Angels and Men by Catherine Fox

Author:Catherine Fox
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SPCK

CHAPTER 16

Mara sat up in bed. Today was her last day. She was returning to college. Her mother, alerted by the Principal, was driving up to collect her. How can I face her? I must get up and go out, she decided. One last walk to try to prepare myself. She pushed the covers back.

It was a mild day. She went out of the house and made her way up the drive towards the road. The sound of a hymn being sung in the chapel floated out to her as she passed. It was a Lent hymn, and after a moment the familiar words went through her mind:

Lord Jesus think on me,

And purge away my sin.

From earthborn passions set me free,

And make me pure within.

Earthborn passions. Passionate lust or passionate anger. By thy cross and passion, good Lord, deliver us.

She reached the end of the drive and turned along the narrow country lane. The first signs of spring were visible in the hedgerows – coltsfoot, celandines – and she could hear the early lambs bleating in the distance. Her mind had gone back repeatedly to her conversation with Johnny by the river, worrying at it (sex? anger?) until she was no longer sure what he had actually said, let alone what he might have meant by it. Something caught her eye in the undergrowth. The first violet, she thought with pleasure, but when she stopped and peered more closely it was only an old scrap of chocolate wrapper. How could a man as good-looking as Johnny be attracted to her? Was it possible? Her heart was beginning to race at the thought, when the truth hit her like a glass of cold water in the face. The risk for him lay in her circumstances, not her attractiveness. He would be all too well aware of the potentially explosive situation they were in. Her grief, his kindness. Too many clergy had found themselves enmeshed like this: something that began as pastoral concern flaring up into fornication or adultery. She forced herself to examine her motives and found that they could not bear such scrutiny. Her mind squirmed.

She began to walk on again. I’m like Joanna, she thought with loathing. I’ll have to keep him at arm’s length from now on. Just when I was getting to know him at last. It’s not fair. She felt a tear creeping down her cheek and she smeared it away angrily. Well, it’s March now. By the middle of June it’ll all be over. Three months, then I’ll never have to see him again. I can survive till then. Some remote part of her exhaled as though with relief. Why do I find sex so disgusting?

Her two encounters so far had both conformed unhappily to the Hobbesian view of the life of man: nasty, brutish and short. The first time especially. Fifteen was too young. Despoiled. Deflowered. Good words for it.

Someone’s party. She had tagged along with Hester, resolved to lose her virginity to find out what all the fuss was about.

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