The Time of the Angels (5 page)

In thus setting her own destiny apart from her cousin’s, Muriel affirmed a superiority which she knew would bring its own burdens. She had, as she slowly glided away from the shores of ordinariness, her moments of panic. It felt like a loss of innocence; and there were times when she weakly yearned for she knew not what reunion with simple innocent things, with thoughtless affections and free happy laughter and dogs passing by in the street. She could not think why her asceticism seemed so like a kind of guilt. Yet there had always been, even in her long friendship with Elizabeth, a secret melancholy. The idea of suicide was not forced upon her by circumstances or disappointments, it was entirely and deeply natural to her, and she had early provided herself with a stock of sleeping-tablets sufficient to remove her promptly and painlessly from the mortal scene should she choose at any moment to quit it. The thought that she stayed on provisionally, and because from day to day she chose to, gave her a reviving thrill as she clutched and shook in their little bottle the precious liberating tablets whose existence she had not revealed even to Elizabeth. Well, she might go some day. But she was certainly not disposed to go just yet.

“Muriel, Ariel, Gabriel.”

“Yes, darling.”

“Did old Shadox-Brown turn up like she said she would?” Elizabeth ground the cigar into the ash-tray and began to pick the leaves apart with restless fingers.

“Yes, she came this morning with Uncle Marcus. I heard Pattie turning them away.”

“I suppose Carel can’t keep them out forever. I can’t say I much want to see Uncle Marcus though. Do you want to see Shadox?”

“Good God no. That woman of principle. Did I show you her letter? All about facing up to things and getting a worthwhile job.”

“I hate facing up to things, don’t you?”

“Hate it. What’s more, I won’t.”

The girls prided themselves on being theoretical immoralists of some degree of refinement. Being high-minded and superior and tough made them by a natural development non-moral and free. They were not themselves tempted by excesses. They lived indeed the strictly ordered life which Muriel imposed and Elizabeth accepted. But they took it for granted that all was permitted. They despised a self-abnegation which called convention duty, and neurosis virtue. They had disposed of such self-styled morality long ago in their discussions, just as they had at an early age convinced each other that there was no God, and then dropped the subject forever.

“I can’t stand that world of do-gooders,” said Elizabeth.

“Neither can I. They’re just gratifying a sense of power. And so pleased with themselves. It’s a kind of snobbery. Shadox is a snob.”

“Talking of do-gooders, has dear Anthea called again?”

“Yes, dear Anthea called this morning. She is a daily visitation.”

Mrs Barlow had already become a joke to the girls.

“I think I’ll just hoist myself up.”

Elizabeth rose from the floor with a series of slow measured movements and adjusted herself on the chaise-longue, stretching out her long black-clad legs. Muriel watched her and did not move. Elizabeth did not like to be helped.

“Did you sleep all right last night, sweetheart?”

“Like a log. Did you?”

“The noise of those trains kept disturbing me.”

Muriel had had her terrible dream last night. It often recurred. She was in a lonely place, it might have been a temple, beside a marble pillar, and threatened by something dark coming out of the ground which reared itself up and up. She could not recall what happened at the end and always awoke in terror. She had never told Elizabeth about this dream.

“I felt so damned tired,” said Elizabeth. “I went to sleep at once.”

“You haven’t been lifting things, have you, darling?”

“No, no. I put the books in one by one. I must admit it took ages.”

“I hope you haven’t got my cold.”

“I gave you that cold, my pet!”

“How are you feeling at the moment?”

“Oh, middling.”

Elizabeth’s illness, still a mystery to the doctors, fascinated Muriel and even charmed her. It was as if all attributes of Elizabeth, even this one, were turned into sweets and favours. Elizabeth herself observed a reticence on the subject which she wore as a chaste air, a kind of modesty which captivated Muriel while it also provoked her. Elizabeth had withdrawn a little behind the secret of her illness. She never now allowed Muriel to see her undressing or undressed. It was an occasional privilege to see her long-bare-legged in a shirt or regal in bed in her mauve nightdress with the little pearl buttons like milk teeth. Only an elaborate knock and a firm reply gave access to her room, her door was often locked, and at certain times Muriel had to await the summons of the bell. Also Elizabeth had become untouchable. Muriel knew this not through any words but through the complex language of movement. She had become aware of an electrical barrier which now shielded her cousin from her. This troubled Muriel, although Elizabeth’s own awareness of the barrier had in fact made it into a form of communication. There were swift tensions between them, pauses and falterings which had a grace of their own, the moments when Muriel wished to take her cousin in her arms and could not do so.

Muriel conjectured that what made this situation was the surgical corset. She would have liked to touch Elizabeth’s side and feel the corset. In fact this object, which she had never been allowed to see, occupied her imagination to a remarkable degree. Elizabeth had been prepared to talk a little about the corset at first, and had even made jokes about it, referring to herself as “the iron maiden", but later she had observed and imposed silence on the subject. The only fact which Muriel knew about the corset was that, since Elizabeth felt more comfortable in trousers, she wore the “male version” of the corset, though what made it male had never become clear. Muriel often wondered whether she ought not to force Elizabeth to show her the thing. So much reticence might be somehow damaging to Elizabeth herself. However, she still hesitated to bully her now more formidable cousin in so delicate a matter. She only wished that she could in some way remove the trouble from her own mind.

As Muriel watched Elizabeth shifting restlessly upon the chaise-longue her gaze passed behind the bleached golden head to a point on the angle of the wall where a long crack had opened in the wallpaper. Elizabeth’s room, once much larger, had been rendered L-shaped by two hardboard partition walls which composed another little room, now opening separately on to the corridor, which had been designed as a linen room, and was already so employed by Pattie. Exploring the house soon after her arrival, Muriel had entered that room and has seen a chink of light in the corner where the two partition walls joined. Through this chink it should be possible to see into Elizabeth’s room and even, with the aid of the big French mirror, into the recess where Elizabeth slept. Muriel, amazed at the speed with which this idea had come to her on seeing the chink of light, had immediately left the room as if to avoid some appalling temptation. Of course she could not dream of thus spying on her cousin.

To take her attention off the still suggestive spy-hole Muriel turned round to face the mirror. The room appeared again, but altered, as if seen in water, a little darkened in a silver-gilded powdery haze. The mirror showed her her own head and just behind it the streaming hair of Elizabeth who had turned to pummel her cushions, and behind that a large part of Elizabeth’s bed, tousled and feathery, in the twilight behind the screen. Muriel now looked into her own eyes, bluer than Elizabeth’s but not so beautifully shaped. As she saw that her breath was blurring the glass she leaned closer and pressed her lips to the cold mirror. As she did so, and her mirrored lips moved to meet her, a memory came. She had once and only once kissed Elizabeth on the lips and then there had been a pane of glass between them. It was a sunny day and they had gazed at each other through the glass panel of the garden door and kissed. Elizabeth was fourteen. Muriel recalled the child’s figure flying then down the green garden, and the cold hardness of the glass to which her own lips had remained pressed.

She shifted now and quickly wiped the minutely textured cupid image from the surface. Elizabeth, finished with her cushions, turned and smiled at Muriel’s reflected face. Unsmiling Muriel still gazed into the mirror as into a magical archway in whose glossy depths one might see suddenly shimmering into form the apparition of a supernatural princess.

“PATTIE.”

“Yes.”

“Shall I make the tea or will you?”

“You make it, please.”

Eugene Peshkov thrust his thick fingers into the tea-caddy. The tea was very fine, like sand, and ran through them. He closed his fingers tightly, making a little lump of tea, and transferred it to the pot. Only a few specks fell on to the furry green tablecloth.

Eugene was unhappy because he had just had a quarrel with his son. Eugene did not suffer much from anxiety. He had spent too long sitting at the bottom of the world and hoping for nothing to suffer from any precarious play of tempting aspirations and glimpses. No object lay just beyond his grasp since he had long ago ceased grasping. He had never ever been really anxious about Leo. But his son made him suffer, and especially of late. There was a constantly reiterated pain, like a repeated blow, uncomplicated and as it were external, but positively there, a pain, a presence.

They had quarrelled over nothing because Leo wanted to quarrel. Leo had made some malicious remarks about the people of the house, and Eugene had checked him, and Leo had said that Eugene had the mentality of a servant and Eugene had been angry and Leo had gone off slamming the door. Such things often happened now, and each time gave Eugene the primitive shock of realizing that a son could be so disrespectful to a father, and the pain which was the mature knowledge that a son could hate a father. Eugene had lived in a great simplicity with his son, and Leo had been a very loving child. They had been together all the time since Tanya died and Leo was two years old. For years Eugene had carried Leo and led Leo everywhere he went. He had to. There was no one else to attend to the boy. Leo had lived on his shoulder and against his side like a baby animal that clings to its parent’s body. Out of such a close and loving communion how could any hatred come?

Of course it was natural that now that he was grown up the boy should not want to live at home. His grant was not enough to pay for separate lodgings and of course he chafed. It was only for a while, as Eugene told him, it was not much to bear. But there was more than natural irritation in the child, there was some deep ferocious resentment. What had Eugene, who had been his minister and protector, almost his servant, all the days of his life, ever done to merit this? He had corrected him, but never harshly. He had criticized him a little. Eugene was aware that his precocious son was casually promiscuous with women, and this continued to grieve and shock him. There had been at least one pregnancy. Eugene had spoken to Leo once about this, in what he hoped was a prudential rather than a disapproving tone. Was he being hated for this, punished perhaps for this? For some time now Leo would not speak Russian with him, and if he spoke to him in Russian the boy would reply in English. This hurt Eugene more than a direct insult. He could apprehend a work of deliberate destruction going on in that resentful mind. Leo would destroy in himself if he could the precious inbuilt structure of the Russian language, he would destroy the tissue of his Russianness, he would forget if he could that he was a Russian.

Eugene was consoled to see Pattie. She had quite often dropped into his air-raid shelter room to ask him for things, but this was the first time, since he had formally invited her to tea and she had accepted, that she was likely to stay for a good while and talk. He felt at ease with her, as he usually did with people who had no pretensions and no position. Eugene suffered from no sense of inferiority. He was filled and stiffened by his Russian essence, just as he knew that English people were filled by their Englishness. English or Russian, more than any other people in the world they quite calmly and quietly knew themselves to be the best. There was no fuss. It was simply so. So Eugene had lost, in his long battered exile’s life, not a single grain of this confidence. But he was a realist and he sometimes surveyed this monstrous self-satisfaction, which was far too relaxed to be called pride, a trifle sardonically in its context. He had never made himself a place in English society, he had never even got a foot on to a ledge or a finger into a cranny. His friends were exiles and misfits like himself. There were enough people left outside to make a society themselves, perhaps a better one. In Pattie he recognized a fellow-citizen.

He looked at her now. She was sitting a little nervously, with her shoulders hunched, upon the lower bunk. The icon blazed above her head like a star. The room was brightly lit, perhaps too brightly and glaringly lit, and Pattie was shrinking and blinking. Perhaps she was someone who always wanted to hide. With its high ceiling and plain concrete walls the room seemed heavy, as if it were sinking into the earth, and it was indeed a little below ground level. A long narrow window had been opened the whole length of one wall, up near the top, uncurtained and now full of foggy darkness. Below in the well of the room was Eugene’s double bunk, his table with the furry green cloth with its deep fringe, an armchair of modern design, a wooden chair, and a yellow porcelain stand, waisted and bosomed like a girl, upon which stood a potted plant. Eugene did not know what kind of plant it was, although it had been with him for many years. It had long drooping branches and very glossy heart-shaped leaves some of which very occasionally became brown and dry and fell off. It disliked both water and light. Eugene loved it dearly, and together with the icon it constituted his property. The rest of the stuff just happened to be there.

Eugene adjusted the electric fire so that its heat should shine on to Pattie. The fire was just for cosiness, since the room was already quite warm because of the proximity of the boiler. Pattie was fingering her cup timidly, stirring the tea for the fourth time. On the table on the furry green cloth was a plate of hot buttered toast, whose buttery brown smell pervaded the room, and a plate of cakes with decorated sugary outsides and soft spongy insides. Pattie had taken one of these on to her own plate beside her on the bed, but seemed too shy to eat it. Eugene contemplated her.

He had seen plenty of West Indian girls on buses and on the underground but he had never studied one close to or for long. He liked the flatness and width of her face which reminded him of a Russian face. Her ample figure too reminded him of his home. She was as a woman ought to be, large-bosomed, monumental. Her hips curved in a hesitant and then in a huge confident parabola and there was plenty behind. Her breasts, revealed now by a rather tight pink jersey, were big and perfectly round, two great firm spheres let into her body. She sat, her legs a little apart, showing a line of slightly tattered petticoat where her shirt was stretched over her knees. He liked the rather untidy, tousled, unkempt femininity of her and the way her shoes were always falling off. He wished she would smile at him more, he liked that sudden display of magnificent white teeth. She was much given to looking at him and the gravity of her eyes disturbed him. He was disturbed by her very dark eyes with the spots of fiery red at their points, and by the curiously straight dusky hair which floated about her head as if it were not really attached but simply followed by a kind of magnetism.

“Is it always dark like this here at this time of year?”

“The fog? Yes, it’s often foggy, though usually not for so long. It’ll let up soon.”

“It rather frightens me. And the trains make such a strange noise underneath.”

“You’ll soon stop hearing the trains. I never hear them at all, I’ve got so used to them. You’ll feel better when you’ve found your own way to the shops.” Eugene was getting a little tired of doing the shopping for the entire household.

“I’ll come with you tomorrow.”

“Do eat your cake. It’s feeling sad because you haven’t eaten it.”

The wonderful white smile, and then the teeth close a little shyly still over a very small morsel of cake.

“I expect you’ll be busy soon. Parties and dinners and things. Once you’ve settled in.”

“Oh no. The Rector never entertains.”

Eugene was not sure if he was glad or sorry. He had debated with himself whether, if he were asked to act as butler, he would say yes or no. He had been a butler in his time. At least he had acted the part of a butler with some success. All who saw him had taken him for a butler and even a good one. Eugene had not felt demeaned by this masquerade. He had also, in his time, acted the part of an odd job man in an hotel, a liftman in a shop, a porter in a school, and, for a short while, a barman. In fact his present job suited him well, though there was little money in it. He liked definite simple manual work and keeping things clean and tidy and being left to himself in his own corner. The job carried a tiny wage, besides the excellent rooms for himself and Leo. There was also a refugee organization which paid him a small stipend. He got along. The previous Rector had required very little of him and Eugene had got into pleasant habits of idleness. He liked to do something which he called meditating but which he knew was more like day-dreaming. He possessed no books except a few paperback novels, but he was a regular reader of historical biographies which he got from the library. He also had a little wireless set on which he absently listened to music. Yet he was interested in his new people and suddenly a bit disappointed that he would not be able to do his act as a butler for them.

“And Miss Muriel, does she entertain?”

“No, no. She keeps—to herself.”

Eugene was not sure that he liked this self-assertive thin girl with her boyish head and sharp curious eyes. She had asked him a lot of questions about himself rather too soon.

“The priest, the Rector—is he often ill like this?”

“He’s not ill.”

I have said something wrong, thought Eugene. He had assumed the priest was ill, as no one had been admitted to the house since he came, and he was often in bed in the mornings. Also his face was odd in some way. He alarmed Eugene a little, though he had been entirely if vaguely kind at their rare meetings.

“Oh, well, good—I heard you turning Mrs Barlow away again this morning and I thought—Are you glad you’ve come to London, Pattie? Do eat up your cake.”

“Yes. I don’t know. I haven’t really seen London yet. It’s nice to be near the river. Can you see the sea down the river?”

“Oh no. The sea’s miles and miles away.”

“I’ve never seen the sea.”

“Never seen the sea!” How could anyone not have seen the sea? Surely the sea must somehow belong to the happiness of every child. He pitied her suddenly for that loss, as if in the deprivation of that essential experience she had dried up into a little wrinkled nut. “How dreadful—I suppose when your parents came from the West Indies—”

“My father came from Jamaica. My mother was white, she was Irish.”

I ought to have guessed, thought Eugene. She isn’t all that dark. I am hurting her. “Is it your mother’s name then—”

“Yes—I mean you’d know, wouldn’t you. My parents weren’t married.”

She minds, he thought. And she thinks I’m somehow getting at her. How can I tell her that it doesn’t matter at all. He wanted to reach over and touch her plump arm just above the wrist where it emerged from the tight pink jersey. He said, “It doesn’t matter at all.”

“I know it doesn’t matter. Well, it does, it did. I had an awful time when I was little.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I can’t. It’s too awful. And anyway I’ve forgotten. Tell me about you, about when you were a little boy.”

“Me—ach—”

“If you don’t mind—”

“No, I don’t mind.” It was a very long time since he had talked to anyone about himself, and almost as long since he had talked to a woman. Talking so naturally to Pattie he realized how rarely now he ever met a woman, apart from the wives of his friends, and even them he had scarcely seen since he came to live at the Rectory. He thought suddenly, I have a woman with me, alone with me in my room.

“Where were you born?”

“In St Petersburg—Leningrad, that is.”

“Was that before they changed?”

“Before they changed—yes. I was six when they changed.”

“Were your parents rich people?”

“Yes.” It was odd to say it like that. His parents had been rich people, very rich by any standards of today. But there had been a naturalness about their wealth which made it strange even to mention it.

“So you grew up in a grand house with servants and all that?”

“Till six, yes. We had two houses, one in St Petersburg and one in the country.”

He remembered it all so very clearly. His Russian memories came in brilliant colour. All his other memories were monochrome. He could see the pink front of the big house by the Moika, with the fat curves of the stucco decorations, painted cream, dusty in the summer, crowned with snow in the winter. And the tall uncut grass at their country house, reddish with its flowers, almost concealing the long low wooden facade from the gaze of the hidden child. He hides in the grass while his mother calls him from the verandah. He sees through the rosy plumes of the grass her white spotted dress and the fringes of her slowly turning parasol.