THE BOOK OF LEAH

And then I understood Leah, in a way I never had before.

The good book has Laban, her father, putting her up to it; saying she should offer herself to Jacob in the dark, pretend to be her sister, Rachel, secure a husband by deception.

That used to make sense to me.

Daughters do as their fathers tell them. Eldest daughters should be married first, no matter how beautiful the younger. There is a system to everything – an order. The moral of the story was distinct, familiar – winning at all costs is a man’s prerogative. If Laban wanted Jacob in his family, if Laban needed a husband for his least-favoured daughter, he had the right to kill two birds with one stone. Leah’s feelings were not important. We could sympathise, but we would also understand – she did it for the good of her family.

Anyway, it all concluded well. Jacob took two wives, both sisters, so he got his beloved Rachel in the end. Leah lacked Jacob’s love but was rewarded by God, made fertile, while the younger sister stayed barren (so she wouldn’t get too big for those pretty boots). Justice played out. Of a kind.

But what if Leah was no unwilling pawn?

She wanted to go unto Jacob in the dark, that’s what I believe. She’d already had a taste, a small savour of someone, somehow – fingers reaching forward tentatively for a strand of her astounding hair, the sudden crush of lips upon hers, unexpected but wanted, a warm tongue, a hand slipping to the base of her spine, pulling her body closer.

She desperately wanted to feel that again.

So, Leah suggested the double-cross, pretending to her father that it was a sacrifice, if only to ensure history recorded her as a martyr, not a whore. Women are the true masters of deception, have always had to be. They don’t get to decide which of their behaviours are virtues.

‘What happens now?’ I said as we broke apart.

I moved straight to the classroom window, flattening my hair, checking who had seen. Everyone was still in the canteen.

He picked up the mop again. I watched his hands upon it.

‘Do I take you out for dinner?’ he said.

I laughed, and he caught up quickly. ‘Oh, yeah! Stupid me.’

Unless you have a boat, I thought. A boat that could take us to the mainland. I would get on a boat like that with you. With you, I would.

I didn’t know where it was coming from, this desperate rush.

‘There’s always the Anchor,’ I said. ‘On weekends, Jed lets women in.’

So, we made a plan. A double-cross of our own.

I luxuriated in the painful wait for Saturday, everything speaking to me of what had happened in the wake of that flood. Eve Grogan, one of my Fourth Years, intoned the lines of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘I think of thee!’ to the class and the words lifted from the page. Seven pairs of eyes pierced me as I sighed at the idea of a tree trunk set all bare. In chapel, I sang ‘Make Me a Channel of Your Peace’ with a sinful fervour. Prints made by the lower school went up on the corridor walls – tomatoes and pomegranates, split in half, spilling their seeds, obscene in their pinks and reds. I blushed and looked away. Whenever he was near, I ached for his touch, to be there again, beneath the white-hot gaze of St Rita.

‘Shall we go to the Anchor tomorrow night?’ I proposed to my colleagues in the staff room on Friday.

They looked up and around, certain that someone else must have spoken, not sullen Miss Cedars who had taken to sitting alone on the low, soft chairs in breaktimes, chewing on an apple.

‘It’s been a difficult week, hasn’t it?’ I went on. ‘Doing that walk to chapel every day in the rain.’

‘We glory in our tribulations!’ shrilled Miriam from the kitchenette, not turning from the sink. ‘Knowing that tribulation worketh patience!’

Ben’s gaze flickered across to meet mine and away again – our plan thwarted at the first move – but Ruth was wise to our silent exchange. She grinned at me wryly, one sinner to another, said: ‘But a beer will help though, Miriam, don’t you think?’

I prepared for that evening by working on my verses, scripture being the most effective retaliation to gossip. I did not want this to play out on Lark’s stage, for my precious Knight of Cups to be dissuaded by too-hasty rumour. Welcoming strangers so easily wasn’t our usual way – though it should have been. I cautioned my own reflection in the window as I did the washing-up, arming myself, rehearsing, justifying my friendliness to Ben, negating it. ‘Be not forgetful to entertain strangers,’ I told that echo of me in the glass. ‘For thereby some have entertained angels unawares.’

Upstairs, I tried on the mermaid skirt, turning my hips to make the pleats fly.

‘For I was an hungred,’ and ye gave me meat: I told Leah in the mirror. ‘I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in.’

I put the skirt away. If I wore it, everyone would know, immediately.

The Anchor was full, as was typical for a Saturday; it took just thirty bodies to bring the place elbow-to-elbow, the last lifeboat in a storm. Jed Springer had rolled up his sleeves and broken into a sweat getting everyone served. He called terse instructions to his brother, Reuben, his slender double, a boatman usually – and a wet blanket, a loser, according to most on the island you spoke to, him being so different from garrulous Jed. Eleanor, Jed’s skittish, wide-eyed wife, completed the trio behind the bar, unsmiling in her bartender’s waistcoat.

The clan from school were in their usual factions – Dellie Leven and Faith Moran stuck close to their boatmen husbands; Ruth French, with housemate Cat Walton, jostled at the bar. Beneath a cluster of painted buoys hanging from the ceiling at the end of the room, sat Miriam Calder and her whiskered husband, Frank, his crutch propped at his side. They were embedded at the headmaster’s table, Miriam force-feeding Diana Crane all the latest buzz. Frank was known for repeating the last few words of each phrase that tumbled from his wife’s mouth, as if providing assurance that all she said was true.

I arrived alone, the Anchor lying just a few yards from my front door; the roars of male laughter travelled into my bedroom on still weekday nights. Ben arrived last, on the arm of a beaming Barbara Stanney. Heads turned when he entered – of course they did, he was our stranger – and Barbara played up to the stares with a teenage relish. She pulled Ben towards her, snuggling into his chest, raising laughter with this charade, making him blush with embarrassment. I could feel Ruth’s gaze on me, expecting me to be annoyed, but I laughed along. The distraction was good. Let everyone talk about Barbara’s ignominious display with the coycrock teacher young enough to be her son; let the wagging tongues stay well away from me.

Three drinks in, we took possession of a table, Ruth, Cat, Ben and I; Barbara had relinquished her toyboy early on for the lure of the dominoes. We huddled close on our stools, standing drinkers jostling at our backs. Ben’s presence continued to work its strange magic on Ruth. With him there, she no longer spoke to me like we were in the schoolyard. Cat spoke easily too.

‘I notice we haven’t seen you in chapel yet, Mr Hailey,’ she challenged. She wasn’t serious in this reprimand, but also she was; maintaining attendance was one of her clerical duties.

‘I’m there every day of the week,’ he shot back, understanding the game. ‘What on earth are you accusing me of?’

‘A violation!’ Cat slammed a palm to the table, making husbands and wives, fishermen and labourers, look down on us for a moment. Ben turned in his seat to give them a genial nod. Ruth sniggered into her glass.

‘Weekdays are for work, Mr Hailey,’ Cat persisted. ‘Saturdays and Sundays are for true devotion.’

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ he said with a wink, taking an exaggerated gulp of his drink and loading his top lip with foam. ‘But seriously,’ he said, ‘what do you all do on the weekends for fun?’

‘This,’ said Ruth, gesturing about her, eyebrows raised imperiously as if to ask, is this not enough? She lifted her gin and tonic. ‘And also, this.’

We launched into another round of ‘Cheers!’ and Ben pulled his phone from his pocket to take a picture of us, drinks raised, stretching an arm so he could be in the frame too.

‘I’ll just post this to Instagram,’ he pantomimed, prodding exaggeratedly at the screen. Then, ‘Oh, wait…’ He tossed the phone to the table and pretended to sulk. We eye-rolled at his joke.

‘Come on, guys!’ It was Ben’s turn to slap the table. ‘Let’s get that petition going for a telephone mast. Let’s drag Lark kicking and screaming towards the shores of the twenty-first century! The revolution starts here!’

We shook our heads slowly.

‘Why come to Lark,’ asked Ruth, skewering him with logic, ‘if you only want what you left behind?’

He shrugged.

‘I mean, what did you leave behind?’ she continued, not letting him answer. ‘Something messy, no doubt, or painful or boring or difficult.’ With each adjective her voice became more impassioned and Ben’s smile became weaker. I could have pointed out that she was using Miriam Calder’s line of reasoning to drive home her point, but Ruth would likely have poured gin over my head. ‘Everyone comes here to escape something,’ she said. In the silence that followed, we awkwardly sipped our drinks. ‘Am I right?’ she asked.

Again, Ben shrugged.

‘Listen,’ said Cat, shooting Ruth a withering look, ‘I grew up on the mainland and I got my degree there. I know it can’t compare. I’m telling you, I’ve never felt closer to God than when I’m on Lark.’

‘Oh!’ Ruth swallowed her mouthful of drink quickly, eager to join in the fervour. ‘Have you seen a sunset from the west coast, yet?’

Ben shook his head. Ruth slammed down her glass in disbelief.

‘No? You have to! You must! Climb up to the Big House, head into the gardens round the back, don’t let the Earl see you and…’ Ruth’s eyes slid to me. She grinned. ‘Leah will show you.’

‘I’ll tell you what, coycrock,’ said Cat, rescuing us both from Ruth’s clutches. ‘I’ll cook for us next weekend, how’s that for something to do?’

Ben leapt on this. ‘Yes! Then you can do the weekend after, Leah, and I’ll do the weekend after that and we’ll all score one another!’

‘What?’ Ruth spoke our confusion.

‘Like on the TV show,’ he said to our blank expressions, adding limply, ‘the one none of you have ever seen.’

The reason I said very little during these exchanges was because, beneath the table, Ben was slowly working his hand under my skirt. I wasn’t wearing the alluring mermaid pleats, just a simple, denim A-line, a style most of the women on the island owned, but still it enticed his touch. His fingertips massaged the soft flesh at the top of my thigh. The sensation required all of my concentration, all of my breath. Only when a hand, someone else’s entirely, landed heavy on my shoulder, making me start, did I burst into gabbling speech.

‘Mary!’

‘You’re not getting drunk are you, Miss Cedars?’

It was Mary Ahearn, Jade-Marie’s mother, still in her greens after a day on the land, her cheeks red from the wind. She was smiling, not really appalled, but her grip stayed firmly on my shoulder. I snipped my knees together to stall the progress of Ben’s hand.

‘Oh, no! Just a little tipsy!’

I hadn’t seen Mary since I’d dragged her daughter down the aisle and away that first morning at chapel. She was a good friend of my parents; I didn’t want her upset. I supposed that she had been called in to see Mr Crane about Jade-Marie’s misdemeanour, yet I had no memory of her waiting there on the chairs outside his office. Did she even know what her daughter had done? Nausea flickered at my throat.

‘You won’t go telling the girls you’ve seen us like this, now, will you?’ I laughed too brightly, and Mary narrowed her eyes as if considering her options.

‘I reckon your secret’s safe with me, Miss Cedars,’ she said, patting me gently and moving away.

My jumper clung hot and sweaty at my shoulder where her hand had rested.

We left as planned; me first, feigning tiredness, Ruth creasing her brow suspiciously at this early retreat. I went home, drew the curtains and waited in the kitchen with the lights off. The moon was new; I was guided only by what I could hear. The gate latch clicked, footsteps sounded in the small concrete yard. I opened the back door.

‘I can’t see you,’ he said.

‘Don’t worry. Your eyes will adjust.’

He reached for me. You are Hades, I thought, the unseen one. I am Persephone, soon to be lost to the underworld. His lips found mine, and I became instantly liquid, alive, though still laced with doubt.

‘I don’t know what I’m doing,’ I said, surfacing for air.

The sabbath would roll around in minutes. Engaging in works of the flesh is to deny yourself a place in the kingdom of God. And then what? What would be the price?

‘Of course you know what you’re doing,’ he said. His voice was as soft as warm sand upon the skin. ‘You know, you know…’