‘Shut up.’ Isabella poured the last of the wine and Camilla writhed to a sitting position. Sinuous, thought Isabella, with tipsy aggression. She always felt hoydenish in Camilla’s company.
‘So how will you catch him?’ asked Camilla.
‘I’ll think of something.’
‘Well, when you’ve finished with him, hose him down and send him round to me.’
But I might never finish with him, thought Isabella, surprised at this new idea. A man you might never tire of. Hmm. She downed the last of her Chardonnay thoughtfully.
Her tactics were simple: she went up to South Wing 4 on Monday morning in a very short skirt and sat beside him. After a moment he turned and looked at her. She smiled and fluttered her eyelashes. His eyes held a look of tired resignation. Beautiful grey eyes with deep laughter lines and long, long lashes. Older than your run-of-the-mill student. He must be a postgrad, she decided. He went back to work.
‘What’s your name?’ she whispered. But he only laid a finger on his lips and shook his head without looking up from his book. He sat reading – she timed him – for three solid hours without a break. When he finally gathered his books and left at twelve thirty, he cycled off so fast that she had no hope of following.
The next day he wasn’t there. Nor the next. By the third she began to think she must have scared him off, but on the Friday she saw him going out of the revolving doors at twelve thirty-one, and realized he must have been hiding in a different bit of the library. The following Monday she tracked him down in the Rare Books room and sat next to him with her thigh almost touching his. He glanced up and gave her another long, weary look. She fluttered her eyelashes and smiled again, and he returned to his work. And so it went on. He hid in increasingly devious places. Sometimes she found him, sometimes she didn’t.
After a fortnight of him steadfastly refusing to talk to her or be distracted from his work, she thought up a different strategy. She lay in wait in the bike park at nine o’clock, watched him arrive, then chained her bike to his after he had gone into the library. She came back at twelve thirty-two and found him waiting with his bike-clips on and his arms folded. He was not surprised to see her.
Hee hee! This is going to be fun! She went up to him, smiling.
‘Would you mind unlocking your bike?’ he said.
‘If you tell me your name.’
Eventually he sighed. ‘Look, there’s something about me I think you ought to know.’
Her heart gave a nasty lurch. ‘You’re gay!’ She saw a fleeting grin.
‘Worse than that, I’m afraid.’ Another lurch.
‘You’re married!’
‘Worse than that, even. I’m an ordinand.’
‘A what?’
‘An ordinand. A trainee priest.’
She grasped at the word in bewilderment. ‘A priest? You mean, like . . . Are you a virgin?’ Several heads swivelled their way at this.
He was struggling not to smile. ‘Actually I’m not, as it happens, Isabella.’
He knew her name! ‘You know my name! How?’
‘Can I have my bike now, please?’
‘No. I haven’t finished with you yet.’ He looked at his watch, sighed again and waited. She savoured that look of sweet resignation, thinking how she would share it with Camilla later. ‘You’re Catholic, then?’
‘Well yes.’ A dismal bell rang. Something about celibacy.
‘Not Anglican?’ she pleaded.
‘Actually, yes.’
‘Oh, Anglo-Catholic, you mean?’
He rubbed his hand over his face wearily. ‘I’m an evangelical. We’re all catholic, but I wouldn’t worry about it.’ He shrugged apologetically at the complexity of the issue. There was a pause.
‘Does that mean you can have it off or you can’t?’ asked Isabella, cutting briskly through all this nonsense.
I don’t believe this, said his look. ‘It means I can’t.’
‘Why not? Vicars can get married, can’t they?’
‘They can’t just have it off when they feel like it.’
She felt a slight rush of shock at hearing him repeat this expression. ‘I bet some of them do.’
‘Not this one. Look, I’m late. Can I have my bike?’
‘In a minute. Why can’t you?’ She lit triumphantly on a good argument. ‘I mean, sex must be OK. After all, God created it, didn’t he?’ She slid closer and smiled up at him encouragingly.
‘You might like to take a look at the Maker’s instructions some time, Isabella.’
She stared, then drew back a little and began to suck her hair. A blush crept up her neck towards her face. ‘I’ve read the Bible. Well, bits of it. Adam and Eve and the Sermon on the Mount.’ Suddenly she wasn’t sure she had. She knew what it was about, though. Roughly. ‘I mean, I know the Ten Commandments.’
He raised his eyebrow enquiringly, and she turned away in case he asked her to recite them. The only one she could remember off-hand was the one about not committing adultery. The whole thing was going horribly wrong. She bent down to unlock her bike and to hide her embarrassment.
‘There you are.’ Her tone was almost as flippant as ever. ‘Have I made you late for your prayers, Father?’
He mounted his bike. ‘Lunch, actually.’
‘Wait. Do you belong to some kind of college, or something?’ He grinned at her and cycled off. ‘Hey! Which college? Come back!’ But he was gone.
Isabella stood a long time chewing her hair. Her insides felt raw, as though some meanness in her had been exposed and brought to light. I was only teasing him, she thought. He didn’t have to put up with it. He could have told me to get lost. But the feeling wouldn’t go away. She had always imagined that despite her outrageousness she was essentially an OK sort of person. Now she felt as though there were some vast overshadowing standard she was failing to measure up to.
She climbed on her bike and headed back to college, busy tailoring the incident into an amusing anecdote for Camilla. She was back in her room before she realized she still didn’t know the bastard’s name.
CHAPTER 2
‘I want you to imagine, if you would, a town or city you know well,’ said Muriel. ‘At night,’ she added.
The group obediently shut its eyes. It was four o’clock on Thursday afternoon; Annie’s least favourite time of the week. After a moment’s skirmish with irritation she closed her eyes too, and pictured the town where she had grown up. She was standing on the high street outside the Nonconformist chapel where her father was a deacon. Rain was spotting the puddles on the pavement.
‘The street lights are on,’ continued Muriel’s voice. Well, of course they are, thought Annie crossly. It’s night. She loathed these contemplative exercises. ‘Imagine, now, that you are hovering over this town or city.’ Pleased by this unexpected development, Annie rose up. ‘In a helicopter.’ She bumped down again angrily. Why a helicopter? Annie was capable of crossing the Rockies on a chaise-longue, but loyalty to Muriel made her call up a helicopter. She hovered over the town in the noisy cockpit as the blades chopped round overhead.
‘Approaching High Street, over,’ said the pilot beside her.
‘Proceed to Western Road, over,’ crackled Control. Chop chop chop.
‘It is totally silent,’ said Muriel. Annie tried to stifle the racket. ‘And now I want you to imagine that a figure steps forward from the shadows. You haven’t noticed him or her before.’
Oh, honestly! Annie’s eyes popped open in exasperation. How could anyone conceal themselves in the cockpit of a helicopter? She scanned the group, but no one else seemed to be having difficulty with the idea.
‘The figure says something.’ Annie shut her eyes again.
‘Listen, could you drop me off at that wine bar on Frogmore Street?’ said the figure.
‘And you respond,’ went on Muriel.
Helicopter banks round out of control. ‘Where the bloody hell did you spring from, mate? You nearly gave me a heart attack!’ Annie
spiralled down clutching her seat. We’re going to crash! The hacking of blades filled her head.
‘And now,’ said Muriel, ‘let’s spend about ten or fifteen minutes in silence thinking about this exercise.’
Annie fought the temptation to open her eyes. Most of the time Muriel was a normal middle-aged woman, but under the pressure of preaching or leading a small group she broke out into peculiar stilted gestures a little out of sync with her words as though she were a badly dubbed foreign film. ‘Let’s try to explore, in the silence, what God might be trying to say to us about our calling.’
Annie crossed her legs restlessly. Ideas like God and Calling had long been the staples, the bread and rice of her spiritual diet. But now they seemed more like French black truffles: so hard to get hold of they may as well not exist at all. The time had long passed when she should have gone to talk to a member of staff, or even her bishop, about this. Her self-imposed deadlines came and went: summer, Advent, Christmas. And now Lent was bearing down on her. It was cowardice that held her back, or pride; for although it was not uncommon for people to drop out of their training at Coverdale, Annie could not bear to be one of them. She had put herself forward for the ministry in opposition to her parents. Bad enough to become an Anglican, let alone seek out a role which was in flat contradiction to the Scriptures. A woman could preach (under certain circumstances), but she certainly couldn’t have charge of a congregation. The Bible was quite clear on the subject. And as for wanting to be a priest – well. Where do you read anything about priests in the New Testament? To say nothing of academic theology. What had a bunch of atheist intellectuals got to do with the Word of God? People who studied theology lost their faith. It had been proven time and time again. You see, Anne? We warned you it would happen. The slippery slope.
I really must go and talk to someone, thought Annie. Dr Pollock, the Principal of Coverdale Hall and Jesus College, was a terrifying woman. Annie couldn’t imagine approaching her. David Tuckerman, who was the Warden of Coverdale Hall, was a nice man, but she couldn’t confide in him either. It was his very niceness that made the idea impossible. Her doubts weren’t strong, clean and brave. They were furtive and unpleasant. They were to do with hating church and wanting to get off with an entire rugby team. If this was her biological clock ticking, then it was built like Big Ben.
Annie made an effort to drag herself back to the group. What were they supposed to be pondering? God and Calling. The wrecked helicopter smoked on the street below. A camera crew circled its remains. Annie could make out the shape of a smart young correspondent with a microphone. ‘The cause of this tragic accident hasn’t been established yet.’ An unknown figure stepping out from the shadows and saying something. Who was it? The dark stranger of the tea leaves, for ever in the future waiting to be met. Dark and thin. Intelligent. Intense . . .
‘GOD AND CALLING,’ said Annie firmly to herself. Outside, the cathedral clock struck quarter past four. She wondered if the other members of the group were sitting thinking about sex as well. Perhaps everyone found the session illuminating except her. Her imagination was too finely tuned. It resented being jerked around by other people’s inexpert handling. She had escaped to private worlds of her own for as long as she could remember; places where things didn’t require engines and propellers to make them fly. All you needed was a stiff breeze and you could circumnavigate the globe in Grandma’s bloomers. The problem for Annie was remembering that it was the real world that was real. Half the time the characters in her novel seemed more convincing than the people around her. If she were to run into Barney or Isabella on the riverbank it would be a while before she thought, Just a minute – you’re not supposed to be here.
She opened her eyes and looked round the rest of the group again. There were five of them sitting with her in Dave’s room in Coverdale Hall. On the wall were several batiks – women with waterjars, elephants – which dated back to Dave’s various stints overseas as a voluntary worker. Annie’s eyes twitched away from the colourful squares. They made her think of her ex-fiancé Graham, who was now a missionary in Africa. Eleven years after the event, she could no more remember why she had ditched him than why she had ever got engaged to him in the first place. Well, you’ll end up never getting married if you carry on like this, Anne, said her mother. Right so far. Annie was thirty-one and still single. Her mother hadn’t particularly liked Graham, but women shouldn’t expect too much.
Dave had his eyes shut. He was about thirty as well, but looked younger. Annie sympathized. People were constantly mistaking her for an undergraduate, or worse still, a teenager. It was a serious disadvantage in her chosen profession. The Ten Commandments seemed more like ten diffident hints when she pronounced them. She had been a fairly hopeless teacher, as well; but fortunately she had only ever taught in a polite girls’ private school so she had just about got away with it. The girls had expressed their rebellion in furtive novel-reading and yawns rather than in flying desktops. Dave had grown a beard to disguise his absurdly youthful appearance, but it only made him look like a small boy peeping through a hedge.
Next to him sat Ted Watts, a big gentle man in his fifties. Annie was fond of him, and they shared a lot of silly jokes which nobody else really understood. Their current craze was odd notices seen in shops. ‘This door is alarmed’, was Ted’s latest discovery. Annie was waiting to tell him about the one she had spotted the previous day: ‘Free-range thighs’. Their favourite was on the wall of the local greengrocer’s: ‘The assistants will cut up large cabbages on request.’ Edward could not be brought to see why this was funny.
Annie suspected that she was a surrogate daughter for Ted. His own family had remained down south while he was training, and he seldom saw his wife and two teenage girls except during the vacation. Annie had once been on holiday with them in Northumberland in a cottage owned by a doctor friend of Edward’s. She had spent half the time not having a clue what they were talking about. Years of accumulated jokes, Spoonerisms and varieties of pig Latin made their conversation unintelligible to outsiders. Annie felt doubly left out. Her own family had never enjoyed things that much.
Ted’s large form partially obscured Muriel. Muriel had been a midwife before coming to Coverdale, and she still wore one of those little upside-down nurse’s watches pinned to her front, although her bosom was a mantelpiece worthy of a carriage clock at least. Annie couldn’t see her face, but her hands were visible, palm-upwards on her knees, cupped as though waiting to receive something. Julian of Norwich’s hazelnut, perhaps.
On the opposite side of the room from Annie sat Isobel. Without Isobel around Annie would have qualified as a jolly attractive woman by Coverdale standards. Isobel was tall and willowy and blonde. Annie was only of medium height and build, with round brown eyes, dark rusty brown hair and freckles. Isobel could sit on her long silky tresses, but Annie had had to reconcile herself to the fact that the only way she was ever going to be able to sit on her own hair was if she cut it all off and stuffed a cushion with it. She had been growing it for two years and it was still only shoulder length. It was coarse and bushy and why didn’t she get herself a decent haircut? She looked a mess, said Mother.
Annie could not like Isobel. She wrestled dutifully with her failure, calling to mind all those helpful sermons she had heard on the subject. Christian love – agape – was not a matter of human emotion. It was an act of will. You could love someone by God’s grace without actually liking them. Annie applied herself to the task as though Isobel were the spiritual equivalent of having to eat school cabbage. They ought to have been friends, since they were the only two young single women in their year at Coverdale, but Isobel was so cool and distant. People were a little scared of her. She would put a headmistress-like menace into the Ten Commandments: ‘Any individuals caught breaking them and spoiling it for everyone else will be severely punished.’ Isobel lacked something. An earthy streak, perhaps; a raunchy sense of humour. This was precisely what Annie had bestowed on her
when she took hold of Isobel and put her into her novel as Isabella’s friend Camilla.
Annie glanced at her watch. Surely fifteen minutes were up? She suppressed her rising annoyance. If she’d had any sense she would have boycotted the sessions as Edward had. He couldn’t bear open-agenda groups, either because of his temperament or as a result of all those years in the Army. He had walked out way back in their first term, muttering that it was a complete bloody waste of time and he had an essay to do. The rest of them had sat asking, ‘How do we feel about Edward’s actions? We feel hurt, rejected.’ No, we don’t. We feel jealous, thought Annie. We wish we had his nerve.
It would have been nice, once in a while, to feel that the fault lay out there in other people, in the system, and not in her sinful heart. A woman’s place is in the wrong, as Annie’s mother was fond of saying whenever she considered herself unfairly accused (which was any time anyone accused her). Annie felt that although there were three women in her immediate family – herself, her elder sister and their mother – the task of being in the wrong always seemed to fall to her. Both her mother and sister were constitutionally unable to be wrong about anything, so whenever someone put empty milk bottles back in the fridge or squeezed the toothpaste in the middle, it always had to be Anne. If anything got lost or broken: Anne. Windows open, doors unlocked, lights left on: Anne. Yes, everyone knew that when something was amiss in the Brown household, stupid, inconsiderate, spendthrift, clumsy old Anne had to be behind it.
Annie had grown up never knowing what her next offence would be. She was always trying to apologize and placate in advance. And over everything lay the long shadow of the Cross. The death of a loving saviour for which she was personally responsible. ‘And I want you to know, boys and girls,’ the preacher might say, ‘that even if you were the only sinner in the whole world, Jesus would have come to die for you. That’s how much God loves you. He sent his only son to die in your place. And if there’s any boy or girl here today who hasn’t asked the Lord Jesus into their heart, I want you to do it now.’ By the time she was seven, Annie must have asked the Lord Jesus into her heart about fifty times; as though Jesus spent his time dithering on the threshold, doing a kind of spiritual hokey-cokey – right foot in, right foot out, in, out, in, out . . .
The Benefits of Passion Page 2
