The Time of the Angels by Iris Murdoch

getting a worthwhile job.”
     
    “I hate facing up to things, don’t you?”
     
    “Hate it. What’s more, I won’t.”
     
    The girls prided themselves on being theoretical immoralists of some degree of refinement. Being high-minded and superior and tough made them by a natural development non-moral and free. They were not themselves tempted by excesses. They lived indeed the strictly ordered life which Muriel imposed and Elizabeth accepted. But they took it for granted that all was permitted. They despised a self-abnegation which called convention duty, and neurosis virtue. They had disposed of such self-styled morality long ago in their discussions, just as they had at an early age convinced each other that there was no God, and then dropped the subject forever.
     
    “I can’t stand that world of do-gooders,” said Elizabeth.
     
    “Neither can I. They’re just gratifying a sense of power. And so pleased with themselves. It’s a kind of snobbery. Shadox is a snob.”
     
    “Talking of do-gooders, has dear Anthea called again?”
     
    “Yes, dear Anthea called this morning. She is a daily visitation.”
     
    Mrs Barlow had already become a joke to the girls.
     
    “I think I’ll just hoist myself up.”
     
    Elizabeth rose from the floor with a series of slow measured movements and adjusted herself on the chaise-longue, stretching out her long black-clad legs. Muriel watched her and did not move. Elizabeth did not like to be helped.
     
    “Did you sleep all right last night, sweetheart?”
     
    “Like a log. Did you?”
     
    “The noise of those trains kept disturbing me.”
     
    Muriel had had her terrible dream last night. It often recurred. She was in a lonely place, it might have been a temple, beside a marble pillar, and threatened by something dark coming out of the ground which reared itself up and up. She could not recall what happened at the end and always awoke in terror. She had never told Elizabeth about this dream.
     
    “I felt so damned tired,” said Elizabeth. “I went to sleep at once.”
     
    “You haven’t been lifting things, have you, darling?”
     
    “No, no. I put the books in one by one. I must admit it took ages.”
     
    “I hope you haven’t got my cold.”
     
    “I gave you that cold, my pet!”
     
    “How are you feeling at the moment?”
     
    “Oh, middling.”
     
    Elizabeth’s illness, still a mystery to the doctors, fascinated Muriel and even charmed her. It was as if all attributes of Elizabeth, even this one, were turned into sweets and favours. Elizabeth herself observed a reticence on the subject which she wore as a chaste air, a kind of modesty which captivated Muriel while it also provoked her. Elizabeth had withdrawn a little behind the secret of her illness. She never now allowed Muriel to see her undressing or undressed. It was an occasional privilege to see her long-bare-legged in a shirt or regal in bed in her mauve nightdress with the little pearl buttons like milk teeth. Only an elaborate knock and a firm reply gave access to her room, her door was often locked, and at certain times Muriel had to await the summons of the bell. Also Elizabeth had become untouchable. Muriel knew this not through any words but through the complex language of movement. She had become aware of an electrical barrier which now shielded her cousin from her. This troubled Muriel, although Elizabeth’s own awareness of the barrier had in fact made it into a form of communication. There were swift tensions between them, pauses and falterings which had a grace of their own, the moments when Muriel wished to take her cousin in her arms and could not do so.
     
    Muriel conjectured that what made this situation was the surgical corset. She would have liked to touch Elizabeth’s side and feel the corset. In fact this object, which she had never been allowed to see, occupied her imagination to a remarkable degree. Elizabeth had been prepared to talk a little about the corset at