by K. M. Peyton
‘It is because of my miracle, in a way,’ Marion said, agonized.
‘Yes. You’ll have to work another to solve this one.’
‘But it was for the angels! It wasn’t supposed to be about people at all.’
‘Everything’s about people, in the end.’
Marion thought about this, hurtling eastwards and feeling that life was never going to be quite the same again. She knew that she was on the verge of one of her states, but that Pat was the same too, strung up to a condition of rare perception. At least, it felt like rare perception but perhaps that was only an illusion: how could one tell? The emotions of the evening and of the impending departure, spurred by nature’s extraordinary intervention, combined to put everything into heightened perspective. But whether that was reality . . .? Marion was adrift.
They sped down the main road beside the marshes, bearing inland for Marion’s village. Marion could not contemplate the thought of saying good-bye and what was going to happen. They truly did need another miracle, she thought. Or never to have had one.
‘What are you going to do?’ she asked tightly.
‘I can’t go to Ruth now, not to all that agony. I shall just put my hand round the door, collect my case and go.’ He throttled down sharply for the turning to the church. ‘Is Geoff waiting up for you?’ The light was on in the cottage. ‘I’m not stopping. Tell Geoff good-bye for me.’
‘Yes.’
Marion opened the door of the car, holding it against the wind. It was harder now to control her feelings than it had ever been. She could not open her mouth to say good-bye and thank you and all the proper things, because she knew it would come out in sobs and confusion. She had to bite her lip very hard to stop it. She could not bear even to look at him, knowing now that he was no longer watching the road but watching her. She shook her head blindly, slammed the door and ran. She didn’t have to use much energy, for the wind took her like a discarded bus ticket and whirled her across the lane. A flash of lightning simultaneously lit the church tower, white and quivering against the electric sky. She dived for the door, and Geoff came to her frenzied knocking.
‘God, what a night! I was worried!’
The wind blew her into the kitchen and Geoff put his shoulder to the door to shut it, stopping to put the bolts in and the doormat over the draughts at the bottom. Marion locked herself in the lavatory to get herself into a semblance of normal, and came out when Geoff called, ‘Fallen down the plug-hole? I want to go to bed.’
‘How was it?’ He had made a cup of tea, and was pouring it out for her. A dying fire glowed in the old kitchen fireplace. Marion was shivering although she wasn’t cold.
‘It was lovely. I was all right—everything was all right.’
She didn’t want him to be curious. Nothing was all right, but she didn’t want him to know.
‘I was a bit worried about the drive home—the roads wet. I’ve seen how Pat drives, and he would be tired after that. It’s a terrible night.’ He yawned. ‘Glad you were O.K. That’s what matters really.’
‘Yes.’ She mustn’t spoil it.
She drank the tea as fast as she could. He was waiting for her, ready to put the lights out. She went upstairs and undressed, and got into bed. She knew she wasn’t going to go to sleep, but when her father said good-night she replied in a sleepy voice. She heard him get into bed next door. The lightning trembled outside, pink and hypnotic.
Falling asleep would have solved everything. But Marion knew it wasn’t going to happen. Not for Pat either, she felt sure. What was he doing? If he didn’t go to bed, there was a lot of time to fill in between now, midnight, and being at Heathrow at half-past ten. Was he going to drive his car all night down the slashing wet roads, working out his salvation? Ruth had told her that sometimes, after concerts, he went out driving because he couldn’t sleep, and would stay out until dawn. Not always. But tonight, Marion thought . . . yes . . . she could picture him arriving home, creeping into the kitchen to get his suitcase for America, and taking it out to the car. She opened her eyes as the lightning ricocheted round her bedroom walls, and in her mind saw the same lightning flaring across the beach at Fair Winds, and the black sea crashing beyond the dunes, the spray whipped in streamers. She saw Pat standing on the dunes, watching, his hair flying out . . . he would, she thought, yes—but don’t go swimming, she said out loud, knowing that it would pass through his mind, the sort of thing that would appeal . . . no! He would have more sense than that, tonight, although she knew he liked swimming in rough seas; she had seen him at it, and watched him come in, laughing and gasping. But tonight it would eat him up, the waves would fold him over and grind him on the stony bottom and lift him up like a plastic bottle. . . . She got out of bed and went to the window and saw the church very close, like a white cliff, every flint and crenellation etched fine in the flickering storm, the tower trembling; could feel the angels wide-stretched to the howling of the wind outside, quivering on their rusted bolts. She went out of her bedroom to the bathroom, to see the view to seaward, moving very quietly, avoiding the squeaks. The snaking river, full to the brim, gleamed in silver loops to the far horizon and the loom of the lighthouse was dim in competition, feebly revolving. The marsh reeds were laid flat. The tide was high and scouring the land. Farther north, beyond Oldbridge, the cliffs would be tormented by the power of the waves, clinging to the roots of the saplings and the matt of the turf. The grave. . . . Marion started to cry.
She went back to bed and tried not to think about it. She buried her face in the pillow. But she knew. . . .
Was she awake, bound hysterically by the workings of her over-active imagination, or was she really asleep, dreaming that she saw it so clearly: Pat walking off his worries in the eye of the storm, leaning against the wind on the cliff edge with the auditorium of the heaving sea stretched to heaven on all sides and the turf quivering beneath him, the last bones stirring in the soil, the soil loosening, the cliff slipping. . . .
Marion got out of bed again. It was too much. It needed another miracle to get them out of this, and there was only one place now to find peace. She wasn’t mad, she knew it—proved it by pulling on her jeans and jersey and fastening her sandals. She went downstairs and out of the back door where it was sheltered from the wind, and ran for the church. It was magnificent, the wind tearing her, the building rocking against the sky above her. She opened the door and ran up the aisle. The whole place was bathed in white light and the angels’ wings flashed and flickered against the arched roof. She stood on the altar steps and looked down the body of the church, lifting up her arms and ready to pray. The angels were watching her; she looked up and saw Herbert, the least angelic, his sardonic smile fixed in pity.
‘Pray properly, girl, on your knees!’ he was saying, and she dropped her arms, went to the front pew and fell on her knees. It was perfectly simple then.
‘Please God, make it all come right.’
It was very strange, but it was as if the whole church was moving. There was a rumbling noise, not like thunder, although it was in the sky and moving, coming closer. She straightened up and looked up at the roof. The roof was moving. The angels had taken off and were coming towards her, great wings outspread as if in protection. She saw Herbert gliding, no longer fixed to the roof, saw him coming down as if to enfold her, his smile more tender than she remembered, ducked her head because of the noise which seemed, somehow, to have arrived.
And knew no more.
Chapter Nine
GEOFF WAS AWOKEN in the middle of the night by knocking on the door. He got up and put his head out of the window.
‘Who is it?’
‘It’s me—Pat—’
‘Wait a minute.’
He went down, shaking himself awake, not entirely amazed, knowing Pat—more curious.
Pat was already inside, leaning against the door. He was soaked through, grinning.
‘Guess what—I thought you ought to know—your church tower has blown down.’<
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Geoff didn’t take it in immediately.
‘What did you say?’
‘The church—go and take a look. All my work in vain. The whole bloody roof caved in and you still fast asleep in your bed!’
‘You’re joking—’
‘At three o’clock in the morning?’
Geoff went out in his pyjamas. Coming round the side of the cottage into the blast of the wind he saw the extraordinary sight of St. Michael’s with only half a tower. With the sheet lightning still flickering round the sky, he could also see the hole in the roof caused by the falling stone, large enough to drop a bulldozer through.
‘Christ!’
‘And you slept through it—’
‘And Marion. Her room faces it—Christ, it’s uncanny—tonight—’
‘You don’t get storms like this every day of the week. Whole cliffs have fallen apart up the coast.’
‘What am I supposed to do, for God’s sake?’
‘Nothing, till morning. If you ring up the vicar he can’t do anything. Poor old Ephraim!’
They went back indoors. Geoff rubbed back his hair, scowling. ‘I always sleep like a log. I waited up for Marion—Christ, what timing—right after your bloody concert to shore the old place up! What the hell are you doing anyway? You’re supposed to be going to America in the morning?’
‘Yes, well—I felt all steamed up after the concert. Couldn’t face going back to Ruth—bit of a mess, really, with her . . . I went along the cliffs. I feel like that sometimes, after a big do. Can’t sleep. I go driving or something. Well, I saw it go, from the cliffs, in a flash of lightning. It was fantastic, right across the valley, as sharp as daylight, the whole top just rolled off.’
‘The cliffs beyond Oldbridge? But that’s three miles away—’
‘Yes. But it sticks up like an aeroplane hangar from across the marshes, you know it does. And the light was extraordinary. It was really weird—the whole thing, standing up there in the storm and the sea thundering up the beach. I felt like God.’ He laughed. ‘I felt like a conductor.’
‘And I slept through it! Marion too, else she’d be having hysterics by now. Poor kid, when she sees it!’
‘Yes, and old Ephraim. He’ll be sick. All that money we’ve been producing—’it’ll need that just to fill that hole in, by the look of it.’
‘I feel we ought to do something about it really. Don’t know what though, till morning. Perhaps we should go and assess the damage? Might be a bit dangerous though. Or ought you to get some sleep in, if you’ve got to drive to London? You can have my bed if you like.’
‘No, I won’t sleep. I can take some pills to keep me on my feet till Heathrow, sleep on the plane. Let’s go and look at the damage.’
‘I’ll go and get some clothes on.’
Geoff went upstairs, got dressed, put his head round Marion’s door.
He came down, frowning.
‘Marion’s bed’s empty.’
‘Perhaps it did wake her then—must have! She’s probably out there now.’
‘Oh, Lord—complications. It’ll send her off the deep end when she sees this. Let’s go and find her.’
They went out and across the lane, Geoff apprehensive. They circled the tower and decided that the bottom two-thirds which remained standing looked in no danger of imminent collapse. There was no sign of Marion, but the door was open. They went in, Geoff feeling distinctly uneasy.
‘Marion!’ he shouted.
The night sky, glittering with stars, spread a strange light overhead where normally the angels flew against darkness. The wind soughed through, skirling in the flowers and the Mother’s Union banners, bowling some leaflets down the nave and a few loose hymn-book pages, moaning in the trunk of the tower. At the top end of the nave, across the front pews and the lectern, a great pile of rubble blocked the way to the altar. Worm-riddled timbers, split across, stuck out like the spars of a wrecked ship. A great pile of crumbled bricks, stones and mortar humped across the flags and splintered pews, the mortar dust lying thick over everything and still heavy in the cold air, clamming the throat.
‘Jesus!’ Pat said, staring.
Two of the angels had disappeared, presumably under the debris, one had fallen across the altar and one into the choir stalls, two more swayed precariously from the sagging roof beyond the hole and the remaining six were still safely in place.
Even Geoff, having taken the church for granted all his life, never actively appreciating, felt crushed by the scene, and not entirely on Marion’s behalf.
‘Where is she?’ he muttered angrily. ‘It’s not too safe in here. She ought to have more sense.’
He looked under the tower and in the Priest’s room and went out in the churchyard to her hole under the elder-trees and back to the house. He noticed that her clothes were missing, and her sandals. He went back to the church, trying to hold down his fear.
‘The door was open,’ he said to Pat, ‘when we came in. You noticed?’
‘Yes, but the blast of the roof falling might have done that.’
‘What, with that latch? I doubt it. It weighs a ton.’
‘Oh, cripes, you’re not thinking—?’
‘I think I am,’ Geoff said quietly. ‘Yes.’
They stood side by side, looking. The wind soughed overhead, the sky pale and brilliant, the storm receding. The disturbed angels swayed and creaked. Soft rain came through the hole, spiking silently into the mortar carpet. There was the smell of the river with it, and the coldness of dawn.
They walked down to the pile of rubble, their feet crunching in the dust, and stood looking at it.
‘She always goes to the front pew. This one, under the lectern.’
The stones and rubble covering it were as high as their heads.
‘But I don’t see why—tonight . . .’
‘She mentioned another miracle,’ Pat said. ‘I said we needed one. You don’t think she might have—? Oh, Christ! She was strung up when she left me. We both were.’
‘We’ll have another hunt round,’ Geoff said, desperate.
But she was nowhere, the house empty, the river banks silent.
‘We’ll have to look, to dig,’ Geoff said. ‘There’s nothing else to think. I will—you, oh God, you’ve got to get off, haven’t you?’
‘No. I’ll help you. Is there anyone else?’
‘They’re all a hundred and ten down here, except Marion and me. I suppose I ought to ring the police.’
The phone was out of order, the telephone lines torn down by the wind. Geoff was frantic. ‘Let’s start. If it’s hopeless, we’ll drive out for help, but it’ll waste time—I mean, we might be wasting time now, if she’s—she’s—’
He got some tools. Pat scooped his driving gloves out of his car. ‘Look, it’s stupid not to go for help. I can drive—’
‘It’ll be half an hour, there and back, if the phone’s out.’
‘I’ll go and tell someone else to go, and come back.’
‘Go to the shop on the corner then. Tell George. He’s got a car. Tell him to go for the police, the fire brigade or whatever.’
Pat roared up the lane and thundered on the shop door. A man put his head out of the window and got the message, his face sagging with amazement. Pat went back to the church where Geoff was already at work, pulled on his gloves and joined him. It was better, he realized: something in one’s terrible anxiety lent itself to attacking bricks and stones, hurling them aside, aiming to free the open end of the front pew.
There was nothing to say, no help in voicing thoughts, no breath to waste, in fact. Even when the police came they didn’t stop. Geoff answered their questions over his shoulder, deep in the slithering pile, hurling the rubble out behind him like a terrier. Pat was beside him, only head and shoulders showing.
‘I think we want more manpower,’ the police decided, and drove out for reinforcements. By the time daylight was filtering in through the hole above them the work party was considerable
and there was much coming and going. Pat uncovered the broken poppyhead of the end pew.
‘Look,’ he said to Geoff. ‘We’ve arrived.’
They leaned back momentarily in their corridor of debris and in the cold daylight exchanged glances.
‘You want a break in there?’ someone shouted behind them.
‘No.’
There was a plank of heavy, rough-hewn oak jutting out just beyond the poppyhead. Pat reached out for it experimentally.
‘It’s one of the bloody angels,’ he said to Geoff.
The thought of Marion being killed by one of her angels was too dire to voice. Geoff’s face was as ashen as the plaster dust that covered it.
‘Let’s clear it.’
Volunteers started to work from the other side, unburying the angel, which was face upwards. The church had filled up by now with village people, but Geoff and Pat were wedged in the pew opening, invisible to most of the crowd, and working together with an instinct for what might win, and what wouldn’t.
‘There’s a gap—’
‘The angel’s made a bridge.’
‘Pass it to me—carefully.’
Pat had found an opening beneath the angel’s wing. It was space beyond, not rubble. He handed the stones back, widening the gap, fearful of sending an avalanche down inside. Gradually they made an opening. There was only room for the two of them to work.
‘If they pass us a torch—’
‘Oh, Jesus, I don’t want to know,’ Geoff said.
‘There’s a chance, with the angel, don’t you see? Hold on.’
The message went back and a torch was handed through. An ambulance had arrived, and ambulance men hovered at the brink of the rubble.
Pat took the torch and peered into the hole. Geoff watched his face, what he could see of it for grime. He saw the expression, and knew.
‘She’s there!’
‘Yes.’
Silence.
Geoff could see it in Pat’s face. Pat wriggled back and put an arm round his shoulders, gave him the torch.
‘Look for yourself. It’s as if she’s asleep.’
Beneath the angel’s wings, supported by the heavy timber of the old pew, there was a tiny cave where the stones hadn’t encroached. The torchlight showed Marion’s body lying, covered with white dust, looking as if made of alabaster. There was a roof timber across her legs and beyond it a wall of rubble, the far side of the tiny cave.