Angel Read Online Free PDF

above a yard stacked with crates. Angel drew down the sash and let in some of the foggy air. Everything in the room, and the bedclothes when she lay down, felt clammy to touch. She lay in bed shivering, waiting for the evening, then the night, to pass. There was nowhere where her thoughts might turn, her escape was cut off, her retreat contaminated. “How dare she!” she whispered again.
    After a long time, she heard her mother coming upstairs, pausing outside the bedroom and trying the door-handle. Then she rapped on the door and said: “Angel! You must answer me. You’ve had nothing to eat.”
    The girl had been thinking of food, as if it might comfort her to eat something, but she stared into the darkness and said nothing. She noticed a change in her mother’s voice—anxiety muffling the anger—but she was indifferent to it.
    Before she fell asleep an idea came to her that there was some comfort to be had—not food—if only she knew where to find it. Something, once, had made her happy, but she could not remember what it was.
    She awoke in the night, aware of some change and strangeness; then the memory of what had taken place engulfed her. Her situation seemed as dreadful as before, and now she was nearer to—or already in—the next day and had no plans for dealing with it. She could not stay locked in the room for ever.
    She got out of bed and crept along the landing to fetch a glass of water. Her mother was murmuring and turning in her bed in the room next to her own. Angel left her door unlocked and lay down again, pulling the bedclothes round her for warmth. I will never go to school again, she promised herself. Those sly little creatures, Gwen and Polly, watching me all day, knowing what would happen to me when I came home; and frightened because they had betrayed me.
    She drew her cold feet up into her nightgown. In a panic she could discern some of the furniture now and the walls were paler. Soon there were footsteps in the street and factory sirens sounding and at the end of Volunteer Street a cart clattering across the cobbled Butts, as the old square was called.
    It was when I wrote the essay, she suddenly thought. “The Storm at Sea.” That was when I was happy.
    She was glad to have remembered this, felt more at peace, and slept.
    She was to be rescued from the next day’s wounds by what looked like a miracle. Her mother wakened early and lay in bed wondering how she and Angel could take up their existence again, so shut in together and with the air so laden with embarrassment. It is how to get back to being ordinary again, she thought, as bereaved people do. Her anger had gone, but she felt she could never be easy with Angel now and would never succeed in hiding her uneasiness. Her spontaneity had overcome previous difficulties, such as discontent and sullenness; but she was sure that she could never be spontaneous again or use any words which were not weighed first; as now she was trying to weigh some for her meeting with Angel that morning.
    She dressed when the time came and went into the parlour to rake out the fire and lay the breakfast. It was scarcely light yet, though people were going to work and soon she heard Eddie trying the shop door and went down to let him in. She cut a couple of slices of bacon for breakfast and went upstairs again. It was time to call Angel, and the confusion she felt made her cheeks flushed, so that she looked full of indignation still.
    The girl was asleep. One arm flung over the honeycomb bed-cover, bare to the elbow, was a dark crimson, as were her neck and forehead. Mrs Deverell forgot her embarrassment and her rehearsed speeches and went to the bed to look more closely. In her sleep, Angel turned her arm on the cover, rubbing it up and down; then she opened her eyes and stared about her. Still half asleep, she began to scratch herself, first one arm, then the other, and frowned in a puzzled way.
    â€œOh, dear,