‘What is it,’ she asked aloud, after a brief, silent prayer, ‘that You are testing me for? There are changes all around me, and maybe changes in me too, and it is Your will, I know. But I don’t see Your plan. Not, of course, that I need to, or that I would ever presume, but suddenly the direction doesn’t seem clear any more. Everything’s turned upside down. This hasn’t happened since I came to You, and I have to say I’m a little annoyed. Well, bewildered, I suppose, is a better way of putting it. I know only that these are signs—’
She interrupted her muttering because she thought she heard a sound. A soft thud—perhaps a pigeon against the glass, or noise from the road outside. But she never prayed aloud if anyone was near, and could not continue until she had established her solitude with certainty. She knew there was nobody with her in the nave, but she tiptoed up to check the chancel. It did not feel to her as though the Reverend was there: his was an open presence, despite his nervousness. And there was no sign of disruption near the altar. She was about to return to her pew—the same she took on Sundays, fourth from the front, on the right-hand side—when her ear caught a breathy whispering, like the movement of the wind. Only more rhythmic. More human.
It came, Virginia surmised, from the vestry, the door to which stood at the rear left of the chancel, slightly ajar. It didn’t occur to her not to pursue it, not once she heard it. She didn’t think of her own safety; the sanctity of the church was uppermost in her mind. She envisaged a gang of vandalizing youths; a hungry, homeless tramp with his snout in the communion wine; even the image of a bloodied Reverend, attacked by thugs and abandoned, rose unprompted to her mind. The walls and contours of the church, which had only ever stood safe and reassuring, were now made strange by the concurrent haziness and peculiar focus of her movements.
Stealth was not Virginia’s forte, and usually she had little occasion to deploy it. But in this instance she moved without hesitation and without a sound to the crack in the vestry door. She could see nothing but the whitewashed wall of the corridor, but ascertained that the sighing—accompanied by creaking and vigorous slithering sounds—was indeed emanating from this point. The door didn’t creak when she slid it open; she was quiveringly attuned, and heard nothing. She inched along the little corridor and peered through the actual vestry door—not through its opening, where she might have been seen, but through the sliver of light between door and frame, between one hinge and the next.
First she saw the black-clad, slight shoulder of the Reverend; and his upright presence so reassured her that she almost disclosed herself. It was as if that slice of his left side put all the earth to rights again, and removed the surreal filter from her eyes. She hung back only because he was obviously not alone. Counselling, perhaps?
She saw an arm on his black back, the fingers splayed, and moving. Embracing a bereaved parishioner, then? The irregular, rapid breaths were thus explained. Satisfied, Virginia looked away, then heard a moan which drew her eye back to the light. She examined the hand again, and as she followed its caresses—they were caresses—recognized that it was a male hand. And that the movements, and the sounds, were those of a particular sort of comfort. And with one eye pressed up close to the chink of the doorway, Virginia Simpson saw, undeniably and definitely and irretrievably, her world turned upside down forever: she saw the Reverend Thompson—whose passion had always been all for God, confined to the pulpit, just as it should be—making earthly and physical love to Philip Taylor. Or was it Stephen Mills? The one with the glasses, anyhow.
The silence with which she greeted this revelation was absolute. Despite the shrill whistling inside her head, Virginia didn’t allow a scream, or even a sharp intake of breath, to escape her. Because if this vision was a horror unimagined, how much more so would be any actual encounter, any exchange of words, any acknowledgement?
By the time she paused among the pigeon droppings on the steps outside, after scurrying undetected through the body of the church, she could almost attribute her sighting of Evil to the sedatives pressed upon her by her mother. It just didn’t seem real. Already, the moment was frozen into discrete frames: the contour of the chink before her eye; the arm; the fingers splayed across God’s sombre vestments; the turn; the flicker of a tongue. The sounds.
That was that. She couldn’t go home. The other time, the other day, had been easier: this time she couldn’t even cry. After all, what was there to mourn? The passing of a few trumped-up ideas, not of a livelihood. That’s what her mother would say. She walked down her street, though. She even looked up and saw the precious basket perched upon the window-ledge, unused now for a couple of days. Virginia dropped her eyes, in case her mother happened to be looking, and walked on, to the end of the road. To the park. To the top of the hump that was Primrose Hill.
It was early yet, fully light, and the park was still crowded. Women—girls, most of them—encouraged and embraced their stumbling, bandy-legged infants, some alongside their loose-limbed men. A group of teenage boys spun a frisbee among themselves. Some dogs circulated: lolloping, slobbering labradors, a Jack Russell, a mongrel, a squat bull terrier firmly chained to his frail mistress’s arm. Occasional couples, immobile, or almost, lounged entwined beneath trees in what had been, when the sun was higher, the shade. But it felt, and on closer inspection, looked, as though everywhere the first efforts towards departure were being made.
Virginia, just short of the crest of the hill, crumpled on to the grass. She was tired. She didn’t know what to think. She didn’t know whether to think. The fingers. The tongue. The sounds. She watched the people around her leaving, saw a girl run back for her pullover, caught the beat of pounding music from a passing car. But mostly she saw before her the almost convulsive caresses of the fingertips, and heard the murky, mucky rustlings of the vicar making love.
Melody Simpson expected it to be Virginia. She so expected it to be Virginia that she cursed her aloud as she made her way to the door. Which then necessitated apology, when the caller proved to be Angelica.
‘Won’t you come in, Angelica? How have you been?’ Her own voice struck her as so painfully artificial that she almost commented on the fact.
She turned off the television before looking her visitor in the face. Not that she had anything against Angelica, but the young woman was plump. Plump, flushed and squishy. A physical type Mrs Simpson found distasteful; her Emmy bore her bulk with a compact sophistication, like a German car. A different proposition altogether. ‘I know Virginia was eager to see you,’ she said, ‘but she’s not here just now. I rather thought she’d gone to visit you.’
Angelica flushed pinker and shook her leonine blonde mane. ‘Oh dear. Oh crumbs,’ she breathed. ‘I hope we didn’t cross each other without realizing it. I knew I should’ve come earlier.’
‘She’s been gone a couple of hours now, so I doubt it. Unless you’ve been wandering the streets for that long?’ Mrs Simpson tacked on a chuckle, as near as she could manage to good-natured. To her dismay, Angelica sat.
‘It’s not like her, is it? Where would she have gone, if not to my house?’
Melody Simpson shrugged. ‘She’s a bit dopey, you know, with the stuff the doctor prescribed. I suppose she could be wandering the streets. I don’t know.’
‘It’s hardly something to be amused about! I feel terribly guilty.’
‘You? Why?’
Angelica fidgeted, but then looked Mrs Simpson clear in the eye and said, as if reciting confession, ‘I knew Virginia needed me, and I was seeing a chap in my building, for dinner, and I thought I wouldn’t come round till afterwards. I put myself first, and it was very wrong, and now look.’
‘At least you were seeing someone. Very healthy. Although it can’t have gone too well, or you wouldn’t have come round at all, eh?’
‘I frightened him a bit, I think. Shall I make us some tea?’
‘I’m not so feeble as I look. Sit still and I’ll take care of it.’
Angelica could not sit still, and sh
e followed Mrs Simpson to the kitchen, where she stood vigorously stroking Bella, who lay on the kitchen table. Great tufts of Bella’s fur floated around in the wake of Angelica’s hand. One clump, Mrs Simpson noted, wafted into the sugar bowl.
‘Shouldn’t we do something?’ Angelica asked. ‘It’s getting dark.’
‘Such as?’
‘Call the Reverend, or Frieda, or someone. Find out where Ginny’s got to.’
Mrs Simpson didn’t answer.
‘You did say, if I understood, that her illness was some kind of a breakdown, didn’t you? For heaven’s sake, she could have jumped off the railway bridge.’
This shook Mrs Simpson slightly, but she was determined to be firm. ‘Angelica, I am no longer my daughter’s keeper. She is almost twice your age. We have reached the point where she is free to dance with the dustman, inject herself with heroin or fly to the moon and I will not intervene.’
Angelica wrinkled her nose. She knew how highly strung Virginia could be. She remembered her tears only a couple of nights before. Angelica hated Mrs Simpson.
‘That said,’ Mrs Simpson continued, jabbing at the air with her teaspoon, ‘she is suffering from a form of nervous exhaustion. She pushes herself too hard and she needs a proper holiday. Now that she’s on leave from the office, I’ve been trying to persuade her that a trip to Skye would be just the ticket.’
‘Skye’s awfully far away.’ Angelica was still determined to go to Skye with Nikhil, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about Virginia and her mother going at roughly the same time.
‘I would drive, of course.’
Angelica hardly heard this. She was thinking that there was no reason why they would need to see each other, that they probably wouldn’t go at the same time. She was thinking that it might really be the best thing for Virginia, and that her friend was in need and should be prayed for and supported, and that she herself was falling into wickedness to consider her own pleasure first. God’s will, and all that. Look where her selfishness had already led: it was night, and Virginia was lost, possibly in danger.
‘I know you have her ear,’ Mrs Simpson was saying, ‘And I would be so very grateful if you could say to her.’
‘Say to her what?’
‘That you think it’s a good idea. I’d take care of everything. It would be a proper rest.’
‘Of course. Of course I will. I agree, there’s nothing quite like the Scottish air … But don’t you think we ought to do something? Now, I mean?’
Mrs Simpson’s resolve was wavering. It was, after all, getting late. ‘What could we do?’ she asked doubtfully. ‘If she’s with friends, we’ll look downright foolish, and if she’s lost, it’s difficult to know where to begin.’
‘Another hour. Perhaps we should give her another hour? Then it will be decidedly late.’
They settled in the sitting-room, the television on, with the windows open to the street—in order, Mrs Simpson did not say, to hear the sirens of any passing ambulances or police cars—and Angelica with Bella on her lap. They watched a police drama in silence, each transposing what they saw on the screen to a private catalogue of imagined gore concerning Virginia. Angelica continued to stroke Bella, vigorously, eventually sweatily, as a means of calming her nerves.
The hour of reckoning came and went, and both knew it and said nothing. They kept their eyes firmly on the television. Mrs Simpson broke out in little beads of sweat. After a time she said, ‘It’s a very warm night.’
‘I’m sure she’s just at someone’s house,’ said Angelica, although she now had butterflies. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll stay.’
‘Did I say I was worried? Did I?’
It was well past eleven when they heard the key in the lock. Mrs Simpson made a whistling noise and thrust herself out of her chair as if jolted by an electrical current. ‘Virginia?’ she called. ‘Virginia Simpson, is that you?’
‘Hello, Mother,’ said Virginia. Mrs Simpson was surprised by the softness of her daughter’s voice. Virginia was obviously tired, but she looked like a girl. A soft, loose smile played about her lips. She stood there, plucking at her skirt. Damnation, thought Mrs Simpson as she reached up and stroked her daughter’s pale cheek: damnation, she’s lost it.
But aloud she growled, ‘Where the devil have you been, you ghastly woman? We’ve been worried sick.’
‘We?’
‘Angelica’s here. She’s practically skinned the poor cat in her worry. If Bella’s bald, you wicked thing, you’ve only yourself to blame.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Oh bother, just come in.’ Mrs Simpson pushed her daughter along the corridor to the sitting-room. Her hand encountered mud and stalks of damp grass clumped into Virginia’s clothing. Melody Simpson knew she would never ask: she had not asked last time and could not now.
‘Darling, you look exhausted! Sit down and I’ll get you some tea.’
‘Angel, how kind.’ Virginia’s voice was listless but not dejected.
Angelica bustled about with the kettle and water, called out, ‘Where were you? Where on earth were you?’
‘I went for a walk.’
‘At this hour?’
‘I fell asleep in the park.’
‘You didn’t!’ Angelica paused dramatically and made a popeyed face. ‘That’s very dangerous! The park—at night!’
‘I’m sure there are plenty of tramps who do it all the time,’ said Virginia.
‘My daughter is hardly a tramp,’ said Mrs Simpson, suddenly defeated by it all.
‘I’m very tired,’ said Virginia. ‘I think I’ll go to bed.’ She wandered out of the room, and the two women heard her bedroom door shut with an indifferent little click.
‘Should we do something? Call a doctor? Do you think?’
‘She’s home now,’ said Mrs Simpson. ‘It must be time for you to get home too. I could call you a taxi.’
‘I really—I mean, she’s not well,’ spluttered Angelica.
‘I know her. She’ll be all right. A trip to Scotland, that’s the ticket. And right now I think we could all be doing with some sleep.’
The next day, Virginia Simpson missed the morning service at St Luke’s for the first time since Angelica had known her. Not that she was surprised, given Virginia’s state, but the experience was very different without Virginia to gossip or exchange comments with. Reverend Thompson’s sermon seemed flabby and forced, and the sight of Mrs Hammond nodding and sucking her dentures further down the pew was, on this day, more repulsive than affectionately familiar. It just wasn’t very fun. (‘That’s all you young people think about these days,’ Frieda Watson frequently complained. ‘Fun, fun, fun.’ Spitting it out as though it was the devil’s own work.) Angelica was restless in her seat and folded the Order of Service into a dozen abortive shapes. And when it was over, she fled, in a way she had never done before, after only one brief exchange—with Philip, who asked after Virginia and blinked obsequiously behind his specs.
She didn’t go to visit her friend, although she had intended to. She couldn’t face Mrs Simpson, and couldn’t see Virginia without first seeing her mother. The sun was shining, but a brisk wind blew all the litter round in festive whirligigs. Things, thought Angelica, as she made her way home, were not going well. Things, she thought as she climbed to her door, had not been so bad for some time. She was on the verge of deeply depressing herself when she ran into Nikhil in the stairwell.
He was cowering on the landing between his floor and hers, apparently uncertain of whether he was coming or going, and he waved a folded piece of foolscap at her. ‘You are supposed to be in church,’ he said. ‘Not here.’
‘It’s over. I came home. Is that all right with you?’
As if remembering himself, he snapped into a more dignified posture. ‘Of course. By all means. I was … bringing you a note.’
‘Oh, yummy,’ said Angelica, reaching for the fluttering page, ‘I love notes. What does it say?’
But he snatched it back.
‘It says I’m sorry.’
‘How peculiar.’
‘I’m sorry for yesterday evening.’
Angelica’s stomach jumped slightly.
‘Because I was prying into your privacy. Because I fear I offended you. Because of course I come to the meetings because you are there. And because I have been thinking, you are right, I must make amends with Rupica. And so I would be honoured to go in your company to Skye. Honoured and respectful.’ He sped through his speech and down the stairs without once looking at Angelica, calling up, at the last, ‘I must go. I am late.’
To Angelica, he looked tremendously handsome as he spun around the banister on the landing below and retreated, blurred limbs and a crop of black hair, to the bottom of the house. He had been right, of course; they hardly knew each other. But that was the delight and therein lay the triumph, and Angelica’s dark hours receded as fast as they had come. After a solid, grinning pause, she marched on to her front door humming ‘Now Thank We All Our God’.
Whatever her other faults, Melody Simpson did not waste time. Not when it was important, anyhow. First thing Monday morning, she put on her Marks & Spencer dress and red leatherette belt and took a taxi to the car rental office. A bit rusty behind the wheel, she had a few narrow misses on the way home, but she and the royal blue Ford Fiesta parked outside the flat without incident. She even hooted the horn, in a jaunty rather than an offensive manner, to try to lure her daughter to the window, but Virginia did not appear. Mrs Simpson then stopped by Mrs Reece’s house to arrange to leave Bella, and to ensure that their downstairs neighbour’s plants would continue to be watered. Only then did she go back up to the flat, where Virginia was sitting with one of her mother’s paperback novels, visibly failing to turn the pages.
The thing was that aside from a few little signs—the novel, her apparent indifference to the fact that she had missed church, her amiable and unresistant reaction to their imminent departure for Skye—Virginia seemed perfectly normal. More than that, she seemed rather nicer than normal.
When the World Was Steady Page 14