Angels and Men (31 page)

‘But I'd fight passionately for your right to be yourself!' There was a stunned silence as they both took in what he had just said. ‘That is . . . I mean, if I were . . . if we . . .' The wind ruffled the new leaves, and he clapped a hand to his face and laughed. ‘Oh, no.'

‘It wouldn't work!' said Mara in alarm.

‘Look, give me a chance to propose first, will you?' He was overcome by laughter again. ‘I can't believe I'm saying this. I wasn't going to. Not now, I mean.' He paused. His face became serious. ‘But having said it –'

‘But it wouldn't work,' she pleaded. ‘You're always trying to change me.'

‘Nonsense.'

‘And you're always saying “Nonsense”!' He opened his mouth and closed it. The breeze whispered in the branches. They stood facing one another under the beech trees. Her heart was racing. ‘You're mad, Rupert.'

‘I know.'

‘There must be dozens of more suitable girls.'

‘True. But none I'd die for.'

She felt tears in her eyes. Nobody had ever said things like this to her before. She remembered her cousin's mocking words: ‘You're so ugly no one will ever want to marry you.'

He took her in his arms. ‘Mara, I'm sorry.' She felt his hand stroking her hair. ‘I'm sorry. Please don't cry, Mara. I don't want to put any pressure on you. I know this isn't a good time. I'd just like to think you haven't ruled out the possibility altogether.' She nodded against his shoulder, not trusting herself to speak. He bent his head and kissed the tears away. She was trembling. ‘Come on,' he said. ‘Show me where the strawberries grow.'

She sniffed, and began to walk along the overgrown path. ‘They won't be out yet, of course,' she said. The path branched off and curved round the side of the wooded hill. Her eyes searched through the undergrowth as she walked. ‘They grow all along here.' She pointed. ‘But if you go down the bank instead, there are hundreds which nobody ever sees.' They climbed down the slope. ‘Look, these are the leaves.' They sat down amongst them.

‘We'll have to come back in the summer and pick some,' Rupert said.

She smiled and lay back looking up at the sky. Her heart was beating fast and light at the thought of him wanting to marry her. He was lying beside her propped on one elbow watching her face. She turned to look at him, and he leant over to kiss her. She closed her eyes and let him, hearing the wind all around in the young beech leaves. His tongue moved in her mouth and gradually she felt her breath coming faster, every joint slackening, her arms going round his neck. At that point he raised his head again and laid a finger on her lips as if to say that was enough. They lay gazing into one another's eyes. It was like a dream. She had never been kissed like that before – out of tenderness, not lust. She touched his face.

‘Rupert . . .'

‘Mara . . . ?'

‘You can if you want to.'

‘Can what?'

‘Make love to me. If you want to.'

‘No!' The sharpness of his tone jolted her. She took her hand away. ‘I mean, of course I want to, but no, I'm not going to. Not just like that. Have some sense, Mara. You don't want to rush things, do you?'

‘I'm sorry.' He kissed her burning cheek.

‘Besides,' he said with a smile, ‘never the time, the place and the contraceptive device all together.'

‘You're so
sensible
, Rupert.'

‘I should think I am! Do you
want
to get pregnant?'

‘It's not automatic, Mr Fertile.'

‘But there's a good chance! You know, Mara, you're terminally reckless.' Like mother, like daughter. Maybe I should have listened to the doctor. She put a hand over her guilty grin. He was smiling down at her. ‘I won't sleep with you unless you marry me first,' he said. ‘You wouldn't respect me.'

‘Aren't those supposed to be my lines?'

‘I know. It's the Church. It's made a woman of me.' His eyes defied her.

‘It has?' And, drunk with the moment, she laid a hand on his groin.

‘Don't!'

He gripped her wrist. She watched his face, waiting for him to push her away. Her lips were parched. They lay motionless.

‘Don't?' She moved her hand and his grip tightened, but still he did not push her away. He rolled on to his back and she felt his hand sliding until it was pressed flat on hers.

‘Don't stop . . .' She began moving her hand again, watching his face. Am I doing this right? His eyes were closed and she saw his lips moving, murmuring, ‘Oh God, oh God.' He was undoing his belt and flies. She slid her hand down inside and met naked flesh. ‘Mara . . .' He lay like the Cerne giant, sprawled out on the chalk hillside among the strawberry leaves. She watched his beautiful face, like an athlete's rounding the final bend. ‘Oh God, oh yes, oh yes.' Down the home straight. Her own heart was pounding like the sound of running feet and she heard his breath coming short, saw his face contorting as he hit the tape:
‘Ah . . . God . . .'

For one second he lay still, then she saw the excruciating bliss dissolve into despair. His arms went over his face.

‘Oh, no.' She slid her hand away. ‘I can't believe I just let you do that.' He sat up abruptly and she looked away in shame as he sorted himself out. Why hadn't he stopped her? She sat up miserably, tainted by his guilt.
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell
.

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Sorry! Mara, if you had any idea the struggle I have keeping my hands off you –' She shrank back from the savagery of his tone. He shut his eyes for a moment, then said more quietly, ‘Sorry. My fault. I should have stopped you. I'm just a lusting fool.' He got to his feet. ‘Come on. We'd better go.'

She stood up and they climbed back to the path and began to make their way to the car. The leaves were a green blur through her tears. How can I have misjudged it like that? she wondered. He took her hand. ‘I'm sorry, Mara.'

They walked back through the tunnel of chestnut trees. There was the car. In no time at all she would be meeting his mother. Hello, Mrs Anderson. Sorry we're late. I was trying to seduce your son in the wild strawberry patch. Her tears turned to an awful bout of internal giggling. She bit her lips, Rupert's eyes were on her.

‘You're laughing, you dreadful girl.'

‘Sorry,' she gasped, but he was laughing too.

He whirled her round and hugged her. ‘Oh, Mara. I feel like I'm sixteen.'

‘Is that what you got up to when you were sixteen?'

‘Well, didn't we all?' He grinned at some recollection.

‘What?'

‘I got caught with my trousers round my ankles once. By the girl's father.' A day of revelations!

‘Oh, no! What did you say?'

‘ “Oh, Major Cartwright – you must have a terribly bad impression of me!” ' Mara laughed out loud. ‘He rang my father of course, and I was gated for about two hundred years. Stop laughing. And don't tell me you haven't done that before, young lady.'

She blushed. ‘Well, I haven't.'

He looked at her in amazement. She saw some question rising to his lips which he did not ask. Instead he lifted her erring hand and kissed the palm. ‘Save it for me, Princess.' They walked back to the car in silence.

It was not until they were drawing to a halt in front of the palace that Mara realized he must think she was still a virgin. There was no chance to tell him, for at that moment a woman appeared in the doorway to welcome them. His mother. They climbed out of the car, and Mara looked out across the smooth wide lawn. A peacock and two peahens were walking gracefully under a distant cedar tree. Their ugly yowls echoed through the grounds as Rupert led Mara up to the house. ‘No-oo, no-oo.' They sounded like the cries of lost children.

Easter Term

CHAPTER 20

The bells chimed three. The sound quivered over the City. Spring always came late to this place. The steep riverbanks were still dull – grey bark, dark ivy – but soon the buds would burst, and the leaves would shoot out lush in the sheltered ravine of the river.

Mara was sitting on the parapet of the old bridge, her back to the cathedral, legs swinging over the edge. She watched the late afternoon light on the water and wondered whether Andrew's train had arrived yet. She was torn between wanting to see him and dreading it. He would persecute her until he got the truth about her stay with Rupert, and yet there would be some relief in confiding. Her body felt hot. Oh, God. How have I got myself into this situation? Rupert the sensible and bossy suddenly becoming Rupert the passionate and romantic. She had honestly tried to make him see it wouldn't work! But then she had muddied the waters so disastrously by her physical response to him that he became convinced it was only a matter of time before she changed her mind. She drummed her heels against the bridge in desperation. How could she have been so stupid? It was the spring air. It was his tender, gallant words – expressions she had been starved of all her life: someone to love her, to die for her. And if he had made love to her there among the strawberry leaves, she was sure she would have been lost. Instead they had gone back to the palace.

‘
The palace
.' She said it out loud, then mentally hurled herself from the bridge with an echoing scream. His family. Such
wonderful
people. She could tell from the way they had tried to accept and involve her that she had been billed in advance as a Very Special Friend. She could also tell that Mrs Anderson was wondering whether she would have to take Rupert to one side and say, ‘Of course, darling, we'll welcome any girl you choose as a daughter, you know that. But perhaps the time isn't quite right.' And then to compensate for her anxieties, Mrs Anderson had made an even greater effort with Eleanor and Morgan's rather awkward daughter. Mara had been made privy to Rupert's sister's wedding-dress fitting. Her opinion had been sought, and she knew – oh, death! – that in due course a thick, white, bevel-edged invitation card would be sent to her. The Right Reverend and Mrs Gordon Anderson request the pleasure. The ceremony in the cathedral, the marquee on the palace lawns, people looking at her and Rupert, thinking – saying, even? –
the next
. Mara saw the bride's bouquet being tossed and falling in eternal slow motion into her unwilling hands. The next. And I would be locked into a life of ghastly dinner parties.

Rupert, it turned out, had shielded her from the full horrors of what lay ahead that evening. He had failed to mention that the colour of several of the stuffed shirts was purple. There was something particularly dreadful about four bishops at a dinner table. Their combined urbanity made her want to eat her cork mat quietly to see if they would say anything. There had also been a cabinet minister, someone high up in the Arts Council, a master of a Cambridge college, and a barrister. And their wives. Liberty prints, crisp blouses, silver brooches. She had behaved herself to the point of insipidity. Maybe they thought she was shy. A nice girl. Terribly clever. A bit shy, but I'm sure Rupert will be good for her. Her father's a clergyman, you know. Good God – she had even behaved herself when they had got on to women's ordination, and the cabinet minister had suggested – arf-arf – that the neatest solution was to delay having women priests until the women themselves could reach a unanimous decision on what to wear in church. She had opened her mouth, but then seen Rupert's anxious eyes on her, and managed not to say, ‘I thought bitching about vestments was an exclusively male preserve.'

This is what it would be like if I married him, she thought: anxious glances across the dinner table preventing me from speaking, until at last one day I explode, taking out half the vicarage dining-room with me. Eventually the last guests murmured and brayed their way to the front door and drove off. She and Rupert were left alone in the deserted sitting-room. The other Andersons had discreetly vanished. Rupert began kissing her again, but now it was all different. The lingering memory of the arf-arfing cabinet minister inhibited her. The sofa cushions still bore the dents of right-reverend backsides, and polite expensive scents hung in the air. As his kisses became deeper, his hands bolder, she began to feel relieved that Rupert was one of the honourable evangelical few who believed that sex was for marriage only. But after a while she realized he had no intention of stopping. What if he'd slipped out to a chemist's while she had been changing for dinner? What if his pockets were now bulging with condoms? Outside, behind the quiet folds of chintz curtain, the peacocks called ‘no-oo!', and when Rupert's hand strayed past her stocking top she pushed him away in panic.

He kissed her gently. ‘You're right. I'm sorry.' He kissed her again, and laughed. ‘It's just . . . Mara – you're irresistible. I can't help myself.' But he respected her decision, and they had gone to their separate beds.

What had made him relax his principles? Was it just lust? Or had he sensed that this would be the only way of persuading her to marry him? The two became one flesh. She might well have mistaken passion for love if the context had been right. Strawberry woods, yes; palace drawing-room, no. As he kissed her one last time at the foot of the stairs, she knew he was honouring her for her self-control. He could not see that it was really terror of being trapped in his home and his image of her as his virgin princess. The following day as he drove her back to the station, she had tried to explain that she was not actually . . . that she had in fact . . . slept with people before. Twice. Actually. She watched and saw his love flex and expand to incorporate this: that she was young, that she had made mistakes (who hadn't?), that she had been hurt. He had thanked her for telling him, and, suddenly, what she had intended as a means of disillusioning him, had turned into the kind of appropriate confession of an almost fiancée. Oh, Rupert! What was she going to do about him?

She heard her voice again, pleading with him: ‘Look, Rupert, I really did mean it when I said it wouldn't work. I couldn't be a vicar's wife. I know I've given you the wrong impression, but –'

‘No, please. That was entirely my fault. I should never have said anything. All I want to know at the moment is that you . . . well, that you'll at least bear it in mind. Don't decide irrevocably. Please, Mara. I love you.' And maybe because he had said that, or because she was escaping, going home, or even because they were at that moment passing the strawberry woods again, she whispered, ‘All right.'

Oh, why had she been so weak and stupid? Rupert was off skiing now with a group of friends. Maybe a fortnight in a chalet with half a dozen double-barrelled names would bring him back to his senses.

Then a voice drifted into her mind. It was a moment before she could place it. Tom. At the friary: ‘
What do you want, Mara?
' Actually, she thought, I want to paint. And for one light-headed moment she felt her spirit rise up and go whirling over the river. Air and space and depth. How would she do it? The moment passed. She stared out across the water. What does a bird see? What would its map of the City be like? A network of paths above rooftops where she saw nothing but emptiness? How could she paint that, create that sensation of climbing on the wind, or spiralling down round a building's edge? She sighed. It was impossible. Then she was ashamed of her cowardice. What made her so unwilling to attempt something if she was not sure she could excel? Maybe she could try the idea out on Andrew. If it could survive his relentless deconstruction, maybe it was possible. But she knew she would not dare. She had never shown him the sketches she had made of him. He had not asked to see them, and she did not know if this was because he was not interested, or because he had been too drunk to remember anything about them.

The bells chimed four. In the distance she heard someone whistling. A workman? The sound carried clearly through the quiet afternoon. She glanced round and saw a man appear on the path that led down to the far end of the bridge. He continued whistling, and she watched his easy strides as he approached. She was about to turn away – he was close enough now to see her watching – when he raised an arm and waved. Johnny. She started as she recognized him. Suddenly it occurred to her: I've been trying to make myself forget him. I've just been using Rupert. But there was no time to do anything with this thought. He was beside her, saying, ‘Thinking of jumping?'

‘No.'

‘Get down, then. You're frightening me.'

He reached out, and she swung her legs round and slid down into his arms. He hugged her tight for a moment. Surely he would feel her heart pounding, even through all those layers of winter clothes.

He was looking down into her face. ‘Going back to college?'

She nodded, remembering to breathe again, and he released her. They began walking.

‘You're back early,' she said. Her voice had an inane, blurting quality, but he appeared not to notice.

‘Yes. Overdue essay. “The Charismatic Revival”. I've been to all the libraries, and I'll tell you a funny thing, Mara: someone's got every single book I need.'

‘Me. Sorry.' They had been on her shelf since her first term, she thought guiltily. She pictured him chasing from library to library and encountering her name at every turn. The college was almost in sight. ‘If you come up now, I'll get them for you.' Nightcap, etchings, whispered a lewd part of her mind, and she blushed. He merely said thanks, and they walked on a little in silence.

‘Did you have a good Easter?' he asked.

‘Yes. And you?'

‘Not bad. I've been in Basel.' She looked up in surprise. ‘On a Mission.'

‘What – converting people?' she asked in distaste.

‘Why, aye. Scalp-collecting. Thrusting our beliefs down people's throats,' he agreed cheerfully. ‘Christianity is a proselytizing religion, sweetie.'

‘Yes – only think of the Crusades.'

‘Of
course
!' He struck his forehead. ‘I was forgetting the Crusades.' She coloured. ‘And let's not forget Jesus's last words to his disciples: “Go into all the world and
learn from other people
.” Don't be so bloody wet, Mara.'

She laughed in amazement. ‘You mean to say you enjoy it? Door-knocking and all that stuff?'

‘Yes. And you know something else? When I started my training, I thought door-knocking and that stuff was the whole point of being a vicar. I'd worked out that “gospel” was supposed to mean “good news”, and it all seemed pretty obvious:
Tell people
.' There was a silence. Don't let go of that, she wanted to say. If you lose that, you'll have nothing left. It'll tear your heart out with it.

‘Anyway,' he said, shaking off his bitterness, ‘it's not a question of enjoyment. We all have to go. All part of the training. We went to Basel, the other lot went to Watford. It's just the luck of the draw.'

‘You landed on your feet, then.'

‘It was OK. I must have put on about a stone, though. They force-feed you. A different home for each meal, and you're always greeted with the words, “We thought you'd be hungry.” '

She tried to picture him eating polite dinners with diplomats. ‘Was it terribly refined?'

‘You bet it was. Even the children scared me. I had to preach to them on Easter Sunday. “Well, boys and girls. This is a difficult question: can any of you remember any of the words Jesus spoke while he was on the cross?” All these hands shoot up. “Yes? Little boy on the left.” “
Eloi, Eloi, lama sabach-thani
.” '

Mara laughed. ‘You're kidding! What did you say?'

‘ “Yes, yes.
Apart
from that.” I don't suppose I knew who Jesus
was
at that age.'

‘Surely you were sent to Sunday school?'

‘I was expelled. Something to do with setting fire to hymn books.'

She smiled. Maddy and May would disqualify him for lying again.

‘How's my friend Rupert, then?' he asked after a moment.

She blushed, hearing from his tone that they had discussed her. She tried to answer casually. ‘He was OK when I last saw him.'

‘So you're a couple these days?' She could not look at him.

‘No.'

‘No? That's not what Rupert thinks.' Oh,
God
.

‘Well, he should. We agreed,' she said belligerently.

‘Maybe he needs reminding, sweetie.'

‘I've tried to explain!' she burst out.

He laughed. ‘You'll just have to be patient with him, I'm afraid, Mara.' They were nearing the college main entrance. ‘What women don't realize is that men can be incredibly stupid. Take the word “no”, for instance. I keep having it explained to me, but somehow I can't hold the concept in my mind for more than about thirty seconds.' What if it were reinforced by a knee in the groin? At that moment Nigel appeared, about to step out into the street for a cigarette. Another man who had never got to grips with the ‘No' concept.

‘Hello, darling. You're back. Got a kiss for me?' He thrust his face up close and laughed as she recoiled. His eyes slid from her to Johnny, then back again. ‘Been for a little walk, eh? Well, I hope he's been behaving himself.'

‘More's the pity,' Mara heard herself say. Shit. She'd always dreaded being sucked into the smutty vortex of Nigel's thought. There was an interesting little pause, then both men laughed. Mara watched out of the corner of her eye as Nigel semaphored a swift message of encouragement to Johnny in those all-male coded gestures which any woman can read at forty paces. Johnny was grinning broadly. There were footsteps coming along the corridor. It was Andrew. Her scowl changed into a smile. Nigel swung round.