The Time of the Angels

by Iris Murdoch

  Marcus could not bear to think of his brother as defeated. He needed, and he realized how far this need stretched back into his childhood, to see Carel as a man of power. He himself had lived on that power, even when he had condemned it, perhaps especially when he had condemned it. In fact he had come to think Carel wise, a witch doctor, but wise. Carel’s black philosophy had cut him with an edge of truth. Truth almost always hurts a bit and that is why we know so little of it. Carel’s truth was an agony. But can such truths be borne, and if they cannot are they really truths? Carel had lived this, perhaps been maddened by it and perhaps died of it. Marcus had felt its faint touch and had started back, had felt only just enough to know the falsity of what he had written in his book. He had imagined that he had time to learn from Carel, to help Carel. This sudden ending left him aching with puzzlement and with a recurring doubt. Was it all dust and ashes, Carel’s passion and his own reflection? Did this death prove it? Perhaps any death proved it.

  A very large furniture-van was standing outside the Rectory and the last of the furniture was just being carried out. Marcus stood a little way off rather wistfully and watched. He recognized some of the pieces as having been long ago in his father’s house. Things, things, they outlive us and go to scenes that we know nothing of. He was hurt that Muriel had not consulted him about the disposal of the furniture, not all of which was going to Bromley. He felt too that she should have offered him something of Carel’s as a keepsake. Now it was as if Carel too were being packed up and carted briskly away. The mystery of Carel had shrunk to the size of a footstool.

  The back of the van was closed up with a loud clang and the men climbed up into the front. Slowly the van drew away. Its big square shadow passed along the red brick facade and touched the grey base of Wren’s tower. The door of the Rectory remained open, and from where he stood Marcus could see into the empty hall. The house had become a vacant shell whose significant spaces would soon be merged into the empty air. It would soon exist only in memory; and indeed in the faint clear sunshine it looked like a memory already. It seemed unreal, vivid and yet not truly present, like a coloured photograph projected in a dark room. Marcus wondered if he should go in, but he was afraid to. He was sure that Muriel and Elizabeth were still inside.

  As he waited, and the sounds from the building site flew chattering upward over his head into the big rivery air, another shadow fell beside him. A taxi had arrived and was now drawing up outside the house. The taximan got out and went to the open door and rang the bell. The bell sounded loud and differently in the empty house. Marcus watched. From far within there was an echo of slow strangely heavy footsteps. Then framed in the doorway he saw the two girls, immobile as if they had been there for some time, their two pale heads close together, their bodies seemingly entwined. With a shock he realized that Muriel was carrying Elizabeth in her arms. The taximan ran forward. Gingerly Elizabeth’s feet touched the slippery pavement. Marcus saw her face turned towards him, long and without colour, half hidden in the drooping metallic hair which gleamed in the sunlight a faintly greenish silver. It was and was not the face of the nymph he had known. The large grey-blue eyes blinked painfully in the bright light and met his vacantly and without interest. Now she was being helped into the taxi. Muriel followed her and the door slammed. The taxi moved away, diminishing through the lanes of the building site until it disappeared into the narrow labyrinth of the city. Elizabeth had not recognized him.

  Marcus sighed and for a moment felt his beating heart. Then almost automatically he walked to the open door and entered the Rectory. There could be no peril now, no ghost even which he could encounter there. Those dangerous presences were gone. The girls had taken elsewhere their mysterious solidarity, their pale impenetrability. And he he, had ceased to be. From that great light, smoky and lurid, the central incandescence had been removed and the glow would slowly fade away. The old fear would fade, and the love would fade too or else unrecognizably change. The relentless vegetable vitality of human life would grow in this case as in all others to eclipse the dead.

  Standing in the middle of the hall Marcus had a sudden eerie sensation. Somebody was near, looking, moving. He turned slightly and saw with the corner of his eye the shade of a disappearing figure. It was Eugene Peshkov who had seen Marcus and who was now gliding away under the stairs hoping not to be observed. For a moment, Marcus thought to call to him but then decided not to. He felt a little hurt and sad that Eugene should hide from him. But he had never troubled to make friends with Leo’s father. He wondered if he should tip Eugene, give him a pound, say. Had the girls remembered to? But no, it was impossible. On this day all they could do was avoid each other, not know each other, and turn away as if ashamed.

  Marcus began to mount the stairs. He trod softly but his footsteps made little echoes. He turned at the top and made for what he thought had been Carel’s study. The door was open and the sun was shining through it. The room was completely empty and dust was already thick upon the floor. Nothing that Marcus could see identified it as the dark cluttered cavern where he had last seen his brother alive and where Carel had struck him that blow which had seemed to him such an indubitable proof of love. Had he been right? It was better not to ask.

  He went to the window and looked out. The spires of the city twinkled a little in the light as if just faintly visible stars had alighted upon them and were moving elusively from place to place. Marcus began to think about Julian. He pictured him vividly, as he had not done for years, clothed in all the grace of a barely grown-up boy. They had loved him. Indeed they had loved each other, all three. Now Carel was gone too and seemed already to recede so fast, as if he were in haste to find his way back to Julian in some distant land of youth. Only Marcus remained, heavy with these deaths, these lives. Only with him did all that was singular of them upon this earth live and grow now.

  There was a sound behind him and he turned sharply. A woman was standing in the doorway. She was dressed in a smart blue tweed coat and her greyish fair hair was fluffy under a diminutive blue hat. Her sudden appearance, her stillness, her staring face gave her for an instant the quality of a ghost. Then she moved. Marcus stared at her. Something in those wide rather ecstatic eyes was familiar to him. In a contortion and shock of memory he spoke.

  “Anthea!”

  “Marcus!”

  “I can hardly believe my eyes! Wherever did you spring from? Is it really you? You haven’t changed a bit.”

  “Neither have you, not a bit!”

  “But where have you been all these years? And whatever in the world are you doing here? You’re the last person I expected to see.”

  “I work in this area now. I’m a psychiatric social worker.”

  “A psychiatric social worker! But why haven’t I come across you or heard about you?”

  “Well, you might have heard of me as Mrs Barlow. I don’t think you ever knew my married name.”

  “Good heavens, are you Mrs Barlow?”

  “I expect you’ve heard I’m ghastly!”

  “No, no! Not still in the C.P. are you, Anthea?”

  “Dear me no. I’m not even a proper Christian any more I’m afraid. I suppose I’m a sort of Buddhist now really.”

  “But why didn’t you get in touch with me? I know it’s been a long time—”

  “And one does hesitate with old friends. Well, I’ve only lately come back to London. And since I’ve been here I’ve had a rather special job. You see, it concerned Carel—”

  “Carel?”

  “Yes. You see, the Bishop specially asked me to see Carel and, well, make a sort of report on his sanity. It was to be quite confidential. I was just to say that I was attached to the pastorate. The Bishop was terribly worried—”

  “But how extraordinary that he should have asked you, I mean what a coincidence—”

  “It wasn’t exactly a coincidence because the Bishop knew I’d known Carel before. He thought it might help. Oh, the Bishop knows all about little me!”


  “How fearfully odd though. Carel was very keen on you in the old days, you know! Well, we all were, Julian, myself— You caused quite a lot of trouble!”

  “I know. I was awful!”

  “Whatever did you make of Carel now?”

  “I never got to see him.”

  “But you must have written to him?”

  “Yes, but I don’t think he ever got the letters. He had cut himself off completely.”

  “How strange. And how very sad.”

  “So you see, he never knew.”

  Marcus looked at Anthea. Of course she had changed. Yet it was still the same ecstatic, slightly crazy, trouble-making girl. And now she was in psychology. It seemed quite suitable. He had told Norah that he found her funny. He still did find her funny. But he had loved her.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t write to you, Marcus. You see, Carel was—”

  “I understand.”

  “I was just going to write to you now. I got plenty of news of you from Leo, actually.”

  “Leo? So you know young Leo, do you?”

  “Oh yes. We’re great friends, Leo and me.”

  “But how do you come to be acquainted with Leo?”

  “Oh, it’s a long story! He comes to me with all his little troubles, you know. He misses that mother that he never had. And I’ve been able to help him with a small loan now and then.”

  “A loan. What was that for, I wonder? Something to do with girls or motor bikes?”

  “No, no, it was for his work in Leicester.”

  “What work in Leicester?”

  “You know, his work in Leicester with delinquent boys. Such a worthy project.”

  “Delinquent boys! I see! Well, Anthea, so you’re married.”

  “Divorcee.” She breathed it.

  “Oh, good. I mean— Come to dinner with me, Anthea. Come next Monday, come to my flat.”

  “I’d love to. I already know where you live. I looked you up in the telephone book. But aren’t you just moving from there? Someone said—”

  “No,” said Marcus. “I’m not moving. I’m definitely not moving.”

  “Look, I must fly. I’m nearly due at the clinic.”

  “Monday then. Half-past seven.”

  “Au revoir, Marcus.”

  When he had heard her footsteps recede and the front door close Marcus began to laugh. He remembered that she had always made him laugh. It was not so much that she was absurd, a kind of electric vitality in her seemed automatically to produce laughter. Carel had laughed for her too, abandoning himself to just such relaxed inexplicable mirth.

  How confoundedly odd it was, Anthea turning up again, and how extremely invigorating he found this oddness. There was a kind of silly innocence about it all, a kind of thoroughly cheering innocence. He looked forward to seeing her again. With her the ordinary world seemed to resume its power, the world where human beings make simple claims on one another and where things are small and odd and touching and funny.

  Marcus found that he had left Carel’s room and was walking down the stairs. Would he go on working on his book? Perhaps it was a book which only a genius could write, and he was not a genius. It might be that what he wanted to say about love and about humanity was true but simply could not be expressed as a theory. Well, he would think about all that later on. What he needed now was relaxation, perhaps a holiday.

  He emerged into the street. He smiled at the feeble sunshine and at the big bustling scene of men at work. He moved out into the gay din of ringing voices and babbling transistor sets. Fancy old Anthea turning up again like that. A psychiatric social worker forsooth! Well, it was odd, it was all confoundedly odd.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  EUGENE PESHKOV WHISTLED softly as he packed his suitcase. It was good to have few possessions. It made moving so easy. Miss Shadox-Brown had arranged for him to move into a church hostel in West Bermondsey. They said he would have to share a room at first, but they were confident they would soon manage to give him one to himself.

  Eugene had been alone now for several days at the Rectory. The furniture had gone, the girls had gone. Leo, who seemed suddenly to have money in his pocket, had gone off on holiday to Spain. Eugene was sorry to leave the place. It had been a snug hole, especially in winter. Of course it was quite deathly now that it was empty, and the last two days were unbearably noisy since they had been demolishing the Wren tower. Today was happily Sunday.

  His belongings filled three large suitcases. His clothes were in one, the second contained the crockery wrapped in towels, and this third case was to hold the oddments, his shaving things, his wireless set, the Russian box, the icon, the photograph of Tanya. His paperback books had been deposited in a box in the hall to be collected by Mrs Barlow for Oxfam. The potted plant and its stand had already gone to the hostel on a handcart.

  Well, he was on the move again. That was how it was. On from one camp to the next. He thrust the photograph of Tanya into the bottom of the case and then pulled it out again for a moment to look at it. It was not a very good one. It showed her in one of her tragedy queen moods. He looked at the wooden hut behind her, trying to remember it more exactly. Tanya was a ghost. He looked through her into the hut. They had shared it with another married couple. They had been reckoned lucky. Perhaps they had been lucky. Perhaps he had been lucky. After all the world was just a camp with its good corners and its bad corners. His corners had never been too bad. The world was just a transit camp. The only certain thing was that one was not in it for long.

  He wished he had been kinder to Tanya. He had felt trapped by her somehow. She had died young in bewilderment and misery and he had been too preoccupied with Leo and with his own future to attend properly to her dying. He had given people cigarettes to sit with her. He was very sorry for her, but he was anxious for it to be over. She was not a brave sufferer and he did not want to undergo her terror of death. He resented this test of the stoicism he had made for himself. He had dropped no tear for his mother, for his sister, persons infinitely dearer to him than Tanya. He had been hard with Tanya and she had not understood. Did it matter now, now that she was nothing?

  He dropped the photograph into the case and turned to lift down the icon. The milky blue angels were infinitely sad. They had travelled a long way. When Eugene was gone they would still travel on and on, until one day no one knew who they were any more. There was only this travelling. Did it matter now, Eugene wondered, his unkindness to Tanya, since there was no God? He felt that it mattered. But that was just a feeling, a heaviness within him. He shook the crumbs of toast and sugar cake off the furry green tablecloth and wrapped the cloth round the icon.

  Pattie seemed distant now almost as if she too belonged to a remote era of time. He was already insulated, closed against the pain of thinking of her. The pain existed somewhere separately, and all that came to him bodily was sadness. He had loved Pattie because she was a misfit like himself. But she was a misfit of some quite other kind. They could not really have met each other’s needs. He could not have let Pattie into his past, and he was his past, that sombre egg which had grown around the jewel of his childhood. He could not have contained Pattie. It was too late now for him to contain anybody. Of course he would have forgiven Pattie, he would have come round, he would have tried at least to understand. Only when she suddenly went he was relieved in a way and soon began to think of it as inevitable. The happiness she had represented to him was merely something dangerous. To grow old is to know that not circumstances but consciousness make the happy and the sad. He was a sad man and he would never make the happiness of others or live in a house like ordinary people.

  His foot touched something which was lying just underneath the bunk and he stooped to look. It was a paperback detective story which he had overlooked. He picked it up and opened the door and began to walk slowly toward the hall to put it in the box with the other books. He stepped softly through the stripped empty kitchen. The sound of living footsteps seemed inapprop
riate, the waking of echoes which were already moribund. He passed through the darkness under stairs and then stopped abruptly. There was somebody in the hall. Then he saw that it was only Mrs Barlow. He was about to speak to her when he saw that she was behaving oddly. She knelt down beside the crate of books, then sat upon the floor leaning her head back against the crate. He heard a faint whimpering sound. Mrs Barlow was crying.

  Eugene backed quietly away and tiptoed back through the kitchen. He left the book behind him on the kitchen floor. He did not want to be involved with Mrs Barlow’s grief. For whom or for what she was weeping there alone in the empty hall he did not know, he had never really thought about her, and the mystery of her tears soon passed from his mind. He returned to his packing. The third suitcase was nearly full. He packed his little wireless set next to the icon and tucked newspapers in around it. There was only the Russian box left to put in now.