When the World Was Steady (7 page)

Not that they always discussed the Bible itself: sometimes they discussed particular teachings or leaders—John Wimber, say, of whom Angelica was an avid follower, or Billy Graham—or even particular sermons. On evenings when the Reverend couldn’t make it, they talked about his sermons and whether they, as representatives of the congregation, agreed with them. Usually they did, unanimously, but they refrained from holding these conversations when he was present for fear of embarrassing him. Reverend Thompson, a slight, balding man in his late thirties, was unflappable about the Lord and his beliefs, but easily flustered in his person.

As for the regulars, besides Nikhil and the Reverend there were seven of them, sometimes eight. There was Janet, a Christian counsellor; Janet’s husband Alistair, who could only make it sometimes, being a doctor and often on call; Mrs
Hammond who, though much older than Mrs Simpson, was brave and unflagging in her attendance; Stephen Mills and Philip Taylor, two theology students at the University of London, slender, excitable young men with sharp senses of humour; Frieda Watson, a strong-minded divorcee of about Virginia’s age; Angelica; and, of course, Virginia herself.

It was an odd collection of people. They themselves marvelled openly at their diversity in age and occupation. Almost weekly Mrs Hammond could be counted on to open the meeting by saying, ‘Blessed are we who allow our Lord Jesus Christ into our hearts! Where else but through the Lord could an old woman like me still be growing and learning and sharing with people like you?’—at this moment she clasped her gnarled hands with great fervour—‘Let’s start by offering the Lord Jesus a prayer of thanks!’

To which the Reverend, when present, would say, ‘Quite right, Mrs Hammond, quite right.’ Occasionally one of the theology students would throw out an ‘Alleluia’ or an ‘Amen’ in the background to reinforce the general enthusiasm.

But in fact, Virginia was not so optimistic about the harmony of their group, and didn’t feel the Lord was doing his bit to smooth things out. The Lord was testing her, it seemed, on the very ground where she should feel safest.

It had to do with the occasional ‘Alleluia’. That background affirmation always sounded false, sarcastic even. Virginia was upset by the theology students.

Stephen and Philip had appeared together, out of nowhere, one Sunday just after Easter, at St Luke’s. They were inseparable, almost interchangeable, disconcertingly similar in their mannerisms and their affectations. It hadn’t initially occurred to Virginia to think of them as ‘that sort’, although Angelica had whispered something about it almost the first time she saw them in church. But knowing this (as by now she felt she did), and áware that if they knew anything about the word of the Lord (which as theology
students they must) then they were condemning themselves to damnation—in the light of all this, Virginia had a hard time accepting their presence.

‘But Reverend,’ she wanted to say but couldn’t, ‘they are emissaries of Satan.’

He would have said only that affectation was not necessarily any indication of sin. He would have said they were taking the first step towards the salvation of their souls and were to be encouraged rather than shunned.

But Virginia—who had turned to God precisely because her distressing experience had revealed human nature to be fallible, sly and, well,
fallen
—was less trusting. She had observed them, both at church and in the group, and she didn’t think they were taking any steps towards salvation at all. What she had observed was that the group—herself included—was being observed. Mrs Hammond’s heartfelt call to prayer was being recorded as a sociological phenomenon for some assigned essay at the university on evangelism within the Anglican church. Virginia was almost certain.

She had talked about it with Angelica, who understood her distress at finding the seeds of Satan in the one secure corner of her life. Angelica was Virginia’s closest ally and dearest friend in the group, and for Virginia, Angelica was the truth of harmony through the Lord that Mrs Hammond praised so. For although the two women were similar in many ways, and Virginia sometimes thought she saw in her friend her own younger self, only worldlier and better equipped to cope, it was difficult to conceive of any purpose other than the Lord’s work that could have brought them together.

Angelica Trumbull, at twenty-eight, twenty-three years Virginia’s junior and technically young enough to be her daughter, was a source of true inspiration. Like Virginia, she had behind her a veiled tragedy, to which she occasionally referred, but some years ago she had found God, and this oblique evil had lifted, leaving a
heavyset but attractive young woman with the face of a cherub and a cascading mass of blonde curls, who shouldered the responsibilities of her single life with a quiet eagerness. An eagerness, indeed, that Virginia, who often felt defeated despite all the Lord’s blessings, would not admit even to herself that she envied.

Angelica was utterly nice. Or perhaps, Virginia thought as she climbed the hill in the fading heat with her leather-bound Bible in her sweaty palm, ‘utterly’ was not the right word: she had too much fun with Angelica for either to be utterly nice, and there had been conversations after which she felt sullied and repentant. But then, it was not always possible to be both truthful and nice, and her friendship with Angelica was about God’s truth.

When Virginia reached Angelica’s house, she saw that there was no light in the window of her friend’s flat. She looked at her watch: it was ten minutes before the hour, and obviously Angelica had been delayed at the office. Dusk was upon the buildings and trees and the rows of parked cars like a fine powder, and Virginia stood at the foot of the house steps unsure of where to go. At the corner there was a pub with frosted windows, from which faint strains of music and a hubbub drifted back towards her. Behind the glass, the light wavered, jostling shadows like a tempestuous sea. Virginia didn’t want to go there. She turned a full circle, slowly, peering into ordered living-rooms and bright kitchens where people mimed the acts of real life: a couple standing in front of the television, the woman absently drying a dish with a striped tea-towel; two young people waving their hands in argument, mouths flicking open and shut soundlessly; an elderly man reaching up to fiddle with curtains and pull them shut. He stopped to look back at her, and Virginia felt conspicuous and forlorn.

She had somehow hoped that in this moment of turning, Angelica would have been spirited home, and that there would now be light and suggestions of bustle from the top of the house, but there was nothing. The old fellow was still staring, from one
house over, and under his gaze Virginia climbed the steps and pressed the Trumbull buzzer. She imagined that she heard the echo of it, and then the silence that followed in the empty flat above. It was almost nine now, but none of the others were visible along the street—not even Philip and Stephen, who were always prompt, unwilling to miss a sociologically important minute—and so Virginia pressed the buzzer beneath Trumbull, marked ‘Gupta’.

His ‘yes’ was wary, and as she explained herself, Virginia found she was patting nervously at her flat, greyed hair, and leaning perhaps too close to the intercom. But Nikhil buzzed her in at once, and when she reached his landing she found him already standing, arm outstretched, in the doorway of his flat.

He was awkward, and his large ears were almost pink as he welcomed her. Virginia found his discomfort in some measure reassuring and relaxing. ‘Of course, of course,’ he said to nothing at all. ‘Sit down. Come in. We will wait together for Angelica to return.’

His flat was the same as Angelica’s, but while hers was her own, peach and yellow and elegantly appointed, Nikhil Gupta’s was rented and spartan, with only a hideous vinyl suite and Formica table. His books and papers were scattered in disarray across all flat surfaces, and the only personal item in sight was a large framed photograph on the mantel. Virginia examined it, while Nikhil cleared a place on one of the vinyl armchairs, which proved, beneath the papers, to be peeling and stained.

‘Lovely flat,’ said Virginia, for lack of any better conversational gambit. ‘Just like Angelica’s.’

Nikhil looked pained and said only, ‘Tea?’ and then, ‘Do sit.’

‘Yes, yes …’ Virginia turned back to the picture. ‘I’m sure the others will arrive any minute. And Angelica, of course.’

From the kitchen came an unexpected crashing of dishes and pots by way of reply. Virginia imagined cramped squalor, and regretted agreeing to tea.

The photograph was a black-and-white posed family portrait that looked ancient although it could not be, for to one side, among several other youths, stood a stern but only slightly younger Nikhil. There were about a dozen people in all, in front of a large tropical-looking tree, with a snowy-haired patriarch and a distinguished older woman in a sari seated in the centre.

‘Are these your parents?’ she asked as she accepted a chipped mug of boiling black tea.

‘No milk, I’m afraid.’

‘Doesn’t matter. Are they?’

He appeared closer to emotion than she had yet seen him. ‘My grandparents,’ he said. ‘And cousins and brothers. And parents, my father’—pointing to a round, balding man—‘and mother’—a tired, gaunt woman with an expression of marked displeasure—‘and my sister.’ He said this last very softly, and allowed his finger to linger on the tiny celluloid chest of his sibling. She, an adolescent of perhaps sixteen at the time of the picture, was by far the most perfect figure in the rows of family members: dark-eyed and clear-skinned and … the word that came unbidden to Virginia’s mind was
luscious
. Just looking at her moved the stiff Nikhil almost to tears, which seemed to Virginia unhealthy and possibly suspicious.

‘You miss them a great deal?’

Nikhil’s nod was dutiful. ‘But it’s more complicated with Rupica. Will you sit?’

Virginia perched gingerly on the arm of the sofa and surreptitiously inspected her tea for bugs. With the same effort with which she had—unsuccessfully—willed Angelica into her flat, she willed one or all of the group into the hallway downstairs. She strained to catch a footstep or a tapping on the building’s front door, and imagined that they were all even now gathered comfortably on the steps, Mrs Hammond leaning against the railing with the others grouped around her, placidly passing the time
about the drive to raise money for prayer books or the forthcoming summer retreat … Virginia very much did not want to hear about Nikhil’s sister Rupica, although she could not have said why not, except general residual bitterness about all very good-looking people and an unacknowledged fear that she was going to hear something unsavoury.

But Nikhil was speaking. ‘… Eight months ago.’

‘Pardon? I thought I heard them coming.’

Nikhil would not be diverted. ‘I said,’ he said, ‘that when I first came, for my studies in international relations’—a wave at the books and papers—‘my family came with me from Delhi, the three of them. This was eight months ago. My father is a civil servant and took a month’s leave. Rupica is now of university age, nineteen. She is as beautiful as her photograph, and we have all wanted the best—for her to study and then marry well and be happy. But she’—a limp, helpless gesture. Nikhil reddened. ‘She has never had a studious or orderly temperament. She does not accept the inevitable.’ He paused, began again. ‘My parents are very educated people. My father, too, studied in England.’

‘I’m sure,’ said Virginia, rueing her decision to ring the Gupta bell.

‘They are not backward or provincial. But Rupica … so when we came, all together, for a month in September, we were staying first in a hotel in Bloomsbury, and Rupica and I shared a room. In the night, after the first week, she would wait until she thought I was sleeping and then she would dress and go out.’

‘In revealing clothes?’ asked Virginia, in the tone that prepares to be scandalized. She listened less now for sounds from the landing.

‘Jeans. A pullover. Her hair in a plait down her back.’

‘Where did she go? Poor girl, led astray, was she—she wasn’t—

‘She had met a man. I did not tell our parents. I thought she
would tire of him, that there was nothing in it. Before, in Delhi, she had met others. She was reckless, as I say. But I was wrong, and it was a grave mistake.’

‘She wasn’t—’

‘On the morning before they were all to return to Delhi, Rupica did not come back to the hotel. I was forced to tell my parents how she had gone every night and forced to say I did not know where to.’

‘Odd you didn’t ask?’

‘Perhaps. But in the afternoon she came back, and brought the man. I was at the university and did not see him, but my parents said he was very old. As old as they are, perhaps. And they were married. They had married in the morning while we worried. And my parents did all they could, but they are married. Rupica is nineteen and can do as she pleases here. They live in Scotland, and we have broken with her.’

‘He’s Scottish? How interesting.’

‘I don’t care what he is. My beloved sister is lost. And perhaps I come to your meetings to try to understand. Your meetings with Angelica.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Rupica insisted that he was, in his way, a very religious man. A Christian. So I try to understand him. And her. Until I do, I cannot see or speak to them. And it is not easy.’

‘Have you spoken to Angelica about this? I’m sure he’s not one of us. Not a Christian. Some sort of nut, perhaps. But no truly religious man would behave the way he has. And against your parents’ wishes!’ Virginia was thinking, ‘And no true Christian would marry a Hindu. A heathen. No matter how beautiful she was.’

‘I think they are here now,’ Nikhil said, resuming his distant manner. In the stairwell, Angelica’s heavy, even tread was followed by other, more eccentric gaits, and the sound of voices and of Mrs Hammond’s cane. Then there was the click of the key in
the lock, and the shuddering of floorboards overhead as half a dozen or more bodies settled themselves in, scraped furniture about the hardwood floor. That racket alone would have been enough, Virginia thought, to make her join the group. Better the fellowship than the sound of their feet.