Marion's Angels

by K. M. Peyton

  * * *

  The next afternoon, all was made plain. The orchestra arrived to rehearse, and the solo pianist arrived in his fast car: the visitor of the night before. He still wore his baseball boots and beer shirt, but was business-like and unrapt, discussing tempi and phrasing with the conductor, poring over the score, and playing one particular passage with the orchestra over and over again until it appeared to satisfy. Marion sat in a pew and watched and listened, enjoying this unusual bustle in her church, the chatting and scraping of chair-legs on the worn flags, laughter, the echo of a practising flute coming back from the arches of the clerestory as if a bird sat up there, mocking. They spoke of acoustics and echo, and put the brass farther back, and pushed the Steinway farther forward, and then the orchestra played something without the piano to see if the balance was right, and the pianist sat down near Marion and smoked a cigarette. Marion wanted to look at him, but daren’t. He was very strongly-built, tough looking, like a bricklayer, she thought, not like a pianist at all. But he had a way of looking when he was playing that was quite different. His name was Patrick Pennington.

  The vicar arrived with several of the important people in the village, Mrs. Roberts of the W.I., some of the parish councillors and old Beetle, the headmaster. The vicar said hullo to Marion, not ignoring her like most of the others, and then he went and spoke in his avuncular fashion to the pianist, who looked bored but fairly polite, and called Marion over and introduced her to him.

  ‘This is Marion Carver, who looks after the church.’

  Marion shook hands politely. The pianist’s hand was large and bony and strong, but gentle, which is what she had expected. He didn’t say anything, but made a noise like a pig grunting. Afterwards Marion realized that the handkerchief she had used round the latch was hanging out of her shirt pocket, showing the printed pigs, but at the time she was surprised, and so was the vicar.

  ‘We’re laying tea on for you all at the school hall,’ Alfred the vicar said, recovering quickly. ‘Will you come down after the rehearsal? Mr. Gibson said you’d be through by four-thirty, so you’ll have an hour and a half, and the ladies will have it all ready and waiting.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Mr. Pennington said politely, but Marion got the impression that he wasn’t really bothered.

  She was right, for when the orchestra departed village-wards in their coach, led by the vicar in his Morris Minor, the pianist wasn’t with them. He was lying stretched out on the front pew with his hands behind his head, looking at the hammer-beam roof and the angels, cleverly hidden from Alfred’s puzzled, departing look round.

  ‘He’s got his own car,’ the conductor, Mr. Gibson, had said. ‘He can find us easily enough.’

  Marion went home, and told her father of the goings-on. He had come up from his boat early, fuzzed over with sawdust, to get ready for the concert.

  ‘You’ll have to wear something nice,’ he said to Marion. ‘Everyone will be dressed up. Have you got anything?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Marion said. Both of them knew that this was the sort of thing they weren’t very good at.

  ‘And that pianist fellow—you should ask him over for a wash or whatever—somewhere to change, if he’s on his own. I can understand him not wanting the beanfeast at the school, but he might quite like just a cup of tea in the kitchen.’

  Marion got changed into a dress that her cousin in Ipswich had worn as a bridesmaid six years ago and her aunt had shortened and parcelled to Geoff; she didn’t like it, but it had a best look about it, shiny and uncomfortable, which is what she thought best ought to be; then she went to look for Mr. Pennington. He was still in the front pew, looking at the roof, not asleep. He turned his head slowly as she came into his vision, and seemed to come back from somewhere far away. Marion somehow thought she knew him quite well, had known him for much longer than just since last night.

  ‘Daddy says you can come to our house to change, if you want,’ she said. ‘It’s just across the road.’

  He sat up slowly.

  ‘And have a cup of tea.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  He got up and he fetched a suitcase out of his car and followed Marion home. It was half-past five. Geoff was shaving in the kitchen mirror over the sink, and the kettle was on the boil.

  ‘The bathroom’s all yours, if you want it. Marion’ll show you. And the tea will be ready when you come down.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  When he came down he looked like a completely different person, exactly like a concert pianist, in fact, in a jacket of black velvet with a pristine white shirt, an inch of cuff showing fastened with gold links, and a tie of dark red silk. His hair was very tidy, his face pale and taut. Not a bit like a bricklayer, Marion thought, blushing that it had crossed her mind. But the baseball boots . . . she poured the tea, confused. And he had snorted.

  ‘That boat by the river—is it yours? Are you building it?’ he asked Geoff.

  ‘Yes.’ Geoff’s face lit up.

  ‘It’s ferro?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who designed it?’

  ‘Alan Hill. Do you want to have a look over her? Perhaps—if there’s time—no, perhaps not—’

  ‘Afterwards, not before. Yes, I’d like to. I’ll come back after the performance. I shan’t have much time though—got to play at the Pavilion at eight forty-five—that’s half an hour away. It might not fit in.’

  ‘Well, if not, another time. Or are you just here for a day or two? You travel a lot?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m based here for the summer. I’ve rented a cottage on the beach. My wife’s living there.’

  Wife! thought Marion, stabbed. It wasn’t possible! How mean! She felt crushed. Even Geoff looked slightly surprised.

  ‘It’s very kind of you to do this,’ he said, turning into a good host, vicar-wise. ‘For the church funds—the roof repair. It needs the money desperately.’

  ‘For the church funds? You mean—’ The questioning look turned into one of despairing resignation. ‘Oh bloody hell, I might have known. You’re getting it free? Mick—my agent—said, ages ago—my fault, I’d forgotten. This is a charity do?’

  Geoff was amused. ‘For the work of the Lord,’ he said, in Alfred’s voice.

  ‘For the good of my image, Mick said. He’s no more up in the works of the Lord than I am.’

  ‘You’ll feel good afterwards.’

  ‘I’d feel better with a cheque.’

  Marion scowled at him. ‘The angels need it,’ she said belligerently.

  ‘So do I,’ Pennington said to her.

  ‘They are more important.’

  ‘Don’t be rude,’ said her father.

  But Pennington said, ‘You’re probably right,’ and looked gloomy. ‘I’d better be off.’

  ‘We’ll come with you.’

  The first cars were already arriving, and the orchestra was coming down the lane in its coach. Geoff and Marion had reserved seats in the front pew, where Marion had hidden the night before. The spikes of Mrs. Parmenter’s delphiniums reached over and shed pollen over the prayer-books. Marion sneezed. She would be able to watch the pianist between the blue flowers and, since the piano had been moved forward, see his fingers twinkling over the keyboard. They must move faster than you could see, almost, she thought, remembering the music the night before. He had disappeared, presumably into the vestry to await his cue. The orchestra was going to play something else first, without him; according to the programme he was after the Siegfried Idyll by Wagner, playing a concerto by Mozart, number twenty-two in E flat. On the opposite page there was a photo of him, looking rather cross, as if remembering that he was playing for charity, and underneath it gave his life-history, all about his ‘meteoric rise to acclaim’ and his engagements in Europe and at the Festival Hall. It finished, ‘He lives in London, is married and has a young son.’ A young son! Worse and worse. Marion supposed that he had had to get married, like her own father, for getting his girl-friend pregnant. She had heard
it so often, in the village, particularly at school in regard to herself, what the W.I. ladies called ‘a shot-gun marriage’ . . . She had, and had always had, a very vivid picture in her mind of her mother and father being married, in this very church, and her grandfather Harris standing behind her father with his gun levelled between Geoff’s shoulder-blades and prodding him when it came to the ‘I will’ part. But, the deed done, they had been very happy. Marion always remembered her mother as a very happy person. Presumably Mr. and Mrs. Pennington were too. But Marion wished he wasn’t married. He was rather special, somehow.

  ‘Have you got a handkerchief?’ her father asked her, eyeing the pollen-heavy flowers.

  ‘No.’

  He found her one, and put it on the seat between them.

  ‘You have to keep very quiet and still when they’re playing. It sounds awful if people cough and sneeze.’

  The church was filling up fast, the people streaming in, all in their best clothes, just about the whole village as well as the smart strangers from London and what Geoff called the ‘culture-vultures’ from the surrounding countryside and Alfred with the Bishop, no less, and several other ecclesiastical gentlemen who all sat in the adjoining front pew. Marion was glad about the scaffolding over their heads. Lifting her gaze, she could see the two angels she called Herbert and Ted eyeing the goings-on with obvious amazement behind the wire-netting. Swithin had done a particularly good job on that pair, for they had the faces not of angels but of village people. Marion suspected that they were real portraits, worked out of Swithin’s system for fun, or affection, fixed for eternity to gaze upon the antics of twentieth-century man. No doubt their models’ bones were by now swilled under by the North Sea a few miles up the coast, having spilled down the cliff like all the others—except the one. When he goes, Marion thought, soon, it will all be finished. The last physical trace of medieval man. But their angels would last for ever. Thanks to the reluctant Mr. Pennington and the orchestra from London.

  The orchestra was now taking its place and the church was completely full, even people standing at the back. Marion had to keep turning round to look, never having seen it like this as far back as she could remember. It looked so strange, a different place, all humming and stirring and alive and rich, brightly-coloured, restless. Is this how it had been in the past? Is this how Swithin had seen it before he died? How could it ever have been so full, given only the local countryside to draw on, without people coming from miles in cars? It couldn’t have, she decided. And yet it had been built so huge. For swank, Geoff had always said. Keeping up with the medieval Joneses. Perhaps he was right. The angels knew, if only they would speak; they had seen everything from the day their eyes had been carved. Even Swithin’s face bending over them. Marion had gone into one of her trances and didn’t stand up when the vicar gave his address and asked the Bishop to lead them in a blessing before the performance. Her father hauled her to her feet and she came to just in time for the amen, and sat down again with everyone else. The orchestra got settled, turning up the corners of their music, and the conductor raised his baton. A deep, expectant silence filled the church. The evening sun streamed in through the windows and the conductor couldn’t see his woodwind, squinting into the light.

  Geoff had always said about music, ‘It’s not so much listening to it, as the thoughts you think while it’s playing.’ Perhaps the Siegfried Idyll made him think about sailing on a summer sea, for it fitted, and he looked perfectly happy, in spite of having had to come in from his boat early and put a suit on. Marion went back to her angels, and Swithin, and kept an eye on Herbert and Ted in case the vibrations might dislodge them; but the music was gentle, not the dislodging kind. Above the choir, Sebastian and Arthur, the most angelic of the twelve, very pure of feature, bland and not as likeable as the others, stretched out their time-bleached wings and hung above the serenade as if aware that it was all for them, aloof and lovely, ungrateful. But Herbert and Ted quivered behind the wire-netting, amazed, peering nosily. The clapping at the end of the piece startled them as much as it startled Marion. She was watching them, saw them vibrate to the noise, winced.

  ‘Come back, come back,’ her father said gently. ‘Did you like it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s our Mr. Pennington now.’

  ‘It’s lovely. I didn’t think it would be like this.’

  ‘No. It’s a perfect setting for such music.’

  The conductor was returning, followed by Pennington, who winkled his way to the Steinway round the delphiniums and bowed briefly to the applause. He looked very distant and unsmiling. He sat down at the piano and fidgeted himself into the right position, brushed some pollen off his sleeve and then sat still, his hands resting on his thighs. The conductor looked at him and he nodded. The conductor lifted up his baton and the instruments, all in position, hung on his word, then burst into action with a chord that made Marion jump, then, instantly, a cheerful tune and some quite joky bits with a bassoon, so that Marion was charmed. It was so long before the pianist came in that she had quite forgotten about him, sitting motionless behind the delphiniums. Then, suddenly, he lifted up his hands and the tune was all his, not grandiose at all, but very simple and delicate, so delicate that she remembered, blushing . . . bricklayer . . . how could she? Yet he was very strong, almost aggressive looking, not thin and poetic at all; he was how she had imagined Swithin might have looked, even to the hands being so strong and big and yet so meticulous . . . she watched them, steeped in her thoughts, and his face too, looking as Swithin’s must have done at work on his carving—wrapt and intense with concentration, the features transformed by the will to create something of rare beauty, of great difficulty; a craftsman’s face expressing the mixed pain and joy of delivering the finished work . . . she had never guessed at it before, but now it was before her very eyes, all bound up with Swithin and the angels. It was what her father had said, not exactly the music but what it provoked in one’s head. It lifted, her up in the strangest way. She felt dangerously moved, knew the feeling, loved it, knew its dangers, but did not want to know. She looked up at the angels and saw them moving, great wings outstretched, their faces shining. It was very hot. They wanted to fly, straining at their tender restraints, their wing-tips pulsating . . . Ted and Herbert bursting at the wire-netting. She could see them moving. She stood up. It was terribly hot. The music was filling the whole roof with a great pulsating, unleashing the angels from their centuries of silent immobility. In a moment the roof would split open and they would take off like great white barn owls, borne on a tide of celestial music. She knew it was going to happen.

  ‘No!’ she shouted at them. ‘Don’t go! You mustn’t go!’

  She made a great convulsive leap out of the pew and ran. But the enormous pot of delphiniums was right in her path and she kicked it over with a crash. A deluge of water gushed out into Pennington’s lap, the delphiniums toppling like pine-trees in clouds of bright pollen. The conductor dropped his baton. Geoff was out of his pew in a flash and made a dive for Marion, wrapping his arms tightly round her on the stone flags, scooping her up.

  ‘Idiot!’ he hissed in her ear. ‘Little idiot!’ and ran, holding her in his arms, right down the aisle and out of the door; leaving behind a stunned silence which was broken only by the amazed dying away of various instruments, cacophonous with shock.

  Pennington disentangled himself from the delphiniums, pushing them all on the floor. His shoes were full of water.

  The conductor crossed over to him, white-faced.

  ‘Jesus, Pat! What was all that about?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Pennington said. ‘Couldn’t help stopping—a physical impossibility to continue, for delphiniums. But now, if you like, the beginning of the movement.’

  ‘You’re soaking wet.’

  ‘Please, let’s go on. Talk about it later.’

  ‘If you like.’

  The conductor went back to his rostrum; muttered to the strings, and raised hi
s baton. The fluttering, twittering audience fell silent, a patter of spasmodic applause broke out, and the music started again. Pennington leaned his arms on the top of the piano, his hands over his face, waiting. Then, when it was nearly time for him to come in, he shifted back into position, rubbed his palms down his thighs, dried the dampness off on the flanks of his velvet jacket, and started to play. As if nothing had happened.

  * * *

  ‘You’re all right now, idiot child?’

  Geoff dropped a gentle hand from around Marion’s shoulders and sat back from her, regarding her with concern. They were sitting on a tombstone (William and Maria, his wife, Peterson, 1820–1858 and 1817–1890) at the bottom of the churchyard, alone, and Marion, having sobbed hysterically into the front of Geoff’s best suit for nearly ten minutes, was beginning to recover.

  ‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’

  ‘Sorry for what? Worse things happen at sea.’

  ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘No. Don’t think about it.’

  ‘They’ll say—’

  He smiled, dabbing at his wet suit with a handkerchief. ‘Who’s worrying? I’ll make the apologies, say all the right things to the right people. You’ll grow out of it.’

  ‘Do you think?’

  ‘I do. Like catarrh and adenoids and things.’

  Marion sniffed.

  ‘Mind you,’ Geoff added, glancing at his watch, ‘I think it might be politic to disappear until everyone’s gone home. I’ll go up and have a word with Alfred tonight, later. We can write a note to the Bishop and the conductor.’