by Susan Hill
And Kitty took her bag, and her wrap, too, in case the evening grew chilly. (But it would not, of course it would not, it was a perfect early summer evening. Only Florence insisted, and indeed, was rather sharp.) And by then the friends had arrived, three of the young women, she was swept away by them, she was happy. And later, reminded for some reason, of the scene in the hall, of Thomas Cavendish, felt a sudden, warm impulse of friendliness towards him, and even of complicity, as though they shared some secret from which all others were excluded. Though if she had been asked, she could not have explained the feeling, or justified it.
And then, the afternoon, the new friends, the sudden gaiety of it all, overtook her.
Coming down after her rest, old Mrs Gray sensed the air in the drawing-room sour with dashed hopes and disappointment.
Florence stood looking out of the window again.
‘I suppose you want to have tea. Ena has just now cleared away but of course she can make some more.’
‘No. I shall not want to trouble her.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mother, it is what they are for, there is no question of troubling.’
She rang the bell irritably, and then, when the maid did not come at once, stalked out and into the hall.
But in the hall, stopped, and saw it all again, saw Kitty careering down the stairs, hair flying. Saw her stop, saw Cavendish look up at her.
Saw on his face an expression she had never seen before but could not understand or put a name to.
25
IN THE Hills, Myrtle Piggerton has a flirtation, and perhaps it will become an affair.
(But such things usually remain quite innocent here.)
And Eleanor watches and is shocked, or envious. But at any rate, withdraws her friendship a little, and so, is even more lonely herself. And desperate for Kitty.
She goes to church a great deal, and volunteers to organise a Sale of Handiwork, in aid of blind native children.
Makes plans to go Home.
On the plain, Lewis sweats and works and drinks too much.
Is lonely. And wakes in the hot nights, out of wild, terrible dreams, to find that he is weeping, and tries to bring Kitty’s face to mind, for comfort.
And cannot.
One morning, very early, Eustace Partridge walks four miles, in the chill, pale mist that lies over the fields, before the sun has risen, to catch the first train that rattles with milk churns, through the quiet countryside to Cambridge.
And his young wife wakes in the empty room, not knowing where he might have gone, or why.
But by now she is used to that.
No one opens the shutters of the house in Norfolk. But a little sunlight finds an entrance here, and here, and cuts, thin and bright as a blade, across the dusty floor.
It is dawn when Adèle Hemmings slips home from her solitary spying upon lovers, and hearing voices that speak only to her from the moon and stars, prophesying, urging.
Miss Hartshorn clears cupboards and drawers and wardrobes of her friend’s clothes, and parcels them, to despatch them to the workhouse, or to poor relief, and looks up from time to time and out of the bedroom window, which is still open, as Marjorie Pepys wanted, the night of her death. But thinks nothing, dares not dwell upon the past or contemplate the future. Only, occasionally some scene from India flashes unbidden across her mind, surprising her in its detail and brilliance.
For two days, the weather dulled slightly, there was cloud and a little drizzle. But then it passed and was forgotten, the sun rose higher, and May bloomed on in its full glory, of lilac and laburnum, the last of the hawthorn and the first of the elder, and all the fields golden with cowslips and dandelions, thick as stars.
And the flat blades of iris with lavender-blue heads, stood tall against the old stone walls in every college garden.
Georgiana, opening the windows and coming out onto the lawn, saw a cat pounce hard upon one of the first fledglings, and screamed at it and flapped at it and called to Alice and cleared the sad mess of blood and bones and feathers hastily away, before her brother should return home.
But Thomas sat on a bench under the great branching chestnut trees beside the river, and thought, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty, in hope and love and dread, and nothing else held any interest for him or had any meaning at all.
26
HE WANTED to be with her. The thought of it possessed him completely, there was nothing else.
Kitty.
But the opportunity came quite soon, and presented itself entirely naturally.
He had the name of a possible tutor in Latin and Greek, the unmarried daughter of a fellow of another college, who lived at home and cared for an invalid mother, and longed for stimulus, distraction and younger company, and would be entirely suitable.
And, of course, he could have written a brief note, would have done so, under normal circumstances.
But nothing was normal now.
Mid-afternoon of an early June day. The avenue was very quiet, some blinds down here and there. It was still hot, the sun still shone and shone.
The chime sounded, far away in the recesses of the house.
He must simply hand in the address, see no one, he had no reason to go inside.
The maid opened the door.
And Kitty was behind her, in the hall.
He thought that his heart, beating so violently, might erupt out of his chest. He held his hands tightly around his stick and behind his back, because he could not control their trembling.
In the drawing-room, everything was in order, formal, neat, the clock ticked into the silence.
He thought, how dull it must be for her here, with the two women, how uninteresting, after life in India. Though he had no real idea of how that life might have been.
‘I am so sorry. There is only me. My cousin is unwell, she has a bad migraine headache and is in bed, and Aunt Dosie is always resting at this time of day.’
‘Aunt Dosie …’
‘Mrs Gray. Her name is Theodosia, don’t you think that very romantic-sounding? But not very Scottish, which of course she is – and never can forget it. I wonder where the name came from?’
He looked at her in bewilderment. She was a child, chattering on, trying to behave in the correct, adult way with an unexpected visitor. A child, that was all.
But she was Kitty. And her flesh, her hair, the bones of her fingers, as they rested on a chairback, seemed to him rare and amazing, the most precious he had ever seen, she was more beautiful than angels. Kitty.
He did not believe that anyone before this time, this day, could so have loved another being.
‘So I am here alone. Almost alone. And all my new friends are doing their examinations, they cannot attend to me just now.’
He said, and heard his own voice sound strangely into the room, ‘I have the name of someone who might perhaps be suitable to tutor you in the classics. Your cousin asked me for advice, I … it is a Miss Unsworth. I am slightly acquainted with her father.’
He did not know how to order the words aright, how to speak to her at all, he was aware of sounding unnatural, false, stiff.
‘Oh, you are very kind. Where does she live? When might I see her? I am very anxious to begin. You see, it is my aim to be an undergraduate. I have been quite inspired by the friends I have made – those Miss Pontifex introduced me to. I long to live in the college and have people of my own age all around me and a room of my own. Oh, but I do realise how much I have to do, how ignorant I am. But I intend to succeed.’
Her face was bright, earnest. Kitty, he thought. And almost groaned aloud. Kitty, Kitty.
‘And now you have gone to so much trouble for me, and you are such an important man and so very busy. And I will go to see Miss …?’
‘Unsworth. Miss Rose Unsworth …’
‘Yes. Oh, do forgive me – I should have – may I offer you some tea? Or rather, a glass of sherry. I know that is the correct thing to offer a college fellow, sherry is what they drink all the ti
me.’ She flushed, seeing him smile.
‘Only, I do not mean that …’
‘Of course you do not. And you are quite right. About the sherry. On the whole, that is to say. But I will not take any now, thank you.’ But at once, wished that he had accepted, needing to stay here with her, to be in this room.
So, he would have tea instead, when she offered it again.
But she forgot to do so.
Faintly, from the street, the cry of ‘Rag and bone, rag and bone …’
And then she said, ‘My cousin was going to ask if you would perhaps show us around your college one day. I have only seen any of them from the outside, of course, from the gardens; and once, I stood in the great court of Trinity. And we walk across the Backs. The women’s college is really rather new, and very different, there are no pictures or treasures of any kind.’
‘Is that what you would like? To look around the inside of a college? To see pictures and treasures?’
He would take them, of course, show them what there was to show, for it would mean he might be with her, it was all he wanted. He would invite them.
He said, not knowing that he was going to do so, ‘Then let us go. You have nothing else to do? It seems rather – quiet for you here.’
‘Now? This afternoon?’
‘Now, this afternoon. That is, if Mrs Bowering …’
‘Oh, no, it will be perfectly all right, she would not be able to come and I had better not disturb her, she is really very unwell. Her headaches last two or three days sometimes, I am told, she has to have the blinds down and absolute quiet. Shall I need a coat? No, I think it is warm enough. I will just tell the maid to say where I have gone.’
The door opened and closed, stirring the still air, shifting the curtains as she went, hair flying out from her shoulders.
He swayed slightly, reached quickly for a chair.
Thought, Kitty. Kitty, Kitty, Kitty.
Thought nothing else at all, was only carried on the tide of it. And did not at all consider what he was about to do, the propriety or not. None of it mattered. Nothing mattered.
He wanted to show her the treasures of the created world.
And besides, he was old, he was fifty-four years old, and a Senior Fellow, a clergyman, it was perfectly appropriate and acceptable that he should escort her.
The clock ticked on into the silence.
He was never to forget any of it, for the rest of his life he would remember everything, in the smallest detail.
But perhaps that afternoon most of all. For on that day, it seemed, his life began. Before it, he realised, there had been nothing, nothing at all.
(And after it, for however many years there were, less than nothing. But that was a different matter.)
Such paintings, such treasures as the college had, he showed her.
(They took a cab there from the stand at the corner. Closing his eyes, even thirty years later, he could see the hairs on the thick neck of the man who drove it, the seam of grease on his collar.)
There was the great picture in the chapel. The Adoration. He took her to that first of all. Stood, watching her eyes become used to the dimness, and focus upon it, trace the figures one by one, the potentate, the shepherds, the Madonna, the waxen child.
And her own face was grave and still as those portrayed there, and the light from the candles beside the altar gave it the same fine, painted sheen.
He could scarcely breathe.
After a moment, he pointed to the kneeling figure, the rapture on the uplifted, worshipping face.
Kitty nodded slightly.
Coming out of the coolness, and the gloom, they laughed, freed, in some way, by the brightness and the warmth of the sunshine that blazed in their faces.
‘It is very beautiful. It is very grand,’ Kitty said. ‘And how old the child looks. And how wise.’
She paused. ‘But I did not very much care for the chapel. The atmosphere is so sad. And … and crushing. I felt very insignificant there.’
Kitty, he thought.
And here she was.
He wanted to cry out to the four walls.
Kitty, Kitty, Kitty.
Then, there were the corridors, and the staircases, the great Hall, the Gallery, the portraits, the cases and vaults of silver, the chained Bible, King Henry’s library, the Elizabethan chest. More staircases. More corridors. It seemed to him dull as the tomb.
On a narrow landing, she half knelt, to peer through a slit of window onto the Fellows’ garden below.
‘Like looking through the wrong end of a telescope.’
Otherwise, inside the old buildings she scarcely spoke and when she did, almost whispered. Her face was very composed, very grave. As grave, as solemn, as the waxen child. As wise.
She had coiled her hair up, beneath her hat.
Once, as she half turned, he saw the skin of her long neck, pale, and almost transparent with a sheen as on a circle of honesty. He stared, his mouth dry.
But then, coming out from the shadow of the buildings, and under the arch into the full sunlight again, and the garden and paths that led down to the river, suddenly she smiled, and took off her hat and shaking her head, let her hair fall onto her neck and shoulders, down her back, all anyhow, and skipped once or twice, turning to say something to him, eyes dancing.
And he felt it, too, the shadow fell away from him, and rolled off his back, he put the buildings, the walls, the books and the paintings and the treasures, all, all behind him and forgot them, they were nothing, they were as dust, and so, laughing, too, he went beside her towards the river which ran between the banks, sparkling in the sun and where the young men in boaters punted and rowed and the young women sat together, smiling, and glided with pleasure under the bridges, into the rippling shadows, and out again, and the moorhens and coots circled around and about them, and the willows trailed gentle strands into the water.
He looked down at her as she stood beside him, holding her straw hat between her hands, against her dress.
He said, ‘Have you been on the river yet?’
Her face, upturned to his, was the face of a young child.
And so they went, walked down to where the boats were, below the bridge, and took one.
He had not rowed on this river for more than thirty years.
Getting in, she reached out her hand to balance, but he would not have touched it, drew back a little. But the boatman was there, she turned instinctively to him to hand her in.
And then, as she settled on the cushions, leaning back a little, put the straw hat back upon her head, and her face was grave again, and quite serene, looking down at the water, and above the water, to the bank, and the bridges, and over and beyond them, to where the towers and stone walls soared to the sky.
He thought only, this time is the most precious there has ever been, all moments have led to this, all moments end here, end now. And then thought nothing more, and there was no more time.
The boat slipped through the water between others, and if he was seen by anyone, he did not know it, would not have cared. After a time, they were downstream, away from the buildings and the Backs, under bridge after bridge, and out of the town altogether, to where the river ran between grassy meadows, full of buttercups and poppies, and tall swaying grass-heads, and the brown cows grazed down almost to the water’s edge.
Once, a kingfisher darted low, bright, blazing blue, from bank to bank.
In holes in the mud, a family of young water rats played, peered. Vanished.
Kitty trailed her hand in the water and the ripples spread gently out from it, thinner and fainter, as they receded, and there was no sound except the creak of the rowlock and the dip and push of the oars. And all around them, the birds, madly singing.
He felt unreal, bodiless. He felt wonder. Astonishment. Pure, vibrant joy.
No dread, no fear, no bewilderment now, but acceptance, as of some miraculous gift.
And, looking across at Kitty, love.
; Her face was turned from him, shaded by the rim of her hat. Serious. Absorbed.
He could row for ever.
But after a time, hours, or years it might have been, they moored beside a path that led through meadows to a village, and walked slowly there and had tea in a garden, at a table under the trees. There was no one else at all.
‘It is like the England in pictures and books, the England they all long for. I read about it, from being very young, in India. And heard them all talk. This is what they remember.’
‘Yes. It is not always like this. But you know that now.’
‘Oh yes – the rain, the cold wind, those grey streets. But all that has gone now, hasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes.’
And stared at her wrist as it curved to hold her cup.
From somewhere deep in the far trees, a cuckoo.
‘There would be nightingales here,’ he said.
In the end, they walked slowly back towards the river, where the boat lay low on the water beneath the sloping bank.
But at the bank, she stopped, and sat down on the grass and leaned back on her hands, smiling, peaceful. Said, ‘It is the most beautiful day I can remember. Days like this should never be over.’
He thought that he would weep then.
And, as he looked down at her, she looked up, full into his face.
And looking up, Kitty saw love, and knew it at once for what it was, though she had never seen it in this way before. And, for a second only, she was puzzled, and afraid. But then what she felt was simply adult, fully grown up in that moment, as if she had crossed a bridge or walked through some door and had gained all the wisdom, and the knowledge of the universe and of the human heart, and could never now go back. And, recognising it, she took it upon herself at once, accepted it.