Air and Angels (11 page)

And because she saw that they were better left to themselves, and, having cleared up the broken seed dish, could be of no further use here, she simply led Georgiana away to bed, and medicine, and hot water laced with rum and lemon.

In the
end, nervous of their freedom, the little birds quietly returned to roost in their cages, and coming in later, and seeing them so, Alice simply closed and latched the door.

But one remained free, one bird Alice did not see, perched high up, close to the skylight, its vivid wings closed, head bent into an iridescent breast.

Georgiana slept. Half woke in confusion. Fell back again into a snake-pit
of turbulent, poisoned dreams.

Woke again, with thoughts of death. Death clung to her. But deliberately, knowing that it was the fever, she turned her mind to childhood, as onto sweet, soft pillows, and was at once soothed and made cool.

And the small, vivid bird roosted on alone, close to the skylight, close to the glass, to the air, to freedom.

She started up again, out of her reverie of
Ireland, remembering what had almost happened through her own fault, her own forgetfulness. Almost.

But it had not. And Alice would surely say nothing to him and so, how could he ever know?

She was a child again, terrified of incurring his displeasure, for he was the bright, the fixed star in her universe, afraid to confess that she had forfeited his trust.

Thought, almost said out loud, but
I am a grown woman, I am forty-four years old, why must I endlessly look back to our childhood? Why do I still, still see him in the old light, why am I so anxious that he, and he alone, should approve, praise, trust, like, love?

Why has no life since then ever fully satisfied?

What is it I lack?

But then, because of the fever, and the low ebb of her spirits in these ghostly hours before dawn,
because of her restless limbs and aching head, she submitted again, and let her mind drift back. To the stories he had told her, sitting before the fire, or on the deep window-seat, looking out at the soft silver veils of rain drifting up across the garden from the Lake. And the books he had read to her, of wild journeys and far countries beyond exotic seas, and their exultant voyages together
across ancient maps.

And so, for a time, kept back the visible skull, the vision of death that stalked, grinning over her shoulder.

But life and death and all the troubled thoughts of it preyed upon Alice in her room at the end of the passage, and rattled the window lock, and the handle of the wardrobe door, and would not be denied.

So that in the end, she went down in her dressing-gown to
the kitchen, and heated milk, and sat on the chair beside the range and rocked to soothe herself.

Life and death. Life and death. Life and death.

Old Mrs Gray thought of death, too, death more than life now, in the long, wakeful hours.

But then, she always did, and was quite untroubled by it.

Only sat at the half-open window and smelled the balmy, gentle smell of night, blowing from off the
river.

And was content. And would not die yet awhile.

HE WOKE in the night to silence. The storm had blown itself out.

Thomas went to the window and saw that the whole quayside and the salt flats and the great, still expanse of the estuary beyond, were washed in moonlight, and the face of the moon gazed back at itself, serene in the waters.

And, as he looked at them, he imagined how they would be now, the secret reedbeds and inlets, the mud-flats
and saltings, right away to the shoreline itself, seething with birds, feeding, flying, or lying low in the water, and other birds tucked into banks and hollows, knew that what appeared to be so silent, so still, so dead under the moon, teemed with hidden life.

Then, as he stood, he heard the faintest sound, the soft slip of an oar into the water. And the smell of pipe tobacco came up to him
faintly, sweetly, on the night air.

The small boats were leaving, the first few gliding away across the estuary, the outline of the men dark as felt against the moon.

The punt-gunners, the wild-fowlers, at the end of their frustration and confinement in the storm, were making silently, stealthily, for their hunting grounds out on the waters, and their secret watching and waiting for the night
birds and the dawn birds, their prey.

He would not sleep again now, would not even wait until first light.

For he, like the other men, was restless to be away, to be out there on the water, though quite alone, and with a less violent purpose.

He dressed and packed his things in the canvas bag, and as he did so, he felt that everything else had dropped away, every other thought or consideration
in the world, he felt light and unburdened, and full of exhilaration.

And he was a boy again, the same boy who had got ready like this, furtively, quietly, to go out in the hush of early morning, through the mist that lay low over the Lake, in the fishing boat of Collum O’Cool. Collum O’Cool, who scarcely spoke, only rowed and fished and sat, close and still. And there had been an absolute bond
between them, a companionship and understanding such as he had never known in the rest of his life.

Nor did he expect ever to know it again.

He descended the dark, creaking staircase, and, after leaving money on the taproom counter in payment, went out of the inn and across the moonlit quay to the boat-shed, where Abel Sinnett had made the small dinghy ready for him days before.

And the smell
of the salt sea blew across into his nostrils and the rich, wet, pungent reek of the marsh, and he felt as if his own body were light enough to rise and soar into the night sky towards the stars pricked out in it, like one of the sea-birds, great of wing.

The island was very small, no more than a few dozen yards across, and marshy, with reeds fringing the outer edges, and thicker grass and some
alder and willows towards the centre. On the eastern side stood the hut, with the houseboat moored beside it. And all around, water, flat and still and luminous under the moon.

He tied up the dinghy and for a moment or two, rested there; as the lap of the waves he had made stilled and died away, there was silence again, thin and pure.

Then, in the distance, the faintest of cries, a curlew, passing
along the far fringe of the tide.

And soon, that other sound, like no other in the natural world, at first a breath on the air, a movement, rather than a sound, but growing rapidly louder, as the geese came through the night towards him. He could see the skein now, flying towards the sea, white in the moonlight. As they approached, the beating of their wings sounded across the silent water-lands,
and then he could hear them yelping, baying like hounds in full cry, their huge, beating bodies directly over his head, he looked up into the heart of the fast-flying pack, before they had gone, over the marshes and the tongue of the estuary, and away to sea, and only the last echo came back, like the faint wash after a great wave, and was absorbed again into the surrounding silence.

With the
smallest sigh over the water, the tide turned.

Then the cold, hard crack of a gunshot, from one of the hidden men, and the crack reverberated, around the rim of the night sky, and others quickly succeeded it, and then the ducks rose in panic and clamour, and made away.

Once, he had shot birds himself, in Ireland as a boy, and for a time out here, with the fowlers. But his heart had pulled against
it, and he had regretted every bird shot, every airy, feathered body that had plummeted like lead from the free sky. Until finally he had shot a curlew, and felt as if the death that sprayed out of his gun had come instead from his own body, and the smoke of it had risen into his throat and nostrils and he had choked on it.

He had never shot again. But he would not condemn those who did, the
men who lay out there now, in punts and hides among the reeds and rushes, and whose harsh livelihood this was.

And now, the dawn came up, pale light seeped into the sky and spread surreptitiously across the waters, and with the first light, a flicker of a breeze, breaking the stillness.

He tied up the dinghy and climbed out and hauled himself, and his bag, up the rungs of the ladder onto the
tarred wooden houseboat. Abel Sinnett had opened it up the week before, aired and cleaned it, and left him supplies, food and oil, candles and fresh water.

Now, Thomas stowed his books and few clothes away, and refamiliarised himself with the close, cramped little rooms, the smell and feel of them, set up a kettle to boil on the primus; and when his tea was made, took it out onto the deck, to
sit and look out over the wide waters.

And as he sat, from nowhere, as though exhaled by the body of some invisible marsh creature, a mist began to steal towards him, wreathing and unearthly, so that in a few moments, the water below and all around him and then the island, the boat and the dinghy, were swathed in its cold dampness. And with the mist, the silence returned, and pressed in upon
his ears, a new, uncanny, muffling silence, quite unlike the clear silence of the moonlit night.

But then, so that it caused a shiver to creep over his flesh like the creeping of the breeze that rippled the water, he heard the strange, ill-omened booming of the bittern.

KITTY RIDES out at dawn, at barely five o’clock, and only the servants see her, rides out across the blue plains towards the river and beyond, mile after mile, with the syce for company, because that is the rule. But the syce keeps a few paces behind her and soon, she begins to gallop to try and outstrip him, and he knows it and allows it, though always keeping her in view, in reach.

And it
is this that she would miss if she were to leave, the freedom to race across country. Above her, the sky is silver-white but tinged faintly bronze where the rim meets the land, and her head is rinsed clean and clear, as a bowl rinsed in a spring, of any thoughts, any words, there is only the exhilaration and the movement, the rush of the air towards her.

But Miss Hartshorn is awake, as always
at this time, she sleeps so fitfully here, sits up in bed with a board across her knees, writing about Kitty’s future to her friend in Warwickshire, taking it upon herself to make tentative plans.

Eleanor sleeps, cocooned in her dreams of glory, for she was admired on all sides, and looked magnificent and Lewis basked in it, and still none of it has faded, the satisfaction continues to warm them.
And when she does stir and wake, it is only to the glow of happy recollections, like a young girl after a first ball, and then to think vaguely that before long it will be Christmas, which of course Kitty adores, and Kitty will be here with them, and so perhaps, everything else can be left to resolve itself, there are no troubles breaking upon the calm surface of her life.

QUITE SUDDENLY, the sun broke through the mist, dissolving and clearing it, flushing the water rose-red, and then, a few feet away from him he saw the bird. It was standing, solitary, motionless, on reedstalk legs, silhouetted against the sheen of the mud which had been exposed by the receding tides, at the island’s edge.

And it seemed to Thomas that this place was a sort of paradise and he
at the heart of it was in that state of bliss which saints and visionaries and poets attempted to describe. And, looking at the bird, perfectly poised against water and land and sky, he thought that no created thing was ever more beautiful.

ON NOVEMBER 22, at St Margaret’s church, by special licence. Eustace Partridge to Mary Wimpole.

But it was a glorious afternoon, winter, the trees bare, and yet still flushed with the last of autumn in the air, in the sunlight.

And Mary Wimpole, who was so small, so neat, wore lavender-grey and a hat trimmed with silver silk roses. But there was a puffy paleness about the skin below her eyes.

No one knew them here, the town was miles away from their homes which was what had been thought best; the families had met together and it had all been decided.

After the wedding, there was luncheon in a hotel, champagne had been served, and claret with the game pie, and so, things had passed off well enough, people had become quite friendly. There had been good wishes and a certain amount of
laughter.

Later, they had walked the short distance, arm in arm, down to catch the ferry to the Isle of Wight and the late afternoon sun struck gold upon the water. Everyone was making the best of it.

Mary Wimpole – but Mary Partridge now – had smiled, and kissed both sets of parents very sweetly, and held his arm as the boat began to pull away.

And they had waved. Everybody had waved, the
figures on the jetty grew smaller and smaller, and became pin figures and still they were waving. And the sea-birds had wheeled and cried and followed in their wake.

It seemed to Eustace that he was, for the time being, for these moments, really perfectly happy, perfectly content. To stand on the deck looking back to the mainland in the last of the sun, which had a little warmth as well as brightness
in it.

Except that he himself was not here, and had taken no part at all in the day’s events, there had been a stranger inhabiting his own body, filling his new suit of clothes, while his real self was in suspense somewhere, looking on from outside, and frozen in mid-frame, mid-life. Yet soon, surely, things would be as they were again, and he would be himself and back in Cambridge, the past
would reassert itself.

Meanwhile, they walked the cliff paths on the Isle of Wight, and slowly along deserted beaches beside the creaming tide, and the weather held all that week, though the fog-horn blew in the early mornings, and once, there was a frost at night.

And Mary Wimpole chattered to him, and he looked after her with infinite care and tenderness, as he would some object that had been
entrusted to him, but temporarily, that was not his but which he was to hand back.

At night, he lay awake beside her, and when she slept, inched his body away, careful not to touch hers at any point, and after that, only listened to her quiet breathing, and the sound of the sea through the window and could neither sleep nor think. Only towards dawn, he became tangled in dreams from which he could
not extricate himself when the fog-horn woke him in the muffled night.