He was back on the doorstep looking pale and wild. ‘You want flowers?’ He piled three heavy bouquets into her arms. ‘Here are your bloody flowers. Now, you listen to me, Isabella. You’re the most impossible, outrageous, maddening woman I’ve ever met and I’m hopelessly in love with you. Will you marry me?’
‘What?’ The bouquets slithered to the floor and she burst into tears. ‘Yes, you idiot.’
‘I was going to ask you on Valentine’s Day,’ he said, with something approaching a pout.
‘Oh, Barney!’ Before she could fling herself into his arms he handed her a little box. Vinyl sofas and swirly carpets flashed through her mind. She swiftly resolved to love the ring even if it turned out to be a nasty little solitaire. It was a moonstone surrounded by seed pearls.
‘It’s beautiful!’ Thank God! He slid it on to her finger. ‘I don’t deserve you, Barney.’
‘Yes, you do,’ he replied grimly. ‘I’m exactly what you deserve.’ He kissed her so hard she winced. He still hasn’t forgiven me, she thought.
‘It won’t happen again.’
‘It’d better not! I can’t make you be faithful to me,’ he said, ‘but I’m warning you, Isabella, I can make you very, very sorry if you’re not.’
She widened her eyes. ‘You’ll take a belt to me?’ But he refused to smile. ‘I just want you to know,’ she began, ‘that he had the tiniest weeniest little willy I’ve ever seen . . .’
His lips twitched at last. ‘I thought size wasn’t important.’
‘That’s just male propaganda. Women aren’t totally insensate. We know a cocktail gherkin from a cucumber.’
‘Impossible,’ he murmured, kissing her more gently this time. ‘Completely . . . totally . . . impossible.’
‘Take me to bed.’
‘Is that the only way you’ll be faithful to me?’
‘Of course not!’ She coloured in mortification. ‘I just thought now we’re engaged . . .’
‘Can’t we wait till we’re married?’
Suddenly it dawned on her. ‘Barney Hardstaff, you’re nervous! I thought you said you weren’t a virgin.’
‘No, but . . .’ He rubbed a hand through his curls and looked so adorably bashful that she didn’t press for details.
‘OK. We’ll wait till we’re married.’
‘Will you be patient with me till I get the hang of it?’
‘Idiot.’ She kissed him. Mmm, it was going to be fun licking him into shape. After a while she remembered the flowers lying at their feet. She gathered them up and took them into the kitchen. ‘Wherever did you get them this time of night?’
‘The graveyard.’
‘What?’ she shrieked. ‘I’m engaged to a man who robs graves!’
He smiled an angelic smile. ‘I said you deserved me.’
The irony of it all wasn’t lost on Annie. Barney and Isabella were on the home straight to wedded bliss as surely as she was headed for heartbreak. It was wonderful, intoxicating, but it wouldn’t last. Annie knew it couldn’t. The end of the affair was stamped across the beginning. This only made the hours they had together more intense. The long slow days between their meetings were shot through with sudden pangs of lust, or overlaid with hazy desire as she willed the hours past till Saturday, Wednesday, Saturday . . . The affair never lost its dangerous edge of fear. Annie felt she was queuing endlessly for some terrifying fairground ride; then suddenly she was away, crying, ‘Help, stop, let me off!’ until it was over and she was staggering with buckling knees back to the beginning crying, ‘Again!’
If they lived together it wouldn’t be like that. A few weeks would start to tame everything. She would begin to understand him. As it was, the lack of continuity meant she had no yardstick against which to measure his behaviour. There was no predicting what mood he’d be in, or what might spark a wild swing. In the background lurked the spectres of former girlfriends, the ones who had left him impotent. He never talked about them. Had they tried to trap him into marriage, perhaps? To gain control of his cheque book? To suck out his immortal soul? Whatever their goal, she was fairly certain of their methods. Anything that smacked of deviousness or emotional manipulation infuriated Will, and she tiptoed around trying to avoid these pitfalls. Unfortunately, tiptoeing also enraged him, but Annie could not help herself.
She never told him she loved him. It might be interpreted as blackmail. What if she forgot herself one mad afternoon and gasped out the terrible three words? Would he bundle her into the street and throw her clothes out after her? She knew that their relationship was an uncomplicated matter of sex as far as he was concerned. The moment he suspected she was manoeuvring him into some kind of commitment he would get rid of her.
‘Do you want me to go on the pill?’ she asked once.
‘No. I don’t trust you to remember to take it.’
‘I just wondered if you found condoms a bit inconvenient . . .’
‘Not half as inconvenient as an unwanted pregnancy. Forget it.’
She read this as a warning and redoubled her efforts to seem unscheming. Even compliments began to feel loaded.
‘I assume you wouldn’t be doing this if you didn’t find me attractive,’ he remarked in the end.
‘Oh! Of course I . . . Am I too reticent?’
‘Well, you squeal when I fuck you. I guess that counts as a compliment.’
‘Don’t say things like that!’
‘Like what, Miss Brown? Fuck?’
‘No. The . . . the other bit. I don’t like to think about it. I get self-conscious.’
‘You poor child. You’ve never made love in front of a mirror?’
‘Never. I’d – No! Will, please . . .’
I don’t know him at all, she thought each time they met. They had bypassed the getting-to-know-you rituals. After a few weeks she knew his body and sexual appetites intimately, but she still knew little about his background other than what she had gathered from Edward’s instructive prayers. He seldom spoke of his family. Although he would talk about his work in Bishopside he rarely mentioned anything from his past. It was not that he was secretive, exactly, but there was a reserve about him that made curiosity seem crass.
‘Did you really save Edward’s life once?’
He scowled. ‘I should have thrown the bugger back in.’
His house reiterated the message. The pale oatmeals and ivories suggested that colour would be an ostentation. He had no photographs lying about the place, no clutter, no memorabilia, nothing that seemed to be treasured for sentimental rather than aesthetic reasons. His musical taste seemed austere to her as well. He seemed to prefer discordant twentieth-century music or spiky modern jazz. She studied his house in awe as though it were a beautiful book in a foreign language. There was one room downstairs she had never been in.
‘What’s in there?’
‘The heads of my former wives.’
Later she heard music coming from the forbidden room and followed the sound. Will was sitting at a grand piano. He paused in his playing and beckoned when he saw her hesitating in the doorway. She went and sat beside him and he played for her, indulging her with recognizable tunes. Annie was deeply ashamed of her musical philistinism. She had only ever been to one opera and that was by accident, in Stuttgart with her German penfriend. They had both been under the impression that Onegin was a ballet. Will cuffed her round the head when she confessed this. She pleaded her background in mitigation. His family were ‘all musical’, he admitted in an off-hand way, which convinced her they were all concert pianists.
Term went by. Ted introduced another game: Favourite Typos. A list went up on the noticeboard and each day new howlers were added. ‘The three parsons of the Trinity’. ‘The Apostles’ Greed’. ‘The redeeming wok of God’. In a college where most students owned a word processor but few could type properly the supply was constant. ‘Go froth and multiply’. ‘Give me oil in my lap, keep me burning’. And Annie’s all-time favourite ‘Get thee behind me, Stan’.
Exams
approached. Annie had one or two papers to sit, but after the experience of Cambridge finals a decade earlier, she couldn’t get worked up about them. Edward slogged dutifully. Ingram, of course, was fine-tuning the sleek engine of his intellect in preparation for his theology finals. There were volumes of Schleiermacher by his plate at lunchtime.
‘What a glorious day,’ said Muriel.
‘What a pity we can’t enjoy it properly,’ said Isobel blightingly.
‘Why don’t we go punting this afternoon?’ boomed Edward. ‘Break from revision. Do us good.’
There was general assent. Annie continued to eat her apple in silence. It was Wednesday. She was supposed to be meeting Will.
‘Tell you what,’ went on Edward, ‘I’ll drag William along. He doesn’t work on Wednesday afternoons.’
Excuse me, Annie pictured him saying, I work bloody hard. She finished her meal and slipped out before Edward could press-gang her into punting. Ted glanced at her and away again.
Footsteps thundered up the stairs and Edward came panting along the corridor before she could shut her door. ‘You are coming with us, aren’t you, Annie?’
‘Um, actually I really must finish my –’
‘It’s William, isn’t it?’ Edward broke in belligerently. ‘You’re still being silly about him!’
‘No! I . . . he’s very kind. I’m . . . I have to finish my doctrine essay.’
‘Then do it tonight. What’s the matter with you, Annie?’
‘Stop bullying me!’
He opened his mouth, then a stricken look crossed his face. She watched him think, Oh, no, I thought she’d got over all that.
‘Gosh, Annie. I’m a brute. Sorry.’
She smiled wanly at him and hated herself as he pounded off down the corridor.
Her head lay on Will’s chest.
‘To think we could have been messing about on the river,’ she said.
Will chuckled. ‘I told him I had better ways of spending my time.’ His fingers played some languid sonata up and down her spine. ‘When will you tell them about us?’
‘What? You’re kidding! “Oh, and by the way, Will and I are having an affair.”’
‘So it’s OK to do it but not OK to tell people.’ She raised her head and stared at him to see if he was serious. ‘How do you square it with God, just as a matter of interest?’
‘I don’t.’ She leant her face against his chest once more, hearing his heartbeat. The Landlord at the door. Knock-knock. Knock-knock.
‘So what’s going to happen to us?’
‘I don’t know,’ she whispered.
‘Don’t worry, Annie. Keep your head down, do nothing and the problem will go away.’
‘That’s not fair!’
He rolled her off him suddenly on to her back. ‘So you’re happy with just sex?’
‘Delirious.’ She smiled up into his eyes and saw they were cold.
‘My God, the perfect woman. She asks no questions, she makes no demands, just fucks like a rabbit.’
She turned her face away.
They lay a long time in silence. This is it, she thought. The beginning of the end. It seemed hard that she should have put so much effort into being what she thought he wanted – undemanding, incurious, happy with just sex – only for him to fling these things back as faults. She saw what it was: he’d had enough and this was how he would get rid of her. She wondered numbly how many afternoons of sour little squabbles and silences she would have to get through before it was over. Or did he want her to go now?
‘Shall I go?’
He sighed. ‘No.’ He reached for her wearily like a player returning to his instrument. What else was there, after all?
He might die. The thought struck her as she walked back to college from the station. She wouldn’t be allowed to grieve. He would be someone she was supposed to know slightly, just a friend of Edward’s she’d never really liked. Nobody would think to ask her to the funeral. Tears welled up without warning. Nobody would ever know that I loved him, she thought. The pretence would continue for the rest of her life. I don’t even have a photograph of him. I’d have nothing to remember him by except one illegible letter and a drawer full of underwear. She saw what a fool she was. It was going to end. She would be hurt and he would not. What did I tell you, Anne Brown? gloated her mother. If you play with fire don’t come crying to me when you get burnt!
She made her way to the college library and finished her essay on atonement. It was not a good essay. It felt like a cheap jigsaw. The pieces didn’t fit properly but she forced them together anyway. Why did Christ die? She reread her wooden answers in a kind of despair. Once she had asked Will if he ever looked at all the pain and suffering in the world and wondered how God could let it happen. It was an old chestnut, the thing every vicar was asked.
‘Do you ever look at the pain and suffering of Christ on the Cross,’ he had replied, ‘and wonder how God could let that happen to himself?’
As an afterthought Annie added this conversation to the end of her essay. Dr Mowbray might like it, although it was anecdotal. She stacked the pages together and went back to her room.
It was half an hour till supper-time. Annie went to her window and looked down across the Coverdale lawn to the riverbank. After supper it would be the weekly College Eucharist. She had come to dread them, receiving communion – eating and drinking judgement on herself – and hearing the terrifying words of the Bible dinning in her ears: It is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened . . . they crucify the Son of God on their own account and hold him up to contempt . . .
She tried to imagine what Christ would say if she were dragged into his presence like the woman caught in adultery, half dressed, still damp with lust. Would he look at her with love and understanding? ‘Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.’ But that was the problem. She would go on sinning till Will threw her out. Then she’d creep back to God for forgiveness. Oh, yes, like an adulterous husband ditched by his young mistress and skulking back to his wife: ‘Darling, it meant nothing. You know that! I love you. Just give me another chance and I’ll prove it to you. Things will be different from now on.’
You’d be a fool to have me back, she said to God. Why do you put up with me? Why do you let me treat you like this? She went to her desk and took refuge in her novel. At least here she was in control. Sins could be done and undone at the stroke of a pencil. There were no lasting implications for her characters’ blunders. ‘Months later, everything looked different,’ she could say, tossing in repentance like a pinch of herbs. That was what she had reduced Christianity to in her novel – a dash of spice to flavour the sex.
Camilla received the news of Isabella’s engagement a little frostily, although she thawed noticeably when asked to be a bridesmaid.
They chatted for an hour or so about dresses until Hermione appeared and enquired snottily if she might be permitted to use the phone that millennium.
‘See you at the party, then,’ said Isabella to Camilla. ‘Barney’s coming, too.’
‘You’re kidding! You do know Luke will be there?’
‘Shit.’
‘Does his lordship know about that little episode?’
‘I told him.’
‘God – did he go ape shit?’
‘Yep. Then he proposed to me.’
‘Not picky about shop-soiled goods, eh?’ Isabella did not respond to this remark. ‘Well, see you on New Year’s Eve,’ said Camilla, after a tricky pause.
Ought she to warn Barney? worried Isabella as they drove to Camilla’s parents’ house. No. Surely she could rely on Luke’s discretion. He was hardly likely to bound up to someone and announce he’d bonked their fiancée, was he? Anyway, with a bit of luck he’d be pissed and communing face down with the carpet by the time they arrived.
‘Oh, by the way, Barney, I’ve asked Camilla to be a bridesmaid.’
‘Mm.’
‘Listen,’ she cried, ‘I do
n’t know what you’ve got against her!’
‘Don’t you?’
‘No! She’s my best friend.’
He took her hand. ‘If she’s your best friend and you want her to be your bridesmaid, I’m very happy.’
‘Why don’t you like her? You could at least try.’
‘I will,’ he promised.
He was as good as his word. Isabella watched anxiously. Camilla was making a supreme effort, too. It turned out to be a wonderful party, after all. Isabella preened herself and showed off her gorgeous ring and fiancé, managing by the sheer force of her personality to give matrimony a bold and risqué air. Everything was going marvellously until she went to get herself another drink. She looked back across the room to cast a smile at her beloved and saw him in conversation with Luke. Bugger. She turned back to the drinks with her face scarlet. What was the smirking bastard saying? Why did you trust to his discretion, you fool? He wouldn’t grasp the concept if you gave him a dictionary. She poured a glass of wine with a trembling hand.
When she turned back Luke had disappeared. A pair of legs were sticking out from behind the sofa. Barney was staring down at them bewildered.
‘Leave him. He’s drunk,’ explained Isabella in relief. ‘He’s always passing out like that.’
Barney shrugged and allowed Isabella to lead him away.
They danced until Big Ben began to chime.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Definitely, in Luke’s case, thought Isabella. Barney had a service at eight the following morning, so they did not linger. He went to de-ice the car while Isabella tried to find Camilla and her mother to thank them. They were both in the kitchen standing over Luke. He was groaning in a chair with a packet of frozen peas clutched to his face.
‘He passed out and hit his head,’ she heard Camilla explaining. Luke removed the packet to reveal a glorious black eye. He mumbled something but Camilla clamped the peas firmly back in place.
‘What did he say?’ asked Camilla’s mother.
‘Didn’t catch it,’ replied Camilla.
But Isabella had: ‘He hit me. He bloody hit me!’ She turned and fled without saying goodbye.
The Benefits of Passion Page 20