A Monstrous Regiment of Women

I plucked the sheet from her hand and pushed it into the pocket of my trousers.

“History is littered with odd happenings that were allowed to fade away into nothing, instead of being seized on as a new beginning.”

The discussion moved away into Jean d’Arc, Queen Elizabeth, the women of the New Testament, George Sand, and on into the trackless wastes of theory.

That afternoon, I had a tutorial with Margery. Marie showed me in and then carried in the tea things, and without speaking or meeting my eyes, she managed to convey an attitude of scorn, superiority, and profound dislike. She had contrived to forget the state of her mistress’s face, remembering only that I had tricked her and maltreated her and made a fool of myself. I sat and studied my hands until she had unloaded the tray and the door clicked shut behind her. I then looked across at Margery.

“What happened, Margery? How did you heal yourself?”

Amazingly, she laughed.

“You, too? Marie seemed to think I was on death’s door the other night—why, I can’t think. I’d have thought you have more sense.”

“And you weren’t.”

“Of course not! I cut my finger on a broken glass and must somehow have rubbed it against my face.” She held out her left hand. There was a plaster around the middle finger.

“Your dress was torn,” I noted.

“Yes. I caught the lace on a rough spot on the bookshelf,” she said evenly.

“Why did you burn it?”

“You are very inquisitive, Mary. I find the sight of blood repugnant, and bloodstains make me quite faint.”

“May I see your finger, please?”

With a tiny shrug, she held out her hand. It was cool and quite calm in mine as I unfastened the plaster. The slice it concealed had been deep, had undoubtedly been made by a piece of broken glass, and had not been there on Thursday night.

There was nothing I could do, no one I could talk to. The only other person who had seen Margery’s injuries was Marie, and she was firmly set on forgetting. If only I had allowed Ronnie to enter the chapel. With her as a witness, I might force an answer from Margery. As it was, mine had been the only eyes, and I was beginning to doubt them. I let loose her hand and she began to do up the plaster.

“It’s very nice of you all to be concerned about me, but do save it for something serious like the ’flu.” She turned her hand palm up to see that the plaster was neat, then paused, looking, I was certain, at the skin over her soft wrist that on Thursday night had shown a welt dotted with blood, where a ring worn by a clenched fist had slid across the ineffectual defence of the small hand. She stared at the spot as if mesmerised, and then she said, in a voice so low I could scarcely hear, “Occasionally, grace is given to the undeserving.” After a moment, she turned her hand back, patted the plaster, and looked up at me, her eyes clear of anything but a slight amusement. “Now, Mary, you take your tea white and without sugar, is that right?”

We spoke that afternoon of one of her guide words: love. I talked about the earthy roots of the Hebrew ahev and hesed, hashaq, dod, rdham, and rea’, and the more ethereal Greek agape and phileos (as well as eros, although it is not a part of the New Testament vocabulary).

I lectured, and she responded, but there was a distance between us. All I could think about was the ease with which she had lied.

As I gathered my books together, Margery stood up to fetch one we had left on her desk, and when she handed it to me my eyes were drawn again by the plaster on her finger. I decided to try one more time for an answer.

“You won’t tell me what happened?”

“I did tell you, Mary. Nothing happened.”

“Margery,” I blurted out in a passion of frustration, “I don’t know what to make of you!”

“Nor I you, Mary. Frankly, I cannot begin to comprehend the motives of a person who dedicates a large portion of her life to the contemplation of a God in whom she only marginally believes.”

I felt stunned, as if she had struck me in the diaphragm. She looked down at me, trying to measure the effect of her words.

“Mary, you believe in the power that the idea of God has on the human mind. You believe in the way human beings talk about the unknowable, reach for the unattainable, pattern their imperfect lives and offer their paltry best up to the beingless being that created the universe and powers its continuation. What you balk at is believing the evidence of your eyes, that God can reach out and touch a single human life in a concrete way.” She smiled, a sad, sad smile. “You mustn’t be so cold, Mary. If you are, all you will see is a cold God, cold friends, cold love. God is not cold—never cold. God sears with heat, not ice, the heat of a thousand suns, heat that inflames but does not consume. You need the warmth, Mary— you, Mary, need it. You fear it, you flirt with it, you imagine that you can stand in its rays and retain your cold intellectual attitude towards it. You imagine that you can love with your brain. Mary, oh my dear Mary, you sit in the hall and listen to me like some wild beast staring at a campfire, unable to leave, fearful of losing your freedom if you come any closer. It won’t consume you; I won’t capture you. Love does not do either. It only brings life. Please, Mary, don’t let yourself be tied up by the bonds of cold academia.”

Her words, the power of her conviction, broke over me like a great wave, inundating me, robbing me of breath, and, as they receded in the room, they pulled hard at me to follow. I struggled to keep my footing against the wash of Margery’s vision, and only when it began to lose its strength, dissipated against the silence in the room, was I seized by a sudden terror at the nearness of my escape.

I made some polite and noncommittal noises, and quickly drew the session to a close. As I left the Temple precincts I tried to tell myself that Margery had not answered my question; however, I knew that she had.

TWELVE

Sunday, 9 January-

Thursday, 13 January

Man for the field and woman for the hearth:

Man for the sword and for the needle she:

Man with the head and woman with the heart:

Man to command and woman to obey;

All else confusion.

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I left the next morning for Oxford with a strong sense of brushing the dust from my boots. I would push it all from me, all the upset and confusion of Margery’s apparent duplicity and, behind it, the impossible occurrences of Thursday night. Not for me the tugs and pulls of Right Action, the flattery of being Margery’s personal tutrix, the