Angel by Elizabeth Taylor Read Free Book Online Page A

will tell your mother there is no cause for alarm. Goodbye.”
    â€œGoodbye,” Angel said dully.
    He looked back through the door. “I hope I read your book in print one day.”
    â€œThat will be up to you,” Angel said coldly.
    â€œYou can start school again next week,” Mrs Deverell said.
    Angel had moved from her bed to the sofa in the living-room and was still writing.
    â€œThere would only be three days left to the end of the term,” she said.
    â€œStill, you might as well make the most of it, and you have to fetch your books and your shoe-bag.”
    â€œEddie can get those. As a matter of fact, mother, I am never going back to school again. The doctor told me to tell you.”
    â€œWhy should he do that? I’m sure he wouldn’t say things to you that he wouldn’t say to me. I don’t understand what you mean.”
    â€œWe talked it over together,” Angel said calmly. “I told him I was wasting time at school and that I wanted to have a chance to write my novels. He agreed with me, but said that I must tell you myself. ‘Outright,’ he said.”
    â€œBut we have to give a term’s notice. And besides that, you can’t hang about here all day and every day.” Mrs Deverell’s voice was full of dismay at the idea. “I was going to talk to your school-teachers and ask their advice about getting you a situation, but if I suddenly take you away, how can I do that?”
    â€œThere won’t be any question of a situation,” Angel said. “I am writing my novel and when I’ve finished it, I shall write another. I have thought of it already.”
    â€œYes, but you must have a situation ,” her mother said, almost shouting from her exasperation. “You must have something to fall back on. Writing stories won’t butter many parsnips, I can tell you.”
    â€œHow can you tell me? You know nothing about it.”
    â€œAnd who’s going to print them, I’d like to know. Who’s going to pay for that?”
    Angel, outraged by this insult, turned her head and looked out of the window. She knew that it was already settled that she should never return to school. Her mother was only putting up a pretence of battle.
    â€œThe neighbours will say you’ve been expelled, if you leave all of a sudden like that. If only your father was alive to advise me for the best. I know he’d say it was a wicked waste to give up your education. All that French thrown to the four winds, and the struggle it’s been sending you to a private school all these years.”
    â€œThen it will be one struggle less for you from now on.”
    â€œI made the sacrifice on account of your future—so that you needn’t just go and work in a shop like I had to. I imagined you in an office with good money and meeting nice people.”
    â€œAn office!” Angel said faintly, closing her eyes.
    â€œAnd I’d have thought you owed it to your Auntie Lottie to discuss it with her.” Her vehemence was running down, Angel saw.
    â€œWhy Aunt Lottie?”
    â€œâ€˜Why Aunt Lottie?’ indeed. You know full well she’s helped to pay the fees. You have a lot to be thankful for, the way she’s been like a second mother to you all these years.”
    But Angel thought one mother more than enough.
    â€œShe’s a proper fire-spaniel, isn’t she?” Aunt Lottie said with a wary cheeriness. Angel was sitting writing with her feet on the fender. Mrs Deverell had been talking to her sister in the shop, relating the week’s problems, and they had both come upstairs wearing looks of bright resolve, as if they were visiting some relation in a lunatic-asylum.
    â€œIt does seem a pity, what I’ve just been hearing,” Aunt Lottie said. She was rosy from the cold and she held her hands over the fire for a moment, then straightened herself and began to take the pins out of her