by Jo Walton
She cut herself a thick doorstep of bread and buttered it, then ladled on gooseberry jam. The gooseberries had been extremely plentiful that year, and they had all saved their sugar ration for the jam. Patty had put in a great deal of time stirring the jam in Mr. Collins’s kitchen, so she felt entitled, as well as hungry. She felt that Ronald was observing her greed and that he would report on it unfavorably to others.
“She’s a lesbian!” Ronald said, as if delighted to pass on the intelligence. Patty literally did not understand for a moment until he went on. “She’s actually been caught sleeping in the same bed as another girl.”
Patty knew about this kind of thing. It went on in girls’ schools as it did in boys’ schools, however hard the teachers tried to stamp it out. She was more repelled by Ronald’s prurient delight in telling her about Marjorie than by what Marjorie was supposed to have done, which she could not clearly imagine.
“Mr. Collins has spoken to her and she refuses to give it up or repent,” Ronald went on.
“It’s probably all the most ridiculous nonsense,” Patty said, stuffing her bread and jam into her mouth and speaking with her mouth full. In Patty’s private opinion, Mr. Collins was too ready to be uncharitable and had it in for the women. “I’m going to talk to her.”
“You’re not!”
“I certainly am.”
Patty strode off full of indignation, which carried her back to her residence and to the door of Marjorie’s room. She hesitated before knocking, and then the memory of Marjorie’s clear voiced declarations of her love of God sustained her. She knew Marjorie wouldn’t have done anything wrong. She knocked.
“Who is it?” Marjorie asked.
“It’s me, Patty,” Patty said.
“What do you want?”
“Just to talk to you.” Patty’s courage was draining away. “It’s not important. But Ronald told me the most frightful nonsense about you and I wanted to tell you I didn’t believe it.”
Marjorie opened the door. It was apparent that she had been crying. “Oh, it isn’t true!”
“I knew it couldn’t be.”
Marjorie ushered Patty into her room, where she sat on the bed to allow Patty the chair. “Would you like—” Marjorie hesitated. “Well actually I haven’t got anything except some cough sweets my sister sent me, but would you like one of those?”
“I’d love one,” Patty said politely.
“The thing is, I have been sleeping in Grace’s room,” Marjorie said, once Patty had the cough sweet in her mouth.
“Grace!” Patty said.
“I know. But she has the room next to mine. And I could hear her crying in the night, and I couldn’t just leave her to sob on and on. I went in to her. It turns out that she was blitzed and all her family killed. She was buried in the rubble for a day and a half. She can’t bear to be alone in the dark, it brings it all back. Of course she can’t keep a light on all the time, because they come around and check we’re observing lights out, though she did try for a bit with flashlights except that she couldn’t afford the batteries, and with candles she worried she was going to burn the place down. So I started sleeping in there with her, and she can get to sleep, and when she wakes up in the night I hold her hand. And that’s really all there is to it.”
“But that’s just … just Christian kindness,” Patty said.
“It is!” Marjorie said. “I’m so glad you understand. Mr. Collins didn’t believe me. He insinuated the most awful things. And at first I slept on the floor, wrapped in my blankets you know, but in the winter when it was so cold I started to get into bed with her, and I suppose it looks bad, but I shared a bed with my sister at home until I came to Oxford and I didn’t see that it was any different.”
“Didn’t you say that to Mr. Collins?”
“He wanted me to repent and be forgiven, but I haven’t done anything wrong! And he wanted me to promise I’d never sleep in there again, and I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. Grace has the most terrible dreams. And he wanted to know why I hadn’t told anybody.”
“Why hadn’t you? We could have taken turns.”
Marjorie sighed. “It was because Grace begged me not to, she doesn’t want anyone to know about her dreams and her family. You know what she’s like. It was hard enough for her to tell me.”
“If she had told the college they might have put her in one of the rooms with two beds so she’d have had somebody there,” Patty said.
“She was in one of those last year, but you know how they make a thing of the single rooms. Virginia Woolf and all that. I hate to even have to explain to Mr. Collins and you now, but I have to defend myself. Grace must see that.”
“I think you ought to explain to everyone in the Christian Union. Once they know they’ll understand.” Patty felt sure of it. “They’re good people, they love God, they know you do, they’ll understand you’re doing it in Christian kindness and you need to go on doing it. And they’ll keep quiet about Grace, and it’s better than what they’re thinking about her now!”
“Could we be sent down, do you know? I mean if people really believed Grace and I were lovers? If we really were?”
“Of course you couldn’t. Think of the willowy men.”
“I think it is illegal, though,” Marjorie said, crushing her handkerchief in her fingers.
“It’s nonsense for it to be illegal,” Patty said briskly. “It may be immoral and unclean because it’s outside marriage, but it shouldn’t be illegal. That’s nonsense.”
Marjorie began to cry again.
“Look, come down now. Nobody was there for the Bible tea when I left except Ronald, but they’ll all be there by now. Come down and clear it up, and have some tea.”
Marjorie was reluctant but Patty persuaded her to come with her. Mr. Collins’s house was nearby, and the whole group was gathered when the girls came in. An awkward silence fell. Ian looked at Patty in horror. Patty saw at once that there was no use waiting for somebody else to say anything. She had developed a technique for overcoming shyness where she took a deep breath and then shut her eyes for a second as she began to speak. She did this now.
“Marjorie wants to tell you it’s all a mistake,” she said.
“There’s really nothing wrong at all,” Marjorie said. She went on to explain, as she had to Patty.
To Patty’s astonishment, although the members of the Christian Union listened they did not immediately see that Marjorie was telling the truth. She was caught wrong-footed because she had been so sure that they would react exactly as she had and see that it had been an act of Christian kindness. Instead they said nothing, until Marjorie stopped talking and then one of the girls said, “If you want to repent we’ll take you back into fellowship, but until then it would be better if you left.”
Marjorie ran out of the room weeping. Patty began to follow her, but as soon as she was outside Ian put his hand on her arm. She thought at first that he had followed for the same reason she had, to comfort Marjorie, but he paid no attention to her. “Stop, Patty,” he said.
Patty stopped and turned to him. “Didn’t you see that she’s telling the truth?”
“It seems a really unlikely, contrived kind of story. And if it’s true, why didn’t she tell anyone before?”
“Because Grace didn’t want everyone to know and feel sorry for her.” This seemed like a very reasonable answer to Patty, but Ian smiled cynically.
“I hardly find it likely. She has done wrong and is lying about it.”
“No. I don’t believe that, and I can’t see how you can.”
“You’re such an innocent,” Ian said. “It’s good of you to try to see the best in everyone. But you have to think how it looks.”
“How it looks?” Patty was bemused.
“If you defend her people will assume that you’re a lesbian too.”
Patty felt hot all over as if she was coming down with a fever. She could hardly believe this was Ian saying this to her. He took her stunned silence for
acquiescence. “Come on back in,” he said. Instead she turned on her heel and walked away from him.
The Christian Union did try to reach out to Marjorie, begging her to repent in a way that strongly resembled bullying. They tried the same thing on Grace, who fled them, and who did not return to college the next year. Patty became lonely again. She worked hard and spent a great deal of time sculling alone on the river, where she still felt close to God.
5
The Epistles of Mark: 1946–1949
Patty’s third year at Oxford began in the autumn of 1946 and ended in June of 1947. In that year she engaged in a passionate affair with English literature, falling in love successively with Robert Herrick, her old friend Andrew Marvell, Elizabeth Gaskell, and finally and most spectacularly with T. S. Eliot. She also joined societies for various social causes, feeling that if the churches were falling to petty bullying, the secular world should be doing what it could. Oxford has many churches, and in the Michaelmas term she and Marjorie tried them all out, a different one every Sunday. She discovered a deep love of choral music and auditioned for the Bach choir, where she sang happily for the rest of the year. She continued to row. The war was over, but rationing and deprivation continued and were harder to bear. These were the years when Orwell was writing Nineteen Eighty-Four and understanding the value of the two-minute hate. There was a great deal of grumbling, to which Patty tried not to add. The first months of 1947 were the coldest she had ever known, and the shortage of fuel for heating made everything worse. She suffered terribly from chilblains.
This was the year when she worked hard on overcoming her shyness. She made herself talk to people and found that she could. She found it worked best to treat everyone as equals, elderly dons and small children alike, and they mostly responded well. She tried hard to find something interesting about everyone—elderly housekeepers, women in shops, postmen. She usually found it, and began to make friends. Her chilblains were useful, everyone had them or had friends with them and had a suggested remedy. They cut across class barriers in a satisfying way. She tried to become outgoing. She made it a policy that if she was invited anywhere she would go. When the summer finally came, with finals looming, she cut her hair short because she was rowing and swimming every day and was tired of how long it took to dry. People told her she looked boyish in her flannels with short hair, but she knew she had never had any beauty to spoil.
In her last week at Oxford, with finals behind her but results not yet announced, she stopped in on a party in Jesus College. Cledwyn Jones, whose rooms they were, was a serious young man who cared about prison reform. There was beer at his party, which Patty declined; she had been brought up to shun alcohol, and besides she found it revoltingly bitter. She took lemonade and soon joined a conversation discussing the new National Health Service legislation. Wittgenstein was there, holding forth as usual. He was horribly drunk. Patty wondered how he ever had time to do any work at his official job in Cambridge when he seemed to spend all his time at parties in Oxford. She moved on and was introduced to a man called Mark Anston, who was in his first year. He was an inch or two taller than she was, but not especially good-looking. He was reading English, like her, but he seemed to be much more interested in philosophy. He also seemed very interested in her. She grabbed Cledwyn and asked about him. “Mark? Oh, he’s brilliant. He’s just got the highest marks anyone ever got in Mods or something like that. He’s from the Midlands somewhere. One of the stars.” When at last she left, Mark offered to walk her home.
It was a beautiful evening, warm and starlit. They walked together back to St. Hilda’s, talking, and then, as they had not finished talking, walked on past the college, on and on, up and down, crossing and criss-crossing Oxford, past the colleges, out along the river and back. His conversation went to her head. She had never heard anyone talk so well. It felt worthy of the architecture of Oxford in the moonlight. She did not always agree with him, but she found him fascinating. He seemed equally fascinated with her, which was in itself intoxicating. She found herself telling him about Stan and Flo and the moment on the beach in Barrow, which she had never told anyone.
“I haven’t seen you at the Christian Union though?”
“I’ve more and more come to the conclusion that I can find God better alone, in nature and in the world. There’s so much hypocrisy in organized religion. I was in the Christian Union, but there was this terrible incident last year when I realized that they were just bullying this poor girl because they believed—or wanted to believe—that she was a lesbian. They came and prayed outside her window, prayed that she would repent, when in fact she had done nothing wrong at all. I couldn’t bear it.”
Mark took her hand, and she felt as if all her nerves concentrated there where he was touching her and spread out through her body. She almost gasped. “They should be pitied and prayed for, not shamed like that,” he said.
“Yes, exactly!”
“You’ve never felt pulled that way?”
She didn’t understand what he meant for a minute. “Oh—no. Honestly, I’ve never felt very much that way for anyone. But neither did Marjorie. She was sharing a bed with the other girl because the other girl was afraid to sleep in the dark. That’s all there was to it.”
“You’re a little innocent,” Mark said, looking charmed.
“No, really, that’s what happened. And the Christian Union—they’re like sheep, and they’re not sincere—or individually they may be, but acting all together like that and asserting that they know God’s will, they’re not.”
“Women have a simpler faith,” he said. “I’ve often remarked it. Men need the dogmas, the organization, the clearly marked paths, where women have intuition.”
Although she had said that she felt closer to God alone, and although he was praising women, Patty did not feel entirely sure about this. “I sing in the Bach choir, and I certainly feel close to God there,” she said.
Mark nodded. “As for the Christian Union, I belong, but I try not to let them stifle me. Wittgenstein says—”
“Are you a friend of his?”
“I have that honor.” Mark spoke a little stiffly. Patty was impressed. “My father is a clergyman,” Mark said, beginning again. “He always intended that I should follow him. But I believe I will stay here and become a don.”
It was a noble ambition, and at that moment, outside the moonlit Bodleian, it seemed the most desirable thing in the world, never to have to leave Oxford. “How lucky you are,” she said.
“I don’t know how it is I didn’t meet you until now,” Mark said. “A whole year wasted. And you’ll be going down soon. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to teach at a girls’ school near Penzance,” Patty said. She had been so pleased and proud when she’d applied for the post and been awarded it.
“Cornwall!” He seemed utterly dismayed. “That’s so far.”
“We could write,” she suggested timidly.
A clock struck eleven, and Patty froze. “I have to get in or I’ll be in serious trouble.” They walked swiftly towards St. Hilda’s. Patty took one step up on the steps, but Mark did not release her hand.
“We must get engaged,” he said. “But we can’t marry for some considerable time. I have two more years here, and then a fellowship and a doctorate which would be another two or even three years, before I could possibly support you.”
Patty stared at him in astonishment. “I want to say ‘This is so sudden’!” she said. “We only just met!”
“Yes, but there’s no question, is there? Except working things out. This was clearly God’s plan for us. You go to Cornwall and we’ll write, and we’ll see each other when we can, and we’ll marry in four or five years.”
Mark was like a force of nature, and his belief in Providence swept her away. “All right,” she said. She expected him to kiss her, but he did not, he just nodded as if things were as they should be and wished her a good night.
She barely slept at all
. The next day he took her to a little jeweller’s shop and after having her finger measured bought her an engagement ring. He did not ask her opinion, which she thought romantic. Her ring was a thin hoop of gold with a tiny chip of diamond, and it was clearly the best he could afford. She was moved by this, as she would not have been by a ring bought by a rich man. He did not seem quite so magical by daylight, but she did not regret her decision.
Two days later, she left Oxford with an Upper Second degree. She spent the summer in Twickenham with her mother, who found fault with everything except Mark, when he visited. She even extended a little grudging approval of Patty for attaching him.
Patty saw Mark only twice that summer. The first time was that one occasion where he came to dinner at Twickenham to meet her mother, and the other time was in the buffet at Bristol Temple Meads, when she was on her way to Cornwall and he was on his way back to Oxford from a walking tour with some philosophers in the Scottish Highlands. He was in strange spirits on that occasion and kept talking about resisting temptation. He kept shifting in his seat and couldn’t relax, so that she was almost glad when her train was called and the hour was over.
She heard from him every week, however. He sent her long erudite letters, full of quotations from poets, full of passion and philosophy, conversations he had had and thoughts he wanted to share with her. It took her days to answer them, and she never felt she reached his level. Yet he poured out his heart to her on paper. His letters were the best she had ever seen—as good as Browning, she said to him. She had been bowled over by him on that night in Oxford, she truly fell in love with his letters.
She continued to receive them all that winter in Cornwall, another cold winter but not as cold as the year before, the first year of her teaching. Mark had sent her a green silk scarf for Christmas, and she wore it constantly against the Cornish winds. The Pines was a small school, exposed on top of a cliff. It was a fee-paying school, like the one she had attended, although only half the pupils boarded. It felt like regression after Oxford, being back to hockey matches and school reports and the smell of chalk. Oxford had continually stretched her mind; here she felt her horizons visibly shrinking. The girls did not much care for English literature, and she was working to a rigid curriculum set by the head of department. She was overwhelmed by their numbers and found it difficult to remember their names. She tried to keep up with the news and found it hard to care. India became independent, and Israel. They were both hot and far away.