Air and Angels

by Susan Hill

  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.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

  ‘I shall be dining in Hall.’

  Georgiana stood up, letting the embroidery drop to the floor, and began to pace up and down, annoyed, discomforted, angry beyond bearing.

  ‘Please sit down, you will agitate the birds.’

  ‘How can you be so churlish? How can you be so ill-mannered?’

  ‘You had much better sit down again and try to be calm.’

  ‘Florence is my friend. She has been a very good friend to me.’

  ‘I know it, and I am glad of it. I would not have it otherwise, naturally. But you know perfectly well that I will not tolerate your machinations.’

  A small, quick, scarlet bird was keeping pace with her, crossing and recrossing in the air, as she crossed the tiled floor.

  ‘She has everything you could want.’

  ‘But I do not.’

  ‘Everything you could hope for. Beauty. Intelligence. Money. Presence.’

  She stood immediately in front of him, her heart pounding.

  ‘Georgiana …’ For he hated her to make a fool of herself. ‘Why must you say all this?’

  ‘Suppose it is simply that I am tired of being your housekeeper.’

  She had shocked him.

  ‘I sincerely hope that is not how you see yourself! Of course that is not the case and you must know it, this is your home as much as mine, it has always been your home.’

  ‘And if I were to wish to leave it?’

  Thomas stared at her.

  ‘Do you?’ he asked quietly, at last.

  ‘If I wished to …’

  She turned away, went to the window and stood, looking out into the dark garden, but saw only his reflection, tall as a crow, behind her in the lighted glass.

  She said, ‘You would need a wife.’

  ‘I should not.’

  ‘Then what, pray?’

  ‘You know full well.’

  ‘Oh …’ She spun round, furiously impatient. ‘Oh yes, I know – those college bachelors … old men … soup-stained!’

  She left, and the embroidery lay where it had fallen to the floor, until the next morning, when Alice picked it up and returned it tidily to the back bedroom drawer, and it was never touched again.

  And after a while, the little birds settled, the agitation over.

  But he could not settle. So that, in the end, he went out, to the far end of the garden, where the grass gave way to scrub and the night air smelled of the pine needles that had been pressed underfoot into the earth.

  And the cat slunk back into the deepest shadows and was gone, and he had never been aware of its presence.

  Georgiana, getting ready for bed, felt battered by emotions that washed up against her, receded, broke over her again.

  She was annoyed at herself, and angry with Thomas, embarrassed and frustrated. But the strongest feeling was of shame and the loss of pride.

  She, too, was unsettled. Went to the window and opened it, closed it again, fidgeted in drawers, brushed and rebrushed her hair.

  Above all, she did not want to forfeit his good opinion of her, that mattered, as it had always mattered, more than anything.

  But how should I go about things? she asked of her mirror image, holding the brush for a moment in mid-air. And felt herself to be inept at the business of life, unable to grasp the subtleties of it. I am clumsy at it, like some gauche girl.

  What I want is his happiness – their happiness, I want what would surely be best for them both.

  But at once saw through herself and her own manipulations.

  She turned out the lamp and lay, wide-eyed, and suddenly, bleakly, she saw them, all three, as barren for ever, dry, joyless people, and saw them as growing old like it, too, to no purpose, while the girls they were so conscientiously feathering a nest for …

  But she knew it would not be as comfortable as that.

  A flurry of rain against the window, and her thoughts stirred about, hearing it, until they rested lightly upon the time of year, the month, the date, and the recollection that it was Nana Quinn’s birthday. Ninety-one? Two?

  At once, the old woman’s face was before her, and the bent back, draped in the brown shawl, and Georgiana was a child again, peering into the hollow that was Nana’s mouth, fascinated by the mumbling gums that sucked bread into a pap before she could swallow it. She could smell the smell of her, a rich, peaty, fleshy smell, not scented like that of her mother, or acrid, like the maids.

  And thinking of her, in that beloved place, she was at once entirely happy, cocooned again in childhood, hearing the lapping of the water on the shore outside and the soft sweep of the rain, with Thomas asleep only a room away, and his promise to take her to see the swan’s nest to hold fast to.

  Smiling, she fell asleep and did not for one moment think of saying any prayers.

  But, hours later, Thomas prayed, read the Divine Office, dutifully, and then the 104th psalm for his own pleasure, and the words were sonorous to him and steadied his mind and heart again at last.

  6

  THE COMMITTEE for Moral Welfare was touring the house in the country, led, upstairs and down, in and out of rooms, by Florence, who had organised it all.

  There were seven of them, and Dr Whyte-Simon, co-opted for the morning for his professional opinion.

  ‘Bedroom.’ Florence strode along a narrow corridor, pushing open doors with the ferrule of her umbrella. ‘Bedroom. Bedroom.’

  They had been maids’ attics, and perhaps a nursery, too. Wooden bars were nailed across the windows.

  ‘It smells very damp,’ someone said.

  Yes, Georgiana thought. Damp. Mice. Decay. Aloud: ‘Must they be made to feel they are coming to a prison?’

  Florence turned and cast one of her most brilliant smiles over her shoulder. She wore a silver-grey coat, tight-waisted, with a full skirt, and her deep red hair coiled and piled elaborately.

  She said, ‘Well, of course, we would be completely refurbishing it all.’ With a sweep of the hand.

  ‘But how much might that cost?’

  Miss Quayle, the rich brewer’s daughter.

  ‘It needn’t be prison-like. Bu
t we are not providing them with an hotel.’

  ‘There is a back staircase, of course, down to the kitchens.’ And Florence moved them all on, and Miss Quayle’s voice came back up the stairwell, peevishly complaining.

  The dust settled.

  Georgiana hung behind in the long attic, and tried to see it with more hopeful eyes, freshly painted, light, airy. Beds with white coverlets, she thought, a cabinet each for possessions. And the little cribs.

  Beyond the small, barred, dirty window, the flat, flat countryside, field after brown field, without dip or undulation, or the softening shelter of any trees, and the dun-coloured sky reached down to meet the land at the horizon. She imagined it here in February and March, the wind cutting across the flat land and into the house through every crevice, the low, heavy-bellied clouds, the rain, rain, rain.

  There was a drive, overgrown with weeds and a scrubby hedge, and the gardens were a ruin of nettles and thistles and the remnants of a few hollyhocks, shrivelled and blackened in the damp cold air.

  Beyond the house and drive, the lane, leading to a straggle of cottages, a mile away.

  She felt total despair, in the place, the situation, and in what they were planning, despair for the young women who might come here.

  A tiny spider let itself down on its spinning thread in the air in front of her face.

  What would we be thinking of, to bring them here?

  It is … desolation.

  She heard Florence’s voice below, energetic, persuasive. And saw her married to her brother, installed in their household, dominating them all. Saw, too, how handsome they would look, admired across rooms, together.

  While I …

  The world unrolled, tantalising, before her.

  But in the yard at the back of the long grey house, among the broken paving-stones and the old roofless stables, the miasma of depression and disillusionment clung close to her as cobwebs again, and Florence’s enthusiasm and determination could find no chink to penetrate.

  We are barren, Georgiana thought. And I would never dare to go.

  From the doorway of the cottages, labourers’ wives and solemn children stood frozen-still, and stared at them, as they drove by, back towards the town.

  Florence and Georgiana sat side by side, in cocoons of separate thought, looking out at the November fields. While in Dr Whyte-Simon’s carriage, the talk was vigorous, and all of money.

  Florence’s mother, old Mrs Gray, sat in the window-seat and ate fruit muffins and read the newspaper through a strong magnifying glass brought up very close to her face.

  Rain curtained the Backs.

  A cobbler had been brought to trial for murdering seven women after tattooing them with an awl. Evidence of the mesmerising charm of the man, as well as details of some of his extraordinary habits, was given by his wife and two other women, who had been his mistresses.

  It was all remarkably absorbing, and she was confident of remaining uninterrupted, for the outing of the Committee for Moral Welfare would doubtless be followed by yet another meeting somewhere, yet more talk.

  Their house was one of the handsomest and best positioned in the town, and very much too large for them. They had been moved into it after the death of her husband, the former Warden, possession granted by favour of the College until some future, unspecified date. Which she took to mean, once she herself was dead.

  And Florence then?

  Two grown men walked along the path towards the bridge in gowns, without coats or umbrellas, heads inclined together, talking, talking. Philosophy, she thought, or Thucydides, or inorganic matter. It was all talk, here.

  She had lived in Cambridge for more than half a century, and it had never ceased to interest her.

  But she had never been happy. Never belonged. Only made the best of it, and pursued her own thoughts, and looked round occasionally, in bewilderment at finding herself here at all.

  Passion, she supposed. Love. Yes, that was what had brought her. She remembered a passion that had made one a foreigner to oneself. And then one awoke in a strange country.

  But at least the rain had always been familiar. She had grown up in a castle in the Scottish Highlands. Remembered mists and mountains and travelling great distances in extreme cold, discomfort and excitement to other castles, to eat huge meals and dance reel after heady reel.

  And solitude. The open air. And rain. Rain without cease.

  He had been a visitor to neighbours, sixty miles away. Within a week, he had proposed to her, two months later, during his next vacation, they were married.

  She had scarcely been back.

  Now, she rang the bell for a second pot of tea.

  At the Old Bailey, the trial of the cobbler had been adjourned. He had sat, head up and defiant, throughout the evidence of the three women.

  Passion, she thought. Passion.

  She would not have wished to end her life in this place, nor chosen to have her only daughter married and widowed and in possession of a small fortune by the age of twenty-one, without, apparently, having known anything approaching passion. And now, how would she get through the rest of her life?

  The cataracts made her eyes water, she was obliged to put the newspaper down, and after that, simply to look out of the window at the rain. But she had been an onlooker all her life, and so found it no hardship.

  The day passed. The rain fell. There were no visitors. At seven, she rang the bell and said she would take an egg on a tray, as it seemed clear Mrs Bowering would not be in to dinner.

  Beside himself with dread and the tension of waiting, unable to work or sleep, or to unburden himself to anyone, Eustace Partridge took a train to London. He had no idea what he might do there.

  As they passed out of Cambridgeshire, towards the end of the afternoon, the rain eased and a shaft of late sunlight gleamed on the back of a pheasant, flurrying out of a hedge bottom into a field, and, seeing it, he longed to be out, striding on up to the ridge. His fingers tightened on an imaginary gun.

  It was the only thing that he shared now with his father. Though usually, they merely walked and stood and shot and called up the dogs, there was never any conversation. But that did not trouble the Major.

  He had no idea if he would ever be allowed to go back there, no idea at all of what might happen to him, and to his future. He had been a disappointment enough, refusing to go straight from school into the army. When the letter of acceptance and congratulation had come from the Senior Tutor of the College, his father had held it at arm’s length.

  ‘Cleverness,’ he had said, ‘cleverness is all very fine. And what about the rest of it?’

  Cleverness. But that would not save him now. He had not been so very clever.

  If.

  His troubles buzzed about like bees trapped inside his skull. Outside, the afternoon dwindled away to nothing. By the time the train reached London, it was dark.

  But in London, there were street lamps, and there was noise, there were people going about with a purpose. Cabs. He took one as far as the West End, and began to walk down towards Piccadilly.

  In his college rooms, a letter, come by the late afternoon post, lay on the oak table, awaiting his return.

  7

  IT IS late afternoon. Time, of course, to be at the club again. Where Kitty has been for an hour or two already, playing tennis with the Swainson girls. But Lady Moorehead has been out visiting and only just arrived.

  And Miss Hartshorn does not come at all, she feels uncomfortable at the club, unwelcome (though a point has always been made of welcoming her), out of place (though a place has always been found for her at once). She stays at home, making notes at a wicker table in the shade of the verandah, a pile of books at her side. Tomorrow, she intends to continue their study of the Lakeland poets.

  ‘Kitty is much admired.’

  Lady Moorehead turns her head in surprise. She is drinking a glass of iced tea, sitting beside the Sub-Collector’s wife.

  ‘Kitty?’

&nb
sp; She looks over, towards the courts.

  ‘They have so much energy!’

  The girls do not play well but they play with tremendous enthusiasm, flinging themselves about in every direction after the most hopeless of balls, to shrieks and peals of laughter.

  ‘You have not been watching as carefully as I have.’

  Eleanor Moorehead follows her companion’s gaze, to where one of the handsomest of the young officers is standing, viewing the game.

  ‘He has been all eyes for Kitty.’

  ‘What nonsense!’

  ‘Well, I shouldn’t dismiss him, he is very highly thought of. His name is Penderly and he is a viscount.’

  ‘And Kitty is a child. No young man should be looking at her at all.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, my dear, Kitty has not noticed.’

  ‘I should hope not. If he does not turn away soon, I shall have to go over and speak to him.’

  But as she says it, several more young men arrive, and he does move, to join them.

  ‘There – not so much as a backward glance. So that is that.’

  ‘Well, she will have plenty of rivals after tomorrow. The Fishing Fleet is due.’

  ‘Oh, that is such a vulgar expression.’

  ‘Accurate, nevertheless.’

  The women smile. Marjorie Marchmont has only sons, and so is blessedly free of the problems of finding eligible young men for daughters to marry. For that is the purpose of the return of the Fishing Fleet of young women, come out from England for the winter to visit their parents, and in the hopes of making a good catch.

  ‘Of course, there is no harm in having a girl marry and settle rather young.’

  ‘Now here they are, all hot and excited, and you are to stop this talk.’