Read Online The Time of the Angels by Iris Murdoch - Free Book Online Page A

in his time, acted the part of an odd job man in an hotel, a liftman in a shop, a porter in a school, and, for a short while, a barman. In fact his present job suited him well, though there was little money in it. He liked definite simple manual work and keeping things clean and tidy and being left to himself in his own corner. The job carried a tiny wage, besides the excellent rooms for himself and Leo. There was also a refugee organization which paid him a small stipend. He got along. The previous Rector had required very little of him and Eugene had got into pleasant habits of idleness. He liked to do something which he called meditating but which he knew was more like day-dreaming. He possessed no books except a few paperback novels, but he was a regular reader of historical biographies which he got from the library. He also had a little wireless set on which he absently listened to music. Yet he was interested in his new people and suddenly a bit disappointed that he would not be able to do his act as a butler for them.
     
    “And Miss Muriel, does she entertain?”
     
    “No, no. She keeps—to herself.”
     
    Eugene was not sure that he liked this self-assertive thin girl with her boyish head and sharp curious eyes. She had asked him a lot of questions about himself rather too soon.
     
    “The priest, the Rector—is he often ill like this?”
     
    “He’s not ill.”
     
    I have said something wrong, thought Eugene. He had assumed the priest was ill, as no one had been admitted to the house since he came, and he was often in bed in the mornings. Also his face was odd in some way. He alarmed Eugene a little, though he had been entirely if vaguely kind at their rare meetings.
     
    “Oh, well, good—I heard you turning Mrs Barlow away again this morning and I thought—Are you glad you’ve come to London, Pattie? Do eat up your cake.”
     
    “Yes. I don’t know. I haven’t really seen London yet. It’s nice to be near the river. Can you see the sea down the river?”
     
    “Oh no. The sea’s miles and miles away.”
     
    “I’ve never seen the sea.”
     
    “Never seen the sea!” How could anyone not have seen the sea? Surely the sea must somehow belong to the happiness of every child. He pitied her suddenly for that loss, as if in the deprivation of that essential experience she had dried up into a little wrinkled nut. “How dreadful—I suppose when your parents came from the West Indies—”
     
    “My father came from Jamaica. My mother was white, she was Irish.”
     
    I ought to have guessed, thought Eugene. She isn’t all that dark. I am hurting her. “Is it your mother’s name then—”
     
    “Yes—I mean you’d know, wouldn’t you. My parents weren’t married.”
     
    She minds, he thought. And she thinks I’m somehow getting at her. How can I tell her that it doesn’t matter at all. He wanted to reach over and touch her plump arm just above the wrist where it emerged from the tight pink jersey. He said, “It doesn’t matter at all.”
     
    “I know it doesn’t matter. Well, it does, it did. I had an awful time when I was little.”
     
    “Tell me about it.”
     
    “I can’t. It’s too awful. And anyway I’ve forgotten. Tell me about you, about when you were a little boy.”
     
    “Me—ach—”
     
    “If you don’t mind—”
     
    “No, I don’t mind.” It was a very long time since he had talked to anyone about himself, and almost as long since he had talked to a woman. Talking so naturally to Pattie he realized how rarely now he ever met a woman, apart from the wives of his friends, and even them he had scarcely seen since he came to live at the Rectory. He thought suddenly, I have a woman with me, alone with me in my room.
     
    “Where were you born?”
     
    “In St Petersburg—Leningrad, that is.”
     
    “Was that before they changed?”
     
    “Before they changed—yes. I was six when they changed.”
     
    “Were your parents rich