The Birds of the Air

by Alice Thomas Ellis

  She drew a mahogany box from under her bed and began to burn the contents. Letters, birth and death certificates. Not many photographs since they had always made her uneasy – the pale faces and dark hair of dead wives, the polite expressions of doomed soldiers tricked out as for a party, the eager fearless smiles of past children beaming through old sunlight . . . She took out a child’s drawings and letters, closed her eyes and put them back. There was no suitable repository anywhere in the world for such things. She thought perhaps she should eat them; for certainly, certainly when she went they would have to go with her.

  ‘Do you want tea?’ asked Hunter rather impatiently from the doorway. He’d forgotten the way suburban housewives had of stuffing guests from the city as though they’d travelled days and nights over deserts.

  Mary turned her face to him and he looked away. ‘Good heavens, no,’ she said cheerfully.

  Hunter relaxed. Firelight had a very odd quality, especially when it shone upwards on to a white face. For a moment he had feared that the humane thing to do would be to take the poker and put down the creature kneeling there in such pain.

  ‘You are so right,’ he said. The meals seemed to have run together. Lunch had drifted into tea time, and any minute now the people from next door would be in for drinks.

  He helped Mary to her feet and she replaced her mahogany box and closed the window.

  ‘We should really be off,’ he said, not looking forward to Christmas night in London with Mr Mauss. ‘Perhaps we should wait for the snow to ease up.’

  ‘Oh, it’s cold outside,’ quoted Mary.

  They hummed together a few bars of song, inflaming a new area of Barbara’s endlessly receptive jealousy.

  ‘You seem very cheerful,’ she snapped at her sister, meaning ‘Fraud, fake, hypocrite’.

  ‘Oh, I am,’ said Mary, grinning. Procne to mute Philomela grieving for her Itys, she thought. There was truly no song left in her.

  Barbara had never been able to make out her sister. She found it impossible to know whether Mary knew something she didn’t or was merely pretending, and it was hard to know which would have been the more infuriating. She smiled nervously at her grinning sister to let Hunter know that she and Mary understood one another.

  They heard Mrs Marsh enunciating through the glass of the kitchen door: ‘You’ll have to go round the front. I don’t want to let the cat out.’

  Mary decided she couldn’t face Dennis and Vera, and hurried back to her room.

  Hunter wished he could go with her. He had, himself, a specific interest in policemen, but not in Chief Inspectors. It was the uniform, of course – not as glamorous as guardsmen or sailors, but an improvement on Spanish waiters in these hard and frugal times.

  He opened the door. ‘Crikey,’ he said, impressed by the amount of snow that still fell.

  ‘Brass-monkey weather,’ said Dennis without emphasis or obscene intent, taking his coat off.

  ‘It’s warm in here,’ said Vera, looking on the bright side.

  ‘How’s the cat?’ asked the Chief Inspector, surprising Evelyn with this evidence of his uncanny detective abilities. She had kept the kitten secret.

  ‘You were calling “Puss, puss”,’ he told her dropped jaw. His tone was stern but kind.

  ‘It was my present to Mary,’ said Evelyn guiltily. She hoped he wouldn’t ask where she’d bought it, feeling sure that he would caution her and advise her that anything that was found should be handed in to the nearest police station.

  ‘Dog man, myself,’ he informed her, and she felt worse. She could see him with a great, grey, slavering, red-eyed alsatian striding the main street of Innstead – and the neighbours wouldn’t let him have one.

  ‘No dogs,’ said Vera decisively, and Evelyn felt relieved. It was his wife who wouldn’t let him.

  No one, absolutely no one, was glad to see Dennis and Vera. Even Kate, who was usually pleased to meet a potential audience, could tell at a glance that they weren’t poetic. The gregarious Mr Mauss could see that they weren’t meaningful, and everyone else was a bit frightened of Dennis, except for Sebastian, who probably thought he’d come to read the meter.

  ‘You know everyone,’ said Mrs Marsh. ‘Have a drink.’ She was exhausted and sick with drink. She longed to lie down, but she was responsible for all these people. ‘Sherry, whisky?’ she asked. She simply couldn’t be bothered to introduce anyone. They all knew their own names, dammit, she thought, with a restoring rush of temper, as they stood around, silent.

  Hunter poured two glasses of sherry and handed them to the newcomers. He began to talk.

  Mrs Marsh sat down, thankful for Hunter. He reminded her of her mother, who could calmly wipe obscuring tides of blood from a wound and pronounce it not mortal, while everyone else had fainted; who could come into a house in the small hours of emergency and, without removing her hat, restore order. She was reliable, thought Mrs Marsh, and Hunter was too; whereas Sebastian – she glanced at him with the venom of any music-hall mother-in-law – responded to difficulty with angry criticism, or sulking silence. Very helpful, she thought bitterly. For a moment she felt, like Mary, that death was blind or malevolent to take the beloved and leave the Sebastians. She was too tired and cross to regret these uncharitable Christmas-Day reflections. Life was unfair, and that’s all there was to it. She felt pity for Mary like sudden spring rain, but it brought her no relief. She shivered in the hot little room. It would always be the Robins who were at risk – young and so wild and foolish. Too young to leave their mothers, she thought sadly. The Sebastians were hardly at risk at all except for overeating and the danger of summer lightning.

  ‘I’m writing a book of verse,’ said Kate, brazenly, to Hunter. She had been waiting for a suitable opportunity to point this out, but none had so far offered itself.

  Hunter wanted to reply ‘Then stop it at once,’ but instead remarked that that was nice.

  Mrs Marsh brightened. ‘Show Hunter, darling,’ she said.

  ‘What a clever girl,’ said Vera disapprovingly.

  Hunter could have screamed. He couldn’t remember when he’d last met someone who wasn’t writing a book.

  Kate waited, a slow expression of hurt spreading over her normally bland countenance as Hunter was silent.

  ‘You must let me read it,’ he said at last resignedly, beckoning up the responsive platitudes. In the world of books it was never worth saying what you meant. Extreme caution was necessary in negotiating your way through the sensibilities of people who wrote, and while this child already clearly had an ego like the liver of a Strasbourg goose it offered her no protection against rejection. Quite the contrary.

  Hunter read a poem under the eager intent gaze of Kate and Mrs Marsh.

  ‘Very good,’ he said flatly, closing the book and handing it back. ‘Very good indeed for her age,’ he added as they both obviously found this praise inadequate.

  Kate reopened the book and handed it back to him. ‘Have you read that one?’ she asked.

  Hunter read it. ‘It’s very . . .’ he began. ‘Excellent,’ he ended heartily.

  It was Barbara who saved him, for once putting her own needs before those of her child. Ever since the temperature had begun to drop so noticeably she had been worrying about whether she had remembered to turn off the water at the mains, and if not whether Seb had remembered to leave his key with the archaeologist up the road who was staying at home for the holidays and had promised to keep an eye on things. She wasn’t sure that this man would be any more useful than Seb in an emergency, but at least he could go and have a look. None of this did she dare confide to her husband, who would be very angry, and would blame her personally for the ice and snow.

  She ousted Kate and sat down by Hunter. ‘Don’t be a nuisance,’ she told the baffled child. ‘Hunter doesn’t want to talk business today.’

  Kate took her poems straight to Mr Mauss. An initial American publication was not something she had planned, but she could think of nothing ag
ainst it.

  Barbara closed her eyes and put her head back, breathing in the scent of Hunter – a faintly woolly, bachelor smell, quite unlike the smell of a husband. He smelled of his little house, comforting, secure. Now the thought of her probably ruined home no longer troubled her – icicles in the airing cupboard, the staircase a glacier. She took a sip of wine and snapped her fingers – pooh. She thought of Hunter’s house instead. She had been there twice – no, three times: always on a Sunday afternoon and always because Seb needed to see Hunter. They had taken the children and had tea. It was odd to remember that she hadn’t much enjoyed it at the time, worrying about the drive home in the dark, and getting the children’s school things ready for the next day . . . It had had that damp, sweet, oddly womanless smell, and she had teased him a little – about the dishes in the sink, the mouse tracks in the pantry, the stew left in a cupboard from one week to the next. There had been lamplight too, and firelight and a lavender bush outside the front door, and bees in hives in a field, and little brown birds. Once she had rested on Hunter’s hard bed when she had a migraine. She had thought nothing of it at the time, she remembered, amazed at her ingratitude and yet proud that she had been so untouched by the wonder of lying on Hunter’s bed. She hadn’t even looked around for evidence of women. It seemed never to change, Hunter’s house. Each time it was the same: the same books, the same cups, the same comb in the bathroom. Perhaps in the New Year Seb would ask her to take his MS down to Hunter. She would leave the children with her friend Ruth and a cold supper for Seb and arrive early, before Hunter got home. The door was warped and stuck on the flagstones when you pushed it open. She could see herself pushing it, feel her spirits sink as she thought it was locked, pushing again, harder. It opened. She was inside, she was lighting the oil lamps – she had no idea how to go about this, but inspiration would come to her. She lit the fire. The little house was growing warm and glowing with pearly light. Hunter had left steak – no, chops. She would make a hotpot and the homely smell would welcome him. He would be so surprised to see the lights gleaming through the snow, and smell lamb. It didn’t occur to her that anyone approaching home under these unexpected conditions might turn straight round and come back with a policeman. Potatoes? Onions? She frowned in the effort to remember where they were kept. The silly boy would have left them too long and they’d be sprouting. But she would have done her shopping on the way. She would have bought fresh vegetables for Seb. Hunter should have them. She would lay the table, but Hunter didn’t seem to have any tablecloths and the table top wasn’t very nice. There was a paisley counterpane in one of the bedrooms – she’d use that. She checked that there was wine in the cupboard by the fire. She made the bed when she took the counterpane – she wished she had a pink frilled nightgown like a rose to lay on the pillow beside Hunter’s pyjamas. She wished she could happen to have about her clean white sheets, smelling of gardens. Then she remembered that Hunter’s sheets smelled only of Hunter, and she shivered with wholly unaccustomed libidinous delight.

  ‘Barbara . . .’ he was saying, and she was back in Innstead – the lamps in Hunter’s house still glowing, the hotpot simmering. But the blizzard was raging here – not forcing her to stay alone with Hunter, but keeping Hunter here with Mr Mauss and Evelyn and Dennis and Vera and Seb and the children and so on, as though a fairy had given her a wish and she had got it wrong, forgetting to specify that she wished to be snowed in alone with Hunter. And even Hunter’s actual presence was somehow less con -vincing than her imaginings. She was a little disappointed in him.

  ‘I thought you were going to drop your glass,’ said Hunter, who was feeling squashed between Barbara and Vera.

  ‘I like the painting,’ said Vera, looking at the framed representation of the lunatic asylum on the mantelpiece.

  ‘Do you?’ said Mrs Marsh, surprised.

  Evelyn waited.

  ‘Evelyn did it,’ said Mrs Marsh hastily. ‘She’s very clever.’

  ‘We knew you painted,’ said Vera. ‘Dennis has seen you with your easel and that.’

  ‘I haven’t been doing it long,’ said Evelyn. ‘I’m still learning, really.’

  ‘I’ve been writing poetry for years,’ said Kate, crudely.

  She and Evelyn glared at each other, competing for the uncertain and wavering limelight.

  ‘I admire people who do things,’ said Vera. ‘Dennis did pottery once, but he didn’t stick to it.’

  ‘I’ve got a lot more at home,’ said Evelyn. ‘You can come and see them if you like.’

  ‘Now,’ said Barbara suddenly. ‘She’s very good,’ she added explanatorily. ‘You should really see her things.’

  Evelyn was gratified but puzzled. She didn’t think Barbara had ever seen her paintings. ‘When . . .?’ she began.

  ‘Sam,’ said Barbara, ‘wipe the window and see what the weather’s doing.’

  ‘No’gorracloff,’ said Sam.

  ‘Well, use your hand.’ Barbara was impatient.

  ‘I’m no’gonna use my han’,’ said Sam indignantly. Tha’s all uvver peopew’s condense’ breff.’

  No one would have suspected him of such fastidiousness.

  ‘Well, get a tissue from the kitchen and use that,’ suggested his mother.

  ‘Can’ fin’ one,’ came Sam’s voice.

  Barbara almost despaired. Sam seemed to have inherited all his father’s impracticability without even his intellect. Surely most normal people would have ascertained by now whether it was snowing or not. ‘Open the door and look,’ she said, in a brave effort to resolve this apparently insoluble problem.

  ‘No, don’t do that,’ said Mrs Marsh. ‘You’ll let all the cold in.’

  ‘If you turned the wireless on you might get the weather forecast,’ observed Evelyn.

  ‘Dennis,’ asked Vera with simple faith, ‘is it still snowing?’

  Now Mr Mauss rose from the hearth where he was playing snakes and ladders with Kate. Resolutely he wiped the window pane with his clean white handkerchief. ‘It’s snowing fit to bust,’ he told them.

  Thwarted, Barbara poured herself another drink. Paradoxically her faint disillusion with Hunter had given her the courage and determination to get him alone, all to herself. He seemed rather more available. ‘No,’ she would have said, detaining him as they all left for the feast of art at Evelyn’s. ‘Not you, Hunter. I want to ask you some -thing.’ It would have to be something about Mary, she had decided unscrupulously, killing two birds with one stone. Her question would be personal, faintly psychiatric, the kind that only he as an old friend could answer, and that would necessarily exclude Mary’s presence. It hadn’t yet occurred to her to doubt that when they were alone Hunter would, in some fashion, declare himself.

  ‘Hunter,’ said Mrs Marsh, knowing now upon whom she could rely in this gathering, ‘would you ask Mary if she’d like a hot drink?’

  Hunter rose gladly and Barbara got up to pour herself another drink, not hot, she thought, but very strong.

  After a while Mrs Marsh followed Hunter to discover the answer to her question. He sat opposite Mary, laughing.

  ‘No, she wouldn’t,’ he said, remembering, as Mrs Marsh opened the door.

  Mrs Marsh felt let down. ‘I wish you’d come through, Mary,’ she said. ‘It seems awfully rude to Dennis and Vera you sitting in here. As though you were avoiding them.’

  ‘If I were a man,’ said Mary broodingly, ‘I think I’d rather be called dogshit than Dennis.’

  ‘Oh, well if you’re in that mood,’ said Mrs Marsh, ‘you’d better stay in here. Come on, Hunter, leave Misery on her own.’

  ‘Besides,’ Mary said, ‘Vera’s face looks like a tumour.’

  Mrs Marsh was furious with Mary for saying something so unkind and disgusting. Nevertheless she inhaled her next sip of sherry instead of swallowing it as she had intended. It went up her nose and started coming out of her eyes, as she wondered what would happen if her nerves impelled her to ask Vera whether she would like t
o come upstairs and powder her tumour. Her face was unhealthily bright and shiny. Mrs Marsh spluttered and dashed her eyelids with the top of her finger.

  ‘What are you laughing at?’ asked Evelyn. ‘Share the joke.’

  ‘I’m not laughing,’ said Mrs Marsh, furious with herself.

  ‘Well, here’s one,’ said Evelyn, reading from a strip of paper. ‘What did the god say when his thunderbolt boomeranged?’

  ‘God knows,’ said Mrs Marsh, uncaring.

  ‘I’m Thor,’ revealed Evelyn.

  Only Sam immediately saw the point of this and he didn’t think it was funny.

  Restlessly, Barbara got up. Her vision was clear but restricted. She tripped over a footstool but made unerringly for the door, the hall and the door beyond, where she saw Hunter as though isolated in a circle and Mary a threatening blur on the periphery.

  ‘I just wish everyone would stay in one place for five minutes,’ said Mrs Marsh. ‘It’s like a pantomime – Mary’s in and out like a fiddler’s elbow and now Barbara’s doing it too.’ Normally she wouldn’t have spoken so disloyally, but it seemed that this Christmas Day it wasn’t the Prince of Peace but the Lord of Misrule who held sway, and Mrs Marsh didn’t care for anarchy.

  ‘Do come through, Hunter,’ said Barbara.

  She leaned backwards and held out both hands to him where he lay on the floor. It. was a totally unnatural gesture and one that it was impossible to respond to gracefully.

  He got up hurriedly and touched one of her out stretched hands. ‘Come on, Mary,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve been rejec’-neject-neglecting us, Hunter,’ said Barbara, seizing the tail of his coat.

  Mary sat down by Sebastian, reflecting that one of the consolations of death was that when it came very close it at least inhibited the invincibly rational from making their usual attempts to disabuse the credulous of their belief in God and the after-life. Even Seb, it seemed, had sufficient delicacy not to speak when there was plainly nothing he could say to her. He was none the less, she considered, a pretty terrible man. He had no garden round his mind.