Air and Angels

by Susan Hill

  He said quietly, ‘Until now, I have never cared for any living creature, as I have cared for birds. A single curlew cry in the midst of the marsh, or a wader standing alone at the edge of the water– I have never ached for any human beauty as I have ached at the sight of those. Until now.’

  She listened, her eyes still on his face, and received what he said gently, kindly.

  ‘I saw you first, standing on the stone bridge, looking down into the water. You did not see me – know me then – or I you. And you were like – the most graceful bird, and so, I loved. At once. But not as – and what to do … how to … what may happen to this love or … what you …’

  He stumbled hopelessly over the words, they made nonsense, he was defeated by them, and buried his face in his hands, his eyes burning, his tongue dry, cleaving to his mouth.

  The rain made a soft rushing sound on the roof of the hut, as though a brush were being swept across it, to and fro, to and fro.

  Kitty said, ‘This is love. It is – it is not as I had thought.’

  He shook his head, but did not look up.

  But after a moment, said, ‘I care for nothing else. You should know that. Will not. There is nothing else in life.’

  He looked up. ‘It is terrifying.’

  He wanted to reach out to her, but did not. He was paralysed.

  She was standing at the window with her back to him, watching the drifting rain, falling like needles onto the still surface of the river.

  He said, ‘Kitty,’ his voice an odd, rasping whisper.

  Then, very carefully, she began to remove her clothes, the wrap, the long, full dress, the petticoats and stockings and chemise, they fell onto the floor and were left like soft, discarded feathers. She stepped out of them and then was motionless, before him, and pale, and naked as a wand, her body not yet a woman’s body, not yet formed. But he did not know that, had never seen, nor had any image of it in his mind.

  He scarcely breathed.

  But then, knelt before her, and gazed and as he gazed, reached out his hand and drew it down her body, an inch away from the flesh, not touching her at all, drew it down to her bare feet, and back and reaching her breast and shoulder, mouth, hair, would have touched. But could not.

  Kitty’s eyes were lowered, she did not look at him.

  And in the end, he rose and stumbled out and half fell, a few yards away, onto the path, and knelt there in the gentle rain, weeping, his head bent, face covered by his hands.

  31

  LATER, THE rain stopped, and a fine mist clung to the surface of the marsh. But above it, the sun shone through again, reflecting on the surface of the water. The air smelled infinitely sweet.

  Kitty stood at the door of the hut, white-faced, and somehow, older. She was dressed, her clothes carefully arranged, so that he wondered wildly if it had indeed happened, if she had ever stood naked for him, or whether he had had some insane, half-waking dream.

  They walked back over the mud, between the wet grasses, to the sea and the streets of the town, and felt strange, embarrassed to pass houses, be among even a few people.

  At the hotel, they ate, and drank a little, sitting in a dark back room, and Kitty was reminded of her first evening in England, with cousin Florence, after she had disembarked. A lifetime ago.

  Then, because his clothes and shoes were soaked through, but more because he knew in his heart that this, today, would be the end of it all, but could not, could not bear the end ever to be, he asked for rooms, and rooms were found, they could rest and bathe, his things were taken away and dried.

  He said, ‘We had better stay here. It is too late to get back now.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kitty said.

  And quite early, she went to bed, and slept at once, exhausted. Thomas went out again, when his things were returned, to walk in the darkness along the shingle, close to the sea, despairing, incredulous, joyful, entirely calm.

  He spent the night in Kitty’s room, sitting up in a chair, and looking over to where she slept, and waiting for the dawn to break on the horizon, along the line of the sea.

  When it did, waking Kitty, she did not start, but watched him as he sat, and when he turned and saw her, said, ‘Remember this.’

  He went and knelt beside her then and buried his head in the bed-cover, and, briefly, she reached out her hand and touched his hair, stroking it lightly as she might that of a distressed child, to comfort.

  And it was the only touch between them.

  32

  FOR NATURALLY, he had been right, those three days were both the beginning and the end of it all, there was to be no more.

  But what there had been was enough to ruin him, and the shame lasted a lifetime. But he understood that, accepted it. His only fear was for Kitty. But Kitty was taken away, Kitty scarcely suffered at all. Or so it was supposed. But as she never spoke of it, no one knew.

  When they arrived back in Cambridge, it was to find Florence and Georgiana come home early from London.

  (Georgiana having felt unwell, and depressed after their tour of St Faith’s Shelter, so that she had no taste at all for the enjoyments they had planned, the theatres and concerts, the strolls in St James, she had been such poor company that Florence had agreed quite easily that they should leave. And besides, she was anxious to get back, living as she did in such hope of a proposal, wanting to further her own plans. She had even confided to Georgiana that she had some reason for hope, though Georgiana had said nothing, uncertain what to believe. But perhaps it was so.)

  Except, of course that it was not and had never been. And arriving home and finding Kitty and Thomas gone, and when they did not return that night, she saw how things were, the truth was plain, shocking and terrible, before her.

  It was not until long afterwards that Florence vented every morsel of the bitterness and hatred she felt, speaking one night to her mother. At the time, she said only, ‘I will destroy him.’ And did so, quite easily, by going at once to the Dean.

  On the same day, Eustace Partridge had climbed up to his old tutor’s room, seeking advice, help, comfort, a welcome, for he planned to leave his wife, and come back here, take up the old ways, somehow, find refuge. But found instead a note pinned to the door, and then, from the servant, and another undergraduate, an old friend, met by chance in the town, heard rumours and parts of the story, and felt utterly betrayed, and most of all by what he saw as the hypocrisy. He had expected nothing of himself, nothing of any other man, but of Cavendish, he expected everything, probity, self-discipline, chastity – perfection.

  He left Cambridge at once, not for home, but for London, to lose himself, confused, angry, and, at last, sitting on a park bench late at night, infinitely sorry too for another wasted life.

  In the house, Kitty stood at the window of her room, and later, lay on her bed fully clothed. But did not sleep. She felt that a hundred, or a thousand years, had passed in three days, and was grown up and completely adult, it was as if she understood the meaning of all things, had seen to the heart of them, and above all understood instinctively that she had known love, of a kind she would never know again, for the rest of her life, and was humbled by it, and grateful for it, and ashamed of nothing.

  But whether she loved in return, she still could not have told.

  Much later, after dinner, for which she did not go down, old Mrs Gray came and sat with her for a little, and held her hand in the darkness, and all was well, at least between the two of them.

  She had not expected it. But it was to Georgiana that he talked, told everything there was, breaking down several times, as he did so, told every detail of those days and of his feelings, the whole truth. And she believed him without question, and would, of course, remain with him, protect him, defend him, that would never be in doubt.

  And only wept, when she was finally alone, wept for the innocence of it all, and his vulnerability, and because of his suffering that must go on, for ever perhaps, and for which she could give him no help, no alleviation. But
envied him, too, for what he had known, the love that had so transformed him.

  33

  EVERYTHING HAPPENED as might have been expected.

  Eleanor, having heard of the death of her husband, and written of it to Kitty, and begun all the dreary business of packing and leaving the Hills and returning to Calcutta, and the empty house, the dumb, respectful servants, having bravely begun to come to terms with it, even, and the realisation that her life here was over, and she had no purpose in India now, received the letter from Florence, telling Kitty’s story, dealing the new blow.

  And so made the arrangements to sail for home, and in time, arrived, and took Kitty at once away from Cambridge, to London first, and, later, to Sussex. (And it was to Sussex that Thea Pontifex went to live, after her marriage, and only a dozen miles or so away from Kitty, and perhaps, eventually, they met. Or perhaps they did not – but Miss Pontifex, at any rate, was happy.)

  And night after night, Adèle Hemmings continued to slip out of the back gate and down through the snickets and alleyways, prowling, muttering. But finally, was discovered, wandering naked beside the weir, and taken to shelter, and was fortunate never to have been harmed. Though by now she was quite deranged, and scarcely understood.

  For three more days afterwards, her aunt lay dead in the upstairs room of their house, as she had already been, for who knew how long, and the cats, wild with hunger, marauded through the gardens all around.

  And, the door of the conservatory having somehow been left open, when the birds were out, by Georgiana, or by Thomas himself, preoccupied, still, a cat, inevitably, found the way in, and there was carnage, which Thomas discovered at dawn. And Georgiana, hearing him, came down, grey hair plaited, and hanging over her shoulder, and sat, as he wept, then, holding him, and rocking him like a child, in the midst of all the small, maimed, broken bodies, and blood, and bright, scattered feathers.

  Among the possessions and papers of Miss Lovelady, gone through eventually by lawyers somewhere, a note was found, neatly written, leaving the house in Norfolk to Kitty, who was traced, and so it came to her.

  But she could never bear to go to it. It remained empty, winter and summer, for years more, and then was sold for very little. But it gave her some money of her own which, one day, she might be glad of.

  There was nothing left for Miss Hartshorn in the cottage in Warwickshire, had been nothing since she had cut herself off from it, by going to India. She had come back, but not to belong. So that she did not know where to go, what to do, and so thought of India again, wondered if she ought to return. For where else was there?

  But knew she could not have faced that, and what, in any case, would be the point or purpose?

  Instead, on a sudden whim, she closed the cottage, and went in search of the place she had come from, so many years ago, another village, sheltered by a fold of the Cotswold Hills. She had grown up here, but left at the age of seventeen, and never returned, and felt fear, as she approached, in case it had changed beyond all recognition, and she would no longer know it, for then, the last hope would have gone, and there would be nowhere in the world for her to belong.

  But nothing had changed, all was exactly as she remembered, as she walked up the hill between the low stone cottages, in the evening light, and stood in the lane, outside the door of the first house in which she had lived as a young child, and knew that the past had been given back to her, and that she was saved, rescued from herself, and all her own mistakes and follies, and not barren, but infinitely rich.

  Old Mrs Gray lived on, through the scandal and all its aftermath, and into the years when, for most people, it became old history, forgotten, and still planned her visit to the Scotland of her girlhood. But died eventually without having gone, though not until she was almost a hundred, and by then Florence had begun to age, and be forgetful and ill-tempered, and periodically did not recognise this or that person, which was the start of her illness. (But the romantic way of seeing it was that the disappointment and bitterness had turned her mind, and jealousy and hatred eaten like a canker into it, ruining her.) But whether she would have recognised as much as the names of those involved, was uncertain.

  Georgiana resigned from the Committee for Moral Welfare, but others took over, and in time, the house in the country was completed and inhabited by generations of fallen young women, for there was never any shortage. Though none was ever so fallen as those who, in truth, were not.

  There were other committees for Georgiana to join, and she was invited to do so, for no one ostracised her. Indeed, a point was publicly made of not doing so, she was welcomed and valued, her life was fuller than it had ever been.

  Alice stayed on, and trudged each Sunday and Wednesday evening, to the spiritualist fellowship, and the seances, which seemed to sustain her, or at any rate, to do no harm.

  But, for about a year after the scandal broke and spread like a stain, thickening and deepening as it went, life was suspended, because Thomas and Georgiana went abroad, to Switzerland first and then to Italy, not so much because he felt obliged to go, as that he could not bear to stay, and not to see Kitty, and yet to see her everywhere, to walk across the Backs, and towards the stone bridge, where she always stood for him, looking down into the water.

  Only, abroad, he saw her too, and had her with him constantly, so that in a sense things were no different.

  But their absence gave people the time to talk and be done with talking, and on his return, they were kind and pretended to have forgotten. Most people. And after all, what was the scandal, what exactly had happened? Who knew?

  He continued to write his book on the sea-birds, and completed it, and it was published and became a standard work, and that gave him some satisfaction. He even began another. But abandoned it, unfinished, after some years.

  Otherwise, he went a great deal to the houseboat, spent days and weeks alone there in the silence, and the tranquillity, the lapping of the water, the open skies, the crying of the birds, the dawns and the moonlit nights, wind and sun and storms, soothed him, rinsed his mind of all anxiety, so that he seemed to float, quietly, on the surface of the shining water, infinitely calm. And read his Bible, and the Daily Office there. But did not otherwise pray.

  And Kitty was always with him, the memory of her never dimmed or became cloudy, and the love he had felt he continued to feel, and it was never supplanted.

  He regretted nothing at all. He had known a brief time of joy, absolute and unalloyed, and saw it as a foretaste of paradise.

  So that many years later, as an old man, standing in the sunshine by the river, which was crowded with the young men in boats, and holding a saucer, and a dish of strawberries, and looking up, and seeing a girl in a pale dress, on the stone bridge, the past raced towards and broke over him and became the present, and he felt what he had felt anew, fresh and raw and vivid. Love, as he had never forgotten for one second of a lifetime since, nor ever once regretted.

  And Kitty?

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  Published by Vintage 1999

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  Copyright © Susan Hill 1991

  Susan Hill has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  This book is sold subject

  First published in Great Britain in 1991 by

  Sinclair-Stevenson

  Vintage

  www.vintage-books.co.uk


  Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

  The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9780099284680

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  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Susan Hill

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  The Turn of the Year

  Part Two

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16