The Time of the Angels

“Stop that, you vile ill-bred little monkey! Get out of my kitchen, I tell you!”

  “You killed my mother,” said Muriel. “You killed my mother, you black bitch out of hell.”

  Pattie, who was still backing away, stopped and bared her teeth. Both rows of teeth flashed. She cried out, “You stopped your father from marrying me. You ruined me, you ruined my whole life. I hate you for it, I’ll always hate you.”

  Muriel swung the heavy saucepan. Pattie screamed as the hot soup came out in a swooping brown stream. Most of the soup went on to the floor, but some of it splashed on to Pattie’s stockings and her apron. Pattie continued to scream. Muriel hurled the empty saucepan across the kitchen.

  Carel entered the room followed by Eugene. Pattie’s screams turned to sobs. Carel took in the scene. He said to Muriel, “The sooner you are out of this house the better. See to it.” He said to Pattie, “Be quiet, Pattie. Miss Muriel is leaving us soon. We must try to be kind to her in the time that remains. There, there, my Pattikins, you aren’t really hurt, are you?” Carel put an arm round the sobbing Pattie.

  Muriel walked past Eugene and out of the kitchen.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  MARCUS FISHER WAS in a state approaching ecstasy. He was ensconced in Norah Shadox-Brown’s sitting-room in front of a roaring fire. The curtains were drawn against the steely grey afternoon. Under a soft lamp the Irish linen table-cloth was covered with a golden strewing of crumbs from the Madeira cake. Marcus put his empty tea-cup down among the streaks of cranberry jelly upon his white plate in the way in which Norah had often asked him not to. He said, “But it’s his seriousness that matters, his passion.”

  Norah leaned to put Marcus’s cup back on to his saucer. She said, “Nothing you’ve told me persuades me he’s serious. He’s either mad or else amusing himself at your expense.”

  “Oh, you don’t understand!” Marcus sneezed.

  “There, I told you you were developing a cold.”

  “I’m not developing a cold.”

  Marcus had done his best to explain to Norah the experience, he was tempted to think of it as the mystical experience, of his meeting with Carel. In explaining Carel’s arguments he had presented the scene, he was aware not quite accurately, as a sober discussion between the two brothers in which he had played his own part. This was not entirely misleading of course in that Marcus had thought quite a lot of answers while Carel was talking, or at any rate he had thought of them afterwards. What he did not tell Norah was that Carel had struck him. That blow was something very private. Norah would not be able to understand it, she would think of it in a crude way as a further proof of Carel’s unbalance. Whereas it was in fact a blow designed to produce enlightenment. It was more than that, it seemed to Marcus in his later thoughts. It was a mark of love. His brother had made him exist, had wanted him to exist, for a moment in an intense presence of each to each. Love was the name of such a presence.

  Marcus, he had to admit, was now in a condition which could only be described as being in love with Carel. He had been too overwhelmed by Carel’s dreadful eloquence and too shocked by the blow to realize this at first. But as he walked away from the house through the intense cold of the evening his whole physical being had seemed changed. He felt radiant, as if he were exuding warmth and light. He felt the kind of happiness which seems to bubble out through the top of the head, making the eyes stare and the lips fall apart in an imbecile smile. The condition was so involuntary that at first he simply could not understand it. Then he apprehended it as in some way caused by Carel having struck him. Then a glorified image of Carel rose up before him and this had absorbed him ever since.

  He found when he got home to his room in Earls Court that all his anxieties had vanished. He tested the room, like an electrician looking for a fault. The room had changed, as if some sinister cobwebby litter had been removed from it. Something which had dimmed the lights, something which had sat in the corner and threatened him, had gone away. Marcus filled the room with the radiance of his new being, Marcus and the room floated over London like a gay balloon. Marcus stood in the room and laughed.

  He had been right then to imagine that a frank talk with Carel would drive his nightmares away. Even his worry about Elizabeth had ceased. Poor innocent Elizabeth, how distressed, or how amused, she would be if she knew what an awesome little goddess she had been made into in Marcus’s imagination! An infirmity of his own mind had inflated that image which had now been blown quite away. He could think again with rational sympathy and affection of a child he had known and of a sick girl he was soon to meet. Out of a number of coincidences he had invented a conspiracy. Why should Elizabeth see him at any time when he chose to turn up, why should she reply promptly to his messages? It was perfectly true that she was ill. He ought to have been more considerate. Of course, Carel didn’t make things any easier by his manners of a mysterious recluse. Certainly Carel was difficult, but Carel had always been difficult. Marcus went to bed and had happy dreams of a benevolent figure which seemed to be half Carel and half his younger brother Julian on whom he had so much doted when he was young.

  Even his relations with Leo had benefited from the new enlightenment. In a separate compartment of his mind Marcus had become distinctly worried about Leo. That he should feel a bit emotional about Leo did not in itself surprise or distress him. He had often had small passions for his pupils but had always and quite easily managed to keep them sealed up. What troubled him here was that Leo so patently knew of this weakness. Marcus was stung too by the suspicion that Leo was not only prepared to exploit him but did so with mockery and without affection. Marcus had become uneasy, especially after their last interview, about the image of himself in Leo’s mind. In a way he was ready enough to be exploited, in a way he liked it. It is part of any teacher’s duty to be moderately exploitable by his pupils. But here Marcus felt his dignity rather especially endangered, and his dignity was precious to him. Also he was disturbed by the sheer magnitude of his affection for the boy, increased in quantity after these recent adventures. Marcus was beginning to need a friendship with Leo which he saw little prospect of achieving.

  However, on the day after his momentous meeting with Carel he had had a very satisfactory encounter with Leo. Leo had rung him up at Earls Court and had later come round. He had brought with him, much to Marcus’s surprise, the sum of three hundred pounds in cash, the price of the icon, and had laid it on the table. When Marcus had questioned him closely about how he got the money he had confessed that on the previous occasion he had told Marcus a lie. The story of his engagement to a girl whose father demanded the production of seventy-five pounds had been a complete fabrication. The truth was that he had acquired a very expensive motor bicycle for which he had partly paid and had sold the icon in desperation in order to pay off the remainder. He had not told Marcus this for fear that Marcus would insist on his selling the bike. Keeping a stern face Marcus agreed that he would indeed have insisted. Since then, accused by conscience, Leo had sold the machine for quite a good price and had taken the proceeds to the White City where he had had a lucky evening with the dogs. That was why he was so happily able to repay Marcus the three hundred pounds. Leo also brought, and very prettily said, the effusive thanks of his father for Marcus’s great kindness to them both.

  Marcus concealed his pleasure at the breakdown of Leo’s ingenious attempt to lie to him, and at the greater frankness between them which Leo’s confession had brought about. He lectured Leo sternly upon the importance of truthfulness and threw in a few words about the dangers of gambling. He went on to discuss Leo’s future in general and suggested forcibly that he should give up the technical college and return to his and Marcus’s earlier plan of doing a university degree in French and Russian. Marcus suggested that if Leo did so change his mind the three hundred pounds which he had so correctly repaid might be earmarked as a sort of education fund to help him over any financial difficulties involved in the changeover. Leo, who appeared chastened,
listened seriously and gratefully and said that he would think the matter over. They parted with a warm handshake and Marcus concluded that he had been mistaken to think that Leo had no affection for him. The boy was thoroughly fond of him after all. Now that Leo was grown up there was no reason why they should not be friends.

  “You seem very pleased with yourself,” said Norah. “More tea?”

  “No thanks.”

  “As far as I can gather from your garbled version of Carel’s tirade, he stated not only that there was no God and human life was senseless, but also that the precarious reign of morality, itself of course an illusion, is now at an end and that henceforth human kind is to be the victim of irresponsible psychological forces which your brother picturesquely designates as angels. This I should have thought rather grim news seems to have raised you to a seventh heaven of delight. I wonder why?”

  Marcus shook his head. “You don’t see,” he said. “It’s partly that what Carel says is true, and the truth is always a bit exhilarating even when it’s awful. Kant understood that. It’s partly that there is a sort of hope, a difficult hope, in what he said. He himself saw this although he denied it at once.”

  “The notion that the truth is always exhilarating seems to me romantic nonsense and I’m surprised to hear you attribute it to Kant. If I’m told tomorrow that I’ve got incurable cancer I won’t be exhilarated. But what’s this hope you speak of?”

  “Well, I suppose those two ideas are really one. The situation is terrible, but nevertheless or perhaps because— I mean the human spirit can respond.”

  “Sometimes it can, sometimes it can’t. Cigarette?”

  “Thanks. Of course, Carel’s right about the absurd optimism of all philosophy up to the present, and he’s right that people who pretend to dispense with the idea of God don’t really do so. One’s got to learn to live without the idea of the Good being somehow One. That’s what’s hard.”

  “Well, you’ve had a philosophical training and I haven’t,” said Norah, “but I don’t see any point in either affirming or denying that the Good is One. I still ought to pay my bills. Ordinary morality goes on and always will go on whatever the philosophers and theologians have to say.”

  “I wonder,” said Marcus. “I wonder.” He added, “For you common sense takes the place of faith. In a way I envy you.”

  “No you don’t. You just feel superior to me. Anyway, I’m the many, thank God.”

  “The many live off the great few in the long run.”

  “The many decide who are the great few in the long run. I’m not going to worry because someone like Carel loses his nerve. And I’d say that even if I thought he was a genius, instead of being just a poor crackpot who needs a few electric shocks.”

  Was Carel mad? Marcus asked himself again. He might know the truth even if he were technically insane. What a passion! Marcus realized now that he had never even sighted that spiritual ocean upon which his brother was seemingly suffering shipwreck. He wished he could share Norah’s sturdy confidence in the world of common sense. Or rather, she was right, he did not wish it.

  “Has this conversation with Carel wrecked your book?” said Norah.

  “Yes.”

  Since the talk with Carel, indeed since fully apprehending the existence of Carel, Marcus had known that his book just wouldn’t do. It was as Carel said, milk-and-water theology. Of course he would write another book, a better truer one with real passion in it. But this one was no use. His version of the ontological proof simply wouldn’t work. “The angels get in the way,” he said.

  “You’ll soon be as batty as your brother,” said Norah.

  Marcus recalled Norah’s words about the twilight of a dying mythology driving people mad. Yet if one went far enough along that road there must be an issue. Or was that “must” just the old delusion inevitably recurring? Did not the removal of God make real goodness possible at last, the goodness that is good, as it were, for nothing? Or was Carel right that this was an ideal so far beyond our reach that we could not even significantly name it? Was there no answer to Carel? Was there nothing which was both good and real?

  “What are you going to do about Carel anyway?” said Norah, uttering a question she had now uttered a great many times.

  Marcus took a deep breath. “Save him,” he said.

  “Save him? How, pray?”

  “By love,” said Marcus. It was now clear to him that this was the answer. His great book would not be about good, it would be about love. In the case of love the ontological proof would work. Because love was a real human activity. He would save his brother by loving him. Carel would be made to recognize the reality of love. “Is Love One, I wonder?” he said to Norah.

  “Marcus, I really think you’re taking leave of your sense,” said Norah. “And there you go again, sneezing all over the tea-table.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  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 s
he 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.