The Birds of the Air

by Alice Thomas Ellis

  Barbara smiled brilliantly. ‘Oh thank you,’ she said, as though Evelyn had just ennobled her. ‘Thank you so much.’

  Into the silence that followed, Mrs Marsh announced that lunch must now be served. ‘Mary,’ she called peremptorily, ‘come and sit down.’

  Mary returned from Melys y Bwyd. The kitten’s pale eyes were like rain-washed wood anemones, the tiny pads of its paws like blackberry pips and its claws like bramble thorns – the small, less serious ones high up the stem near the blossom . . . Robin on the whole had preferred the wild raspberries to the blackberries. One year they had spent the whole summer turning raspberries into jam. Robin had said it was adorable. No one else, as far as she knew, had ever described food as adorable. That was the year, she remembered meticulously, that Robin got covered in crows’ egg, up a tree, poking down the nest with a clothes pole – not out of merry vandalism but in the eventual best interest of the crows, because they got down the chimney and it would be better for everyone if they were to leave. The careless structures of twigs in the chimney were a nuisance, causing damp grey-yellow clouds of smoke to billow out when she first lit the fire, but it was worse to open up the silent cottage smelling of the wilderness, trapped, and see the sooty, perfect tracery of desperate wings on the white-washed walls and know that somewhere there lay a corpse to be disposed of. Crows were stupid enough to fall down chimneys but too stupid to get up them again. Silly birds, she thought, knowing that if it were daylight she could look across beyond the ridge and see the branches of the distant trees, clotted with crows’ nests, but never Robin, never again, up or down a tree.

  ‘What nonsense,’ she said, freshly incredulous. ‘You’d better take this cat,’ she told her mother, handing it, now limply trustful, across her palm. ‘It’ll be better in the kitchen. Puss off.’

  The ground at Melys y Bwyd would be icebound now, Robin’s grave clasped iron-hard, Robin’s bones as cold as stone. All around, the meadow grass would be silver-green and the mountain bracken red-gold; the trees plucked bare as dead birds save for the black yews and the fox umber of beech in the hedgerows. The hedgerows now, thought Mary with satisfaction, would be dry and pinched with frost – all gone their nuptial finery, the idle golden peace of summer days. Those hedgerows had much to answer for, decked for weddings, letting the hearse pass through them in the flowery dust. Once upon a time the lads of the village would have been looking to their staves now, plaiting a little cage, getting ready to beat the hedgerows in pursuit of the wren on the 26th. Such a sad, angry, godless day, the day after Christmas – the laughing, brutal young men carrying a dead caged bird high in triumph all round the boundaries to bury in the churchyard and allay misfortune for the coming year, and St Stephen stoned for feeding the poor. On Boxing Day the entire population would be pretty stoned – fat, sick, hungover and dreary with anti-climax and a surfeit of rich things.

  ‘Comin’, Mary?’ enquired Mr Mauss. He was quite relaxed and clearly had no consciousness of being an intruder on this family scene. He had removed his beltless mac and his hat and wore a light-weight jacket and trousers, a striped shirt and strange feet-shaped shoes. He seemed to have aged since they last met and it didn’t suit him. Like all his countrymen, he was designed for youth, the ball-game, swimming the Atlantic. Now his handsome steak-and-milk-fed bones were obscured by drooping flesh, and his splendid teeth looked foolishly out of place between developing dewlaps.

  Mary was thinking, ‘The north wind doth blow and we shall have snow and what will the robin do then . . .’

  ‘You do look well,’ she said. She didn’t habitually greet other people with observations on their appearance – like a hunter sighting game and weighing it up in his mind’s eye.

  ‘You look great,’ said Mr Mauss, inexactly. He didn’t much like Mary, who had once given it as her opinion that his great country was founded on heresy, genocide and greed – what the Americans themselves referred to as religious idealism, courage and enterprise. It was, he had considered, a quite uncalled-for remark.

  Hunter whispered in Mary’s ear as they paused in the hall. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I could have left him in London, but it didn’t seem to occur to him that I would.’

  ‘Well, of course you couldn’t,’ said Mary. Even she could see that. ‘Christmas is sacred to them.’

  Hunter giggled. They shared an image of the American Christmas – riches, reconciliations, tears, snow, success, sentiment, furs and firs, the shop windows shining like Heaven and everything good for sale.

  ‘Jingle bells,’ said Mary.

  Mrs Marsh smiled, indulgently, if a little nervously. She had never understood their silly jokes but was glad to see Mary laughing. She wondered vaguely, not for the first time, why they had never married. They always got on so well.

  She began to make people stand up so that she could pull their chairs to the tables. It was awkward and upsetting, and she wished momentarily that she could clap her hands and disperse everyone like the birds. So many people made a room even untidier than did present wrappings and string. Gamely, she coaxed and com manded. ‘Evelyn, you sit here between Seb and Mr Mauss. Hunter, you get between Ba and Mary. Kate and Sam, you go and sit on the stairs . . .’

  It was now that Mr Mauss revealed a hitherto unsus -pected and wholly unwelcome aspect of his personality. He was good with children – he was fonder than Father Christmas of little children, fonder than Italian waiters, than politicians on polling day. Kate, he declared, should by no means sit outside on the stairs. She should sit on his knee if needs be. He didn’t seem as fond of Sam.

  Mrs Marsh could have crowned him with her tray. ‘There isn’t room,’ she protested.

  ‘Nahnsense,’ said Mr Mauss roundly. At one point he even spoke of ‘the little lady’.

  Mrs Marsh gave in. She went so far against her principles as to put the sofa cushions on the floor for the children. Sam could hardly be banished alone to the stairs, though he was more than willing. She had never approved of Americans, ever since the days of G.I.s – funny-coloured uniforms and chewing gum . . .

  ‘I’ll serve in the kitchen,’ she said flatly, not bothering to ask who would like what or how much of it.

  ‘They’ll have what they’re given,’ she muttered to Evelyn, who had maddeningly insisted on climbing over Mr Mauss to come out and help. The thought of waving vegetable dishes and boiling gravy boats above those close-crammed heads and her pretty chintz was altogether too daunting.

  For once Sam wasn’t hungry. He had eaten all the soft-centred chocolates from several of the boxes on the sideboard. He wished he hadn’t. He liked the food he was given here. At Granny Lamb’s now they would be sitting in the dining room with dogs dribbling at their sides. They’d be eating something like rotting pheasant with Smith’s Crisps warmed up in the oven, and what his grandfather called ‘bread poultice’; he ate it all the same, thought Sam – and the bitter walnuts from his own tree. Pauline, the housekeeper, wouldn’t be there today; his grandmother would have to do the washing up. Though Pauline usually did all the kitchen work, he had never seen his grandmother actually touch her. It was as though the lower classes, no matter how much they washed dishes or themselves, would never be clean enough for her to touch. (The pedigree dogs slept on her bed and licked her brown-spotted hands.)

  Mr Mauss and Kate discussed poetry. Sam sat up at the mention of a poem by Tennyson called ‘Marijuana in the Moated Grange’ but lost interest when it turned out to be about a girl.

  ‘That’s the wise thrush,’ trilled Kate, ‘he sings each song twice over . . .’

  Barbara’s bit of turkey went down the wrong way.

  Hunter beat her on the back and Evelyn brought her a glass of water.

  ‘A lot of people die of choking these days,’ Evelyn said conversationally. ‘In American restaurants they keep a special thing for putting down people’s throats. The average size of a piece of meat that people choke on is about like a cigarette packet. I expect Mr Mauss could tell y
ou . . .’

  First fine careless rapture, thought Barbara. Careless rapture . . . She hiccoughed violently and turned her face to Hunter’s shoulder.

  Oh help, thought Mrs Marsh.

  ‘Hail to thee, blithe spirit,’ waffled Kate.

  Mary decisively clanged her knife down on the table.

  Kate stopped speaking. She ate a potato slowly, one eye on her aunt. Despite her curiosity she had had enough sense not to question Mary on the effects of bereavement. She had considered offering the sweet sympathy of an innocent child, but had luckily thought better of that too. It would have been very foolish. Nevertheless her aunt’s lack of interest made her nervous. She suspected, astonished, that of the two of them, Mary liked Sam the better – a preference unique in Kate’s short experience.

  ‘Bird thou never wert,’ declaimed Mr Mauss.

  Mrs Marsh saw worriedly that there still seemed to be a great deal of wine about. It reminded her indirectly of her mother, who had never approved of the Lord’s actions at the marriage at Cana and was wont to suggest by way of excuse that he had probably turned the water into tonic wine, adding further that it must always be remembered that in those countries the water was undrinkable.

  Hunter must have brought all these bottles, realised Mrs Marsh, and she hadn’t thanked him.

  Sebastian, his head inclined downwards, his face thoughtful, was shaking the peppermill – one of a pair, tall shiny wooden things, faintly phallic, a gift from the lady who owned the hairdressing salons. Mrs Marsh herself didn’t much care for them – she preferred her dainty glass and silver cellar and pot – but at least she knew how to work them.

  ‘You twist the top – Professor,’ she said, permitting herself a moment’s malice. ‘Like this.’ She leaned across and ground a liberal quantity of black pepper over Sebastian’s sprouts.

  Barbara was a little shocked that her mother should dare to tease Sebastian. ‘He doesn’t like too much,’ she said.

  Evelyn didn’t think the party was going very well. She took her cracker and proffered an end to Hunter. ‘Pull,’ she invited.

  The paper hat fell into his cranberry sauce, but Evelyn had the half with the joke. She unravelled it. ‘What flies in the air and shaves?’ she asked, announcing, as everyone seemed non-plussed, ‘A hairy plane.’

  ‘Oh, that was funny,’ cried Mrs Marsh insincerely. ‘Now, Kate, why did the bull rush?’

  ‘Because it saw the cow slip,’ responded Kate obediently.

  Mr Mauss looked puzzled.

  ‘What’s the difference between a weasel and a stoat?’ enquired Evelyn. No one knew. ‘Well, a weasel is weasily distinguished and a stoat is stoat-ally different.’

  Seb closed his eyes.

  ‘Why did the lobster blush?’ asked Evelyn, quickfire.

  ‘Because it saw the salad dressing.’ Kate was scornful.

  ‘No,’ said Evelyn triumphantly. ‘Because it saw Queen Mary’s bottom.’

  Mrs Marsh remembered one of her mother’s risky jokes – why is Queen Victoria like a flower pot? But it wasn’t suitable for mixed company. Her mother had only told it as a concession – a treat for the girls when they were scouring pans or darning socks. Like the one about the Houses of Parliament passing motions in chambers. It was only at Christmas that Mrs Marsh remembered things like that – her mother and the jokes, and the Band of Hope, and the mutton broth and sago pudding that were always Tuesday’s dinner. She suddenly felt like Methuselah. She had passed through so many modes of everyday existence: from long to short to long to short skirts, from the copper and the dolly and the rubbing board to a geyser with constant hot water and now to a washing machine, from the old flat irons heating on the range to the neat little appliance that perched above her folded ironing board in the cupboard. The interminable nappies and linen sheets and shirts and tablecloths had been replaced by cotton wool and plastic and things that drip-dried. After the range she had had to get used to a gas stove, and now she had her clean electric oven. Soda and soft green soap had given way to plastic bottles of fat-fighting liquid. She was too sensible to feel regret, but she did feel extraordinarily old. And she wasn’t old in present-day terms, she thought incredulously. Merely a senior citizen. I feel like God’s granny, she thought, lost in the oddness of time.

  ‘Whaddaya do if ya nose goes on strike?’ asked Sam unexpectedly.

  Only Kate knew the answer to this and she was, fortunately, not prepared to divulge it.

  Barbara knew Sam too well to imagine it would be suitable for a family gathering, and her look threatened him with numerous deprivations if he proceeded.

  Mrs Marsh rose hurriedly. ‘Trifle or Christmas pudding?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know that one either,’ said Evelyn.

  ‘I mean do you want to eat trifle or Christmas pudding?’ said Mrs Marsh. Really, Evelyn could be dense at times.

  ‘We’d better hurry,’ she said. ‘Dennis and Vera will be here soon.’ She could kick herself for inviting them, but she had felt sorry for them, retired and alone and their boy – as they called him – away engineering somewhere in some unsafe country.

  She dumped glass bowls in front of everyone, splashing a few spots of freshly melting brandy butter on Seb’s cardigan. He dabbed at it, tutting, instead of ignoring it as a proper man would have done.

  The sight of the kitchen horrified her. It looked as though a major accident had taken place rather than a Christmas luncheon. Evelyn hadn’t scraped or separated the plates but had put them straight in the sink and filled it with water. Bits of turkey, grease and stuffing floated miserably about on top, interspersed with torn crackers. Part-filled bowls and glasses stood around on every surface, and the steam which was intended merely to heat the pudding had filled the room and escaped through the hall.

  Into this chaos, if she knew him, would come the Chief Inspector and his wife. He seemed never to have heard of front doors. Probably used to bursting in shoulder-first in the small hours, thought Mrs Marsh unjustly. She made sure the kitchen door was bolted. This once, she decided, he should do the thing properly.

  ‘Barbara,’ she implored, driven to appeal for help, ‘clear the front room, and make the coffee.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Evelyn cheerfully.

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Marsh, louder than she had intended. ‘You sit down and rest and talk to Mr Mauss.’

  In the end Hunter did the tidying up. He did it beautifully and Mrs Marsh gazed at him with respect, wishing Sebastian were a bit more like him.

  She put away the stilton and biscuits, which she hadn’t offered to anyone. They would make too many crumbs and she was sure everyone had had enough to eat – except for Mary, who had messed about like a child, hiding her turkey under her potato and refusing parsnip and stuffing. She’d have to have an eggnog later, noted Mrs Marsh.

  Evelyn was sitting on the sofa next to Sebastian, who was speaking of his work to Hunter. She looked bewildered. Seb’s insistence on ordinary language and absolute clarity of expression rendered his discourse entirely unintelligible to the ordinary person.

  Mrs Marsh felt warm affection for her. At one of Barbara’s university parties Mrs Marsh had been lectured for half an hour by a small man, who looked to her as though he’d crawled up through a drain, on the importance of maintaining by breeding a standard of intelligence and physical beauty that was essential to civilisation. That much she had got of his drift. The points of the compass had come into it too – and there he had lost her.

  Mr Mauss had also altered his demeanour and was speaking of important matters, but not, it seemed, to the satisfaction of Sebastian, who grew increasingly restive. At the words ‘a person in an addictive situation’ Seb lost patience. ‘An addict,’ he snarled. ‘You mean an addict.’

  ‘That is correct,’ agreed Mr Mauss, imperturbably.

  Seb flung up his eyes behind his spectacles and exhaled loudly.

  There were too many schools of thought here for Mrs Marsh to cope with. She hersel
f liked the human comfort of the cliché.

  ‘Well, life has to go on,’ she said aloud, and went to wipe down the still warm oven. The kitchen was more or less back to normal, and she poured herself a medicinal tot of brandy. It was just possible, she reflected, that Dennis and Vera would think Sam’s green hair was a party hat.

  Evelyn was now describing the grief she had felt on learning that Venice was slowly sinking into the sea. Mr Mauss was agreeing that it was indeed a tragedy.

  Mary, on the other hand, was rather pleased. She thought that she herself must have that instinct of tyrants, who, when bereaved or upset, respond by demanding huge destruction, comparable to the loss they feel that they themselves have suffered. ‘Sod Venice,’ she thought idly, imagining the splash, plop, suck, as palaces, churches, paintings, statues, the horses of St Mark sank unprotesting into the turgid flood.

  She retired to the back room and opened the window. Dry flakes of snow drifted in, as ready and accustomed as doves returning to their familiar cote. She left the window slightly ajar to feel the cold after the heat of the front room, and told herself that alive or dead she wouldn’t undergo another Christmas. The year’s accumulated ill-will seemed always to find expression at this time. Relations who throughout most of the year had the sense to stay apart confined themselves in small spaces to eat and drink too much. And not content with this they felt it necessary to invite people who were lonely because they were unpleasant or boring and no one liked them. They had to be made to participate since it was felt that no one should be alone on this of all days.

  Alone – thought Mary. She put a shovelful of smokeless fuel on the fire, and it settled down obediently and burned. Like the hard black seeds her mother planted – they dropped unprotesting into the earth, grew, flowered and were cut, arranged by the W.I. and thrown away – all without a moment’s query.

  Mary was disobedient and perverse. ‘No,’ she said, sharply and aloud. It was, for Mary, quite a usual response. But answers abounded, and of them all death was the most neat and particular. There was no arguing with the imperial composure of the dead . . .