Air and Angels (17 page)

She wanted to call out to her cousin
in the adjacent room. But did not, for the cousin was a stranger still, and what would she be able to say or do? And the journey across to the window, between the humps and knobs of the unfamiliar furniture seemed too perilous to make.

Then, and strangely, it was for the first time, she thought of her mother, saw Eleanor, standing against the light and the softly sifting curtains, smelled her
as she lay on the bed beside her.

She did not cry, but turned over into her waiting arms, and, sighing, fell asleep at once.

But she is old, he thought, stopping suddenly in the doorway. She is an old woman.

Georgiana, sitting beside the fire, reading, her spectacles slightly askew on her nose. The lamp cast shadows under her eye sockets, and in furrows down the sides of her mouth, and, seeing
her so, he remembered what their mother had looked like, for there she was before him.

He was shaken. For this was his sister, who had always been a child, a young girl to him. And he felt a spurt of anguish and of guilt, too, thought, what life has she had, does she have? She is alone. She will grow old, is doing so, and I have not noticed, barely thought about her. Does she worry? What does
she care about? What dreams, hopes, does she still have?

He realised that he did not know, had not known for years, nor ever thought to enquire.

She saw him, or sensed that he was there, laid her book down. He stepped into the room.

But did not, that night, speak of his conversation with Daubeney. He was not ready, did not know what he thought of it himself, what he wanted. He could not yet
discuss it with her.

And so they simply sat, side by side, close to the fire, and Alice brought in the tray, and outside, the wind roared and beat upon the windows, and the sudden draught made the fire blaze.

He wondered if she would care to move into the Master’s house, in the college, to leave here, after so many years, to continue to subdue her own life to his. Did she resent him? Perhaps
so. Perhaps with reason.

But he said only, ‘So the plans for your holiday were quite abandoned.’

Georgiana set down her book, leaned back in her chair, eyes closed.

‘Oh yes. Florence has gone today to fetch her niece. The ship will have docked now. I think they travel back to Cambridge tomorrow.’

‘I see. I had no idea how much it was all a great disappointment.’

‘Florence’s niece?’

‘The
holiday in Switzerland.’

‘Oh no.’ She made a slight, dismissive gesture. ‘No.’

For perhaps it would not have been very satisfactory, they would have quarrelled, or the weather would have been too cold, or else she would still not have felt completely well. Something. Anything. Perhaps it had never been a good plan.

‘You seem tired.’

‘Yes.’

‘Perhaps you ought to see Hannon again? Your cough
…’

‘Oh, that will linger until the warmer weather, you know that it so often does. I am perfectly resigned to it.’

‘Yes. The year is at a low ebb. But there were aconites and snowdrops out in the Fellows’ garden today.’

‘And a terrible wind. I walked a long way against it. I daresay that is why I am tireder than usual.’

‘Walked?’

‘To the old hospital. I was sent for by Mary Dundas.’

‘Mary
Dundas …’

‘The maid. Years ago. You will not remember.’

He did not.

‘But she was dead. Since yesterday. I must have meant something to her all these years, for her to send so urgently. I failed her. She was already dead.’

‘But you were not to know, of course, you …’

‘I should have gone at once. I did not, and the fault is mine.’

Her voice was flat and dull. He recognised the depth of her
self-blame, and did not try again to dismiss it. Said nothing.

But, after a little while longer, got up and went into the conservatory, where the small birds had gone to roost, and only stirred, fluttered a little, as he entered, before quietening and settling back again.

He closed the door, and sat down among them in the darkness. In the small parlour, Georgiana stayed on, thinking of nothing
in particular, before the dying fire, too weary, for the moment, to face the effort of going up to bed.

Adèle Hemmings walks alone through the dark avenues, past all the shuttered, respectable houses, and the wildness of the wind delights her, excites her, the wind lifting her clothes, and the rain running down her face and finding a way beneath her clothes to her body, and sliding, cold over
her skin.

For she goes out every night now, or almost, very late, after her aunt has gone to bed. And if her aunt does not want to go to bed, but sits up, demands cards and tea and the serial story read aloud to her once again, and conversation and company, then she is scarcely able to bear the frustration, she feels her restlessness like an itch, the desire, the need to be out alone in the darkness,
walking, walking, blots out all other thought.

But in the end, the old woman does go, heavily, painfully up the stairs, in the end, the lights are out, and the cats, too, slipping away from the house, down through the garden, and Adèle Hemmings is one of them, but they are intent upon their own secret, malevolent business.

And no one sees her, no one is aware, except perhaps one man, returning
late, glimpses a figure, running before the wind, or a nursemaid, up to a restless child, and, glancing between the curtains, down into the night streets.

Or perhaps after all it is only shadows moving in the wind.

And so she ventures further, away from the shelter of the familiar avenue, out from under the protection of the walls and overhanging trees, into the lanes that thread the town, under
the old buildings, and away towards the open spaces, her feet soft on the grass, nearer to the river. Here she is not alone, here are others, hidden among the tree trunks, in the shadows, alone or together, and perhaps she sees or senses them, perhaps not. But either way, does not care, she is exhilarated simply by being here in the wind and rain and darkness, far from the stifling house and
the smell of more than a dozen cats and the snores of her porcine aunt. Who, if she wakes, breathless, sweating, unwell, afraid, and fumbles for the bell that is always close to hand, and rings loudly, demandingly, and calls, calls, will not be answered, not be heard.

But perhaps, for now, she sleeps. And Adèle Hemmings walks along the path beside the water towards the mill, and her heart pounds
with pleasure and the sky races ahead of the wind, and the sound of her footsteps, like the calling voice and the desperate bell, will never be heard.

THE TWO friends, Amelia Hartshorn and Marjorie Pepys, faced one another again, sitting on either side of the hearth in the cottage in Warwickshire. It was as though there had never been any interlude, any parting. Except that things were in one respect, so terribly changed.

The room, though, was precisely the same, nothing had been disturbed or moved, been taken away or added, since Miss Hartshorn
had left. And the woods still came down almost to the back door and the river ran through the water-meadows beyond the sloping front garden, as they had always done. Now, the wind crashed through the trees, and somewhere in the midst of them, ripped one, old, and weak and rotten, out of its socket, and hurled it to the ground.

It had rained for days, the river was running fast and rising, rising
up the banks.

‘There was no wind there. I missed the wind. Wind in the trees and rain on the roof. The sounds were all quite different in India.’

She would have said. But did not. She found she could not bring herself to speak of India at all. The two years were blown away like scraps, flimsy and inconsequential and so forgotten, to speak of them, to try and recall, reminisce, evoke, seemed
scarcely worth the effort it would cost. The things she had seen, the beauty and the strangeness, and the horror of it all to her, became like dreams or fantasies, far away and fading farther.

‘So, I was wrong to go, quite wrong. There was too much boredom, and too many terrible sights; the heat was too stifling, the dust too thick, the brightness glared in my eyes. I was made to feel subservient,
I had no friends, I should have listened to you. I should not have gone.’

She would have said. But did not.

Nor ask, ‘And you? What of you, alone here for almost two years? Tell me that.’

But did not.

The cottage had not changed, nor this room in it, nor the wood behind it, nor the water-meadows that led to the river.

But Marjorie Pepys had changed. Seeing her, first, at the door, Miss Hartshorn
had almost recoiled, with shock and distress.

Now, she sat opposite to her across the hearth and saw that she had missed the last years of her friend’s life, and must soon lose her, and then, be alone here, to come to terms with her death, and her own burden of guilt.

Marjorie Pepys’s sight was failing, the eyes rheumy and vague. She had been a plump woman and now, she was thin, thin as a bird,
with fragile, brittle bones sticking out through the stretched, dry, parchment skin.

She had been dark, and now was grey, the hair like fluff; had been confident, definite, certain, her movements sure, and now trembled and fumbled and shrank back into herself.

Yet she had said nothing, given no hint of illness in any letter, and so, in what way could it be referred to, this terrible, final change,
what words would encompass it? There were none.

Only, within her, Miss Hartshorn’s voice called out, for an answer, an explanation, and tried to comfort and reassure.

But aloud, they merely spoke of the wind in the trees and the rising river and the dog, which lay on the hearthrug between them and still smelled chokingly, and Miss Hartshorn unpacked a little and brought out a gift or two, trivial
things. Wondered fleetingly about Kitty. But did not care.

Only once, as she passed close to her chair, on the way out of the stifling little room, Marjorie Pepys reached out and perhaps tried to touch her hand and hold it. But the gesture was vague and made in the wrong direction, and came to nothing, after all.

AND THE sun shone and the air was mild, and suddenly, miraculously, for this one day, it was already spring. The light bathed the stones of the buildings and sparkled on the river and played on the arches of the bridges that spanned it.

Waking at dawn, in the pretty new room, and drawing her curtains back, Kitty saw a new world, in a soft, pale light of a kind she had never seen or imagined,
rare, beautiful; and at once, all the greyness, the cold and rain of her first days here were swept away, and with them her own apprehensions and low spirits.

‘Oh, but it is beautiful!’ she said, walking up the avenue with her cousin, under the boughs of the bare trees. ‘Oh!’

They stopped. Ahead of them, across the green lawns, King’s chapel soared to heaven, riding, like a great ship moored.
Birds wheeled in the sky, above the towers and turrets and pinnacles and tree-tops all around.

‘It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.’

And Florence, looking at her rapt face, caught Kitty’s delight and saw it all anew herself and gloried in it and her own spirits rose, too.

They walked slowly on. At their feet, the open cups of crocuses sprouted from the new grass, maundy purple,
white and egg-yolk gold. A thrush delved between.

On the river, and in the mud beside the river, ducks dived, and bobbed about in pairs, moorhens swam and the willows were hazed yellow-green.

‘Oh!’ Kitty said again, and again, ‘Oh!’ and turned this way and that as they walked, looking in amazement around her.

And so they went about the whole morning, walked and walked in the limpid sunshine,
under archways and through gateways, in and out of courts. Went into a tea-shop to drink hot chocolate (for, out of the sun, the east wind still blew cold down passageways and across the grass from off the far Fens), came out again, among the horses and cabs, young men and the bicycles, to walk further still, Kitty’s head a kaleidoscope of everything she saw, her eyes feasted on it in jubilation,
it seemed that she could walk and look for hours and never tire, and so, Florence, walking with her, did not tire either.

And the spring sun shone on old Mrs Gray, sitting in the bay window, who felt it warm on her face, and closed her eyes and dozed a little in pleasure, and Georgiana opened the doors of the window that let onto the garden and went out, lighter of heart than for weeks past,
to look for signs of the upturn of the year, among the shrubs and plants.

It was, for this one day, as if the world stood quite still, suspended, between the gales and cold and lowering skies of the long winter and others, perhaps, to come, and within this frail capsule of warmth and new light, people blossomed briefly, and were soothed, smiled at one another and spoke and strolled more quietly
through the streets and stood companionably in groups on the paths beside the grass and running down to the river.

At the house in the country, which had been taken over at last by workmen, by joiners and tilers and painters and boys carrying hods, the sun shone through empty window sockets and lay in lemon-coloured fans across the bare, dusty boards, and at noon, the men took their bread outside,
to sit on piles of stones and planks about the derelict yards and cobbles, snatching what they could of this unlooked-for spring, before going back, to prepare the place for so many as yet unfallen women.

And other women stood in the open doorways of cottages and for a few minutes, took the sun, and the babies played in the dirt at their feet, and out on the Fens, the warmth briefly stirred men
and birds and plants and all the rest into new life.

But in the end, after all, they must return for lunch. Though Kitty protested, feeling that she might walk, or even dance, in the sun here for ever.

Only, in King’s Parade, Florence met a friend, newly returned from away, and must talk, and so, Kitty went on ahead, through the gateway and around the paths, slowly, in the direction of the river,
and felt, at once, very, very young, new-born on such a morning, and altogether adult, to be here, for these moments, quite alone.