The Time of the Angels by Iris Murdoch Page A

there’s nobody about?”
     
    “Not specially. There’s nothing down here except warehouses, and anyway being Sunday—”
     
    “Oh, it’s Sunday, is it. I hadn’t realized.”
     
    “Call yourself a parson’s daughter and not know it’s Sunday!”
     
    Muriel thought the young man rather pert. She said a little coldly. “Well, good day. I’m just going down to the river.”
     
    “You’ll never find the river that way.”
     
    “I expect I’ll manage. Goodbye.”
     
    “Look, I’ll show you the way to the river. Honestly you won’t find it otherwise. There are just little alleys in between the warehouses and you have to know them. Do you mind walking across all this muck?”
     
    “But the river must be this way. If I go straight on—”
     
    “The river’s all round us here. We’re on a sort of peninsula, it loops round. This is the quickest way, come on.”
     
    The boy moved away as he spoke and was vanishing into the fog. Rather exasperated, Muriel stepped off the pavement and followed him. She had been in a mood for being alone.
     
    The earth of the building site, which had seemed fairly level, was covered with hummocks and slippery cups of ice. The surface of the earth was frozen but brittle and there was mud beneath.
     
    “Wait a minute, don’t go so fast.”
     
    “Sorry. I expect your high heels— Oh I see you’re wearing what they call sensible shoes. You can take my arm if you like.”
     
    “I’m all right. Is it far?”
     
    “Only a step. It’s rather exciting, this sort of wilderness, isn’t it. I’ll be very sorry when they build on it. There’s a super view of St Paul’s and lots of other churches. You’ll see when the fog lifts.”
     
    It was strange to Muriel to think that they were surrounded by invisible domes and towers and spires. She had ceased to think that she was in a city at all.
     
    “Here’s the pavement again, we’re almost there.”
     
    A blank wall suddenly towered up in the fog and there was another darkness near. Muriel felt herself enclosed.
     
    “This is one of those alleys I told you about. It gets narrower and there are some steps. Watch out, it’s rather slimy. Hang on to the wall if you can.”
     
    Muriel touched the wall with her gloved hand. Great cakes and scabs of semi-vegetable matter fell into the slimy stuff at her feet. She could feel it getting inside her shoes. She cautiously descended some steps holding on to a chain slung against the wall. There was a space of pavement and a lamppost. Then some more steps and suddenly water.
     
    “Well, there it is,” said Leo. “Not that you can see much of it at the moment. But you wanted it and there it is.”
     
    Here the fog seemed lighter in colour and slightly less dense as if it dreamed that somewhere the sun shone. Muriel could see fifteen to twenty yards of swift flowing water, a dark luminous amber, which was whisking along with it a strewing of woody fragments and long weeds resembling hair. Again very near a fog horn sounded and Muriel felt the same emotion of which she could not say whether it was fear or love. The steps descended into the water. She went to the bottom step and then turned to look up at Leo.
     
    He was leaning against the wall at the top of the steps. He was dressed in a short shabby black overcoat with its collar well turned up around a striped woollen scarf, and his close-cropped hair, darkened by the damp air, looked like a sleek leather cap. He had the bright provisional look of a diving duck or a water sprite which has just that minute broken the surface. Muriel, appraising him for a moment as if he belonged to the world of art, noted the satisfying roundness of his head. What made him so beautiful? Perhaps the coolness of those very wide-apart eyes.
     
    To cover up what had become too long a stare she said, “Is there a bridge near here? Can one get across?”
     
    “My good woman, there aren’t any bridges here. We’re down in dockland.