Angel by Elizabeth Taylor Read Free Book Online

shoulders, keeping her warm.
    Her mother must have worried secretly and sent for the doctor, for the next morning he arrived unexpectedly. Mrs Deverell, looking rather guilty, brought him up to the bedroom, where Angel was hunched up over her writing. She raised her eyes when the door was opened, but did not smile or say good-morning.
    â€œHere’s Doctor Foskett,” her mother said feebly. “I’ll have to go down to the shop. Eddie’s gone off with an order. Will you call me if you want me, doctor?”
    He nodded and began to walk about the room, rubbing his hands. Angel watched him. When they were alone, he said: “So you’ve a tired heart, like your father?”
    â€œI didn’t say so.” Angel looked suspicious.
    He came closer to the bed and glanced down at the exercise-book, at a half page of florid handwriting. Lack of character, he thought, looking away at once. T’s uncrossed, i’s undotted, backward sloping capitals. Flourishes; curlicues.
    â€œWhat do you say, then?” he asked.
    â€œI said that my heart flutters and misses beats and that I have a pain.”
    He held his watch in one hand and her wrist in the other, checking her pulse, half turned away from her so that she was able to glare at his back.
    â€œYour mother is worried,” he said, putting the watch away in his pocket. His voice sounded rather accusing. Then he opened her nightgown and put the stethoscope to her chest. When he had done so, he took away her two pillows and made her lie flat upon the bed. “Now sit up,” he told her. She obeyed him. “Now lie down. Sit. Lie. Sit.” As his commands grew quicker, she became breathless, and indignant with him. When at last she was allowed to lie still, he sounded her chest again.
    â€œYou can have your pillow back. There is nothing in the least wrong with your heart, you know.”
    He is my enemy, thought Angel.
    â€œWhy don’t you want to go to school?” he asked her, more gently. “Are you in some trouble with your lessons? Is this school work you are doing now?” He flicked the cover of the exercise-book.
    â€œNo.” She shook her hair back from her shoulders, staring at him. “I am writing a novel.” Under the bedclothes her fists were clenched and pressing against her thighs. She felt ferocity towards him, as if he had already laughed at her. “I am going to be a novelist,” she said.
    â€œA profession calling for a very strong heart,” he replied.
    â€œI am strong,” she said proudly, forgetting for the moment that he was the doctor and why he was there.
    â€œI think you are. So don’t be cowardly and worry your mother for nothing. She’s a brave woman. I admire her.”
    â€œYou laugh at her.”
    â€œAnd I would laugh with her. She would understand.”
    â€œNo one is to laugh at me. ” Her green eyes blazed at him.
    â€œWho would dare?” he said lightly. “For you would never laugh at yourself. But perhaps a sense of humour is a drawback to a novelist,” he mused.
    â€œI shan’t be writing funny books.”
    â€œNo, of course not,” he said gravely, and thought: I wonder. He paced about the room, then said: “As soon as I have gone, you must get up. No more trays and extra work for your mother. You could cook the dinner, in fact.”
    â€œI don’t know how to cook and there’s no point in my learning,” she said.
    He shrugged his shoulders and shut up his Gladstone bag with a snap. “If you want to leave school,” he said, “you should tell your mother outright. No more of this heart nonsense.”
    â€œI did have the rash,” she said angrily. “You saw it yourself. You speak as if I haven’t been ill at all.”
    â€œWell, that’s cleared up, hasn’t it? Now don’t forget. Up you get! You will have a much better light for your novel-writing if you are up. I