Angel (7 page)

“There's a parcel for you, Angel!” Mrs Deverell called up the stairs.

Her heart raced and she felt confused. It was a letter she had waited for, so why a parcel, she wondered in a panic? During the last week she had doubted postmen and publishers; now for the first time she felt a doubt about herself. Then life isn't endurable after all, she thought as she went halfway down the stairs and took the package from her mother. She opened it in her bedroom. A printed slip fluttered to the floor and she picked it up and stared at it. When at last she knew that there was no mistake, she was filled with anger. They had dared to give no reasons, omitted all excuses, had sent no letter. She loathed them, whoever they were, with the utmost ferocity; as maniacal as a vain woman jilted.

She re-wrapped the manuscript in the same piece of paper with the publisher's label on the inside, and found another address from one of her school-books. She had no money for postage and could not get to the till while her mother was busy in the shop, so she gathered up all her school-books, which were all that she had to sell, and went out of the house by the back door. She made her way through the yard where there were stacked-up packing-cases, a clothes-line; a few ferns grew against one of the walls and one or two crocuses had forced their way through the trodden ground. A door led into a cinder path between high walls. Here were the back entrances of other houses; on dark nights a place of whisperings and rustlings, cats fighting, rats scavenging.

The bookshop was in the Butts, by the church, a musty, galleried building full of mildewed volumes that no one would ever read again. The young assistant seemed dubious about adding to them, and took the books from Angel, glanced at them and shrugged his shoulders. “I'll inquire,” he said. When he came back, he was smiling with false pity. “No, I'm afraid we should have no use for them. We could offer one and sixpence.”

“Two shillings,” Angel said, burning with humiliation.

“Now, come,” he said insolently. “You don't want to make me go all the way back and ask again for the sake of sixpence.”

“Yes, I do.”

He sighed extravagantly, but he went away and when he came back it was without the books. He handed her the florin with infuriating solemnity and, as she turned to leave the shop, called after her: “Don't spend it all at once, will you?”

“You ill-bred jackanapes!” Angel said loudly. He looked startled, but when she turned to close the door she could see him through the glass panel. He was bowed over the counter, as if weeping or in pain: for a moment she felt appeased, and then she saw that he was convulsed with laughter.

By the time the manuscript was next returned, the pain was blurred by her excitement over the new novel she had begun to write: the story of a great actress's triumph over a contemptuous world. (Those who had booed at first would, long before the last page, be taking the horses from the shafts of her carriage and drawing her exultantly through the crowded street.)

Almost methodically, Angel tied up the parcel again. Now that her school-books were all sold, she had no address to send it to, and when she had managed to steal some money from her mother's purse she set out for the Free Library. On one side of the municipal building was a museum full of stuffed animals and broken earthenware; on the other, across the draughty vestibule, was the library, dark with books all bound in greasy black leather. Angel could not get beyond the turnstile without a ticket.

“Complete the form and obtain a reference from a clergyman or suchlike,” said the assistant.

“I want a book now, at this minute.”

“I'm sorry,” said the young man.

“I know that you are not,” said Angel. “I will go through and
look
at the books without taking one away.”

“I am afraid that until you have a ticket you are not allowed inside the library.”

A woman waiting behind Angel laid her book impatiently on the counter, and at once Angel turned and picked up the book and opened it at the title-page. For a second, she memorised the publishers' address printed there; then, without speaking, she pushed past the woman and went out to the vestibule.

She hurried through the streets, her lips moving rapidly as if she were mad. At the post office she wrote the address on her parcel: Gilbright & Brace, Bloomsbury Square, London.

Going home, she felt tired, overcome by the lassitude of the spring evening; as if she had taken a rest after long exertion and found it difficult to rise up again. She shrank from the wind and the grittiness of the pavements. All that she saw and felt tired her, and she longed to shut out the world and be secure in the womb of her imagination. A boy bowling an iron hoop ran past her and she trembled at the noise he made with his hobnail boots on the pavement. One of the dreaded neighbourhood characters approached, a gaunt woman who walked stiffly, menacingly, her eyes glaring above a scarf which was drawn up to cover most of her face. Angel had heard that she had some sinister disease. Children stared at her, for there was a rumour that she had no nose. Sometimes as she hurried by they could hear her muttering: the scarf muffled her curses on the world or some reiterated plaint about the state of her existence. Today, as if she were sleep-walking, she stared ahead of her and climbed the steps of the Wesleyan Chapel. “At least she has religion,” Angel thought, as if she had come upon a child playing with a broken toy.

When she reached home, she found Aunt Lottie there. She was still in deep mourning for Queen Victoria, and the black and braided dress was brightened only by a bunch of velvet parma violets which Madam had discarded. It wasn't the usual day for her weekly visit and she seemed excited and nervous.

“Where have
you
been?” she asked Angel. Mrs Deverell looked apprehensive.

“Out,” said Angel, going over to the window and throwing her cloak on the sofa.

“Aunt Lottie's been waiting to see you, dear,” said her mother.

“I had a message from Madam. . . .”

“Not more theatricals?” said Angel.

“Shall we have a cup of tea first?” Mrs Deverell suggested.

A silence fell as she began to lay the table. Aunt Lottie fidgeted with the parma violets and Angel looked out of the window. Rain had fallen earlier in the afternoon, and there were still places where the pigeon-coloured rooftops shone with silver. At the corner of the street, a child with shaved head and bare feet was skipping. Her thin arms kept crossing over her breast, the rope looped rhythmically above her head and her pinafore flew out as she bobbed up and down, and her lips moved as she counted.

“Aunt Lottie has a suggestion to make,” said Mrs Deverell as the three of them came to the table.

But over this new offer from Paradise House even Aunt Lottie was dubious, and she hardly knew what reaction to hope for or which one would affect her less disagreeably.

“Madam wants a young maid to train under me ready for Miss Angelica. Up till now, she's managed with Nannie, with me to help on special occasions, but the time's coming when she'll need more than to scrape along like that.”

“Poor thing!” said Angel scornfully.

“So Madam, having heard me talk of you, thinks it would be better for me to have someone I know to train into ways similar to my own, for she always is consideration itself to me. . . .”

“She is that,” said Mrs Deverell.

“Madam, then, says for me to come this afternoon, hesitation is not in her make-up. ‘You must go at once,' she said, ‘and ask her mother.' So what do you think of taking the position? Do you feel that you have such a vocation?”

“I?” said Angel. The question came out on a deep gasp of astonishment.

“It would be nice for you to be with Auntie Lottie, and would comfort me to know you weren't with strangers,” Mrs Deverell said.

“There's no life better,” Aunt Lottie said smugly.

Angel stared at her. “Do you really dare to suggest that I should demean myself doing for a useless half-wit of a girl what she could perfectly well do for herself; that I should grovel and curtsy to someone of my own age; dance attendance on her; put on her stockings for her and sit up late at night, waiting for her to come back from enjoying herself? You must be utterly mad to breathe a single word of such a thing to me. Go back and tell your damned Madam what I think of her insult, ask her what she would say to someone who spoke of her own daughter so degradingly, and tell her that one day she will blush with shame to think of what she has done.”

Her mother and her aunt sat quite still, as if they were waiting to be photographed, her mother with her head turned slightly aside and Aunt Lottie smiling down at her plate. When Angel had stopped speaking, there was silence. Her Aunt licked the tip of one finger and pressed it into some cake-crumbs on her plate. She had an air of preoccupation mingled with disdain. She licked the crumbs off her finger and brushed her lips with a lace handkerchief; then she lifted her head, looked up at the ceiling and seemed to be listening to her own thoughts. The silence nearly defeated Angel. It underlined her loud outburst. The temptation was to begin again, but she resisted it, knowing that Aunt Lottie was expecting, hoping for, her to become hysterical. She sat out the silence. Her mother, the most apprehensive of the three, broke it.

“I think you should apologise to your Aunt Lottie,” she said quietly. “No matter how you may look at the matter, she was only passing on a message. She in no way merited such rudeness.”

Now Aunt Lottie, still smiling faintly, raised her hand, shook her head quietly. “No apology, please, Emmie, I want no apology.” She kept her voice much quieter than usual, to mark its contrast with Angel's. “I see that I have looked upon my work wrongly all these years. It never seemed to me to be dishonourable to be serving others. I never saw it in that light. We are all servants of God, I thought. I did my work humbly and as my conscience directed: and was glad to do it. Now I see that I was mistaken. I see that I was wrong not to vaunt myself more, be more puffed-up.” As she warmed to her sarcasm, colour came into her cheeks and her composure began to break; she trembled as her temper rose: she fell into savage repetitions and bitter irony. “I see that humility and unselfishness and ungrudging work are not what are respected. Oh, quite the reverse. It's setting yourself up as high as you can; giving yourself superior airs, however unwarranted; being too grand to lift your hand to help another, not even your own mother, that's what's to be respected, it seems. . . .

No, please Emmie, may I continue? I have sat here week after week, biting back my words; I can't contain myself for ever. . . . No, pass on Madam's message I did, as I at least know what is due to my betters; but never for one moment think that I did anything but dread the consequences. I shall go back now and tell Madam what is true—that I could not be the instrument of bringing to her service what we have never had at Paradise House—vanity, selfishness, ingratitude. I am afraid you and I wasted our money, Emmie. There were times when we used to feel proud of all the learning she was getting, not knowing the seeds it was sowing. What use is French, I ask, if you are to spend your life sponging on your mother. . . . No, please, Emmie, may I . . .? trying to ape the lady? Lady! I will try not to laugh.” She did not succeed; a curious snorting noise came from her. “I have spent my life with ladies and I think I may say that I know where the word applies. I shall be interested to see where all these grand ideas are leading to. Very interested. Very interested indeed.”

She had gone on too long. She had made the mistake Angel did not make and now she could not stop. Triumphantly, Angel took a slice of bread-and-butter, folded it over and began to eat. She gave the impression that she was doing so only to pass the time; not because she was hungry. She had gained the ascendancy and all three knew it.

“I shall come to your house, Emmie,” Aunt Lottie said. “For your sake, I shall come as usual; but I shall never address you again as long as I live, Angel Deverell, and if you choose to address me, be prepared to be ignored.”

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” Mrs Deverell moaned.

“And what is more,” Aunt Lottie went on, ignoring her previous threat, “don't expect to get another penny from me, not for any purpose whatsoever; not if you are starving in the gutter. And when I pass on, I hope that whoever I now decide to leave my little nest-egg and my few trinkets to won't feel themselves above accepting them.” At the thought of her own death, she became even more unsteady and her eyes filled with tears.

“Now, Lottie, Lottie!” her sister said soothingly.

“Would you pass the jam, mother?” asked Angel, in a polite, indifferent voice.

After tea she went out. She walked through the streets, without wondering where she was going. I am quite alone and there is no hope, she thought. The argument between herself and her aunt went on in her head; sometimes, so intensely did she suffer what she thought, her lips moved and she muttered aloud.

The streets were grey and gritty. Lights were already shining through the bright, engraved and frosted windows of the public-houses, though darkness was an hour away. Outside the Music-Hall a long queue waited for the early doors of the pit to open. Angel passed the Prison, with its plum-coloured brick and dagger-like slits of windows. She felt very little curiosity about any of the lives that were lived inside these places where she had never been. She could perfectly, she thought, imagine what went on, in the public-house and the music-hall and gaol. Experience was a makeshift for imagination; would neither be, she felt sure, half as beautiful, or half so terrible.

At the back of the Prison were a little park and some public gardens. Children were bowling hoops around the boarded-up bandstand where the Temperance Brass Band played on summer Sunday evenings. A few people were walking briskly along the gravel paths, between wind-raked evergreens. These paths wound up towards a shrubbery on a small hill where there was a great cast-iron statue of a lion, a landmark for miles. Some boys were now walking round it, looking up at its huge testicles and sniggering.