LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘You’re much too good to me, Elizabeth.’

      Did this protest mean that Hector felt himself fettered by his obligations to her? She did not stop to wonder.

      Her mood, persisting until next day, which was Sunday, inclined her towards going to church, and she was a little surprised and touched by Hector’s ready acquiescence.

      Whenever they went to church they sat in the Shand pew, and after the morning service all the Shands strolled home with Aunt Janet, and returned by way of Balfour Terrace, where John and Mabel took their leave and Elizabeth and Hector, waving good-byes, went back to the High Street alone.

      John, being the senior Shand, sat at the outside end of the pew; Hector was next to him, then Elizabeth, Aunt Janet and Mabel. Elizabeth found it possible to smile on both the other women, but unconsciously, after the first silent greeting, she edged towards Hector and away from Aunt Janet. She found herself also regretting that she had cut off her intercourse with the minister merely because of Aunt Janet’s scandalmongering, and she waited eagerly to catch his eye and send him a message of reassurance.

      The minister walked up to the pulpit with his usual solemnity, with even more than his usual dignity. His glance crossed Elizabeth’s once, but his blue eye flashed such a cold strange gleam that she felt snubbed. Perhaps he resented the way she had dropped him?

      She forgot this personal question in her amazed disapproval of the sermon. She could not know that William Murray had sat up until far into the morning reshaping that sermon to fit his spiritual rebirth into the Church. Where was his sympathy, his tolerance? she asked herself. The man was thundering theology from the pulpit; splitting hairs, logic-chopping. Far above the heads of his congretation, anyhow, thought Elizabeth scornfully, looking round at the vacant or sleepy faces. He was now proving to them that the existence of good connoted the existence of evil; this world was a world of both good and evil, unlike the Kingdom of God, which, when it came, would be neither good nor evil, but equally beyond both, transcending both. Meanwhile, because on earth we had intuitions of good, we must admit also intuitions of evil.

      ‘The metaphor of darkness, like all metaphors, misleads our childish minds,’ said the minister. (Was that meant for her? thought Elizabeth.) ‘We fold our hands passively and wait for the sun to dispel the darkness of evil, when we should be fighting it, driving it away, casting it out, as Christ cast out devils.’

      In her mind’s eye Elizabeth suddenly saw Ned’s distorted face, and her heart grew heavy with a feeling of doom.

      ‘The Church, as the visible body of Christ,’ preached the minister, ‘is an alliance against the powerful forces of evil. Alone, we cannot fight evil; it is too strong for the individual; we all need help in the struggle, and so we are banded together to form a Church. Who is not for us must be against us….’

      Elizabeth, more and more confounded, leaned forward in the pew and rested her chin on her hands. The man was actually talking about original sin. What had happened to him? What was he going to do to Ned?

      ‘The body in itself is evil,’ insisted the minister, ‘until we deliberately consecrate it to God.’

      Elizabeth sat back with such violence that she dislodged a Bible from the shelf in front of her and sent it clattering to the floor. She wished she had the courage to rise and contradict the minister on the spot….

      Aunt Janet was offering her a peppermint.

      ‘Don’t you feel well, Elizabeth?’ she whispered.

      ‘Me a peppermint too,’ whispered Hector, grinning.

      Aunt Janet rustled the little paper bag. Elizabeth turned fully round and looked at the clock to see how much of this apalling sermon was still to come.

      She would not listen any more. The odour of peppermint and cinnamon, the incense of a Scottish Presbyterian church, floated around her. Sucking her hard peppermint, she stared at one of the windows, combining the little panes of glass into squares and diamonds of colour. Let him stew in his own juice, she thought angrily. Let him take a whip and beat the devil out of Ned if he chooses; it’s none of my business.

      The congregation stirred; the sermon was finished; everyone stood up to sing the final hymn. Elizabeth kept her mouth shut. She would never, never go to church again, let the Shands say what they liked. She wasn’t going to have all that theological tapestry hung between her and the universe.

      Slowly and sedately they moved out in the throng.

      ‘Did you feel ill, Elizabeth?’

      Aunt Janet was at her ear, solicitous.

      ‘No, I was only angry.’

      ‘Angry, my dear?’

      ‘Angry with all the nonsense Mr Murray was talking.’

      ‘I thought it was a very good sermon, I’m sure. Didn’t you think so, John?’

      ‘A very good sermon,’ said John.

      ‘Well,’ Elizabeth laughed a little, ‘I think it’s awful to have to listen without being able to contradict. I wanted to answer back.’

      She turned round, looking for Hector as usual, but was surprised to see him walking off with Mabel. It was extraordinary. He had never done that before.

      She could not help watching the two figures in front. Mabel walked very well; she had an elastic step; her very back looked gay. She and Hector were laughing. It was queer, she commented to herself, that the sight of Mabel and Hector exchanging badinage should rouse in her the same feeling of disapproval that had invaded her the other day. She felt grown-up again, relegated to the background with the sober adults, as it were, while the children frolicked along in front. It puzzled her.

      John seemed to be amused at something. Whatever it was, he checked himself from putting it into words. But the twinkle in his eye suddenly delighted Elizabeth as she caught it.

      ‘Your beard twinkles when you smile, John,’ she said, feeling audacious. ‘The point of your nose twinkles, too. Look at it, Aunt Janet, doesn’t it now?’

      She had never before suspected that she could venture to chaff John, or that he would like it. Apparently he did like it, and her grown-up feeling vanished when she discovered that John was an excellent victim of teasing. She forgot that for a second or two she had resented being left to his society. Behind a cross-fire of personal remarks she escaped for the moment from her anger with the minister, her forebodings about Ned, and her uneasiness with regard to Mabel and Hector. In spite of his beard, and his size, John was not so very grown-up after all.

      ‘I was afraid of you at first because of your beard,’ she confessed, ‘but now I see that you are only hiding behind it.’

      When Aunt Janet was safely within her own front gate Elizabeth found herself still beside John.

      ‘You know my sister is coming on Saturday?’ he said suddenly.

      ‘Oh yes,’ cried Elizabeth. ‘I’m looking forward so much to meeting her.’

      ‘I think you’ll like each other. I couldn’t help laughing when I saw you fidget so much in church; she used to do exactly the same.’

      ‘Did she want to answer back too?’

      ‘She always did,’ said John gleefully.

      Elizabeth’s heart leapt. ‘Is she at all like me?’

      ‘No, not at all. She’s more like Hector, I must admit. But, although you may not care to hear me say so, she’s much better-looking than Hector.’

      ‘I’ll let you say so as much as you please. When does she arrive on Saturday?’

      ‘I think she’s to travel overnight from London coming in here about ten o’clock. Hasn’t Mabel invited you and Hector to come to dinner on Saturday night to meet her?’

      ‘No, not yet —’

      ‘She’ll

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