Read Online Angels and Men by Catherine Fox - Free Book Online Page A

She had long fair hair partly covered by a headscarf and her head was bowed as though she were studying the ground in front of her. Then she looked up. Her lips began to move. From where she was standing Mara could not hear what she was saying, but she saw how the people passing glanced and paused, then walked on again. Some of the youths under the monument called out. To be speaking to no one – the girl must be unbalanced. There were looks of embarrassment on the faces of the passers-by. Perhaps someone would come and take her kindly by the arm and lead her off.
    Mara was about to turn away when she noticed that the girl was holding a black book. A Bible. She was preaching. For an instant the marketplace stood still as if it were carved in crystal, then a sound of hissing filled Mara’s head and she turned and ran. Off up another street she went, passing through the crowds of shoppers, back towards the college. As she climbed the steps to her room she remembered what she had gone out to buy. A hyacinth bulb. She could almost have wept.
    No one could fault Mara’s determination . These words had appeared in one of her school reports; implying, of course, that practically everything else about her could be faulted. After lunch she had read doggedly about medieval mysticism until well into the evening, forgetting to go for tea as she strove to stifle the fears of the morning. By the time the clock was striking half-past seven she felt secure enough to put down her book.
    She yawned and stretched, and tentatively let her mind return to the image of the girl in the marketplace. It had been like one of those occasions when a smell – flowering currant, creosote in the sunshine – rockets you straight back to childhood. The sight of a girl preaching in a marketplace had been like a box of snakes bursting open. All those feelings of suffocation, of loathing, of rage, had come writhing out of her memory, and for a moment she might have gone back three years and been standing once again in the Church of the Revelation, with the praying hands reaching to touch her and cast out the demons of pride and rebellion. Those hands. Clutching, pressing. She had never been able to bear being held and restrained. ‘We command the spirit of pride to come out of Mara in Jesus’ name!’ shouted a voice in her memory. And she had wept, trying desperately to believe it was true. Here at last was the reason for all her unhappiness. She could be exorcized and free. The hands pressed. The voices claimed the victory.
    Mara spat at their memory and reached for her book and pencil. Rapidly a snake formed on the page, then another. As she drew, she became absorbed in the pattern of twisting forms as they wove themselves into a circle. When the drawing was complete, she found she was quite pleased with it. It was rather beautiful, in fact; like a crown. She flipped back in the book to look at the circle she had drawn earlier, with the Joker and the morris men. The two pictures seemed to belong together. Maybe this is what I am trying to do, she thought, to ‘make sense of certain things’, as she had mumbled to Dr Roe.
    The thought of Dr Roe prompted another memory: ‘A good face. You could draw it.’ On a fresh page her pencil made a couple of sketching motions without touching the paper. She hadn’t attempted a portrait for years. Caricatures were easy. She could do half a dozen now without hesitating – the polecat holding up The Times , Maddy and May bawling obscenities out of the window. Or Rupert, in an illustration from a boys’ adventure story. The caption: Rupert helped the strange young woman pick up her books . Or Johnny piping through the streets followed by rat-women. If it could be done out of a sense of mischief, like Maddy’s impersonations, then she might let her pencil scribble freely. But my talent springs from cruelty, she thought. She flung the book aside and realized she was