Angel Read Free Page B

tyrannie
    L’étendard sanglant est levé.”
    â€œIt’s amazing, isn’t it?” they would say, marvelling that they had got their money’s worth. Angel wondered why she felt ill-used and humiliated. She tried to ward off her aunt’s curiosity; was vague and evasive; and when at last they left her in peace, she would kneel on the sofa and look down at the street, at children playing hop-scotch, skipping from ropes tied to a lamp-post; the milkman ladling milk into jugs; the organ-grinder with his monkey.
    They would forget her at last, the two sisters, and Angel would listen to their conversation, to the stories of Paradise House, where Aunt Lottie was lady’s maid. So often, as this evening, she did not see the street below because the great vision of Paradise House obscured other things. She discovered the rooms and galleries, paced the grassy paths between yew trees and statuary.
    â€œShe brought this lardy-cake from the cook,” Mrs Deverell was saying. She took it, glistening and curranty, from the hearth. “It shows how much they think of her.”
    Angel let the curtains drop together and went to the table.
    Her mother fetched the toast and the teapot. They stood behind their chairs. “For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful,” said Mrs Deverell. “I could do you a boiled egg, if you like. Your Auntie brought me a few new-laids from the gardener.”
    â€œNo, thank you, I’m not hungry,” Angel said. She tipped the cat off her chair and sat down.
    After tea, Mrs Deverell went down to serve in the shop. It was an unspoken assumption that there would be no advantage gained from sending Angel to a private school if she was to demean herself behind the counter when she returned. So she sat upstairs on her own. Her mother had given her a chemise to scallop, but she got no further with it from one week’s end to another. When she made a stitch or two, she held the cambric up close to her eyes, but only if she were alone in the room. She was short-sighted and determined to hide it. She would be blamed for any mistake rather than give the reason for making it and run the risk of being forced to wear spectacles.
    She was vain of her strange appearance, and in fact her colouring, her green eyes, dark hair and white skin, was remarkable and dramatic; but her features were already, at fifteen, forbiddingly aquiline; her teeth were prominent and her astigmatic eyes sometimes unfocused. Her hands she thought exceptionally beautiful and would look at them for minutes together, as she was this evening, spreading them before her, turning them, viewing them from every angle, imagining garnets clasped round her wrists.
    â€œMadam’s garnets would suit Angel,” Aunt Lottie had once said, adding, “I’d rather garnets than rubies any day.”
    â€œI think emeralds are more Angel’s stone,” said Mrs Deverell. Angel went over this argument often afterwards. Some days she chose the emeralds, to match her eyes; this evening the garnets, to illuminate her skin.
    At Paradise House there was another Angelica, Madam’s daughter, whose name was never shortened. Aunt Lottie, in admiration of her mistress and all that she did, had had this name waiting for Angel when she was born. A boy’s name was never contemplated, for Madam had no sons. Until Angel went to school and learnt better, they always spelt the name with two ‘l’s.
    The Angelica whose name had been copied was a month or two older than Angel; but not so tall, Aunt Lottie said. An opinionated little madam, she was described as plump; and pink-and-white. The garnets would be wasted on her. A string of seed-pearls was what she merited, with her insipid looks and her hands rough as boys’: too much horse-riding and dog-washing, Aunt Lottie thought. Angel, resenting that other girl whom she had never seen but knew so well, turned her hands