either she was the pot calling the kettle black, or she was a mass of prejudice and ignorance. She picked up the book.

‘
His dark eyes blazed
,' she read aloud. May came back into the room and stood with the kettle, staring at her.
‘“You damned little bitch,” he bit out. “You want me as much as I want you! Don't think you can get away with this!” He strode from the room, leaving her white and trembling on the bed. As the door slammed, the realization swept over her. “My God! I don't hate this man – I love him!” '

She looked from Maddy to May in disbelief, and they crowed with laughter. ‘What
is
this crap?' and she flung it aside.

‘She doesn't understand,' said Maddy in throbbing tones. ‘She has never been left white and trembling on the bed with the realization, “My God! I love this man!” ' Maddy retrieved the book and began reading again with such feeling that Mara was torn between disgust and amusement.

‘It's a different
Weltanschauung
, you see,' explained Maddy, reaching for the mug May was handing her, ‘but one entirely compatible with a feminist outlook. The men are masterful, overbearing and loose-limbed, yes, I know,' she said as Mara was about to break in, ‘but they
invariably
end up marrying the heroine, which – let me finish – in terms of the genre, is a triumph of the female world view. He is tamed and subdued by the love of a good woman. Harmony and fruition prevail – like in
All's Well That Ends Well
. And you have to admit', concluded Maddy, ‘that that is the most compelling and tightly reasoned justification for reading crap that you have ever heard.'

‘I intend to do my dissertation on that very subject,' said May from where she was standing at the mirror experimenting with various lipsticks. ‘ “Beauty and the Beast: Fairy-Tale Motifs in Popular Romantic Fiction, with Special Reference to Margaux Spreadeagle's
Stormy Summer
”. What do you think of this?' She turned to them with a vivid, coral-coloured mouth.

‘Ghastly,' said Maddy. May wiped it off and reached for another tube.

‘ “Vermilion Flare,” ' she read. ‘It sounds like the title of another romance.' She tried it, and turned to them again.

‘An improvement,' said Maddy. ‘It'll go better with your dress, too.' Preparations for the approaching college ball, Mara realized.

‘Are you going to the ball, Mara?' asked May, blotting lipstick kisses on to a tissue.

Mara shook her head.

‘Oh, but you must, you must!' they protested.

‘Who with?'

This was supposed to be unanswerable, but they both replied promptly, ‘The polecat?'

Mara had a vision of herself and the polecat locked in an endless snarling waltz, and laughed.

‘Did I hear a strange sound?' asked Maddy.

‘An unfamiliar sound!' said May.

Yes, ha ha, thought Mara, returning to her usual sour expression. She told them that she had agreed to wash up instead. There were plenty of jobs with a modest amount of pay at the college ball, and taking one of these was the honourable refuge of the overdrawn or the under-confident. Or the celibate. She had seen Johnny's name on the list of workers.

‘Cinderella,' sneered Maddy.

‘ “Vermilion Flare: The Cinderella Myth in Post-War Light Romance”,' said May.

‘Why don't you ask Rupert to take you?' persisted Maddy. ‘
He
likes you.' There was a pause. With two seconds' thought she might have phrased this more delicately, her expression said. ‘He likes you,
even if nobody else does
,' read the subtext. Mara suppressed a smile.

‘But he's got a partner already,' said May. ‘He's taking someone called Cordelia Chauffeured-Bentley, and a party of Somebody Someone-Somethings he was at Oxford with.' She started to apply eye-shadow.

‘Could you marry a man with a double-barrelled name?' asked Maddy.

‘It is our destiny,' replied May. Mara stopped listening to them as they began to talk about their own partners for the ball. Her mind was full of dancing and the black georgette dress. She heard the music and saw the swirling beads and the nodding of tall feathers. Aunt Daphne danced by herself to her own tune, while the other girls hovered white and trembling under the moon in male embraces. Off across the chiffon clouds went Aunt Judith's plane as the lights of the great house twinkled below; and there, dancing from star to star, went Great Aunt Jessie, who could see angels.

‘She isn't listening to a word we're saying,' came Maddy's voice.

Mara turned to them indifferently. May had just finished her work at the mirror.

‘Who am I?' She faced them. The eye-liner made her eyes appear enormous, and she cast her gaze heavenwards, taking up a swooning pose.

‘Teresa of Avila?' suggested Mara. May laughed, and picked up a tea-towel and tied it over her hair. Martha Simmonds. Joanna.

Maddy snorted in recognition. ‘Lucretia the poison woman. God, I hate that girl.'

‘Well, we all know why that is,' said May.

‘Because she's a tape-worm,' said Maddy.

‘Because you can't hog the stage when she's in the room,' said May.

‘I wouldn't
demean
myself by trying. “Johnny, let me worship you. Let me suck the sweat out of your second-best jockstrap!”'

‘You thought that one up in advance,' accused May.

‘She's a fool,' said Maddy, ignoring this. ‘The one thing you must never,
ever
do is treat men like Johnny with respect. They get cocky. Except he was all cock to begin with.'

‘In your fevered imagination,' said May.

‘I've got eyes,' said Maddy. ‘Unless that's a pair of socks down his underpants, of course. I'll have to ask him.'

Mara laughed.

‘There's that funny noise again,' said May.

‘Yes, and another thing,' said Maddy, rounding on Mara. ‘You can bloody well stop signing Joanna into meals as your guest! We always end up having to look after her.'

Mara sat in silent fury. She had done no such thing. Had Joanna forged her signature?

‘Mara denies all knowledge,' said Maddy. ‘In which case St Teresa has signed herself in
illegally
. Outrage!'

‘The Lord told me to,' said May, folding her hands and looking pious. Then, whisking off the tea-towel, she became herself again. ‘You'll have to have a word with Mr Nasty Pasty,' she said. ‘He controls the meal lists with a fist of iron.' This must be the catering manager and head chef.

‘
Nigel
,' said Maddy scornfully. ‘He always reminds me of a professional snooker player – the cockney accent, the hair slightly too long, the pasty, pale complexion. I bet he even has a snooker table down in the bowels of the earth in his Salmonella Emporium.'

‘She's scared of him,' explained May, wiping off the make-up. ‘He caught her eating a lunch she hadn't signed in for.'

Mara stood up to leave, forgetting as usual to say thank you, or goodbye.

‘Goodbye, Mara,' said Maddy with emphasis. ‘No, no – it was our pleasure.'

‘Yes,' said May. ‘
Please
don't mention it.'

And so she did not, but gave an idle wave as she left to return to her room. Her anger had been dissipated by their chatter.

She was still working that evening, but when she heard the clock chime nine, she paused and listened to the rain against the window. She reached for her black book to do some drawing. In her mind's eye she saw Aunt Judith's plane, and her pencil touched the paper. Then it suddenly seemed to her that the book was too small. She took two sheets of unlined file paper and sellotaped them together. Her pencil hesitated. She felt like a child turned loose in a field when it had been used to a narrow garden. The rain pattered on the glass again, and she began to draw.

This is Aunt Judith in her plane. She died years before I was born. I don't think I've even seen a picture of her. Then her mother's letter came back:
Aunt Judith was rather like you
. And so it could have been her own face behind the goggles, and her own black hair streaming out in the wind. The little biplane was high above the clouds, heading for realms unknown. Mara paused. The picture looked like an illustration for a story.
Aunt Judith
, she wrote underneath in gothic script. She enclosed the letters in a scrolled ribbon, and now she was reminded of stained-glass windows; of Gabriel with Latin words unfurling from his lips in a kind of medieval speech bubble, and the Virgin with a polite frown, casting in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. Mara's pencil began moving again. Another ribbon rolled out, this time from the back of the plane, as though Aunt Judith were towing a motto across the sky. What should it say? With a smile Mara filled in the words of the Miller of Dee:
I care for nobody, no, not I, if nobody cares for me
. And now the picture was complete. Or was it? As she looked at it, Mara began to sense that this was only a part of a larger picture.

After a moment's thought she tore another sheet out of the pad and joined it to the other two. On the new page she drew a cloud filled with Latin – phrases, words, tense endings, quotations – and on it sat Great Aunt Daphne. Her long thin legs dangled over the cloud's edge, and she had a sarcastic expression on her face. And not far away from her, stepping from star to star, as though they were stones in the local stream, went Great Aunt Jessie. In her hand she held her ear trumpet. What were the angels saying today?
You can eavesdrop, child, if you are very careful
. Mara heard the whispering voice in her memory. She said that to me, but I was too small to hold the trumpet for myself, so I never heard them. All around Aunt Jessie wound the words of her favourite hymn on ribbons:
Angels to beckon me nearer my God to thee. Nearer to thee, nearer to thee
.

And, now, thought Mara, let there be angels. She attached more sheets of paper and filled the sky with angels. Some passed by in dark glasses carrying briefcases. Others sat on a circle of stars drinking tea and discussing in Latin whether they believed in Bultmann. Others were gathering up and towing away the ribbons of prayer which had floated up through the clouds. Some prayers were long and ornate, some simply said
Help
. At the top of the picture the archangel Michael was rolling up his collect and tucking it under his arm. A phrase billowed out under one wing as though the wind had caught the words.

She sat for a moment and looked at what she had drawn. Then she folded it hurriedly and put it in her desk drawer, as though it were a secret which nobody must see. The idea of it had crept along her veins like strong wine. I won't sleep tonight for the planning of it, she thought; and although it was late she changed into her tracksuit and went out for a run. Her mind was buzzing with biplanes and angels. Maybe the night air and the exercise would quieten them.

The wind was still throwing handfuls of rain as she set out running along the street. The wet cobbles gleamed in the streetlights, and she could hear the trees around the cathedral sighing and creaking. The great walls and towers rose up ashen in the floodlights, and at the sight of them she slowed to a walk. All the windows were dark.

She stood looking up at the towers in the white light, until she heard footsteps coming along the street. She had turned and was about to break into a run, when her name was called. Her heart leapt. It was Johnny. He came up to her.

‘I've been meaning to talk to you.' His accent seemed more marked, as though the northern night air had drawn it out. ‘The other day – what was that look for?'