Air and Angels (28 page)

He went and knelt beside her then and buried his head in the bed-cover, and, briefly, she reached out her hand and touched his hair, stroking it lightly as she might that of a distressed child, to comfort.

And it was the only touch between them.

FOR NATURALLY, he had been right, those three days were both the beginning and the end of it all, there was to be no more.

But what there had been was enough to ruin him, and the shame lasted a lifetime. But he understood that, accepted it. His only fear was for Kitty. But Kitty was taken away, Kitty scarcely suffered at all. Or so it was supposed. But as she never spoke of it, no one knew.

When they arrived back in Cambridge, it was to find Florence and Georgiana come home early from London.

(Georgiana having felt unwell, and depressed after their tour of St Faith’s Shelter, so that she had no taste at all for the enjoyments they had planned, the theatres and concerts, the strolls in St James, she had been such poor company that Florence had agreed quite easily that they should
leave. And besides, she was anxious to get back, living as she did in such hope of a proposal, wanting to further her own plans. She had even confided to Georgiana that she had some reason for hope, though Georgiana had said nothing, uncertain what to believe. But perhaps it was so.)

Except, of course that it was not and had never been. And arriving home and finding Kitty and Thomas gone, and
when they did not return that night, she saw how things were, the truth was plain, shocking and terrible, before her.

It was not until long afterwards that Florence vented every morsel of the bitterness and hatred she felt, speaking one night to her mother. At the time, she said only, ‘I will destroy him.’ And did so, quite easily, by going at once to the Dean.

On the same day, Eustace Partridge
had climbed up to his old tutor’s room, seeking advice, help, comfort, a welcome, for he planned to leave his wife, and come back here, take up the old ways, somehow, find refuge. But found instead a note pinned to the door, and then, from the servant, and another undergraduate, an old friend, met by chance in the town, heard rumours and parts of the story, and felt utterly betrayed, and most
of all by what he saw as the hypocrisy. He had expected nothing of himself, nothing of any other man, but of Cavendish, he expected everything, probity, self-discipline, chastity – perfection.

He left Cambridge at once, not for home, but for London, to lose himself, confused, angry, and, at last, sitting on a park bench late at night, infinitely sorry too for another wasted life.

In the house,
Kitty stood at the window of her room, and later, lay on her bed fully clothed. But did not sleep. She felt that a hundred, or a thousand years, had passed in three days, and was grown up and completely adult, it was as if she understood the meaning of all things, had seen to the heart of them, and above all understood instinctively that she had known love, of a kind she would never know again,
for the rest of her life, and was humbled by it, and grateful for it, and ashamed of nothing.

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

Much later, after dinner, for which she did not go down, old Mrs Gray came and sat with her for a little, and held her hand in the darkness, and all was well, at least between the two of them.

She had not expected it. But it was to Georgiana
that he talked, told everything there was, breaking down several times, as he did so, told every detail of those days and of his feelings, the whole truth. And she believed him without question, and would, of course, remain with him, protect him, defend him, that would never be in doubt.

And only wept, when she was finally alone, wept for the innocence of it all, and his vulnerability, and because
of his suffering that must go on, for ever perhaps, and for which she could give him no help, no alleviation. But envied him, too, for what he had known, the love that had so transformed him.

EVERYTHING HAPPENED as might have been expected.

Eleanor, having heard of the death of her husband, and written of it to Kitty, and begun all the dreary business of packing and leaving the Hills and returning to Calcutta, and the empty house, the dumb, respectful servants, having bravely begun to come to terms with it, even, and the realisation that her life here was over, and she had no purpose
in India now, received the letter from Florence, telling Kitty’s story, dealing the new blow.

And so made the arrangements to sail for home, and in time, arrived, and took Kitty at once away from Cambridge, to London first, and, later, to Sussex. (And it was to Sussex that Thea Pontifex went to live, after her marriage, and only a dozen miles or so away from Kitty, and perhaps, eventually, they
met. Or perhaps they did not – but Miss Pontifex, at any rate, was happy.)

And night after night, Adèle Hemmings continued to slip out of the back gate and down through the snickets and alleyways, prowling, muttering. But finally, was discovered, wandering naked beside the weir, and taken to shelter, and was fortunate never to have been harmed. Though by now she was quite deranged, and scarcely
understood.

For three more days afterwards, her aunt lay dead in the upstairs room of their house, as she had already been, for who knew how long, and the cats, wild with hunger, marauded through the gardens all around.

And, the door of the conservatory having somehow been left open, when the birds were out, by Georgiana, or by Thomas himself, preoccupied, still, a cat, inevitably, found the
way in, and there was carnage, which Thomas discovered at dawn. And Georgiana, hearing him, came down, grey hair plaited, and hanging over her shoulder, and sat, as he wept, then, holding him, and rocking him like a child, in the midst of all the small, maimed, broken bodies, and blood, and bright, scattered feathers.

Among the possessions and papers of Miss Lovelady, gone through eventually
by lawyers somewhere, a note was found, neatly written, leaving the house in Norfolk to Kitty, who was traced, and so it came to her.

But she could never bear to go to it. It remained empty, winter and summer, for years more, and then was sold for very little. But it gave her some money of her own which, one day, she might be glad of.

There was nothing left for Miss Hartshorn in the cottage
in Warwickshire, had been nothing since she had cut herself off from it, by going to India. She had come back, but not to belong. So that she did not know where to go, what to do, and so thought of India again, wondered if she ought to return. For where else was there?

But knew she could not have faced that, and what, in any case, would be the point or purpose?

Instead, on a sudden whim, she
closed the cottage, and went in search of the place she had come from, so many years ago, another village, sheltered by a fold of the Cotswold Hills. She had grown up here, but left at the age of seventeen, and never returned, and felt fear, as she approached, in case it had changed beyond all recognition, and she would no longer know it, for then, the last hope would have gone, and there would be
nowhere in the world for her to belong.

But nothing had changed, all was exactly as she remembered, as she walked up the hill between the low stone cottages, in the evening light, and stood in the lane, outside the door of the first house in which she had lived as a young child, and knew that the past had been given back to her, and that she was saved, rescued from herself, and all her own mistakes
and follies, and not barren, but infinitely rich.

Old Mrs Gray lived on, through the scandal and all its aftermath, and into the years when, for most people, it became old history, forgotten, and still planned her visit to the Scotland of her girlhood. But died eventually without having gone, though not until she was almost a hundred, and by then Florence had begun to age, and be forgetful and
ill-tempered, and periodically did not recognise this or that person, which was the start of her illness. (But the romantic way of seeing it was that the disappointment and bitterness had turned her mind, and jealousy and hatred eaten like a canker into it, ruining her.) But whether she would have recognised as much as the names of those involved, was uncertain.

Georgiana resigned from the Committee
for Moral Welfare, but others took over, and in time, the house in the country was completed and inhabited by generations of fallen young women, for there was never any shortage. Though none was ever so fallen as those who, in truth, were not.

There were other committees for Georgiana to join, and she was invited to do so, for no one ostracised her. Indeed, a point was publicly made of not doing
so, she was welcomed and valued, her life was fuller than it had ever been.

Alice stayed on, and trudged each Sunday and Wednesday evening, to the spiritualist fellowship, and the seances, which seemed to sustain her, or at any rate, to do no harm.

But, for about a year after the scandal broke and spread like a stain, thickening and deepening as it went, life was suspended, because Thomas and
Georgiana went abroad, to Switzerland first and then to Italy, not so much because he felt obliged to go, as that he could not bear to stay, and not to see Kitty, and yet to see her everywhere, to walk across the Backs, and towards the stone bridge, where she always stood for him, looking down into the water.

Only, abroad, he saw her too, and had her with him constantly, so that in a sense things
were no different.

But their absence gave people the time to talk and be done with talking, and on his return, they were kind and pretended to have forgotten. Most people. And after all, what was the scandal, what exactly had happened? Who knew?

He continued to write his book on the sea-birds, and completed it, and it was published and became a standard work, and that gave him some satisfaction.
He even began another. But abandoned it, unfinished, after some years.

Otherwise, he went a great deal to the houseboat, spent days and weeks alone there in the silence, and the tranquillity, the lapping of the water, the open skies, the crying of the birds, the dawns and the moonlit nights, wind and sun and storms, soothed him, rinsed his mind of all anxiety, so that he seemed to float, quietly,
on the surface of the shining water, infinitely calm. And read his Bible, and the Daily Office there. But did not otherwise pray.

And Kitty was always with him, the memory of her never dimmed or became cloudy, and the love he had felt he continued to feel, and it was never supplanted.

He regretted nothing at all. He had known a brief time of joy, absolute and unalloyed, and saw it as a foretaste
of paradise.

So that many years later, as an old man, standing in the sunshine by the river, which was crowded with the young men in boats, and holding a saucer, and a dish of strawberries, and looking up, and seeing a girl in a pale dress, on the stone bridge, the past raced towards and broke over him and became the present, and he felt what he had felt anew, fresh and raw and vivid. Love, as
he had never forgotten for one second of a lifetime since, nor ever once regretted.

And Kitty?

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