Mara’s one comfort was that Johnny didn’t seem to have been taken in by it. He had alienated a further section of Coverdale Hall by his irreverent attitude. Mara had been in Coverdale common room one lunchtime and heard a serious discussion about the problem in Jesus College being turned by Johnny into an impromptu skit on charismatic prayer meetings. The laughter drew a larger crowd and Mara could see that by no means all the spectators were amused. Rupert had tried in vain to stop him, but had ended up as his unwilling stooge.
She could see that it was funny, but it was too near the bone for her to laugh. She could also see that several people found it not only offensive, but very upsetting. Satirizing the ridiculous was one thing, but mocking someone’s beliefs was another. Couldn’t he see what he was doing? She feared he could, but that he didn’t care. What would dear Joanna have thought if she’d been privileged to witness this performance? Would he still be the man God had set aside for her? Probably.
Mara thought back to the previous night when Joanna had turned up in the bar and hovered on the edge of their group, waiting to be bought a drink. Maddy and May sat with a thought bubble visible over their heads: I’m not bloody well buying her one. Rupert and Johnny still hadn’t seen her, and in the end Andrew leant forward with a smooth Borgia smile and said, ‘Let me buy you a drink.’ Joanna asked for wine, eyelids batting in fear, not knowing what he was playing at. Bastard, thought Mara with a smile.
The situation had already been unpromising without Joanna’s fluttering and sparkling. Mara could not be in Rupert’s presence without wanting to scream. She could tell he was trying not to say ‘nonsense’ or boss her about. Johnny was in a black mood. Maddy and May were needling him persistently.
Mara sighed impatiently. Why do I go over these scenes so compulsively? It’s like binge eating, watching Joanna over and over again in my mind until I make myself sick. The girl wormed her way at last into Johnny’s attention, beseeching him with her big eyes, Mary at the feet of Christ. Mara kept hearing snatches: ‘The Lord says . . . exams . . . not coping . . . need to talk to you.’ Johnny was caught between her and Maddy’s and May’s infantile sniping. Andrew was watching with amusement, waiting as Mara was for the explosion. What had finally caused it? Ah, yes. Maddy saying,
‘I bet his idea of foreplay is to say “Brace yourself, pet.”’
Well, he would normally have played up to that one, but instead he rounded on Maddy: ‘Right. That’s it. One more comment like that and you’re out of here.’ Mara saw Maddy’s red face, felt the nasty silence again, then saw – ugh! – Joanna lay a calming hand on Johnny’s arm. Like a patient wife controlling her impulsive husband in public. Johnny turned and stared at her in disbelief.
‘Noli me tangere,’ said Andrew, and Mara laughed before she could stop herself.
Johnny’s eyes were on her at once. It was like looking down the barrel of a gun. Then he picked up his drink and walked out. Maddy was almost in tears, and Rupert steered the conversation into less stormy seas. After a while Joanna left. She’s going to go and find Johnny, Mara thought. Yes. She stood up and left the bar with a calm joy in her eyes. The Lord had told her to do it.
Mara gazed up at the sunlight through the April leaves. The bells chimed half-past twelve and she stood up and headed back to college. She wondered for the thousandth time whether her hatred of Joanna was really nothing more than sexual jealousy. Two unbalanced young women after the same man. Why tart it up with cosmic significance?
She was almost back at college. Her thoughts stole back to Johnny. She was feeling guilty: she and Andrew – the two smart-arse postgrads cracking Latin jokes and sniggering. At the same time she was infuriated by Johnny’s stupid behaviour, which was sending a series of frissons through the college. Why does it matter what he does? nagged a voice in her mind. Why are your standards for him so exacting?
The smells of college lunch wafted out as she opened the door. After collecting her post she joined the lunch queue. Pizza with rice and chips. She felt someone pushing in behind her.
‘God, another starch trip.’ It was Andrew.
‘You can piss off,’ called Nigel from across the kitchen. ‘I don’t cater for your sort.’ Andrew and Mara went and sat near the window. She began to open her letters. One was from her mother. Mara’s heart pounded. She had asked for a picture of Hester. Her fingers trembled as she opened the envelope. Andrew was reading an article as he ate and not paying her any attention. She pulled the letter out. Three photos. The first was of Hester. Mara stared. A girl smiling in a garden. It was a good likeness, but meant nothing to her. It could have been a stranger. The next was a black and white portrait of a woman, probably one of the mad aunts. Mara traced a resemblance to herself, but as the woman was in Victorian fancy-dress it was difficult to be sure. She was seated at a piano, and a man was standing behind her wearing a twirling false moustache, hand resting on her shoulder. Mara was just turning it over to look at the back when her eyes fell on the third picture. Dewi! Good God. Where had her mother got this from? Dewi. She had worn her memories of him to rags, and now here he was again. It must be one of the last pictures taken of him before he disappeared. It looked as if someone had called his name, then taken the picture as he turned. Utterly characteristic. Level, offensive stare –
The picture was whisked out of her hand. ‘Mmm, mmm. Who’s this? A relative?’
‘Cousin.’
‘God, he’s like you. Introduce me.’ She grinned in spite of herself.
‘You wouldn’t want me to.’ A more violently homophobic male it was difficult to imagine. Calling Dewi a poof was his sisters’ ultimate weapon. It could only be safely employed from the window of a rapidly departing car, or in adult company at a range of two hundred feet. ‘Besides, I can’t. He’s disappeared.’
‘Disappeared? Is that a family euphemism for doing time?’
I could believe it, she thought. ‘Well, he’s a missing person with the police, as far as I know. He just vanished.’
Andrew was looking at her in amazement. ‘Don’t you know what happened?’ She shook her head. ‘God – your family, Mara.’ He handed the picture back. ‘Pity.’
Mara began to read her mother’s letter as she picked at her chips. I thought you might like this picture of Dewi I found the other day. No explanation. Mara sighed in exasperation. The other photo turned out to be of Aunt Judith with one of Grandpa’s curates. It reminds me of that sepia picture of you and Johnny. Mara could see why. She peered again at the moustachioed man, then returned to the letter. I can remember the Victorian soirée where the picture was taken. Judith was killed shortly afterwards. We still don’t know how the accident happened. She was such a good pilot. Poor Judith. She was a real sister to me in many ways. What’s she on about now? wondered Mara. She was my cousin, really, of course, as you probably know. What? Mummy and Daddy brought her up as their daughter because Aunt Daphne wasn’t married. It was all a bit complicated in those days, I’m afraid.
Bloody hell! Mara tried to keep the stunned disbelief off her face in case Andrew saw it. So Grandma had been right at Christmas when she said, ‘My niece, Judith.’ Mara had assumed it was just another slip of the tongue. Her eyes scanned for the inevitable phrase – yes, there it was: ‘It’s not meant to be a secret any more, although it was at the time. I was never told who the father was. One simply didn’t ask that kind of question.’ So Judith was Aunt Daphne’s daughter. Who was the father? Now Grandma was dead there was probably nobody who could tell her.
Mara abandoned her lunch and went back to her room, leaving Andrew still deep in his article and his starch. She propped the photos up on her desk and began to work under her various relatives’ gaze. From time to time she glanced up and caught Hester’s smile or Dewi’s pale mad stare. She was grinning to herself at Andrew’s drooling appreciation when a thought struck her. What if Dewi was gay? Was that what her father had been implying at Easter? It would explain why Dewi had left home. No room for nancy boys on that farm. She coul
d almost hear her uncle roaring, ‘No son of mine . . .’ My family.
The bells chimed. Mara was feeling restless. She tossed down her book and crossed to the window, staring down at the green riverbank. It was a beautiful mild evening and there was a voice in her conscience nagging away about Johnny. She turned and looked around the room. The row of relatives seemed to accuse her. Go and apologize. She gave in, and picking up her sketch-book in its file so that she would have something to clutch, she set off for Coverdale Hall. The voice in her conscience now changed its tune and began to suggest that she was just using any old excuse to go and see Johnny. She stifled it impatiently and climbed the last twisting flight of stairs to his room. She paused in the corridor. There was a sweet smell lingering in the air. Honeysuckle. She froze. Joanna wore honeysuckle perfume. Was she in the room with Johnny now? Mara felt her scalp begin to prickle. Well, I’m not letting her drive me away. She strode towards the door and rapped. There was a swift, furtive movement in the room, then silence. Mara stood, heart pounding. He was in but not answering. Was –? Her hand went to her mouth. She was in there with him!
Mara turned and retreated swiftly along the corridor and down the stairs. That furtive sound – if they were both in there, then there could be only one reason why he wasn’t answering the door. Her face burned with mortification, and she heard her mind mumbling oh no, oh no, over and over again. She stood in the silent stairwell and tried to compose herself. A blackbird was singing down in the gardens below. The sound floated in through an open window on the warm evening air. No. Johnny was not in the room. Joanna had got in somehow and was waiting for him, the way she had got into Mara’s room once. Johnny would come back at some point tonight, drunk even, and find her waiting . . . in his bed! No. Stop being such a bitch. You’re projecting. She grinned guiltily and continued down the stairs. But oughtn’t Johnny to be warned? Her conscience jeered. She was passing Rupert’s room when the door opened and he stepped out. His face lit up.
‘Were you coming to see me?’
She couldn’t bring herself to crush him. He invited her in and made her coffee, talking to her happily while she tried to forget about Joanna. After a minute or two she realized that Rupert was asking her something.
‘Mara, I don’t suppose you’re going to the June ball?’ The ball to be invited to, if you knew someone who could get hold of a ticket. In the castle. ‘Because I’ve managed to –’
The door crashed open. Johnny. Rupert stood up and swiftly cut off the most articulate stream of bad language Mara had ever heard. The two of them stepped out into the corridor, but Mara could still catch scraps of conversation through the half-open door.
‘She’s got into my room somehow. I’ve had it up to here with that girl!’
‘Well, ask her to leave, John.’
‘She says she wants’ – something something. Mara strained to hear. ‘Get rid of her for me before I throttle her. I don’t care how you do it, just do it, man.’
Mara felt a surge of horrible triumph as though she had somehow stage-managed the whole thing. She heard Rupert going off along the corridor, then Johnny came back into the room.
‘Sorry,’ he said curtly, crossing to the sink. He had been out running. Mara watched as he stripped off his shirt and dropped it to the floor. He began throwing water on his face, breathing hard. He was standing with his back to her, both hands resting on the sink. Quick! She whipped her file open and began to sketch rapidly. Back, shoulders, arms, neck, those muscles – bloody hell. She scribbled for as long as she dared, then closed the file and sat absently chewing the pencil. Only just in time. He turned and fixed his eyes on her.
‘Laugh and you’re dead, Mara.’ She sat, teeth clamped on the pencil, mesmerized. That’s how I like ’em, said the fishwife, hard, hungry and sweating. Mara took the pencil from her mouth and tried to get a grip on herself.
‘Joanna?’
‘Yeah.’ He rubbed a hand over his face. ‘The girl’s mad. Why me, for God’s sake?’ Even a prophetess needs her bit of rough. Mara bit her pencil again to stop herself saying it. ‘I mean, I knew she had a thing about me, but –’ He broke off.
‘But then,’ continued Mara obligingly, ‘who hasn’t?’
‘That’s not even funny, Mara.’
‘No. Sorry.’ The paint on the pencil crackled under her teeth. Johnny crossed over to her and put out a hand.
‘Let’s see, then.’
She jumped. ‘See what?’
‘What you were drawing.’
‘Oh, it’s nothing.’ Her voice was casual, but her fingers were clamped on the file. ‘I was just doodling on my notes.’ He leant down and twisted it from her grasp. The pictures of Andrew! She leapt up.
‘You can’t. Oh, give it back. Please!’
He laughed and held the file above his head out of her reach, and in her frantic efforts to grab it she walked straight into a hard, sweaty embrace. She tried to step back, but it was no good. His mouth was inches from hers.
‘Oh, God,’ she heard herself say. A pulse of lust went through her. They stood motionless, locked together. Oh, God. Then he grinned and kissed her slowly on the lips.
‘Mmm. Some other time, maybe.’ He handed her the file, and she snatched it and fled.
She managed to get back to her room before the tears of humiliation spilled over. It wasn’t fair! She’d worked so hard at hiding her feelings from him. There’ll be no pretending now. I’m like Joanna, she thought. Mara felt a rush of sympathy for the girl. Was she crying in her room as well? Two of them in the space of five minutes, Johnny must be thinking. Shit, what did I do? They’re throwing themselves at me. Mara licked her parched lips and tasted salt. Another horrible twist of lust clenched her stomach. Was this what had happened to Aunt Daphne? And to her mother?
The blackbird was still singing in the garden below. Mara crossed to the window and looked down. It was getting dark. She wondered whether the same problem was being dished up again and again to every generation of her family until someone at last solved it. She heard her father’s voice: ‘Someone somewhere has to break the pattern.’ I can do it, she thought with a sudden hardening of her heart. I’m good at this. Renunciation, despair – my most familiar sustenance.
CHAPTER 22
The birds were singing outside when Mara woke. She went across to the window. It was a fine mid-May morning. She looked down at the steep bank. The river was almost screened by leaves now. Who would believe it could get this green? As she watched she could feel a thought twitching in her mind. Something about today. Something special. Then she laughed. My birthday. I’m twenty-two. She flung the window up and sat with her arms on the sill looking out. What a blue, blue sky. The whole world looked rinsed and sparkling. Hester used to call this birthday weather. Mara tensed herself, waiting for the rush of pain at this thought, but it did not come. Instead she felt strangely happy, as she had done that windy day at home in the vacation. Hester might have been just across the landing in another room, about to come in and say happy birthday and sit with her watching the beautiful morning. Mara had been dreading this day. The first birthday alone. Maybe these stretches of glee would go on occurring from time to time, like unexplained remissions in a long illness. Or else the wound was beginning to heal. She stood up and went to take a shower. No use picking at the scab to see if it would still bleed.
The hot water beat on her face and ran down her body. Her hair grew wet and heavy, sticking to her back as she began to wash it. A good bright day for drying it, anyway. A good day for many things. No. She thrust the thought of Johnny firmly from her mind. She had been avoiding him for a couple of weeks now, and she knew he had noticed. Once he had blown her a lascivious kiss across the theology section of the university library and laughed out loud when she stuck up two fingers in return. People had turned to see what was happening, and she had ducked between the rows of bound journals and hid.
The thing she hated most was the sense that she was no better than Joanna
in all this. What had Joanna been up to that night, exactly? She ‘had only wanted to talk to Johnny’, according to Rupert, who had done what Johnny asked and got rid of her.
Mara winced at the memory of the verbal flaying she had once received from him. His words must been been effective in this instance too, since Joanna was no longer trying to climb into Johnny’s trousers and establish the Kingdom of God there. She was pursuing the friendly gorilla instead, the one that Mara had washed up with at the college ball. Poor boy. He had been won over by Joanna’s special ministry to Jesus College, and now spent long hours closeted with her in intense prayer, waiting for the fire of God to fall. He had clearly proved more pliable than Johnny.
Mara smiled as she stepped out of the shower. She knew her caution was probably unwarranted. Other than teasing her, Johnny wasn’t going to take advantage of her accidentally disclosed lust. Mara repressed a voice in her mind which sighed, Unfortunately. She wrapped a towel round her head and went back to her room. No, he was altogether too . . . well, ‘decent’ had to be the only word. Decent, my arse, said the fishwife. About as decent as a prize bull after a winter in the barn. Nonsense, retorted Mara. Now, what am I going to wear today? Something a bit special.
She went to the wardrobe and drew out another of Aunt Judith’s dresses. Cornflower with a hint of lavender, she decided. The soft cotton was sprinkled with tiny white polka dots. It had a full skirt and a wide belt of the same material. She began whistling as she towelled her hair dry. Now is the month of maying, when merry lads are playing. A fist hammered on the wall.
‘Shut up, you stupid bitch. I’m trying to sleep.’
She glanced guiltily at her watch. Twenty to seven. She had forgotten how thin the wall was. As she ran her fingers through her hair, to separate the curls out, an interesting thought struck her. She had heard a wide range of instructive things through that wall, from obscene language to sixteenth-century Spanish motets, but never the sound of bedsprings in extremis. Either Andrew did whatever it was men like him did – which she could never quite bring herself to imagine – elsewhere, or he was as chaste as she was. Hmm. Elsewhere, presumably. But where? Not public conveniences, surely? Not someone as fastidious as Andrew. But this might be another failure of the homophobic imagination. Or the female imagination. She began to whistle again as she wondered. Each with his merry lass, a-sporting in the grass. Another exasperated sound from the other side of the wall silenced her. A moment later Andrew came into the room in his silk dressing-gown.
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