Air and Angels (16 page)

In Miss Lovelady’s locked cabin, all the things that had belonged to her, the remains of her existence, waited for no one and were of no significance now. What will happen to them, whose
are they, Kitty would have asked; and she thought, ridiculously, of the fruit cake, and the fingers of shortbread in their tins, and the row of brown, sensible shoes. But she could not bring herself to speak about any of it, and whoever would know?

And the house in Norfolk waited, too, windows tightly closed, yet the spring gales battered at them and loosened the locks, and inside, the floorboards
moved, curtains shifted, and then, stillness and silence again, and the empty rooms waited. But for whom, for what?

Kitty’s eyes smarted, with tiredness and watching, her body felt cramped and stiff, but she could only be taut, alert, it was not possible to relax.

On the quayside, the lamps shone fuzzily here and there through haloes of rain and gleamed in pools on the ground. There was the
usual clangour, as the great ship edged in.

Florence stood, under a corrugated metal overhang, sheltering from the rain and the bitter wind, and waited alone, for Kitty.

For there had been a moment when she had allowed herself to look the likely truth of things full in the face, and acknowledge it absolutely, like pulling aside a curtain and staring, just once, straight into a mirror before
drawing back.

The truth was, that he would not marry her, that he had no interest in her at all. (But nor had he in any other woman. He would never marry. She might take comfort from that.) She might plot and determine, but her own wants counted for nothing, and had no power.

He would avoid speaking to her, encountering her in any way, if he could. And suddenly, the frustration of it had worn
her down. (Though as soon as she had glimpsed and admitted the truth, she had turned aside, and could not bear it, she allowed new hope to flicker up from somewhere, and cupped her hands around it tenderly, shielding it like a weak and fitful flame.)

Well, but at least she had a status, she had been a married woman. When she looked at the other women about her, in their society, that too was
a comfort.

So she had determined to throw herself completely into the business of looking after Eleanor’s child, and planning out her education. For she had surely some maternal instinct which would serve. And so, for several weeks, she had gone energetically about, letters had been written, visits made.

There were to be classes on certain mornings. Poetry and other literature with Miss Bell
at her cottage in Jesus Lane; art appreciation, and some mathematics and natural history, and Thea Pontifex had been approached about finding a tutor for history.

Then, she supposed, religious studies, about which, surely, it would be perfectly in order to consult him?

There must be visits to London, too, to the museums and the galleries, perhaps even, from time to time, to suitable plays. (‘She
will want more than that. Young girls do nowadays. She ought to be sent to a proper school, she will need to mix with friends of her own age. It is all very different from when you were young.’ So said old Mrs Gray. But was not particularly attended to.)

The room was got ready, a very nice room, Georgiana had said so. It was at the top of the house, long and low, with a window at either end.
They had chosen pretty new curtains and a wallpaper. There were painted bookcases, and a small armchair, and the chimney had been swept out to allow a fire to be burned in the grate again.

Beyond the windows the Backs, the meadows, the river, and on the other side, all the rooftops of Cambridge, and the great college tower, whose bells would tumble her awake.

And a mirror on the dressing-table
and a desk and chair and a new quilted cover on the bed.

It is what this house has lacked, Florence thought, looking round at last, young footsteps on the stairs, a lighter, brighter voice, energy, interest, eagerness. It is what
I
have needed. For she had never had anyone but her mother to care for or take trouble over.

She will bring a breath of fresh air into our dreary lives.

THE WIND blew, great gales marauding across the bare land. Branches of trees snapped off and whirled away.

Out on the fens the birds fled, or hid, huddled, and were battered about.

And with the wind came rain, and where a slate had blown off the roof of Miss Lovelady’s house in Norfolk, the rain drove in like nails, and seeped through the ceiling, gradually staining a circle, and ran in a
channel down the scullery gutter, and drip-drip-dripped steadily onto the yard.

But who was to know or care, what had it to do with anyone at all?

Crossing the gardens late in the afternoon, under a scudding sky, Thomas Cavendish saw, because his head was bent, aconites, yellow as butter and a clot of snowdrops on fragile stems, pale beneath the branches of the copper beech, and on the grassy
rise close to the hedge. And stopped, his coat flapping in the wind, and looked down with sudden pleasure at the first faint marks of spring.

On the table in his rooms, a private letter from Jonas Daubeney, the College Dean.

The hotel was rather dark, with heavy oak furniture and lace curtains thick as curd cheese and drapes and covers and cloths of maroon-coloured plush.

People spoke in low
voices or not at all, only sat staring into the fire, or turning the pages of newspapers.

Kitty was pale, almost silent. Tired. Beyond the windows in the darkness it rained a chill, thin rain. She could not believe it was possible for India to exist.

But the dinner was good, plain and hot and substantial, and Florence encouraged her to drink a little wine.

‘It will all seem much better in the
morning. Not so strange. And you will feel fresh again.’

She looks like a child, she thought,
is
a child, among so many dull elderly people. And felt sorry for her and reached across to press her hand.

Kitty smiled, pushed apple pudding onto her spoon. Thought, who am I? What am I doing here? And glanced round the stuffy little room in panic, searching for something familiar, recognisable, to
comfort her, and unexpectedly, found it, in the sight of a small brass gong, embossed with figures, and a frieze of animals around the base of the stand.

‘Oh, everyone has those!’ she said to Florence, ‘they are always on the sideboard. In our houses in India.’

But then, trying to swallow the food, she could not, because the tears spurted up, into her eyes, her nostrils, her throat, they filled
her mouth and threatened to choke her.

Calmly, gently, Florence led her out.

It had been a long walk, longer than Georgiana had anticipated, out to the old hospital, if she had realised, she would have called a cab. Only she supposed that the exercise would have done her good. Except that the wind had beaten her about the head, pushing against it had exhausted her completely. So that, arriving
in the cold, dark entrance hall, she had been obliged to sit down for several minutes on a wooden bench. She was wet, too, the wind had driven rain into her face all the way.

She sat listening to footsteps echoing sharply down the tiled corridors, and the sound of wailing, and the incessant coughs.

Nowhere, Georgiana thought suddenly, nowhere should be like this, so dark, so bleak, so chill.
The faces she saw were hard, preoccupied, closed, they had dead eyes.

And then, eventually, on reaching the ward, she was told simply that Mary Dundas was dead, since the previous day. Mary, who had been their housemaid all those years ago, until she had grown lame, and wayward, and unreliable, so that they had been obliged to let her go.

And where had she gone? Georgiana thought now, and the
truth was that she had never known, never enquired where, had, perhaps, not wished to be told.

After quite a short time, Mary Dundas had been all but forgotten. But last week the letter had come, that she was old and very ill, dying even, in this hospital, and had asked if she might see Miss Cavendish.

And now, Georgiana had come at last and sat in shame and distress on a hard chair in a cold
corridor outside the door of the ward and all around her, the wails, the cries, the moaning, and the brisk, impersonal footsteps.

Mary Dundas was dead. Were there relatives? Friends? A later employer? She did not know, could not ask.

No one should die in such a place, in this way, she thought, and gripped her hands tightly on the sides of the chair. But how could she have prevented it? What
could she have done?

Somewhere, a bell rang, and then fell silent, and after that, for a few moments, there was only the sound of the rain pattering against the uncurtained windows, and onto the skylight above her head. Lamps were lit and glowed in the corners of the room. The fire burned, rich red at the deep heart of the coals.

The Dean’s face was scored over with fine lines like cracks in
a map. Now and again he spun the globe that stood on the table beside him, touching the tips of his fingers to the coloured countries spread over its surface. Africa. The Australias. China. The Indian Empire. Thomas followed them round.

Africa. The Australias … and ocean upon ocean.

As a young man, looking through the windows into this room, this scene, he would have looked upon everything he
wanted.

And now?

The wine gleamed golden in his glass.

‘You are poised,’ Daubeney said, and spun the globe again. ‘But of course you realise that. Unless, you were looking to a bishopric? In which case, I would say …’

‘Good heavens no.’

‘No. I imagined not.’

Thomas stared into the fire. Whatever Daubeney had wished to discuss with him he had not expected this. Though he supposed that, had
he been asked directly, he would have agreed that the Master of the college must wish to retire some day. He had simply never given it any thought, it had not concerned him.

‘You would be the clear choice of the majority. That is not in doubt.’

‘But you yourself? …’

‘Will be seventy-one this year, Thomas. Besides, I have no such ambitions.’

And have I? The fire cracked like a pistol, shooting
a blazing cinder onto the hearth.

Africa. The Australias. China. The Indian Empire. Africa. The Australias … and ocean upon ocean.

Georgiana sat holding a new book on the history of the Trojan Wars. It was a pet subject of hers. But did not read, only walked the cold tiled corridors again in her mind. Tried to recall Mary Dundas’s face.

But she had left her address, insisted that she wished
to be informed about the funeral; at least, she had done that.

As he walked back through the empty town streets, the wind came roaring at him down alleyways and around corners, tearing at his clothes, and along the quiet residential avenues, the trees thrashed madly together.

It was very late. There was scarcely a light in any window.

In the end, when the fire had almost died out, and the globe
had ceased to spin, he had gone back to his own rooms, intending merely to collect some papers and his coat. But instead, had sat on in the darkness, going over what had been said, trying to come to terms with it. Only the cold, and the last clocks chiming through the courts had driven him out.

Above all, he could not understand why the offer – or at least the suggestion of an offer – had not
raised his spirits. Why he did not feel pride, vainglory even, the thrill of ambition satisfied.

Only, looking ahead, he had seen himself in those rooms, beside those fires, for all the years to come, until death.

But what other dreams had he? Where else would he want to go?

The wind yowled, racing down the road, hurled itself at him and wrenched the gate from his hand, and then, for a second,
the clouds parted to let out the moon, and turning, he saw some wild, fleeing figure, on the far side and ahead.

But, trying to focus on it, looking again, there was nothing, no one.

He let himself very quietly into the house.

Kitty woke from a nightmare of suffocation into darkness as thick as felt. The room smelled faintly of must and moth and airlessness. She had sunk down into the depths
of the feather bed and the wad of quilt lay like lead over her body.

She had forgotten – if she had ever known, how this felt, to breathe in air that was cold and damp and yet to be stifled at the same time under the weight of bedclothes.

In India it was always hot, and the single sheet was always light (but in the hills at dawn the air was cold and fresh as spring water, and then, you woke
and leaned forwards to roll up a blanket that waited ready at the foot of the bed).

And, struggling awake from the dreams of drowning, choking, she sat up and could not make out anything around her, could not see her own hand when she held it before her face. And together with relief at being awake after all, being alive, came the thought that she must die. She, Kitty, would die, nothing more
certain. The
only
certainty. She touched her hand to her own face. Die.
Be
dead.

And what was ‘dead’? And where? How could that be?

Miss Lovelady had said, ‘We are in the hands of the Lord. We must be on His side, on the side of the Right, we should “put on the whole armour of God”.’

And she had responded to that, with all her heart. To take up a sword and fight on the side of Light and against
the forces of darkness, to stand up, for the poor, the hungry, the oppressed, the imprisoned, the sick, to do battle, to right wrong. All of that had sounded an echo in her heart.

Now, alone in this dark room of a strange hotel, so many thousands of miles and light years from home, she felt only fear, fear and dread and bewilderment and weakness.

And where was Miss Lovelady now? She who had
spent thirty-two years of her life spreading the Gospel? Who had so stirred Kitty’s brave imaginings, who had said, ‘We cannot choose.’

With God. So she would have said. But if not, then where? Nowhere. Nothing.

The image of the grey bag, drifting down through fathoms of dark water, bobbed about in her mind, it was anchored there, and would never float away.