Read Online Angel by Elizabeth Taylor - Free Book Online

and one or two crocuses had forced their way through the trodden ground. A door led into a cinder path between high walls. Here were the back entrances of other houses; on dark nights a place of whisperings and rustlings, cats fighting, rats scavenging.
    The bookshop was in the Butts, by the church, a musty, galleried building full of mildewed volumes that no one would ever read again. The young assistant seemed dubious about adding to them, and took the books from Angel, glanced at them and shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll inquire,” he said. When he came back, he was smiling with false pity. “No, I’m afraid we should have no use for them. We could offer one and sixpence.”
    â€œTwo shillings,” Angel said, burning with humiliation.
    â€œNow, come,” he said insolently. “You don’t want to make me go all the way back and ask again for the sake of sixpence.”
    â€œYes, I do.”
    He sighed extravagantly, but he went away and when he came back it was without the books. He handed her the florin with infuriating solemnity and, as she turned to leave the shop, called after her: “Don’t spend it all at once, will you?”
    â€œYou ill-bred jackanapes!” Angel said loudly. He looked startled, but when she turned to close the door she could see him through the glass panel. He was bowed over the counter, as if weeping or in pain: for a moment she felt appeased, and then she saw that he was convulsed with laughter.
    By the time the manuscript was next returned, the pain was blurred by her excitement over the new novel she had begun to write: the story of a great actress’s triumph over a contemptuous world. (Those who had booed at first would, long before the last page, be taking the horses from the shafts of her carriage and drawing her exultantly through the crowded street.)
    Almost methodically, Angel tied up the parcel again. Now that her school-books were all sold, she had no address to send it to, and when she had managed to steal some money from her mother’s purse she set out for the Free Library. On one side of the municipal building was a museum full of stuffed animals and broken earthenware; on the other, across the draughty vestibule, was the library, dark with books all bound in greasy black leather. Angel could not get beyond the turnstile without a ticket.
    â€œComplete the form and obtain a reference from a clergyman or suchlike,” said the assistant.
    â€œI want a book now, at this minute.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” said the young man.
    â€œI know that you are not,” said Angel. “I will go through and look at the books without taking one away.”
    â€œI am afraid that until you have a ticket you are not allowed inside the library.”
    A woman waiting behind Angel laid her book impatiently on the counter, and at once Angel turned and picked up the book and opened it at the title-page. For a second, she memorised the publishers’ address printed there; then, without speaking, she pushed past the woman and went out to the vestibule.
    She hurried through the streets, her lips moving rapidly as if she were mad. At the post office she wrote the address on her parcel: Gilbright & Brace, Bloomsbury Square, London.
    Going home, she felt tired, overcome by the lassitude of the spring evening; as if she had taken a rest after long exertion and found it difficult to rise up again. She shrank from the wind and the grittiness of the pavements. All that she saw and felt tired her, and she longed to shut out the world and be secure in the womb of her imagination. A boy bowling an iron hoop ran past her and she trembled at the noise he made with his hobnail boots on the pavement. One of the dreaded neighbourhood characters approached, a gaunt woman who walked stiffly, menacingly, her eyes glaring above a scarf which was drawn up to cover most of her face. Angel had heard that she had some sinister disease. Children