The Time of the Angels

by Iris Murdoch

  “Oh, Pattie, look. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  “Wonderful! Everything’s different.”

  “Let’s go out quick. You’ve taken his breakfast up, haven’t you?” For some reason Eugene could not name the Rector.

  “Yes. Wouldn’t you like an egg?”

  “No, no, not today. Let’s go out. Get your coat.”

  “I don’t know if I ought to—”

  “Come on. I’ll show you the river. I’ll show you the snow.”

  A few minutes later they were walking on the snow with long shadows behind them. The snow on the building site was untrodden, crisp and frosty on the top, so that their boots broke the crust with a brittle sound. The low bright sun slanted across the snow making little blue wave-like shadows on its surface, and making the snow crystals here and there shine so brightly that Pattie kept stopping with an exclamation, hardly able to believe that there were not jewels strewn about her feet. The air hummed with brightness and Eugene’s body ached with memory.

  He was wearing his old trench coat, a garment so stiff and hard that it was like putting on a mould of clay. Pattie wore her grey coat of rather rabbity fur and a red woollen scarf round her head. Her black hair, beginning now to be a little frizzy, made a dark frill about her round brown astonished face. She walked a little gingerly, as if hesitating to break the dry crust of the frozen snow which the sun now made to look golden as if it were baking. She turned often to look back at their footprints. The snow below the surface was woollier, bluer. She stared at Eugene with spellbound exhilaration and surprise. Eugene laughed too. The vapour from his breath, freezing upon his moustache, had made it stiffen with a pleasant tickling feeling. He felt a little giddy with the light and the opened hugeness of the past. He put an arm round Pattie’s shoulder. “The sun suits you. It’s funny, but I keep thinking you’ve never seen snow before.”

  “I feel as if I’ve never seen snow before.”

  “Of course this isn’t real snow.”

  “It is real,” said Pattie.

  After a moment Eugene said, “Yes, you’re right.” He felt crazy and happy. He kept his arm on her shoulder, guiding her.

  “Where’s the river? I haven’t even seen it.”

  “I’ll show you. I’ll show you the river. I’ll show you the sea.”

  They had come into a street where the snow was trodden a little and where wavy ridges of white patterned the blackish red of brick walls. A few people passed, bundled up in coats and scarves, with a strained dazed smiling look upon their faces. Eugene and Pattie came round a corner past a little public house and out of the shadow of the street on to a quay where the curve of the huge river lay before them, full to the brim and moving fast, a steely bluey grey covered in scaly golden flecks, and beyond it the skyline again of towers and domes and spires, all pale and clear against a sky of light blue, like a blue stone polished until it glittered.

  “Oh!” said Pattie.

  They stood a while watching the water move. They had the quayside to themselves.

  “It’s so fast.”

  “The tide is running.”

  “And so huge.”

  “It’s near the sea.”

  “Which way is the sea?”

  “That way. We’ll go there soon.”

  Eugene leaned on the granite wall of the quay. The snow, dry and almost warm, lightly powdered the sleeves of his coat. He took off his glove and felt with pleasure the bite of the air upon his hand. He scooped the snow a little and fingered the dry hard ridges of the granite. The huge echoing light, the dense feel of the stone, the hastening movement of the wide river, the glittering arc of buildings low upon the horizon, dazed and transported him. He felt himself the centre of some pure transparent system, infinitely spinning, infinitely still. There was no place in this limpid universe where darkness could hide. He said, “Pattie, I feel so full of joy, I hardly know where I am.”

  He took a handful of snow. It was light, almost substanceless. He turned to Pattie. She was looking at him, dazed too, smiling. The cold made dark red fires glow in the brown of her cheeks. With her hair confined by the scarf her face looked round and plump, sweetly childish, wholesome like fruit. Eugene lifted his handful of snow up to the curve of her cheek and felt the warmth of her with his snowy hand. A little whiteness dusted on to her glowing skin. She was brown and warm and laughing beside him.

  “Ouf! It’s going down my neck!”

  “Take your glove off,” he said. “You must feel the snow. It’s not cold really. There.” He took her ungloved hand in his. He wanted to see her brownness against the white. He sank their joined hands slowly into the snowy coping of the granite wall.

  “Oh, it is cold!”

  “It’s lovely.”

  “It’s like cold sugar.”

  “Oh, Pattie, I feel so strange and good. Are you warm enough? I wish I could get you inside my coat like a little cat!”

  “I’d purr!”

  “Let me warm you.” He put an arm awkwardly round her. His overcoat stood up between them like a board. He fumbled his coat a little open and tried to draw Pattie nearer. Her hand, which he was still holding, he tucked in under his arm, leaving it to claw a hold upon the material of his jacket. Shifting the pressure from her shoulder and edging back the collar of his coat with his chin he tried to get a grip on her waist and move her nearer in between the flaps of the coat. He held on to the slippery bunchy fur, pulling at it. It was a gauche embrace. They stood face to face, two rotund bundles of clothing, unable to get close enough, excluding each other. Pattie stared past him, her cheek wet where the snow had melted on it. He felt the cold air assault his body. Then Pattie somehow moved and sidled, and got herself inside the overcoat. He felt her warmth and the weight of her leaning body. With a little grunt she pushed her face into his shoulder. The scarf fell back revealing a drift of curling blue-black hair. Eugene’s hand moved to caress it. He said, “I love you, Pattie.”

  She said, muffled in his coat, “I love you too.”

  Eugene gave a groan and tried to get his arm right round the fur coat. They shifted, dislodging the snow from the granite wall into their boots. Pattie let go of the back of his jacket and leaned upon him more heavily. She pressed on him like a falling pillar and he felt her warmth from his chest to his knees. He braced himself against her, his hands flat on her shoulders, immobilized and blind. Some time passed. Then with a reflex movement like a slow spring her head gradually lifted and his face inclined upon hers, bone feeling for bone. He kissed the curve of the cheek where he had laid his snowy hand, and began to look for her lips. When he found them some more time passed. With a series of twitches and pressures Pattie began to detach herself.

  “Oh dear,” she said.

  “My dear,” said Eugene.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Pattie.

  “What are you being sorry about?”

  “I shouldn’t have—”

  “Why ever not? Come, Pattie, we’re not children.”

  “It’s wrong—”

  “Well, let’s make it right. Pattie, will you marry me?”

  “Oh—”

  “Don’t be upset, my dear. It’s just an idea. We’ll think about it, shall we? We don’t have to hurry each other. Pattie, please—”

  “You can’t want to marry me,” said Pattie, “it’s impossible.” She had moved away and was standing looking out over the hurrying river. Her ungloved hands, unconsciously cold, clasped and chafed each other.

  “Don’t look so desolate. Of course I do. Why shouldn’t I? I know it’s sudden— And I know I’m not much of a—”

  “It’s not that. You’re wonderful to me. Oh, you don’t know— But you mustn’t want me like that. I’m no good.”

  “Now, don’t be silly—”

  “I’m—well, I’m coloured—and I’m—”

  “Pattie dearest, don’t talk utter nonsense. I might as well tell you that I’m Russian. We are ourselves, two very special people, and we’re both
exiles and we’re both lonely and we’ve found each other. You’ve made me so happy and so different since you’ve been in the house, you must know that. Of course I must seem a hopeless broken-down sort of a case. But I could change things, I’m not a fool. I could earn much more money if I wanted to. We’d live in a proper house—”

  “Don’t—” said Pattie. She hid her face for a moment. Then she moved, hands in pockets, and bored her head into his shoulder. “I love you, I love you.”

  “Oh, Pattie, I’m so glad. There, I’m sorry I startled you. Don’t worry about anything, there’s plenty of time, we’ll see. I want to prove to you that I can make money—”

  “Money doesn’t matter.”

  “Well, think about it, won’t you, Pattie. If we do love each other—”

  “But you can’t love me.”

  “Pattie, stop it.” He held her very close, his chin burrowing in the stiff black hair.

  Pattie pushed him away again. She put on her gloves and adjusted her scarf. Her face shuddered a little as if her teeth were chattering. She said, “You—you stay here. I’ll go back.”

  “Let me come—”

  “No, you stay here. I want you to stay here. Keep it for me little. I can find my way.”

  “You will think about what I said?”

  “Of course I’ll think about it. Thank you—thank you—”

  She turned now with a sort of awkward dignity and walked away rather slowly, still with the cautious catlike tread. Closing his eyes, Eugene heard the crackle of her footsteps receding. When he looked again she was gone.

  He blinked, staring about him. It was as if he had come out of a small room, out of a sealed interior, so much had the scene which had just passed secluded him from his surroundings. The quayside was still deserted, the thick snow upon it marked only with his and Pattie’s footprints. He looked along the wide river, breathing deeply, and the giddiness returned, the giddiness it seemed to him of a waltzer; and it was as if he had been dancing over the snow, waltzing so swiftly and so lightly that his feet had never broken the frosty white crust.

  Some new sensation had taken residence in his body, new or else very old. He felt it surge upward and he threw his head back like an ecstatic swimmer meeting a wave. He recognized the sensation, it was happiness. Yes, he would marry Pattie, he would live in a real house again.

  He gazed at the skyline. The gilded domes and spires twinkled in the sun, a pale whitish gold, blending into the heaped buttresses of the snow. The painted many-pillared facades, blue and terracotta under the blurred chequerings of the snow, stretched away diminishing along the endless quays, each window with its tall snowy crest, each capital traced out in arabesques of white. He looked at the long low city upon its huge frozen river. The sun shone for him from a sky of lapis lazuli upon the solemn fortress walls, upon the striped turrets of the Resurrection, upon the vast gilded dome of St Isaacs, upon the rearing bronze of Peter, and upon the slim pure golden finger of the Admiralty spire.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “IF DYING, AS Being-at-an-end, were understood in the sense of an ending of the kind we have discussed, then Dasein would thereby be treated as something present-at-hand or ready-to-hand. In death, Dasein has not been fulfilled nor has it simply disappeared; it has not become finished or is it wholly at one’s disposal as something ready-to-hand. On the contrary, just as Dasein is already its not-yet, and is its not-yet constantly as long as it is, it is already its end too. The ending which we have in view when we speak of death does not signify Dasein’s Being-at-an-end, but a Being-towards-the-end of this entity. Death is a way to be, which Dasein takes over as soon as it is. Ending, as Being-towards-the-end, must be clarified ontologically in terms of Dasein’s kind of Being. And presumably the possibility of an existent Being of that not-yet which lies before the end will become intelligible only if the character of ending has been determined existentially. The existential clarification of Being-towards-the-end will also give us an adequate basis for defining what can possibly be the meaning of our talk about a totality of Dasein, if indeed this totality is to be constituted by death as the end.”

  Pattie, who was cleaning Carel’s room, read these words in the book which lay open upon his desk. She read them, or rather it was not reading since they meant absolutely nothing to her. The words sounded senseless and awful, like the distant boom of some big catastrophe. Was this what the world was like when people were intellectual and clever enough to see it in its reality? Was this, underneath everything that appeared, what it was really like?

  Pattie put down her dustpan and brush and went to the window. A train was rumbling underneath the house. She had still not got used to them. She hitched up her tweed skirt. The fastening had broken that morning and the safety-pin with which she had secured it had come undone. It was the afternoon, and the sun was shining, hazily and reddishly now, between luminous streaks of cloud. Far off across the snow Pattie could see the black receding figure of Mrs Barlow whom she had some minutes ago turned away from the door. The snow-field of the building site was sugary pink, and the spires of the city beyond, heavily shadowed on one side and defined on the other in a clear rosy light, lifted a medley of cubes and cones towards the sky. Pattie sneezed. Was she getting a cold? Carel hated it when she had a cold. Perhaps it was just the dust.

  Throughout the day Pattie had avoided Eugene. It had not been difficult, since Eugene through delicacy, perhaps through sheer happiness, had kept out of her way. Pattie had passed the time in a mingling of joy and despair so intense that in the end she scarcely understood which was which. She had not known that she would love Eugene. But she knew now that she did and that she loved him in a quite special way which she had thought to be impossible to her forever.

  Yet also this was not conceivable. She loved Carel and she could not love anyone else. Even to say this was to say something too abstract. Into the web of her being which was interwoven with Carel no alien thing could penetrate, it was too dense, too thick, too dark in there. She was knitted to Carel by bonds so awful that it was a frivolity even to call them love. She was Carel.

  What then had happened this morning? In the sunlight and the snow some madness had come, some sudden amazing freedom. The black years had dropped from her heart, and she had felt again that free impetuous movement toward another, that human gesture which makes each one of us most wholly himself. And it was indeed as if a new self had come to her so that in her out-going toward Eugene she was complete and there was none of her that was elsewhere. Out of her dark benumbed being something had sprung clear and danced. Her joy in Eugene’s love, her joy in her own renewed power to love, had remained with her in purity throughout the day. Yet how could this be?

  The innocence which she had prized in Eugene before she knew him well shone round him in glory now. He was a man without shadows. He loved her, simply, truthfully, and offered her a life of innocence. He offered her too, and she had felt it, smelt it, this morning, happiness. Happiness was in Eugene as it is in all blameless people and needed only a touch to make it flow over. It had flowed on to her, it was perhaps what most of all throughout the day had crazed her. She felt that she could be happy with Eugene. She could become his legally wedded wife and wear a golden wedding-ring and live with him innocently. To be married, to be ordinary, to love in innocence.

  It was perfectly possible. And yet it was totally impossible. I could not tell Eugene about Carel, she thought, he would shrink from me in horror if he knew. The question of telling did not even arise. Am I still Carel’s mistress? Pattie asked herself, and she answered yes. At any moment still, indeed forever, Carel could take her into his bed if he wished. She had no other will but his. Carel was her whole destiny. It was true that she had sometimes imagined leaving him, had pictured a redeemed Pattie leading a humble life of service. But this was an idle dream, as she knew now by the contrast between these imaginings and the sharp unmistakable pain of a real possibility. That the real possibility was an impossibility
was a contradiction which she would have somehow to learn to live with.

  But I love him, said Pattie to herself, as if this simplicity could save her.

  “Pattikins.”

  “Yes.” Pattie turned back hastily from the window.

  “Haven’t you finished yet?”

  “Yes, just finished.”

  “Did you find any traces of those mice?”