The Time of the Angels

by Iris Murdoch

  It took Muriel a little time to be absolutely certain that they were gone. She blinked her eyes. She looked at the other shelves and ran her hands all over the surfaces. The tablets were simply not there.

  Muriel had been in a sort of hysterical coma ever since she had woken up. Now she became entirely cool and clear-headed. Had she moved the sleeping-tablets from that place? No. They had been there a little while ago, she was sure, and she had not moved them. Muriel stood frowning into the cupboard. Had someone borrowed them innocently? No one in the house used sleeping-pills. Even Elizabeth was a fairly good sleeper, and though her father kept odd hours he could sleep when he wanted to.

  Muriel slowly closed the cupboard door. It was odd and disconcerting. But she supposed there was nothing she could do about it. There must be some simple explanation, though she was not able to think of it at the moment. She had better go now. This problem was not the only or the worst one that she was leaving behind her. She had better go, before she met her father, before Elizabeth rang her dreadful bell. Muriel moved slowly out of the room and as far as the head of the stairs.

  The sound of the music still continued. It was Swan Lake. Muriel recognized the Dance of the Cygnets. Surely all was well. She put her foot on a stair. Then she turned and walked quickly along the landing to her father’s door. She knocked. There was no reply. She waited a moment, knocked again, and then very cautiously opened the door.

  It was dark inside. The curtains were still drawn and the lamp upon the desk had been covered by a cloth. Muriel stood still, frozen, expecting a sudden voice to speak to her out of the dark. Nothing happened. Then she heard, through the soft drone of the music, another sound, a sound of heavy breathing. Her father must be asleep.

  Now she could see a little more inside the room. She moved forward through the doorway, setting her feet down very softly and peering into the corner. Her father, wearing his cassock, was lying upon the couch with his head supported on a cushion. His breathing was clearly audible, a long guttural snoring sound, then a long pause, and then another one. Muriel closed the door behind her. She moved closer to look at her father.

  For a moment, with cold horror, she thought that his eyes were open and that he was looking at her. But it was only a trick of the light. His eyes were closed. His lips were slightly apart, their corners drooping in a sort of sneer. One hand hung down to the floor and lay relaxed upon the carpet, palm upward. Muriel stood still, staring down at him. What was she doing here? Suppose he were to wake up and find her looking at him? But an anxiety which she could no longer master had taken control of her. Very cautiously she shifted the cloth from the lamp and let the light shine upon Carel. She stood rigid again. He did not stir. Then she saw the little blue bottle which had contained the sleeping-tablets. It was lying on the floor near the foot of the couch and it was empty.

  Muriel had known this from the moment of leaving her own room, but the knowledge had been numb and dead in her. She stood there now beside the desk, breathing very quickly, and wondering if she was going to faint. She managed to sit down on a chair. She thought, he is gone. And she closed her eyes.

  She opened them wide a moment later. The music. Carel must have put the record on. He must have been conscious just a few minutes ago. She got up and went to the couch. She could hardly bring herself to touch him. She put her hand on his shoulder. She gathered the thick stuff of the cassock and as her grip tightened felt the bone of the shoulder within. She shook him, and said “Carel!” The closed eyes did not flicker, the body showed no awareness, the regular breathing continued. Muriel shook him again, much more violently this time, trying to pull him up by both shoulders and digging her fingers in. She called into his ear “Carel! Carel!” The inert body fell back from her hands.

  Muriel thought, I must call for help. I must get to the telephone quickly and ring up the hospital. He is only just unconscious. He can’t have swallowed the tablets very long ago. They can still treat him, they can bring him back, he will be all right. She started for the door. Then, as if she had been plucked from behind, she hesitated and stopped. And as she stopped she moaned in an agony of pity for herself. This, this, this, she was not to escape this. Ought Carel to be brought back?

  She turned and stared at his face. Already it had changed a bit. The enamelled skin which had glowed with whiteness was like grey wax now, the colour of trodden snow which had lost its glitter. The features seemed to be sinking into the bone. Even Carel’s hair, spread a little upon the cushion, had lost its glossiness and looked like a relic, some scarcely recognizable stuff found in a tomb or a casket. Muriel gritted her teeth. She must think now, think as she had never thought in her life before. But could she, in the presence of this, think?

  Carel had made a decision. Was it for her to alter it? A privilege she had claimed for herself, could she deny it to him, to go when and how he pleased? He had his reasons for going, reasons perhaps more dreadful and compelling than she could conceive of. She could not be responsible for dragging him wretchedly, piteously, back into a consciousness he had rejected and thought to annihilate. She could not do that to her father, to his authority and to his dignity. Carel was not to be hauled back by his heels into a hateful life. She could not at this last moment assume that power over him.

  Yet she had the power, and could not deny it, the power of life and death. Now and for a little time she could decide to make him live. Should she not forget who he was and simply save him? But she could not forget who he was. Should she not return him to his freedom? He could make the decision again, she would not be condemning him to live. He had always done what he wished. Should she contrary him now? How could she decide this awful thing when she was stricken and sick herself, sick with the presence of death, the death that was in Carel, which was slowly taking him away, and which she could check if she would by a cry?

  Muriel sat down and laid her head on Carel’s desk. The music continued, airy, substanceless, clear and mercilessly beautiful. The music continued cut off and far away in a beyond where nothing was sick or mortal. Here in the room Carel’s breathing was guttural and regular, a sort of quiet self-absorbed discourse. Muriel thought, if I do nothing these sounds are numbered now, in a little while they will simple cease, there will be a last breath and then no more. Mechanically she began counting. Then she thought, all breaths, all heart-beats of all humans are numbered. My life is as finite as his. Was she thinking and had she decided? No thoughts could help her now. She had never more positively felt the utter and complete absence of God. She was alone and rested on nothing and had recourse to nothing. There was no rock of ages.

  She got up again and walked about a little. She came near to him and looked down upon the sleeping face. It seemed a terrible intrusion to look upon that face. The peace which it had desired had not yet come to it. The sleeping face was anxious. Oh God, does he want to be waked, does he want to be rescued, thought Muriel. If I could only know, if he could only tell me. If he had told me before I would have obeyed him. She leaned over him, staring, but the anxious sunken face had no message. Then suddenly she saw something white, held in Carel’s right hand which was resting between his side and the back of the couch. It was a piece of crumpled paper. Muriel reached out, hesitated, and then very gingerly plucked at the paper. What dreadful awakening was she now afraid of? That he should wake and know her act? Surely he knew even now. His fingers seemed to resist her. The paper came away.

  Muriel smoothed it out.

  My dear this is so awful I can hardly write it, I have to go, and if I saw you I couldn’t. You know I said I would never go dear. I wouldn’t have ever honest I wouldn’t. You know I love you my dear. Only this other thing I couldn’t bear. How could you have done it. You know what I mean about Elizabeth. Muriel told me. It has killed me. You have had the years of my life, all there was of me. You know I love you and I’ve been your slave only I couldn’t stay on with her you know and the only way to go is like this suddenly. When you get this I’ll have
gone away and don’t try to find me, well you couldn’t, I’m going right away out of the country I think. Don’t worry of me I have money saved dear. You know I will be miserable and thinking of you always, I will be miserable all of my life for you. I could not be what you wanted of me, it was too hard for me. Forgive me please. You know it is all because I do love you so much, you know that. I love you and I can hardly write this letter. Goodbye.

  Pattie

  Muriel read the letter through twice and then tore it up into very small pieces. The letter steadied her, it was something to think about. So Pattie had had the resolution to get out. She had acted even faster than Muriel had. So it was for Pattie’s sake that he lay there. He knew that Pattie knew and he knew who had told her. What did he think of me, what did he ever think of me, Muriel wondered. Is he dreaming of me now? Are there strange huge dreams perhaps at the end in such a slumber? She began to look around the room. Perhaps there was a letter, perhaps he had written her a letter, left some scrap of message for her? He must have known that sooner or later it was she who would find him. She looked on the desk and searched the floor and all about the couch. At last she saw a piece of white paper lying a little under the couch near his head and quickly picked it up. It was a paper dart.

  Muriel began to cry. She cried silently in a hot blinding stream of tears. She loved her father and she had loved him only. Why had she not known this earlier? There had always been a darkness in her relationship with her father and in that darkness her love had lain asleep. If only there had been no Pattie. If only there had been no Elizabeth. If only there could have been just herself and Carel together. She seemed now so strongly to remember a time when it had been so. She had loved him so much. She could have made him happy, she could have saved him from the demons. But Elizabeth had always intervened. All Muriel’s connections with the world, her connection with her father had had to pass through Elizabeth. She knew now that a special pain which Elizabeth had caused her, and to which she had become so accustomed that she scarcely noticed it, was the pain of jealousy.

  Muriel’s tears continued and she moaned a little, very softly, and trembled, standing there in the lamp-lit room beside the sleeping figure. Would there be love again? Love was dying and she could not save it. She could not wake her father and tell him she loved him. Her love only existed in this awful interim between dark and dark. It was a love immured, sealed up. It could only have this demonic issue. To let him go was all that she could do for him now. She would not wake him to a consciousness which he had judged unbearable. She would not wake him like Lazarus from a dream of hell to hell itself, a place where love was powerless to redeem and save. She had been given her knowledge too late, and perhaps in the corruption of her heart could only have accepted it too late. And now she was condemned to be divided forever from the world of simple innocent things, thoughtless affections and free happy laughter and dogs passing by in the street.

  The Swan music came abruptly to an end. Moving trance-like, Muriel leaned to put the record back to the beginning again. Her tears fell on to the drooping folds of the cassock. He had gone, and he had left her Elizabeth. There would be no parting from Elizabeth now. As she turned back to the sleeper she saw a bright streak of light between the curtains. Wearily, heavily she pulled the curtains back. The fog had gone away. There was a little blue sky and the sun was shining. Against a mass of moving clouds she saw the towers of St Botolph and St Edmund and St Dunstan and the great dome of St Paul’s. There would be no parting from Elizabeth now. Carel had riveted them together, each to be the damnation of the other until the end of the world.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “MARCUS.”

  “Yes, Norah.”

  “Are you going down to see them out at the Rectory?”

  “There’s nothing I could do.”

  “Are the girls going straight to the new house?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Where is it, Bromley or some such curious place?”

  “Bromley.”

  “I do wish Muriel would take a holiday, now the spring’s come.”

  “She could afford to.”

  “They’re both quite well-off now, aren’t they?”

  “I do think Carel ought to have left something to Pattie.”

  “Pattie’s all right. If you write to her again don’t forget to call her Patricia.”

  “She seems to be enjoying her African refugee camp.”

  “Misfortunes of others soon cheer us up.”

  “Is that a cynical remark, Norah?”

  “No.”

  “Pattie took it well, don’t you think?”

  “There’s a streak of ruthlessness in Pattie.”

  “There’s a streak of ruthlessness in all of us.”

  “You say the girls took it well.”

  “Muriel did. I still haven’t seen Elizabeth.”

  “Not a feather ruffled?”

  “Not a feather ruffled.”

  “Odd young woman.”

  “You didn’t write to her again?”

  “I’m through with trying to see Muriel.”

  “They’ll be pulling the Rectory down next week.”

  “Did you see in The Times about the Wren tower?”

  “Yes, too bad. Found a new place for Eugene Peshkov yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I suppose his refugee pension will go on?”

  “Don’t worry. I’m his pension.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I pay him that pittance. He thinks it’s from a fund.”

  “Norah, you’re extraordinary.”

  “One must be rational about charity. I don’t think you are.

  “You mean about Leo. Don’t forget he’s coming to tea, by the way.”

  “Do you think he really means to do that degree in French and Russian?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, there was no need to give him three hundred pounds.”

  “I told you, we’d earmarked it as an education fund.”

  “He exploits you.”

  “Nonsense. I think maybe I will go down to the Rectory after all.”

  “You’ll stay here tonight?”

  “No, I must get back to Earls Court. I want to work late.”

  “So you are going on with the book?”

  “Yes, but it’s all different now.”

  “Have you arranged to have your furniture moved yet?”

  “No, not yet, actually.”

  “Would you like me to arrange it?”

  “Oh, please don’t trouble, I’ll— Look, it’s stopped raining.”

  “Well, I suppose you’d better go now if you’re going.”

  “Sure you won’t come, Norah?”

  “No. Muffins for tea.”

  “Muffins. Goodie.”

  The building site crawled with men and machines and over it a continuous mingled din of machinery and voices and transistor sets rose up into the weak blue sunshiny air. The recent rain had covered the black surface with little glassy pools, each of which reflected a faintly bluish silver light. Orange monsters with huge claws scored the sticky earth and cement tumbled noisily in huge revolving drums. In the distance a steel skeleton was already rising.

  The Rectory could be seen from afar, a red blob beneath the soaring solid grace of Wren’s grey tower. Marcus picked his way along the muddied pavement past singing, shouting men in striped jerseys and slowly manoeuvring lorries. What did he want at the Rectory? Why on earth was he going there? In the course of the grim rituals after Carel’s death, and in the month and more that followed, he had seen a certain amount of Muriel, but nothing of Elizabeth. Muriel had been formal and polite and constantly refused his offers of assistance. She was decisive and calm and efficient and seemed entirely unmoved by her father’s suicide. She would not allow anyone to help, and there was nothing today which Marcus could do for her. He was come simply as a spectator to indulge some painful craving of his own.

 
Marcus had been living in a new time, the time since Carel died. It already seemed a long, long time, long enough to grow old in. After the first awful shock of the news Marcus had felt lost, deprived of use and purpose. Carel had been a great sign. Marcus had been ready to meditate on Carel, to fight with Carel, to be hurt by Carel, perhaps to redeem Carel. He had no resources to deal with this sudden parting. He was left with an old love for this brother which he could do nothing with. He wondered if with a greater show of affection, with a little more understanding, even with a kind of brutality he might have saved him? He was tormented by the idea that Carel had needed something from him.

  What had Carel died of? What demon, what apparition, become too terrible to bear had quenched that dreadful vitality? Had Carel despaired, and what could that despair have been like? Or had his departure been something cool, another act and as it happened the last one in some long pattern of quiet cynicism? How did this act relate, how could it relate, to that passion in Carel which Marcus had been ready to revere? Had chance, sheer contingency choked Carel in the end? Had he died of a mood?