Marmion’s good-heartedness had been their moral compass these last three years. Judith doubted whether they could have been as close, the rest of them, without her. She admired Marmion – loved her, even – would certainly never wish to hurt her, but . . . It must be a cliché to imagine oneself in the grip of an inevitable power. There was no moral right on her side; even in the headying aftermath of passion Judith knew that. There was merely selfishness, and a brazen conviction she hardly believed in herself. She imagined Bill’s dalliance with Marmion as the launching craft fuelled to lift a spaceship out of the earth’s atmosphere before it burned away; and her own, their own, as the real thing, the rocket soaring up and out towards the moon and the stars and the sun.
But who was to say what this was, what it meant, after one illicit encounter? Perhaps, Judith thought, they should stop before Marmion found out – but she couldn’t bear that. She couldn’t manage the sacrifice, and the self-control. Oh God, oh God; what on earth were they going to do?
June 1995
Marmion
Fay drove up a track that passed through a farmyard before pulling up on the grassy verge before a gate.
‘We can’t get any further by car,’ she said.
‘Is that where we’re going?’ Marmion asked, as they looked up at the slope rising steeply in front of them. The now-familiar horse’s-head summit was hidden from view, but a long stretch of footpath was visible, leading up to an angular ridge. This was clearly an expedition of a different order to the walks Fay had taken them on over the weekend. But everyone had been so strange this morning, so unexpectedly crabby, despite yesterday ending so happily with compline and then whisky by the fire, that she’d been secretly pleased when Fay suggested this outing. Last night’s service had marked the end of the music festival, and they were due to return to Cambridge today, but another dose of fresh air before they left was a good thing, Marmion thought. In any case, there hadn’t been much choice. ‘We always climb Nag’s Pike with new visitors,’ Fay had said at breakfast, as though surprised that they hadn’t grasped this fact already. ‘You’ve had a few warm-ups: you’ll be fine.’
‘That’s the direct route,’ Fay said now. She smiled suddenly, as though amused by the stony faces around her. ‘The gentler approach takes a bit longer, but we’ve got all day. Who wants first go as water carrier?’
She was wearing leather walking boots that looked as though they’d climbed every fell on the map, and the knapsack she held out now had the same venerable appearance. It wouldn’t be engineered for comfort, Marmion thought. She was relieved when Stephen took it.
‘Onwards, then.’ Fay pushed open the gate and struck off across the field. ‘Last one through shut the gate.’
Despite the warmth of the last week, the ground was far from dry, and little squelching noises accompanied every step. Fay was the only one of them with proper walking boots, and as she led the straggling line across the first field, Marmion thought that this hearty fell-walking side of her was another surprise. She’d imagined the Lake poets were more Fay’s scene than Wainwright.
It was a hot day, but to Marmion’s relief a little cooling breeze followed them along the edge of the valley. They were in an elongated basin, the shapes of the fells as beautiful and evocative as the lines of some modern sculpture. You thought of dinosaurs swooping down glacial valleys, Marmion thought, or Roman soldiers marching through on their way to Scotland. You thought of all the generations of people who had walked through here, and felt a bit embarrassed at your own feebleness.
‘All right?’ asked Stephen, who was keeping pace with her.
‘Yes. Lovely, isn’t it?’
Stephen nodded. His features had a determined set this morning; Marmion suspected her own looked rather similar.
After fifteen minutes they reached a stile. Bill, who’d seen her coming, had stopped to wait on the other side.
‘OK?’ he said, offering a hand as she climbed over.
‘I’m fine.’ Marmion paused so she could hold onto his hand a little longer. She’d felt once or twice this weekend that Bill had something on his mind (which was hardly surprising – they all had plenty on their minds at the moment, didn’t they?), but in between times he’d been more than usually attentive, and she thought now that it was typical of him to want to make up for those moments of distraction.
‘Enjoying yourself?’ he asked.
Marmion pulled a face. She’d have liked to say something more, but words didn’t always come to her when she wanted them. Instead she jumped down and, bending quickly, plucked a sprig of heather from beside the path and threaded it into a buttonhole on Bill’s jacket.
*
Bill had been desperate all morning for an opportunity to talk to Judith. People often separated into twos and threes on a walk like this, he’d told himself; you could easily conduct a private conversation in plain view. But it proved harder than he’d hoped to get her alone, and as they climbed steadily up the side of the valley he was plagued not just by impatience and longing, but by doubt. He wasn’t much of a prize, after all. Judith’s boyfriends were invariably more glamorous than anyone in the choir: sulky English students with angular haircuts, or aristocrats wearing Socialist Worker badges. But surely he couldn’t have imagined the way she’d looked at him last night; the way she’d spoken. Oh, that voice, laughing and mocking and drawing him in, all at the same time . . .
‘Penny for your thoughts,’ Judith said behind him – and his head was so full of her voice already that for a moment he thought he’d conjured the words himself.
He didn’t dare turn; didn’t look back over his shoulder.
‘Marmion’s keeping Stephen company,’ she said. ‘Or perhaps the other way round.’
‘Ah.’
She laughed. ‘I thought you might have a bit more to say than that.’
‘I do.’ He half stopped then, panic-stricken. ‘I do. I just . . . I don’t know where to start.’
‘OK,’ Judith said. ‘Well, so we could start with that was nice, but it was a bad idea, or –’
‘No,’ said Bill. ‘No, of course it wasn’t a bad idea. It was – I can’t believe my luck.’
‘I can’t either,’ said Judith, and his heart tipped and tumbled in relief. ‘I can’t believe we’re going to be that lucky, I mean. Given the circumstances.’
‘What do you mean?’ He wanted very badly to touch her: it was no good leaving this to words, he thought. ‘Judith, I . . . We’re only twenty-one. I’m not married to her.’
‘I know.’
‘I’ll talk to her,’ he said. ‘I’ll explain. It’s a natural break.’
He could drop out of the course at the Guildhall, he was thinking. He needn’t see Marmion. She needn’t see him.
‘Not now,’ said Judith. ‘Let’s just . . .’ She put a hand on his arm, the kind of gesture that might mean anything from a distance, and he felt a shiver run through his body.
They had come to a stile, and Judith was over it before the warmth of her fingers had left him. Bill glanced away for a moment to recover his composure, and there was Marmion, only twenty yards behind. Her face was flushed – but with effort, he thought, after a wild moment of fear, not with distress.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked, as she approached.
She smiled. ‘I’m fine.’
Bill’s eyes rested on her for a moment – a moment in which the courage to speak, to say there’s something I need to tell you almost came to him – and then Marmion was over the stile and bending to pick something up, and smiling again as she tucked a piece of heather into his buttonhole. Gypsy luck, he thought. There’d been women who came to the door every year when he was little, proffering good fortune for 50p. His mother – hard-nosed in so many other respects – had never turned them away. Fat lot of good it had done her. Bill clenched his teeth as he set off again.
Fay had taken a different angle after the stile, moving more steeply uphill. The grass was rougher and
sparser now, and the shimmer of a beck caught the light, spreading carelessly across the ground as it coursed downwards.
A little way ahead, Judith paused.
‘I’m not sure there’s a path here,’ she said. ‘It’s very boggy.’
‘Gracious.’ Marmion stopped too. ‘It really is a bit . . .’
Cressida grinned suddenly. ‘You’re all going too slowly,’ she said. ‘Bogs are like custard: if you run across them, they don’t give way.’
She threw herself abruptly forward then, lifting her arms wide and careering off across the field like a little girl, her long hair flying behind her.
‘I’ve never run through custard, to be honest,’ said Bill – but before he knew what was happening they were all racing along in a gaggle of arms and legs, caught up in the surprise of the moment, splashing through the marshy ground and emerging on the other side wet and muddy and elated. Cressida flopped down breathlessly on a tree root, and the rest joined her.
Judith’s hair was tangled, her face full of light. ‘Oh, that was so much fun!’ she said, grabbing Stephen’s arm. ‘See what we missed, growing up in the city.’
Bill felt a terrible clutch in his belly: he wanted to make her feel like that, he thought. What could beat the thrill of bringing Judith alive, banishing that formidable poise and making her forget herself? He shut his eyes, struggling with vertiginous shifts between euphoria and despair.
Marmion had turned to admire the view. ‘I can see why you’ve brought us here,’ she said, beaming at Fay.
‘Not yet you can’t,’ said Fay. ‘We’ve hardly started.’ She pointed towards the summit of the fell. ‘Up there, the view really is worth seeing.’
There was a moment of silence, broken only by a faint sound of panting. Bill glanced at his watch. Fay looked as tired as anyone, he thought; strain showed in her face as her rousing words died away. The thought of being back in Cambridge caught at him suddenly: things would feel different there, he thought. Everything would fall into place.
‘Perhaps we shouldn’t go all the way up,’ he said in his most reasonable voice, the one he used when someone was drunk and needed to be steered home. ‘If we’re leaving this evening, and everyone needs to pack . . .’
Fay looked straight at him, and her expression was horribly intransigent.
‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘What’s the rush? There’s plenty of time for packing. You’ve got the rest of your lives for things like that.’
*
There was a dramatic change in the terrain after the stream. The boggy lowlands gave way to a craggy moorland landscape, strewn with boulders ranging in size from small pebbles to massy lumps that might almost, Marmion thought, be fossilised whales left behind by the retreating glaciers. There was still no sign of a path, but Fay continued without hesitation, veering further to the right again so they were climbing even more steeply.
For a long while no one said anything. Marmion remembered the whispers of apprehension she’d felt earlier in the weekend and wondered whether there had been something in the air all along; something that should have made them wary. Had anyone else felt it? Bill, perhaps, with that preoccupied air? Judith was as lively as ever, but Stephen had seemed guarded this morning, and Cressida too, until that moment crossing the bog when she’d suddenly come back to life. Marmion wished she could say something, ask someone, but it was hard to catch anyone’s eye – and in any case, she was too short of breath for conversation. This was the kind of hill, she thought, that made you believe in gravity.
After another half-hour, Fay halted in front of a fence.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘This is irritating. There should be a stile here, but they seem to think we can get through this.’
Barbed wire was strung tightly between metal stakes in a line that ran as far as they could see in both directions. It was hard to imagine how there could ever have been a stile here. Sheep’s wool lay in snow-like tufts along the four strands of wire.
‘Anyone got any wire-cutters?’ asked Bill, his good humour almost convincing.
Fay said nothing – as if this was a challenge they had to rise to themselves, Marmion thought. But her silence was almost scarier than her bossiness.
‘If this is really the only way,’ said Judith, ‘we’d better try to widen the gap.’
Bill and Stephen moved forward obediently, taking hold of the lower two strands and yanking them firmly apart.
‘OK,’ said Judith. ‘Cressy? You’re the smallest.’
Cressida didn’t look keen, but she crouched down and put a hand gingerly on the bottom wire.
‘Hang on,’ said Judith. She gathered up Cressy’s hair, holding it in a tight bundle near her neck. ‘Try now,’ she said, and Cressida scrambled and slithered through the fence with a suppressed squawk as some part of her caught on the wire, then a smile of triumph when she stood up on the far side.
‘Brava!’ said Fay. ‘See?’
That was all very well, Marmion thought, but she was a lot bigger than Cressy. Judith was wriggling through the fence now, managing it with a grace that reminded Marmion of a gymnast.
‘Marmion?’ said Bill.
She looked at him, and he looked back. She really didn’t want to do this; really didn’t want to be put through the humiliation.
‘Let me get your hair,’ said Judith, and as Marmion leant down she reached through the fence and twisted her hair – thicker and curlier than Cressy’s – into a skein to keep it away from the barbs.
Bill and Stephen gave an extra tug on the wire, allowing her another inch or two, and Marmion edged her right shoulder through. Then she thought: perhaps head first would be better. Before she could think again she let go of the wire and fed both hands through the gap. She was on all fours now, straddling the wire with her midriff. She must look ridiculous, she thought, but this was no time for self-consciousness. Carefully, she placed her left foot on the wire. If she rested it there, adding to the pressure on the lower strand, perhaps she could get the other foot through more easily. But when she lifted her right foot the wire wobbled dangerously. She gave a kind of kick and projected herself forward, landing in a heap on the other side. At least she’d done it, she thought, wrestling her way back onto her feet, but then she noticed the rivulets of blood on her calf, beading up from deep scratches, and she felt her eyes filling with tears. Were they going to have to go back down the same way? she wondered. Was this really supposed to be fun?
Judith put an arm around her.
‘OK?’ she asked, and Marmion nodded.
‘Bit scratched,’ she said.
‘Full marks for artistic impression,’ Judith said.
Behind her, Fay was slithering through the fence now. Marmion held Judith fiercely for a moment.
The men scrambled through next; within a few moments they had arrived on the other side.
‘Reporting for duty, Commandant,’ said Stephen.
‘Well done, all,’ said Fay. ‘They do like to put a little adversity in our way.’
She seemed to have forgotten, Marmion thought with a flash of exasperation, that all this had been her idea. She was the benign hostess again, the helpful guide.
‘Anyone want some water?’ Fay asked.
‘Ah, is that what I’ve been carrying all this time?’ asked Stephen. ‘Be my guest; drink some of my ballast.’
‘It’s not far now,’ said Fay. ‘We rejoin the main path over there, and it’s a shortish climb to the top.’
The others seemed re-energised by the halt; they set off at a brisker pace, but Marmion began to fall behind. She could feel her morale slipping, her heartbeat thumping, her legs aching. She kept her eyes on the path, taking one step at a time, trying not to feel too daunted by the distance she still had to cover.
*
The barbed wire was almost the last straw for Bill. The sight of Marmion, undignified and bleeding, and Judith kneeling beside her, offering a tissue and consoling words; of Fay looking at them all in that
odd, discomfiting way. Even Cressida had glared at him when he’d attempted a we’re-all-in-this-together smile, as though it was his fault Marmion had been injured, or that they hadn’t stood up to Fay.
He strode off before the others had finished drinking from the water bottles Stephen produced from his backpack. It was hopeless, he thought. He remembered Judith saying, that was nice, but it was a bad idea, and then not now, let’s just . . . Putting her hand on his arm as though she had no idea what effect that would have on him, and then laughing in that wonderful, windswept way when they’d come through the bog, clutching Stephen’s arm, not his. How could he have thought she was interested in him? He just wanted to get this bloody awful walk over with now, this whole trip.
He hardly knew what to feel when he realised Judith was behind him. He heard her footsteps, her breathing, a little exclamation as she missed her footing. He quickened his pace, and she kept up with him. Once he glanced over his shoulder, and he could see the others were some way behind by now, but still he kept going, and so did she. Neither of them spoke: it was as if they were both intent on making a clean getaway. His heart beat faster and faster from excitement and anticipation and dread. Had he been wrong, then? Could she really . . .?
After another few minutes, he risked a halt. They had just come round a sharp corner; the others were nowhere to be seen. Judith was beside him in a second, cocking her head slightly to smile at him, breathing heavily from the climb.
‘God, Judith,’ he said. ‘Oh God . . .’ and he pulled her towards him on the narrow path and kissed her with all the suppressed vehemence and ache of his heart and his head and his limbs. No more words; just their bodies pressing and twisting against each other and the world dropping away at their feet, the steel-thin air and the beat of the sun. This was escape and sublimation: this was the answer to his dreams. He held her tight, Judith the burning flame, the source of all joy.
Every Secret Thing Page 8
