Angel (5 page)

Trapped, hungry, bored, she lay in bed all day. She had had a surfeit of day-dreaming and her mind was confused by too many pictures, which fell into fragments, into a bewildering muddle when she closed her eyes. She had imagined too much.

Her mother had taken the only book in the room, and Angel dared not go along the passage to look for it. Time unwound itself so slowly. As it was growing dark, she thought with panic of the long evening ahead with nothing to do but doze and dream and listen to the shop doorbell ringing below, to the far-away voices and the bubbling, warbling sound of the gas-jets. For a moment she thought of Gwen and Polly coming home from school without her. When she tried to wrench her mind quickly away from that, she realised how hemmed-in she was in all her everyday doings: there were wounds in all directions, and boredom was the enemy which brought her face to face with one misery after another.

Her mother brought in her tea and Angel saw with dismay the two small sponge fingers on the plate. She decided that whatever her complaint was going to be tomorrow, it should not be nausea or a headache, and she wondered if some trouble with her heart would leave her free to eat and read. She had never cared much for books, because they did not seem to be about her, and she thought that she would rather write a book herself, to a pattern of her own choosing and about a beautiful young girl with a startling white skin, heiress to great property, wearing white piqué at Osborne and tartan taffetas at Balmoral.

When she had finished her tea, and that was very soon, she got out of bed and fetched an old school exercise-book from a shelf, tore out some pages of map-drawings and began without hesitation on Chapter One. “In the year 1885,” she wrote. It was the year of her own birth.

The words flowed without effort all the evening and she seemed to be in a trance. As soon as she heard her mother beginning to climb the stairs, she dropped the exercise-book under the bed and lay down and shut her eyes. “You look feverish again,” her mother said despairingly. “Do you still feel sick?”

“Not now. Just faint.”

“I don't know what to do, I'm sure. The doctor didn't seem to think there was any call for him to look in again. This bad weather doesn't help. You can't see a hand's measure in front of you for the fog tonight. A lot of throats about, customers tell me. They took Mrs Baker's Vera away with dip. this morning. Such a pretty little girl, too.”

Angel was quite unmoved. She never cared about such things. As usual, she was just waiting for her mother to go away.

By bedtime, she was both excited and exhausted. Her right arm and shoulder were aching and her fingers were cramped. She had scarcely paused, either to consider what she should write or judge what she had written. Day-dreaming had paved the way. She knew what the rooms and grounds of Haven Castle looked like and could describe the Duchess's gowns and jewellery in detail. White peacocks wandered on the moonlit terrace the night Irania was born. The birth was prolonged for several pages. Then all of the blinds on the South front were drawn and the staff appeared, as if by magic, draped in black crape. Unencumbered by a mother, the heroine faced the future.

Angel, who had never grieved about human beings and could not be interested in Mrs Baker's Vera going to hospital with diphtheria of which she might die, now felt tears burning in her eyes for the woman in her story. At the funeral she mourned, not along with the tenants or even the family, but from a different plane: God's, perhaps.

When her mother had put out her light and said goodnight, she lay peacefully on her back, staring up into the darkness. She thought of the exercise-book hidden under her pillow, ready for the first of the daylight. It was the happiest evening of my life, she decided.

The next day was Sunday and because the shop was shut Mrs Deverell sat in Angel's bedroom by the little fire, doing her accounts. The bells of the old church in the Butts sounded muffled in the foggy air. It seemed a day sealed off from the rest of the week. In the early afternoon, it began to grow dark.

“What would you like for Christmas?” Mrs Deverell asked. Angel had scarcely spoken a word all day, was lying there, fuming, frustrated by this intrusion.

For once, she did not know what she would like. It was only a matter of time before she would have everything she wanted. As a famous novelist, she could buy herself both garnets and emeralds, a chinchilla wrap, a sable muff, her own carriage. All that separated her from such riches was the time it would take to transfer what was in her head to the pages of the exercise-book—time which her mother was now foolishly wasting.

Suddenly, she saw that she would have to be bold and ruthless if she were to succeed. She could not afford to be secretive any longer, or concerned with other people's opinions. Pulling the exercise-book from under her pillow she held it up for her mother to see. “I should like half-a-dozen of these,” she said briskly. “With marbled covers just like this one, if you please. I am writing a novel and one is not enough.” With a look of calm she opened the book, drew up her knees to make a rest for it and continued with her writing.

Her mother blushed and gave her a quick, suspicious look. Then she frowned and keeping her lips tight went on with her work. She had nothing to say. The silence in the room was so oppressive to her that when she had washed up after tea she came back to the bedroom wearing her little feathered hat and her black cape trimmed with silk fringe. She was carrying a hymn-book. “If you don't mind being left for a while, I thought I'd go to Chapel. It will be a breath of air,” she said.

Angel nodded.

“Would you like to get up for a little while this afternoon?” her mother asked her next day.

Angel was afraid that this might be the first step towards sending her back to school and she decided that she was too ill. With extraordinary resilience, she had forgotten her original reason for not wanting to go to school. Now she was too busy. She would never again, she thought, be able to spare the time.

“My heart is no better,” she complained. She kept to her heart trouble because the food had improved since she gave up having nausea. “I get a pain there and it seems to flutter and miss beats.”

“I'll have to have the doctor again,” said Mrs Deverell in a worried voice.

“Give it a day or two,” Angel suggested. She hadn't time for the doctor, either.

“I'll send Eddie for him tomorrow if you're no better. No use going on like this if there's something wrong. I know your father had a tired heart and had to be careful. I think you ought to be lying down flat.”

“All right,” said Angel and lay flat. This saved time, as her mother then went away. As soon as she had gone, Angel sat up again and went on writing. Sometimes her back ached and she would stretch her arms and yawn. Her black hair was loose and spread over her shoulders, keeping her warm.

Her mother must have worried secretly and sent for the doctor, for the next morning he arrived unexpectedly. Mrs Deverell, looking rather guilty, brought him up to the bedroom, where Angel was hunched up over her writing. She raised her eyes when the door was opened, but did not smile or say good-morning.

“Here's Doctor Foskett,” her mother said feebly. “I'll have to go down to the shop. Eddie's gone off with an order. Will you call me if you want me, doctor?”

He nodded and began to walk about the room, rubbing his hands. Angel watched him. When they were alone, he said: “So you've a tired heart, like your father?”

“I didn't say so.” Angel looked suspicious.

He came closer to the bed and glanced down at the exercise-book, at a half page of florid handwriting. Lack of character, he thought, looking away at once. T's uncrossed, i's undotted, backward sloping capitals. Flourishes; curlicues.

“What do you say, then?” he asked.

“I said that my heart flutters and misses beats and that I have a pain.”

He held his watch in one hand and her wrist in the other, checking her pulse, half turned away from her so that she was able to glare at his back.

“Your mother is worried,” he said, putting the watch away in his pocket. His voice sounded rather accusing. Then he opened her nightgown and put the stethoscope to her chest. When he had done so, he took away her two pillows and made her lie flat upon the bed. “Now sit up,” he told her. She obeyed him. “Now lie down. Sit. Lie. Sit.” As his commands grew quicker, she became breathless, and indignant with him. When at last she was allowed to lie still, he sounded her chest again.

“You can have your pillow back. There is nothing in the least wrong with your heart, you know.”

He is my enemy, thought Angel.

“Why don't you want to go to school?” he asked her, more gently. “Are you in some trouble with your lessons? Is this school work you are doing now?” He flicked the cover of the exercise-book.

“No.” She shook her hair back from her shoulders, staring at him. “I am writing a novel.” Under the bedclothes her fists were clenched and pressing against her thighs. She felt ferocity towards him, as if he had already laughed at her. “I am going to be a novelist,” she said.

“A profession calling for a very strong heart,” he replied.

“I
am
strong,” she said proudly, forgetting for the moment that he was the doctor and why he was there.

“I think you are. So don't be cowardly and worry your mother for nothing. She's a brave woman. I admire her.”

“You laugh at her.”

“And I would laugh with her. She would understand.”

“No one is to laugh at
me.
” Her green eyes blazed at him.

“Who would dare?” he said lightly. “For you would never laugh at yourself. But perhaps a sense of humour is a drawback to a novelist,” he mused.

“I shan't be writing funny books.”

“No, of course not,” he said gravely, and thought: I wonder. He paced about the room, then said: “As soon as I have gone, you must get up. No more trays and extra work for your mother. You could cook the dinner, in fact.”

“I don't know how to cook and there's no point in my learning,” she said.

He shrugged his shoulders and shut up his Gladstone bag with a snap. “If you want to leave school,” he said, “you should tell your mother outright. No more of this heart nonsense.”

“I
did
have the rash,” she said angrily. “You saw it yourself. You speak as if I haven't been ill at all.”

“Well, that's cleared up, hasn't it? Now don't forget. Up you get! You will have a much better light for your novel-writing if you are up. I will tell your mother there is no cause for alarm. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” Angel said dully.

He looked back through the door. “I hope I read your book in print one day.”

“That will be up to you,” Angel said coldly.

“You can start school again next week,” Mrs Deverell said.

Angel had moved from her bed to the sofa in the living-room and was still writing.

“There would only be three days left to the end of the term,” she said.

“Still, you might as well make the most of it, and you have to fetch your books and your shoe-bag.”

“Eddie can get those. As a matter of fact, mother, I am never going back to school again. The doctor told me to tell you.”

“Why should he do that? I'm sure he wouldn't say things to you that he wouldn't say to me. I don't understand what you mean.”

“We talked it over together,” Angel said calmly. “I told him I was wasting time at school and that I wanted to have a chance to write my novels. He agreed with me, but said that I must tell you myself. ‘Outright,' he said.”

“But we have to give a term's notice. And besides that, you can't hang about here all day and every day.” Mrs Deverell's voice was full of dismay at the idea. “I was going to talk to your school-teachers and ask their advice about getting you a situation, but if I suddenly take you away, how can I do that?”

“There won't be any question of a situation,” Angel said. “I am writing my novel and when I've finished it, I shall write another. I have thought of it already.”

“Yes, but you must have a
situation
,” her mother said, almost shouting from her exasperation. “You must have something to fall back on. Writing stories won't butter many parsnips, I can tell you.”

“How can you tell me? You know nothing about it.”

“And who's going to print them, I'd like to know. Who's going to pay for that?”

Angel, outraged by this insult, turned her head and looked out of the window. She knew that it was already settled that she should never return to school. Her mother was only putting up a pretence of battle.

“The neighbours will say you've been expelled, if you leave all of a sudden like that. If only your father was alive to advise me for the best. I know he'd say it was a wicked waste to give up your education. All that French thrown to the four winds, and the struggle it's been sending you to a private school all these years.”

“Then it will be one struggle less for you from now on.”

“I made the sacrifice on account of your future—so that you needn't just go and work in a shop like I had to. I imagined you in an office with good money and meeting nice people.”

“An
office!”
Angel said faintly, closing her eyes.

“And I'd have thought you owed it to your Auntie Lottie to discuss it with her.” Her vehemence was running down, Angel saw.

“Why Aunt Lottie?”

“‘Why Aunt Lottie?' indeed. You know full well she's helped to pay the fees. You have a lot to be thankful for, the way she's been like a second mother to you all these years.”

But Angel thought one mother more than enough.

“She's a proper fire-spaniel, isn't she?” Aunt Lottie said with a wary cheeriness. Angel was sitting writing with her feet on the fender. Mrs Deverell had been talking to her sister in the shop, relating the week's problems, and they had both come upstairs wearing looks of bright resolve, as if they were visiting some relation in a lunatic-asylum.