The Time of the Angels by Iris Murdoch Page B

It’s easy to see you’re a country mouse.”
     
    Muriel reflected for a moment. She could not let this one pass. Yet if she picked it up she was inviting something approaching a relationship.
     
    She said, “If you and I are going to see anything of each other with any sort of pleasure, on my part at any rate, you will have to mend your manners quite considerably.”
     
    A looked of poised cunning satisfaction replaced the bland mask and then faded into it again. Leo came down a step or two towards her, but still not close. “Shall I kneel down and apologize?”
     
    A moment before Muriel had attributed his jauntiness to a natural “I’m as good as you” attitude of a servant’s son. Now she realized that he had wanted exactly what he had got, something which made them familiars, accomplices. She had fallen into a trap.
     
    She said coldly, “Don’t be silly. I just don’t care for your being quite so familiar. Now I think we should go back. I’m sorry to have to ask you to guide me again, but I should certainly get lost by myself.”
     
    “Oh, don’t go yet,” he said. “Please. It’s rather wonderful here.”
     
    It was rather wonderful, and Muriel in fact felt no urge to move. The enclosed solitariness of the place made the spot significant in an almost religious way. The intense cold did not numb but heightened consciousness. Muriel turned back to the silent hurrying river. It smelt of rotten vegetables and somehow too, and very purely, of water.
     
    “You’re at some sort of technical college?” she said to Leo, not looking at him. He had now come to stand close beside her.
     
    “Yes. I hate it though. I’m not good enough at maths. There’s a chap there just down from Cambridge who puts us through it. I can’t keep up. Were you good at maths?”
     
    “Not bad. But I imagine school maths are different.”
     
    “Well, yes they are. I can’t cope with this stuff at all, it’s the whole way of thinking that’s beyond me. It hurts my mind all the time. He keeps saying he’s being exact about something and I just can’t see that he is. Oh, I can’t explain. I think I’m going to chuck it and take a job.”
     
    “Won’t your father be disappointed?”
     
    “My father? What the hell do I care what my father thinks?”
     
    “Why, aren’t you fond of him?”
     
    “Fond of him? Haven’t you read your Freud, girl? Sorry, I’m not supposed to talk like that, am I. You know all boys hate their fathers. Just like all girls are in love with them.”
     
    Muriel laughed. “I’m not in love with mine. But I’m sure your father is proud of you, getting yourself a grant and all that.”
     
    “He doesn’t care. He’s got plenty of money. He’s a writer, really, or thinks he is. He just does that portering job for fun. When he’s tired of it he’ll move on. He’s just an eccentric.”
     
    “Really.”
     
    “He pretends he’s a poor Russian refugee, but he isn’t Russian at all, he’s German. A banking family from the Baltic, you know. Been in England all his life. Pots of money.”
     
    “Oh. Well, well. What about your mother?”
     
    “My mother’s a wonderful person, you must meet her. She’s English of course. They separated years ago and she’s married again. She married a baronet in the north of England. I quite often go there. They’re awfully grand people. I’m in love with my mother.”
     
    “Really. How interesting.”
     
    “My mother is a great beauty and fearfully extravagant. We’re a family of eccentrics, I’m afraid. Do you know what my father’s passion is?”
     
    “What?”
     
    “Gambling. All Russians are gamblers, you know.”
     
    “I thought you said he wasn’t Russian.”
     
    “Well, those Baltic Germans model themselves on Russians. He adores roulette. Just as well he can afford it. He goes to Monte Carlo, then he has an attack of conscience and does penance by taking some beastly obscure job. He’s doing penance, at the