Air and Angels

by Susan Hill

  Later, he spoke to Georgiana, not only of Eustace Partridge, but of the Dean. She said, ‘He has a forgiving nature. He is a man of tolerance.’

  ‘He took an easy attitude – a lazy attitude.’

  ‘You are hurt. You feel that you have been personally betrayed.’

  ‘He has betrayed us all, let us all down, for some idle passion. No – not even that, he said as much. He has not even that excuse.’

  ‘And is there no possibility of his staying up to complete his degree? Could his father not …’

  ‘The father is a boor and a philistine. I daresay this is all in character. He will like nothing better than an excuse to take the boy away. He has a dim view of scholarship.’

  ‘Try to be forgiving.’

  But he felt that his heart had been turned to stone and all his hopes and expectations dashed and he could not forgive.

  Only, much later, he was overcome with remorse, and a picture of the young man weeping in his rooms came to his mind with such force that he put on his coat again and returned to college, meaning to see him and speak gentler words.

  Georgiana had said, ‘I hate it when you are so hard. That is not the brother I know.’

  He bowed his head, against the wind and rain, and in acknowledgement of his own lack of charity.

  The boy’s rooms were in darkness, and when he sought out the servant, it was to hear that Eustace Partridge had already left the college.

  Returning to his own desk, he wrote a short, anguished letter of contrition and, after addressing it, walked across the court and into the chapel. There, he knelt in the darkness and poured out his heart, prayed for the young man and his lost future, for the young woman and the unborn child, commended them all to God, and then turned his attention inward and searched his own soul, asking for the grace to have a right judgement in all things, and for the gifts of mercy, of humility and of love.

  And the air seemed to seethe around him with the prayers of the centuries, they pressed in upon him, and he felt touched and uplifted by them, and as if his own prayers and his solitary voice had joined others, to become part of the fabric of the building. Relief filled him, and gratitude, he had a more immediate sense of the holy and live-giving than for years, and was profoundly comforted.

  Three days later, he took the train to Norfolk.

  13

  OTHER GIRLS sit out on the verandah, sewing, writing diaries, sketching, gossiping, giggling. Drinking sodas and lime. And perhaps, later, a piano lesson.

  But their mothers sit, too, and write endless chits, about that evening’s dinner or the stores, or send messages, by the boy, about dances and dress patterns (for now the young women have arrived from Home, everyone is very much concerned with fashion, and refurbishing last year’s dresses and ordering new. The returned girls are quizzed relentlessly for details of the latest collars and trimmings, hats and hems, the local dressmakers driven frantic with orders, toil and toil.)

  And other women on other verandahs hasten to reply.

  But Kitty does lessons every morning.

  (And if they have ever disagreed about it, Eleanor has told Lewis that at least if Kitty is educated, she will make a better companion for a husband. Though she knows there is more to it than that.)

  ‘Men don’t want clever women. They don’t want that sort at all.’

  He has been tetchy, at the end of a day, gone off, irritably, to his bath.

  But they talk on, through the open door. Only the boy has got the water at the wrong temperature, or else the soap does not lather.

  ‘Kitty is going to marry. It goes against all natural thinking that she should be clever. Let her have fun, be admired. So long as she does not damage her reputation. George Springer’s girls …’

  She lets him grumble on, hearing the regular sluicing of the water down his back.

  And of course, when he is out and dried and dressed, it has all been smoothed away. Then, they agree about Kitty after all, discussing George Springer’s buck-toothed daughters, and having higher aspirations for their own.

  For she is all they have.

  Miss Hartshorn is much recovered.

  (Though the terror will disfigure her dreams, sleeping and waking, perhaps for ever.)

  But she is up and about and anxious to put on a brave face and be back to work, at least for the time being.

  So here is Kitty, sitting beside her, listening.

  It was a threatening, misty morning – but mild. We first rested in the large boat-house, then under a furze bush. The wind seized our breath. The Lake was rough. There was a boat by itself, floating in the middle of the bay below Water Millock …

  When we were in the woods beyond Goldbarrow Park we saw a few daffodils close to the water-side. We fancied that the Lake had floated the seeds ashore, and that the little colony had so sprung up. But as we went along there were more and yet more; and at last, under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones around and about them; some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake; they looked so gay, ever glancing, ever changing. This wind blew directly over the lake to them. There was here and there a little knot, and a few stragglers a few yards higher up, but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity, and unity, and life of that one busy highway. We rested again and again. The Bays were stormy and we heard the waves at different distances and in the middle of the water, like the sea.

  Miss Hartshorn falls silent, and for a long time they sit together, and the vision of the daffodils, the landscape of the Lakeside, of all England, lies between them, and they are speechless in contemplation of it.

  And India stretches away all around, irrelevant, disregarded.

  Kitty has a sudden picture of herself in a railway train, flashing across England, through the wet, green, flat fields that run towards the coast, sees her own feet sticking out in front of her, beneath a blue serge coat. Sees her shoes, black-buttoned, with a scuff on each toe. Sees the very marks on the floor of the carriage.

  The volume of Wordsworth’s poems is open on the wicker table. Miss Hartshorn looks down. Will say ‘And then, of course, there is the poem itself. Her brother’s poem. But that came later, that was not written until 1804.’

  And she will take it up and read it aloud. (She reads rather well.)

  But not yet. Now, they are still too much in the midst of it all. They sit on.

  ‘Oh, I want to go there, to be there, to see for myself. To walk beside the Lake, climb the crag, stand in the rain, feel the cold wind on my face. To read more, read the others. To see their graves. I want it all so much.’

  Kitty’s head is a confusion of disconnected fragments. Names. Places. Hopes. Dreams.

  But she says nothing.

  From the house, a burst of singing, half-chant, half-melody.

  Silence.

  Eyes closed, Kitty recites.

  I wandered lonely as a cloud

  That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

  When all at once, I saw a crowd,

  A host of golden daffodils …

  (For she has memorised it long ago.)

  Hearing her, Miss Hartshorn weeps.

  Eleanor sits opposite the young woman whose child has died of cholera, the previous day. The fan goes round and round, round and round in the ceiling, and the room is rather dark.

  The first few, formal murmurs having been made, there is nothing at all that she can think of to say.

  But the mother talks.

  ‘He seemed perfectly well. Nothing was wrong. When he went to bed he was … normal. Oh, and I have been so careful, ever since he was born … stood over the servants … had everything boiled … made sure that the food … but someone has been careless … I can’t … I have
been so strict with them. About … things for the baby … everything. I don’t think they like me, but they know … I ordered them … Herbert ordered them … and he was never allowed to drink the milk in any other house … we carried our own … he … the ayah knew.’

  Her voice went on like a slow-flowing river, monotonous and repetitious, over stones.

  Flick-flick, flick-flick, flick-flick went the fan, around and around.

  There were swathes of faded and patched English chintz and cretonne covering the Indian chairs, and water-colours and oil paintings on the walls. Ben Nevis. Sheep at Evening. Salisbury Cathedral. But the furniture, the whole room, still looked, as always, Indian.

  And little brass and ebony tables everywhere.

  ‘It happened so quickly. It was hideous. But he seemed so well.’

  She got up, wandered about the room. Smiled vaguely. Sat down again.

  ‘The doctor was half-drunk. Though Herbert said … But he didn’t seem to care … even be interested. It was almost as if he were … we were … as if it was some native child. I told him we had done everything … asked if there was … he shrugged. He simply shrugged.’

  She stared in a sort of panic, huge-eyed, at Eleanor.

  ‘I haven’t cried. I cannot cry. It has all happened so quickly.’

  Yes, Eleanor thinks. And watches the fan go around and around. That is how it is here. Children, babies, playing, sunshine, healthy one day, dead the next. Cholera, typhoid, dysentery, malaria, septicaemia. Snakes, scorpions, mosquitoes, rats.

  India. Danger.

  First Miss Hartshorn. And now this.

  She has lived, been very happy, here, for twenty years. And for almost sixteen of them, since Kitty’s birthday, has been fearful, constantly shadowed by anxiety over her safety. She has exposed her only child to all these risks, to this ever-present, lurking danger, and all for the joy of having her with them, and because she could not have borne the separation.

  And it will go on, she thinks, it will never be over.

  The young woman, whose name is Myrtle Piggerton, rings for tea. But then leaves the room abruptly.

  Eleanor sits in the bamboo chair, under the flicking fan, and sees the future. Sees Kitty married to some young soldier or civil servant, and sent off to a remote station. Kitty lonely, bored, frittering away her life among a lot of dull, provincial women. And with nothing but the appalling dangers of pregnancy and childbirth ahead of her. And afterwards, the whole cycle would merely begin again.

  Harry Piggerton was an only son, the first-born. He was not quite two years old.

  The young woman comes back. Apologises. But is dry-eyed still.

  Then, sitting across the room, after the servant has brought in tea, and hard little coconut cakes, she tells Eleanor about the child’s birth, trying to draw her into the great, stifling conspiracy of female suffering.

  ‘Yes,’ Eleanor says. ‘Yes. I know. Of course. I understand.’

  But she does not. Only remembers, before Kitty, having been told that it would be unendurable pain, and so, of course, expected it.

  They were in the hills, her room looked out onto the valley and the line of mountains beyond. She had felt at peace, and strangely detached. It was very early morning, the tree-tops rising out of the mist, the rooks caw-cawing.

  And the pain had been really nothing to speak of, short-lasting and quite endurable, she had almost enjoyed the rigours of it, as of a good, hard walk uphill, straining every muscle, but exhilarated.

  Afterwards, she had looked down at her fair, small, perfect daughter, and the joy of it, the passionate love and commitment of the moment, haunted her still.

  For no particular reason that they could determine, there had not been any other child.

  So that, when women talked, she kept silent and felt apologetic, as if a suffering had quite unfairly passed her by.

  Now, she stands, feels obscurely guilty again, facing the dry-eyed, distraught young woman. Thinks, and this is another suffering evaded, and nothing truly bad has ever happened to me.

  ‘No … won’t you stay? We could sit on the verandah … Herbert won’t be home for … oh … the boy will bring us a drink.’

  But she makes an excuse. And it is true that there is a dinner tonight and the Viceroy will be present. She intends to look magnificent.

  ‘You see …’ The young woman takes Eleanor’s hand, grips it. ‘Now I have nothing.’ And she looks desperately about her, at the mean little bare-earthed garden, the fence, the flagpole on the nearby government building, the vulture, raking the sky.

  Yet she has always seemed the most devoted, the most conscientious, of the younger wives, even Lewis has remarked upon it.

  And will be so again, Eleanor thinks, driving away, will do her duty, and make the best of India, will bear more children, and perhaps with greater ease, and will love them, agonise over them, and eventually, one way or another, lose them. But what she has said this afternoon, for all it is the truth, was revealed in shock and grief and distress, and will be soon denied, or even forgotten.

  She turns her attention to the evening ahead, and how she intends to look magnificent.

  But the dry-eyed young mother of the dead little boy, and her fears for her own Kitty, get in the way.

  14

  FLORENCE HAD had a small table set in the upstairs bay window. She intended to sit at it and read seriously, to educate herself.

  She had already written to Thea Pontifex.

  ‘Of course, I am an historian,’ Thea had replied in her plain, round hand. ‘I cannot pretend to guide you in any other area, except perhaps a little in literature, which has long been my other love.’

  There followed a short list of General Introductions to the study of English history and the Constitution. At the end of it, was an appendix on The Novel.

  Florence stood up. It was a fine morning. She would go into town, in search of new gloves; and afterwards, to the bookshops.

  Seeing her, in the bright sunlight across King’s Parade, Mrs Lacey, wife of a college Warden, held up the traffic with her umbrella. Bicycles swerved madly.

  ‘Now at last I have caught up with you. You have been positively striding out.’ She took Florence’s arm.

  ‘We are having a dinner on Friday. There will be a Professor of Fine Art from London, and Miss Blake, who has published poetry. I do hope you are free to come?’

  Free, Florence thought. Oh yes. But looked around her in sudden panic, feeling pressed in by tall buildings, and the crowds pushing past along the pavement.

  Oh, I am always free.

  ‘I am short of a lady.’ She pushed her face, with its little, snouty nose, close up to Florence’s shoulder.

  ‘But I think I may be already engaged for Friday. Perhaps I may let you know?’

  Florence smiled charmingly, and then escaped, to walk as fast as she dared making for the side lanes, and the bridge, gloves forgotten, books unbought.

  Here, it was very quiet. A chill wind cut off the water. There were scarcely any other walkers, under the bare trees.

  She thought, as she thought every hour, there is nothing else that I want in my life, and nothing else will satisfy. I have a single purpose.

  But, for the time being, had no idea how to go about achieving it, and longed, walking very slowly, looking down into the river, for an adviser, a confidante.

  In the end, finding herself back among the buildings and in the shadow of his college, she went in and crossed the court to the chapel, where she stood with a few other visitors, and gazed up at the great picture, behind the gilded altar. But it meant little to her, and she passed altogether over the one, half-shadowed face of the kneeling figure, quite unseeing, unaware.

  And of course, she had hoped that he would be somewhere about, and he was not, so that at last she was obliged to leave, to go back across the courtyard and out through the gates, into the clamour of the streets again, and if she had glimpsed the windows of his rooms, she did not know it, for
which were they?

  It was lunchtime. And she despised herself for a weak fool, and then rushed to purchase some gloves which, on getting home, she saw that she did not like.

  The bookshops remained unvisited.

  But she went to dinner at the house of the Warden, and wore silk, of a startling blue, and sensed admiration.

  And overheard, farther down the table, as a silence abruptly fell, the rather shrill voice of the Professor of Fine Art.

  ‘A woman can make any man marry her, if only she will go about it in the right way.’

  Florence stared at him, a flush of excitement and wild hope suffusing her neck.

  At another dinner, Eleanor sits next to the Viceroy and is charming, he is quite delighted with her, and at the ball which follows, dances with her twice. And she does, indeed, look magnificent. So Lewis thinks, watching, and he himself feels glorious with pride.

  Uplifted and made radiant by the admiration and interest, the flattery that surrounds her, Eleanor waltzes like a girl, as perhaps Kitty will soon waltz here, and is quite satisfied, quite fulfilled, for surely, she thinks, life can hold nothing more than this, and in the midst of it all, I am doing my duty, and supporting my husband, it all reflects upon him, I am exactly where I should be.

  And whirls away, lightly, in the Viceregal arms.

  Tomorrow, there is another ball, in fancy dress, for now the Cold Season is in full swing, every day there will be garden parties and afternoon drives, the gymkhanas and the polo, tennis and archery and badminton tournaments and teas, there will be regimental balls and club balls and moonlight picnics and a wedding or two, with everyone young, or pretending to be so. Charmed lives. And sadness and loneliness and homesickness and beggars and lepers, the return of the hot weather and the deaths of children, are banished out of sight, thought not always quite out of mind.