Air and Angels

by Susan Hill

  The table was cleared, for a crown roast of lamb, ludicrously frilled.

  He had opened the doors to two of the cages, so that after a while, some of the small birds came out and flew up to the roof, or here and there above their heads. Kitty stood absolutely still, entranced, and at last, one, emerald of wing, alighted for a few seconds on her outstretched hand.

  She said, ‘We have them in India. They are everywhere. But free.’

  Disturbed by her voice, the bird flew in quick darts into a high branch of the tree that grew up through the centre of the conservatory.

  The others were taking coffee in the drawing-room.

  ‘Well, they are released like this as often as is practicable. But it is true, of course, and you are right, they should be free.’

  ‘Oh, I was not criticising. You must not …’

  ‘No, no.’

  She went to the cage of moon-yellow weavers.

  ‘These fly in the garden.’

  ‘You miss home. India.’

  ‘It is so strange – you see, I do not … it is as though it is, not just another place, another world, but somehow … not real. A dream … it is there but not there. I can’t explain.’

  He was silent. The birds fluttered softly. Kitty turned back.

  ‘You see, I have come here because I want to learn. I chose to come. I am so pitifully ignorant … I want to know about, oh about everything. I don’t want only to visit picture galleries and improving exhibitions in that genteel way, like … like a young lady. I want to learn about … about the stars and planets and Darwinism and the Greek gods and heroes and the history of religion and calculus and … oh, so much.’ Her peaked face was transformed, shining, eager.

  Moved, Thomas asked quietly, ‘And then?’

  ‘Oh, then I want to do good in the world. No, you must not laugh at me.’

  ‘I would not dream of it.’

  She sat down on the circular seat that ran around the trunk of the tree and a cloud of the birds rose up in a bright panic, above her head.

  ‘I had wondered … I had known there was so much in the world … I … that is why I came here. To be educated. India is only tea parties and tennis and balls … which I quite like, but … And then there would have been marriage, I suppose. Cousin Florence says I must meet girls of my own age, and she is right, and of course I would like to have friends. But it must not be the same.’

  ‘The same?’

  ‘I mean, the same as India.’

  ‘I think you can be sure that it will not.’

  ‘Mrs Gray says I should certainly meet young men, too. She is very modern, for such an old person.’

  ‘We must all seem very old to you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You must take care … take care not to lose anything.’

  ‘Lose?’

  ‘Oh … freshness. I suppose I mean simply – the joy of being young.’

  ‘But Miss Lovelady was right. I have thought about it so much. Life must not be wasted.’

  ‘Miss Lovelady?’

  ‘She was a missionary … on the boat. I … she became my friend. She was a saint, I think. I learned everything from her in a few days only. I think I am quite different because of her. And then she died. I went to her cabin and … but she was dead. She had been ill … that was why she was returning to England. She didn’t want to. She wanted to die in India.’

  Kitty looked up at him.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Where… ?’

  ‘Oh, they buried her body at sea. I know that. I watched it. But where is she?’

  He knew he should say, with God, but he could not speak.

  ‘She was such a good woman. And she only wanted to stay and die in India. Is she in heaven? I expect that is what you would tell me.’

  Thomas shook his head, turned away in distress. But she sat quite composed, clear-eyed.

  After a moment, he said, ‘We should go back to the drawing-room now. The birds must be left to roost.’ And led her out.

  In the hansom going home, old Mrs Gray, having dozed contentedly on and off during and after dinner, was wide awake.

  But in between, she had watched them, and missed nothing.

  Now, she would not sleep again until the early hours.

  She sat very upright in the corner of the cab, the plaid stole drawn around her.

  Said to Kitty, ‘You should be dancing. That is what all young girls should do. Dance until dawn. I danced until dawn from being seventeen until I was married and left Scotland for good.’

  ‘But she is not seventeen, Mother, she is not yet even sixteen. There will be time enough for all that. It was because of the dancing that Eleanor thought it best she should come here.’

  Mrs Gray ignored her, turned a little, to pat Kitty’s hand.

  ‘Dancing,’ she said, again, ‘dancing until dawn.’

  Kitty smiled, liking her.

  But felt dazed, heavy-headed, her cold suddenly worse again. She did not recall much of the evening just past, did not think at all, only let the movement of the cab soothe her.

  But she had liked very much to see the birds, fluttering free. And had expected to be tongue-tied then, but was not. She realised that she had told no one else about Miss Lovelady, until this night.

  She closed her eyes, which were smarting with cold and tiredness.

  And Florence dreamed, like the young girl that Kitty was, and saw herself descending a staircase, entering a room, sitting at a glittering table beside Thomas Cavendish, and knew that she was envied, that she commanded the scene. Knew that she had seen his eyes, admiring, upon her.

  And now could think of no possible reason why he would not eventually marry her.

  Georgiana, returning from the kitchen where she had been to congratulate Alice, paused in the doorway of the drawing-room and saw the whole evening spread out before her, felt the air still seething with their presence, their finery, their conversation. There, Florence had sat, and there old Mrs Gray, and Kitty, leaning back into the shadows a little, deep in her chair. (But Kitty, she thought, had done very nicely, had been quite composed and not too shy. Kitty, for all her peakiness, had made a pleasant impression.)

  Flushed with the success of it, she wanted to hold on to the evening, a little longer, to have time pause.

  Thomas stood beside the fireplace. The embers had slipped down low in the grate, and were almost out.

  He said, ‘I have decided not to allow my name to go forward for the mastership.’

  And the bubble of the evening burst and lay in fragments around her. She sat heavily down.

  ‘I have been foolish to entertain it. Of course the position, the way of life would not suit me – it would be wholly alien.’

  ‘If you are sure,’ she said, and could not argue, could not think of it at all, she was suddenly exhausted, barely able to form the words in her mouth. ‘If you are sure …’

  But of course he was not. As he spoke, he was again thrown into confusion and indecision.

  After a while, he said, ‘But now is not the time to discuss it.’

  Georgiana did not move. The room felt suddenly cold.

  She said, ‘Well, it is for you to decide.’ And then, ‘But at least I am glad we welcomed the little cousin Kitty Moorehead. It was the right thing to do.’

  ‘I hope she will not be a bluestocking.’ He spoke harshly. ‘She is certainly plain enough.’

  And did not say anything more, and after a pause, left the room.

  16

  THE HOUSE is quite empty.

  (Apart from the servants, of course. But they do not count, they live their own, separate, alien, impenetrable lives.)

  Lewis leaves at dawn, and returns as late as possible from the club, and then only to sleep here. (Though there is no real sleep, the nights are scarcely less intolerably hot than the days now. Only the glare of the sun, the brightness is gone, there is relief from that. Otherwise, one lies choked by a thick blanket of humid h
eat, under a net on the verandah. And still it is too hot.)

  He will sweat it out here another month, and then join Eleanor in the Hills, for the rest of the Hot Season. The Hills are ahead of him, a cool, blue mirage. Sometimes, waking out of a turbulent half-sleep, he hallucinates the sound of running water from the endlessly trickling streams.

  But the worst of it, this time, is not the heat. He has endured that before, will do so again. You simply get on with it. Ignore it.

  The worst is the loneliness. The absence of Kitty.

  He has never imagined it, nor realised, the single-minded desperation with which he loves her. Has always. He dreams of her every night, and she is always floating away from him, just out of reach.

  Once, he dreamed that she was dead somewhere, and woke, flailing, calling out in terror. Lay, hearing the thudding of his own heart, above the terrible screaming of the jackals that always fills these nights.

  And once, coming home early, to change for dinner, he went aimlessly round the empty house, and, coming into Kitty’s room, had a sudden, vivid recollection of doing so once before, when she had been a baby, a few weeks old. There had been no one else here. She had lain in her crib, under the veil of netting, awake, eyes open and following the slight movement of light and shadow. He had looked down at her and been so startled by her transfixed perfection, by the beauty of her head, her fingers, the mauve-blue of the skin above her eyes, that he had knelt down and … what? Adored her? Prayed to her? For she had been far more to him than simply his child, at that moment.

  Now, he stands in the same doorway, looking ahead into the same room. And it is empty.

  Asks, where is it? That time past? And where is she? Where is that child? And where is Kitty?

  17

  THE WEATHER turned mild again, the wind veered and then dropped altogether. Spring returned and would, it seemed, settle.

  Everything came into flower at once, daffodils and tulips together, with late blossom and early blossom, and the buds were fat and ready to burst on the horse-chestnut trees along the avenues.

  But it was still too early, everyone said, it could not last, it was not natural. The weather had been so peculiar lately, the seasons all anyhow. Because of course what people wanted was the story-book year, everything in place and as it should be, sun all summer, snow in winter, green spring, golden autumn, just as they remembered it, from childhood, when the world went aright.

  The grass grew and was cut for the first time, and the whole city smelled of it, of spring.

  The sun shone, gentle on the old buildings, sparkling on the water. Just as it should. And the young men rowed and the young women rounded corners, wildly, hilariously, on bicycles, skirts ballooning out.

  On the marshes, the spring migrants returned, and the over-winterers were long gone to their cold northern places, and the birds paired, now, and began to build their secret nests, and the larks sang their seamless song, spiralling upwards until they were invisible. But still heard, still heard.

  And at night, in the corners of gardens, under bushes, cats yowled.

  Florence went about with a great purpose, fixing up this class or that private lesson, trailing Kitty in her wake, and Kitty looked about her, and tried to make sense of it all, to understand what she would have to do. And grew a little less pale, and blossomed, and relaxed in the spring sunshine. Saw the young women on bicycles and was stirred with her own ambition.

  And from time to time, some young man became aware of her, in the street, and glanced back.

  But Kitty did not notice.

  A week passed. Thomas, deep in work, avoided people. Shut the door of his study, so that Georgiana sat every evening quite alone.

  On Sunday, he preached in the college chapel and, as he stepped down from the pulpit, thought, and is this death, to step down and into the abyss? Is there perhaps, no more than this? And shuddered, and at once, turned his mind away and listened to the Testament, and, later, read from it, and recited the Creed, took shelter in the familiar words. But not, perhaps, comfort.

  But the work steadied him, and he did not look beyond it, though he was aware that he had made no decision still, that his future was uncertain, and he changed his mind daily, and saw things differently. And sometimes, as he walked across the Backs, or down the tree-lined avenue, the spring thrust itself to his attention, and then he stopped momentarily, and turned his face towards it, and the vision of the marshes and the still water came to him, soothingly.

  And somewhere, too, not in his present consciousness, but hovering, waiting a little out of sight, out of reach, there was the picture of Kitty, the girl on the bridge. Or rather, not the picture itself, it was not so exact, so clear as that. Rather, it was the awareness that the picture would be there, and all the emotions that surrounded it, if he chose to look.

  But he did not.

  18

  IN THE Hills everyone dresses in the latest fashions, after the patterns sent from London and Paris, everyone promenades. And it is wonderful, they are like flowers revived, in the cool air, they sparkle in conversation, pay visits, make plans, regain appetites, with new energy and vigour. And if they ignore this or that – the bazaar, the servants, and do not listen to certain noises, they can imagine that this is not India at all, but Home, Home.

  But it is not Home, and Eleanor knows it, lying on her couch in the afternoons, listless, bored, and she does not share the liveliness, the bubbling talk and excitement, for once, she would rather have stayed in Calcutta, with Lewis. Or so she thinks.

  But at last she must get up and dressed, and go to tea with Myrtle Piggerton, for they seem to have become close friends. And they will talk desultorily, and sometimes, it is of doing something worthwhile, perhaps starting a little morning school for the native children, or some practical classes, for the women. Perhaps putting on a theatrical performance, in aid of the Mission, a play, something with a greater intellectual substance than the usual frivolous comedies that are so popular here.

  Or perhaps Lewis will take her for a week’s holiday, a river trip up-country would be stimulating.

  She remembers her stay in a wooden houseboat on Lake Kashmir, years ago, before Kitty was born, remembers the pink mist over the water at sunrise, and the terraced gardens, rising up behind, the tranquillity of the place.

  And Myrtle drinks her tea and chatters, chatters, to conceal her desperate longing for another child, and her unassuaged grief over the loss of the first, and brings news of a midnight picnic, with Chinese lanterns strung about the trees, and dancing, flirtations.

  But Eleanor thinks she will not go.

  Says, ‘We have to do so much to please men. Why else would we be here at all? What else is there?’

  And thinks of the alternative, of Miss Hartshorn, and the whole procession of sad governesses.

  And the days pass, and some have affairs. But nothing to be taken very seriously. And soon, Lewis will come, and Myrtle Piggerton’s obtuse young husband, and the Hill season will be at its height. And at the end of it, the packing, and the awful journey back, the winter in Calcutta. And so the world turns.

  Eleanor thinks, I cannot bear it, I can no longer live like this. And resolves absolutely to return to England. To Kitty.

  19

  FIRST THERE was nothing. Blackness. Complete unconsciousness. And then, as though he had walked onto a stage or into a lighted room from a dark hall, there was the dream.

  But it did not feel like a dream, there was none of the usual strangeness about it, everything was as usual, and as it was in life. Almost everything.

  It was spring, of course, the first day of spring, the sun shone, and there was even a little warmth in it, though it was so early. The catkins and the velvet willow buds were out, and the crocuses, maundy violet, egg-yolk yellow and white upon the grass, and the delicate primroses hidden deep.

  Thomas walked at leisure up the Avenue, slowed, taking pleasure in the sunshine. There were people about, faces upturned, smiling at on
e another, and at total strangers, because of the beauty of the day.

  And so, he came towards the stone bridge that curved over the water. And glancing up, saw the girl, standing still, poised as a bird in the sunlight, her head bent, looking down into the water. One hand rested on the stone, and her hair was tied back from her face.

  He stopped dead.

  In life she, Kitty – for, of course, it was Kitty, he knew that now – (and yet, still it was not) had stood exactly so. And worn a pale dress.

  But in the dream she was quite naked.

  He came awake in blind terror. His room was dark.

  Kitty, who was not Kitty, the girl, stood on the stone bridge, pale as marble.

  He looked, and could not look, but the vision would not fade. The absolute beauty of it gripped him by the throat, choked and suffocated him.

  He could not move.

  And afterwards thought that death at that moment would have been the best, the only possible thing, would have saved all that came after.

  But he could only lie on his bed in the darkness, pouring with sweat from shock and terror, unable to form any coherent thought, any words, mesmerised by the vision, by the dream that did not, would not fade, as the memory of the real sight had never faded. But the two only merged together and were suffused in a clear light.

  He did not sleep again that night. But after some time, he had no idea of how long, switched on the lamp, and made to take up the prayer book. But when his fingers touched the cover, drew back at once, and could not, dared not.

  Only left on the light, hoping that the vision of the girl would somehow be obliterated.

  But it was not, it remained steady before him. The difference now was that he had no feelings of joy or peace in the presence of it, could not turn to it for warmth and comfort. There was only fear, of what lay in the depths of himself, and of what it had done, might do. And fear of his own powerlessness.