Air and Angels (4 page)

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.

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 her 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.

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 – which 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.

She did a thing that she had not done for years.

In a drawer of one of the back bedrooms, lay oddments of uncompleted sewing, and she rummaged about until she found something acceptable, a cushion-cover, half embroidered, and with the remaining silks and needles stuffed inside. She
did not remember it, had no idea at all whether it had been a project of hers from girlhood, or even of some nursemaid or companion half a lifetime ago.

It was not unattractive, a modest circlet of pansies and violets interlocked in shades of mauve and blue, with white. And perhaps she should make an effort herself to provide some things, if they were to have a Sale of Work.

But that was not
the real reason. She felt awkward, suddenly, wanting to sit with Thomas, wanting to talk to him, and to broach the subject of tomorrow evening, yet hesitant and embarrassed. Fearful of his reaction.

But how perfectly ridiculous, she thought, I am a grown woman, intending to invite an old friend to dinner, and that is all.

And took up the bag of embroidery and swept calmly through her brother’s
study and out into the conservatory.

Only that, of course, was very far from being ‘all’.

He sat in a basket chair in the shadows, the birds busy here and there secretly among the leaves.

He said, ‘But you never sew! You are not that kind of woman.’

And what kind of woman am I? she might have asked, or what kind of woman is it who sews? But did not, only threaded another needle clumsily, inexpertly,
as he watched her. And set aside the consideration of what kind of woman she felt herself to be – aspired to be, perhaps – until she was alone and brave enough to face it.

Instead, she simply looked across at him, and said, ‘I have asked Florence to dine with us tomorrow evening.’

‘Ah. Then I shall be dining in Hall.’