The Birds of the Air

by Alice Thomas Ellis

  ‘A nice little piece of steak – braised, and some carrots,’ said Mrs Marsh from the door of Mary’s room. ‘And Evelyn has brought you a lovely peach.’

  ‘Lovely,’ said Mary.

  ‘Would you like Evelyn to come in and talk to you while you have your supper?’ enquired Mrs Marsh, who often asked this question.

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Mary, who often made this answer.

  ‘Well, I think you’re silly,’ said her mother. ‘Evelyn is very interesting once you get to know her.’

  Evelyn, who lived across the Close, had taken up art in her mid-sixties. She had begun by painting by numbers but had now bought herself a cape and an easel and daily painted in freer style on the flasher-haunted downs. When she wasn’t doing this she visited the lunatics who lived in vast numbers in an institution nearby. Many of them, she claimed, were ‘as sane as you or I’. Some of them indeed consistently took her for one of themselves and would try to prevent her leaving for fear of the trouble and grief she would find in the world outside. This, Mary considered, showed some sense, for a recent fugitive had sought sanctuary in the church, where one of her mother’s friends was arranging the flowers. ‘I’m going to take my clothes off,’ he had announced, perhaps as a further demon stration of his freedom, showing no sign of maniacal lust. ‘If you do, I shall leave,’ the flower-arranger had told him. But he did, so she fetched the vicar. ‘Put on your vest,’ the vicar demanded sternly. ‘And your trousers and your shirt, and your socks and your shoes. And now go.’ The denizens of Innstead were divided in their opinions of the vicar’s action, some maintaining that he had shown strength of character and firmness of purpose, and some that he had behaved in an uncharitable and unchristian fashion. One old lady suggested that Jesus wouldn’t have thrown the man out; but everyone, even the vicar’s critics, thought this was going a little far. Society, after all, was quite different from what it had been in Jesus’s day: the vicar should have alerted the social services, if not the police.

  Mary found this sort of story interesting, but Evelyn preferred to talk of Caravaggio and chiaroscuro.

  ‘She’s got you a present,’ said Mrs Marsh.

  ‘Then I must get her one,’ said Mary defiantly. Forgive us our Christmasses, she said to herself, as we forgive them who have Christmassed against us. It was an old joke of Mrs Marsh’s, who would have been so pleased to hear it repeated aloud, but Mary kept silent. She had to be careful not to encourage her mother, not to raise false hopes.

  ‘Is that the carrots burning?’ asked Mrs Marsh, her hand cupped to her ear. She found her daughter difficult to talk to.

  Later, when the percussion of pans and lids had stopped, Mary heard her mother talking to Evelyn. ‘Such a good little hostess . . . The enormous parties . . .’ she was saying of Barbara, and ‘Anything . . . She could have done anything . . .’ of Mary.

  Barbara was trying to be brave. She was cold, and her hands shook. Her face was dry and wore a cutout smile, as stiff and unnatural as a cardboard party mask, and she hardly knew what she was saying to the mobile faces around her as they opened and shut to speak or eat. She had told herself repeatedly that everyone else in this room had had extra-marital affairs and no one had died of it. No one minded any more – it was acceptable, it was smart, it was only human, it was ‘sophisticated’. At the old-fashioned word she felt tears in her eyes. She had never even learned to be sophisticated and now that everything had passed beyond the very concept she was lost – a stranger among her friends. ‘Oh, the smoke,’ she said, to explain her overflowing eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said some woman offendedly, flapping at the air in front of her mouth to clear it.

  ‘No,’ said Barbara. ‘Oh no . . .’ Oh, she thought, I wasn’t brought up like that. I was brought up to be faithful and polite. I don’t smoke or complain when other people do. What’s happening to me? I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it.

  It was a good party. Everyone except herself seemed to be having a lovely time. Apart from the autochthonous notables there was a sprinkling of peers and politicians, and someone had briefly brought the currently fashionable Russian dissident. He had a spoilt, invalidish air – partly because he was so well wrapped up in scarf, gloves and hat and partly because of the unnatural deference accorded him.

  Barbara herself unconsciously shared the feeling of intermittent unease that afflicted most of the university population who, while confident that their institution was the centre of the universe, were also vaguely aware of a certain provincialism. Those dons who could afford it had flats or even houses in London and at least a few friends not directly connected with the academic world.

  One of these desirable outsiders was speaking to her now, asking after her sister. Why, she wondered irritably, did she think of him first as Mary’s friend rather than as Seb’s editor? Her sister had a way of defining people by her relationship with them, and while Barbara loved Mary this was no time to be reminded of ancient jealousies.

  ‘She’s all right, Hunter,’ she snapped, realising from his tone that he already knew perfectly well how Mary was. Mary, she thought distractedly, remembering with panic that she had liked the Thrush, had liked having musical friends. Having no particular gifts of any kind herself, she had determined to appreciate music more than anyone else. She had pointed out as often as possible, to whoever would listen, how much she appre -ciated music. And now even that was ruined. Her friend, her interest and her husband – all lost to a mouthful of turkey.

  ‘Are you all right, Barbara?’ asked Hunter.

  ‘I think so,’ she said pitifully. ‘I might sit down.’

  Hunter ousted an elderly gentleman from the nearest chair and placed his hostess in it.

  She was ashamed, she was frightened. But she was going to cry – here. And now.

  Sam switched on his tape.

  Greatly amplified, the voice of the Canon was heard: ‘. . . a humble pride in the fact that the chapter . . .’ For a moment the Canon thought he’d gone mad. He stared round wildly.

  ‘. . . the most lovely William-and-Maryish sort of house,’ roared the amplifier.

  ‘. . . goose de cook,’ it informed them at an unbearable pitch of sound.

  Sebastian seized the plug and pulled it out. There was total silence save for his wife’s now reasonably restrained sobbing.

  ‘See how you have upset your mother,’ said Sebastian quietly to his son. ‘I hope you are satisfied.’

  Of course after that there was laughter: nervous, and in a few cases artificial, laughter – but laughter none the less. People bent down to peer kindly at Barbara’s damp and twitching face. They lightly squeezed her forearm, or patted her shoulder with quick consoling movements, not wishing to imply that there was anything seriously wrong but eager to express sympathy. A few of the harder, coarser guests regarded her sideways, with disgust.

  Hunter, gazing into the distance, put his arm about her and turned her head against his hip. He stroked her ear once, patted her hair and then hurried away – but not soon enough. There stirred in Barbara that unreasoning affinity of the newly hatched gosling for the nearest solid object. Crawling painfully from her shell of rejection, she permitted herself the beginnings of a fixation on Hunter – as doomed to disappointment as the infant goose seeking succour of a fox-terrier or a cardboard box.

  She raised her head and smiled – which made her look a little mad.

  ‘Her sister is very ill,’ Sebastian told his guests discreetly. ‘Barbara is under great strain.’

  Reassured, they resumed their enjoyment of the party.

  Hunter sought out Sebastian’s American publisher, of whom he was in charge. He didn’t really think that Otis Mauss would have been particularly offended or disturbed by the recent events, but his unusual sense of responsibility drove him to make certain. Mr Mauss, as he had expected, was standing happily alone, gazing about and holding his glass with both hands. He was an undemanding and amiable man who, Hunter felt, thought of the
English with whom he had to deal as a bunch of clever monkeys who were not to be judged by normal American standards. Hunter himself thought of Oti Mauss as rather more foreign and strange than a dynastic Chinaman.

  ‘Have you talked to some nice people?’ he asked.

  ‘Yessure,’ said Mr Mauss.

  Hunter wondered which they had been and looked around for an untried likely victim. Most of the people present had good manners, so he reached out and seized an elbow at random.

  Barbara was sickened to see the Thrush talking to Sebastian’s editor. It was plain to her that the immoral woman meant to infiltrate every aspect of Seb’s life. Barbara felt as though she were drowning, falling through a bottomless space of lovelessness with no hand to catch or prevent her.

  Hunter was pleased to be able to introduce his charge to the Thrush. Although in the wider world she wouldn’t have passed muster in the qualifying round for Miss Llandudno, by university standards she was considered exceptionally beautiful. His conscience clear, he chatted happily to the Canon.

  The wind had dropped. The lamp lit a corner of the window pane, illuminating a swarm of snowflakes, and the smokeless fuel in the fireplace burned brightly. Mary, her book open and unread on her lap, listened to her mother and Evelyn talking in the kitchen. They always sat there in the evenings after W.I. meetings, perched on high blue stools, drinking coffee out of mugs and eating biscuits from a blue tin.

  ‘You must first make a little list,’ said Evelyn. ‘Two little lists. One for Christmas Day itself and one for the other days.’

  Mary could sense her mother’s irritation.

  ‘I’ve done that,’ said Mrs Marsh. ‘I could paper the kitchen with little lists. I’m trying to think where to put everybody.’

  ‘Well, you’re staying with me,’ said Evelyn. ‘I thought you’d decided . . .’

  ‘I mean for lunch on Christmas Day,’ said Mrs Marsh. ‘Mary’s in the dining room. The kitchen’s too small, and as I’ve got rid of the dining table I shall have to put up two small tables in the sitting room, and if the worst comes to the worst the children can eat on the stairs. There’s you and me, and Barbara and Mary, and Kate and Sam and Sebastian and Mary’s Hunter. There are three straight chairs, these two stools, the pouffe, and two people will have to sit in armchairs with cushions, but it makes the tables so crowded.’

  ‘Then put the children in the hall,’ suggested Evelyn helpfully.

  ‘I’m going to do that if I have to,’ said Mrs Marsh, sounding, as she spoke, as if she were grinding her teeth.

  ‘You were silly to sell all your dining-room things,’ said Evelyn, and Mary held her breath. But her mother answered mildly enough and absently, as though she were already thinking of something else.

  ‘Mary could hardly have slept on the table or in the sideboard,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll put Barbara and Kate in one room, and Sebastian and Sam in the other. The children are really too old to sleep together.’

  Someone ran the tap and turned on the electric kettle and the voices became inaudible. Mary twisted herself round to look at the small vertiginous area of falling snow and heard no more.

  It was growing late, and Hunter’s eyes were a little blurred.

  ‘I must get you back to the Savoy,’ he said to Mr Mauss.

  ‘That’s very good of you,’ said Mr Mauss equably, putting down his glass and looking round for the door.

  ‘Well, in a minute,’ said Hunter. ‘I must say goodbye.’

  ‘Oh, me too,’ said Mr Mauss, quite unruffled.

  Hunter kissed Barbara’s cheek – something he hadn’t done before. ‘It was a lovely party,’ he said. ‘I’m so looking forward to Christmas Day.’

  Barbara gazed at him silently, waiting for some explanation of this odd remark.

  ‘I’m going to Mary’s for lunch,’ he explained. ‘Your mother asked me.’

  Barbara smiled slowly. Somewhere in that area of the human mind where the wish is father to the thought activity was taking place. Hunter, Barbara decided, had wangled this invitation in order to be with her. Not even his description of her mother’s house as Mary’s annoyed her now. Hunter desired her, and Sebastian should be taught a lesson.

  She didn’t move or speak, merely smiled a slightly batty smile and watched him walk away.

  The smile alarmed Hunter. Being in the world of books he was familiar with lunacy in all its forms and that smile reminded him of something. He had last seen it, he remembered, on the face of an author who had written a book combining the basic principles of zoology with psycho-analysis which he believed beyond all doubt would change the course of the world. He shuddered. Sebastian was a tiresome fellow, he thought censoriously, and being lazy-minded about human relations he didn’t bother to ask himself why Sebastian’s infidelity should bring that particular look of loony expectation to Barbara’s face. Seizing Mr Mauss, he made for the door.

  Kate, flushed with praise and approval and quite above herself, rebuked her brother for making their mummy cry.

  Sam had remained at the party, prominently placed in the centre of the room, in order to save face. He hadn’t enjoyed it, and this was too much.

  ‘Fuck off,’ he said very loudly.

  Hunter had to intervene. Seeing Sebastian’s expression, he dropped Mr Mauss and stepped in front of Sam, wondering as he did so why it was that so many publishers were regarded by their authors as mother, father, guide, philosopher and friend (not to mention pimp, psychiatrist, midwife, bank) and, what’s more, so often felt it incumbent upon themselves to fulfil these expectations. He himself didn’t like authors much, especially Seb Lamb.

  ‘My dear,’ he said, seizing Sebastian by the upper arm. ‘Otis wishes to say goodbye to you.’

  ‘G’bye,’ said Mr Mauss docilely. ‘Seeya m’next trip. Come to Dallas.’

  Stepping thankfully through the front door into the cold air of the stone town, Hunter was yet again pounced on by a Lamb.

  ‘Sam’s gone,’ Kate gabbled excitedly. ‘He’s run away, and Mummy’s gone after him, without her coat.’

  Handing Mr Mauss back into the hallway, Hunter took off down the street. Barbara was wringing her hands on the next corner and peering despairingly to right and left. Twice before Sam had been brought home by the police and she was sick of it. She couldn’t bear any more . . .

  Hunter saw Sam first, across the road, standing in a bus queue with one or two old people who were talking to each other because it was so cold.

  ‘Sam,’ called Barbara. ‘Come here at once.’

  Sam stared deafly ahead.

  ‘Sam,’ repeated Barbara on the edge of hysteria.

  ‘A’right, OK,’ said Sam, loping nonchalantly across the road.

  The old people gazed, silenced, at their departing companion wondering perhaps whether this was an abduction, but not very interested.

  Mary awoke early to a sky the colour of writing paper, very high and blandly indifferent. She wished she could throw something human, something bad, at that pale and careless sky – beyond which, she suspected, the little gods were playing selfish games.

  The snow had gone in the night, there was no wind and the day was as still as that day in Aulis for which Iphigenia paid the price.

  ‘Nice cup of hot tea?’ yelled her mother from the kitchen, going on to complain in normal tones that the snow had melted and she did think for once they might have had a white Christmas.

  ‘I feel like a great white vegetable,’ said Mary, unanswerably.

  ‘What?’ cried her mother, dashing from one door to the next and viewing her daughter with angry alarm. She was a gardener herself and had no love for those horrid, neglected, water-retentive tubers, blanched beyond recovery. ‘Your breakfast’s ready,’ she said, panting a little.

  No one could leave without breakfast. If, regularly, nice little meals were brought for her straying daughter, Mary wouldn’t be able to leave. When would she find the time if tea was ready, or her milk drink with the skin ski
mmed off? Mary wasn’t really ill-mannered. Mrs Marsh planned ever-widening palisades of breakfast, elevenses, lunch, tea, dinner, supper, to contain her child.

  Mary was quite sorry for her. It seemed hard that mothers should be the means of letting into the trap that was life those creatures they loved best in the world. For despite their designation the entrance was not entrancing, nor the exit exciting. And the space between held more of bitterness than was promised with the salt, the balm, the joyous clear water and the white cloth of baptism.

  Mrs Marsh got out her fur-lined boots. They were slightly too small – she was vain about her little feet and refused to admit that they had spread since her dancing days.

  She went into Mary’s room to pull her boots on and discuss what she should buy at the shops. The discussion was largely conducted with herself, since Mary, unlike Barbara, wasn’t interested in shopping.

  ‘Old Soames had some nice geese,’ said Mrs Marsh grimacing, pulling at the back of her boot and stamping down on the final word. ‘Except a goose would be no good for all of us – just bone and buckets of grease. Daddy used to like a nice goose though, with a sharp apple sauce. I mustn’t forget to pick up my jacket from the cleaners. Is there anything you want?’

  ‘No,’ said Mary. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’ll get you some eggs,’ said Mrs Marsh. ‘They’ll be fresh today. You ought to come with me,’ she added. ‘You could do with some new make-up, and it’s no good me buying it when you’re not there.’ She looked resentfully at Mary’s pale face. ‘You look like a toad’s tummy,’ she said to it, not really addressing her daughter as a whole. She believed that women felt better with a touch of make-up on – no matter how old or sad or beaten the face. Her daughter was cold and alien as a puddock, a bright hard jewel of rage burning in her head.

  Mary thought it would be diverting to paint her nose with lipstick and her teeth with eyeshadow and annoy her mother. ‘There’s no point,’ she said, which annoyed her mother more.

  ‘There’s always point,’ said Mrs Marsh. ‘Look your best and you feel your best.’