On the side against which the girls from Spofforths’ sat there was a window with St George. He was mild and smooth as yellow soap, but he had crushed the Dragon. Out of the Dragon’s belly had burst peculiar bunches of crimson grapes. This window sanctified the light, which poured rich and bland and purple, even when the shingles were cracking with heat. Theodora washed her hands in purple. She listened coolly to the words that did not touch. Her own mystery offered subtler variations. Her fears were not possessive. She had not yet had occasion to summon God, who remained a bearded benevolence, or a blue and golden scroll above the altar window.
Once Theodora found beneath the pew a crow that had closed its wings and died, stiffer and blacker than old umbrellas. She touched it in the silence between the prayers. The crow was folded as neatly and as decently as a soul should be, the prayer suggested. About her own soul Theodora was not so sure. Mother, for instance, who sat ahead, a firm small outline in bottle green, would give up without hesitation when it was time, a neatly folded soul, because for Mother, you were sure, things existed in hard shapes. Mother had not dissolved at dusk under the apple trees. But sometimes, and even in a strait pew, Theodora’s own soul opened and flamed with the light that burst through the Dragon’s wounds.
So now she rejected the crow, gently, with her heel. She looked across at Violet Adams, from whom she had been separated on coming into the church. Theodora looked, over the heads of Lottie and Grace, and saw she had left Violet Adams behind. It was less melancholy than inevitable. She did not love Violet less. They could still walk linked through the long grass at dusk, and hate the intruder, but Theodora knew she would also prefer sometimes to risk the darkness and walk alone.
Violet looked at Theodora, through the hymn, over the heads of Grace and Lottie. She smiled the mysterious smile of someone who reads poetry and shares secrets, and Theodora smiled also, because it was true, but that was not all.
Waiting for the hymn to stop, and the voices of girls that praised the Lord in pink and blue, she watched the light blaze through the glass Dragon and gild the nape of Frank Parrott’s neck, which was already gold. He sat ahead, a reddish gold.
Afterwards everyone stood about outside the church, and families picked out their own girls, to talk or to take to dinner. The girls were suddenly sheepish then, to find their lives divided into two.
‘You should ask your Violet Adams out to Meroã,’ said Mother, waiting for Father to bring round the horses from where they had been nosing chaff behind the church.
‘Not today,’ Theodora shrugged.
Because she did not feel there was much connection between Violet Adams and Meroã. She looked at Violet, who was talking hard to Una Russell and pretending not to see. There was no connection at all.
‘No,’ Theodora said. ‘Another time.’
And she stepped back, bumping, with a thump that was heard, the hard body of Frank Parrott.
‘Hello, Theo,’ laughed Frank. ‘It’s a long time. You must get Grace to bring you over. You and Fanny. We must have a picnic.’
Frank, who had harnessed the horses to the sociable the Parrotts used for church, spoke and looked aside. Frank was uneasy in his Sunday clothes, but still a transparent gold that Sunday had not touched. Theodora wanted and wanted not to look. She remembered a red and clumsy boy, and a wart on a hard knee. Now Frank was fine and straight in his wrinkled Sunday pants, and what there was of his moustache was gold.
‘That would be nice. Yes, Frank. We shall speak with Grace,’ Theodora said.
Then backed, to escape any possibility of further encounter with Frank Parrott, whose Adam’s-apple moved up and down. At the same time she had the impulse to give to someone something, whereas there was nothing, only her hymn book that she held too tightly in her glove. She could not feel her hand.
When Theodora returned, her face still bright, when it was evening, Violet’s skin was thick and pale.
‘Well,’ Violet said.
‘Oh, it is you,’ said Theodora.
It was inevitable.
‘Where did you get to?’ Violet said.
‘When?’ Theodora asked. She was still dazed.
‘Why, after church,’ Violet said.
‘Nowhere. There was such a crush.’
‘I had something to tell you,’ said Violet.
‘What?’
‘Aha,’ said Violet, with a kind of pale secrecy that would not be read.
But it did not greatly matter what it was that Violet had to tell. And Violet knew. Violet was being a goose, but Theodora could have kissed her, in spite of the goosishness, and the rather shameful voice in which she had read the poem, and the steady seeping of her catarrhal nose. Theodora loved Violet dearly. She could afford to. She was strong.
Theodora waited many days for something to happen, but it did not. Often it does not happen. Theodora often looked at Grace Parrott, who was unperturbed, to see what Grace expected, but Grace did not.
So Theodora said to Grace, in tea, ‘Frank spoke about a picnic.’
‘Oh,’ said Grace, disliking a prune. ‘Frank will talk his head off.’
‘I thought,’ said Theodora, ‘we might combine. Gertie would make the cakes.’
‘But Frank,’ said Grace, ‘is going to Muswellbrook on Friday. He will work on the Thompsons’ place. For experience,’ she said.
So it was like that, as wrinkled as a prune.
‘Theodora,’ Violet Adams said, ‘I want to see you afterwards. It is most important. I have had some news.’
Violèt took Theodora into a corner of the big, dark schoolroom, not outside, which was unusual, but it was unusual news that Violet hinted at. Over the prunes she had tried to make it dark, and now to keep it so, in the deserted schoolroom, into which the light fell only a little way from the glass door, marking the boards for a space, but not the desks, these remained shapes.
Theodora felt, and would feel, blank, whatever Violet might now say. It was only a bare suggestion that Frank Parrott had made, and as a bare suggestion Grace had disposed of it. Theodora sat and waited for Violet to speak. She sat on a bench beside the big blackboard, on which there was still the figure of a problem, an isosceles triangle it was, that somebody had solved and left. It looked both frightfully simple and frightfully complex. Theodora sat. She felt the chalk dust settle on her. She waited for Violet to say something, to create a fresh figure, and present a similar problem for which a solution would have to be found. These were endless.
‘Well, won’t you guess?’ Violet asked.
‘I am going to bed soon,’ said Theodora. ‘I have a headache.’
Violet laughed. Caught in her own drama, she could not really believe in headaches. Besides, her news had given her an importance that Theodora lacked. She would speak, but the secret could never be equally theirs.
‘I am leaving at the end of the term,’ Violet said.
Theodora stirred. The blank that one gesture had rubbed was widened by Violet’s words.
‘I am going home,’ said Violet. ‘Mother considers I have had enough of school. I shall help with the housekeeping and do the flowers.’
The settled nature of it all made Violet’s voice flat and matter of fact. But of course it would happen like this. The answer could have been found at the back of the book.
‘But we shall write to each other, Theo.’
As if, perhaps, she had felt the coldness of her triumph, which now she wanted to warm. Theodora felt on her shoulder Violet’s face.