Angels and Men by Catherine Fox Page B

unspeakable from the speakable, but I was born without one. The obstetrician who delivered me said it was the worst case he’d ever known.’
    Something in her tone made Mara turn back and look at her again. Maddy’s face seemed as if it might at any moment tremble, and Mara realized in amazement that despite her crowing self-confidence, Maddy longed desperately for approval. With one cold look she had punctured Maddy as surely as if she had stabbed her with a needle. There was a silence, and in the end Mara tried a tentative smile. It was answered at once with a relieved grin. Maddy began talking again about her plans for the evening, although some of her usual boisterousness had gone.
    â€˜And so you’ll come, then, Mara?’ asked Maddy.
    Mara shook her head. At once she read Maddy’s thought balloon: She doesn’t really like me .
    â€˜Please,’ persisted Maddy, ‘you’ve got to come. Our names sound so good together – Maddy and Mara and May. Like something out of Enid Blyton.’
    â€˜ “A Night on the Tiles with the Three Ms”,’ suggested May.
    â€˜ “The Three Ms and the Amazing Piss-up”,’ said Maddy.
    â€˜What about your surnames?’ asked Mara, who could not be bothered to think of a title. ‘I don’t fit in there.’
    â€˜Ah, yes,’ said May, ‘but what about your nickname?’ She tossed the hat with a spinning motion on to the chest of drawers. Mara gave her a look.
    â€˜Rupert and Johnny call you Mara Sweetie,’ said Maddy.
    They were watching for her reaction. She raised a disbelieving eyebrow. There could be few epithets she was less likely to attract.
    â€˜I’m still not coming,’ she said. At length she managed to convince them, and they left her to her work, with instructions that she must join them if she changed her mind.
    After they had gone Mara read for another half-hour about the lives of various women fanatics of previous generations. Fragments of Maddy’s and May’s conversation kept intruding. ‘ Rupert and Johnny call you Mara Sweetie .’ She had to admit to a pathetic flutter at the thought, and repeated her vow that she would never descend to Maddy’s and May’s level. They were pursuing the two men blatantly and relentlessly. Mara frequently caught snatches of facetious banter between the four of them and, knowing she would be unable to join in, she had tried to remain aloof. On one occasion she walked into Maddy’s and May’s room before she realized the men were there too. Rupert rose to his feet instantly. Johnny remained sprawled in a chair until a hiss from Rupert appeared to rouse him. He got up with a grin.
    â€˜Sorry. He’s training me up to be middle class.’
    â€˜It’s not a class issue, Whitaker,’ snapped Rupert. ‘It’s a question of common courtesy.’
    Mara withdrew at once.
    â€˜Don’t worry,’ she heard May saying as she hurried back down the stairs. ‘She’s always like that.’ Mara paused to see if there would be a response.
    â€˜Actually, she’s really a serial killer,’ Maddy’s voice said. ‘But they’ve got it controlled by drugs. The college is helping rehabilitate her.’ There was general laughter and Mara slipped away.
    She sat and rattled her pencil against her desk edge, still thinking about Rupert and Johnny. What had drawn two such very different men to the same vocation at the same time? Why were they friends?
    Maybe they needed one another. Certainly Rupert, left to his own devices, would soon become insufferably pompous. A perfect cleric, in fact. Whereas Johnny – she stopped, realizing she was getting dangerously close to daydreaming about the pair of them. Mara Sweetie, Mara Sweetie. She shook her head briskly and bent over her book again.
    When the clock struck eleven, she picked up her hat and cloak and went out. She made her