Air and Angels (27 page)

In the end, he struggled
for some way to speak of it to Moxton, some way of explaining.

But he could only say, at length, ‘I saw her … I walked from home, across the Backs. She was – standing on the bridge.’

He fell silent, seeing it again, as he had seen it a thousand times in his mind’s eye, Kitty standing, looking down into the water.

‘You see – my life is changed – utterly and irrevocably changed – and I – I am
not the same man – I – it is as though …’

Cecil walked away a few paces away from him, and stood, head bent.

‘It is all I want – all I – I want nothing more in life. But … how can that be? Why should it be?’ He was crying for help.

Cecil half turned, but did not look at him, could not meet his eye. When he spoke, his voice sounded tight, strange.

He said, ‘But she is a
child
. She is fifteen
years old. She is younger than Elizabeth.’

‘Yes.’

‘She … you cannot …’

Then Thomas said, simply, ‘Why should I not marry her?’

‘Marry?’

‘Not … when she is older … a little older … Why?’ Wildly, as he spoke, he thought it possible.

Knew that it was not.

He said, ‘I have never known love. I am fifty-five, and I have not known love until this time.’

‘No.’

And Cecil looked at him then and
saw that it was true, and that his face was softened and made young by it; it was as though he looked not at a sober, fleshly man, but at someone changed and made altogether new, reborn. And wholly innocent.

And he thought then of his own love, for his wife, as it had begun so many years ago, and of Isobel now, her face blank and turned from him, of the days and nights of despair.

‘What am I
to do?’

Moxton shook his head, not knowing.

‘It is all. There is nothing else, do you not understand that?’ His voice was urgent, angry even, yet he whispered and could scarcely be heard.

In the end, Cecil turned and slowly began to walk away, back in the direction of the house and the garden, the laughing children. Kitty. And after a few moments, Thomas followed him.

Whether it was better
to have spoken or whether he should have kept altogether silent, he did not know.

But, looking up and seeing Kitty, standing slightly apart from the others, at the corner of the lawn, he cared nothing either, forgot it, everything, in thrall to, stunned again by, love.

Looking at his face again, Moxton felt a spurt of anguish and cold fear, but intermingled with a sudden, mad hope, and the desire
to defend him.

The game ended, the circle of figures broke. There were joyful shouts, and then the children came running, laughing towards them over the lawn.

In its pram underneath the tree, the baby stirred in sleep, eyelids fluttering a little. But he did not wake.

And in the trap, driving through the night lanes, Kitty slept, too, and he stopped and laid his coat over her, and then drove
on with infinite care, as if the road beneath them were made of glass.

In the little, rattling train, empty apart from themselves, she sat in the corner of the carriage, huddled back against the seat, pale and moth-like, as the moon rose, silvering the countryside. And the train whistled, eerie, ghostly, running through a tunnel, frightening the vixen who raced away from it, back to her cubs
in the far spinney.

‘You are very tired,’ he said, ‘I have been very wrong to keep you out so late.’

‘Oh no, I am only drowsy. And …’

‘And?’

But she shook her head, and looking out of the window, he saw the backs of the first, dark terraces, on the edge of the town. And – for time still stood, for them and must never spring forward, nothing must end, said.

‘Then perhaps, tomorrow, you would
like to go …’ he hesitated, ‘go to the sea.’

‘The sea,’ she said gravely. ‘Yes. I should like that most of all.’

And they looked into one another’s faces, one another’s eyes, then, and so remained, looking, and never looked away until the train drew into the station.

Hearing their voices and the closing of the door, old Mrs Gray sat on the armchair beside her bed, fully dressed. But did not
go down, did not interfere. Only remembered things that were a lifetime away and, understanding what she had seen in his face, and the meaning of it, feared for him.

‘THE SEA,’ she had said, ‘I should like that most of all.’

And so they went, nothing could have been simpler, and if the world stirred uneasily, beneath the bright, serene, sunlit surface, a calm before the storm, and if he knew, he was entirely careless of it.

There had not been a cloud in the sky for days, they were grown used to it, took it for granted, everybody did.

From the railway
station, they walked up the hill, past the granite-faced church, and at the brow, before the slope began to run down again, stopped, and looked over the rooftops of the little pink- and white- and lemon-painted houses, to where the sea lay, flat and smooth and bright blue as a child’s sea in a picture.

Though when they reached the level, and the narrow lanes that led out onto the foreshore, the
houses, those belonging to the fishermen, were not all so pretty, some were dingy and mean, with blank windows that let in no light.

And the shingle beach sloped down to the water’s edge and the waves swelled up and tumbled over, foaming and swirling all around, it was not, even today, a gentle, sheltered sea.

The pebbles were pale, grey upon grey as gull’s wings, and the gulls themselves perched
on the breakwater, and rawked from the rooftops, wheeling suddenly about the sky, riding the water, far out. The air tasted salt on their lips.

They walked away from the town, and Kitty took off her shoes and the water washed over her bare feet, making her laugh with pleasure.

He wondered how it could be that he was content simply for there to be this, to walk with her, look at her, have her
in this place with him, and be entirely happy, in a state of bliss and utter satisfaction, to need nothing else, nothing more. For all of his past, the old interests and concerns had dropped quite away from him, and his old self was sloughed off, like a skin. And looking about him, he saw the world re-created, all things were strange, new, brave and infinitely rare and beautiful to his eyes. He looked
at sea and sky, at the stones beneath his feet, and the shimmer of the far horizon, and the bird balanced on the post ahead, and he had never seen their like before, all were miraculously new to him.

Kitty was standing, her shoes in her hand, the sea water creaming, opaque, green and white as bottle glass, around her ankles.

She turned, ‘Oh, it is beautiful here. It is a wonderful place. It
is quite perfect.’

And danced then, stretching out her arms, in the sunlight, at the edge of the water.

Behind the town, behind the sea wall, lay the marshes, and the river wound slowly across them inland for mile after mile, under the great, pale bowl of sky.

Later, they came here, and walked again, and as soon as they had left the sea and dropped down onto the marsh path, they left the sound
of it, too, the ceaseless rushing up and falling over and sucking back upon itself, rasping down the pebbles. Here it was utterly quiet, save for the odd, haunting cry of a bird and the brush of their legs against the dry grasses.

The water lay low in pools, half dried up, and the river ran like a silver snail-thread.

Farther away, the sky was darker, as though condensing like a bruise. The
air was very close, very still, it seemed harder to breathe here.

And then, as if both had agreed upon it, though neither had spoken, they sat down, on the dry path, overlooking the water, and the wide, pale marsh, and began, falteringly, to talk to one another in the way of lovers, though neither knew it, or knew that this was a common thing.

He told Kitty what he had scarcely spoken of before,
not because the things were secret, but because there had never been any chance, or occasion, any other person, to tell. Told of childhood and of the house in Ireland, and his days out in the boat with Collum O’Cool, of his sister and her love for him, how she would follow him about; of his mother, school, the university, the church, his friend Cecil Moxton, his work, his God, his love for the
birds, the island and the hours spent alone there, told her his thoughts, feelings, fears, and, in between, the small details, that he did not know he had so much as remembered, and the dreams and the nightmares.

And Kitty told, too, and as she told, relived, and saw it all vividly before her, India, the hot days, the house, the Hills, the servants, the horses, the crying of the jackals at night,
the procession of governesses, and talking of it, wanted it again, missed it, and speaking of her mother and father, cried, as she had not let herself cry since coming to England and the tears seemed necessary. But they were not tears of unhappiness.

They sat, a little apart, not touching, looking away from one another, and after a long time of talking, fell silent, and there was only the whistle
of a bird now and then, in the silence of the marshes around them.

He said, ‘You must eat something. We should go back to the town.’ But, looking up, he saw that the sky had gathered and darkened and was hanging heavily over them, there was thunder faintly in the distance, and the first heavy drops of rain.

All around them, the open marsh, save for, perhaps a hundred yards away, near to the
river-shore, a half-derelict hut, once used by the punt-gunners, abandoned now, for they no longer came to this part.

But it was clean and dry inside, though quite bare. Through the glass-less window, and the door that swung half open, they looked out at the rain, as it came in soft, pale clouds, sweeping over the marsh, shutting out the line of the land, where it met the sky. The air smelled
of earth and salt and of the mud, stirred by the first rain for weeks.

He said quietly, ‘Until now, I have never cared for any living creature, as I have cared for birds. A single curlew cry in the midst of the marsh, or a wader standing alone at the edge of the water– I have never ached for any human beauty as I have ached at the sight of those. Until now.’

She listened, her eyes still on his
face, and received what he said gently, kindly.

‘I saw you first, standing on the stone bridge, looking down into the water. You did not see me – know me then – or I you. And you were like – the most graceful bird, and so, I loved. At once. But not as – and what to do … how to … what may happen to this love or … what you …’

He stumbled hopelessly over the words, they made nonsense, he was defeated
by them, and buried his face in his hands, his eyes burning, his tongue dry, cleaving to his mouth.

The rain made a soft rushing sound on the roof of the hut, as though a brush were being swept across it, to and fro, to and fro.

Kitty said, ‘This is love. It is – it is not as I had thought.’

He shook his head, but did not look up.

But after a moment, said, ‘I care for nothing else. You should
know that. Will not. There is
nothing else
in life.’

He looked up. ‘It is terrifying.’

He wanted to reach out to her, but did not. He was paralysed.

She was standing at the window with her back to him, watching the drifting rain, falling like needles onto the still surface of the river.

He said, ‘Kitty,’ his voice an odd, rasping whisper.

Then, very carefully, she began to remove her clothes,
the wrap, the long, full dress, the petticoats and stockings and chemise, they fell onto the floor and were left like soft, discarded feathers. She stepped out of them and then was motionless, before him, and pale, and naked as a wand, her body not yet a woman’s body, not yet formed. But he did not know that, had never seen, nor had any image of it in his mind.

He scarcely breathed.

But then,
knelt before her, and gazed and as he gazed, reached out his hand and drew it down her body, an inch away from the flesh, not touching her at all, drew it down to her bare feet, and back and reaching her breast and shoulder, mouth, hair, would have touched. But could not.

Kitty’s eyes were lowered, she did not look at him.

And in the end, he rose and stumbled out and half fell, a few yards away,
onto the path, and knelt there in the gentle rain, weeping, his head bent, face covered by his hands.

LATER, THE rain stopped, and a fine mist clung to the surface of the marsh. But above it, the sun shone through again, reflecting on the surface of the water. The air smelled infinitely sweet.

Kitty stood at the door of the hut, white-faced, and somehow, older. She was dressed, her clothes carefully arranged, so that he wondered wildly if it had indeed happened, if she had ever stood naked
for him, or whether he had had some insane, half-waking dream.

They walked back over the mud, between the wet grasses, to the sea and the streets of the town, and felt strange, embarrassed to pass houses, be among even a few people.

At the hotel, they ate, and drank a little, sitting in a dark back room, and Kitty was reminded of her first evening in England, with cousin Florence, after she
had disembarked. A lifetime ago.

Then, because his clothes and shoes were soaked through, but more because he knew in his heart that this, today, would be the end of it all, but could not, could not bear the end ever to be, he asked for rooms, and rooms were found, they could rest and bathe, his things were taken away and dried.

He said, ‘We had better stay here. It is too late to get back now.’

‘Yes,’ Kitty said.

And quite early, she went to bed, and slept at once, exhausted. Thomas went out again, when his things were returned, to walk in the darkness along the shingle, close to the sea, despairing, incredulous, joyful, entirely calm.

He spent the night in Kitty’s room, sitting up in a chair, and looking over to where she slept, and waiting for the dawn to break on the horizon, along
the line of the sea.

When it did, waking Kitty, she did not start, but watched him as he sat, and when he turned and saw her, said, ‘Remember this.’