The Benefits of Passion

by Catherine Fox

  By the time they reached his house a fatal awkwardness seemed to have descended. They took off their wet jeans and bundled them into the washing machine. Annie giggled at the absurdity of bare legs in the kitchen and was almost relieved when he led her upstairs to his bedroom. They undressed and began kissing. This is hopeless, she thought, after a while. We should have done it on the beach. His confidence seemed to have abandoned him. She reached down timidly to caress him. He thrust her aside, sat up and to her dismay began to call down a string of vile medical curses on his impotent flesh.

  ‘Don’t, Will.’ She placed a hand on his arm, but he flung it off again. ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘It’s not OK!’ he raged.

  A nursery rhyme flitted improperly through her mind. My master’s lost his fiddling stick, and doesn’t know what to do! She giggled. There was a horrible silence. She stared into his wild eyes, appalled at what she had done. He grabbed his dressing gown and stormed out of the room.

  Oh, no! Annie sat frozen in dismay. She hadn’t really been laughing at him. It was nerves. She sat on the bed dithering, knowing she must go and apologize yet terrified of his anger. Go on, she urged herself. It was unforgivable to laugh at such a moment. The poor man. She wrapped a blanket round herself and crept after him.

  He was sitting in the kitchen pale with rage. Another giggle trembled in her.

  ‘Look, Will, I’m really sorry. Couldn’t we try again? Please? It doesn’t matter if –’

  ‘Don’t you patronize me,’ he spat.

  She flinched. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I’m sorry. Can’t I . . . um, do anything to – to . . .’

  He sat biting his lip. Gradually his expression grew less wild. ‘You could always kiss it better,’ he muttered. For a moment she didn’t catch his meaning.

  ‘Oh! I . . .’ She hesitated.

  He was waiting, raw from his recent humiliation, poised to take further offence. Now wasn’t the time to say she’d never done this before.

  The tiles were cold under her knees. She felt him pulse to life between her shrinking lips. The washing machine was still threshing away. She was trying not to gag and offend him. Rain spattered against the window. He groaned and his hands began to stroke her hair. Perhaps one day she might grow to like it, this strange mixture of power and vulnerability, of tenderness and disgust. He was whimpering her name. Then he was hauling her off him.

  ‘Lie down,’ he whispered urgently. Her back cringed against the cold tiles. He parted her legs. She clung to him and waited.

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ!’

  ‘Will!’

  ‘I can’t do it!’ he sobbed. ‘I can’t do it!’ He wrenched away from her. His face was distorted with rage, hatred. ‘It’s you. You’re unfuckable. I need a woman, not some giggling fucking schoolgirl. Get out. Get your clothes and get out!’

  She listened to his footsteps pounding up the stairs.

  God stood there like her mother spitting in triumph. Well, you got what was coming to you, Anne Brown. I just hope you’ve learnt your lesson.

  She got up off the floor and wrapped the blanket tightly round her, clutching it under her chin. Tears streamed down her cheeks. The machine began its spin cycle. I can’t go till it’s finished. She sat huddled in the blanket like an accident victim beside a road, waiting, trembling. He hates me. I should never never have come here. At last the machine came to a stop. She tried to pull her jeans out but they were tangled with his. Her fingers were too weak to free them. A sob escaped. He was upstairs having a shower. She could hear the water running.

  She sat down again and clutched the blanket. Her mind reached out to God, pleading, but he turned away. I’m busy. It’s your own fault, Anne. You’ve got to realize I’ve got better things to do with my time than run around after you . . . On and on went the voice.

  I shouldn’t have laughed.

  She could hear him coming back. Her hand tried desperately to smooth her hair.

  ‘Your clothes,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks.’ She took the bundle from him. He wouldn’t even look at her, just bent and turned the washing-machine dial. The drying cycle began. Annie heard the soft clatter of jeans rivets against the drum.

  He picked up a bottle of whisky and left the room. A moment later she heard the television. Rugby. Crowds roaring, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, the commentator’s voice rising and falling. Ordinary Saturday noises. Washing machine, rain on the window, sport on the television.

  She made herself get dressed. The jeans tumbled round and round. She was watching herself staring at them. It will end. It will end. She hadn’t known a man’s face could look like that. She had never been hated before.

  I should never have laughed at him. Time crept by. You’re unfuckable. Unfuckable.

  There was a soft slump and final rattle as the machine stopped. Silence. ‘But the linesman’s flag is up . . .’ She fought her jeans free of his and pulled them on, feeling the buttons burning her stomach. For a moment she stood looking around as though there was something else she had come with but mislaid. Her coat was in the hall. He heard her and came out of the sitting room.

  ‘I’m just going.’

  He shrugged. They stood. Behind him she glimpsed the television. The rugby was over. Players were being carried shoulder high through the crowds, but she couldn’t tell who had won. The whisky fumes on his breath reached her, and among them another smell, something from her childhood. She couldn’t identify it.

  They hesitated, neither seeming to know how they should part. Then she heard her voice foolishly thanking him.

  ‘Thanks? For what?’ She cowered back from him. ‘Oh, just fuck off, Annie.’

  As she hurried through the rainy streets towards the station she remembered what that smell had been. Johnson’s baby shampoo. She started crying again.

  CHAPTER 13

  The ten days of term that remained were among the worst of Annie’s life. The numb shock wore off to expose an ache of misery. She felt too bruised and sick for other people’s company, their laughter, jokes and worried looks. And yet to be alone was worse. If only she could get her mother’s voice out of her head she might have a chance of straightening things out with God, who was, after all, slow to anger and of infinite mercy. But whenever she tried to repent another tirade burst out. Oh, ‘sorry’ is all very well, Anne Brown. You should have thought about that before you went off to a strange man’s house. What did you expect, I should like to know? I don’t know why you thought you’d be any good at sex. You’re not much good at anything, are you? You can’t blame him, you know.

  Her appetite dwindled and she couldn’t sleep properly. The growing anxiety of her friends forced her to invent a mild but lingering bout of flu. This provoked a great deal of concerned advice, and one day at breakfast, when for the fifth time Edward had ordered her to go to the doctor’s, she could stand no more. They had stared after her in surprise as she rushed out of the dining room almost in tears. She tried to take refuge in her novel, but her characters and their lives seemed unbearably trivial.

  She made herself go over every detail of that awful afternoon. How could she have been so stupid, so cruel as to laugh? Of course he was furious. Any man would be. No wonder he hated her. There was nobody she could confide in. No one to advise her whether to apologize, or to steer well clear of him. Oh, if only I knew what to do! Sometimes she wondered if he would make some move, but then his horrible words would burst afresh into her mind. You’re unfuckable. And his expression as he said it. She had never really fallen out with anyone before. She’d always been too placating and timid to bear being even vaguely at odds with someone. And now this awful crushing mortifying . . . Her only hope was that she would gradually get over it.

  The days passed. She made herself carry on with her routines for the sake of her friends. Chapel, meals, study, sleep. Her world seemed dead. There was no Libby bounding along at her heels. Occasionally she caught sight of her reflection in windows and saw how gaunt she was l
ooking. No wonder they were all worried about her. They had tackled her one after another in their different ways. If she hadn’t felt so wretched she might have been amused by their different tactics. Ted seemed to be holding back, but in the end even he came knocking on her door.

  ‘It’s not crossing the sea that makes a missionary,’ was his opening remark. Annie stared. ‘But . . . ?’ he prompted. The penny dropped.

  ‘But seeing the cross.’ She felt herself smile for the first time in days. A new Ted Watts game. ‘The heart of the human problem is . . . ?’

  ‘The problem of the human heart. That’s an old one, Annie. Come on. Let’s go out for a wander. It’s a lovely mild evening.’

  They walked arm in arm down across the old bridge. Annie heard a blackbird singing and noticed that the buds were swelling.

  ‘Soon be spring,’ said Ted.

  ‘Mm.’ The evidence was there, yet she didn’t have the heart to believe it. They began walking along the riverbank with Ted steering round the muddy puddles because of his open-toed sandals. Before long they came to a bench with a view of the cathedral rising up above the trees on the steep bank and reflected in the river below. They sat and listened to the rushing of the weir. Annie wondered if Ted’s tactic was simply to allow her the chance to confide if she wanted to. This had been Isobel’s approach over a polite cup of lapsang earlier in the week.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said at last. ‘One day we’ll be dead and it’ll all be over. That’s what I generally tell my girls when they’re making themselves miserable over some heartless male.’

  Annie’s heart jolted. Was this just a shot in the dark or did he know something? ‘And what do they generally reply?’

  ‘“Push off, you horrible old man.”’

  Annie felt herself smile again. They didn’t know how lucky they were, having a father like Ted. She pushed her hands up the opposite sleeves of her coat and gripped her wrists. If only she had a big cuddly dad she could fling herself at. Daddy, he was horrible to me and I want to die! Annie watched the water rolling over the edge in a glassy curl, then surging and frothing below.

  ‘You can tell me to push off, too, if you like,’ he offered.

  ‘Oh, Ted.’ Her hands gripped tighter. ‘It’s just that . . . There’s really nothing to say.’

  ‘I suppose there isn’t,’ he agreed. ‘Apart from the usual truisms, like there being plenty more salmon in the loch.’

  Heavens – does he think it’s Edward? ‘I expect salmon’s a bit posh for me,’ she said, to encourage this idea.

  ‘Well, unless it’s tinned salmon in a white bap with salad cream,’ said Ted. He gave her a friendly hug and she leant her head against his shoulder. The light was fading. A tear slid down her cheek and grew cold.

  ‘Do you still want to come on holiday with us?’ he asked, after a moment.

  To William’s cottage. She felt another tremor of fear that Ted knew more than he was saying. ‘If that’s all right with you.’

  ‘Of course. I wasn’t sure you were up to a week with the Watts family.’

  ‘Well, I coped last year.’

  ‘So you did.’ There was another silence. Annie watched the water. ‘Edward said he might look in.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Penny and the girls call him Edward “Crunch” Hunter, because you can hear the hearts breaking as he enters a room.’

  Annie laughed out loud, perhaps a little too spontaneously for one of Edward’s supposed victims.

  After another small pause Ted added casually, ‘He was talking about bringing that doctor friend of his.’

  ‘Yes. He said.’ He knows. There was a long silence. The water rushed on and on. Ted was warning her and giving her the chance to pull out of the holiday. Oh, why don’t you just tell him? she urged herself. But he probably thought she was suffering from unrequited love. The squalid truth would shock him. She couldn’t bear the thought of him drawing back in disapproval. The cathedral clock chimed and they roused themselves.

  When they arrived in college the stairs were shuddering as Edward came crashing down three at a time. He bounded up to them.

  ‘Taking a break from my sermon prep,’ he boomed. ‘Evangelistic talk on the Ten Lepers. Can’t seem to get enough oomph into it.’ Annie saw his eyes darting between her and Ted, wondering if there had been some important breakthrough on the Annie front.

  ‘Well, Edward,’ said Ted, ‘I’m afraid that if you can’t put fire into your sermon . . .’

  You’d better put your sermon into the fire, thought Annie with a giggle.

  Edward’s face lit up. ‘That sounds like the old Annie.’ He crushed her briefly into his guernsey. ‘Why don’t we all head for the bar?’

  Annie woke the next day feeling that her misery had eased a fraction. Perhaps she would never understand why things had gone so disastrously wrong with William. After moving so long in Christian circles where people aspired to forgiveness, the lack of reconciliation was hard to endure. But she would have to learn to live with it. At least she had friends who cared about her.

  She was considering this as she leafed through the post in the B pigeon-hole. This was always a potentially amusing occupation, as there was also an Anthony Brown training at Coverdale. All kinds of jolly mix-ups could occur when things arrived addressed to A. Brown. Here, for instance, was a challenge. It was probably for Anthony, as Annie didn’t recognize the writing. And what appalling writing it was. Someone – a desperate postman, perhaps – had written ‘try Coverdale Hall’ beside the scrawled address. Was that a Mr or a Ms? Impossible to tell. The postmark was smudged. She put it back. Anthony would probably recognize it at a glance as a note from a senile uncle, or something. Unless – She snatched the letter back and peered again at the postmark. Did it say Bishopside? Doctors were famed for their atrocious handwriting. Oh, whatever shall I do? The crime of violating Anthony’s mail could not possibly outweigh the risk of him intercepting a letter from William. She tucked the letter up her sleeve and fled back to her room. She could always apologize later.

  It contained a single sheet. She stared in dismay, unable to read a word of it. Come on, Miss Brown. You were a teacher. You’re good at deciphering scrawls. But no overdue third-form essay written on the school bus compared with this. The signature began with a W, but beyond that, nothing was definite. Even the date was illegible. A hasty jagged script with the pen never leaving the paper. It looked like the cardiograph of a mad spider. She squinted and held it at arm’s length. Dear A-scribble. It was hopeless. She let out a laughing sob and pushed the letter into her desk drawer before she burst into tears. It might say anything from ‘Sorry. Please get in touch’, to ‘Fuck off out of my life for ever’.

  ‘Dad, you’ve blocked off the double word score!’ cried Hayley.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Ted. He rearranged the letters on a different bit of the board. Annie and the rest of the Watts family craned round. FLAIMO. They were playing neological Scrabble on the fourth evening of their holiday. ‘It’s an upper-class lawn-mower,’ explained Ted. Annie stared at her letters, then added PLONG to the board.

  ‘That’s the sound you get when you play a piano with a fork,’ she said. Beside her Ted’s younger daughter was humming thoughtfully as she fiddled with her tiles. Suddenly a great shout went up from the others.

  ‘Ten p! Ten p!’

  ‘I wasn’t!’ protested Lisa.

  ‘Yes, you were!’ said Penny, rattling a Bible Society collecting box at her. ‘“Take Time to be Holy.” We all heard you.’

  ‘Hah!’ said Lisa. She posted a coin into the slot. The Watts family levied fines not only for profanity but also for piety. That week there were particular penalties for singing hymns from Sankey and Moody’s Sacred Songs and Solos. Unfortunately for Annie these were familiar from her chapel childhood and she had paid a small fortune into the Sankey box. The tunes had an infuriating habit of lodging themselves in her brain for days at a time. Take time to be holy, speak oft with thy Lord!r />
  The holiday had gone a long way towards restoring her peace of mind. Perhaps it was the combination of lunatic Watts company and breathtaking scenery. When the game of Scrabble was over and the others were absorbed in different occupations, Annie got out her notebook to see if she was equal to Barney and Isabella yet.

  She read over the passage about Barney’s ordination and Isabella’s conversion and sighed. It seemed glib, and she had meant it to be so moving. To hear God’s voice saying, You’re accepted, she thought. What could surpass the joy? ‘That sweet “well done” in judgement hour’, as the hymn put it. Her eyes filled with tears. She had been starved of approval all her life, and longed to hear her Maker saying, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’ It wouldn’t happen. She was nothing but a failure. Even her little attempt at fornication had failed. And there was Isabella, silly worldly Isabella, skipping with a wiggle of her hips into salvation. The novel was too lightweight. Barney was supposed to be a good solid evangelical – a bit like Edward, perhaps – but he seemed to be coming out as a complete pagan. In her mind she had all the details of his spiritual life worked out. She knew how he prayed, how he agonized over Isabella and their relationship, but none of this had made it on to the page. It was a bit of a busman’s holiday, writing about faith. She feared it was horribly telling that she could write more easily about sex than spirituality. Well, perhaps she could come back to it and weave it in later.

  While she was pondering this Ted’s daughters were playing some game which involved looking things up in the dictionary and hooting with laughter. They were speaking rapidly in their own private and very complicated pig Latin. Even Ted and Penny admitted they were baffled by it. Annie watched them as they giggled and flung their long shiny hair back off their faces. She had taught plenty of nice fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds like them. It was pleasant to be a companion rather than (groan) Miss Brown.

  ‘Grasshopper!’ wailed Lisa. They were weeping with laughter.

  ‘We’re doing this for you, Annie,’ gasped Hayley. ‘Just wait. You’ll love it.’ Annie smiled and returned to her notebook. Suddenly she had no stomach for her characters and their easy lives. She put the book aside and sat gazing blankly at the chimney breast until, at length, she was distracted by Hayley who was waving a sheet of paper at her.