The Time of the Angels (14 page)

“I’m very sorry,” said Muriel. “I did knock, but you were both talking so loudly you couldn’t hear.”

There was a pause. Eugene looked at the wall. He felt disgust with himself, disgust with Leo, disgust with everything. His body relaxed into hopelessness. Leo had composed his face and turned now to look at Muriel. He looked at her blankly and dully as if waiting for guidance. Muriel was gazing at him with fastidious distaste.

“You oughtn’t to speak to your father like that,” said Muriel. “I think you’re loathsome.”

Leo looked at her still for a moment as if he were very tired and could scarcely understand her. Then he smiled. “A reptile. Is that it?”

“Oh, get out!” said Muriel.

Leo half turned towards his father, but without looking at him, made a quick gesture as of throwing something away, and then left the room closing the door sharply behind him.

Muriel dropped her eyes before Eugene. She was dressed in her tweed overcoat upon which pinpoints of snow still glittered here and there. There was a sugary white ridge upon each shoulder. Under her arm she was clutching a small brown-paper parcel. Eugene looked at her short hair, damp and darkened and stringy at the ends, and at her thin clever face, and he hated her English alienness, her absolutely unconscious superiority, and the fact that she had dared to order his son out of the room. His scene with Leo should have run its course. Perhaps he and Leo understood each other after all. He had felt it just now as Leo went away. Even the anger and the shouting had been a connection, like an embrace, something which brought them closer together. They might have worked out a meaning between them. Now the impertinent intervention of this girl, and what she had witnessed, had made it all jagged and ugly, simply shameful for them both. He breathed deeply with misery and resentment.

“I’m terribly sorry to butt in,” said Muriel, looking at him at last. She seemed a little breathless. “But I just couldn’t listen to him saying those things.” She seemed very embarrassed but her gaze was intrusive, almost aggressive.

Well, why didn’t you go away, thought Eugene. He said, “Yes.”

“I’m awfully sorry,” said Muriel.

Eugene was silent. He could not forgive her for what she had overheard.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Muriel went on, “Mr Peshkov—Eugene—may I? I hope you—don’t mind—” she dropped her eyes again and began to fumble with the brown-paper parcel she had been carrying.

“What is it?” said Eugene.

“Please forgive me,” said Muriel. “I’ve brought you a little present. A Russian present. I was so terribly sorry about your icon. I know this can’t be a substitute. But I thought it was very pretty, and I thought it might, well, cheer you up a bit. I do hope you like it.”

The wrappings fell to the floor and Muriel held out something small and brightly coloured towards Eugene. He took it automatically and stared at it. It was a painted Russian box of the familiar traditional kind. The figures of Russian and Ludmilla stood out in glossy red and blue against a very black background.

Eugene looked at it with anguish and puzzlement. It reminded him of something, something dreadful; and for a moment it was as if some awful shaft of memory were about to open wide. Where had he seen just this before, very very long ago? The veiled memory was dreadfully present with some content of unutterable pain and loss. But it did not declare itself. He continued to stare at the box. Then tears came up into his eyes and overflowed. He tried to check them, to conceal them with his hand. He bowed his head over the box, weeping. He could not stop the tears and he still could not remember.

“THOSE WHO THOUGHT to rescue the idea of Good by attaching it to the concept of will intended chiefly to prevent the corruption of that sovereign value by any necessary connection with specific and ‘too too human’ faculties or institutions. Since a good conceived of as absolutely authoritative was deemed an insult to human freedom, the solution in terms of action was tempting. If goodness resided in a movement or in a pointing finger its very mobility would preserve it from degeneration. I have already argued that such a theory commits the fallacy it professes to avoid by proving to be but the covert praise of a certain type of personality. Will, choice and action are also the names of the ambiguously human. I come now to a more serious and thought-provoking objection. If the idea of Good is severed from the idea of perfection it is emasculated and any theory which tolerates this severance, however high-minded it professes to be, is in the end a vulgar relativism. If the idea of good is not severed from the idea of perfection it is impossible to avoid the problem of ‘the transcendent’. Thus the ‘authority’ of goodness returns, and must return, to the picture in an even more puzzling form.”

Marcus surveyed his latest paragraph, the opening of chapter five, soberly and, he trusted, objectively. There was a prophetic tone in what he wrote which he had at first attempted to eliminate. He had conceived of the book as something very cool and hard, composed of a series of extremely simple propositions. But his prose, as it were expropriating his thought, was increasingly producing a kind of stuff which was distinctly rhetorical and persuasive. The temperature was rising. Perhaps this was inevitable. The sheer complexity of the argument could not but produce, as it were by friction, a certain heat. Could philosophy really be passionless? Should it be? Marcus, with a profounder satisfaction, answered no. But it was important to be crystal clear. He did not intend his book only for the philosophers. He had his responsibilities to the age. Le Pascal de nos jours. He smiled.

Marcus had returned to his book as to a definite consolation. Its growth reassured him. There was daily more of it and more of him. He rose upon it like a ship on a lifting tide. Yet he had been upset and threatened and his confidence was far from whole. He had been shaken, in some way that he could not fully understand, by his encounter with the Bishop. In his distress about Carel he had vaguely hoped for something from the Bishop. He would have welcomed a chance to talk about his brother in simple, even in crude terms. He had expected the Bishop to represent a sort of ecclesiastical version of Norah’s common sense. He had expected something brisk and jovial and confidentially down-to-earth. That was what Bishops were like, indeed what they were for. And the Bishop had seemed to know this too, since he had in a way feigned just such a persona. But what had actually been said was something alarming, not what it should be, as if the lines of a play had been subtly altered. Some kind of reassurance which Marcus had wanted about Carel, about the whole situation, had simply not been forthcoming. Behind the Bishop’s tolerant psychological small-talk, behind his worldly aphorisms, there opened a black scene, as if the walls had rolled away to reveal the trough of the heavens, dark, seething with matter, riddled with void, and without any intelligible principle of organization. Marcus felt a surprised relief on returning to his book to find that the arguments seemed as sound as ever.

Marcus was not sure what verdict on Carel he had wanted from the Bishop. It seemed a treachery to wish for an adverse one. Yet it would certainly have helped to have at least a simple one. Of course the Bishop would have had to be discreet. But there are ways of discreetly placing people and reassuring other people. Marcus would have liked to have been included in some kind of committee decision, some gesture of the solidarity of the sane. He realized, slightly shocked at himself and the same time aggrieved, that what he had wanted was an assurance that Carel was an unfortunate, a sick man, a psychological case of some fairly familiar kind. For if he was not that what was he?

Something upon which Marcus had relied had been removed and now there was nothing to stop what he feared becoming larger and nearer. Yet what did he fear? Carel did not threaten him personally, Carel was scarcely aware that he existed. Why did this dark figure seem always to loom beside him? Marcus knew that he must go again to see his brother, and he tried to put this idea to himself with simplicity, as a rational plan; but there was still that same whiff of dread. He feared that something senseless would happen, he feared to hear Carel laugh, to see Carel move in a way that would reveal that black seething universe again, reveal it perhaps suddenly close at hand, like an ants’ nest, like a smear of insects’ eggs upon the tip of the finger.

He had sent flowers to Elizabeth and she had not replied. First he was hurt, then he was frightened. He did not want his picture of Elizabeth to be transformed too. Already he could feel it changing mysteriously as if some positive malignant force were acting upon him, upon her. Elizabeth turned and turned, a figure in a dark veil becoming a cocoon of darkness. He could no longer visualize her face. Some cloud had drifted across her image. There was danger. But was it danger for him or for her? He decided daily that he must dispel these absurd fancies by going to visit her, walking straight up to her room if necessary. They could hardly keep him out by force. Or could they? Anything was beginning to seem possible. Marcus brooded, and extremely bizarre and disturbing imagery pursued him to the far threshold of sleep and on into the turbulence of dream.

It had been another day of fog, and foggy smells mingled with the odour of tobacco. Warm in the room, even the fog smelt familiar and friendly. It was late evening now, after ten o’clock, and Marcus had put his manuscript aside. A clutch of letters concerning school matters had still to be answered before he retired. It was proving impossible to keep entirely clear of school. He must decide about the appeal for the new chemistry building. That couldn’t be left until the summer. He put the letters out in order of importance, stirred a cup of hot milk and yeast extract, and listened to the purr of his gas fire and the murmur of traffic in the Earls Court Road. The curtains were drawn and a single lamp revealed the business-like littered table and the very large glass-fronted bookcase superscribed Manners Makyth Man which had belonged to Marcus’s father. The engravings of Rome and two chocolate-brown cloisonne vases on the mantelshelf were also family pieces. Partly indifferent to his surroundings, partly uncertain of his taste, Marcus had acquired few things for himself. In fact, although he had lived in the flat during school holidays for several years now, the place still had a certain air of the provisional and the temporary. This suited Marcus, who liked to think of himself as an austere man. He enjoyed the plainness of the little flat, and he liked the area and the village life of Earls Court. He was used to it. Why on earth had he agreed to move into Norah’s top flat, where there would be endless fuss about cushions and curtains? He appeared to have agreed.

There was a loud buzzing noise close behind him and Marcus jumped. For a moment he clutched at his heart. What was the matter with him? He had been affrighted simply by his own door bell. Yet who could it be at this hour of the night? Marcus rarely had late visitors.

His flat was on the first floor. He opened his door and turned on the landing light and ran down the stairs. Still in some agitation he fumbled at the door and opened it.

A muffled figure with an upturned coat collar stood in the night haze outside. For a moment, for no good reason, Marcus thought it was Carel. Then he saw that it was Leo Peshkov.

“Oh!” said Marcus, as if he had been struck. Recovering himself he said, “Good evening, Leo. What can I do for you?”

Leo had a woollen scarf over his head. He parted his coat collar and spoke through the aperture, his hands beneath his chin. “Could I come in and talk to you for a minute?”

“A bit late, isn’t it?”

“All right, I’ll come back tomorrow.”

“Come in, come in.”

The icy foggy air drifted with them up the stairs. Marcus’s room was perceptibly colder.

Marcus turned more lamps on. He was agitated and pleased that Leo had come. He began to debate whether or not to give the boy whisky. “Take you coat off. Yes, sit there.”

Leo, who was looking round with interest, had been in the room once before, on an occasion Marcus preferred not to recall. Marcus, making an unsuccessful appeal to the boy, had felt himself patronized. The memory stiffened Marcus now. He determined to make a display of his detachment. He sat down opposite to Leo on the other side of the fireplace. Now they were both in low leather armchairs, their feet extended towards the golden panel of the fire. Leo’s face, usually so pale, was pink and still pinched with cold, his nose glowing and his eyes watering. His features composed in Marcus’s gaze and he shook himself into presence. “Ouf!”

The cold night had already made a bond between them. “Cold out?”

“Bitter.”

“Snowing?”

“Not now. It’s nice in here. I’m afraid I’ve got a cold coming on, do you mind? You know how you feel it when you come into the warm.”

“Have some—hot milk?”

“No, thanks.”

“Whisky?”

“No. Better wait. You may be kicking me downstairs in a minute.”

“Come, come, what’s this about?”

“Shall I be terribly brief and direct?” Leo wiped the moisture from his face with a handkerchief, crumpled the handkerchief, and leaned against it as against a pillow. The attitude had an unconscious coyness. He smiled a tired intelligent smile which Marcus remembered. He was a very good-looking boy.

“Yes, please.”

“Well, I want some money.”

“I don’t think you can be quite as brief as that,” said Marcus. “You’ll have to tell me why. And I warn you the answer’s almost certainly no.” He smiled and curtailed the smile.

“Well, I thought I’d be put through it. Where shall I start? You won’t approve.”

“Never mind. Go on.”

“But I do mind. Let me see. Well, the start I suppose is that I’m engaged to be married.”

“Really,” said Marcus. He was aware of being disagreeably surprised.

“Yes. Well, now, my fiancée’s old man is mad keen that we should buy a flat, in fact a particular flat he had his eye on, and he was prepared to put up some money so that we could get a mortgage provided I put up some too.”

“So you want me to lend you some?” said Marcus.

“No, no, not so fast. You don’t come in for some time yet. About seventy-five pounds the old man said. He regarded it as sort of test of me. I’d just got to get it from somewhere or else.”

“And did you?”

“Yes. And you’ll never guess how.”

“How?”

“You won’t like this bit.”

“Go on, go on.”

“You know that family icon, that religious picture with the three angels my old father doted on? I took and sold it.”

Marcus vaguely remembered the icon. “Your father let you do this?”

“No, I just took it. You might say in a manner of speaking that I stole it.”

Leo was leaning forward now and was studying Marcus with a fascinated almost delighted expectancy. With a baffled sense of being experimented on Marcus controlled his face. There was something familiar and somehow deadly about the situation. Leo knew him too well. Marcus was not unduly concerned about Eugene’s icon but he was very concerned to make the right impression on Leo. He decided to say coolly “Proceed.”

“My pa was terribly upset.”

“I dare say. So you got the money.”

“So I got the money. I sold the thing for seventy-five pounds. But then the silliest thing happened. You’ll think me an awful fool.”

“Never mind what I think you. What happened?”

“You see this girl. Her name’s Sally. She has a brother. His name’s Len. And Len knows a lot of racing people. And—you’ll think me an awful fool—”

“Get on with it.”

“Well, Len talked me into putting the money on a horse he said was a certainty and the horse didn’t win.”

“Too bad,” said Marcus. “Now I suppose you want me to lend you seventy-five pounds so that you can get in with Sally’s father. I think you’re going to be unlucky.”

Marcus still spoke coolly. He could feel Leo watching his face with cat-like attention. Marcus automatically lifted a hand and hid behind it, feigning to shield himself from the fire. His interviews with Leo had always had an almost technical ease and precision of pattern. He felt now in the tension between them, in Leo’s bright expectation, the machine-like force of the familiar system. But on this occasion somehow everything must be made to be different, the pattern must be broken. It occurred to Marcus that it was just the pattern which had always prevented him from really reaching, really knowing Leo. Marcus removed his hand and gave the boy a cold almost inquisitive stare. Yes, everything could be made different. He stiffened his face.

“Oh no, no,” said Leo. He had allowed a pause. “I’m surprised that you think that. I’m prepared to bear the consequences of my actions. I’ll take my chance with Sally’s pa. But I don’t see why my father should suffer.”

“You deliberately made him suffer.”

“I know I did. Don’t you think it possible I might regret it, that I might feel ashamed?”

“Ashamed?” said Marcus. “You?” Then he suddenly began to laugh. He stood up and went to the table and laughed heartily over his manuscript. He felt liberated into the warmth and light of the room, able to wave his arms, able to move. He said to Leo, “Have some whisky.” He began to get it out of the cupboard. By the time he was handing over the glass Leo was still looking disconcerted. Marcus felt so pleased he had almost forgotten the story.

“You don’t think much of me, do you?” said Leo.