Angels and Men

by Catherine Fox

  ‘Listen,’ he said, holding her fast as she fought against him. ‘There’s a retreat house a few miles north of here. Why don’t you let me take you there? For a week or two?’ She stopped trying to break free and looked up into his face. They watched each other. ‘I know you think I’m trying to trick you. You think I’ll drive you back to college instead.’

  ‘You will.’

  ‘Look, I’m not saying trust me, because I know you don’t. I’m just saying this is your best option. If you don’t want to go to hospital, you’ll have to take the risk.’

  The fight went out of her. ‘You’ll take me to this retreat house?’ It was getting dark. She saw the gulls twisting on the wind over the sea.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You won’t take me back to college?’

  ‘No.’

  She started to cry again. Slowly, slowly he relaxed his grip and cradled her head against his shoulder.

  ‘It just hurts so much,’ she sobbed.

  ‘I know, sweetheart. I know.’ He stroked her hair until her sobbing subsided. ‘Come on. You’re cold and wet. Let’s go.’ They walked into the wind and driving rain.

  It seemed strangely quiet in the car as they set off. She felt stunned. Tears continued to slide down her face and drip on to her hands. Her grief seemed dull and ugly now, like street after street of derelict houses which she must walk through until at last she was free of it all.

  ‘I haven’t brought any clothes. I’ve got nothing with me.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll bring you some tomorrow.’ Signs for the retreat house began to appear. Fear seeped in again. What would it be like? What if she couldn’t sleep, or eat? What if they were right, after all?

  ‘Do you think I’m mad?’

  ‘Totally.’ She glanced at him and he smiled.

  They turned into a long wooded drive. It was nearly dark. The wind blustered about the car. Lights appeared through the trees ahead and as the car drew up she could just make out the dark shape of the house.

  ‘What will they think?’ she asked in panic.

  ‘They’re expecting you.’ He turned off the engine. ‘I phoned earlier and said you might be coming.’ There was a pause, and she heard the rain spattering on the windows. When he’s gone, I’ll run. No one will find me. She sensed him watching her. After a while he spoke again. ‘You said back there you’d kill yourself.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Look at me.’ She turned. His eyes were searching her face. ‘Thinking of running away?’

  She jumped. ‘N-no.’

  ‘No? Well, one thing’s for sure – if you do run, you won’t have to worry about killing yourself, Princess, because I’ll find you and wring your fucking neck.’ Her mouth dropped open in shock. He meant it. But then he smiled at her and put a hand on her arm. ‘Don’t mess it up, sweetie,’ he said softly. ‘Come on. You owe me this. I’m already going to be in deep shit as it is. Don’t make things any worse for me.’ She looked into his eyes and saw with sudden clarity the risk he was taking for her. If he had misjudged her state of mind and she killed herself . . .

  ‘I won’t mess it up,’ she said.

  ‘Good.’ He opened the car door. ‘Wait there a second. I’ll see if I can find one of the brothers.’

  He was gone. Monks. Why hadn’t she guessed? She leant her head back in despair. She’d escaped from doctors only to run into the arms of the Church. She opened the car door stealthily and got out. Johnny was some way off, talking now to a robed figure. They were silhouetted in the light of the open door. She began to back along the drive. Don’t look. Don’t let him see me. Another step, another. She was nearly out of their sight. She turned. Run! But with the first pace she stumbled and fell. She scrambled to her feet and, looking up, saw a pale figure hanging in the gloom. Terror shot through her. Then she saw it was only a crucifix, life-size, and she had tripped on its step. Rain beat on the plaster body, dripping from the thorns round the bowed head, running down the bare legs. It’s too cold to hang there naked, she thought; and to her amazement she found she was crying for pity. In the light of day it would be the kind of religious statue she despised, vulgar, sentimental; but now in the half-light she could think of nothing but how cold and lonely it looked. Words she knew she did not believe crept across her mind: In this thy bitter passion, Good Shepherd, think on me.

  She turned and, with tears still falling, walked back towards the house.

  CHAPTER 15

  When the flood is past. She could not remember where the words came from. Not from the Bible. From a poem? When the flood is past. She was sitting watching the stream that ran deep in the valley beneath the retreat house. Everywhere there were signs of earlier flooding – broken trees, mud and grass choking the undergrowth, and rubbish hanging from twigs. She could see how high the waters had come. The river ran quietly now. How long have I been in this place? She thought it was about four or five days. The monks had left her more or less alone, letting her sleep and eat and wander as she chose, but she knew they were keeping an eye on her. It was very quiet under the dense pines. She might almost be on the sea bed. The branches creaked as the wind bent the treetops this way and that far overhead. Down at the roots all was still.

  She sat watching the surface of the river, and the trees and sky which seemed to lie beneath it. Where there’s life there’s hope. That’s what people will say, taking my arm kindly. What hope have I got? The belief that all this will pass. The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing. Better to have died, then, and to know nothing. Hester is the fortunate one. Faithful unto death. She never had to live with this. She never knew it was all a lie.

  She leant back against the tree trunk and closed her eyes. Tears crept down her cheeks and her mind drifted on the surface of sleep. The tree behind her back moved gently as the wind tugged at its top. Memories floated by. Her aunt’s voice, speaking angrily: ‘She can’t cope! I have four children, and she can’t cope with two. When they were babies, yes, all right. I can understand that. But now? Why do I have to take her child?’ I am waiting terrified in the dark hallway. I know I shouldn’t be listening. They are speaking Welsh, which they think I can’t understand. ‘You think I haven’t got enough to do already without this? First your Aunt Jessie and now this? Supposing I couldn’t cope either, all of a sudden?’ At last Uncle Huw speaks: ‘She’s my brother’s child, and she stays.’ There will be no more words. Just the clashing of plates, the slamming of drawers, the sullen dripping of washing on the rack. I will be no trouble. Never asking for things, never wetting the bed. I must stay here because they don’t want me at home.

  It’s the sound of the river. That’s what’s taking me back. I haven’t really thought about all this for years. She tried to remember how often she had been sent to stay with her aunt and uncle. Three times? Four? Or was it more than that? She was no longer sure. She knew her father had taken her there when she was a baby, and she could remember another occasion when she had been about six. The other times blurred together. I used to hide between two rocks by the stream above the farm. The bracken made a roof and I would read in the greeny light, listening to the water. There were never enough books. Black Beauty. Pilgrim’s Progress. Inquire Within upon Everything. I read them all. And when all else failed, there was the Bible.

  The best book to read is the Bible.

  The best book to read is the Bible.

  If you read it every day, it will help you on your way.

  Oh, the best book to read is the Bible!

  We sang that in the chapel Sunday school. And another one: Read your Bible, pray every day, if you want to grow. And I did pray. Every day: ‘Dear Lord, let Dewi be nice to me. Let him want to play with me. Don’t let Aunt Susan be cross with me. Please don’t let there be any spiders in my room. Please, please don’t let the Second Coming happen before I’m ready.’

  It’s as though my time there was made up of fear and misery. Things must have improved, though, or I would never
have chosen to spend my summer holidays there. My happiest memories are of August on the farm. Dewi was there, teaching me to wolf-whistle, to bowl, letting me drive the tractor sometimes. Once he gave me a penknife. Memories worn out long ago with overhandling. But now other less savoury things came floating by. Hide and seek with Dewi and his friends. They had a pact, running off so that she remained unfound hours later, still waiting, hoping. I’m seven years old, and I’m sitting in the barn in the dark. No, not the dark. I’m blindfolded and tied up. He will come and rescue me in the end. I’ve been here a long time. I’m weeping into my blindfold, because I know there are spiders in here. At last Uncle Huw finds me. ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He unties the knots.

  ‘Who did this?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He is very angry.

  ‘It was Dewi, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know.’ I’ve been here so long I’ve wet myself, and I run off in shame and fear. When I see Dewi later, I can tell he has been crying. He has been beaten, and now he will punish me.

  Elizabeth is the oldest. ‘Why can’t I have a room of my own? Why do I have to share with them? Faye’s always poking into my things!’ She bends down to dab nail varnish on to a hole in her tights so it won’t run. Now she has a red blob on her leg that looks like blood. Three in the room, and four with me. Elizabeth hates it. She escapes into her magazines. One day there will be a dreamy guy for her. But how? No discos, no youth club, no parties, even. ‘I hate this bleeding farm.’ I have to share a bed with Faye. We sleep one at each end, and she kicks me in the night. ‘I hate you. Everyone hates you. Dewi hates you. He told me he does. Nobody wants you here, so why don’t you just go home so I can have my bed back?’ Faye is my age. They tell her to look after me and that we should be friends, but she gives me Chinese burns to see if I will cry. ‘You know why everyone hates you? Because you’re ugly. You’re so ugly that when you grow up, no one will ever want to marry you. Even your parents hate you. That’s why you have to come and live with us. I heard them telling Dad.’

  Sometimes Morwenna plays with me, but she’s only a baby, and I get bored.

  Aunt Jessie died when I was ten. Elizabeth got her room. The next summer Aunt Susan cleared the box room in the attic and I slept there instead. It was too small, really, you couldn’t open the door properly because of the bed, but I loved it. I used to lie staring out at the hills through the little window. It was my heaven. A month of bliss every summer. Tagging along after Dewi. Helping with the baling. Building dens. Paddling in the stream. ‘Well, she’s no trouble,’ said Aunt Susan once to a neighbour. Her lips were tight. She had no time for us girls. Dewi was the only one she loved.

  The last week of school was always unbearable. Five days till I go to the farm. Four days. Three days. Flies droning in the classroom. Two days. One more day and I’ll be there . . .

  ‘Why were you crying last night?’ Faye asks Aunt Susan this at breakfast. Aunt Susan says nothing and her face goes red. ‘Why were you crying? You were moaning.’ Aunt Susan reaches out suddenly and smacks Faye’s face. Faye bursts into tears. ‘Now what have I done? I was only asking!’ Aunt Susan leaves the kitchen. ‘It’s not fair! What have I done?’ I heard her too, and on other nights, and Uncle Huw grunting, once, like someone swearing. Dewi is eating his breakfast. He doesn’t talk to us, because he is fourteen and a boy and we are only ten-year-old girls. But Faye keeps on saying, ‘It’s not fair!’ and in the end Dewi says, ‘They were having it off, stupid.’ Faye stops crying with shock.

  ‘No they weren’t!’

  ‘You don’t even know what that means,’ says Dewi.

  ‘Yes, I do! It’s what they do to have babies. She says she doesn’t want another baby.’ Faye is right, but Dewi jeers at her.

  ‘I suppose you think he’s only fucked her four times.’

  ‘You’re not allowed to say that word! I’m going to tell! You know you’re not allowed to say that word!’ He says it again, then gets up and goes out laughing. Faye screams after him, ‘Dewi, you’re not allowed to say that word!’

  The farm is a hateful place. One of the ponies has a great dangling thing and it tries to climb on the other ponies’ backs. Sometimes there are dogs stuck together, quivering. Dewi has a magazine in his bedroom, hidden carefully, but Faye has found it. She shows it to me. He’ll be in trouble, because the girls have no knickers on and they’ve got their legs open. One of them is squeezing her breasts as though she’s holding them out for someone to take. She has a stupid smile. Faye hides the magazine under Dewi’s mattress where Aunt Susan will be sure to find it when she makes the bed. She’ll take it to Uncle Huw and he’ll hit Dewi with his belt; but if I warn Dewi, Faye will pinch me, and she’ll tell about the magazine, anyway. In the end I creep into his room and steal it. I take it out on to the hills, far away, to the place they called World’s End, and then I burn it with my magnifying glass. I burn the stupid smiling girl first, burning out her smile with a point of sun. Nobody ever finds out.

  She dreamt that she was awake. Hester was there, peering into the stream, and calling her. ‘Mara, there are treasures in the stream.’ She bent over to look, and sure enough, there were tiny bottles in bright colours, and gold and silver coins. ‘They said you were dead, Hester.’ Hester stared in astonishment. Then they both laughed and laughed at the very idea.

  She woke to find herself sobbing. After a moment she leant forwards and looked in the stream. No treasure. There were tiny fish darting about. As she watched them flicking to and fro a strange feeling crept over her. She was being watched. She turned. There was a man among the trees. She froze, but then he stepped forward, and she saw it was Johnny. He came and sat beside her.

  ‘How are you doing, flower?’ Her answer was choked by tears. He put his arm around her and she leant her head against his shoulder as though he were God and had all the answers. She was too weary to despise her weakness.

  In the end she said: ‘I dreamt she was here. Just now. I was asleep.’

  ‘What was she doing?’

  ‘Looking into the stream.’ She started to tell him about it, but the sense of desolation broke over her afresh. Hester, Hester. She was gone. I’m alone. A mirror with no reflection. ‘She was always there.’ Johnny hugged her close. ‘Even when we were apart.’

  ‘Were you apart much?’

  ‘Yes. Just after we were born. I was sent away. And sometimes while we were growing up, too.’ She sensed his astonishment and could not bear to meet his eye.

  ‘They sent you away as a baby? Why?’ He pulled away slightly, trying to see her face. She looked down at the ground where the tree roots were showing like veins through the earth. ‘Why?’ he asked again.

  ‘Because . . . There were reasons. My mother couldn’t cope.’

  ‘Couldn’t cope? Is that a polite way of saying she cracked up?’

  ‘No.’ She heard the defensive tone. ‘It was just difficult for her. With two of us. She was ill. She kept having to go into hospital.’

  ‘Where did you stay?’

  ‘With my uncle’s family. In Wales.’

  ‘Was that all right?’

  She hesitated. She wanted to say ‘I loved it!’ but found she no longer could. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They picked on me. My cousins. And my aunt didn’t want me there.’

  ‘Then why did your parents let you go there, if you were unhappy?’

  ‘Because they had to. Don’t keep asking me! My mother couldn’t cope. That’s all there is to it.’

  She covered her face with her hands, seeing for the first time how the two lies had been balancing one another all these years: my mother couldn’t cope, so I was sent to the farm; which was OK because I loved it there. But I didn’t. I hated it. Why couldn’t she cope? She pressed her knuckles into her forehead, trying to keep out the unbearable thought that was forming. She didn’t want me. My own mother didn’t want m
e. It’s not true! It was my father who rejected me. Not her. Suddenly she saw that there were not only papered cracks, but whole rooms and wings bricked up and papered over, hidden so cunningly that she would never know they were there. Unless someone like Johnny came along on the outside and counted the windows and realized something was missing. Eventually she looked up again, watching the stream running over the stones.

  ‘I don’t want to think about it.’ They sat for a moment in silence.

  ‘Tell me about Hester, then.’ Where could she begin? ‘What was she like?’

  ‘Not like me. She was . . . she was . . .’

  ‘Not clever?’

  ‘She was clever.’ She was sounding defensive again. ‘Well, not brilliant, maybe. She did well at school. Better than I did, in some ways.’ Never asking why. What’s the point of it? Always absorbing and accepting what was taught. ‘She was beautiful.’ His lips twitched and she saw how her words seemed to be begging for a compliment. ‘She had dark hair. Like mine, only straight,’ she hurried on. ‘I always wanted straight hair. Mine never looked shiny. And her eyes were blue, not grey.’ Something in her had clicked open and confidences came rushing out. ‘People were always saying, “Well, you wouldn’t think they were sisters even, let alone twins.” She was much smaller than me. And she was always nice.’

  He laughed. ‘Even your worst enemy wouldn’t say that about you, Mara.’

  She was stung. Even at a time like this he was laughing at her.

  ‘I meant it positively. She didn’t have a mean streak in her. She wanted everyone to be happy.’ But there was still a trace of amusement in his face. He got out a cigarette and lit it. ‘I’m not saying she was perfect!’

  ‘You’re not? What were her faults, then?’ He crumpled the empty packet and tossed it aside. She stared in faint shock at his action and he retrieved the packet with a grin. ‘Could you imagine murdering anyone, Mara?’