Marion's Angels

by K. M. Peyton

  ‘Why did you say you felt at home here?’ she asked Pat, slightly belligerently.

  ‘Did I say that?’ He looked surprised. ‘I’m ravenous. Let’s go back.’

  They went back the same way to the beach, and Ruth collected Lud and they all started back, walking together now, Marion and Pat in the water and Geoff and Ruth keeping dry, with Lud between them. Their shadows stretched out to sea; the sea and the sky merged, darkening, and the first light shone far out, faint and green. It seemed farther going back, the sand dragging. Pat and Geoff took it in turns to carry Lud. When they got back to the cottage, Ruth took Lud and Pat, handing him over, walked out into the sea just as he was and swam strongly away into the dusk.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Ruth said. ‘He’s a lousy host. I thought he’d offer you drinks while I dished up.’

  She didn’t seem in the least surprised. They all stood watching for a moment, then went back over the dunes to the cottage, into a lovely smell of cooking and the warm tangle of the kitchen, where Geoff got his own beer and Marion supervised Lud’s supper and put him to bed while Ruth got their supper ready.

  ‘Look, do you like this?’ Ruth, in the middle of setting out the cutlery, reached in to the living-room and brought out a parcel which she threw to Marion. ‘If you do, I could make you a dress of that. It’s your sort of colour.’

  Marion opened it and found a material patterned in blues and violets, rather dusky and muddled, and sprinkled at intervals with small orange flowers. It was rather how the sea had looked from the cliffs, she thought, darkening as the sun left it.

  ‘It’s lovely! Will you really?’

  ‘Yes. For going to a concert in? Is that what you want?’

  ‘Long, like yours. Oh, yes!’

  ‘I’ll do it this week. I shall enjoy it.’

  Geoff looked pleased too. ‘That’s terribly kind of you. That’s just the sort of thing we’re not very good at managing—and when you ask other people—’

  ‘Like Mrs. Rowley,’ Marion growled.

  ‘—they are very kind, but it never seems to look right, somehow. I know when it looks right, when it’s on, but I couldn’t for the life of me find it in a shop.’

  ‘I will be your chief adviser,’ Ruth said. ‘For no charge. I shall enjoy it.’ She was laughing, pleased.

  When Pat came back, swamping the kitchen, Marion showed him the stuff and told him Ruth was going to make her a concert dress.

  ‘Whose concert? That’s the important question.’

  ‘You said—at the dinner—you said—you promised—’

  ‘I didn’t promise. I said, if you work at it, perhaps, in the front row at the edge, near the door.’

  ‘I have worked at it. You don’t know—’ Marion’s vehemence caused Geoff to check her.

  ‘Hey, steady on!’

  ‘They are my concerts!’

  ‘Marion!’ Geoff was furious. Pat was grinning.

  ‘We’ll build you a little cage,’ he said, ‘at the side of the stage: I promise you can come, yes. To the last one. And meantime you can go on practising.’

  He went away to get dried and changed and Geoff said to Marion, ‘That’s not very fair, considering what happened before. I’m not going to let you go if there’s any risk of that happening again.’

  ‘I won’t let it,’ Marion said.

  ‘Well, if you can stop it, that’s splendid. It might be the cure, if you want to go badly enough.’

  ‘We could go too,’ Ruth said. ‘I usually do anyway. I’m sure it will be all right next time. I’m going to dish up. I can’t wait any longer.’

  The evening was pleasant, Geoff and Pat talking about boats and Ruth, after supper, taking. Marion’s measurements and going through her patterns for the dress. The men washed up. When it was time to go, Ruth suggested that they come again the following Saturday.

  ‘I’ll have the dress ready by then and you can try it on. Come to supper again, then Geoff can still have his day boat-building. I know it would break his heart to miss that.’

  Marion couldn’t wait for the dress. Geoff was amused.

  ‘I thought you didn’t care about clothes?’

  ‘No. Only this clo.’ ‘Clo’ had been her private word, with Liz, for a single garment. ‘Anyway, I like going there.’

  ‘Yes, so do I.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why do you like going there?’

  ‘Because I like them. And you do too, so it all fits. I mean, Horry’s wife asks me round for a meal quite often, but it doesn’t fit in with you, so I don’t bother. If you went there with me, you’d sit and scowl all the evening.’

  ‘I could watch the telly,’ Marion said, meek with recognizing the sacrifices Geoff made uncomplainingly for her.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ He grinned. ‘You’re quite a good excuse really. But Pat and Ruth are different.’

  ‘Yes.’

  By Saturday they had heard from Alfred that the dates of the three concerts had been fixed.

  ‘The one in London is next month. The publicity is all at the printer’s already, the advertising booked, Ephraim is appearing on television—quite incredible. A real miracle, one could say.’

  ‘One could indeed!’ Geoff said, very polite.

  ‘We at the church end have got to get moving too. I think there will be a lot of visitors. Marion will need some help probably. I’m getting some of the ladies on to it now. I’ll try and see that they don’t upset Marion—it might be a bit difficult, but try and persuade her that it’s all for the church’s good, in the end. Some of them are a bit—perhaps, a trifle—bossy, and Marion is apt to—she’s—’

  ‘Difficult,’ Geoff prompted.

  ‘Yes, a little. She has a way of—well—’

  ‘I know exactly what you mean.’

  ‘Yes. Well. The ladies don’t always understand. But I’m sure everyone will work together for the common good. We’re going to have signs put on the main road, you know, directing the way to the church, and notices outside about the appeal, a sort of thermometer thing, you know, showing how much we want and how much we’ve got. You know the sort of thing. Rather vulgar, perhaps, but necessary. And the money-box—I was rather hoping we might rope you in to keep an eye on it. We’ll empty it as often as possible, of course.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll be glad to.’

  ‘It might all be rather busy down your lane, if things go according to plan.’

  It was, relatively, already. Mrs. Rowley came down in her car with three other ladies, all in overalls, with brooms and buckets and scrubbing-brushes. Their husbands, less enthusiastically, came in the evenings to tidy the graves and the compost heap and instal a privy behind the elder trees, with a notice ‘Toilet’ nailed discreetly, half-hidden by leaves. Marion was given dire warnings from Geoff to be nice to everyone, and not presume she owned the place.

  ‘You started all this, just remember. You’re the one that wants it the most, so don’t get temperamental.’

  She cleared away the trains and all her things in the priest’s room, and the ladies threw out her jamjars full of buttercups and brought back the delphiniums of embarrassing memory, and cut-glass vases of roses six times bigger than any in Marion’s garden, without a single caterpillar hole amongst the lot. She had to agree that it all looked rather nice. The church smelled of polish and carbolic. A photographer came and took a lot of photographs. Marion went in in the evenings to see what was different, and remind the angels that it was all due to her.

  ‘You just remember, when you’re all fixed, who you’ve to thank. Who worked the miracle.’

  Her friend Flint, denied the train-set, tried to make her help him set it up in his father’s workshop instead, but she wouldn’t go down to the village. She didn’t want to miss anything. Flint’s father had bought him a skateboard for his birthday.

  ‘You can have a go on it, if you like. The bit of road down mine is just right, where it’s downhill. You need two, anywa
y, to see if there’s anything coming.’

  ‘Bring it up here.’

  ‘It’s no good up here. Too much gravel.’

  Geoff said, ‘I’ll buy you a skateboard, if you like.’

  ‘It’s no good up here. Too much gravel.’

  ‘You can take it where it’s okay.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘She ought to make friends in the village,’ Mrs. Rowley said to Geoff. ‘Haven’t you ever thought that—’ Seeing Geoff’s expression she changed her tack. ‘I’m not criticizing, my dear boy. I think, you’re doing a splendid job. But naturally, it’s very difficult for you, out on a limb here, to see that she mixes with the right people.’

  ‘We’re going to supper with the Penningtons tonight, as a matter of fact. We often meet Mr. Voigt there.’

  ‘Really!’ She couldn’t help showing that she was impressed. But she covered up immediately. ‘But friends of her own age . . . perhaps Melissa and Louise. . . .’

  ‘Ugh!’ Marion said, on being warned.

  ‘She means well,’ Geoff said sharply.

  Sometimes he worried that the Mrs. Rowleys of the world were right.

  Saturday was hot, and they drove to Fair Winds in the evening amongst all the traffic going home from a day at the seaside. They found Pat changing the oil in his car, and Ruth was putting Lud to bed. Marion went upstairs, and had to read a story to Lud, which was nice, taking her back to the days when Liz had read to her. The memory came back very sharply; even the story was one Liz had read. Everything to do with Ruth, she thought, kept overlapping with her mother. It was strange, for no one else had ever had this effect. Lud was looking extraordinarily clean and cuddly in his cot.

  ‘Can we go and look for bones again?’

  ‘It’s a bit late now.’

  ‘I never found one. I want one.’

  ‘I’ll bring you one if you like.’

  ‘Oh, yes!’

  ‘Next time.’

  Ruth had her dress laid out on her bed, all finished except for the hem.

  ‘Try it on.’

  It was every bit as desirable as Marion had hoped. She stood in front of the mirror, pink with pleasure at her new image, very straight and thin—no, slender was the word—her knobbly knees hidden by the long skirt. Ruth started to pin the hem.

  ‘I wasn’t sure if you had a bosom or not. It was a bit tricky.’

  ‘Flattening it?’

  ‘Yes. The pattern was one to fit me. Not that I’ve got much. But it’s come out all right.’

  ‘It’s beautiful! Can I keep it on?’

  ‘Why not? Dressed for dinner. Shall I too? We’ll give them a surprise!’

  She finished the pinning—‘I don’t think they’ll stick in. I’ll tack it after dinner’—and changed into one of her dark gipsyish skirts and a tight black shirt. She went to a drawer and pulled out a gold chain which she looped several times round her neck, and a necklace of small rhinestones which she arranged round Marion’s neck.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just for dinner, special. I can’t give it you.’

  They went downstairs and god the supper on the table—ham and salad and garlic bread crisp out of the oven—and called Pat and Geoff, who were still doing something to the car.

  They came in together, dirty and cheerful, and Marion, standing ready for her father’s approval, saw his eyes go straight to Ruth, and an expression in them that, for a moment, shattered her. It was elemental, recognized instinctively, quickly guarded, adjusted.

  ‘Cripes, what is this?’ Pat said. ‘The Bishop coming again?’

  Geoff said to Ruth, ‘Marion looks wonderful. You’ve done a splendid job.’

  ‘Better than that banana gear,’ Pat said. ‘Very concert-worthy, I would say. Geoff’d better go home for his penguin suit. I’ll go up and get my tails.’ He sniffed at the marvellous smell of the garlic bread. ‘No, hold it, Geoff. It might get cold. We’ll come as we are.’

  He wiped his hands on the towel hanging on the door and sat down hungrily. Marion watched Geoff cautiously, but everything was quite ordinary again, the moment passed. But she knew that what she had seen was no figment of her over-active imagination. She felt quite thrown by the jar it had given her, moving warily to her place. After the first shock, she realized that it was quite inevitable. She too loved Ruth. Why should it be any different for her father, starved of such a basic emotion for so long?

  ‘What’s up? Pin sticking in you?’ Pat asked.

  ‘No.’ Worse than pins by far. Her miracle was slipping.

  ‘You’re practising being quiet and ladylike?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Very good. We might test you after supper.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Play to you and see what happens.’

  ‘Really? Do you mean it?’

  ‘We’ve got to start some time. The first concert is next month, Cambridge and Norwich both quite soon afterwards. You’ve got to get in training. Ephraim goes back to America in September, as soon as we’ve done the Norwich gig. The day after, in fact. He suggested I might go with him.’

  Ruth, passing the salad, said quietly, ‘I trust you declined.’

  ‘I said. I’d consider it.’

  ‘Does Mick know?’

  ‘I told him, yes.’

  ‘What did he say? No, don’t tell me. I can guess. “A fantastic opportunity!”’

  ‘It’s not to play, only to meet a few people, have a holiday. You too.’

  ‘To meet people. To work.’

  Pat shrugged. ‘Let’s not talk about it.’

  ‘No. Let’s not.’

  The exchange was quick, muted and unexpectedly fierce. Afterwards, when they were talking about cars and boats and normal things, Marion wondered if she had imagined both the fierceness and the look on her father’s face. She felt all churned up inside about both things. They were both frightening in their implications. She turned to Pat.

  ‘Did you mean it, about playing to me?’

  ‘If you want me to.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘It suits me, to go right through the Chopin studies as if it’s for real. I’ve got to play them in Sheffield on Friday.’

  ‘I thought you were on holiday?’

  ‘Semi.’

  Marion was pleased and excited, not having dared to prompt him about her concert again. When they finished supper, he helped clear away, and Marion dried up while Ruth washed. Ruth said to Geoff, ‘You don’t want to listen, do you? Do say, not just be polite. We could go for a walk along the beach. Or take some beer out on the dunes.’

  ‘Yes, whatever you wish.’

  ‘We’ll go out then. It’ll be better practice for Marion.’

  She went into the sitting-room and turned a lamp on, and tidied the cushions in the armchair.

  ‘You might be better sitting in the kitchen. You’ll find it’s very overpowering. The room’s so small. In fact, it’s best of all out on the dunes. We shall probably enjoy it better out there.’

  ‘No. I shall be all right.’ She wanted to watch as well as listen.

  ‘What he’s going to play—if you’re going to get sent, so to speak—it’s the sort that will do it. We’ll stay if you like.’

  ‘No. It’s quite all right.’

  ‘Very well.’

  She smiled. ‘Enjoy it.’

  She went out with Geoff, and Marion sat in the armchair, hugging her knees, waiting. Then she remembered her dress, and sat straight. Pat came in and sat down at the piano. He had put on a clean shirt and tie and looked very serious.

  ‘Opus twenty-five, Chopin,’ he said to her. ‘I’m not going to stop, you understand.’

  ‘No.’

  She felt all shivery and he hadn’t played a note yet. He removed some music that was on the rest, and laid the rest down flat, and then sat very still for what seemed to Marion a long time, staring straight ahead of him. Marion claspe
d her hands together tightly, nervous; for Pat, as she knew him, seemed to have disappeared, exchanged for this remote stranger. When he started to play, rippling very rapid, harp-like notes beneath a lilting, summery melody, she saw again the thing that had set her off before: the expression on his face that had made her think of Swithin carving the angels; she had forgotten it until this minute, this strange transformation, taking on the nature of the music, that she had described to Ruth as ‘looking beautiful’; it wasn’t really that, although it gave that effect. It was as if he wasn’t exactly himself any more, but more a medium through which the music was being expressed.

  She hadn’t known what to expect this time, and was more nervous because of it, sitting very still in the armchair.

  It was all right at first. There was a moth burring under the lamp, and she watched that, it was easier, and the notes whirred like the moth’s wings. It galloped, grew louder and more energetic, then launched into a deep, sensuous tune. She looked out of the window, biting her lip, holding herself very still. There were figures on the dunes, outlined against the deep blue sky of the July dusk. She knew now that it was going to be very difficult. She had this very strange feeling that something in the music was moving towards her, that it was going to pick her up and take her with it whether she wanted or not; and in her mind it was the same as her miracle, picking up all these people and driving them along on a path she had not foreseen at all. It was growing all the time more powerful. Sometimes there was a pause, a rest, but too short, and then it would start again, and Pat never once glanced at her or said anything, but was contained in this shell of concentration, forming the music.

  It was a mental thing, trying to hold out, and not managing it. The music, first spelling out a very simple tune in single notes, came at her suddenly like a breaking wave, a great torrent of sound, submerging her. The tears streamed down her cheeks. She held on physically, her arms over the sides of the chair and her fingers digging into the upholstery to keep herself from running; but the music would not stop, pouring out in passionate waves that broke and thundered over her. She could not hear herself sobbing for it yet she knew she was, the tears choking her and the miracle running amok, tearing everyone to bits: nothing in her head made sense. She twisted over and turned her face into the cushions, holding her hands over her head, and was still buried there when the music stopped, not aware immediately that it was all over, not until she realized that she was making a terrible noise—it was her, not the music. The cushions were soaked and her hair stuck in wet strands all over her face. She lay there, not daring to come up, all her good intentions in ruins. And she knew Pat was waiting for her.