Air and Angels Page 2

  ‘Why have you let this woman in here?’ she said, of Georgiana, and rang the bell furiously. ‘Get rid of her.’

  ‘Is it Christmas yet?’

  ‘Why did no one bring me breakfast?’

  ‘They let a cat in at night to pee on my bed.’

  ‘Thomas? Thomas who?’

  ‘My teeth ache.’

  A Home, Georgiana thought, leaving that morning. But not a home. Yet what else is there? Demented, senile, the woman who was Florence but was not Florence had to be cared for and protected from herself, and from matches and gas taps and boiling water and wandering out naked into the street.

  Remembering, and trying not to remember, blotting both the past and that morning’s visit from her mind, Georgiana wept, as she regularly wept; for the loss of her friend and the waste and her own helplessness, and guilt lay like lead in her chest.

  On the lawns that led down to the river, the crowds were thinning at last, though slowly, for people were reluctant to go, and so bring an end to the glory of the day. One by one, the boats were brought out of the water and carried in.

  Somewhere, refusing to catch the eye of her Mama, lost in the centre of a group, the girl stood, her shoulder just touching that of a young man with a blond moustache, her eyes shining with the thought of the ball to come, and of dancing out of the marquee onto the moonlit grass. One of any number of pretty girls with dark hair and a white dress (the parasol folded now and put away).

  The band had stopped playing, but the sun, lower in the sky, still shone benignly and there was no cloud to mar the perfect end to the perfect day.

  I must get up, she thought. I cannot sit here, doing nothing. For she was very conscious of being the only one of them who still could ‘do’ things, this or that, find some purpose in life.

  Yet she sat on, feeling her age more and more. Thought, where might it all have ended if it had not ended here? With my brother old and shambling and dropping his saucer and spilling his tea, and Florence, angry and demented and all unknowing, unaware.

  And she herself, spinning in circles of busyness and usefulness and sociability, for fear of the alternative.

  Looking up, then, she saw that the sun had gone off the lawn, slipped down behind the monkey puzzle tree she had always hated.

  And Kitty?

  * * *

  Part One

  * * *

  1

  AN AFTERNOON in November. Mist rising off the water, water dripping from the trees, and the cobbled lanes and passageways greasy and treacherous. Not quite four o’clock but already dark. Here and there on the street corners, braziers, and beyond them, black shadows.

  The gas lamps flared, haloed in mist, and in so many college rooms, the lamps were lit and young men bent their heads over books or the toasting of muffins.

  Thomas Cavendish leaned back in his chair, watched this one particular young man, shuffling papers together at the table. His name was Eustace Partridge.

  There is something wrong, Thomas thought. The boy had been vague, tense, had lost his train of thought several times, made elementary mistakes in the translation. It had happened before, the previous week, but that for the first time.

  ‘Is something troubling you?’

  The boy stood up, startled as a young horse, flushed, sent Munro’s Homeric Grammar flying to the floor.

  ‘You seem rather unsettled.’

  ‘No. Thank you, sir. There’s nothing wrong, absolutely not. Of course. Thank you.’

  He darted a glance across the table, apologetically, Thomas thought, as if to say, I am lying and you know it, and there’s nothing to be done. I’m sorry.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

  ‘Very well.’

  He nodded his dismissal and Eustace made for the door.

  ‘The boy has’, his school High Master had written, ‘one of the finest minds it has ever been my fortune to encounter. He is in every way exceptional.’ So he had arrived in the college, garlanded, the Masterman scholar and set fair to sweep the undergraduate scholarship board. A runner, an oarsman, and of alarming beauty, fair-haired, Grecian-featured.

  Thomas went to the window and watched him go at a half-run across the court and under the archway. And suddenly, remembered another early evening standing looking out onto these buildings, the chapel tower, the court, the same horse-chestnut tree, set in the middle of the lawn. The first evening.

  He had been surprised by the size of the rooms he was put in, had paced up and down the sitting-room and touched the furniture reverently, stood facing the blazing fire, and then with his back to it.

  The servant had brought a jug of hot water and a bowl, clean linen.

  ‘Dinner is at seven in Hall, sir, and if you would care for a glass of sherry now?’

  He had examined the books all round the room. Plato. Lehr’s Aristarchus. Plautus. Tulse’s Commentaries on the Epistles of St Paul. On another shelf, the complete novels of Sir Walter Scott.

  Then, he had gone to stand at the window and, after a moment’s hesitation, opened it wide and leaned out, and the smell of the damp, dank November air, of river and earth and coal smuts and fog, had filled his nostrils and gone deep down not only into his lungs but into the deep and permanent well of memory, so that over all the years that were to come, though there would be so many other evenings, in cold winter or high, drowsy summer, when the smell of Cambridge below and beyond and all round him, was quite different, it was this, exactly this, this autumnal mist and smoke, that became for him the one reliable trigger for nostalgia.

  He was not a man who, on the whole, yearned for his youth; he had often felt uneasy then, being young had not suited him in some essential way, he had felt ill at ease with it, as though he were wearing someone else’s suit of clothes. With the coming of middle age, he had relaxed and begun to feel settled in and with himself, and in a right relationship to the world.

  Now, at fifty-four, standing at the open window of this other set of college rooms and smelling the damp, he remembered again vividly but without any yearning how it had felt to be eighteen years old and up for the scholarship examination. And how, smelling that smell, and hearing the sweet, gentle sound of the chapel bell begin to ring across the dark deserted spaces, a passionate desire to belong here, settle here for life, had risen up in him. The emotion had been so strong that it had taken him aback, for he had never been given to any kind of passionate feeling, to yearnings and ambitions.

  ‘I have to,’ he had said to himself, and gripped the ledge, ‘I have to. I must.’

  And so he had. So that now, all those years afterwards, he was filled with a great, indulgent tenderness towards his younger self, and for the passion of his own longings.

  From across the court that same sweet chiming of the bell. He took his gown from the hook behind the door, turned the lamp down and left the room.

  Eustace Partridge set his books down on the table in a neat pile. Disarranged them. Sat down. Stood up again. Knew that he had to go out again, as he had been out every night for the past week, to walk anywhere, restlessly, aimlessly. To think, and try not to think.

  But, going to the door, he heard the chapel bell for Evensong, and realised that now he must wait, or else meet others on his way and be obliged to speak, and so he simply stood in the middle of the room, eyes closed, clenching his hands, willing the minutes away.

  In the grate, the whitening embers shuffled and slipped down upon themselves with scarcely a glow at the core. But he made no move to put on fresh coals and so restore a blaze. Only stood in the darkness, as the bell rang relentlessly on.

  2

  IT IS one of the handsomest houses in the old residential district of Calcutta, with a drive and gravelled paths that are swept and raked three times a day, lawns, flowerbeds and fountains, and a flight of steps up to the porch, lined with geraniums in pots.

  On her bed under the mosquito net, in the middle of the afternoon, Kitty drifts pleasantly in and out of sleep and a half-dream, half-r
ecollection of the great snow-peaks of the Himalayas, glimpsed across the blue-shadowed valley, and it seems as if, in her dreams, she can smell, even taste, the coldness, and that the mountains are near, near, only a leap away. If she could simply take off, lift her skirts and fly. She has often stood like this, since she was a small girl, and dreamed of flying, longed and longed to fly, itched with the frustration of feeling her own leaden clumsiness, of being bound in the confines of flesh and bone.

  And, putting her hand up to her face, she can feel the air that blows across with snow on its breath, it is blissfully cold on her cheek.

  But, coming to, half opening her eyes, sees that it is, after all, only the curtains, blowing a little in the slight breeze that comes in from the garden – for Kitty does not close her shutters, and she keeps the window open.

  It is the Cold Weather season now, to everyone’s relief, they are back from the Hills. But it is still hot enough, in the middle of the afternoon, and besides, rules never change, she is obliged to come to her room and lie down on her bed and sleep.

  Try to sleep. And it is pleasant enough to lie in her trance, here, and yet elsewhere.

  Everyone else sleeps, Kitty thinks.

  And yes, a corridor away, Lady Moorehead, fully dressed in coffee-coloured muslin with cream lace, sleeps nevertheless on her day-bed, sleeps peacefully, deeply, stilly and quite without dreaming, under the gently revolving fan. But her shutters are tightly closed, and the room is shadowy.

  In a more modestly proportioned room at the side of the house, as befits her station (though the Mooreheads are kindness itself, they treat her with great respect, offering friendliness, if not exactly friendship, she had never been made to feel at all inferior, although naturally it is quite understood between them that she is), not asleep, nor even lying down, but sitting quietly, pen poised over a letter she is writing, Miss Amelia Hartshorn thinks of the Hills too, and with greater nostalgia and affection because she knows she is unlikely ever to see them again.

  From somewhere just behind the house, a sudden wail, and then the brief noise of screeching, quarrelling voices rises and falls; and at once it is quiet again, and the heavy, sleepy stillness of mid-afternoon has scarcely been disturbed. Miss Hartshorn has almost learned to ignore such ripples upon the bland surface of everyday life, though always aware that the raised voices and screams and wails that may mean nothing more significant than a spat between the cook and the boy over utensils, may equally well signify riot, sickness, madness or sudden death.

  In her innermost heart, she is still terrified of this bright, passionate, impenetrably strange country. She has merely learned to overlay her fears with apparent calm and indifference.

  ‘The flowerbeds are very gay again,’ she bends her head to write, ‘they sow seeds one day and it seems they are all but up the next! I am still unused to the sight of hibiscus and plumbago and bougainvillea, cheek by jowl with pansies, asters, petunias and snapdragons.’

  Kitty dozes, to the plashing of the fountain beneath her window. But in the Hills, there is always water, the ceaseless tumbling of it, down between the tree trunks into the river that flows far below. And the river forms the background to everything, though after a day or two there, one simply ceases to notice it.

  In the end, between the fountain and the slight stirring of the breeze, she does fall soundly asleep. Come in to her some time later, Lady Moorehead is taken aback by the extreme whiteness of her daughter’s skin, its delicacy. But above all, by the fact that she looks so young, so child-like again in sleep, and touches a finger to her cheek, and then bends to kiss her. Kitty stirs, but does not wake, and Eleanor Moorehead leaves the room quietly troubled, and rendered indecisive all over again by the subject that has been so preoccupying her, and about which she had all but made up her mind to speak to Lewis that night.

  For what has flared up anew within her, fierce and fresh, is helpless love for her child, and the desperation of having Kitty, and only Kitty, as the focus of all her hopes and longings.

  In her room, she sits again, without calling for the shutters to be opened, upright and tense, and thinks that time is cruel. It is a thought she is not particularly aware of having had in relation to herself before, so that the truth of it strikes her all the more forcefully.

  3

  THE VERGER was lifting the taper to light the candles on either side of the altar, and as they sprang to life, so did Giorgione’s great picture that stood behind it. Pools of light fell here and there, on the sallow face of the potentate and the nut-brown face of the shepherd, upturned in adoration and on the gilded Offerings, and the serene young Madonna, the waxen-fleshed child and the roseate cherubs. Outside the lighted areas, the remainder of the picture was in gloom, though it was a coloured gloom, deep brown and indigo and the red-brown of old, dried blood.

  It was a formal expression of religious sentiment, a glorious, distant thing. There was nothing personal, nothing intimate about it, and it neither invited nor repelled belief, it was simply a statement. Here, it said, is the Word made flesh; bow down and adore.

  Only in the ecstasy of the expression of one kneeling figure, of no importance, in the bewilderment and humility and rapture that transformed it from an earthbound human being to one potentially immortal, did Thomas ever catch a glimpse of the glory of it all, only this obscure and shadowy corner moved him to more than dutiful admiration.

  Now, in cassock and surplice, seated in his stall, he looked up at it again, and thought, yes, I see it. It is still there and it will never fade or be unavailable to me. In that one face …

  The choir stood to sing the Magnificat. In the body of the chapel, a dozen worshippers knelt in the dimness. But the music and the voices would be raised, the worship conducted, regardless of whether there were eight or eight hundred in the congregation, and that pleased and satisfied him, that things were ordered as they should be.

  He himself felt no religious fervour. What uplifted him, moved him to praise and wonder, was all elsewhere and had long been so, in a world quite outside this building, these people, this order of service. He had never truly felt even the young believer’s ardour. He did not feel guilty about this. He was suspicious of the emotional. He had accepted what he had always been taught to be true, and had decided to commit himself to it, and in any case, it was all so much a part and parcel of the rest of his life, of his studying, his teaching and his official position in the college. He could not have told where religious belief and feeling began or ended, nor had he ever thought it necessary to brood upon those matters.

  The notes of music dropped beautifully, clearly, separately, out of the air. ‘Now Lord, lettest thou thy servant …’.

  Only, he regretted the loss of something, he could not have said what, some yearning, some pure, spiritual ecstasy.

  Like as the hart panteth after the water brooks,

  So panteth my soul after thee, O God.

  What he felt, here in this place, was a deep contentment, a sense of the rightness of things, and he thanked God with something approaching passion then, for his own good fortune, for his life here within these walls, and for all the rest that lay outside them. And at once, he felt a warm spurt of pleasure, thinking of the house, the conservatory, his study and what they contained, all waiting for him, and of the work ahead that was to be done, the new ideas that crowded in upon him daily. And all of this had been given to him in addition to the rest, and freely, and was more than he had any right to expect.

  The rumble of benches, as they kneeled to pray. Thomas bent his head and closed his eyes, and behind them came, all unbidden, the image of the boy Eustace Partridge’s secretive, troubled face.

  ‘Oh Lord …’ for he had a duty to pray for him, though, knowing nothing whatsoever of what might be wrong, he could only pray unspecifically, committing him to God’s care, and asking for wisdom and peace on his behalf.

  On his own behalf, he prayed for nothing. His life was serene, and as he wanted it to be.

>   Behind the candles, the Magi adored, and the shepherds, and the Virgin sat for ever imperturbable, and the naked infant received its homage with an ageless, expressionless face.

  Eustace Partridge lurked in the shadows beneath the high walls, guilty-seeming as a footpad or a vagrant; but he had committed, and would commit, no felony, and if asked his reasons for being here, would have had no answer. ‘Is something troubling you?’ his tutor had asked. He wished he might have told him, that he could unburden himself to someone, anyone, and so relieve this terrible waiting and not knowing, this tension and dread. But after all, what was there he might say? Nothing, for there might be nothing, it might not have happened or be going to happen, his world might continue as before and he would be reprieved. Or else there would be news, tomorrow or next week (surely it could not be much longer than that? But he realised that he did not know, and was appalled at the extent of his own ignorance).

  Or else there might be silence, and silence would be as good as good news.

  He shook his head to clear the buzz of confused thoughts and speculations. He knew he should go back to his rooms and work, or sleep, or else knock someone up, Hanson, or Agnew-Brown, and get drunk.

  But he simply went on standing in the shadows, in the mist and chill, like a boy who has broken a vase and run away and dares not return home to confess.

  And that was how he was inside himself, as miserable and vulnerable and frightened as he had been at the age of four or eight or thirteen, whenever he had been faced with the prospect of having to see his father. For if it had all gone wrong, that was what he would have to do, face them all, one by one, or together, but worst of all, face his father.

  I am a grown man, Eustace thought, and yet it is still like this.