The Accidental Woman Part 3

'I miss him.'

Strangely, they continued to talk for many more hours, until ten o'clock, in fact. Bobby then realized that he had had nothing to eat.

'Is there a chip shop near here?' he asked.

Maria gave him the necessary directions.

'Aren't you coming?'

'No. I'm not hungry.'

'You look tired. Why don't you go to bed?'

'I might.'

Bobby borrowed his sister's front door key, and left. Maria, meanwhile, decided to take advantage of his absence by listening to some music. It might be her only chance to enjoy the blackness and the solitude. You should not a.s.sume from this that she resented Bobby's visit. On the contrary, as she made her preparations for bed that night, washing, undressing, choosing the tape, she did so in the consciousness of an unaccustomed warmth, a wholly unexpected rediscovering of kinship. But she was still reluctant to relinquish her midnight treat, the enjoyment of which had become increasingly important to her, now that her relations with Anthea and f.a.n.n.y had deteriorated, and now that the attentions of Winifred had intensified her need to feel capable of self-reliance. When she listened to Bach, alone, and saw nothing, these people ceased to exist. She suspected that Bobby would not understand this process, and besides, it would not work if there were somebody else in the room. So she listened, for about half an hour, to the first and second violin part.i.tas, and then she fell asleep.

She was awoken by the sound of her bedroom door opening, and by light from the landing. It was Bobby.

'h.e.l.lo,' he whispered.

'h.e.l.lo,' said Maria. 'I must have fallen asleep.'

Sleepily she looked at her clock. It was four-thirty.

The next morning, as Bobby was toasting bread at the electric fire, Maria said: 'I had a very strange dream last night. I dreamt I was asleep, and then you woke me up by coming in, and I looked at my clock, and it was half past four.'

Bobby chuckled.

'What are you laughing at?'

'What happened after that?'

'I can't remember,' said Maria. 'What time did you come in last night? I never heard you.'

Bobby laughed again.

'That was no dream.'

'Oh Bobby, don't tease me. You can't possibly have been out that late. What time was it? I must have gone to sleep very quickly.'

'I was out,' said Bobby, 'until twenty past four. Your clock is ten minutes fast.'

Maria was both confused and alarmed.

'But where were you? What happened? What was wrong?'

Bobby laughed again, quietly and at length.

'One day, Maria,' he said, 'I shall tell you where I went last night. One day.'

'Never mind one day. Tell me now,' said Maria angrily.

Bobby shook his head, and kept his secret, for the time being. He stayed for two more days, cold, happy days. It was a windy afternoon when Maria said goodbye to him at the station. The sun kept making abortive efforts to penetrate dense banks of fast-moving cloud. The train was late, they stood chatting and holding hands, it grew warmer and less windy, and still Bobby would not explain. As his waving hand dwindled, Maria felt a sudden surge of loneliness. And then the sun really came out.

5. Last Days.

Of all the Oxford days which Maria ever looked back on, she remembered none so clearly or with so much pain as a blazing summer's day at the end of her last term. It was a wasted day, an unhappy day, a very beautiful day in some respects. It started, as far as Maria's memory and therefore as far as we are concerned, in the afternoon. Armed only with a copy of poems by Baudelaire, which she had no intention of reading, she stationed herself on a bench, beneath a tree, opposite the main entrance to one of the men's colleges. It was astonishingly hot, and had been for about a week, the heat was beginning to have that weighty feel which means that a storm is not far off. It weighed her down, supplemented internally by the heat of anxiety and of desire. Her heart pounded, as hearts do at such moments, and in such situations, not an unpleasant feeling as long as it doesn't happen too often, more than once every few weeks, for example. In this position, which she varied only in a small way as we shall see, she waited for five hours, during which time she reflected haphazardly on the circ.u.mstances, the feelings and former incidents, which had brought her to this pretty pa.s.s. She did not recall them in chronological order, she did not so much recall them at all; in fact, it would be truer to say that they a.s.saulted her, but we shall record them chronologically, for the reader's benefit.

She had first met Stephen shortly after waving goodbye to her brother at Oxford station, all those months ago. Maria was short of friends at the time. Her tutorial partner, a girl called Madeline, had noticed this and, being a horse of a different colour from those which inhabited Cribbage House, she had taken pity, what's more in quite a useful way. She had recognized immediately that there could be no real sympathy between Maria and herself, and so, rather than making an extravagant show of friendship, she had simply taken the trouble, over a number of weeks, to introduce Maria to most of her friends in the hope that some of them would like her, and that she, in turn, would like some of them. And indeed both of these hopes were, to a modest extent, realized, so that Maria needed no longer to be short of company on those days when she ventured into the city. She never took full advantage of this fact, it is true. For instance, she would never have called on one of these friends uninvited. But if she were to meet one of them by chance she would by no means hasten away, she would linger and talk, perhaps for a long time.

Of these new friends Maria had a particular favourite, whose name was Stephen. After waving goodbye to Bobby she had hurried off to her afternoon tutorial, and after her afternoon tutorial she had been invited back to Madeline's room, for a light tea, and also, did she but know it, for the opportunity to meet Stephen. Maria and Stephen had not got on, initially. She had thought him furtive, and he had thought her unfriendly, although both were wrong. In Maria's experience, boys either disliked her at once, or liked her at once, and if they liked her they would convert this liking, not knowing what else to do with it, into moonstruck love, droopy hangdog moody wide-eyed romantic s...o...b..ring, and if this emotion was not immediately reciprocated, which understandably enough it never was, they would adopt the absurd posture of the injured suitor, absurd enough in itself but fifty times more so if adopted within minutes of clapping eyes on the admired object. Now Stephen was very reticent with her at first, and so Maria a.s.sumed that this reticence had its origins in this same process, why after all should he be any different, and consequently she designated it with the word furtive, whereas in fact his only feelings towards her had been confusion, and an incipient liking which he had not known how to act upon. But Maria shortly came to realize her mistake. Meanwhile he had mistaken her distrust, her weariness, her abstraction and strange inner awareness of both loss and gain after the last two days with Bobby, all for unfriendliness. An inauspicious start, wouldn't you say. And yet out of this misunderstanding had grown a bond, and, on Maria's part at least, out of this bond had grown the stirrings of an attraction and an admiration so strong that they soon came to dominate her life and to seem, basically, a bit of a nuisance. At the same time she felt very happy, happier than she had done for months or even years, and it was a timeless happiness, too, free from the complications described in Chapter Three. It was qualified by one factor only, which was that she was not at all certain, she had no concrete evidence whatsoever, that Stephen returned her love. (And just when I was thinking that we could get away without using the word.) Maria's love for Stephen (in for a penny) bore little relation to her love for Nigel. They never went to bed together. They never kissed. These were not Maria's decisions, she would have done both, simultaneously for preference. But at the same time she felt that it made a nice change not to do these things, it gave her a sense of independence to think that she could love without seeking routine satisfactions. Stephen himself never mentioned the matter. Occasionally Maria wondered whether he found her unattractive, or whether he was h.o.m.os.e.xual, or frigid, but more often she was happy to let things continue as they were. She had never had any use for wiles, the little feminine wiles in which it was considered by some indispensable to be adept. Charlotte, for instance, had found her att.i.tude in this respect particularly hard to understand. You will never get anywhere, Maria, she had said once, until you learn to practise the ways, the little feminine wiles and ways by which we of the weaker s.e.x are able to exercise our authority. Little gestures, Maria, and little actions, which render men helpless, which turn them to putty in our hands. These had turned out to be, in ascending order of effectiveness, the fluttering of the eyelashes, the crossing of the legs, and the sucking of the p.e.n.i.s. Maria was not impressed by this advice and had never acted upon it. She felt that it would be wrong, apart from anything else, to force upon Stephen attentions and pressures which he had not invited. She was happy already, and did not want to jeopardize her happiness.

Although I have, in this context, used the word happy (three times, not counting various derivatives), I have not, as you may have noticed, used the word content, and there is a good reason for this, namely that it denotes, does it not, a placid state of mind, and according to this definition Maria was not at all content, and was well aware of the fact, in lucid moments anyway. She was content to be in love with Stephen, she was content not to go to bed with him, but she was not by any means content not to know whether he was in love with her. Indeed torment would be a more useful concept to invoke than content, when describing the state of mind or, for that matter, of heart, into which this uncertainty had thrown Maria. Simply to know, as a matter of incontestable truth, that he did not love her, would have been much better than not to have a clue one way or the other. Her uncertainty led her into every manner of peculiar behaviour, for, in the absence of any definite information to the contrary, one half of her believed Stephen to be in love with her, and acted accordingly, whereas the other half held her back, and would not let her carry through to their conclusion actions which half of her patently craved. On such occasions her behaviour was, therefore, essentially that of a madwoman. And this afternoon, the one I am about to describe, was itself one such occasion.

There had been others, many others. Days when she had waited outside Stephen's college, knowing what time he was most likely to emerge in order to meet an appointment or an engagement, and had then followed him through the street, debating always within herself whether to approach him and to feign surprise, as if they had met by chance. Sometimes Maria could be very foolish. She knew that if Stephen ever found out about this behaviour, he would consider it incomprehensible, and might stop loving her, or might never start loving her, or might even stop liking her. Yes, might even stop liking her. But that didn't stop her doing it. There was one time which kept coming back to her, as she sat waiting outside his college that hot afternoon, it came back to her in fragments, glimpses insistent in form and character, always the same, but this is not how I shall narrate it.

It had been another warm afternoon, uncomfortably warm, but worth it for the lovely cool into which she had stepped as soon as she entered the chapel. She walked softly, her shoes echoing on the slabs, and sat unnoticed at the end of a pew, two rows from the back. The chapel was empty, except for the organ loft, where Stephen and his music teacher were having a lesson. Maria knew that Stephen had an organ lesson at this time in the afternoon, and had come to the chapel for this very reason, to listen to him as he played. It was the first time she had ever done so, and also the last, the memory being, as far as she could see, more important than the experience. It, the memory, came to take on a peculiar texture, composed largely in the end of visual rather than aural elements. Even now she felt a shudder, perhaps of pleasure, perhaps of pain, at the thought of the scene as her mind's and her remembrance's eye had between them framed it, the pale glowing tetragon of sunlight on the slabs, the shaft of sunlight connecting this figure to her nearest window, the dustclouds dancing before her, the shade around, and the soft, insistent music, to which Maria hardly listened, at least in her usual way, but which might have spoken to her of regretful acceptance, if she had been interested in that sort of conjecture. Now: irony coming up. The music, as far as Maria was concerned, was Stephen's. It was he who made it, and filled the chapel with it, it was he alone who was humanly responsible for the sound of those moments, for the sound which her world made, in other words, during that time. This was how she liked to look at it, and this was at the heart of all that day's worth. But to tell the truth, never a bad thing to do occasionally even in a novel, it had not been Stephen playing the organ at all, in this instance, for his teacher, exasperated beyond measure by the hopelessness of his performance, had taken over and played the whole prelude without stopping, as a demonstration of how it should be done. Maria did not know this. But her inaccurate memory meant much more to her than our knowledge of the facts can ever mean to us, so we needn't feel superior.

Since it was now approaching the end of their time at Oxford, things were getting desperate, from Ronny's point of view. None of his proposals of marriage had yet obtained a favourable response, in spite of the fact that he had increased their delivery to the rate of one a day. He had, of course, found out about Stephen. Ever since making the discovery, about six weeks ago, he had been the victim of an insane jealousy. What Maria never knew, when she followed Stephen through the streets of Oxford, the two halves of herself frantically debating whether or not to approach him, was that Ronny, more often than not, would be following her, frantically debating within himself (one cannot talk in terms of halves with regard to Ronny, eighths would be nearer the mark) whether to accost Maria, and charge her with her infidelity, or whether to accost Stephen, and confront him with his treachery, or whether to leave well alone. No decision was every arrived at, because he always lost them sooner or later. Ronny would have made a useless spy. But he knew all about their movements, he was well acquainted with the strange fascination which this quiet young man exerted, oblivious, over Maria. That was why, as Maria sat beneath the spreading tree, watching the entrance to Stephen's college, Ronny sat at the window of a nearby cafe, watching Maria through a pair of stolen opera gla.s.ses. He never once moved, except to order more cups of tea, his consumption of which soon ran into dozens, and to go to the lavatory, which he had to do more than he would have liked. At all other moments, his eyes were fixed on his prey. He sat sideways on his chair, poised to leap up should she make the slightest movement. He had no other idea than to follow her wherever she went.

This gave Ronny the edge over Maria, with respect to ideas. For she had not yet decided, had not really considered, for that matter, what she would do if and when Stephen emerged into the sunlight. We can only conclude, in fact, that she had not given either the motives or the consequences of her behaviour the slightest thought. Otherwise, how can we account for its absurdity? An absurdity apparent to everyone but Maria, apparent even to the pa.s.sers-by who stared and shook their heads at the spectacle of her yearning vigilance. The best we can do is to surmise. Her course of action would probably have been to have hidden behind the tree, until he pa.s.sed, and then to have called out, in an accent of surprise, Oh, h.e.l.lo, Stephen. And what she would have done after that is anybody's guess, for it would have depended entirely upon his response, and what his response would have been is n.o.body's business. I have enough difficulty predicting Maria's behaviour, without bothering about his. From this quagmire of speculation, however, one fact can be retrieved. This is that it was essential, for Maria, that the encounter should seem to be unplanned. Explain that if you can. Perhaps she thought that Stephen might be disposed to interpret a chance meeting as the sign of fate's intervention, and would thereby conclude that he and Maria were made for one another, or something like that. Or perhaps she wanted to be in command of the situation, and felt that the odds were better if it were only she who knew the circ.u.mstances by which it had come about. Perhaps (getting warmer) she did not want him to know how desperately she had wanted to see him again. Perhaps, therefore, we can explain the whole daft phenomenon by reference to a certain vice, five letters, beginning with p and ending with e, not entirely unconnected with a certain unfortunate incident which took place in a certain garden, shortly after the dawn of time, if you can remember that far back. There is obviously a very wholesome lesson to be drawn from this. Maria might have spared herself a great deal of unhappiness, it's hard to say exactly how much, no more than a lifetime's worth at the most. Anyway, guesswork can only go so far.

Part of Maria's foolishness can be traced to the fact that her relationship with Stephen had recently drawn to a climax of aching ambiguity. It was the end of term and he was going away the next day, not home, but away, far away, to China, in fact, where he was to take up a teaching job. He would have gone earlier, but he had to stay in Oxford for a viva, that very afternoon, Maria didn't know when exactly, which is why she was waiting outside his college all afternoon, for she knew that his route lay that way. The previous evening, alone together, in a bar, they had talked about his journey, he with a mixture of apprehension and excitement, she with a mixture of anguish and misery, neither of which he noticed, in his apprehension and excitement. Oh, but they had come so close, so very close, to a declaration of shared feelings. There had been moments when their hands had nearly touched, and their eyes had nearly met, and after that it might all have been plain sailing, love offered and reciprocated, nothing new really but it seems to mean a lot to the people involved. It never quite happened. I shall miss you, Stephen, she had said. I shall miss you, Maria, he had said, with emphasis on the 'you'. Would you like me to come with you? Maria never said this, although she wanted to say it, she was dying to say it. I would like you to come with me. He had never said that either, although perhaps he too wanted to say it, but didn't, out of shyness. Well, I suppose this is it. That's what he did say, as they stood out in the dark after closing time and said goodbye. Maria now came close, very close, to asking her question, but all she had managed was to falter, If there's anything you want, before you go. Yes, he had asked, when she tailed off. You know my number, she said. You know my number.

She had not slept that night, or listened to music.

Maria waited for five hours outside Stephen's college. After one and a half hours, he had left for his viva by a back route, known only to members, and after another hour he had returned, the same way. He had then spent three hours packing, and had left for the station, by the front route, but by then Maria herself had left, in despair, and slightly p.i.s.sed off with the whole business. And Maria chose to get up and leave, as it happened, at a time when Ronny was in the lavatory, so he neither saw her go nor knew where she went. The afternoon had not worked out too well all round.

It was a clammy summer evening. Maria wandered carelessly. She tried to hear Stephen's music again, in her mind, she played it back as an accompaniment to the fading busy life all around her. She sobbed, who wouldn't, but most of all she chided herself for the waste, the senseless anxiety she had inflicted that afternoon. All the long evening she lay by the river, tired, angry, waiting for the light to die once and for all. Then she walked home (for want of a better word. And, indeed, for want of a better place).

On arriving at Cribbage House, she was met by the sight of f.a.n.n.y slowly and silently carving grooves in the kitchen table with the bread knife. Maria looked in, withdrew, crossed the dark hallway and began to climb the stairs. But she was stopped by a voice, f.a.n.n.y's voice, f.a.n.n.y who had not spoken to her since their fight over the watch.

'Maria.'

Maria halted, turned.

'Yes?'

'A man rang.'

Maria came down one step.

'When?'

'I can't remember.'

'Did he give his name?'

'No.'

'Did he leave a message?'

'No.'

She watched her face for signs of malevolence, and saw none. Not wishing to cry in front of f.a.n.n.y, Maria ascended the stairs quickly. Her bedroom door slammed.

She was awoken at about three in the morning by the sound of thunder. The storm had broken. Sleepily she listened to the rain battering her window, and the periodic crashes, forgetful in her drowse of the unhappiness which had so recently descended on her. No glimpse of the lightning was admitted by the thick, dark blue curtains, but soon Maria, impatient of this deprivation, got up from her mattress and threw them open. Then she sat by the window and watched the rivers of rain coursing down the gla.s.s, and the huge blue garish streaks splitting the sky. Sitting there, strangely frightened and fascinated, she must finally have fallen asleep again, because she felt a sudden jerk of consciousness and an instinctive sense of time lapsed when she first heard the sound of familiar feminine fists banging on her door. She swore silently but went to admit Winifred at once, knowing well that resistance was futile.

She had expected to see a smiling face, to be subjected to a shrill torrent of praise for the splendour of the storm and the proof which it afforded of G.o.d's majesty. But Winifred was very quiet, very solemn as she entered the room, wordless, and stood gravely by the fireplace, her head bowed. She was also very wet, and cold. Maria fetched a blanket from a drawer, and draped it around her shoulders, but she seemed hardly to notice.

'Maria 'she began at last, and then stopped.

'Is anything the matter?'

'Yes,' she faltered. 'At least I think there is. Maria, you must advise me, you must tell me what you think. I think I think I may have done a bad thing.'

'Can't you remember? Aren't you sure?'

'I know I did it. I know that. But I want you to tell me, whether you think I did the right thing, or the wrong thing.'

There was a pause for thunder.

'Well, you'd better tell me what it is.'

'There was this man, you see. A young man, I should think just a little bit older than us. He came up to me in the street, and well, I killed him.'

Maria was for some reason speechless.

'Well, what do you think? Is that a bad thing... to have done?'

'Winifred, are you sure you did this? You're not just making it up? When did it happen?'

'Just now. I came straight back here. It happened in town.'

'Tell me,' Maria sat down on the mattress, the strength having left her body, 'tell me more about it.'

'Well,' Winifred took a breath, and then went on, in a shaking voice, 'as you know, I'd been to the usual meeting, the Holy Truth Society, the one I go to every week, and we'd had the usual talk, this week it was about yoghurt, and after the talk we'd had a good discussion. Really,' she reflected, 'a very good discussion, and after this discussion we went back to Marjorie Ogilvie's rooms, as usual this would be at about half past ten and she gave us some things to drink and of course some drugs just mild hallucinogenics, you understand, it's a little weakness we indulge occasionally and after that, well, it all begins to get a bit hazy. I can remember us all arguing about Aquinas's theory of the angelic hierarchy there must have been only five or six of us there by now, as well as this big blue rabbit in the corner who seemed to be taking an unnecessarily anti-Thomistic line and then all I can suppose is that I fell asleep, because the next thing I knew it was three o'clock in the morning and I had this funny sensation, it was as if my tongue was two hundred feet long and all coiled around the lampstand, I don't know if you've ever had it. Anyway, Marjorie seemed to be turning us all out, so I managed to get downstairs and outside and I found myself in the middle of the storm. I was starting to feel very cold, and sick, and to think a bit more clearly, and I walked along for a while until suddenly I realized that I was completely lost. That was when this man came up. This beastly man. I was sheltering from the rain in this doorway, when he came up with his umbrella and offered to take me home. Where do you live, he said. I knew this was in the nature of a proposition, I could tell he was... propositioning me. You piece of filth, I said, you lump of sc.u.m, leave me alone. Hush, he said, hush, you're lost and I want to take you home. Let me help you, he said. So I shouted, Leave me alone with your depraved filthy cravings, let me be. I know what you want, it's my body you're after. And then, and then, do you know what he said? I wouldn't say no, he said, I wouldn't say no to a bit of your body at all. So then I then I think I must have s.n.a.t.c.hed his umbrella off him and started poking him in the face with it, and when he fell over I can remember shutting it and hitting him over the head with the handle, it had this heavy wooden handle, and then... and then I came back here.'

There was a long silence. Except, of course, for the storm.

'Where is the umbrella?' Maria asked.

'It's in my bedroom.'

'And you're sure he was dead when you left him?'

'Oh yes,' said Winifred, half smiling with satisfaction in spite of herself. 'I made quite sure of that.'

Maria got up, and forced herself to lay her hand gently on Winifred's shoulder.

'I think you should go to bed,' she said. 'Go to bed, and have a nice long sleep. And then, when you wake up, you might find that it was all a horrible dream.'

'Do you think so?' said Winifred.

'Yes, I do.'

'Do you know what, Maria,' said Winifred, after a few moments' pause, 'that's good advice. I think that a rest is exactly what I need. Everything will seem much clearer in the morning.'

When Winifred, this resolve notwithstanding, failed to move, Maria took her by the arm and led her back to her bedroom. Then she went back to bed. The storm was on the wane and, rather to her own surprise, she fell into a deep and restful sleep.

The next morning, as she was getting dressed, Maria heard a car draw up in the drive outside Cribbage House. Doors slammed, and there was an impatient ring on the doorbell followed eventually by the sound of two men climbing the stairs. She heard them knocking on Winifred's door and then questioning her in quiet hostile voices. Maria looked out of the window and saw, as she had expected, the shiny blue roof of a police car. She decided to leave as quickly as possible. Furtively, Maria slipped on the remainder of her clothes, opened her door and slid through the doorway, tiptoed across the landing, stole down the stairs and sidled towards the front door. As soon as she was free she broke into a run, and continued in what was never less than a breathless stride until she had reached the town centre.

There she paused, uncertain. A curious desire now took shape within her, one which she had never felt before and which on any other day would have appalled her, namely, the desire to visit Ronny. Since we are duty-bound to attempt an explanation of this aberration, maybe the case was simply that his mindless adoration was at this stage the only dependable factor in her life, the only form of affection accessible to her when most in need of support. She felt oddly rea.s.sured by the thought of seeing his stupid smile, even of receiving the inevitable offer of marriage and of watching his face fall as she softly refused him. Pathetic behaviour, this, without a doubt, but she's been under a lot of strain.

Ronny's delight and surprise upon seeing her lie outside the emotional range of this book. Naturally he wanted to know what had brought about her change of heart.

'Well, I just thought... we both have so little time left in Oxford. I wanted to say goodbye properly.'

'Goodbye? But we'll see each other again. We'll still see a lot of each other, from now on.'

'We can't rely on that, Ronny. I don't even know what I'm going to do next, or where I'm going to go.'

'Wherever it is, I'll be there.'

Maria did not seem to take from this statement the rea.s.surance which Ronny had intended.

'Don't be silly,' she said. And then, to change the subject, 'Look, it's nearly twelve o'clock. Why don't we go for a drink, and some lunch?'

They went to a pub in St Giles'. As they walked there, Ronny could not help observing that Maria seemed extremely depressed. He based this conclusion, with what counted for him as startling psychological insight, on various slight and subtle signals, such as her reluctance to raise her eyes even momentarily from the pavement, and her refusal to speak a word even in response to direct questioning. His usual way of injecting cheerfulness into a conversation with Maria was to make earnest promises of accompanying her for the rest of her life, and supporting her through the direst financial and emotional difficulties. But today, this failed to have the desired effect. Fortunately their arrival at the pub presented his limited imagination with a new subject for discussion.

'What would you like to eat?' he asked.

'What are you having?'

'Well, the gammon's very good here. But perhaps you don't feel like hot food on a day like this. They do excellent salads.'

It took Maria a long time to make up her mind, since she had no appet.i.te whatsoever and therefore no criteria on which to base her decision. But finally she chose the gammon.

Gammon. That was her first mistake.