Marion's Angels

by K. M. Peyton

He grinned. ‘How glad I am you’re not.’

  In spite of the smile he looked rather miserable and pale, even slightly greenish.

  ‘Why are you here? Did you want to see Daddy?’

  ‘No.’

  He paused, but saw that she needed an answer.

  ‘I just like to come somewhere quiet, before anything—that—that matters—matters a lot, that is, and this is a nice place. On the way, you see.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He glanced at his watch again. ‘I’d better go.’

  ‘Does it matter a lot this afternoon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did it when you played here?’

  ‘No. Not like it matters today.’

  She felt very relieved by his assurance. She started to walk back down the aisle with him.

  He said, ‘What did they find out, those surveyor chappies? Did they come and look at the roof?’

  ‘Seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds, they said. To make it safe.’

  Pat whistled. ‘That’s quite a few concerts.’

  ‘Daddy says impossible.’

  ‘Nothing’s impossible—speaking from experience. Unlikely, perhaps. What you want is a rich American. Or an Arab sheikh. Pray for one—you’ve all afternoon.’

  She looked at his face but it was quite serious.

  ‘I wouldn’t like it to go either,’ he said.

  ‘Daddy said it needs a miracle.’

  ‘Well, I believe in miracles.’

  ‘Truly?’

  ‘Yes. They happen.’

  Marion was doubtful. ‘I’ll try,’—they reached his car, and he got in—‘I’ll go and pray for a rich American.’

  ‘Put one in for me too,’ he said.

  ‘All right.’

  She wondered if he remembered what he had promised about her own private concert, but didn’t think it was the time to ask. He started the engine, and gave her a bleak nod of farewell, and drove off towards the main road. She walked back across the graveyard, still clutching her bunch of roses, and went back into the church, wondering what miracles had happened to him, to make him so sure they existed. Perhaps to be playing in the Festival Hall at Oldbridge when he was so young. Being married to Ruth, perhaps. Perhaps she would find out one day.

  She did the flowers, putting the new roses on the altar. In spite of the fact they were not gold or silver or jewelled plate, they glowed in the afternoon sunlight with colours as godly as any precious stones, and the maggot holes didn’t show at all. For saying prayers, not many had a virtual cathedral of their own to hear their desires . . . Marion went down on her knees in front of the altar. Usually she used a pew, if she just felt like saying something friendly, or wanting something not very important, but for the church itself the altar steps seemed right. It was just a matter, really, of formalizing what God knew already she wanted so badly, and adding about the rich American, and a bit for Pat himself.

  She prayed as well as she knew how. Not exactly the words—it was the intensity of the feelings one put into it; if the praying was really good, one felt quite tired afterwards, in Marion’s rather limited experience. She had just about finished, and was winding up with a few thank-yous—not purely sycophantic, but true thank-yous; including one for introducing her to Pat and Ruth (especially Pat)—when the latch on the door dropped with a clatter and she heard someone come in. She scrambled up, not wanting to be caught in the act, and scurried down the nave, hoping to pass the visitor and escape without saying anything. The visitor was looking up at the roof and muttering to himself, but something in his muttering struck Marion as quite extraordinary.

  ‘God dammit, I’ve never seen anything so bee-ootiful. . . .’

  The fact that he was talking to himself was quite irrelevant; it was the broad nasal intonation that so stunned Marion, the unmistakably American accent, delivered on the heels of her final amen at the altar steps. God might move in a mysterious way, but that he could move so fast was almost unbelievable. She stopped in her tracks and stared.

  ‘Hi, kid,’ the man said. ‘You live around here?’

  He was small and wiry, fiftyish, Marion thought, with a strong, impressive nose and very lively, quick eyes. He had crinkly black hair going grey, a kind, mobile mouth. He wore a short white raincoat, immaculately pressed, a light tobacco-brown suit, and he had a jaunty hat of pale suede with a tiny gold feather. Round his neck hung an extremely impressive-looking camera. He looked, in short, like a very rich American.

  Marion, wasting no time, said, ‘Yes, it’s very beautiful but it’s in a bad state of repair. It might have to be closed if we can’t get enough money to fix it.’

  ‘Is that so?’ His eyes, removing themselves momentarily from the roof, fixed on her with interest. They then went back to the roof, and visibly filled with undeniable grief.

  ‘That would be a tragedy! I’ve never seen anything so lovely as those carved angels.’

  He stood and gazed slowly round the whole church, the quick eyes darting over every crack and damp-stain. He started to walk slowly down the aisle, gazing up at the roof. Marion walked by his side. Pair by pair the aloof angels spread their wings over their footsteps. The American studied them intently, pair by pair. He fetched out gold-rimmed spectacles from his pocket and fixed them over the great arch of his nose. He had very delicate nostrils, flared like shells.

  ‘What do you know about this church?’ he asked her. ‘About these angels?’

  Marion told him everything she knew. They mounted the altar steps together and turned as if to bless a congregation, standing together. The man listened very intently, not at all impatient, deeply—flatteringly—interested. Marion talked with the same ardour as she had so recently used in her prayers, feeling that this man was a challenge to her powers of persuasion, a part of God’s plan for St. Michael’s. She was convinced that he had been sent, that he was going to get out his cheque-book and write her a cheque for seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds as soon as her eloquence had made itself felt.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘You sure know your facts, honey. You’re some scholar, I’ll say that for you. You the priest’s daughter or some’n?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You sure can talk. How come you know all that?’

  ‘I look after it,’ she said.

  ‘You do?’ The intent gaze turned back to her, amused, impressed. ‘You?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t they have a Committee of Friends? No ladies running coffee-parties to raise funds? Nobody from some institution or some’n to look after it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You British—you treat history like it’s some’n that’s just lying around, take it or leave it . . . you got those Goddarned angels up there and nobody’s interested? I just don’t believe that, honey.’

  ‘No, well, they’re interested, but they say it’s going to cost too much to repair the church and it will probably have to be closed, and the tower demolished.’

  ‘Gee, that’s terrible. A place like this. This place is magnificent. I sure wouldn’t mind taking this home with me.’

  Marion’s heart lurched with horror, remembering that Americans were inclined to do that sort of thing: she had heard of it, removing old buildings stone by stone, all numbered and labelled, for re-erection in Texas or Kansas or somewhere equally unlikely. She saw St. Michael’s standing in the American’s backyard, lined up with the swimming-pool and the tennis-court, shining and incongruous in Californian sunshine. God was letting things go astray.

  ‘You can’t take it home!’

  ‘No, baby, but I sure wouldn’t like it to fall down because you British don’t know how to look after your history.’

  ‘We do know. We just haven’t got enough money.’

  ‘How much money d’you say?’

  ‘Seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds.’

  ‘That sure is a lot of cash. You can say that again.’

  He looked thoughtful. Marion waited for him
to produce his cheque-book, but nothing happened. He glanced at his watch.

  Marion said, desperately, ‘If you think it’s so beautiful, couldn’t you—wouldn’t you like to—’ Desperate as she was, she couldn’t actually say it. She shut her eyes and prayed. Standing on the altar steps, she prayed so hard that the sweat came out in little beads all across her forehead.

  When she opened her eyes, the American was looking at her in a very curious way.

  ‘Are you okay, honey?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What you want for this church, honey, is a bit of publicity. I might be able to raise you a bit of publicity. I’ll have a word with my agent.’

  Marion wasn’t sure if her prayer was working or not. She couldn’t exactly see how, but it sounded right somehow.

  ‘I’m on holiday right now. Six months rest, they said. But my agent’s over here with me—he don’t believe in resting much. I’ll have a word with him and see what he says. I’d like to do a little thing like that. I don’t want six months rest, like my agent. We’re used to working.’

  Marion was lost.

  ‘A few little concerts perhaps, with a whole lot of publicity.’

  ‘Concerts?’ Marion grasped the familiar straw. Of course, the festival . . . Oldbridge was swarming with musicians this week, Americans, Europeans, Japanese, Pennington. . . .

  ‘We had one—a concert, to make money. But it only makes a little bit—you need dozens, hundreds—’

  ‘No, honey, not the way we do it. You do a few concerts. You get your publicity right. You make your appeal. The concert just starts things rolling. My agent knows the job backwards. We’d raise you the money, if we put our minds to it.’

  ‘Do you play the piano?’

  ‘No, honey. I’m a fiddler.’ He produced a card from his wallet, with a name and address on it. It was a foreign-looking name: Ephraim Voigt.

  ‘You’d want an orchestra?’ Marion was remembering about the expenses, eating up all the lovely money.

  ‘No, baby. Just an accompanist.’

  ‘A pianist? I know a pianist.’

  He laughed. ‘Whadyer know? It’s in the bag.’ He clapped her on the shoulder. ‘I must be getting along. I’ll miss the concert.’

  ‘That’s him! The pianist—I know him! You’re going to the concert, now? At the Festival Hall?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well, he’s the pianist I know. He likes this church too. He comes here. He was here earlier. He would accompany you.’

  ‘You don’t say! I’ll go and see how he sounds!’

  Marion couldn’t tell whether the man was just having her on, or whether he meant it. She walked back down the aisle with him as she had walked with Patrick earlier, and he kept up his gee-whizzing about the angels, his big nose angled up to the roof. He took some photographs, exploding magnesium flashes into the ether enough to startle the whole dozen into flight, then some in the churchyard; then he clapped her on the shoulder again and drove away in a car about four times the length of Pat’s with room for about ten people inside.

  Marion watched him go, and sat on a tombstone, her legs feeling suddenly very weak. The place was deserted, silent, basking in the afternoon sun. She couldn’t believe any of it had happened at all. She thought she must have fallen asleep over her prayers, trying so hard, and dreamed it all. But the visiting card was in her hand. Her hand was trembling. She felt exhausted, shattered.

  She felt so ill she started to cry. She realized she was getting into one of her states, and forced herself to her feet, and stumbled back to the cottage and down the garden.

  ‘Daddy! Daddy!’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  Recognizing the need he climbed down off his boat and she flung herself on him, burying her face in his tattered shirt. He put his arms round her and waited. His familiar smell, of marine ply and epoxy resin, soothed her. He stroked her hair and said, ‘Let’s sit on the bank for a bit, then we’ll go and make a cup of tea. You can tell me what’s set you off.’

  They sat on a corner of the cockpit cover, and looked out over the smooth banks of mud and the brown tide pushing its way up its channel in the middle; like gravy, Marion always thought, a scum on its edges, questing and worrying its way inland. The golden samphire was wiry under their feet, fringing the top lip of the bank.

  ‘I went in the church and Pat was there.’ She told him exactly what had happened. She showed him the visiting card.

  ‘Ephraim Voigt,’ Geoff read. ‘Well, even I have heard of him.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s a violinist.’

  ‘That’s what he said.’

  ‘Just about the most famous violinist in the world.’

  Marion could see that even Geoff was shaken this time. He sat staring at the card, and frowned out over the river.

  ‘Even if Pat does believe in miracles,’ he said, ‘I reckon he’ll be a bit surprised by this one.’

  ‘Do you think it’s a miracle?’

  ‘It’s a coincidence. Just how far coincidences have to go to become miracles—your guess is as good as mine.’

  ‘He might just have—well, he might forget. We might never hear from him again. Perhaps I only thought he said all that.’

  ‘Quite possibly. But he was there.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Although half the famous musicians in the world are at Oldbridge this week . . . well, one or two.’ Geoff was chewing a grass, still frowning.

  ‘We’d better forget it,’ he said. ‘Unless he follows it up. I wouldn’t count on that.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It is extraordinary, there’s no doubt.’

  They went up the garden, and Geoff put the kettle on. When the tea was made and they were sitting on the doorstep in the sun to drink it, Geoff said, ‘It might be best not to tell anyone what happened. Not about your praying, I mean. All right about meeting the man in the church, but not about him coming in answer to a prayer.’

  ‘Nobody would believe it.’

  ‘No.’

  Marion knew that he was thinking that everyone would mark it against her, another bit of evidence of how peculiar she was.

  ‘Pat knows. It was his idea.’

  ‘Oh, yes. We know—’ It was odd, Marion thought, how Pat and Ruth were already accepted into this especially intimate relationship, not particularly because of this incident, but because, somehow, they fitted. Like old shoes. They had arrived, and they seemed to be on the same wavelength as her and Geoff which, mostly, was a slightly different one from other peoples’.

  ‘We know,’ he repeated. ‘But people like Alfred, Mrs. Rowley and them—don’t say anything. Pat’s all right. You can tell him.’

  ‘I prayed for him to do well in his concert too, so perhaps that worked as well. He looked a bit—a bit nervous. He told me to.’

  ‘Yes, I daresay. I wouldn’t like to do what he does. I hope it worked for him.’

  ‘Yes. I like him. Ever so. And her.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘You know—’ She paused, glanced sideways at Geoff. ‘She reminds me—’ She stopped. ‘You said she did too.’

  Geoff was drinking his tea. He put the empty mug down.

  ‘Yes. Not the looks, exactly. But the way she—’ He wasn’t sure, and hesitated.

  ‘The way she is,’ Marion said.

  ‘I suppose.’

  He smiled suddenly and said, ‘Did you say any prayers for me while you were about it?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry.’

  ‘If my prayers were to come true, it wouldn’t solve anything.’ Geoff spoke obscurely, quietly. Sometimes he said things Marion didn’t understand, but she got him puzzled too at times; it was mutual. But nothing to worry about. She looked at him sideways, the familiar, rather bony profile, a few freckles, sawdust, untidy blond hair. He didn’t look like a father, somehow. Not like the sort that came to school to meetings. He never came to the meetings. ‘They’ll tell me, if I n
eed to know anything,’ he always said hopefully.

  ‘You could pray for my beam-shelf, next time,’ he said. ‘God might know where that extra two inches on the starboard side came from. I’m sure I don’t.’

  She helped him for the rest of the afternoon, and the shock of what had happened receded. They could easily have dismissed it altogether, save for the card standing on the mantelpiece in the kitchen.

  Quite late, when Marion was undressing for bed, the phone rang. Geoff answered it. She heard him say, ‘Just a moment. I’ll fetch her.’

  He put his head round the stairs door and called up. ‘Marion, it’s your American.’

  She came down in her vest, her heart bumping.

  ‘Hullo?’

  ‘You the little girl in the church this afternoon? I rang the padre and he gave me your number. Is that you, honey?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, it’s okay, sweetheart. I had a word with my agent. He thinks it’s a cute idea. And your friend—I sat in on his concert, and he’s okay too. Real nice playing for such a kid. Now I’ll leave it to you to tell him what’s cooking, eh? You tell him to contact my agent. He might not want to do it—well, I can send home for my usual guy if not. We can discuss it any time he likes. Can I leave that to you? To get him to contact my agent?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘As soon as you like. I don’t know how he’s fixed. He’ll have to let us know. I’m staying at the George. You can get me there, leave a message any time. You’ll do that, honey?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fine. See you.’

  He rang off. Marion stood in her vest, holding the receiver, rooted to the ground. Geoff took it off her, gently, and put it back on its rest.

  ‘It’s come true, your miracle? What did he say?’

  ‘He said yes. He’d do it. The concerts . . . he wants Pat to accompany him. He told me to tell him.’

  She looked at her father, white-faced.

  ‘I feel queer.’

  ‘You’re not the only one,’ Geoff murmured. He put his arm round her, and could feel his own hand not entirely steady. He didn’t want to say anything to alarm her, but. . . .

  ‘Stone the crows, Marion, you must have prayed damned hard.’

  ‘I did. It made me come out in a sweat.’