The Birds of the Air Read online

  Mrs Marsh crossed the hallway – two steps – to Mary’s room. ‘He leaves too much to Barbara,’ she said. ‘He never gives her a thought. He’s wrapped up in his work.’

  ‘He’s all right,’ said Mary inadequately. ‘Barbara worries too much.’ He had to have some defence, she thought, against her sister’s grasping, tentacular nervousness.

  Mrs Marsh sighed, remembering, for no reason, a moment when Barbara was a little baby sitting on her knee in the springtime at Melys y Bwyd and Mary was dancing – a silly two-year-old’s dance. Suddenly someone had laughed and laughed until the room was full of laughter, and it was the little baby on her knee – who previously had only smiled or cried – laughing with the utmost delight at the dancing child.

  ‘I don’t believe he loves her,’ she said.

  Mary recoiled. ‘I’m sure he does,’ she said with artificial formality.

  But Mrs Marsh doubted it. She wondered crossly if anyone but she knew what it was to love – how painful and tiring it could be. She wondered how Mary had loved Robin. She remembered how Robin had loved Mary, bounding at a photograph of her as a girl crying ‘Isn’t she lovely? Isn’t she beautiful?’, leaping through the door, not stopping to say hullo. Such extravagant behaviour. She wished she could tell Mary how much she loved her, but Mary wouldn’t listen . . .

  She got up tiredly. She could cope with anything if people would be happy, would make an effort. Really, it seemed as if only she held all her world together. ‘I wish you’d speak to Sebastian,’ she said without hope. ‘He’d listen to you.’ It was Mary’s fault that Barbara had met Seb, though she’d been pleased at the time.

  ‘It’s snowing again,’ said Mary. There would be no point in trying to explain to her mother that the most ruthless dictators, impalers, people who put people in sacks and threw them in the river, robbers, politicians – all, all have always considered those who offer them the mildest hint of criticism to be extremely wicked and deserving of annihilation.

  ‘He wouldn’t listen,’ she said.

  *

  Sam was very good that evening. He smiled several times and jovially shoved Kate with his elbow when she mentioned poetry. He seemed quite unselfconscious about his hair, not even glancing in the numerous mirrors from time to time as anyone else might have done, for pleasure or reassurance, and helped his grandmother get the tree out from the cupboard under the stairs. Mrs Marsh never had a real tree. The needles were so difficult to remove from the carpet. She kept a number of little golden nets, put tangerines in them, and hung them on the ringer, interspersed with realistic-looking birds made from papier mâché and feathers. The effect, though artificial, was preferable to the garish pyramids of light in the neighbours’ windows. Mrs Marsh had no paper chains, balls or lanterns, just some real holly that the greengrocer acquired from somewhere on the downs. She strung her Christmas cards around the hall and put chrysanthemums in the front room. But she thought Mary’s room looked bleak for the time of year with no decorations at all.

  ‘Put up your cards,’ she urged. ‘It looks so miserable.’

  ‘No,’ said Mary. She liked the pale walls and the firelight and the skeleton garden visible through the window, unrivalled by brief baubles. And she disliked the funereal opulence of Christmas, the anxious overeating of a cold people in midwinter, the forced gaiety and the absurd expense. Christmas should be looking forward to spring, the thin clear light and the rains of hope, not banging and whistling in uncertain rebellion against the frozen despair of present dearth.

  Mrs Marsh peered through the window. ‘It’s snowing quite heavily now. I wonder if I’ve got enough caster sugar.’

  ‘Ba,’ said Mrs Marsh on the morning of Christmas Eve. ‘We must get some more fruit. I think Sam’s been eating it.’

  Sam didn’t like fruit. Kate had been eating it. But Barbara didn’t think it worth explaining.

  ‘Don’t take the car,’ said Mrs Marsh. ‘Put on your boots and wrap up warmly and walk in the soft snow on the edges – the roads are like glass. Just get oranges and apples and nuts – I’ve got bananas in the cupboard. They had some nice pineapples the other day but the price was disgusting. If you take Sam,’ she said as an afterthought, ‘make sure he wears something on his head.’

  Sam stayed behind. He sat on a stool in Mary’s room and stared blankly before him. There was nothing she could say, since he obviously couldn’t sit with Seb and his papers, his grandmother didn’t approve of people sitting around in their bedrooms and Innstead offered nothing to divert him. He sat silently in her place by the window, his legs stretched out and his long feet in black boots falling sideways like a supine rabbit’s. The light from the garden shone coldly on his beige skin and his green hair, and he slid lower, his back against the wall, as the birds went on scrapping just outside. In imagination he straddled the rooftree like a warlock. Lines of silent, gape-mouthed people came to stare at him, and he knocked all their heads off, one by one, with superbly aimed sharp-edged slates, which he unhooked from their moorings with professional ease. (He knew how to do this since a holiday at Melys y Bwyd, when a man had replaced all the slates blown off by a wicked Welsh gale and he had sat on an upstairs windowsill, his back to the hills, and watched him all one morning. They had called from below, ‘Oh Sam, do be careful. You’ll fall.’ But they hadn’t dared go into the room for fear of startling him. The slater hadn’t minded him at all – just kept on doing his job and humming.) Zing went the slates, slicing through the winter air, decapitating people – none of whom were known to Sam: anonymous, complaisant game. They kept on wandering into view until the air was full of their silly heads, flying around as thick as autumn leaves. His brief cheerfulness had gone.

  Mary watched him warily. He was, she realised, full of something and likely to confide in her. Several people had recently told her things that they would prefer not to be widely known, confirming her in her suspicion that they too thought she was going to die. Sometimes Sam reminded her of Robin, and she couldn’t be sure whether she liked him for this or whether she would prefer to see him dead too.

  ‘Dad’s got a mistress,’ Sam announced at last in perfect English.

  Mrs Marsh, passing through the hall, heard him clearly and stood still, her hand suddenly cold on the newel post.

  ‘She shings,’ added Sam irrelevantly.

  ‘Well?’ asked Mary.

  ‘’orrible,’ said Sam. ‘In ’er chest.’

  ‘A contralto, I should think,’ mused Mary. ‘I’m glad we got that clear.’

  Sam was greatly relieved to see how little his aunt cared. She didn’t love anyone enough to mind at all what they did. He thought there was a lot to be said for people devoid of passion, and in Mary passion had dwindled to one desire – that she might see Robin again – and one fear – that she might not. Sam wasn’t to know this, but whatever the reason his aunt’s distant coldness was a relief after the heated curiosity of his mother who anguishedly loved and disapproved of him.

  Mrs Marsh peered round the door. She knew perfectly well that she ought to go on upstairs to the lavatory, as she had intended, and say nothing of what she had overheard, but she couldn’t help herself.

  ‘Are you telling lies, Sam?’ she demanded.

  Sam blushed. ‘Nah,’ he said indignantly – like all liars, far more offended than the usually veracious at having one of his few truthful utterances doubted.

  Mrs Marsh glared at him with the wholly unfair dislike reserved for the bearers of evil tidings. It would be better, thought Mary, if such people were made to wear distinctive clothing, so that the archers could shoot them down before they reached the barricades to upset the embattled inhabitants. There was seldom anything to be gained from the premature reception of bad news.

  Sam, too, was angry. He thought old people shouldn’t listen at doors and was aware again of the hopeless impossibility of reprimanding his seniors. Surrounded by moral turpitude, he yet knew that any word of rebuke from him would be considered im
pertinent, naughty and asking for trouble. Zing-split, he went in his head, mowing down the incessant ranks of imagined strangers – but it would be better, he suddenly realised, if his grandmother didn’t believe him, for she certainly cared. She smelt of love and worry.

  Mrs Marsh had reached the same conclusion. ‘You talk a terrible lot of nonsense,’ she told Sam, running upstairs. ‘Don’t encourage him, Mary.’ She had just noticed an extraordinary family resemblance between aunt and nephew, and fumed briefly at the unfairness of things. After all, there were countless other relations Sam could have taken after . . .

  *

  Throughout the afternoon neighbours kept calling with heavily wrapped small offerings of marmalade and bath-salts, which were added to the pile round the tree. They all knew Mary, and many of these things were for her; but Mary lurked in her room and left it to her mother to hand round the decorative boxes of matches and the apple-shaped candles which she had got for her to give in reciprocation. Her mother had had to wrap all these presents herself since Mary was loth to wind any material round anything or put anything in boxes and it hadn’t been necessary to buy a present for Robin. Christmas wasn’t necessary for Mary. She would wait for Easter and that other unanswerable feat of godly legerdemain. Resurrection, after all, was the pièce de résistance, deserving only of the roll of drums, the fanfare, the held breath – making the miracle of birth and even death quite commonplace.

  Evelyn, as best friend, kept her visit and her gift till last – until the evening, when she saw the lights go on. Then, glowing with the selfless pride of the donor, she crossed the Close to claim her reward of gratitude and a glass of sherry.

  ‘You can’t really wrap it up and put it under the tree,’ she said, ‘but I thought I’d bring it over tonight so it can settle in before the rush tomorrow.’

  ‘What is it?’ enquired Mrs Marsh, deeply suspicious. Evelyn was scatter-brained, and anything could be hidden under her cloak. She should have been warned when Evelyn had said that she had ‘just the present’ for Mary. It was bound to be something totally unsuitable.

  Evelyn knelt, fumbling under her cloak, and placed her gift on the floor. It staggered about, no more pleased to be given than Mrs Marsh was to receive it. It shrank and spat and sniffled without hope at the bleach-washed floor.

  ‘Kitty, kitty,’ said Evelyn, crouching lower to address it. ‘I found it on the downs three days ago,’ she explained, ‘all on its lonesome, crying under a bush, and I kept it in the shed so you wouldn’t see it.’

  ‘It’s wild,’ said Mrs Marsh.

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ said Evelyn. ‘It was when I found it, but it’s got used to me now. It sits on my lap.’

  ‘House-trained?’ asked Mrs Marsh.

  ‘Nearly,’ said Evelyn offhandedly, stroking the hostile kitten as it tried to hide under the kitchen cabinet.

  Mrs Marsh was very cross. She had a chaotic vision of half-eaten birds, cat mess, hairs and future generations of kittens all over the house and garden.

  ‘Its mother is probably looking everywhere for it,’ she said spitefully. ‘Parent animals leave their young concealed while they go foraging for food.’

  Evelyn grew stubborn. ‘It was lost,’ she said. ‘It was all thin, and its nose was bleeding.’

  ‘Well, I’d better find it a box,’ said Mrs Marsh resignedly. ‘Come on, puss.’ It was a tiny brindled thing, much too young to be seeking its fortune alone.

  ‘You have to put its milk on your finger,’ said Evelyn, not looking at her friend, ‘and let it lick it, and then put your finger in its saucer until it starts lapping. And you have to squash a little bit of sardine in milk, and it eats that for its dinner off your finger.’

  Mrs Marsh was outraged. Did Evelyn really suppose that she had time to sit around hand-feeding cats?

  ‘It’s Mary’s cat,’ said Evelyn. ‘She’ll do it.’

  Mrs Marsh doubted it, but had discerned Evelyn’s purpose. The kitten was to give Mary an interest, a reason for living. This was a common theme in women’s magazines and the afternoon films on television – except that it was usually a child, physically or mentally afflicted, who was restored to the world by the love of a dumb animal.

  ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ she asked. ‘We’ll have to have it seen to.’

  ‘I think it’s a girl,’ said Evelyn, brightening. ‘It’s very affectionate.’ The kitten backed away from her, its mouth open in silent loathing.

  ‘I’ve got a ribbon to put round its neck, and a card,’ said Evelyn, ‘so I’ll come round in the morning and put them on.’ She was a little disappointed at Mrs Marsh’s lack of enthusiasm and wondered uneasily whether she would appreciate the painting of the lunatic asylum seen through the branches of a laburnum tree that was to be her own present.

  ‘Have a sherry,’ said Mrs Marsh at last, taking pity on her friend’s downcast mien.

  ‘It’ll be good for Mary,’ said Evelyn. ‘It’ll give her something else to think about.’ It was her contention that the bereaved grew ill from grief. ‘Take widows,’ she said. ‘They all either get cancer or take to drink.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Mrs Marsh pointed out.

  Evelyn looked rather knowing – perhaps thinking it was early days yet. ‘You’re very unusual,’ she said patronisingly.

  But Mrs Marsh reluctantly inclined more to Mary’s theory, the arsy-versy of ‘nothing succeeds like success’, that if a person is born with a hare-lip he will undoubtedly go on to develop short sight and flat feet.

  She sighed, and turned on the wireless to listen to the news. It was preceded by a talk from an Anglican bishop.

  ‘What does Christmas mean to you, Bishop?’ enquired the wireless.

  The bishop began, ‘Oh, a time when families get together, chip each other, pull each other’s leg . . .’

  The words drifted through the wall.

  ‘And of course,’ the bishop went on, ‘it’s a religious time, and it’s when one has a bit of a rest and wonders what life is all about. Life is a strange mixture of sadness and joy, isn’t it?’ he observed, his tone deepening. ‘I went to have a drink with some of the clergy . . .’ He laughed. ‘Har har! And I said morning service in my own chapel with my grandmother present, and then I went to one of the large London prisons, and then to an Intensive Care Unit. Then at an Old Persons’ Home I sat down at the piano and played “I’m Tired and I Want to Go Home”. Har har!’ The bishop’s tone, which had lightened, now deepened again. ‘I am a poorer man today,’ he announced, ‘because there are poor people on the street. But – love is stronger than hate even on the streets of Belfast.’

  In a pig’s arse, thought Mary.

  She and Sam glanced at each other, embarrassed.

  ‘Dear me,’ she said.

  The wireless emitted a final self-satisfied holy giggle and some distant well-trained children began to sing carols.

  The snow melted again overnight, leaving everyone with a sense of anti-climax which conflicted awkwardly with their expectations of Christmas Day. It was mild and grey and wet, and no one really enjoyed the early breakfast of mushrooms and bacon. Not even the bottle of champagne they drank as they opened their presents did much to raise their spirits. Nor did their presents.

  Sebastian announced that he had left Barbara’s bottle of scent in his rooms and she’d have to wait for it until they got home, and Barbara instantly and irrationally believed he’d given it to the Thrush.

  ‘He’s teasing you, Mummy,’ Kate said. ‘Daddy, show her what we got.’

  ‘You show her,’ said Sebastian, settling back in his chair and folding his hands across the green cardigan that covered the beginnings of a paunch. His eyes were invisible behind the steely shine of his spectacles, his skin as fair and smooth as a baby’s. Mrs Marsh felt her mouth twist with distaste.

  For Barbara they had got an embroidered ethnic evening bag, hung with tassels and gleaming with bits of mirror. She recognised it at once and wondered remotely whether she would find a
slice of turkey in it.

  ‘We got it in the boutique,’ cried Kate. ‘Oh, Mummy, isn’t it perfectly exquisite?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Barbara, sense returning as she realised that these things were widely available. Still, she wondered again whether her husband was stupid or cruel, and wished, dully despairing, that he was neither.

  Evelyn came across at mid-morning with her ribbon and card and proceeded to drive the kitten – who had spent a pleasant night on an old jumper and was beginning to relax – mad.

  ‘Do hold it, Kate,’ she implored, as it tried to turn itself inside out.

  ‘You’ll throttle the damn thing in a minute,’ said Mrs Marsh impatiently. ‘Just give her the kitten and the card separately.’

  It wasn’t what Evelyn had planned. Separated, the kitten and the blue satin ribbon weren’t nearly as appealing, but there was nothing else for it.

  Mary thanked her formally and patted the kitten before it went to ground under her bed. It emerged later when she was alone again and played for a while in an unpractised fashion. She wished it no harm.

  Mrs Marsh listened devotedly to the Queen’s broadcast.

  The monarch let it be known that, among other things, it would give her, personally, much pleasure if people would stop killing each other. (Her son had recently made several uninformed and ill-advised comments on church matters, freedom of expression and the management of industry, while her consort frequently exhorted his wife’s subjects to pull out their fingers, cease their bloodymindedness, get off their backsides, and so on, in a simple, sailor-manly fashion.)

  It would be better, thought Mary, if they were all to keep their jaws clamped firmly shut on the silver spoons with which they were born for the purpose. Or alternatively they might get the authors of the animal books to write their scripts for them. (The heir already spoke of elephants as ‘heffalumps’.)

  In each home in the Close the inhabitants, like Mrs Marsh, would be avidly lapping up these banalities. People who believed in monarchy, reflected Mary, were certifiably mad – madder than people who believed in little fat gurus or addressed their prayers to Elvis Presley. She looked aside as the high gentle voice delivered a final, deplorably limp and unleavened platitude.