Air and Angels

by Susan Hill

  I am being teased, thinks Eleanor, and I cannot take it, not about Kitty. And looking at her as she comes up, flushed and with her hair all anyhow says, oh, but she is quite beautiful. And her heart almost stops.

  ‘Child, child, now sit down quietly and have some tea, you are steaming like a pony and it is not at all becoming.’

  Kitty laughs and sits down at her mother’s feet in a cloud of white muslin and shining hair.

  ‘It is all so much fun for you girls nowadays.’

  Kitty stares at Mrs Marchmont. But says politely after a moment, ‘Oh yes, of course, it is great fun.’ Yet the life seems suddenly to have gone out of her and her eyes are far away.

  In the notebook that lies beside her, Miss Hartshorn has written:

  Poems referring to Childhood

  Poems founded on the Affections

  Poems of the Imagination

  The Period of …

  Here, she has laid her pen down. It is quiet. There is only the soothing play of the fountain, some distance away. She feels more relaxed and more accepting of this place and of her own being here than ever before. She supposes it has to do with her decision. (For she is to leave, though neither Sir Lewis and Lady Moorehead, nor Kitty, yet know it. She has only written of it to her friend in Warwickshire.)

  She has almost fallen asleep. From the kitchens, a gentle, rhythmic crooning, like an ayah’s lullaby for a baby. But there is no ayah and no baby, it is the cook’s old, blind grandmother, who sits outside all day, rocking herself and alternately dozing and singing.

  And the singing weaves itself into the half-dream Amelia Hartshorn is having and is aware that she is having, and gradually, even the continual alarm bell that has gone on ringing deep within her without pause ever since she arrived in India is, if not stilled, at least grown so muffled and faint that she feels safe enough to pay it no attention.

  Then there is something. The slightest sound. A shadow falling across the grass. She opens her eyes. And it is as though she has been turned to ice or stone, with fear.

  The syce stands a yard or two away from her. He has come up, barefooted, soft as a panther.

  Her mouth and throat are paralysed.

  All of her horror and loathing of India, her revulsion from its sights and sounds and smells, and everything she has ever heard and believed about it, every rumour, whisper, story, superstition, rises up within her like a terrible bile. Only, because she is paralysed, it sticks in her gullet and cannot be vomited out.

  His eyes are upon her intently; and yet somehow, not quite upon her. She sees a glaze over them, and a wildness in them. She remembers the times she has spoken to him sharply, imperiously even. Though it has only been in brave imitation of those around her, as she has tried desperately to behave in the proper way, even while knowing that it will never be natural to her. For she, too, is in the position of a servant, and the servants know it.

  The garden is silent. The singing has stopped.

  The man stands absolutely still, and now, she sees that he has something in his hand, a stick or a club. She stares in fascination at his long, brown, naked foot, which is slightly raised, as though he is about to step forward, wonders, in a strangely tranquil way, if this is to be her last sight on earth, this one man’s foot, on the grass of Calcutta. For surely he means to kill her. His body quivers with intent.

  Yet they are in the open, outside the house, and it is broad daylight.

  But there is no one about, and the shutters are closed. She imagines hidden eyes, gleaming between the chinks. Perhaps they know. Perhaps it has been long planned.

  All this goes through her head in the frozen instant before the syce leaps, lunges, his arm raised, and brings the wooden club hard down. She hears the slight swish through the air.

  Behind her head, the snake drops from the verandah, stone dead onto the grass.

  The man grins, a great, white grin of triumph, and pleasure.

  8

  FOR MORE than a week it had rained, the river was swollen and running fast, the Backs and the towpaths became flooded.

  So that it was quite easy for the girl to wade into the water and drown, a little before midnight.

  The body was found at dawn, by a ferryman. It was caught by the dress in the waters below the mill, and washed to and fro, and the dress clung close to the girl when the grappling hooks dragged her to shore, and clung, too, to the swelling of the child that was within her.

  She had been the daughter of a drayman, living in a yard at the back of Silver Street, as the local newspaper, to Mrs Gray’s edification, reported.

  Georgiana and Florence were in the breakfast room writing appeal letters, the whole table had been cleared and given over to it.

  But Alice had brought a tray of tea and buttered biscuits, and the evening paper, which made an excuse for a respite.

  And so, reading the paragraph over Georgiana’s shoulder, Florence reached out and tapped it with her finger.

  ‘It is for that,’ she said with passion, ‘it is so that poor, wretched girls do not have to do that in their desperation. That is why we are here, and why we must raise the money.’

  For the general response of the Committee to the house in the country, had been rather negative. And now they themselves were growing weary of writing the ingratiating letters, with the endless rain pattering on the windows. The room was stale, it did not seem to have come fully light all day.

  Georgiana asked, ‘How is Mrs Gray?’

  ‘Oh, Mother has gone to visit some poor old woman in the cottage hospital. She is dying I think. Her husband was one of the college butlers, in their day. And then she is to pay a call on some newlyweds, just returned from their honeymoon tour – Vita Phipps’s daughter. She will enjoy that. She will scrutinise them!’

  ‘Then you will stay for supper?’

  They looked at one another, and the glance held for a moment.

  But Florence only said, ‘Thank you’ very smoothly. ‘That would be pleasant.’

  ‘Well, it would mean no need for any more interruptions. We can go on with the letters until just before.’

  ‘Yes,’ Florence said. ‘So we can.’

  But she stared out of the window and made no move to sit down at the table once more.

  They had been watching the Painted Bunting, which had head fathers of a clear and most exquisite blue. It had come forward to sit on a branch very close to them.

  But now, Florence had left the conservatory and was standing again in the study.

  ‘But it is here,’ she said softly, gesturing around her, at the frames of drawings, one below the other, on the walls, ‘that your real love lies.’

  Thomas stood in the doorway. ‘The sea-birds. Yes.’

  ‘And is your catalogue near to completion?’

  ‘Oh, no. It will take me years, it is a life’s work. Especially as, of course, it is not my life’s work, properly speaking.’

  ‘Only that of your heart.’

  He smiled.

  ‘It is the names,’ she said. ‘They have such beautiful names.’

  And went along, reading them out aloud in her strong voice.

  ‘Fulmar. Shearwater. Cormorant. Avocet. Turnstone. Kittiwake.’

  ‘But then, of course, “spoonbill, gannet, shoveler, scaup and loon”.’

  She inclined her head, smiling.

  Thomas crossed the room, and opened one of the chests.

  ‘Look at these. They are new to me, they came from London quite recently.’

  The portfolio, tied with black tape at all four corners, contained several dozen water-colours, of the whole sea-bird placed centrally, and sketched in around it, details of wing and beak, nest and egg and individual feather, together with a silhouette of the bird in flight. They were delicate, painstaking, opalescent in the beauty of the pale colours and fragile pencil lines.

  Georgiana, stepping into the room, saw the two of them, framed together, heads bent, beside the lamp, and would have turned away agai
n, leaving them alone. But seeing her, Thomas stepped back and gestured to her to come, and so the picture was broken.

  She said, ‘You have never shown these to me.’

  ‘No.’

  And she saw him as a boy again, sailing out with Collum O’Cool, the sea-birds soaring and swooping overhead around the boat, saw her brother looking up at them, the joy open on his face.

  Coming in that evening, he had joined them at dinner without demur, and been more than civil. The talk had grown quite lively. Florence always listening to him with careful attention, before startling him by some remark.

  But he respects her now, Georgiana thought.

  He went to the bookshelf, and took out his copy of John Clare’s notebooks, and now he read aloud from them, as they stood looking at him, his voice soft with pleasure.

  The bittern, called here around the butter bump, from the loud noise resembling that word, haunts Whittlesea Mere, lays in the reed shaws. About the size of the heron. Flyes up right into the sky morning and evening, and hides all day.

  ‘It is all very fine to play the scientific scholar.’ He looked down in reverence at the book. ‘John Clare was not a scholar. But I would give my arm to set it down as he does. And yet it is clear.’ He tapped the page. ‘The observations are exact. It is all here.’

  Passion, Florence thought, hearing him. It is simply that. And at that moment, completely understood and respected him, and recognised the truth about him, too.

  9

  LEWIS AND Eleanor, late at night.

  ‘She says she had been planning to leave in any case. She had intended to tell us quite soon, but now, of course, she wants to go at once. By the next available boat.’

  ‘That is the shock. I daresay she will see things differently in a day or so.’

  ‘You really must take it seriously, Lewis. She is quite adamant.’

  ‘But these things happen in India every day. And after all, she is perfectly all right. Sadu saved her life.’

  ‘She knows that. But she says that she has hated it – India – everything about it and the life here, from the very beginning. She says she is terrified.’

  ‘Shock. Shock and hysteria.’

  ‘We cannot oblige her to stay. Oh, it is all very difficult. She has really tried so hard with Kitty, tried to find things to interest and stimulate her. She says Kitty is far cleverer than she knows.’

  ‘Perhaps …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If things had been different. If Kitty had stayed at school in England … But it is too late to repine about that now.’

  ‘Oh, it was my fault, I know that.’

  ‘My dear, I am not saying so. You know I have never blamed you.’

  ‘I was the one who couldn’t bear to be parted from her, who took her all the way Home and brought her straight back again.’

  Kitty had been eight years old. They had stayed in a quiet house on the Sussex coast for three months, and looked at school after school until, at last, one had seemed to suit. Eleanor had quite made up her mind. Only to realise, the day before Kitty’s first term was to have begun, and when she herself was packed ready to return, that she could not possibly leave the child there. Nor could she herself have stayed. Other women did that, chose the children and abandoned their husbands, to a bleak life of work, the club, polo, for years upon end.

  But Eleanor had cared too much about her marriage. And too much about her child, and so, had chosen them both. She and Kitty had travelled back to India joyfully together, and shortly afterwards, the procession of governesses had begun.

  ‘There is no question of anyone’s being to blame. You did what you felt was right.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘If it had been a son … but Kitty has done very well, and I adore having her with us, you know that.’

  ‘But now?’

  ‘Now … I imagine she will have outgrown a governess altogether before very long, so perhaps it does not greatly matter. Her mind will be full of other things.’

  ‘Yes. Tennis parties and gymkhanas and … and chat. But we have always agreed that we wanted more for her.’

  ‘Well, I am not sure that I want a bluestocking for a daughter.’

  ‘And I do not want a butterfly.’

  ‘Well, I imagine if Miss Hartshorn seriously intends to leave and you think it best, we will find a replacement.’

  ‘Yes. Perhaps that is the answer.’

  ‘Have you something else in mind?’

  ‘Kitty is so unsettled just now. You must surely have noticed. Her head is full of dreams.’

  ‘All fifteen-year-old heads are full of dreams, of one sort or another.’

  ‘And I do not want to have it turned too soon by some young man. She is very pretty.’

  ‘Well, it will be turned sooner or later. Perhaps she had better begin to get used to it.’

  ‘There has to be more to her life than …’

  Than I have had. But she does not say it. And it is not so clear as that. She herself has been happy, has wanted nothing more.

  Uneasy with the way the conversation has turned, he smiles, comes across and puts his hands on her shoulders.

  Says, ‘But I daresay when Miss Hartshorn has calmed down, she will decide to stay here, after all.’

  For a moment, she is almost blinded by rage at his obtuseness.

  Amelia Hartshorn lies, stiff, still, wide-eyed. From the garden, through the shutters, the night sounds of India. And through her head, reeling endlessly, silently, terrifyingly, the events of the previous afternoon, every detail seen, heard again, every fibre of her body reacting, over and over.

  They have been kindness itself. Lady Moorehead has sat with her, listened, murmured comforts. The servants have brought fruit and iced tea, tiptoed about.

  And the syce saved her life of course. And it is over, and perhaps they will not sympathise with her for very much longer.

  It happens every day here, after all.

  And through it all, she prays. Prays with a fervour she has not known herself capable of, a single-minded desperation. Prays for a place to be found for her on a boat soon, soon, to be gone from here. Prays for Home.

  She cannot sleep and so, will not dream. But beneath the endless repetition, running through her head, is Home, England. She catches glimpses of it and tries to grasp them But they fade. India is more powerful. India overcomes and obliterates, its appalling brightness, the blazing colours, the chattering, the smell, the horrors, the craziness, the bedlam of India, fill her head like the terrible, inescapable cry of the brain-fever bird.

  And so she lies rigid, praying her passionate prayer, and so the night passes.

  Kitty sleeps and dreams no dreams. But, waking at dawn, has a vivid recollection of walking with her mother along a flat, hard, shining beach in the rain. Watches the line of her footprints fill up at once with water, hears the sound of the sea and the cry of the gulls, remembers the joy she had in that great expanse. Remembers taking to her heels and running, running, running.

  England, she supposes.

  And turns, and sleeps again at once.

  10

  FLORENCE AND Thea Pontifex sat over tea in Thea’s room in the women’s college. They had been friends since girlhood but, in the face of opposition, Thea had attended the university, and so, gone on to teach. Florence had watched her without envy but rather, when she herself had married Chester Bowering at the age of twenty, with a considerable sense of superiority. She had treated Thea quite patronisingly.

  Thea, clear of mind and of purpose, fair and generous of heart, had gone on her way steadily, aware of, but unconcerned by, Florence’s airs.

  Now, feeling herself to be a woman without a purpose in life, as well as grossly undereducated, Florence envied Thea.

  She said, ‘You are the one person I know who is entirely contented, who has no dissatisfaction.’ Though even as she spoke, she recognised that it was not entirely true, and added, ‘Or at any rate, the only woma
n.’

  Thea smiled, poured more tea. The room seemed too small to contain all of Florence’s restless energy.

  ‘It is perfect here,’ Florence gestured. ‘You see, I am simply envious.’

  And at that moment, meant it, and longed for what the college room represented, and which she herself had never known; attendance at stimulating lectures, afternoons spent in serious private study, the intense loyalty among a group of like-minded young women, talk late into the night, earnest, engaging.

  It was a room full of character and interest, she thought, with books, pictures, china, ornaments, journals, music, a crowded room, personal and supremely unfashionable.

  ‘Perhaps it is not too late. I should like to embark upon some course of study. Learning is so important, you have shown me that.’

  ‘Have you some particular subject that interests you?’

  Florence rose and began to pace about the room, tall and dramatic, between tables and chairs, the desk and the piano.

  ‘Oh, history perhaps … ancient history … the classics and early civilizations. Or then again, science … the new discoveries. Or something very pure – philosophy.’

  Thea bent her head and busied herself with the tray.

  ‘Well, perhaps it is best to be clear.’

  ‘Yes. Oh yes. I understand that, of course. You have always been so sure, and then simply gone ahead.’

  ‘Women are not indulged here. Any indecisiveness, any wavering, a suggestion that one is less than fully committed – and oh, it is so gleefully pounced upon. We have to be all that men are, but doubly so. And yet …’

  She stood, ‘Still women. Shall we walk outside a little before it gets quite dark? The rain has cleared now, I think, and you must see the viburnum in the far shrubbery, it is a mass of pink.’

  They toured the paths. There was no one at all about.

  ‘Of course,’ Thea said, glancing sideways, ‘we are a very closed society here. We are so far out, and I daresay we give off a slightly frumpish air – even conventual. We have very little male society.’