Air and Angels (3 page)

From somewhere just behind the house, a sudden wail, and then the brief noise of screeching, quarrelling voices rises and falls; and at once it is quiet again, and the heavy, sleepy stillness of mid-afternoon has scarcely been disturbed. Miss Hartshorn has almost learned
to ignore such ripples upon the bland surface of everyday life, though always aware that the raised voices and screams and wails that may mean nothing more significant than a spat between the cook and the boy over utensils, may equally well signify riot, sickness, madness or sudden death.

In her innermost heart, she is still terrified of this bright, passionate, impenetrably strange country.
She has merely learned to overlay her fears with apparent calm and indifference.

‘The flowerbeds are very gay again,’ she bends her head to write, ‘they sow seeds one day and it seems they are all but up the next! I am still unused to the sight of hibiscus and plumbago and bougainvillea, cheek by jowl with pansies, asters, petunias and snapdragons.’

Kitty dozes, to the plashing of the fountain
beneath her window. But in the Hills, there is always water, the ceaseless tumbling of it, down between the tree trunks into the river that flows far below. And the river forms the background to everything, though after a day or two there, one simply ceases to notice it.

In the end, between the fountain and the slight stirring of the breeze, she does fall soundly asleep. Come in to her some time
later, Lady Moorehead is taken aback by the extreme whiteness of her daughter’s skin, its delicacy. But above all, by the fact that she looks so young, so child-like again in sleep, and touches a finger to her cheek, and then bends to kiss her. Kitty stirs, but does not wake, and Eleanor Moorehead leaves the room quietly troubled, and rendered indecisive all over again by the subject that has
been so preoccupying her, and about which she had all but made up her mind to speak to Lewis that night.

For what has flared up anew within her, fierce and fresh, is helpless love for her child, and the desperation of having Kitty, and only Kitty, as the focus of all her hopes and longings.

In her room, she sits again, without calling for the shutters to be opened, upright and tense, and thinks
that time is cruel. It is a thought she is not particularly aware of having had in relation to herself before, so that the truth of it strikes her all the more forcefully.

THE VERGER was lifting the taper to light the candles on either side of the altar, and as they sprang to life, so did Giorgione’s great picture that stood behind it. Pools of light fell here and there, on the sallow face of the potentate and the nut-brown face of the shepherd, upturned in adoration and on the gilded Offerings, and the serene young Madonna, the waxen-fleshed child and the roseate
cherubs. Outside the lighted areas, the remainder of the picture was in gloom, though it was a coloured gloom, deep brown and indigo and the red-brown of old, dried blood.

It was a formal expression of religious sentiment, a glorious, distant thing. There was nothing personal, nothing intimate about it, and it neither invited nor repelled belief, it was simply a statement. Here, it said, is the
Word made flesh; bow down and adore.

Only in the ecstasy of the expression of one kneeling figure, of no importance, in the bewilderment and humility and rapture that transformed it from an earthbound human being to one potentially immortal, did Thomas ever catch a glimpse of the glory of it all, only this obscure and shadowy corner moved him to more than dutiful admiration.

Now, in cassock
and surplice, seated in his stall, he looked up at it again, and thought, yes, I see it. It is still there and it will never fade or be unavailable to me. In that one face …

The choir stood to sing the Magnificat. In the body of the chapel, a dozen worshippers knelt in the dimness. But the music and the voices would be raised, the worship conducted, regardless of whether there were eight or eight
hundred in the congregation, and that pleased and satisfied him, that things were ordered as they should be.

He himself felt no religious fervour. What uplifted him, moved him to praise and wonder, was all elsewhere and had long been so, in a world quite outside this building, these people, this order of service. He had never truly felt even the young believer’s ardour. He did not feel guilty
about this. He was suspicious of the emotional. He had accepted what he had always been taught to be true, and had decided to commit himself to it, and in any case, it was all so much a part and parcel of the rest of his life, of his studying, his teaching and his official position in the college. He could not have told where religious belief and feeling began or ended, nor had he ever thought it
necessary to brood upon those matters.

The notes of music dropped beautifully, clearly, separately, out of the air. ‘Now Lord, lettest thou thy servant …’.

Only, he regretted the loss of something, he could not have said what, some yearning, some pure, spiritual ecstasy.

Like as the hart panteth after the water brooks,

So panteth my soul after thee, O God.

What he felt, here in this place,
was a deep contentment, a sense of the rightness of things, and he thanked God with something approaching passion then, for his own good fortune, for his life here within these walls, and for all the rest that lay outside them. And at once, he felt a warm spurt of pleasure, thinking of the house, the conservatory, his study and what they contained, all waiting for him, and of the work ahead that
was to be done, the new ideas that crowded in upon him daily. And all of this had been given to him in addition to the rest, and freely, and was more than he had any right to expect.

The rumble of benches, as they kneeled to pray. Thomas bent his head and closed his eyes, and behind them came, all unbidden, the image of the boy Eustace Partridge’s secretive, troubled face.

‘Oh Lord …’ for he
had a duty to pray for him, though, knowing nothing whatsoever of what might be wrong, he could only pray unspecifically, committing him to God’s care, and asking for wisdom and peace on his behalf.

On his own behalf, he prayed for nothing. His life was serene, and as he wanted it to be.

Behind the candles, the Magi adored, and the shepherds, and the Virgin sat for ever imperturbable, and the
naked infant received its homage with an ageless, expressionless face.

Eustace Partridge lurked in the shadows beneath the high walls, guilty-seeming as a footpad or a vagrant; but he had committed, and would commit, no felony, and if asked his reasons for being here, would have had no answer. ‘Is something troubling you?’ his tutor had asked. He wished he might have told him, that he could unburden
himself to someone, anyone, and so relieve this terrible waiting and not knowing, this tension and dread. But after all, what was there he might say? Nothing, for there might
be
nothing, it might not have happened or be going to happen, his world might continue as before and he would be reprieved. Or else there would be news, tomorrow or next week (surely it could not be much longer than that?
But he realised that he did not know, and was appalled at the extent of his own ignorance).

Or else there might be silence, and silence would be as good as good news.

He shook his head to clear the buzz of confused thoughts and speculations. He knew he should go back to his rooms and work, or sleep, or else knock someone up, Hanson, or Agnew-Brown, and get drunk.

But he simply went on standing
in the shadows, in the mist and chill, like a boy who has broken a vase and run away and dares not return home to confess.

And that was how he was inside himself, as miserable and vulnerable and frightened as he had been at the age of four or eight or thirteen, whenever he had been faced with the prospect of having to see his father. For if it had all gone wrong, that was what he would have to
do, face them all, one by one, or together, but worst of all, face his father.

I am a grown man, Eustace thought, and yet it is still like this.

Someone turned out of the college gateway and walked quickly away down the street towards the river. Eustace shrank back further into the shadows. But he thought that his tutor had not so much as glanced in his direction.

In the end, he went back to
his rooms and ordered up supper, and when it came, to his own surprise he wolfed it down, and was comforted by the warm food and drink, as an upset child is soothed by a bowl of sweet pudding.

Georgiana, in her small sitting-room, at a round table covered in a dark green chenille cloth, the light of the lamp encircling her, and the pile of papers in front of her.

Ten minutes before, Alice had
come in to see to the fire, which was burning sluggishly, as fires always did at this damp back-end of the year. But then, she had said, ‘No, Alice, thank you, don’t draw the curtains.’ Though there was nothing to be seen outside. Only, she did not like to be closed in as early as this, to have the winter evenings seem any longer.

She turned back to her work.

‘Bazaar’ she had written.

‘Sale
of handiwork.’

‘Subscription ball.’

‘Lantern lecture?’

Where she paused, wondering if it were true that the Misses Tufnell were really friends of Lady Leonora Fletcher, who had crossed Afghanistan by mule, and if so, whether she might be persuaded to come and speak about her travels in public. According to Florence, they knew her well, might even be on visiting terms, though someone else had
doubted they were more than acquaintances, and not even recent ones at that.

And would people pay to come?

‘Donations’ she wrote, and looked at the word and felt depressed, thinking of all the hours of list-making and letter-writing.

‘Dear Lady … Dear Duchess … I wonder if I might bring a cause with which I am closely associated to your kind attention?’

Well, it would have to be done, though
perhaps she might manage to foist much of the letter-writing itself onto others. But it was a sure way of raising at least some of the money.

At the meeting of the Committee for Moral Welfare, on the following day, they were to be told exactly how much they needed, either to build a new house, or, if that were to be too costly, buy and convert an existing property, for use as a Home for girls
and unmarried women who were with child, to live in during pregnancy and confinement, and for the period immediately afterwards.

Florence had found a manor house, in a secluded situation in a village seven miles outside the town. None of the others had yet been to see it – it was empty, and slightly derelict. But Florence had been forceful about it for some weeks and was sure to be even more
forceful tomorrow, since the Committee was meeting in her own home, which always gave one a certain advantage in pressing points.

But others felt it would be more practical for the Home to be established within the town itself.

It had all been taking up much of Georgiana’s time during the past months, and now that the project did, at last, seem to be coming to fruition, it would take up even
more. It was time she gave gladly, believing passionately in the cause. For Georgiana always had a cause to which to devote her energies.

Now, looking again at the pencilled note, ‘Lantern lecture?’, her mind strayed to Lady Leonora, who had been, she knew, the insignificant fourth daughter of a minor duke and who, at the age of twenty-nine, still at home, and plain, with dwindling prospects,
had decided to take up travel. Now, seven years on, she had been, as well as to Afghanistan, to India, Turkistan and Persia, and was rumoured to be planning a journey to the Amazon Basin. She travelled alone, used native bearers and guides, and had put herself into innumerable situations of danger and discomfort. She excited admiration and disapproval in equal measure, had been disowned and subsequently,
as her fame had spread, reclaimed by her family.

And Georgiana envied her and sometimes, as now, indulged in fantasies of emulating her, of going away from here, somewhere – she thought idly of mountains and deserts and of seeing places previously accessible to no Western woman. And the mist closed in across the Backs and pressed up the dark garden towards the house, and the clock chimed six
and then ticked softly on, and looking up, she thought that she must wash and change and then go to speak to Alice about a duck for tomorrow’s dinner.

The fire was beginning to glow a little at the core as she dreamed her brief dream, and all the time knew that she would do no more than take a walking holiday in Switzerland. If Florence could be persuaded.

After supper she might go and talk
to Thomas about the Committee meeting, ask his opinion on the subject of the house purchase, for there were persuasive arguments on both sides, though she herself was inclining to agree with Florence, that the young women would be better off cared for somewhere discreetly in the country.

And then, they might all three discuss it at dinner tomorrow. She wondered how she might broach the subject
of ‘dinner tomorrow’ to him. And so, tapping her pencil on the pile of papers as she sat in the light of the lamp, turned her mind to contemplating that.

Thomas crossed the bridge and walked briskly down the avenue, under the dripping trees, light of step and of heart. But behind him in the shadows had been Eustace Partridge, though he was sure that the boy had not seen him. He wondered again
what might be wrong, and what he himself ought to do, and was mildly irritated by it all, liking the tenor of his life to remain even, and people to behave predictably.

There was no one about. As he reached the corner, he stopped. Ahead, the avenue of houses, set behind their drives and lawns. But beyond them, the fields began, and just at this point, there was something in the air, a smell of
the open countryside, and a particular wind that blew off the far Fens. That was what had made him pause. For he felt pent up on these lowering days of early dark, needed to get out under wide skies and across the marshes. He closed his eyes and the air smelled colder, fresher. One day next week, he thought; he could take the train on Friday evening and stay at Clawdon Quay, be up and out in the
boat before dawn. Yes.