The Time of the Angels (26 page)

MURIEL WAS ALMOST ready to leave. She had not spoken to Pattie again. She had not seen Elizabeth again. She believed what Pattie had said. She preferred not to speak more of it, she wanted no discussions or assurances or proofs. She wanted nothing which would further enforce into her mind this thought which she would have to live with for the rest of her life. Better to leave it quiet and hope that in the end, like Pattie, she would seem to forget it.

Muriel had spent most of the previous day, after Pattie’s revelation, lying upon her bed in a state of coma. The intense cold seemed to dim and lower her consciousness until there was nothing except a faint flickering awareness which was scarcely aware of itself. Something lay upon her, pinning her to the bed. Perhaps it was an angel of death that lay there, slowly chilling the inert body. The little daylight went soon and darkness came. Time passed. Footsteps passed. A light turned on in the corridor shone in through the half-open door of the room. But nobody came to her. Pattie did not come. Carel did not come. And Elizabeth did not ring her old familiar bell. The house fell silent.

Muriel thought she must have slept a little. Her limbs were long and stiff with cold, the joints frozen. She could not bend her legs or her arms. She rolled a little to and fro on the bed. Pain passed through her body like an alien distilment, a sensation she could hardly recognize. She knew objectively that this must be pain which her awakening body felt. She made it return again and again. She felt that if she continued to lie still she would soon die of cold and of the extinction of the will. The will, returning to her, was pain too and she closed her eyes and bared her teeth upon it. At the end of a long time she managed to sit up and put her foot down to the ground. Her feet seemed curled and cramped into balls which would not flatten to meet the floor. She moved them awkwardly about upon her ankles, and the blood forced its way onward in anguish. She was able at last to stand, take her overcoat off and put on an extra jersey. Putting the coat on again was an almost impossible feat but she got it on after a lot of slow struggling. She looked at her watch in the light from the corridor and found that it was only ten o’clock. She went quietly downstairs, left the house, walked to the nearest telephone box, and telephoned Norah Shadox-Brown.

Her relief at hearing Norah’s voice was so intense that she could hardly speak at first. During this time Norah, who seemed somehow immediately to understand, kept up a monologue of sensible soothing remarks. When Muriel started incoherently to talk Norah forestalled her explanations. Of course Muriel wanted to leave her father’s house and to leave it early tomorrow morning. What could be more natural? Of course Muriel could come and stay with Norah for as long as she liked. In fact, what Muriel really needed was a holiday. Norah was going off in a few days to stay with a cousin who had a villa at San Remo. Why shouldn’t Muriel come along too? They might even get some sunshine, though of course even in Italy at this time of year one couldn’t be sure. She would expect Muriel early tomorrow morning. Muriel left the telephone box murmuring “San Remo, San Remo.” Perhaps after all there was a world elsewhere.

She could not really believe it though. Her misery was waiting for her in the house. Here was the machine in which she belonged. Here was the stuff she was made of and running away could make no difference. She got into bed with her coat on and lay there shivering. She tried to think about Elizabeth but the familiar image was so altered that it was not like thinking about her any more. The iron maiden. She pictured Elizabeth’s room with the fire flickering and the jigsaw puzzle laid out on the floor. Perhaps it was finished now. She pictured the flickering fire and Elizabeth’s eyes open in the half dark and she dreaded the sound of Elizabeth’s bell like a summons from the dead.

She could not sleep, turning and turning in her bed, there was no warmth in her. What was Elizabeth thinking now, what could she be thinking? Did she regard Muriel as a spy, a traitor who had for a long time watched and suspected and schemed? Muriel thought: I must be hated for my knowledge. Oh God, if only I had never known. If only I had taken Elizabeth away without every having known. But would Elizabeth have come? It was impossible now to think of taking Elizabeth away; and yet to what was she being left? Muriel could not conceive of Elizabeth as a victim. But had she no pity for her cousin? Had the long years of their friendship suffered a metamorphosis so that even their childhood was changed? She thought: poor Elizabeth. But the thought was empty. She thought: my sister, but she could not give the words a meaning. The only thing which at last stirred her with a warm shudder of emotion was the realization that she had not fed Elizabeth. Would her cousin die there in the house like a neglected animal? Her bell had not rung. It was unspeakably weird to think that someone else must have fed her. Muriel fell asleep and dreamed of her father as he had been long ago.

When the morning came it felt like the end of the world. Muriel thought, this is the worst day of my life, let me just stiffly live through it. She opened the window to a paler twilight. The fog seemed to be clearing. It was no colder out there than it was in her bedroom. Nothing spoke in her now, not even the little voice of self-preservation which continues after reason is silent. She just remembered, as if from long ago, that she had somehow decided she must go. The notion that she could even now if she chose to walk to Elizabeth’s room and open the door was present to her mind painfully but remotely like a detailed and academic hypothesis of a torture. She moved about mechanically and her teeth chattered with a localized self-pity.

It was already nearly nine o’clock. She began to pack a suitcase, picking things up with clumsy frozen hands. She put her notebooks into the bottom of the case, and the loose sheets on which her long poem was written. She glanced at the poem as she put it in and saw in a flash that it was no good. She quickly stuffed some jerseys and a skirt in on top of it. Her fingers were too cold to fold anything and she was now almost weeping with exasperation. The case would not shut. She must be making a lot of noise. She jammed the case down on the bed, half sitting on it, and got one lock to snap. She looked for her overcoat and found that she was wearing it. She did not look round the room but went straight out of the door. The electric light was still burning on the landing. She moved with long quiet strides along the landing and down the stairs. She could hear the gramophone playing in her father’s study. She opened the front door.

“Excuse me,” said Anthea Barlow, “for calling so early in the morning. I was just wondering if I could see the Rector.”

Muriel stared at Mrs Barlow who had materialized, huge as a bear, in the pale brown light of the doorway. Mrs Barlow was too big, too material. Muriel felt like a spirit before her, and for a moment it did not occur to her that they could communicate.

“It is rather an early call, but I do rather urgently want to see him. You see—”

Muriel made a tremendous effort to speak. Her voice came out precise and clear. “I’m afraid my father is not here.”

“Oh, really? Could you tell me—”

“He has gone,” said Muriel, “to stay at his villa at San Remo.” Her voice piped, thin and high.

“Really? Could you—”

Muriel closed the door. She waited in the hall until she heard the slow footsteps going away. Then as she was about to open the door again she paused. There was something which she had forgotten. The sleeping-tablets.

It occurred to Muriel to notice, and she noticed it grimly, that during all her recent pain she had never for a moment considered leaving a world which had become so appalling. She evidently preferred the agony of consciousness. She had packed her poem and forgotten the tablets. Perhaps she would survive after all. She half decided to leave the tablets behind, but some old prudence turned her back. About the future, one never knew.

She put her suitcase down beside the hall door and mounted the stairs again very softly two at a time. The music was still playing in her father’s room. She reached her own room and quickly opened the cupboard where the tablets were kept. They were gone.

It took Muriel a little time to be absolutely certain that they were gone. She blinked her eyes. She looked at the other shelves and ran her hands all over the surfaces. The tablets were simply not there.

Muriel had been in a sort of hysterical coma ever since she had woken up. Now she became entirely cool and clear-headed. Had she moved the sleeping-tablets from that place? No. They had been there a little while ago, she was sure, and she had not moved them. Muriel stood frowning into the cupboard. Had someone borrowed them innocently? No one in the house used sleeping-pills. Even Elizabeth was a fairly good sleeper, and though her father kept odd hours he could sleep when he wanted to.

Muriel slowly closed the cupboard door. It was odd and disconcerting. But she supposed there was nothing she could do about it. There must be some simple explanation, though she was not able to think of it at the moment. She had better go now. This problem was not the only or the worst one that she was leaving behind her. She had better go, before she met her father, before Elizabeth rang her dreadful bell. Muriel moved slowly out of the room and as far as the head of the stairs.

The sound of the music still continued. It was Swan Lake. Muriel recognized the Dance of the Cygnets. Surely all was well. She put her foot on a stair. Then she turned and walked quickly along the landing to her father’s door. She knocked. There was no reply. She waited a moment, knocked again, and then very cautiously opened the door.

It was dark inside. The curtains were still drawn and the lamp upon the desk had been covered by a cloth. Muriel stood still, frozen, expecting a sudden voice to speak to her out of the dark. Nothing happened. Then she heard, through the soft drone of the music, another sound, a sound of heavy breathing. Her father must be asleep.

Now she could see a little more inside the room. She moved forward through the doorway, setting her feet down very softly and peering into the corner. Her father, wearing his cassock, was lying upon the couch with his head supported on a cushion. His breathing was clearly audible, a long guttural snoring sound, then a long pause, and then another one. Muriel closed the door behind her. She moved closer to look at her father.

For a moment, with cold horror, she thought that his eyes were open and that he was looking at her. But it was only a trick of the light. His eyes were closed. His lips were slightly apart, their corners drooping in a sort of sneer. One hand hung down to the floor and lay relaxed upon the carpet, palm upward. Muriel stood still, staring down at him. What was she doing here? Suppose he were to wake up and find her looking at him? But an anxiety which she could no longer master had taken control of her. Very cautiously she shifted the cloth from the lamp and let the light shine upon Carel. She stood rigid again. He did not stir. Then she saw the little blue bottle which had contained the sleeping-tablets. It was lying on the floor near the foot of the couch and it was empty.

Muriel had known this from the moment of leaving her own room, but the knowledge had been numb and dead in her. She stood there now beside the desk, breathing very quickly, and wondering if she was going to faint. She managed to sit down on a chair. She thought, he is gone. And she closed her eyes.

She opened them wide a moment later. The music. Carel must have put the record on. He must have been conscious just a few minutes ago. She got up and went to the couch. She could hardly bring herself to touch him. She put her hand on his shoulder. She gathered the thick stuff of the cassock and as her grip tightened felt the bone of the shoulder within. She shook him, and said “Carel!” The closed eyes did not flicker, the body showed no awareness, the regular breathing continued. Muriel shook him again, much more violently this time, trying to pull him up by both shoulders and digging her fingers in. She called into his ear “Carel! Carel!” The inert body fell back from her hands.

Muriel thought, I must call for help. I must get to the telephone quickly and ring up the hospital. He is only just unconscious. He can’t have swallowed the tablets very long ago. They can still treat him, they can bring him back, he will be all right. She started for the door. Then, as if she had been plucked from behind, she hesitated and stopped. And as she stopped she moaned in an agony of pity for herself. This, this, this, she was not to escape this. Ought Carel to be brought back?

She turned and stared at his face. Already it had changed a bit. The enamelled skin which had glowed with whiteness was like grey wax now, the colour of trodden snow which had lost its glitter. The features seemed to be sinking into the bone. Even Carel’s hair, spread a little upon the cushion, had lost its glossiness and looked like a relic, some scarcely recognizable stuff found in a tomb or a casket. Muriel gritted her teeth. She must think now, think as she had never thought in her life before. But could she, in the presence of this, think?

Carel had made a decision. Was it for her to alter it? A privilege she had claimed for herself, could she deny it to him, to go when and how he pleased? He had his reasons for going, reasons perhaps more dreadful and compelling than she could conceive of. She could not be responsible for dragging him wretchedly, piteously, back into a consciousness he had rejected and thought to annihilate. She could not do that to her father, to his authority and to his dignity. Carel was not to be hauled back by his heels into a hateful life. She could not at this last moment assume that power over him.

Yet she had the power, and could not deny it, the power of life and death. Now and for a little time she could decide to make him live. Should she not forget who he was and simply save him? But she could not forget who he was. Should she not return him to his freedom? He could make the decision again, she would not be condemning him to live. He had always done what he wished. Should she contrary him now? How could she decide this awful thing when she was stricken and sick herself, sick with the presence of death, the death that was in Carel, which was slowly taking him away, and which she could check if she would by a cry?