Free The Accidental Woman by Jonathan Coe Page A

be very foolish. She knew that if Stephen ever found out about this behaviour, he would consider it incomprehensible, and might stop loving her, or might never start loving her, or might even stop liking her. Yes, might even stop liking her. But that didn’t stop her doing it. There was one time which kept coming back to her, as she sat waiting outside his college that hot afternoon, it came back to her in fragments, glimpses insistent in form and character, always the same, but this is not how I shall narrate it.
    It had been another warm afternoon, uncomfortably warm, but worth it for the lovely cool into which she had stepped as soon as she entered the chapel. She walked softly, her shoes echoing on the slabs, and sat unnoticed at the end of a pew, two rows from the back. The chapel was empty, except for the organ loft, where Stephen and his music teacher were having a lesson. Maria knew that Stephen had an organ lesson at this time in the afternoon, and had come to the chapel for this very reason, to listen to him as he played. It was the first time she had ever done so, and also the last, the memory being, as far as she could see, more important than the experience. It, the memory, came to take on a peculiar texture, composed largely in the end of visual rather than aural elements. Even now she felt a shudder, perhaps of pleasure, perhaps of pain, at the thought of the scene as her mind’s and her remembrance’s eye had between them framed it, the pale glowing tetragon of sunlight on the slabs, the shaft of sunlight connecting this figure to her nearest window, the dustclouds dancing before her, the shade around, and the soft, insistent music, to which Maria hardly listened, at least in her usual way, but which might have spoken to her of regretful acceptance, if she had been interested in that sort of conjecture. Now: irony coming up. The music, as far as Maria was concerned, was Stephen’s. It was he who made it, and filled the chapel with it, it was he alone who was humanly responsible for the sound of those moments, for the sound which her world made, in other words, during that time. This was how she liked to look at it, and this was at the heart of all that day’s worth. But to tell the truth, never a bad thing to do occasionally even in a novel, it had not been Stephen playing the organ at all, in this instance, for his teacher, exasperated beyond measure by the hopelessness of his performance, had taken over and played the whole prelude without stopping, as a demonstration of how it should be done. Maria did not know this. But her inaccurate memory meant much more to her than our knowledge of the facts can ever mean to us, so we needn’t feel superior.
    Since it was now approaching the end of their time at Oxford, things were getting desperate, from Ronny’s point of view. None of his proposals of marriage had yet obtained a favourable response, in spite of the fact that he had increased their delivery to the rate of one a day. He had, of course, found out about Stephen. Ever since making the discovery, about six weeks ago, he had been the victim of an insane jealousy. What Maria never knew, when she followed Stephen through the streets of Oxford, the two halves of herself frantically debating whether or not to approach him, was that Ronny, more often than not, would be following her, frantically debating within himself (one cannot talk in terms of halves with regard to Ronny, eighths would be nearer the mark) whether to accost Maria, and charge her with her infidelity, or whether to accost Stephen, and confront him with his treachery, or whether to leave well alone. No decision was every arrived at, because he always lost them sooner or later. Ronny would have made a useless spy. But he knew all about their movements, he was well acquainted with the strange fascination which this quiet young man exerted, oblivious, over Maria. That was why, as Maria sat beneath the spreading tree, watching the entrance to