Air and Angels Read online

  Air and Angels

  Susan Hill

  Random House (1992)

  Tags: Romance, Fiction, Contemporary, General

  Romancettt Fictionttt Contemporaryttt Generalttt

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  'Subtle and profoundly moving, this novel is rich in the qualities for which Hill has won such high praise in the past... One of our finest novelists' Sunday Times Celibate, irreproachable and distinguished, Thomas Cavendish is in his mid-fifties and the obvious choice to become Master of his college. But, walking by the river one hot May afternoon, Thomas sees a young girl standing on the bridge. It is a vision that is to alter his life irrevocably and tragically, but with the beauty and joy of a love never previously imagined. 'As light as a feather but as powerful as flight' Observer

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Susan Hill

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  The Turn of the Year

  Part Two

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Celibate, irreproachable and distinguished, Thomas Cavendish is in his mid-fifties and the obvious choice to become Master of his college. But, walking by the river one hot May afternoon, Thomas sees a young girl standing on the bridge. It is a vision that is to alter his life irrevocably and tragically, but with the beauty and joy of a love never previously imagined.

  About the Author

  Susan Hill’s novels and short stories have won the Whitbread, Somerset Maugham and John Llewellyn Rhys awards and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She is the author of over forty books, including the four previous Serrailler crime novels, The Various Haunts of Men, The Pure in Heart, The Risk of Darkness and The Vows of Silence. Her most recent novel is A Kind Man. The play adapted from her famous ghost story, The Woman in Black, has been running on the West End stage since 1989.

  Susan Hill was born in Scarborough and educated at King’s College, London. She is married to the Shakespeare scholar, Stanley Wells, and they have two daughters. She lives in Gloucestershire, where she runs her own small publishing company, Long Barn Books.

  Susan Hill’s website is www.susan-hill.com

  ALSO BY SUSAN HILL

  Featuring Simon Serrailler

  The Various Haunts of Men

  The Pure in Heart

  The Risk of Darkness

  The Vows of Silence

  Fiction

  Gentlemen and Ladies

  A Change for the Better

  I’m the King of the Castle

  The Albatross and Other Stories

  Strange Meeting

  The Bird of Night

  A Bit of Singing and Dancing

  In the Springtime of the Year

  Mrs de Winter

  The Woman in Black

  The Mist in the Mirror

  The

  The Boy Who Taught the Beekeeper to Read

  The Man in the Picture

  The Beacon

  The Small Hand

  A kind Man

  Non-Fiction

  The Magic Apple Tree

  Family

  Howards End is on the Landing

  Children’s Books

  The Battle for Gullywith

  One Night at a Time

  The Glass Angels

  Can it be True?

  SUSAN HILL

  Air and Angels

  Prologue

  THE RIVER was crowded, and the lawns that sloped down to the river, there were young people everywhere, and the sun shone, as it properly should on such a scene, as it shines in stories, sparkled on the water and on the upturned young faces, and the parasols (for parasols were once again in fashion). And then, suddenly, there was a stir in the midst of it all, where the crowd was thickest, and some of the young men raised a boat high, high above their heads, to a great shout … ‘Hurrah’ … ‘rah’ … ‘rah’, and water cascaded out of it onto their heads and shoulders and down their arms, in a brief silver stream. The crowd parted to let them through and they advanced slowly up the lawn in triumph.

  Though what precisely the triumph was, or whose, he could not be sure. For there had been so much noise and confusion, so many people, such a succession of triumphs, all that long, hot, golden afternoon.

  For years, all the young men had looked alike to him, and he knew none of them any more, they blurred together with his memories of the young men of the past. Though at least they stood still in age now, at least they no longer seemed, as they once had, to be becoming disconcertingly younger and younger, until he had feared they might turn into small children and then to babies and so finally disappear backwards altogether.

  But they had remained simply boys. (Though they were young men in their own eyes, and perhaps that was all that counted.)

  Then, standing half inside the entrance to the marquee, but looking out onto the throng on the lawn and the crowded river, for a moment he panicked, clutching a cup of tea and a bowl of strawberries, quite alone, seeing no familiar face among so many. He wandered a few paces into the undersea light of the tent’s interior, where they sat in groups at small green tables that were set too closely together, and where the heat and the steam from the tea urns, and the babbling voices, seemed to rise and hover in a dense, visible cloud just above their heads.

  He fled, and collided with others, pushing in through the doorway, and stopped, panicking again, trying to clutch onto the sense of his own identity, and his reason for being here; and then, in trying to rescue his bowl of strawberries and steady himself by raising his cup to take a sip of tea, the tea spilled and slopped over and the saucer somehow spun out of his hand onto the grass.

  So he waited and let the crowd swirl around him, and gradually he felt calmer and knew once again why he was here, as he had been here every May Week of his adult life. Though he was still entirely surrounded by strangers. There were so few left who were not.

  And out of a painted sky the sun shone and shone.

  But he was known to them. Or at least, to some. They saw an old man, who had once been handsome, and was still tall and upright, still had a full head of hair, springing up thickly, though entirely white. For although it was more than thirty
years ago, before any of these young men and women were so much as born, the story – or at any rate, a public version of it – was known and remembered, and sometimes alluded to, had become one of the legends of the place.

  So, milling about on the lawn, looking down to the river, on their way in or out of the marquee for the tea and strawberries, some whispered his name to one another.

  ‘Thomas Cavendish … the Reverend Thomas Cavendish … Did you never hear …?’

  On the other side of the lawns, Georgiana caught sight of him, lost him as the crowd milled around, then saw him again, as he shambled forwards, an old man who had spilled his tea and was being jostled. And a sudden dart of the purest anguish struck her through the heart, so that she all but cried out loud at the pain of seeing him as he was, and thinking that she had not wanted him to come to this, had wanted something quite other for him, had dreamed of …

  But, glancing up and catching sight of him again, she saw, too, how fine a figure he still was, and how the shadow of his former handsomeness lay over him, and for a few seconds then, saw him not as her only brother on this May Week afternoon, not in time at all, but timelessly, as an immortal. And became inattentive to the chatter of Professor Bulmer’s moustachioed widow (for Georgiana had companions, there were plenty of faces here that were familiar to her).

  I used to challenge him, she thought, aware of how much had gone before. But now, I simply accept. What does he think of, or feel? What does he believe in?

  But she did not know. Perhaps she had never known, only assumed.

  For no reason at all that was apparent, a picture came into her mind and she saw him on another summer afternoon, in another place and a lifetime ago.

  She was a small child, standing at a window watching out for him to come back from fishing with the son of the tinker, Collum O’Cool, fretting because she herself had nothing to do, and the deathly silence of after-lunch and her parents’ rest lay thick as a blanket over the house.

  Then, as she willed and longed for him to come, there he was, striding ahead of the little, dark, nut-faced Irish boy over the grass, a bag and a rod slung from his shoulder. Looking up, he saw her at the window, stopped, and beckoned, and she went flying from the room and down the stairs and out of the front door to meet him, and he lifted her up and swung her through the air, she saw his face, laughing up at her and smelled the sea-salt, fishy smell on him. And behind them stood Collum O’Cool. She had been five years old and her brother Thomas fourteen, and the Irish summers were immaculate in the memory.

  Fifty yards away, by chance or the curious process of telepathy acting between them, he too stood, and dreamed a vivid, momentary, waking dream of Ireland, and it brought with it the overwhelming desperation he had known so often in his later life.

  He saw himself in a boat, the little, low-bottomed boat of Collum O’Cool, who was rowing them far out on a grey sea, at first light. Behind them, the low shoreline, the house, and the violet shadow of the mountain, grew small and distant, as if they were being blotted out of a picture, and above them there was only sky, and all around them only sea, and the two merged together on the horizon towards which they rowed, and the only sound was the creaking oar and the slap of its blade into the water and the thin whistling that Collum O’Cool made through his teeth.

  A great surge of excitement and joy, a wave of exultation in the space and the freedom, and their own progress away, far away, from house and land and people, surged through him, so that he wanted to shout and sing, to stand up in the little boat and reach out in rapture to embrace the sky.

  He felt the ripple of the memory of it now, as he stood watching more young men with boats on the jostling river, but it was not felt as pleasure but as frustration, a longing for freedom again, and the days of the past, for sea and sky and space, and the Irish summers of boyhood, or the Scottish holidays, or the bleached winter dawns on the Norfolk marsh. He felt rage at the cramping and confinement of old age, and of this low-lying, miasmic, oppressive place.

  From the river, more shouting. Puzzled, he stared down at a saucerless teacup and a bowl full of strawberries – a fruit he especially disliked.

  The Professor’s widow was chattering again, talk seemed to issue from her as effortlessly as breath.

  ‘Yes’, Georgiana said, and then ‘No’, and ‘Yes, indeed’. But otherwise could be inattentive.

  From somewhere behind the white boat-house, music, a band.

  In a moment, she would detach herself politely and go to him, for she wondered how he had ever come to be over there alone. He hated these occasions, had always hated them. But always came. Even that first summer, after it all.

  She thought, I am keeping an eye on him, as if he were a small child. But he used to look after me.

  Brightly the band played on, and everywhere people were smiling. It was, after all, simply the most perfect day …

  When she looked over to him again, she saw that he was standing a little apart from the crowd, and that he was quite motionless, frozen, staring ahead to where the bridge spanned the river. She followed his gaze, and saw his absolute intentness, even at this distance. Saw what he saw.

  And she knew at once what was in his mind, what he felt and thought, for how could she ever have forgotten? In those seconds of seeing him so transfixed she understood completely that the anguish had never lessened but was as raw as it had ever been and would remain so and the only thing that would ever alter it was death.

  He had looked up vaguely from his saucerless cup and bowl of strawberries and seen her.

  The low bridge arched over the water and the girl stood alone upon it. One hand rested on the rail and the other held a parasol (for parasols were once again in fashion).

  Her hair was dark, and the white dress brushed her ankles.

  She was looking towards the boats, which were some yards away, so that her face was turned from him, and in the shade cast by the willows. She was completely still.

  It was her.

  Of course, it was not.

  But the shock made him gasp for breath, and time went spinning out of control, and the past came racing, like a wave, up the lawn towards him, and broke over him, and he drowned in it …

  He felt Georgiana’s hand on his arm, knew that it was hers, and let her lead him away, and did not once look back. After a while, the young woman on the bridge lifted her arm and waved to one of the laughing groups and the picture was broken, and then she moved, ran lightly down and was lost among them. But he did not see her.

  And in any case, who was she?

  His sister nodded and smiled and spoke here and there, saying goodbye. But he was far away, immersed in the past. In the cab home, driving between the high walls of the college buildings, softened by sunlight, he was quite silent, sunken into himself. She kept her hand on his arm, but knew better than to speak.

  In the quiet, late afternoon avenue, the shadows were long. There was no one about, and faintly, from the Backs, the music of the band came floating, and the distant cheering.

  ‘I think we should like some tea, Alice.’

  For urn tea really was not the same.

  But Thomas shook his head and went down the hall and through the door that led to the conservatory, and closed it behind him.

  For some time after it had gone cold, Georgiana sat over her tea beside the open french windows that gave out onto the garden. Occasionally, the house creaked in the silence. From the kitchen, a faint clang, and the rolling of a saucepan lid across the floor.

  She thought, Alice is getting old, along with us, she needs a rest. Perhaps she would really like to retire. But put the thought out of her mind at once, dreading change and upheaval, the whole business of beginning again with someone new. Though in many ways Alice had become less than satisfactory.

  From the conservatory, there was no sound. Perhaps he slept. Slept, or dreamed his waking dream. But there was nothing that she could do for him, she could not go to him or reach him. Had never.
r />   Trees lined the garden and stood, stately at the far end of it against the sky, this part of the town was rich in trees, and just now they were at their fullest and freshest and best, the limes, the walnut, the horse-chestnuts and the great, dark, heavy copper beech, whose branches swept like outspread skirts to the ground.

  She saw a table covered with a white cloth, and laid for tea beneath it, and herself pouring cup after cup, and Thomas talking earnestly to one of the young men, pacing beside the flowerbeds. And other young men sitting cross-legged on the grass, awkwardly balancing cups and plates, laughing too loudly at her jokes.

  Florence, elegant in grey, teasing them.

  But Kitty was not there.

  And the monkey puzzle tree that she loathed. But they had never bothered to do anything about it.

  Now, the lawn was empty, the young men did not come here any more. But she still took care of the garden. The flowerbeds were stuffed with fat, pink, blowsy peonies, and the rose Albertine cascaded over the wall; the front of the borders needed attention. She would go out later, cut some of the flowers to fill a bowl, snip dead heads and clip the whiskery grass. Fidget. But for now she sat on, looking out at it all, the picture in the frame, and thought of the other garden, this morning, and Florence lying staring at it, but unseeing, unknowing. Uncaring? And her skull pink and shining beneath the sparse, downy white fluff, what remained of her beautiful hair. Oh and the Home was the best place for her, the only possible place, that was clear. They fed her well, she had become quite fat, she who had always had such a good, such a disciplined figure, though full, and set on a broad frame. Now, the fat spread in flabby rolls, pale as raw dough beneath her chin.

  They kept her clean and moved her bed to give her a view of the other side of the garden and a glimpse of the street, people walking by. She had refused to get up for almost a year.

  But there was no love.

  Whichever way her bed faced did not interest her, and when she spoke, she raved and knew no one.