Too red, thought Fiona, as she studied her cheeks in the metal mirror above the row of sinks. The lights didn't help, dull fluorescent strips that rendered skin like a garish cartoon, all oranges and pinks. And the warped surface of the mirror only added to the caricature. When she moved her head her features poured from one dent to another, contracting and expanding. Usually expanding, it seemed, in the region of her big red cheeks. She looked down to the sink and concentrated on washing her hands. Vanity, she reminded herself, is a sin.
After fixing her hair she stepped out of the bathroom and into the reading room of the university library. Conscious of the faces rising in front of her, easily detached from their studies, she tried to soften her footsteps. The lights were brighter out there. Their buzzing mingled with the whirr of the ventilation system to form a backdrop of white noise that was suddenly audible when it switched on or off. There were no free seats at the desks crowding the room; in many places it was clear that the people next to each other were strangers. For Fiona this was reason enough to study elsewhere.
She left along a corridor that led to a large glass door with glass panels on either side of it. Daylight poured through it, puddling on the vinyl floor. The door opened and a slim, male shape remained beside it, holding it for her. She sped up. The boy's features emerged from silhouette, black hair, high cheekbones, red lips.
“Hi Fiona,” he said.
Her hand rose to her chest and touched the ridge of the silver cross beneath her blouse.
“Hi Tom,” she said, as she turned to pass him.
The area she was in now was sunny and open, a relief after the nervous crush of the reading room. Her friends were at one of the tables lining the outer wall, beside a window that reached nearly from floor to ceiling.
It was spring outside.
“Hiya,” she said, as she pulled her seat out and sat back down.
“Hi Tom,” breathed Helen and Lilly, fluttering their lashes.
Fiona felt her cheeks grow even redder. She had known they would tease her, her legs had known as she walked towards them; but somehow that only heightened her embarrassment.
“You look a bit flushed, dear,” said Lilly, who was as pale as her name.
“Maybe she's in love,” said Helen, “You're not in love are you, Fiona?”
Fiona rolled her eyes. She turned to the last girl, Paula, in search of relief. It wasn't that Paula was her closest friend — in the web of feminine relationships two years of university had spun around her, that place was indisputably occupied by Lilly. It was just that Paula could be counted on soak up some of the teasing.
“Fiona's in love!” shouted Paula, before clapping her hand to her mouth.
The silence that followed was exaggerated. As the girls shook their heads and pretended to be mortified, Fiona felt as if something was waiting for her. Something slow, and unnerving, a spider.
Lilly looked up. “Will you say a little prayer for him?” she asked Fiona. Helen was delighted: her shrewish face crinkled beneath her neat, blonde hair.
“You're not still talking about Tom are you?” said Fiona, hoping that she was, “maybe it's you who's in love.”
“Come on guys,” said Helen, “he's not worth falling out over.”
Helen seemed disappointed when Lilly changed the subject to the essays they were working on, end of term papers for their module on seventeenth century English literature. As usual, all of them had chosen the same topic; and as usual, Lilly had chosen it first. Arrogant Humility: the Religious Poetry of John Donne. While she talked about Donne, his life and work, his sermons and sonnets, the others seemed to be fighting the urge to take notes.
“What do you think about Donne's use of the Petrarchan sonnet form?” interrupted Helen, with a sidelong glance at Fiona.
“I don't,” said Lilly, “I'm too busy thinking about what his sonnets mean. What do you think,” she said to Fiona, “about the way he talks to God?” Her eyes scanned the open book in front of her. “Take me to you, imprison me, for I, / Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, / Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.”
Fiona looked down, trying not to blush. “I suppose that's what they meant by ‘arrogant humility.’ That's the — paradox. It means he was modest in some ways but arrogant in others.”
“Does it?” asked Lilly.
“It doesn't even make sense!” said Paula, “how can you be arrogant and humility and the same time?”
The others started laughing.
“Humble,” I mean. She was laughing too now, showing a lot of pearly teeth. She had the kind of delicate bone structure and exotic looks — her mother was Ethiopian — that should have made her beautiful. She was beautiful, until she opened her mouth.
The laughter died down and Helen said: “We'll have to be careful not to get too intellectual here. After all this is English, not Philosophy or Theology — like they said about your last essay, Lilly.”
Lilly ignored her. “There's another interpretation of our topic,” she said, “a more interesting one.” She paused; in the expectant silence Fiona became aware of the conversations at nearby tables, held in stage-whispers, hushed and noisy at the same time.
“What is it?” asked Paula, “what's the interpretation Lilly?”
“That religious humility itself is arrogant, and Donne recognised this, and reflected it in his poems.”
Lilly and Fiona stared at each other across the table, the big bright window beside them. To the students hanging around outside, lingering in the sunshine, it must have looked like someone had placed them in a frame.
“What do you mean?” asked Fiona in a level voice.
“I mean a lover of paradox like Donne would surely have noticed the paradoxes in his own faith. If you're humble and meek that means you're better than everyone else. If you're kind and unselfish you'll go to heaven while your friends burn in hell. That sort of thing.”
A pause. “You're very clever,” said Fiona.
Helen glanced from the pale, striking girl beside her to the plain little redhead across the table. She had never understood why Lilly had chosen Fiona as her best friend. “It doesn't matter who's clever and who's not Fiona,” she said, “we're working on this together.”
After an uneasy silence Fiona said, “There's a book in the — reference section on the Elizabethan poets I've been meaning to look at. Maybe it's back on the shelves now.” She got up and left the table.
She followed the path that ran along the outer wall for a while, moving slowly, conscious of her friends' eyes on her back. To her left, metal shelves of a softened gray colour — grey tinted with beige or sand — formed ranks of high narrow corridors, dark even on a day like today. She stopped to read the sign on the end of one of them: 595.780-789, Insects, Lepidotera: moths to butterflies. It seemed as good a subject as any. As she passed books about the anatomy of Silver Tiger moths, the mating habits of Monarch butterflies, lighted panels flicked on above her, triggered by her movement. She was uncomfortably aware that she was only walking to get away from her friends. Aware too, that it wasn't working. Lilly, her best friend Lilly. What did she want? Why did it always feel like she was looking for weak spots? Humility itself is arrogant. She might as well have said, You're arrogant, Fiona, arrogant to think you're so pious and good. You're a hypocrite, pretending to be selfless because you want to go to heaven. And haven't you heard yet? Heaven doesn't exist.
That bitch! Next time she has one of her breakdowns…
Fiona stopped to catch her breath. She could feel the tears pricking her eyes, the anger rising in her throat. She knew that on the surface she would look as she always did, face maybe a little paler; but a war was being fought inside her, and to lose it meant losing her footing, her self-control. Deep breaths, the panic faded. But the bitterness remained. Helen, always ready to put people down, make them feel as insecure as she was. Why couldn't she just be nice for once? Fiona snorted. Might as well expect butterflies to fly from these books and fill the aisle with their multicoloured wings. Even Paula appeared to her in a disturbing light — her clownish laughter revealed as a mask, a smile painted over a suffering face.
Restless tension grabbed Fiona's legs and she started walking again. There was a musty, old-book smell, out of place in the sterile ranks of grey. She knew what her friends would say if they saw her now, if her face gave them access to the maze of her thoughts. You're being oversensitive Fiona, they'd say. You're imagining things that aren't there. She turned down another aisle: Political Science this time, 320.06. None of us would do anything to upset you, you know. Why would we? We're your friends, and friends only want what's best for each other. If you can't see that it's really a pity… But it was always the same: they said one thing and meant another. So what did they mean, really? That they weren't her friends at all, that they wished she'd go away and leave them alone? This wasn't too nasty, it was too simple, too easy to be true; only the doubts it had sprung from were tangled enough to be taken seriously. With the sensation of worrying at a recent injury, she tried to imagine the conversation they were having now. Fiona's been acting so strange recently hasn't she? I know, did you see the way she was staring at me? Well I didn't want to say anything Lilly, but I think she's a bit off with you — you know, a bit funny… maybe she thinks you're not cool enough to be her friend any more. Not cool enough? Lilly's light clear laughter rang out in Fiona's head. Not holy enough more likely…
Fiona looked up. She was at the end of the aisle already. She could hardly remember walking along it. She must have been racing between the walls of books, footsteps tapping as fast as her heart. She stayed there for some time, at the crossroads between the shelves, waiting for the map in her head to realign itself with her surroundings. It never did though, and her unease grew instead of shrinking. It was alien to her to not know exactly where she was. The lights behind her switched themselves off until there was only the one above. Its fluorescent radiance fell on her like snow, artificial snow. She started to walk again, even though she had no idea where she was going. She realised that it wasn't her friends' words that had upset her — it was the glimpse of their hurtful intentions. How horrible it was, to take a step into someone's mind and find nothing there except spite and the will to reveal it; how limitless their malevolence seemed, extending into the darkness. Her quick short strides took her past an endless succession of metre long shelving units, each one with six grey shelves, distinguishable only by the subjects they contained: Psychology, Anthropology, Genetics, Biology. If only she could blot it all out, become oblivious to the meanings hidden in everything people say and do — the aggression, the selfishness, the power-games, the fear. Life would be so much simpler then, so much kinder. She thought of Paula, her good natured naivety, but again it seemed to her that Paula was wearing a mask. A mask worn not out of fear, but complicity, a way of helping people to hide from themselves.
She wondered how long ago she had left her seat. She couldn't keep wandering around here forever — the others would think she was trying to avoid them. And besides, it would soon be time to leave the library and walk to the refectory for the evening meal. She pictured the four of them, strolling through the haze of the freshly mowed playing fields, past the pond where the white and yellow flowers were spreading across the water. It was always pleasant then, after the day's study was over. What was it Lilly had said? 'Nature is more beautiful when your mind is too tired to dispute it.' Fiona felt a sudden urge to praise her friend, to tell her how clever and witty she was. But she knew where this would lead — this vice that disguised itself as forgiveness. The next step was to imagine herself apologising, shamefacedly admitting her doubts about their friendship; after that Lilly would be shaking her head and offering incredulous reassurances; then they would both be laughing at how silly she had been. In the end their relationship would as unequal as before, only now Fiona would understand that even this was more than she deserved. She closed her eyes and thought back to when she and Lilly had first met. University had hardly begun. Her new life had been as fresh as the buds now unfurling on the trees outside. They had talked about school, and courses, and towns they both knew. Everything had been intended to put the other at ease, every nod and smile, every confession of ignorance or doubt. Only now they didn't seem like confessions; they seemed like deceptions, ways of slipping past her guard. Fiona felt an intense pain, as if a tear had opened up in the tissue of her memories. Nothing in the past was safe from the knowledge she had now; and the future was even more vulnerable. She and Lilly would sit next to each other at the meal tonight. They would talk in quiet voices that the others couldn't always hear, about the difficulties Fiona was having with the coursework, about her fear of getting out of her depth; later, in one of their rooms, they would discuss the boys vying for Lilly's attention, which of them were handsome or clever or funny, which were slimy enough to charm Fiona as a way of getting at her friend. And on Monday morning they would go to the lecturer's office to drop off their essays — which by then would be almost identical, mere variations on Lilly's eloquent and atheistic arguments.
With an uncharacteristically sudden movement, Fiona pressed her hands together and began to move her lips. “Our father,” she mouthed, “who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven…”
After the brief hypnosis of her prayer, the therapy of her bowed head, she was startled to see a light further down the corridor. It was coming through the shelves on one side. Without pausing, she began to walk towards it. She was aware of her breathing and her clacking feet; they reassured her, she was still alive. The shelving units had no back and she could see straight through to the other side. Someone was there, she realised, someone else was there. How many people had she passed among the shelves, feet from them but miles away, closed in her own worries? As if to atone for her introversion, she stopped walking and held very still. She heard a soft tapping noise, a finger skipping between the spines of books; then someone muttering under their breath. “Aaah,” said a male voice. There was the scuff of a book sliding out. She took a few more paces and peered through a gap between the books. She saw an indistinct movement — a shoulder maybe, in a dark coloured top — and heard the sound of pages being turned. Not entirely sure of her intentions, she cleared her throat. The pages stopped turning. She considered pushing out a few more books, throwing a poltergeist's tantrum in the other aisle. She heard the book close and realised that whoever was there was about to leave. She said hello. There was no response so she said it again. This time a pair of grey eyes appeared in the gap. They jumped between her own eyes as if they wanted to know everything about them. She smiled; she hoped he could tell she was smiling. The eyes vanished and fast, steady footsteps began to recede along the corridor.
Fiona wanted to chase after them. She imagined a male back in a dark jumper, shoulders rising and falling, book swinging metronomically by its side. She imagined it coming closer with each stride she took, her heart pounding in the silence of the shelves, until finally she reached out and touched him. That warmth beneath her hand, and the breathless confusion afterwards, when she opened her mouth to explain and everything poured out of her at once: I just had to talk to you… to say something, anything… we were so close we were almost touching… it's so weird… I mean I prayed and suddenly you were there… A moment of bashful silence. A warm smile, confused and understanding at the same time. A hand stroking her hair, a low voice telling her not to worry, not to be shy. A pair of lips pressed against hers, a patient tongue teasing them open and showing her — finally — how to kiss.
When the boy was far away enough that it wouldn't look suspicious, she circled around the end of the aisle and quietly began to follow him.
The encounter had sharpened her senses. The monotonous corridors took on new textures and sounds — dust swirling beneath the lights, the sibilants of a distant, whispered conversation. She noticed that the books were different here. Many of them were yellow with black writing on the spine, evidently part of the same series. She tried reading some of the titles, but it was as if they were written in a foreign language — one that shared the words and syntax of her own, but used them in an entirely different way. “Right Ideals and Simple Associative Rings,” said one, “The Twisted K-Theory of Lie Groups,” said another.
The lingering trail of lights made the boy easy to follow. After a couple of turns Fiona saw daylight as well, sharp and pale in the striplit gloom. She wondered how she could have got so lost; the shelving area was not that large and the tall windows of the library wall were never far away. She came to an open space with a scattering of desks, then a path, then more desks along the wall. Much like the study area she had been in before, except the people here were different. For one thing, nearly all of them were male; for another, her appearance seemed to have a magnetic, almost distressing effect on them. Eyes danced over notes and textbooks — often the same yellow textbooks she had seen on the shelves — before flitting nervously up to her face. “Poor boys,” she thought, “as if they've never seen a girl before.” She wondered which of them she had spoken to earlier. But the need to find him seemed lurid and far away, like the intensity of a finished dream. She tried not to think about it as she made her way between the desks.
Among the shy glances her stride was more confident than usual — as if self-assurance was a commodity that they had sold and she had bought. She passed a desk where a boy in a black polo-neck was poring over an open book; her draught stirred a sheet of paper covered in neatly handwritten symbols, Greek and Latin letters. The paper slid from the desk, dragging the other sheets piled beneath it. She heard the sound of a chair pushed back. She turned, saw the falling sheets swoop from side to side, stepped forward to offer her help. She was sure she recognised the grey eyes that glared at her from above the black polo-neck, rolled all the way up to the chin. But the way they dropped to concentrate on reordering the pages, as if the boy's soul had been scrambled along with his work, told her that neither her help nor her recognition would be welcome. “Sorry,” she said, and for the second time Charlie didn't answer her. He returned to his chair and tapped the papers level against the desk. Most of his face was flushed with indignation, but in a few ragged patches on his cheeks his native pallor remained.
It was only when Fiona reached the path that she realised how close she was to her starting point. Just around the corner, she thought — what an idiot I am! She felt the building return to its familiar shape, the nightmare jumble of furniture and walls rearrange itself into the place she came to every day to study with her friends. Where she scored through notes with highlighter pens — pink, orange or blue, depending on their urgency. Where she took breaks from time to time, to check her email on the computers, or buy a snack from one of the vending machines downstairs.
She was almost back now. In a minute she would be telling the others all about how the book was looking for was missing, how the librarian she had — finally — tracked down had no idea when it would be returned, and how, when she thought of it, there was more than enough background on the Elizabethan poets in her notes. And the girls wouldn't think anything strange about that. Don't worry, they'd say, as they packed away their books and pens, It's time for supper anyway — the Elizabethan poets will just have to wait till tomorrow.
As she approached the corner the walkway seemed to suck her in to the facing window and its sweeping view. She decided to pause there for a moment, to compose herself before she returned to the others.
A line of beech trees grew near the library, reaching up to the fourth floor — a floor below Fiona. A breeze was blowing and the continual, languid motion of the treetops — now thatched with light green leaves — drew in Fiona's eye and seemed capable of holding it for hours. But her gaze detached itself to range across the wide lawn behind the trees and the buildings spaced around it; then over them to the halls of residence on the edges of the campus, and the roads and houses beyond that. On the lawn students kicked footballs and flipped frisbees, or lay on the grass, reading with sunglasses on. Fiona felt her breathing slow and become more even. She had forgotten how pretty the campus could be. In winter, true, it was a depressing sight; it looked unfinished then, as if the buildings were still sketches in an architects workbook. And only sketches seemed to live there — slick grass, skeletal trees and lonely, stick man people. But all that changed in spring. Suddenly flowers sprung up everywhere, Bluebells, Snowdrops, Chrysanthemums, in corners where nothing but mud had been before. Leaves burst from trees, cracking apart the hoary twigs. And people seemed to bloom too, smiling and laughing as if the sun had opened up their faces. As Fiona continued to gaze at the campus, it occurred to her that no-one who had seen the spring could deny the existence of God. Here it was, the proof of her beliefs. Not a musty, winter proof, the kind found in arguments and books; it was right here, in the tiny purple flowers on the vine climbing the art department wall, the chalky paleness of the sky above the horizon. It was in every muted thump or shout that reached her through the glass, every liquid movement that spread among the trees. Her anxiety was completely gone now. In fact, as her mind retraced her stop-start wandering among the shelves, her panic and paranoia, she almost laughed out loud. It all seemed so ridiculous — agonising over a few veiled words, a few dark thoughts, when the light of God's love was everywhere, shining on everything. Her eyes moved to the students on the path that ran alongside the lawn. They were beginning to migrate across the campus to the refectory. These were the early eaters, the early risers, the people who attended their nine o' clock lectures with shower-fresh hair and pens poised like wands above their paper. People like Fiona and her friends. She watched them foreshortened on the path, those boys and girls wearing tee-shirts and jeans, shoulderbags and backpacks. It seemed to Fiona that from up there she could see everything about them. She could see that, like her, they were foolish and vain, and thought they could hide their true feelings inside them. She could see how they concealed their discontent with themselves and each other, and how, once buried, it grew into bitterness and scorn. She could see how they kept people at a distance with quick jokes and superficial warmth. She wished she could tell them, all of them, that there was no point trying to hide anything, because the Lord God knew their every thought, and He could see into their hearts as clearly as she could see through this glass.
But it was time to go now. The queue would be growing outside the refectory, and she didn't want to keep the others waiting. Especially not Lilly, who got so snappish when she was hungry. As she turned to leave she noticed something odd out of the corner of her eye: a ripple seemed to move across one of the buildings, making its facade bulge and then shrink again. She stepped back and realised that the ripples were everywhere, small distortions in the window pane. By moving her head from side to side she could make the whole campus wobble. Someone started laughing and she recognised the goofy sound. It was Paula. She had really better go.
