Angels and Men

by Catherine Fox

  She woke in the dark with a headache. The bells began to chime. She counted. Two o’clock. She pulled on her dressing-gown and made her way sleepily to the bathroom to get a glass of water. The light was on. Someone was already in there. She drew back at once but it was too late. She had seen. Andrew’s mocking laughter pursued her back to her room.

  Oh, God. She pressed her hands over her eyes, but the scene would not be banished. Andrew standing naked facing her. Another man kneeling in front of him. Every detail was clear in her cringing memory. White tiles, cork bath mat, Andrew’s long fingers in the other man’s hair. She heard footsteps crossing the landing, but had no time to compose herself before Andrew was in the room.

  ‘You should lock the fucking door!’ she shouted at him.

  He laughed. ‘Get used to it, sweetheart.’ He was drunker than she had ever seen him. ‘What do you think your life’s going to be like in Oxford, hmm?’

  ‘Get out! Get some clothes on!’

  He lurched across and wrapped his arms round her. ‘This is the real me you’re seeing. Makes you think, doesn’t it?’ She tried to push him away, but he clung to her drunkenly, pressing his face up against hers. ‘Makes you realize it’s not going to be a nice cosy little rent-free sex-free love nest among the dreaming spires.’

  ‘Go away!’ she sobbed. ‘You’re drunk.’

  ‘If you don’t like it, try living off Whitaker instead. You can paint and think pure thoughts while he fucks you.’

  ‘Please, go away, Andrew,’ she wept as she tried to struggle free. ‘Please.’

  ‘No. It’s time you heard this.’ There was a movement at the door. The other man, clutching a towel round himself.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Come in,’ said Andrew. The man hesitated at the sight of Mara’s tears. ‘No. Seriously. She’d like another little demonstration, wouldn’t you, Princess?’ His tongue flickered in and out. ‘You’d better learn fast, darling, because all men want it. Believe me. Even the nice straight ones like Johnny Whitaker.’

  ‘Don’t be a shit,’ the other man said. He came in and began to haul Andrew back out of the room. ‘I’m really sorry about this,’ he said to Mara.

  ‘Why?’ asked Andrew. ‘What are you sorry about?’ They were at the door. Andrew grabbed him and began kissing him. He pulled away.

  ‘Don’t. Can’t you see she’s upset?’

  Andrew laughed. ‘So what? She’s a blood-sucking parasitic bitch.’ Mara pushed him out, slammed the door and locked it. ‘Like every fucking woman on God’s earth,’ he shouted, pounding his fists against the wood.

  She cowered on the bed weeping as he continued to hammer on the door and swear at her. The field mice were stirring in their room, but they had the sense not to emerge. At last the other man succeeded in dragging Andrew away. Their voices came through the wall. Arguing. Then silence. Music playing. It was Billie Holiday. Each footstep or creak of furniture made her cringe and clamp her hands over her ears. No sound seemed innocent any more. He was drunk. He didn’t mean it, she tried to tell herself. No, said another voice in her mind. That’s what he really thinks. You’re a blood-sucking parasitic bitch. Was it really only this afternoon that she had slept with Johnny? The whole thing seemed to have happened in another age. If only he would come. Tapping softly on the door, carrying her back to bed and making love to her silently, over and over again. Johnny, Johnny. I’ve lost everything. She wept in the dark, longing for him, longing for sleep, trying not to think of the two men in bed only inches away behind the wall.

  When she got up the next morning, she felt as though she had slept only five minutes in the entire night. There was no sound from Andrew’s room. She went down for breakfast with a strange, lightheaded sensation, as though the world was being kept from her behind plate-glass. She collected some coffee and toast and sat down, but as she reached out for the butter, her hand suddenly looked odd to her. Then a bright stain of light appeared in front of her left eye. Oh, God. Please not a migraine. She dropped her head in her hands and watched in despair as her vision was swallowed up in angry flickering. Someone came up behind her.

  ‘Hung over, are we? Tut, tut.’ Nigel. She got up and made for the vanishing doorway.

  ‘Migraine,’ she said.

  ‘Nasty. Go and lie down in a dark room.’

  ‘I know that.’ She began to cry in anticipation of what lay ahead. His arm went round her waist.

  ‘All right. Come on, then, beautiful. I’ll take you back.’ She sniffed back the tears and let him lead her to the stairs. He gave her a squeeze. The lights were jangling and bursting in her head. ‘Anything I can do?’ They were on the last flight. She shook her head. He took the keys from her hand and opened the door. ‘Now you lie down and get some rest.’ She heard him drawing the curtains.

  ‘Thanks, Nigel.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, you can owe me one, darling.’ She lay down. He went, and a moment later she heard him writing something on her door. ‘Do not disturb,’ she hoped. Someone came out of the next room.

  ‘Good God.’ Andrew. ‘Joined-up writing.’

  ‘Bugger off.’

  She lay tense, listening to them.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ Andrew asked. More scribbling. ‘Ah. Migraine. With an “e” on the end, usually, Nigel.’ He sounded half drunk still.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Listen, can I bring someone to breakfast?’

  ‘If you’ve signed them in.’

  ‘I didn’t get round to it.’

  ‘Too bad, then.’

  ‘I’ll make it worth your while, darling.’ Mara pictured Nigel recoiling.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘A colleague, Nigel. Just a colleague.’

  ‘Oh, all right, then.’

  ‘Nigel! Let me thank you properly.’ A muffled protest. He knows I can hear, thought Mara. That’s the only reason he’s doing it.

  ‘Get off, you pervert.’ She heard Nigel’s footsteps retreat rapidly down the stairs. There was a silence. She lay waiting for him to come in and taunt her again. The cathedral bells began to chime for matins. Then she heard Andrew go back to his room. Voices. She pressed her knuckles into her temples as the flickering lights gave way to pounding. Nothing to do but endure. Footsteps went past her door then down the stairs. The Sunday morning bells pealed on and on, and eventually she fell asleep.

  When she woke, it was after four o’clock. She moved her head gingerly this way and that. The worst seemed to be over. She listened for a sound from the next room, but heard nothing. A kind of dull reassuring peace had descended. All her hopes were crushed, but at least the terrain was familiar again. Sunlight was coming through the crack in the curtains and fanning out across the ceiling. There were people chatting down on the terrace below. Nearly the end of term. Thank God. I’ll soon be gone. It felt like an echo of the mood that always gripped her at the end of the summer term at school: Soon I’ll be at the farm. She lay trying to remember why she had looked forward to going there so much, and found herself drifting back to one summer when she was fourteen.

  I’m lying on the swaying hay bales on the trailer as Dewi drives the tractor back to the barn. Willow warblers in the trees along the stream. Listen: the falling cadences, beautiful warnings – my tree, my tree, keep away. And somewhere up in the blue a lark filling the whole sky with song. I am searching for the tiny speck of bird, but I can’t see it.

  Back at the barn. We are unloading the bales and stacking them. My hands sting as sweat seeps into the blisters made by the baler twine. The bales are too heavy for me, almost, but I struggle to lift them, to help Dewi. Aunt Susan calls in the distance that tea is ready. I sit down on a pile of bales and Dewi comes up to me. He stands close and says, ‘Kiss me, girl.’ I kiss him quickly on the lips, then look away, face burning. ‘No, kiss me properly. French kissing.’ But I don’t know how. I’ve tried to work it out from films and by sneaking glances at snogging couples. I have no one I can ask. ‘You don�
��t know what I mean, do you?’ I shake my head in shame, still looking out across the yard. ‘Time you learnt, then, isn’t it?’ he says, and turns my face to him with his hand. I let him. I feel his breath. He’s sucking at my lips, and then I feel his tongue slipping into my mouth. I flinch back, but he holds on to me. Touching tongues – kids do that for a dare! Surely grown-ups don’t enjoy this? ‘That nice?’ he asks. If I say no he might be angry, but he might be angry if he thinks I’m lying. So I mutter, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Want me to do it again?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He does it again. I feel hot and strange as though I’m going to wet myself. He pauses and says, ‘You’re supposed to do it back.’ I try, but then he puts his hands up my T-shirt and fingers me. I freeze, knowing I shouldn’t let him. No boy’s ever going to fancy you, Faye always says. Look at you – you haven’t got tits, you’ve got corn-plasters. He stops kissing me and pushes me back on to the bales. The hay prickles my bare back. I roll my head and look away as his hands start to unzip my jeans.

  ‘Dewi, Dewi,’ calls Aunt Susan again. He pulls my shirt back down. I zip my jeans up guiltily and sit up. He smiles at me, knowing I won’t tell. I watch him as he walks off across the yard. The barn is full of stealthy rustlings. I imagine the mice and rats staring at me, the farmyard cats, the owls in the gloomy rafters, the swallows in their mud nests, a hundred round eyes all staring, all feeling my shock, all wondering what will happen.

  Mara sighed. And I never saw him again. He just walked out of my life and disappeared. And I’ve always blamed myself. Somehow I made it happen. I drove him away by loving him too much. By letting him kiss me and touch me like that. And the same pattern has gone on and on repeating itself.

  Would Dewi ever come back? she wondered. How would his parents react if he did? What were her cousins like these days? The families had drifted further and further apart. Elizabeth now had three children, according to Aunt Susan’s Christmas card. Faye was married, divorced, pregnant and living with another man. Mara wondered what it was like to be Aunt Susan, grieving for her lost son, despising her daughters for not making a better job of their lives than she had done, hoping the empty sherry bottles would not roll out of their hiding places when visitors called. But maybe they all pity us. Poor Eleanor and Morgan. One daughter dead, the other totally out of control.

  There was a knock at the door. Andrew came in carrying a vase of flowers which he put down on her desk. Tears of relief brimmed over. He went and opened the curtains, then came and sat beside her on the bed.

  ‘Poor baby. How are you feeling?’ His gentle tone made her cry all the more. ‘Ssh. It’s all right.’ He stroked her forehead. After a while she managed to stop sobbing. ‘Well, are you still coming to Oxford with me?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t fancy being a fag hag after all?’

  ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘Yes it is.’

  ‘No – it’s because you’re so cruel. And manipulative. You treat me like shit, then you make me feel it’s all my fault.’

  ‘Oh, come off it. It’s the sex. You’re just a bit squeamish, that’s all. You’ll get used to it, Princess. Come to Oxford.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Look, if you weren’t so uptight, everything would be OK. You can’t spend your whole life freaking out over every innocent little bit of fellatio you interrupt.’

  ‘You . . . you . . .’ she stuttered. ‘I’m not taking the blame for this, you bastard.’ He was laughing. ‘That’s exactly what I mean! You’re always doing it.’ She felt herself starting to cry again. ‘I can’t bear it, Andrew. One minute I think you’re the only person who really understands me, and the next you say such terrible wounding things.’

  ‘They go together. If I didn’t understand, I couldn’t wound.’ He took her hand in his. ‘Actually, you have a slight advantage here. I haven’t a clue what I said.’

  Her chin trembled. ‘ “Blood-sucking parasitic bitch.” ’

  He laughed and repeated the phrase admiringly, domesticating it for her. ‘Well, it’s a slightly muddled image, zoologically speaking, but not bad after a bottle of whisky.’ He held her hand to his cheek. ‘Come to Oxford.’ Why do I always let him get round me like this? she asked herself. ‘Please. I need you, Mara.’

  ‘Yes. As an Aunt Sally.’

  ‘No! As a friend.’ He began kissing her fingertips. ‘Oh, please. Don’t be so unforgiving. What if I do the cooking?’ She made no reply. ‘What if I promise to lock the bathroom door?’

  ‘What if you apologize?’

  He dropped her hand. ‘Don’t let’s be silly about this, Mara,’ he said austerely.

  She felt herself starting to smile. ‘All right. But if I catch you at it again I’ll throw a bucket of cold water over you.’

  He considered this. ‘Mmm. That might add an interesting frisson.’ He got to his feet. ‘Coffee?’ She nodded and he filled the kettle. They fell silent for a while. Mara wondered if she would get hardened to his bouts of nastiness if she lived with him long enough.

  ‘Why are you so horrible to me?’ she asked.

  He gave her his fallen choirboy smile and shrugged. ‘Kismet. We were made for each other: you’re a born victim and I have a sadistic streak a mile wide.’ There was another silence. He wandered around the room, whistling softly through his teeth. At last he stopped and faced her. She saw his fingers drumming rapidly on the desk, at work on some complex piece of Bach. ‘And because you took my man, you bitch.’

  ‘Hah! So we’re out in the open, at last.’

  ‘Yes. I had some vague intention of being generous about it; but let’s face it, darling, generosity is so bland compared with revenge.’

  She reddened in anger. ‘Well, I hope last night made you feel better.’

  ‘No. It didn’t. And now I can’t decide who I hate more: you, or him, or myself.’ The kettle boiled.

  ‘But that sounds like remorse,’ she said.

  ‘Mmm. I thought I dimly recognized the feeling.’

  ‘You know something, Andrew, for a hardened hedonistic atheist you’ve got a pretty sensitive conscience.’

  ‘Vestigial.’

  ‘I think you’ve got an ethical code after all.’ He shrugged again. ‘So why don’t you just give in and admit you believe in God?’

  ‘Because God hates gays.’ Her eyes widened. ‘It was a joke, Mara.’ No it wasn’t, she thought. ‘Oh, don’t take everything so seriously, for Christ’s sake. You’re so bloody demanding, Princess. You either idealize people or write them off. You’re such hard work.’ She knew she was. No wonder people tired of her. ‘I don’t want to be your honorary angel.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He grinned, and she realized he had tricked her into accepting the blame again. Good God – if he wrote off someone’s car he’d get them apologizing for lending it to him in the first place.

  ‘This bodes well for our co-habitation,’ he said. ‘You can be the one who wears the hair-shirt in our relationship.’

  ‘And what will you wear?’ she asked, itching to slap his smug face. ‘The cat’s pyjamas?’

  ‘The trousers, Mara. The trousers.’

  They went down for college tea arm in arm. Mara’s ears were ringing from too many aspirins. Her legs felt weak. It was over twenty-four hours since she had eaten anything, and she could feel Andrew watching her as she collected a plate of bread and salad. They went out through the French windows and joined the other students on the lawn in the late afternoon sun.

  After a while May appeared. ‘Only two to go. Shakespeare and sociolinguistics,’ she announced, bolting down her Scotch-egg salad and fantasizing about all the things they would do once exams were over. Mara listened to her rattling on about picnics and punting.

  ‘Where’s Maddy?’ she asked when a long enough pause occurred.

  ‘Oh, crying in our room, probably,’ said May. ‘I don’t mean to be horrible, but she’s been going on and on about it,
and nothing I say makes any difference. It’s her performance exam tomorrow. The accompanist keeps letting her down – not turning up for rehearsals, or arriving late and buggering off early. “Find someone else,” I say. “There isn’t anyone,” she says. “I’m going to fail.” ’ May flushed at the heartlessness of her impersonation. ‘Well, I’m sorry, but she’s been going on about it all week. Cuchulain’s completely useless. He just strokes her hair.’ I could stand that type of uselessness, thought Mara.

  ‘Go and tell her I’ll do it,’ said Andrew. They both stared at him in surprise.

  ‘You’re going to do something nice?’ asked May reverently. ‘Aren’t you worried your image will suffer?’ This brought no response other than a raised eyebrow, so May got to her feet. ‘Well, I’ll go and tell her the wonderful news.’

  ‘Do that, little one.’ He smiled up at her and she coloured.

  ‘You realize, of course, that if you weren’t such a shit she’d probably have dared to ask you.’ With this she walked off.

  ‘True,’ said Andrew. The students around talked and clattered their cutlery. Mara looked at him. He had his head tilted back and he seemed to be watching the flight of the swifts high above. Was he unhappy? He always seemed so self-sufficient. No one would dare to assume he was feeling lost and small and in need of comfort.

  He turned and met her eye with a questioning look, and she heard herself saying, ‘I just want you to know I think the world of you.’ It sounded wooden. There was a burst of laughter from a group near by, as though they had heard what she said. She waited for his blighting response, but he only leant and kissed her cheek.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  I can’t help him, she thought. But instantly she was ashamed of herself for being more absorbed by her inability to comfort him than by the fact that he was suffering.

  A moment later he roused himself and stood up. ‘Ah, well. I suppose I’d better go and be wept over.’

  She got to her feet too, and they went back into the building. He waved idly and disappeared as she began to climb the stairs. Halfway up the first flight she was forced to stop, her head throbbing. She looked up to the top and saw Johnny there in a jacket and tie. Her face burned as he ran down to meet her.