Angel (4 page)

She began to cry, and by this time Angel had gathered something of what she was saying and was turned to ice. She faced blankness, despair, and longed for death, seeing no other end.

“You wicked, wicked girl!” Her mother cut off her sobbing and began to storm again. She was not nearly done. “To make up all those lies about a place you've never been to, nor ever likely to; but to go on as if you had some right there. And telling those innocent children; day after day, they said. Putting on such airs. Taking it on yourself. Oh, it was a treat for me, I'll tell you; hearing all about that. She's been a good customer, too. And friend. And now I just hope I never see her again, not so long as I live. How can I ever hold my head up, knowing all that she'll have to say among the neighbours? There never was a tongue wagged like hers. I know her. I remember when I was in the Chapel choir with her. I don't forget what she said about my own sister. But you!” Her grief suddenly gave way to vexation. She leaned towards Angel and hit her face. “I would rather have seen you dead at my feet than let you bring this disgrace on me.” Then she stepped back, feeling ashamed, seeing the mark of her hand across the girl's cheek.

Angel had said nothing. She turned her back for a moment, waited for some strength to come to her legs, then managed to walk from the room.

Her mother ran after her and when Angel had locked herself in her bedroom, drummed her fists on the door; for she had not had what she wanted, an explanation. “Why did you? Why?” she sobbed.

There was no explanation, and Angel on the other side of the door in the dark cold room was silent. She felt strangely outraged; as if her mother had violated her.

She had no matches to light the gas and she began to undress in the dark, unlacing her boots and pulling off her black woollen stockings, leaving her clothes in a heap on the floor. She thought that her mother had gone downstairs to the shop, but she would not risk opening the door. “How dare she!” she whispered over and over again as she stumbled about the room, braiding her hair.

No light came into the bedroom. There were no street-lamps to shine in, for it was at the back of the building and the window was above a yard stacked with crates. Angel drew down the sash and let in some of the foggy air. Everything in the room, and the bedclothes when she lay down, felt clammy to touch. She lay in bed shivering, waiting for the evening, then the night, to pass. There was nowhere where her thoughts might turn, her escape was cut off, her retreat contaminated. “How dare she!” she whispered again.

After a long time, she heard her mother coming upstairs, pausing outside the bedroom and trying the door-handle. Then she rapped on the door and said: “Angel! You must answer me. You've had nothing to eat.”

The girl had been thinking of food, as if it might comfort her to eat something, but she stared into the darkness and said nothing. She noticed a change in her mother's voice—anxiety muffling the anger—but she was indifferent to it.

Before she fell asleep an idea came to her that there was some comfort to be had—not food—if only she knew where to find it. Something, once, had made her happy, but she could not remember what it was.

She awoke in the night, aware of some change and strangeness; then the memory of what had taken place engulfed her. Her situation seemed as dreadful as before, and now she was nearer to—or already in—the next day and had no plans for dealing with it. She could not stay locked in the room for ever.

She got out of bed and crept along the landing to fetch a glass of water. Her mother was murmuring and turning in her bed in the room next to her own. Angel left her door unlocked and lay down again, pulling the bedclothes round her for warmth. I will never go to school again, she promised herself. Those sly little creatures, Gwen and Polly, watching me all day, knowing what would happen to me when I came home; and frightened because they had betrayed me.

She drew her cold feet up into her nightgown. In a panic she could discern some of the furniture now and the walls were paler. Soon there were footsteps in the street and factory sirens sounding and at the end of Volunteer Street a cart clattering across the cobbled Butts, as the old square was called.

It was when I wrote the essay, she suddenly thought. “The Storm at Sea.” That was when I was happy.

She was glad to have remembered this, felt more at peace, and slept.

She was to be rescued from the next day's wounds by what looked like a miracle. Her mother wakened early and lay in bed wondering how she and Angel could take up their existence again, so shut in together and with the air so laden with embarrassment. It is how to get back to being ordinary again, she thought, as bereaved people do. Her anger had gone, but she felt she could never be easy with Angel now and would never succeed in hiding her uneasiness. Her spontaneity had overcome previous difficulties, such as discontent and sullenness; but she was sure that she could never be spontaneous again or use any words which were not weighed first; as now she was trying to weigh some for her meeting with Angel that morning.

She dressed when the time came and went into the parlour to rake out the fire and lay the breakfast. It was scarcely light yet, though people were going to work and soon she heard Eddie trying the shop door and went down to let him in. She cut a couple of slices of bacon for breakfast and went upstairs again. It was time to call Angel, and the confusion she felt made her cheeks flushed, so that she looked full of indignation still.

The girl was asleep. One arm flung over the honeycomb bed-cover, bare to the elbow, was a dark crimson, as were her neck and forehead. Mrs Deverell forgot her embarrassment and her rehearsed speeches and went to the bed to look more closely. In her sleep, Angel turned her arm on the cover, rubbing it up and down; then she opened her eyes and stared about her. Still half asleep, she began to scratch herself, first one arm, then the other, and frowned in a puzzled way.

“Oh, dear, what is it? What's wrong?” her mother asked, laying her hand on the burning skin which was raised up in weals and blotches.

In a few seconds after waking, Angel had realised the situation. Her fears had dissolved and the day's behaviour was decided. She was ill and had escaped. As she rubbed and scratched, her skin grew more furiously inflamed and she was glad. If she were clever, she could make it impossible for anything to be said for days, except: “How do you feel?” or “What do you fancy?” She could easily be as clever as that, and began at once, with unintelligible mutterings and by staring at and beyond her mother as if she could not see her there.

Mrs Deverell filled a stone jar with hot water, wrapped it in an old pair of combinations and laid it at Angel's feet. Then she went to the living-room and took down one of the pile of books on the top of the harmonium and began to look up some diseases. After a while, hesitating between scarlet-fever and erysipelas, she panicked and took an extreme step, sending Eddie running off for Doctor Foskett.

In the medical book, erysipelas was given an alternative and more dramatic name, St Anthony's Fire, and, when the doctor arrived, Mrs Deverell, making haste to diagnose, used this term, having forgotten the other. Angel had not stirred, except to rub her arms and worsen the inflammation, since she had wakened. When her mother had asked her one anxious question after another, she had turned her face closer to the pillow; but now she felt awe and curiosity at such a strange-sounding, mystical disease. She opened her eyes and looked at the doctor and saw that he was trying not to laugh, as he bent down to take his stethoscope from the Gladstone-bag.

Angel lay silent while he listened to her chest. She was restoring herself, coating over her wounds as an oyster does. Falsehood could make her resilient, and the humiliation she had suffered was being tucked safely away. “When I was ill,” she would refer to it in her own mind, expecting other people to behave in the same way. She had been brought up to fear the doctor. Tall, bearded, frock-coated, he seemed as frightening, as mysterious, as God. “You don't want me to have to fetch the doctor, do you?” her mother had often said when she had refused to eat food that was held to be good for her, gruel and hot milk with sugar and a nauseous egg-nog she was given at bedtime, “to fill her out”. Now she saw that he was merely a busy and possibly irritable man, finding private amusement from the behaviour of his patients. She vowed that she would never contribute to his amusement, and she felt contempt for her mother for rattling on so absurdly and exposing herself to his observations.

“Well, I don't think it can be—what was it you suggested?—ah, St Anthony's Fire,” said the doctor. “No, I think we can rule out that. What have you been eating?” he asked Angel.

“Nothing,” she said listlessly.

“She didn't fancy anything,” her mother said quickly.

“Have you had any shell-fish?”

“Oh, I wouldn't let her touch anything like that.”

“Or potted meat?”

“No, doctor.” Mrs Deverell sounded scandalised.

“Then it remains a mystery. Have you had your bowels opened?” he asked Angel and wondered if her disdainful closing of her eyes meant that she had or that she would not lower herself to answer him.

Mrs Deverell looked doubtful, her head on one side, suggested liquorice-powder and fell into vague murmurings while Dr Foskett packed his bag. He seemed disinclined to discuss Angel's menus for the day, sanctioned all that was mentioned and then said that to go without could do no harm. At this, Angel was in despair. She was painfully hungry. She comforted herself by thinking, it is better to be ill, than well. It is better to starve than have to talk to my mother, or go to school.

When the doctor had gone, leaving Mrs Deverell as mystified as ever, but relieved, Angel appeared to fall asleep again and the rash on her arms grew paler. Mrs Deverell went down to the shop, where she was sure that Eddie was helping himself to sugar-wafers.

Angel wondered how she could creep from bed and fetch some food, but the peril of being discovered less ill than she had pretended, kept her lying there. She dozed, then woke and scratched the rash to make it worse, worried that it might vanish altogether. Mrs Deverell found time to steam a fillet of plaice, and when she brought it Angel sighed ungratefully and stared at the tray as if the very thought of eating defeated her. She was waiting for her mother to go. She wanted to be alone while she ate, and not only because she must hide her appetite. In a strange way, almost as if she were in love with food and drew comfort from it, she loved solitude while she ate. Talking at mealtimes irritated her.

“Don't you fancy it, then?” her mother asked. They were still wary with one another, but Angel's illness made conversation possible.

“I'll try.”

The food was getting cold and Angel's exasperation made her hands tremble as she took up the knife and fork.

“Well, do your best. I must get back downstairs.” Mrs Deverell drank a cup of Bovril behind the counter and whenever she was hungry took a biscuit from one of the tins, or a handful of sultanas.

Angel ate as slowly as she could, every morsel of fish and the two thin slices of bread and butter and drank some milk. When her mother came back the tray was on the floor and the plate was as clean as if it had been polished.

“So you finished it all? That's good.”

“I'm afraid the cat did.”

“The cat?”

“I couldn't manage it after all and the tray was heavy on my legs, so I put it on the floor and the cat ate it. I had a little.”

“But I shut the cat out.”

“You shut the cat
in
.”

“Well, where is he now, then?”

“I got out of bed and put him outside.”

“Oh, how vexatious! And the price the fish was! I did hope you would manage it. Isn't there anything that would tempt you for your tea?”

Angel could think of so many things, poached eggs, welsh rarebit, smoked haddock covered with butter; but she shook her head.

By the evening, she was painfully bored. Although she did not feel ill, she was suffering from a slackness of spirit, a heavy dullness in her heart. She longed for a different life: to be quite grown-up and beautiful and rich; to have power over many different kinds of men. To pass the time, she began to imagine herself living such a life, in one scene, sharply visual, after another. She did not bother with narrative or explanations. She simply, in her dreams, was at the centre of each scene, very much herself still, with her green eyes and her black hair but with a few things changed; she took a shade off the length of her nose, which seemed to her too long for romance.

She was at Osborne, wearing red velvet, when her mother brought in some bread and milk for her supper; and, as soon as she had eaten it, she made haste to return there. Bowing her head, she went down in a deep curtsy and her skirt spread out like a flower. Her garnets were a dark fire on her white skin. Then the old Queen did an unexpected, a gracious thing, which sent a murmur through those present. She leaned forward and kissed Angel's brow.

When Mrs Deverell had smoothed the bed, letting in all the draughts, making her comfortable for the night, as she called it, and left her in darkness, Angel went on with her pictures. She even attempted to set one of them at Paradise House, but her imagination had healed earlier than her heart and she winced at the pain she gave herself.

She was not tired and she lay for hours planning romantic triumphs for herself. The one obstacle to credulity was her mother. She could not bring herself to destroy her, was too superstitious to remove her, as she had removed half an inch from her own nose, and in all the scenes Mrs Deverell hovered tiresomely in the background. After a time, Angel thought of a solution. She could be my maid, she decided. As Aunt Lottie is Madam's.

By the next day, there were no visible symptoms of her illness. The rash had gone. She complained instead of nausea and headaches, and her mother persisted in bringing trays of the same meagre invalid food—a coddled egg at midday, one scallop for her supper—and took away the book she was reading.