Air and Angels Read online

Someone turned out of the college gateway and walked quickly away down the street towards the river. Eustace shrank back further into the shadows. But he thought that his tutor had not so much as glanced in his direction.

  In the end, he went back to his rooms and ordered up supper, and when it came, to his own surprise he wolfed it down, and was comforted by the warm food and drink, as an upset child is soothed by a bowl of sweet pudding.

  Georgiana, in her small sitting-room, at a round table covered in a dark green chenille cloth, the light of the lamp encircling her, and the pile of papers in front of her.

  Ten minutes before, Alice had come in to see to the fire, which was burning sluggishly, as fires always did at this damp back-end of the year. But then, she had said, ‘No, Alice, thank you, don’t draw the curtains.’ Though there was nothing to be seen outside. Only, she did not like to be closed in as early as this, to have the winter evenings seem any longer.

  She turned back to her work.

  ‘Bazaar’ she had written.

  ‘Sale of handiwork.’

  ‘Subscription ball.’

  ‘Lantern lecture?’

  Where she paused, wondering if it were true that the Misses Tufnell were really friends of Lady Leonora Fletcher, who had crossed Afghanistan by mule, and if so, whether she might be persuaded to come and speak about her travels in public. According to Florence, they knew her well, might even be on visiting terms, though someone else had doubted they were more than acquaintances, and not even recent ones at that.

  And would people pay to come?

  ‘Donations’ she wrote, and looked at the word and felt depressed, thinking of all the hours of list-making and letter-writing.

  ‘Dear Lady … Dear Duchess … I wonder if I might bring a cause with which I am closely associated to your kind attention?’

  Well, it would have to be done, though perhaps she might manage to foist much of the letter-writing itself onto others. But it was a sure way of raising at least some of the money.

  At the meeting of the Committee for Moral Welfare, on the following day, they were to be told exactly how much they needed, either to build a new house, or, if that were to be too costly, buy and convert an existing property, for use as a Home for girls and unmarried women who were with child, to live in during pregnancy and confinement, and for the period immediately afterwards.

  Florence had found a manor house, in a secluded situation in a village seven miles outside the town. None of the others had yet been to see it – it was empty, and slightly derelict. But Florence had been forceful about it for some weeks and was sure to be even more forceful tomorrow, since the Committee was meeting in her own home, which always gave one a certain advantage in pressing points.

  But others felt it would be more practical for the Home to be established within the town itself.

  It had all been taking up much of Georgiana’s time during the past months, and now that the project did, at last, seem to be coming to fruition, it would take up even more. It was time she gave gladly, believing passionately in the cause. For Georgiana always had a cause to which to devote her energies.

  Now, looking again at the pencilled note, ‘Lantern lecture?’, her mind strayed to Lady Leonora, who had been, she knew, the insignificant fourth daughter of a minor duke and who, at the age of twenty-nine, still at home, and plain, with dwindling prospects, had decided to take up travel. Now, seven years on, she had been, as well as to Afghanistan, to India, Turkistan and Persia, and was rumoured to be planning a journey to the Amazon Basin. She travelled alone, used native bearers and guides, and had put herself into innumerable situations of danger and discomfort. She excited admiration and disapproval in equal measure, had been disowned and subsequently, as her fame had spread, reclaimed by her family.

  And Georgiana envied her and sometimes, as now, indulged in fantasies of emulating her, of going away from here, somewhere – she thought idly of mountains and deserts and of seeing places previously accessible to no Western woman. And the mist closed in across the Backs and pressed up the dark garden towards the house, and the clock chimed six and then ticked softly on, and looking up, she thought that she must wash and change and then go to speak to Alice about a duck for tomorrow’s dinner.

  The fire was beginning to glow a little at the core as she dreamed her brief dream, and all the time knew that she would do no more than take a walking holiday in Switzerland. If Florence could be persuaded.

  After supper she might go and talk to Thomas about the Committee meeting, ask his opinion on the subject of the house purchase, for there were persuasive arguments on both sides, though she herself was inclining to agree with Florence, that the young women would be better off cared for somewhere discreetly in the country.

  And then, they might all three discuss it at dinner tomorrow. She wondered how she might broach the subject of ‘dinner tomorrow’ to him. And so, tapping her pencil on the pile of papers as she sat in the light of the lamp, turned her mind to contemplating that.

  Thomas crossed the bridge and walked briskly down the avenue, under the dripping trees, light of step and of heart. But behind him in the shadows had been Eustace Partridge, though he was sure that the boy had not seen him. He wondered again what might be wrong, and what he himself ought to do, and was mildly irritated by it all, liking the tenor of his life to remain even, and people to behave predictably.

  There was no one about. As he reached the corner, he stopped. Ahead, the avenue of houses, set behind their drives and lawns. But beyond them, the fields began, and just at this point, there was something in the air, a smell of the open countryside, and a particular wind that blew off the far Fens. That was what had made him pause. For he felt pent up on these lowering days of early dark, needed to get out under wide skies and across the marshes. He closed his eyes and the air smelled colder, fresher. One day next week, he thought; he could take the train on Friday evening and stay at Clawdon Quay, be up and out in the boat before dawn. Yes.

  As he passed the gate of the house fifty yards from his own, a cat came slinking out from the bushes and followed him. He stopped at once and turned on it, hissing, but it did not retreat, only stayed beside him and then began to weave around his legs. Thomas shuddered, and pushed at it with the side of his foot. But the sleek, coiling body evaded his movement, and the eyes stared up at him without blinking.

  If he could have killed anything in his life, it would be a cat. He was not in any way afraid of them, he simply hated them, for what they were and would do.

  Above all, he did not want a cat to follow him to his own house. In the end, because the creature sat down beside him and he could not get rid of it, he crossed the road, and recrossed it some yards further up. Looking back, he could see the cat watching him, topaz-eyed, out of the darkness.

  Georgiana, still sitting in the circle of lamplight beside the fire, heard his footstep and the opening of the front door, and started, and for some reason felt guilty. She did not like idleness in others, and was ashamed of being caught out in it herself.

  But I was not idle, she said, I was preoccupied, what with the Committee and the question of the Home, and whether, after all, it would be best to order a duck for tomorrow’s dinner or – in case that should seem too much as if she were wanting to make an occasion of it – fall back upon a simple fowl.

  She began to sort her papers and put them together.

  But she heard his footsteps retreat across the passageway, and then the closing of his study door. He was not going to come and see her, and would have no idea of what she had, or had not, been doing.

  Well then, a duck after all, she determined, and let us make it an occasion.

  And went off to the kitchen, to speak to Alice.

  4

  NOW THE house stirs again.

  Kitty must be dressed in several layers of uncomfortable clothing (her second-best white with the high frilled collar has been laid out) and go out with Mama to take tea at the club. She must submit to having h
er hair pulled back and plaited (for she is not yet sixteen and too young, Lady Moorehead feels, to be allowed to wear it up, or loose).

  But for the moment, she stands at the window and watches the play of sunlight on the fountains, and suddenly, feels energy, her own youth and confused desires, life, well up inside her, and does not know what she might possibly do with it, and in a great flurry, rushes out of the room and through the passages and the cool hall onto the porch.

  So that her father, just returned home, calls out, ‘Kitty, Kitty – where are you going at such a rate?’, laughing. But she waves and runs on into the garden, and perhaps does not hear him.

  Only, stopping somewhere, down one of the gravel paths, beside the lawns where the grass is the vivid green of the new season, Kitty runs out of steam and stands stock-still again, irresolute, and a little foolish.

  ‘Kitty might still be six years old.’ Lewis has come into the room, laughing indulgently.

  ‘She is almost sixteen!’ And she says it with such passion that he swings round in surprise to stare at her.

  ‘Don’t worry about her.’

  ‘No. But then, of course, I do, I fret over her the entire time.’

  But then she smiles brightly and rejects his outstretched hand, not wanting to have this conversation now, when she is not completely prepared for, or relaxed about it.

  ‘Are you coming to the club?’

  ‘Later.’

  ‘Yes. Well then …’

  Lewis waits, lets her call the tune, as always, thinking again, she is too rare for this place, for me, still unable, even after nineteen years, to believe his own luck.

  At the door, she hesitates.

  ‘Lewis …’

  But it is all jumbled in her head – Kitty – her restlessness, which was plain for all to see – her being still a child and almost a woman – her cleverness – what ought to happen – what she herself wants – what Miss Hartshorn … and that was another thing – Miss Hartshorn.

  ‘And now we shall be late for tea.’

  She turns away and it is the same, abrupt impatience of movement that he had recognised in Kitty, dashing down the steps. He shivers, taken for a second by an appalling dread of losing either of them, and it cannot be a cloud crossing the sun, for clouds do not stray in that occasional manner here.

  5

  IT WAS quite a dark room, not large, and the conservatory led directly out of it.

  On two walls, his books – ornithology, with some geology and botany lower down, and, here and there, a little literature. But the theology and classics, tools of his daily trade, had no place.

  His maps were raked below a specially built table, on which he could spread them in a frame, and beside them, the cabinets of birds’ eggs, arranged beautifully in their drawers. Above, and taking up every other available space, the drawings and water-colours and identification charts of all the pale, delicate sea-birds, graceful of wing and leg, the colour of pebbles and waves, of sky and cloud, shore and shell.

  Thomas stepped inside and closed the door and for a moment stood quite still, and felt the familiar satisfaction and pleasure, and the absolute sense of his own identity.

  The fire burned sweetly, the lamp was lit, the room waited.

  But first, he must see to the birds.

  In summer, the whole outer wall of the conservatory slid back, and then the aviary was open to the sunshine and the outside air, and belonged more to the garden than the house. But now, the heat was on and the moisture that rose from the small pool in the centre, with its trickling fountain, made the air steamy to breathe.

  He switched on the lights, and at once the cages came alive as the tiny birds began to flit and flutter from side to side, flashing emerald and orange, black and saffron and scarlet wings, and the humming birds hovered, whirring softly in mid-air, and the cheeping rose from the cage like a cloud.

  He went to the far end and carefully unhinged the door and let it swing open.

  For several moments, the birds fluttered about in agitation. But then, first one, then others, flew out and straightaway up towards the roof, and then down again, to alight on the branches of the tree that grew up from the floor, where the earth had been left exposed in an area surrounded by a stone ledge.

  He began to go methodically round, replenishing seed and water dishes, cleaning and tidying, and once or twice paused, as a bird came close to his hand, or darted into the cage and out again, and froze stock-still as a zebra finch settled briefly on his shoulder.

  And, coming in to tell him that dinner was ready, because of course he had not heard the bell, Georgiana saw him from outside, and watched in silence, knowing that he was entirely content, that there was apparently no room for anything else in his life, and wished that it were not so, thought for the thousandth time that it could not, surely, be right.

  Thomas glanced round, sensing her there, and gestured for her not to open the door.

  ‘Dinner is ready,’ she mouthed at him. But he only nodded, and went on with the bird cages.

  Georgiana turned impatiently away, thought, he has never needed me, not as, since the day that I was born, I have needed him.

  As a child, barely able to walk, she had followed after him, in and out of rooms, up and down stairs. He had been endlessly tolerant of her. When he had gone away to school at the beginning of every term, she had wept, days and nights of abandoned, desperate tears, had felt as if the solid ground had given way beneath her.

  The plain truth is, she said now, that he needs no one. No one at all. Well – he should be made to need …

  She returned to tell Alice not to wait, but to serve dinner, thinking, let him eat it cold.

  ‘He needs no one.’

  But he arrived at the same moment as the soup.

  He wiped his mouth fastidiously, before laying his napkin down. ‘Really,’ he said, ‘there seems no doubt about it, Georgiana, and nothing to discuss.’

  ‘You are so dismissive. Why must you be?’

  ‘No.’ He spoke quite kindly. ‘Not that I hope. Of course, I know how conscientious you are and that you want to do what is right. You are concerned.’

  ‘Then why cannot you be concerned?’ She rang the bell rather too hard. ‘Oh, I know what you are going to say – that it is no business of yours. But I want to make it your business – at least for the moment.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He was silent, and at once she felt ashamed of her own abruptness. For why should any of it be of interest to him?

  ‘I’m sorry for raising it.’

  ‘No,’ he said evenly. ‘You were right. You’ve a duty to weigh all the considerations carefully, of course.’

  ‘Well – it is important, Thomas, not just some idle women’s business to fill up my time. I want you to know that.’

  ‘I do know it.’

  ‘I value your opinion – and your good opinion of me.’ Oh, she thought, as she spoke, yes, that is the one thing I have valued, have longed for, all my life.

  ‘You know perfectly well that you have that.’ He was laughing.

  ‘Don’t tease.’

  Alice came in, with a Queen of Puddings.

  ‘It is simply that there seems to me nothing to be gone over. It is perfectly clear that your Home will have to be in the country. How could it be any other?’

  But the moment he spoke so decisively, she saw with extreme force and clarity the strength of all the arguments against it.

  ‘They would need to be near the doctors – and perhaps within reach of their families, who would want to visit.’

  ‘Would they?’

  ‘Some would. Or at least, they ought not to be made to feel they were being deliberately cut off from them.’

  ‘Isn’t it more than likely the families would think otherwise? Would want them as far out of sight – mind even – as possible.’

  ‘Besides,’ Georgiana ploughed on, ‘in the country, they would only have one another for company and – and influence – w
hich might, of course, be all for the bad.’

  ‘Too late to worry about that by then, I should say – wouldn’t you?’

  ‘And then …’

  But she had foundered and he knew it, and waited calmly for her to finish.

  ‘The fact is,’ he said, ‘it would be a charity to these – young women, to put them in a Home in the country. They would be spared the prying eyes and the malicious tongues. They might even salvage a little of their reputations by being out of sight until they can return. And besides, surely the air would be healthier.’

  ‘Well – perhaps you are right. At any rate, I am grateful to you for letting me talk it over.’

  ‘And you will talk it over again at your Committee.’

  ‘It will have to be decided, yes. But most likely we shall have to spend too much of the time talking about money.’

  Thomas got up from the table. ‘It is disturbing that the subject should have to take up anybody’s time at all.’

  ‘I daresay. But I’m afraid that, human nature being what it so often is …’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you going back to the study?’

  He hesitated.

  ‘Only so that I may tell Alice where to bring the coffee. And perhaps I may join you a little later?’

  For she had still not broached the other matter.

  Thomas nodded. ‘Whatever you wish, of course,’ walking briskly to the door.

  Out in the dark garden, among the dismal rhododendron bushes, the cat which had made Thomas so agitated, prowls, and will soon slip even nearer to his house, confident of mice, but also sensing rarer prey.

  And in other corners, other cats, yowling for lust as well as blood.

  Out on the marshes miles away, a thousand wild birds roost, secret among the sandbanks, the hollows and the fidgeting reeds.

  But in India, the gaudy birds that are two a penny, shriek and cackle all day, and flaunt themselves.

  And in other hiding places, very different creatures, warm, pliant girls and urgent, persuasive young men, press together against tree trunks, in outhouses and boat-houses and alleyways and even on the memorial bench in the pretty little overgrown garden behind St Botolph’s church, and whisper and kiss and attend only to the moment, never to their futures, which Georgiana and her Committee may sooner or later oversee.