Air and Angels (25 page)

‘Nevertheless …’

Florence did not reply, nor turn back to him.

There was silence again.

He had no idea what else he might do, only sat staring down at the empty teacup and saucer in his hands, a cold, dead misery numbing him through.

He had come only in the hope of seeing her
and he had not seen her, and so he must go, back to college, he supposed, or home, or else, to walk without purpose about the lawns and paths. It did not matter where.

Florence’s back was stiff and straight as a rule.

He set down his cup, rose heavily.

And, hearing him, she too felt the cold, leaden weight of disappointment.

He had said nothing.

But why then had he come?

But he was simply
embarrassed, this would not be easy for a man like him.

Of course he would come again.

She turned, having reassured herself, smiled brilliantly.

In the hall, she waited, as he took up his stick, drew on his gloves, and tried to choose the words to say, ‘
I
will teach her. Let her come to me, let her …’

But could not have spoken them.

And, hearing the sounds, the maid came down the passage
to open the front door, he had almost left.

And then footsteps running, and she was there, on the staircase, and seeing them below, stopped, said, ‘Oh, hello … good afternoon.’

He looked up at her.

Kitty flushed a little, with confusion, as well as the excitement of running.

‘I am going out to tea in an undergraduate’s rooms – that is, a lady, a woman undergraduate, of course. I have suddenly
made a whole lot of friends, isn’t it fun, and they have introduced me to others.’

She jumped down the last two or three stairs, hair loose, flying out.

He was transfixed by her, his heart pounding.

Then, she looked at him, and her face became quite grave. She said quietly, ‘But you must not think badly of me. I am not become completely frivolous, I have not forgotten what I said to you, you
must not think that I did not mean it.’

‘No. I did not think it.’

‘It is just that the weather is so very beautiful and – but I am to study, it is all being arranged, there is so much I am to learn.’

It seemed to Thomas that they stood looking at one another in the dim hall for hours, then, for a lifetime, for no time. Yet for only a split second. And that no one else was there, no one else
existed in the world.

Then, Florence stepped forward, spoke, the maid put her hand up to her cap, and so, the pieces fell into a different, duller pattern, and he had gone, the usual politenesses said.

It was over.

He walked very quickly until he was out of sight of the house, and then stopped for breath, and clutched at the wall, and held onto it, dizzy and trembling violently.

And Kitty
took her bag, and her wrap, too, in case the evening grew chilly. (But it would not, of course it would not, it was a perfect early summer evening. Only Florence insisted, and indeed, was rather sharp.) And by then the friends had arrived, three of the young women, she was swept away by them, she was happy. And later, reminded for some reason, of the scene in the hall, of Thomas Cavendish, felt a
sudden, warm impulse of friendliness towards him, and even of complicity, as though they shared some secret from which all others were excluded. Though if she had been asked, she could not have explained the feeling, or justified it.

And then, the afternoon, the new friends, the sudden gaiety of it all, overtook her.

Coming down after her rest, old Mrs Gray sensed the air in the drawing-room
sour with dashed hopes and disappointment.

Florence stood looking out of the window again.

‘I suppose you want to have tea. Ena has just now cleared away but of course she can make some more.’

‘No. I shall not want to trouble her.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mother, it is what they are for, there is no question of troubling.’

She rang the bell irritably, and then, when the maid did not come at
once, stalked out and into the hall.

But in the hall, stopped, and saw it all again, saw Kitty careering down the stairs, hair flying. Saw her stop, saw Cavendish look up at her.

Saw on his face an expression she had never seen before but could not understand or put a name to.

IN THE Hills, Myrtle Piggerton has a flirtation, and perhaps it will become an affair.

(But such things usually remain quite innocent here.)

And Eleanor watches and is shocked, or envious. But at any rate, withdraws her friendship a little, and so, is even more lonely herself. And desperate for Kitty.

She goes to church a great deal, and volunteers to organise a Sale of Handiwork, in aid
of blind native children.

Makes plans to go Home.

On the plain, Lewis sweats and works and drinks too much.

Is lonely. And wakes in the hot nights, out of wild, terrible dreams, to find that he is weeping, and tries to bring Kitty’s face to mind, for comfort.

And cannot.

One morning, very early, Eustace Partridge walks four miles, in the chill, pale mist that lies over the fields, before
the sun has risen, to catch the first train that rattles with milk churns, through the quiet countryside to Cambridge.

And his young wife wakes in the empty room, not knowing where he might have gone, or why.

But by now she is used to that.

No one opens the shutters of the house in Norfolk. But a little sunlight finds an entrance here, and here, and cuts, thin and bright as a blade, across
the dusty floor.

It is dawn when Adèle Hemmings slips home from her solitary spying upon lovers, and hearing voices that speak only to her from the moon and stars, prophesying, urging.

Miss Hartshorn clears cupboards and drawers and wardrobes of her friend’s clothes, and parcels them, to despatch them to the workhouse, or to poor relief, and looks up from time to time and out of the bedroom
window, which is still open, as Marjorie Pepys wanted, the night of her death. But thinks nothing, dares not dwell upon the past or contemplate the future. Only, occasionally some scene from India flashes unbidden across her mind, surprising her in its detail and brilliance.

For two days, the weather dulled slightly, there was cloud and a little drizzle. But then it passed and was forgotten,
the sun rose higher, and May bloomed on in its full glory, of lilac and laburnum, the last of the hawthorn and the first of the elder, and all the fields golden with cowslips and dandelions, thick as stars.

And the flat blades of iris with lavender-blue heads, stood tall against the old stone walls in every college garden.

Georgiana, opening the windows and coming out onto the lawn, saw a cat
pounce hard upon one of the first fledglings, and screamed at it and flapped at it and called to Alice and cleared the sad mess of blood and bones and feathers hastily away, before her brother should return home.

But Thomas sat on a bench under the great branching chestnut trees beside the river, and thought, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty, in hope and love and dread, and nothing else held any interest
for him or had any meaning at all.

HE WANTED to be with her. The thought of it possessed him completely, there was nothing else.

Kitty.

But the opportunity came quite soon, and presented itself entirely naturally.

He had the name of a possible tutor in Latin and Greek, the unmarried daughter of a fellow of another college, who lived at home and cared for an invalid mother, and longed for stimulus, distraction and younger
company, and would be entirely suitable.

And, of course, he could have written a brief note, would have done so, under normal circumstances.

But nothing was normal now.

Mid-afternoon of an early June day. The avenue was very quiet, some blinds down here and there. It was still hot, the sun still shone and shone.

The chime sounded, far away in the recesses of the house.

He must simply hand
in the address, see no one, he had no reason to go inside.

The maid opened the door.

And Kitty was behind her, in the hall.

He thought that his heart, beating so violently, might erupt out of his chest. He held his hands tightly around his stick and behind his back, because he could not control their trembling.

In the drawing-room, everything was in order, formal, neat, the clock ticked into
the silence.

He thought, how dull it must be for her here, with the two women, how uninteresting, after life in India. Though he had no real idea of how that life might have been.

‘I am so sorry. There is only me. My cousin is unwell, she has a bad migraine headache and is in bed, and Aunt Dosie is always resting at this time of day.’

‘Aunt Dosie …’

‘Mrs Gray. Her name is Theodosia, don’t
you think that very romantic-sounding? But not very Scottish, which of course she is – and never can forget it. I wonder where the name came from?’

He looked at her in bewilderment. She was a child, chattering on, trying to behave in the correct, adult way with an unexpected visitor. A child, that was all.

But she was Kitty. And her flesh, her hair, the bones of her fingers, as they rested on
a chairback, seemed to him rare and amazing, the most precious he had ever seen, she was more beautiful than angels. Kitty.

He did not believe that anyone before this time, this day, could so have loved another being.

‘So I am here alone. Almost alone. And all my new friends are doing their examinations, they cannot attend to me just now.’

He said, and heard his own voice sound strangely into
the room, ‘I have the name of someone who might perhaps be suitable to tutor you in the classics. Your cousin asked me for advice, I … it is a Miss Unsworth. I am slightly acquainted with her father.’

He did not know how to order the words aright, how to speak to her at all, he was aware of sounding unnatural, false, stiff.

‘Oh, you are very kind. Where does she live? When might I see her? I
am very anxious to begin. You see, it is my aim to be an undergraduate. I have been quite inspired by the friends I have made – those Miss Pontifex introduced me to. I long to live in the college and have people of my own age all around me and a room of my own. Oh, but I do realise how much I have to do, how ignorant I am. But I
intend
to succeed.’

Her face was bright, earnest. Kitty, he thought.
And almost groaned aloud. Kitty, Kitty.

‘And now you have gone to so much trouble for me, and you are such an important man and so very busy. And I will go to see Miss …?’

‘Unsworth. Miss Rose Unsworth …’

‘Yes. Oh, do forgive me – I should have – may I offer you some tea? Or rather, a glass of sherry. I know that is the correct thing to offer a college fellow, sherry is what they drink all
the time.’ She flushed, seeing him smile.

‘Only, I do not mean that …’

‘Of course you do not. And you are quite right. About the sherry. On the whole, that is to say. But I will not take any now, thank you.’ But at once, wished that he had accepted, needing to stay here with her, to be in this room.

So, he would have tea instead, when she offered it again.

But she forgot to do so.

Faintly,
from the street, the cry of ‘Rag and bone, rag and bone …’

And then she said, ‘My cousin was going to ask if you would perhaps show us around your college one day. I have only seen any of them from the outside, of course, from the gardens; and once, I stood in the great court of Trinity. And we walk across the Backs. The women’s college is really rather new, and very different, there are no pictures
or treasures of any kind.’

‘Is that what you would like? To look around the inside of a college? To see pictures and treasures?’

He would take them, of course, show them what there was to show, for it would mean he might be with her, it was all he wanted. He would invite them.

He said, not knowing that he was going to do so, ‘Then let us go. You have nothing else to do? It seems rather – quiet
for you here.’

‘Now? This afternoon?’

‘Now, this afternoon. That is, if Mrs Bowering …’

‘Oh, no, it will be perfectly all right, she would not be able to come and I had better not disturb her, she is really very unwell. Her headaches last two or three days sometimes, I am told, she has to have the blinds down and absolute quiet. Shall I need a coat? No, I think it is warm enough. I will just
tell the maid to say where I have gone.’

The door opened and closed, stirring the still air, shifting the curtains as she went, hair flying out from her shoulders.

He swayed slightly, reached quickly for a chair.

Thought, Kitty. Kitty, Kitty, Kitty.

Thought nothing else at all, was only carried on the tide of it. And did not at all consider what he was about to do, the propriety or not. None
of it mattered. Nothing mattered.

He wanted to show her the treasures of the created world.

And besides, he was old, he was fifty-four years old, and a Senior Fellow, a clergyman, it was perfectly appropriate and acceptable that he should escort her.

The clock ticked on into the silence.

He was never to forget any of it, for the rest of his life he would remember everything, in the smallest
detail.

But perhaps that afternoon most of all. For on that day, it seemed, his life began. Before it, he realised, there had been nothing, nothing at all.

(And after it, for however many years there were, less than nothing. But that was a different matter.)

Such paintings, such treasures as the college had, he showed her.

(They took a cab there from the stand at the corner. Closing his eyes,
even thirty years later, he could see the hairs on the thick neck of the man who drove it, the seam of grease on his collar.)

There was the great picture in the chapel. The Adoration. He took her to that first of all. Stood, watching her eyes become used to the dimness, and focus upon it, trace the figures one by one, the potentate, the shepherds, the Madonna, the waxen child.

And her own face
was grave and still as those portrayed there, and the light from the candles beside the altar gave it the same fine, painted sheen.