The Time of the Angels (24 page)

EUGENE PESHKOV AWOKE, turned on an electric torch and looked at his watch. No need to get up yet. He turned over and began to fall slowly through a grey shadowy shaft of space and time. The sun is shining brightly on a huge meadow of long grass. The flowers of the grass upon their very thin stalks are reddish and cast a mobile rosy light over the green expanse of the grass which is softly moved by a warm wind. A single birch tree stands in the middle of the grass, its slim trunk elegantly twisted inside its translucent fall of faint greenery. A little white dog is barking and barking.

A lady in a striped dress emerges from a golden haze into a sphere of light. The narrow stripes of her dress are white and green and the hem of her dress has a dark terminal line where it has been sweeping the dusty verandah. “Dickory, dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock!” Eugene laughs and tries to lift up the lady’s skirt. He is the little mouse that runs up the clock. He lifts the edge of the skirt a little bit. Underneath there is a grey petticoat of silk with a heavy fringe. He lifts the fringe. There is another petticoat below made of creamy lace. He thrusts his hand down to lift it up. There is another petticoat, white as milk, and below it there is another. Eugene utters sharp cries now as he digs and thrusts. He is half suffocated inside a wardrobe which seems to have no back but to go on and on. He pushes forward through a forest of clinging flimsy dresses reeking of old perfume. The dresses press closely about him, impeding his limbs. They will stifle him. He cannot breathe. He gasps, and sees his mother weeping in a room in Prague. Her gauzy grey dress extends in a long train, filling the room with a clutter of grey ectoplasm. The little white dog barks and barks.

Eugene woke up to find that he had buried his face in the pillow. He tried to catch the tail of his dream. He caught a quick glimpse of the sunny meadow and the verandah of their country house near Petersburg, and then it was gone. Even that fell from his memory although he knew that he had remembered it just the second before. He knew the dream had concerned his English governess, Miss Alison, but he could not recall anything which had happened in the dream. Miss Alison had always been there, a stiff figure who moved about very slowly and uttered little shrieks if anything fast occurred such as a dog jumping up or a child leaping. He had talked English with Miss Alison as soon as he could speak. She had taught him English nursery rhymes which she sang in a tiny high voice beating time with her finger. And she had introduced him to a new world of puzzlement and fear when he had found her one day in her room weeping uncontrollably. It was the first time he had ever seen a grown-up weep. He did not know that grown-ups could cry at all, let alone cry like that. He had wept too then, noisily, in terror. If grown-ups could cry like that then there was no safety in the world. He had not till much later wondered about the cause of her tears. Probably she was just homesick and alone, a lost little English lady in a robust alien world which scarcely noticed her. She spoke a little French. She never learnt Russian. She had accompanied them on their flight as far as Riga, and then taken the ship for England. Could she be still alive? Eugene had never had any notion of her age. She might have been twenty, thirty, forty. More likely she was dead now.

Eugene got up and switched the light on. He was late again. It was so hard to wake up in winter. He dressed quickly. As he was dressing his eye fell upon the painted Russian box which was sitting upon the table. The dream had had something to do with that box, something very sad, the something which had made him weep and which he was still unable to remember. He stared hard at the box, trying to make his mind vague and receptive, but could recall nothing. He transferred his gaze to the icon and smiled. He saw in a clear image, like a little oval picture, the icon in his mother’s bedroom in Petersburg. It had been surrounded then by a heavy frame of black painted wood picked out in gilt squares. At the bottom of the frame there was an extended bracket intended to hold a lamp, but Eugene’s mother, whose piety was tempered by a concern for objets d’art, especially those belonging to her own family, would never allow a lamp to be lighted in case the fumes should damage the icon. With the image of the icon in its ponderous dark frame came a vague apparition of Eugene’s mother, all softness and dove-greyness, her voluminous pale fair hair pinned up in a high crown, a flimsy grey dress, or was it a neglige, falling vaguely about her and making a shadowy pool about her feet.

It was a miracle that the icon had come back and that it was Pattie who had brought it. He felt that the icon itself must somehow have determined how it all fell out. It had been on a miraculous progress and now it had come back to him. Neither he nor Pattie had any idea how it had come back. Pattie had simply found it lying on a table in the hall and had rushed in to give it to him. Eugene really did not want to know any more. It was a happy augury.

Pattie’s significant appearance with the icon had completed the circle of his good fortune. Pattie had made him believe in happiness. He was well aware too that the grace of happiness comes to those who have faith in it. He had been indifferent to it for almost all of his life, had not conceived of it as one of his possibilities. It seemed that he had had his life’s ration of happiness before he was six. Now he wanted a happy future. And he saw Pattie wanting it too, and suspected that this desire was coming to her for the first time. To be the cause that another person desires to be happy is a grave responsibility. Eugene wore his seriously but with an increasingly light heart. He was becoming sure that he and Pattie would get married.

Not that Pattie had said or done anything clear. She seemed confused. She had asked him to wait and not to trouble her. She had said, “I can’t say yes,” but her dark faintly reddish eyes had said yes, yes, yes, and she could not resist touching him to take away any hurt her words might have caused. Eugene believed her eyes and her hands. He and she had been taken in charge by the involuntary chemistry of love. While nothing specific was said Eugene felt day by day and more and more the arrival of Pattie. Like a weight slowly subsiding he could feel the steady increase of her reliance on him. Every day there was more of her for him to care for.

Sometimes it seemed to him that she was worried and upset about something and he tried to make it as easy as possible for her to talk to him about it, but she would always fall silent. He began to speculate about Pattie. She had told him that she had no history, but could this be true? Trying to picture the worst he conjectured that she might have had an illegitimate child when she was very young. Or it might be simply that she could not get over the belief that her colour was repugnant to him. Whatever the barrier was, he longed to know it so that he could sweep it away with the force of love. Meanwhile this little crestfallenness in Pattie made her but the more attractive to him. He cherished her diffidence, her doubt. It was not that he was confident of her innocence, he saw her innocence. She was the innocent, the undiscovered America, the good dark continent.

His cheerfulness in waiting made it easy for him to behave to her with a quiet constant loving kindness. Love made an artist of him. He bought little presents, invented treats. It was years since he had seen himself making anybody happy. He had lived selfishly for far too long and flattered himself that his dull simplicity was a merit. Leo was right, he ought to have fought for a place in English society. He had drifted weakly into a senseless isolation and called it unworldliness. But if he tried he could do ordinary things at last, he and Pattie together.

His happiness overflowed on to her, and although she seemed sometimes with a half-hearted gesture to brush it away she could not escape its influence. She often sang now. And she was easy with him. With a tact which he hoped he could maintain he still restrained a boisterousness which he often felt. He would have liked to seize Pattie, to slap her and set her on his knee. As it was their physical contacts remained like those of affectionate children. Only sometimes would he allow himself to kiss her seriously or hug her in bear-like transports of joy.

If there was anything which his years as a hermit had given him it was a quality of the affections which he hesitated to call purity. It was more like novelty. He felt as if he were a boy in love for the first time. He had never really been in love with poor Tanya. His only loves had been those of his childhood and he had seemed all his life until now incapable of any other.

“I dreamt about my English governess last night. Miss Alison was her name.”

“Were you fond of her?”

“Oh yes. I loved everybody. Children always do.”

“Some children.”

“What did you dream last night, Pattie?”

“I never dream. What happened in your dream?”

“I can’t remember. I think it was at our country house.”

“What was that house called? You did tell me.”

“It was called Byelaya Doleena. That means White Glen or White Glade in English. It was called for the birch trees. You see birch trees have white trunks.”

“I know birch trees have white trunks, silly! There are birch trees in England.”

“Are there? Yes, I suppose there are. I don’t remember ever having seen any in England. Oh, Pattie, you aren’t going are you?”

“I must go. It’s past my shopping time.”

“Have you got your sugar mouse?”

“It’s jumped into my pocket. Shall I wear my new boots?”

“Yes, of course. They make you look Russian.”

“They’re a bit tight. Suppose they start hurting on the way along?”

“What a worrier it is! You wear your new boots like a brave girl.”

“I won’t be long.”

“Be careful crossing the roads. Buy me something nice.”

“Come with me to put on my boots.”

Pattie and Eugene went into the kitchen. Pattie seemed in a happier mood than usual and they had been laughing a lot.

“Let me put on the boots for you. Sit down there.”

Eugene knelt and took off Pattie’s frayed tartan slippers. For a moment he held her warm plump foot in his hand. It was like holding a big bird. He held the boot for her and with pointed toe she pressed a foot in. The boots, which Eugene had encouraged her to buy and which had been much discussed between them, were of black leather, almost knee length and lined with wool. Pattie had never had such boots before.

“They’re too tight, I told you so.”

“You always complain your shoes are too big for you!”

“They aren’t at first. First they’re too tight, then they’re too big.”

“Come on, push.”

“I can’t get in.”

“You don’t know how to put a boot on. It’s just a matter of getting round the corner. Push.”

Pattie’s foot entered the foot of the boot and Eugene could feel her heel press firmly down into its place. “Good. Now the other.”

With much pushing and hauling Pattie donned the other boot.

“Now your fur coat. Now you’re a real Russian!”

Wrapped up in her rabbity fur coat and her head scarf Pattie looked spherical, just such a dear bundle as might be seen any snowy morning on the Nevsky Prospect. Eugene laughed at her and then out of sheer happiness hugged her to him, whirling her round. Over her shoulder he saw standing in the kitchen doorway Muriel Fisher who was regarding them both with an expression of malevolence.

Eugene released Pattie, dropping his hands hastily to his sides. Pattie turned and saw Muriel too. She hesitated and then walked boldly towards the door. Muriel stood aside. Eugene, mumbling “Good morning” followed Pattie into the hall. Pattie went to the front door and opened it. A wave of icy air came in, biting hands and faces. There was much less fog today but little could be seen outside except a thick dark grey light.

“Ouf, Pattie, it’s cold. Better not keep the door open long.”

“Come outside a moment,” said Pattie.

Coatless and shivering, Eugene stood out on the step while Pattie half closed the door behind him. The sudden cold had nipped and reddened their faces and they peered at each other in the bitter dark light. Their faces which had been two flowers each to each were blighted and closed. “What is it, Pattie? I’m freezing.”

“I wanted to say— Oh it doesn’t matter.”

“Say it when you come back.”

“I will come back, won’t I?”

“What do you mean? Of course you’ll come back.”

“And you’ll be there, won’t you?”

“Of course I’ll be there.”

“You’ll always be there, won’t you, Eugene, always?”

“Always! Now you be careful, Pattie, and don’t fall down in your new boots.”

Pattie disappeared into the cold obscurity of the morning, walking rather cautiously on the pavement upon which the snow was frozen in iron-grey lumps. Eugene dodged back into the comparative warmth of the hall. Perhaps he should have gone with her. His few tasks could have waited. He was glad of her words though. She had never said “always” to him before.

Smiling he crossed the kitchen and opened the door of his room. Muriel Fisher who had been sitting down beside the table rose to her feet. Eugene entered more slowly. “Miss Muriel—”

“I’m sorry,” said Muriel in a very low voice. “May I talk to you for a moment?”