Air and Angels (26 page)

He could scarcely breathe.

After a moment, he pointed to the kneeling figure, the rapture on the uplifted, worshipping face.

Kitty nodded slightly.

Coming out of the coolness, and the gloom, they laughed, freed, in some way, by the brightness and the warmth of
the sunshine that blazed in their faces.

‘It is very beautiful. It is very
grand
,’ Kitty said. ‘And how old the child looks. And how wise.’

She paused. ‘But I did not very much care for the chapel. The atmosphere is so sad. And … and crushing. I felt very insignificant there.’

Kitty, he thought.

And here she was.

He wanted to cry out to the four walls.

Kitty, Kitty, Kitty.

Then, there were
the corridors, and the staircases, the great Hall, the Gallery, the portraits, the cases and vaults of silver, the chained Bible, King Henry’s library, the Elizabethan chest. More staircases. More corridors. It seemed to him dull as the tomb.

On a narrow landing, she half knelt, to peer through a slit of window onto the Fellows’ garden below.

‘Like looking through the wrong end of a telescope.’

Otherwise, inside the old buildings she scarcely spoke and when she did, almost whispered. Her face was very composed, very grave. As grave, as solemn, as the waxen child. As wise.

She had coiled her hair up, beneath her hat.

Once, as she half turned, he saw the skin of her long neck, pale, and almost transparent with a sheen as on a circle of honesty. He stared, his mouth dry.

But then, coming
out from the shadow of the buildings, and under the arch into the full sunlight again, and the garden and paths that led down to the river, suddenly she smiled, and took off her hat and shaking her head, let her hair fall onto her neck and shoulders, down her back, all anyhow, and skipped once or twice, turning to say something to him, eyes dancing.

And he felt it, too, the shadow fell away from
him, and rolled off his back, he put the buildings, the walls, the books and the paintings and the treasures, all, all behind him and forgot them, they were nothing, they were as dust, and so, laughing, too, he went beside her towards the river which ran between the banks, sparkling in the sun and where the young men in boaters punted and rowed and the young women sat together, smiling, and glided
with pleasure under the bridges, into the rippling shadows, and out again, and the moorhens and coots circled around and about them, and the willows trailed gentle strands into the water.

He looked down at her as she stood beside him, holding her straw hat between her hands, against her dress.

He said, ‘Have you been on the river yet?’

Her face, upturned to his, was the face of a young child.

And so they went, walked down to where the boats were, below the bridge, and took one.

He had not rowed on this river for more than thirty years.

Getting in, she reached out her hand to balance, but he would not have touched it, drew back a little. But the boatman was there, she turned instinctively to him to hand her in.

And then, as she settled on the cushions, leaning back a little, put
the straw hat back upon her head, and her face was grave again, and quite serene, looking down at the water, and above the water, to the bank, and the bridges, and over and beyond them, to where the towers and stone walls soared to the sky.

He thought only, this time is the most precious there has ever been, all moments have led to this, all moments end here, end now. And then thought nothing
more, and there was no more time.

The boat slipped through the water between others, and if he was seen by anyone, he did not know it, would not have cared. After a time, they were downstream, away from the buildings and the Backs, under bridge after bridge, and out of the town altogether, to where the river ran between grassy meadows, full of buttercups and poppies, and tall swaying grass-heads,
and the brown cows grazed down almost to the water’s edge.

Once, a kingfisher darted low, bright, blazing blue, from bank to bank.

In holes in the mud, a family of young water rats played, peered. Vanished.

Kitty trailed her hand in the water and the ripples spread gently out from it, thinner and fainter, as they receded, and there was no sound except the creak of the rowlock and the dip and
push of the oars. And all around them, the birds, madly singing.

He felt unreal, bodiless. He felt wonder. Astonishment. Pure, vibrant joy.

No dread, no fear, no bewilderment now, but acceptance, as of some miraculous gift.

And, looking across at Kitty, love.

Her face was turned from him, shaded by the rim of her hat. Serious. Absorbed.

He could row for ever.

But after a time, hours, or
years it might have been, they moored beside a path that led through meadows to a village, and walked slowly there and had tea in a garden, at a table under the trees. There was no one else at all.

‘It is like the England in pictures and books, the England they all long for. I read about it, from being very young, in India. And heard them all talk. This is what they remember.’

‘Yes. It is not
always like this. But you know that now.’

‘Oh yes – the rain, the cold wind, those grey streets. But all that has gone now, hasn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes.’

And stared at her wrist as it curved to hold her cup.

From somewhere deep in the far trees, a cuckoo.

‘There would be nightingales here,’ he said.

In the end, they walked slowly back towards the river, where the boat lay low on the
water beneath the sloping bank.

But at the bank, she stopped, and sat down on the grass and leaned back on her hands, smiling, peaceful. Said, ‘It is the most beautiful day I can remember. Days like this should never be over.’

He thought that he would weep then.

And, as he looked down at her, she looked up, full into his face.

And looking up, Kitty saw love, and knew it at once for what it
was, though she had never seen it in this way before. And, for a second only, she was puzzled, and afraid. But then what she felt was simply adult, fully grown up in that moment, as if she had crossed a bridge or walked through some door and had gained all the wisdom, and the knowledge of the universe and of the human heart, and could never now go back. And, recognising it, she took it upon herself
at once, accepted it.

And all in a second. No more.

Slowly, she stood up. Again she did not ask him for a hand to help her. He would not have dared to give it.

She faced him.

He said, ‘Kitty.’

And thought to die, then.

Very carefully, she stepped back into the little boat, and sat, gathering her skirts around her, her back straight, eyes wide. He saw the pulse leaping in her throat.

And
took up the oars and in silence and stillness, rowed them back, and the sun had slipped down a little in the sky, and shone onto her and blazed round her, and all was different between them, and the world wholly changed for ever.

‘KITTY?’

But it was the maid, Ena, who was in the room, changing the water jug.

The headache had not lessened, though the sickness was gone.

‘Miss Kitty has gone out, ma’am, for a tour of the colleges.’

‘With some of her friends? The undergraduates?’

‘No, ma’am, with the Reverend Mr Cavendish, who called.’

But she was not well enough to get up until the following afternoon, and then,
felt the usual, bruised wariness, afraid that some sudden movement would trigger the headache again. It was like a thunderstorm that has rolled away, to linger dully somewhere in the near distance, and might at any time return.

At tea, she said, ‘I hear you visited the colleges? Privilege indeed!’

‘Yes.’ Kitty spread honey upon a slice of bread. Her hair was plaited tight at the back of her
head, her dark linen dress severely plain. She was not the same person.

Would never be.

‘It was very interesting.’

But, staring into her face, Florence found it closed, and defying admittance.

Only, the previous evening, it had not defied old Mrs Gray, who had been sitting at the window when Kitty returned and had looked into it, and into his face, too, and seen what was open and plainly written
there.

But would of course say nothing.

I
N THE
early morning, Lewis leaves the house and rides, and feels well, strong, vigorous, able, even, to tolerate the intolerable heat. On Friday, at last, he will leave for the Hills.

By noon, he shivers with fever at his desk, and later, is giddy, disorientated.

Later still, before midnight, dead, on the floor beside the bed, where he has fallen, eyes wide open, staring, staring.

IT WAS such a short time, to change lives so irrevocably, and all over so quickly.

(For Florence and Georgiana were gone on the train to London, to be taken around St Faith’s Shelter for the fallen young women, they would stay at a good hotel close to the park, and go to theatres and galleries, too, and shop in St James’s, they would enjoy themselves, it would do them both good.)

It was only
three days.

But it seemed to him that it lasted for ever, looking back, it had been the whole of his life.

(Though Kitty, looking back, if she ever did, could barely recall it.)

She had said that she would like more friends, that she had only Miss Pontifex’s undergraduates, who in any case were older, and had their own lives, and perhaps had merely been kind.

‘I will give you friends – new
friends, of just your own age, or thereabouts, they will be glad to welcome you.’

And so they went, on the train for a short distance, and then, through the lanes in a trap, between verges, thick and creamy with the late flowering of cow parsley, and, here and there, wild scabious, pale, chalky blue, and clouds of tiny butterflies, orange-tipped, drifted up as the wheel brushed against the grass.

It was the most perfect of days once more.

(And what old Mrs Gray thought, she did not speak, only wondered sadly, sitting at the wide window in Cambridge, about Florence and all her illusions.)

He had left a note on his door in college, and done no work at all, and seen no one, and did not think of any of it for a moment.

Kitty sat straight-backed, very still, they were quite silent with one
another.

But now and then she smiled, at him, or away, at some distant, secret thing.

And looking at him, she felt old beyond her years, and responsible, too. She was not girlish, had no thought of chattering about any of it to such friends as she had, understanding that it was not a thing of that kind. Though she had never until now known anything of love, that had been to do with some distant,
possible future, she had not bothered to consider it.

She saw that he looked at her, and saw love, again, and recognised its rarity, its absolute value. But felt quite calm, though knew that he was not, and that for him it was momentous in a way she could only dimly comprehend, that he trembled and was afraid. Felt for him.

But whether she loved in return, she could not have told.

The trap
turned into the village, where honeysuckle and the first of the roses flowered and climbed and cascaded over walls and doors.

Corridors, Georgiana thought, it is always corridors. And high, narrow windows, and iron beds, primly made, and girls with sad faces scrubbing floors. Texts on the walls. Bibles. Sheets being hemmed, in a great, bare basement hall.

And the babies taken away from them
as soon as born.

And all for what? she thought, for what? Wanting to weep.

In India, the message makes its slow way up from Calcutta to the Hills, passed without interest through a dozen hands.

Eleanor sits on the verandah and looks at the green, green trees on the opposite slope, and is aloof from Myrtle Piggerton (whose flirtation has petered out, but who must still suffer the social consequences),
and is lonely, and will be lonelier still, soon.

But rings the bell for iced tea, not yet knowing.

In the garden of the vicarage, more roses, and beds of great, pink, blowsy peonies, and the children, the girls walking arm in arm (for of course, they had taken to her at once, and especially Elizabeth, she was straightaway become a friend), and the baby peaceful in the pram.

Later, after tea,
they played French cricket, where the lawn ran down towards unkempt grass and the great hawthorn hedge.

(But Isobel stayed in the house, she felt unsafe in the outside world, vulnerable. And they were used to it, their life continued more or less without her, though several times, one or other of them had gone back to see her, and the sense of her despair hovered around the edges of the day,
and the summer sunshine, souring them a little.)

But Kitty did not feel it, Kitty was not soured, Kitty ran and threw and laughed and kicked off her shoes and rocked the baby back to sleep, and tossed her hair from off her face, and the small boys clambered about her, pulling her down, spinning her round, ambushing her with shouts. Kitty, Kitty, Kitty.

She was a child among them.

But once,
caught him looking at her, and smiled, bright-faced, joyous, and he saw that, after all, he had no need to speak, that she knew, had long known, and that all was open between them, and then, his heart leaped, in pain and pleasure, then, all things in the world were possible, and there was no hurt or harm anywhere.

Standing beside him, Cecil Moxton saw too, and stared, bewildered, disbelieving.

Slowly, they began to walk away together, out of the garden, echoing with the cries of the children and through the gate that led to the fields, and followed the path bordering the wood, the terrier running before them. They walked for a mile or more, until they were out of sight of the house, the hayfields thick and rich and sweet around them.

But for a long time he could not speak, only looked
at the hayfields stretching all around and away from them in the late afternoon light, the faint haze on the horizon, as if the sea lay there. And he had again the sense of time, as well as space, stretching infinitely ahead of him, and yet of there being no time, and of standing here at the still centre of things, the place to which he had been journeying all his life.