Bill’s family was in some ways rather like hers – similar enough, anyway, for Marmion to feel at ease with them. Like the Hayters, the Devenishes were a tightly knit clan. Bill’s older sister Mandy lived at home with her baby daughters, who’d been born prematurely and had spent several weeks in the special care unit. The twins’ father was never spoken of, at least in Marmion’s hearing, so they, like the hotel, were a family project. But – and this was perhaps how the Devenishes were un-Hayter-like – it seemed to Marmion that the babies were more a burden than a joy. Of course she couldn’t be sure how her parents would react to the arrival of two unsupported grandchildren, but she’d felt, sometimes, that Mia and Grace were seen as part of a pattern of adversity. Bill’s father was musical, and Mandy had read English at university, but there never seemed to be time for such distractions in the Devenish household. There were always so many practicalities to deal with: bookings, guests, complaints, bills, medical appointments. Marmion could see that Bill longed to escape from all this, but that he was ashamed of that impulse too – and she could sympathise with both those feelings. Certainly a weekend with Bill’s family made her own seem almost frivolous.
A loud laugh from Judith drew her attention back to the group gathered on the terrace. Stephen was regaling them with an account of a dalliance he’d conducted in the University Library in the weeks before Finals. Marmion smiled. Stories of unrequited love were part of Stephen’s stock-in-trade, produced to amuse them all. The fervency of his devotion was always less convincing than his willingness to cast himself as a comic character.
‘I must have bought her a dozen cheese scones,’ he was saying now. ‘I even buttered them for her,’ and they all hooted with laughter, imagining long-limbed Stephen demonstrating courtly love with a butter knife in the fervid atmosphere of the library’s tea room.
‘What was her name?’ asked Judith.
‘Sarah,’ said Stephen promptly. ‘Or perhaps . . . Clare, actually, I think. No, she was at Clare. A medic, anyway. She told me all about her skeleton.’
‘I didn’t think medics went to the library,’ said Bill. ‘Don’t they lurk in dissecting rooms and anatomy museums?’
‘There are books to be read about medicine,’ said Judith. She stretched her arms luxuriantly, letting one of them fall on the back of Bill’s chair before folding them behind her head. ‘More of them than you might think. Didn’t you have a fling with a medic last term, Cressy?’
‘He lurked in dissecting rooms,’ said Cressida, mock-reprovingly. ‘Didn’t let me near his skeleton, anyway.’
Marmion watched her for a moment, catching her glance at Stephen. Sometimes she thought Cressida’s crush on him was over; sometimes she thought she’d imagined it. She was always the last to pick up on romantic intrigue, she knew, but there had been times when she’d been sure that Cressida was unhappy, and that Stephen was the cause. She wondered now, batting at a fly which had settled on her arm, whether she was right, and whether her clumsy intuition about the reason for Stephen’s indifference was anywhere close to the truth.
As another ripple of laughter went round the table, Marmion thought for the second time that day how hard it was to believe that all this – the habit of seeing everything through the prism of their little circle – would be over so soon. She hadn’t begun to imagine how she’d do without it. But she dismissed the flutter of melancholy before it could settle, swatting it away like that bluebottle a moment ago. It was silly, she told herself, to waste the time they had left being maudlin.
‘Do you realise,’ she said, ‘that we’ve sung evensong three times a week for three terms a year for three years? Not counting all the extra services and concerts.’
‘How many is that?’ Cressida raised an eyebrow. Marmion’s maths was on a par with Judith’s godliness: another standing joke.
‘Well over two hundred,’ said Stephen.
‘It seems more,’ said Marmion, disappointed. There were the rehearsals too, of course, hundreds of hours of singing together, but even so: she’d wanted the total to startle them.
‘Two hundred’s a lot,’ said Stephen. ‘Two hundred Magnificats. Two hundred evening collects.’
‘Do you remember the compline when Bill set fire to the service sheet?’ Cressida asked.
‘No one noticed,’ said Bill.
‘Or the nude service?’ said Judith.
Marmion grinned. Deep, the organ scholar, had dared them to wear nothing under their cassocks one Tuesday evening, and they’d all processed solemn-faced up the aisle, feeling deliciously childish and a little chilly, in the depths of the cold Cambridge winter.
‘No one noticed that, either,’ said Bill. ‘More’s the pity.’
‘No one except God,’ said Marmion.
‘I thought God wanted us naked,’ said Judith. ‘Wasn’t that his beef with Adam and Eve?’
‘I rest my case, m’lud,’ said Cressida.
‘I rather thought God could see past our outer vestments anyway,’ said Stephen.
Marmion was never sure, when God came into the conversation, whether she was being teased. ‘Of course He can,’ she said. ‘You can’t hide anything from Him. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing.’ She smiled, trying to convey both sincerity and light-heartedness. But no one replied, and after a moment Fay pushed back her chair.
‘On that note,’ she said, ‘it’s time to go. Rehearsal at three.’
‘Another rehearsal?’ asked Judith. The others looked from her to Fay, surprised by the change of plan.
‘I told you this morning,’ Fay said. ‘With the church choir, for the service on Sunday morning. They’ll be glad of your help.’
‘Good,’ said Cressida – with more conviction than any of them felt, Marmion thought. There had definitely been no mention earlier of another rehearsal: the confusion, the oversight, embarrassed her a little. She stood up, smiling at Fay.
‘Shall we bring all this in?’ she said. ‘Wonderful lunch; thank you.’
*
The church was fuller than Judith had expected. She was sure that most of the audience had come for the local performers in the second half (including an elderly barbershop chorus who promised to be hilariously bad), but even so they applauded the High Scarp group enthusiastically, and didn’t seem to notice when Stephen got the words wrong in an exposed section of a Stanford motet, substituting something vaguely erotic, and all five of them came close to corpsing.
After Byrd and Bruckner and Britten they sang some close-harmony arrangements: ‘When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano’ and ‘Blue Moon’, and then ‘In the Still of the Night’ – a final luscious solo for Bill.
The lights hadn’t been put on yet in the church, and Judith was very conscious of the music swirling around them in the dusk, the audience reduced to a faint rustle. Do you love me as I love you, Bill sang, with a little exposed lift on the I, while the others filled in the background of the moonlit night and the open window with their swooning harmonies. As the last note died away, there was an audible sigh from the audience, and Bill turned to grin at the others with a mixture of pleasure and amusement and bashfulness.
Her heart still racing from the thrill and concentration of the singing, Judith felt a quiver of shared pride, and of something sharper. Smiling stupidly like this, feeling the prick of tears, wasn’t like her. She was more in love with all this than she’d ever admitted, she realised now. More in love with the careless professionalism, the taking-for-granted of each other’s skill. She watched each of them step forward to acknowledge the applause: Marmion glowing with pleasure, Cressida holding tight to her self-possession, Stephen betraying more than usual in an unguarded smile, Bill grinning broadly. They bowed together, and then Bill was murmuring something and a hush fell over the church again as he looked up, their self-appointed spokesman, and announced, ‘The Silver Swan’.
This was Judith’s moment of glory – the top line gliding effortlessly, swan-like,
above the close-knit texture of the part-song, while the others took turns to press forward with the quaver runs that drove the piece towards its last, painfully drawn-out cadence. As they settled on the final F major chord, Bill looked across at her, raising an eyebrow and making the little wobble of a hand gesture that meant marvellous or fabulous or whatever word – inevitably less powerful than that almost invisible shimmy of the fingers – each of them might choose.
The tremble of pleasure and longing Judith had felt a moment ago flared again. For the sweet sadness of the song and the shared experience of the singing, but also – and here was the dangerous, the almost unthinkable thought – for the pleasure of Bill’s admiration. Unthinkable because Bill was Marmion’s boyfriend, and Marmion was her friend, and Bill mattered more to Marmion than any man had ever mattered to Judith. Because she’d promised herself to relinquish him, to resist him, three years ago, and she’d stuck to her promise.
While the audience clapped again and the others smiled out at the crowd, Judith’s eyes stayed fixed on Bill. She knew him so well now, every nuance of expression familiar, but just now she felt she’d never really looked at him before. His solid, straightforward face, that look of unplaned wood, wasn’t her usual style at all. There was something almost ridiculous about him, she thought; about his defiant disregard for sophistication, despite the subtlety and sensitivity of his singing. It made the kick of attraction all the stronger – but she could resist, still. For sure she could resist. There was no harm in a quiver, a catch, that no one else saw. But as Bill turned to lead them off the platform, his eyes rested on her for a fraction of a second and her heart stumbled. He knew, she thought. He might not have admitted it yet, but he knew.
*
Back at High Scarp, Marmion settled happily on the sofa as Fay opened a little cupboard set into the wall beside the fireplace.
‘Whisky?’ Fay asked. ‘Cognac? Or sloe gin, or . . . there’s some absinthe, and some chartreuse, even. Poisonous stuff, chartreuse, but you ought to try it once.’
‘Chartreuse for me,’ said Judith. ‘Too Brideshead for words. I shall be Anthony Blanche.’
Marmion chose sloe gin, which sounded less lethal than the alternatives, and which tasted like rather delicious cough mixture. Bill and Stephen accepted a glass of Glenfiddich apiece, and Cressida a tot of brandy.
Armed with glasses that shone green and purple and amber in the firelight, they settled down to Fay’s programme of entertainment. Marmion was victorious in the charades with ‘Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me’ – playing successfully on the others’ assumption that the pop charts were, as Bill put it, uncharted territory for her, so that they were too busy guessing Monteverdi operas to remember that she’d been to see Batman Forever on her own one afternoon after exams.
After that there was a party-piece game which involved making sound effects the others had to identify. Fay went first, blowing out her cheeks to produce a convincing imitation of a bullfrog. Bill – playing up to the spirit of the occasion, Marmion thought – suggested a cow, and then a fart, before yielding the right answer to Cressida.
‘You next, Bill,’ said Fay.
‘I didn’t guess it, though,’ said Bill.
‘Even so.’
After a moment’s thought, Bill put his hands to his lips and produced a stream of birdsong.
‘Goodness,’ said Judith. ‘That’s an unsuspected talent.’
Bill grinned. ‘What is it, then?’
‘Nightingale?’ suggested Judith. ‘Lark?’
Bill shook his head.
‘A gap in my education,’ said Judith. ‘What about you, Cressy? Wasn’t birdwatching on the syllabus at Benenden?’
‘Sadly not,’ said Cressida. ‘Squeezed out by all that flower arranging and decorative sugarcraft.’
‘Wren?’ offered Marmion, although she had no idea what different birds sounded like. The downside of a city childhood, she thought. ‘Thrush? Robin?’
‘You’re an ignorant lot,’ said Fay. ‘It’s a blackbird.’ She looked enquiringly at Bill, and he nodded. ‘You must all have heard a blackbird sing.’
‘The trouble is, they don’t introduce themselves,’ said Judith. ‘And I hesitate to say they all sound the same, but . . .’
‘Don’t encourage him,’ said Stephen. ‘Can’t you see he’s got dozens more up his sleeve? We’ll be here all night.’
‘Bill’s birds,’ said Judith, and she laughed briefly.
‘Your go, Marmion,’ said Fay.
‘Is it the person who makes the silliest suggestion?’ said Marmion. ‘I’m afraid it is. And I’m afraid I’m going to be no good at this.’
It ought to come with having a musical ear, being able to reproduce sounds, but she wasn’t sure it did. But then she remembered one of her father’s party tricks, produced to tease or amuse her into practising when she was little, or to hint that her fiddle was out of tune. She took a deep breath and produced a whining string sound, just below an A, then tweaked it down and up and down, never quite centring on the right pitch.
‘A siren,’ said Judith.
‘No.’
‘A baby crying,’ said Stephen.
‘You’ve clearly never heard a baby crying.’
‘A baby animal?’ suggested Cressida.
‘Call yourselves musicians,’ said Marmion. ‘Listen again.’
This time she sang a spread D minor chord, the one most violinists tune to, before launching into her pitch-twisting routine, then mimed holding a violin on her shoulder and twiddling the pegs.
‘That’s cheating,’ said Fay, as Bill and Cressida shouted out the answer together. ‘Stephen next.’
Stephen didn’t hesitate. Screwing up his face, he produced a fizzing sound that made Judith snigger again. She’d had a couple of glasses of chartreuse by now, and there was some colour in her cheeks.
‘Alka-Seltzer,’ she said.
‘Nope.’
‘One of your 78s?’ offered Bill.
Stephen shook his head, and repeated his performance with greater vigour.
‘Oh, I’m not sure I want to know what this one is!’ said Marmion.
‘A waterfall?’ said Cressida.
Stephen waggled his fingers in front of his face like fronds of seaweed.
‘I have absolutely no idea,’ said Marmion. ‘Something crumbling apart?’
‘A fire,’ said Fay. They all looked at her. ‘Is it a fire?’
‘Yes,’ said Stephen.
‘How on earth did you know that?’ asked Bill.
‘Fay knows everything,’ said Judith.
They ought to be laughing, Marmion thought, at Fay’s luck or intuition or at Stephen’s absurdity, but somehow they weren’t. Something seemed to have shifted in the room. Something to do with Fay, perhaps: had she been in a fire, or lost someone in a fire – or was she playing a different game now? Marmion stared at her, but Fay was looking from Bill to Judith, and there was nothing to detect in her expression except that flat smile again.
Whatever it was, Marmion decided suddenly that she’d had enough. She put her hand to her mouth as though to stifle a yawn, then stood up.
‘Won’t you have another drink?’ Fay asked, but Marmion shook her head.
‘No,’ she said. ‘But it’s been a lovely day. Thank you.’
Crossing the garden in the almost-dark a few moments later, Marmion stopped for a moment, in the same place she’d stood that morning, to look out across the valley. The sky above the fells was violet-coloured – a transient, volatile shade like the inside of a flower or a shell. Even as she watched it changed, deepening and darkening towards night. If she had left five minutes earlier or five minutes later, she thought, she would have missed this moment, this particular, fleeting colour. She looked up at the stars, laid out in brilliant contrast across the wide stretch of the horizon, and then she heard footsteps behind her and turned to see Bill approaching.
‘For I will consider thy heavens: the moon a
nd the stars, which thou hast ordained,’ he said.
Marmion smiled, thinking that she was more grateful than she could say for Bill.
‘Look.’ She pointed at the Pole Star, hanging poised above the summit of Helvellyn, and then at the clear outline of the Plough.
‘Don’t you find them scary?’ he asked.
‘Who?’
‘The stars. Doesn’t the thought of them frighten you? Such an expanse of empty space.’
‘Would you rather be confined in a smaller space?’ Marmion asked.
‘Such an expanse of time, then. Compared to our lifespan.’
‘Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live,’ quoted Marmion, the Purcell setting they had sung this evening blooming in her head once more. ‘At least if he’s Henry Purcell he’s got something to leave behind.’
‘If he’s not, he’d better make the most of the time he’s got,’ said Bill, slipping a hand around her waist.
Marmion quivered. ‘That sounds eminently sensible.’
‘Do you really . . .’ Bill hesitated.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
His arm was around her still, the feel of his body familiar and comforting. ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘Even if it is nothing.’
She felt a little sigh on her neck. ‘I was just thinking about . . . the God thing.’
‘The God thing?’ Marmion smiled.
‘God seeing every secret thing,’ Bill said. ‘Don’t you find that scary too?’
‘No. Why should I? And why should you? We’re not doing anything God wouldn’t like, I’m sure of that.’
She turned then, and kissed him sweetly, lingeringly, before taking his hand and leading him into the cabin.
*
When it came to it, the question of sex with Bill hadn’t been difficult to settle. Marmion had never been enjoined to chastity, simply to prudence and respect, for herself and others. What had been surprising wasn’t that she found herself taking off her clothes so willingly that first time, but the delight it brought her. She hadn’t expected that her enjoyment of other sensory pleasures would be matched, even exceeded, by touch, nor that Bill, whose experience was barely greater than hers, would be such a perfect partner in her exploration of the joys of the flesh.
Every Secret Thing Page 4