The Birds of the Air (10 page)

In the great hall the master, the warrior and most of the guests had fallen asleep, now half-stunned, half-bored by this impossible happening. When they awoke they would say they had dreamed.

The sweet-faced lady with the white hair still watched. A pigeon had followed the coot on to the table, immaculately wrapped as for Ascot. (How the guests would have enjoyed Ascot had they been born in a later age!) A hen, indignant as hens often are, strutted the board as one seeking somewhere to lodge a complaint. A duck – a worthy duck, fat and bosomy, since he had been the lady’s pet and each day ate white wheaten bread from her fingers – golloped the water from the warrior’s beaker. A heron, a widgeon, a bustard, a crane stood around preening the last traces of their once-cooked blood and gravy from their offended feathers. Bird droppings lay everywhere and the hall was taking on the characteristic odour of the aviary.

And at last, the swan, the lord of the lake, cast from his beak the gilded quince which had held it agape, tossed from his head the crown of gingerbread, threw from his wings the wreaths of thyme and flung himself with majestic ease into the smoke-laden air of the rafters.

The smoke dispersed, the hall door swung open with the mighty draught. The birds flew. The swan, before he left, with one beat of his great wings broke the right leg of the sweet-faced lady with the white hair, and then was gone to the water. He had forgotten to tear from his splendid throat the necklace of dried peppercorns, and to this day on that lake are to be seen swans with speckled necks . . . The duck never recovered his trust in his mistress and refused all her blandishments. She didn’t really mind, since she had been looking forward to eating him, and the sight of him sloshing around in the green pond-weed made her nervous . . .

‘You’d feel so much better, Mary, if you
did
something instead of sitting there day-dreaming,’ said Mrs Marsh. ‘We’re having lunch soon.’

The thought of the entropic delights of Christmas lunch made Mary feel sick. She could smell smoke and burned flesh. ‘Something’s caught,’ she said, wishing the turkey could unlatch the oven door, free itself like four-and-twenty blackbirds, rise like the phoenix and go and gobble in the garden, leaving the flesh-eaters to drink snow and eat chrysanthemums. Worms had eaten Robin. Cheek, thought Mary, outraged beyond all adequate expression. Beautiful Robin was ashes and dust and the droppings of worms.

‘Oh hell,’ said Mrs Marsh. ‘Evelyn’s turned up the oven.’

At this critical moment the telephone and doorbell rang simultaneously.

‘Godfathers,’ said Mrs Marsh, running out and stretching her arms cruciform to lift the receiver and open the door in the same movement.

Barbara and Kate rushed in saying ‘Ooooh, it’s turned so
cold
’ and ‘Ooooh, it’s warmer in here.’ They ran upstairs to put on their frocks for lunch, and Sebastian slowly divested himself of his tweed coat and hat and green woollen scarf, getting in the way of Mrs Marsh, who was growing increasingly agitated over the telephone and trying to disguise it from whomever she was speaking to.

‘That was Hunter,’ she said accusingly, having crashed down the receiver. ‘He’s bringing some American. His aeroplane wouldn’t go last night because it’s foggy. There’s melting ice on the runway, the flight controllers are all on strike and they had a bomb scare at the terminal. Too many excuses. I don’t think he
wanted
to go.’ She stamped her foot on the parquet. ‘What will he sit on?’ she demanded.

‘You could bring in a deckchair,’ said Barbara.

‘No, I couldn’t,’ said Mrs Marsh, who was in no mood to take advice, even from Barbara. ‘Evelyn,’ she called to the kitchen, ‘we’ll have to borrow one of your chairs. Sebastian . . .’ she addressed the front room. ‘Will you go with Evelyn and bring a chair back?’

‘Sam will go,’ said Sebastian.

‘Sam,’ called Mrs Marsh, ‘put on a woolly hat and go with Evelyn to get a chair, or you’ll have no lunch.’

‘S’cold,’ complained Sam, sliding downstairs on his heels. He was wearing skin-tight jeans and a tee shirt.

‘Borrow your father’s coat and hat,’ suggested Mrs Marsh crossly. Sebastian was quite unbelievably lazy and thoughtless not to realise that it would make her position impossible if the neighbours were to clap eyes on Sam’s green hair. ‘Go very quickly and don’t talk to anyone.’

Evelyn had been surprisingly unperturbed by Sam’s hair. She wasn’t a bad old soul, thought Mrs Marsh. There was something to be said for the artistic viewpoint. Evelyn, though not the most proper inhabitant of the Close – she didn’t
quite
qualify for the description ‘a very nice person’ – nevertheless had virtues that the others lacked. There had been an evening, years ago, when Evelyn and her sister, since dead, had first arrived and Mary had been down for the weekend. Mrs Marsh had given them supper because their kitchen things were all in tea chests. ‘You must stay and meet my daughter,’ she had insisted; ‘she’s in publishing’, adding silently ‘and so clever and pretty’ with secret, satisfied motherly contentment. Mary had been late. They were all quite happy waiting for her: Evelyn and Yvonne tired after the upheaval of moving, Mrs Marsh peaceful and proud, and complacent. When they heard the sound of the key in the lock they had all sat up, put down their coffee cups and gazed expectantly at the front-room door, eyes raised to the approximate level of a human face. But when the door opened they had had to lower their eyes because Mary had come in on all fours, head down, her hair swinging slowly back and forth. She wasn’t even all that drunk, Mrs Marsh had realised furiously, noting the light of intelligence in one bright eye briefly visible and alert through swaying hair. Then Mary had gone to sleep on the floor under the window. Evelyn and her sister had been very understanding, but it had been weeks before Mrs Marsh could really like them again. Trust Mary not to go to
The Bear
. Trust Mary to go to the one disreputable pub in the district – the one with the touts and stable boys and riffraff from the city, the one by the racecourse, the one where suburbia was defined by the mingled cries of owls and drunks. Mrs Marsh wondered where the bad blood had come from. Not from her dear John. It must be from somewhere in herself, she thought, with puzzled guilt. Still, the incident had made her realize after a while the value of Evelyn’s dimly perceived, but largely tolerant, view of life. And when Mary had come home with Robin, the enchanting fruit of sin, only Evelyn had said, ‘Oh, what a dear little baby! How sweet!’ The other neighbours had been much too polite to mention it at all and had passed by on the other side.

It was growing late – dark in the garden and the turkey drying in the oven.

‘It’s nearly four,’ said Mrs Marsh. ‘We’ll have to eat now.’

She eyed the growing array of empty bottles. It was impossible to know who had drunk what – there had been so many odds and ends of whisky, rum, vodka, martini, liqueurs in the bottom of the front-room cabinet. The sherry, too, was going down rapidly – she had bought six bottles and two had gone. Impossible, she thought, a touch bemused by her three glasses of Bristol Cream.

She looked critically at Barbara and was reassured. Barbara was wearing lipstick and a new silver belt on her crimson frock, and Mrs Marsh knew her well enough to know that if she had been feeling like a deceived wife she would have dressed the part – dowdy and plain and sad. Barbara had always tried to fulfil expectations, whatever they might be. It was too ridiculous that of her two daughters one should be so biddable and the other so rebellious – even Mary’s present state seemed like an act of revolt.

Mary had beaten Sam to the place by the window. She wished she were alone, and that Hunter and Mr Mauss weren’t coming. She wished she could lie in the garden and come up later with the crocuses. What a rest that would be. She had lost interest in the world. A world in which Robin could die was a foolish, trivial place where nothing made sense and she had no desire to linger.

‘I can hear them at the door,’ said Barbara, her colour deepening.

‘Oh godfathers,’ said Mrs Marsh.

‘Let them in,’ said Mary hastily, hoping to prevent them knocking. ‘You’ll like Mr Mauss,’ she added, to cover her brief exposure of weakness. ‘He’ll probably thank you for entertaining him in your lovely home.’

‘It’ll be nice for Seb,’ said Barbara, beginning to gabble. ‘He’s never really had the time to see enough of his American publisher. They can have a nice long talk . . .’ Her hands were wet.

‘Good heavens, it’s started to snow again,’ announced Mrs Marsh as she opened the door. ‘Come in. You must be frozen. Give me your coats. Everyone’s in here. How do you do. What a nuisance about your plane. Seasonal weather. Seb, give them a drink.’

Mary and Sam sat on stolidly in the back room.

‘Here’s Hunter,’ cried Mrs Marsh, flinging open the door and fixing Mary with an imperative, maternal eye, indicating that the moment had come to display some manners, to offer some show of vivacity. ‘She’s much better,’ she told Hunter. ‘The doctor’s very pleased with her.’

But he wasn’t, Mary knew. He was annoyed with her, because she didn’t respond to his skills.

‘Hullo, Hunter,’ she said.

‘And Mr Mauss,’ prompted Mrs Marsh in a singsong voice as to a class of five-year-olds.

‘Hullo, Mr Mauss,’ said Mary.

‘That’s Sam,’ said Mrs Marsh, in a normal, hopeless voice, waving a hand at her grandson.

‘Hi, Mary. Hi, Sam,’ said Mr Mauss.

Hunter felt a little hysterical. The nursery-school atmosphere was becoming too noticeable. He feared that when he spoke he would do so in careful and toneless monosyllables.

‘
Mary
,’ he said hastily, crossing to kiss her. He felt, as he looked at her, a certain wrath and disappointment. She had a nebulous, unreal air, as of one who has permitted circumstance to define her visually – a nun, a prisoner, an actress . . . It was unlike Mary.

‘You
look
well,’ he said. She inclined her head. She had no idea of what she looked like, not having really seen herself in a mirror for months now, but she was fairly sure she didn’t look well . . .

‘Now come and see Seb and Ba and Kate,’ instructed Mrs Marsh, ushering. ‘And Evelyn,’ she said. ‘And then we’ll have lunch at once.’

Mary and Sam sat where they were, the garden growing distant and dim as the snow fell with the darkness. There had been a moon last night – a bridal moon, veiled and ominous behind the running clouds – but now there were only snow flakes, hurrying down and gathering as mobs gather to overthrow tyrants.

Someone tapped at the window, pressed his face against the glass. Mary started and turned.

‘Oh good lord,’ she said. She called to her mother, raising her voice. ‘It’s the Chief Inspector. Can you open the back door to him?’

Sam stiffened.

Barbara, in the midst of trying to appear to Hunter at once casual and irresistible, nearly died. ‘Sam,’ she whispered.

Mrs Marsh didn’t notice. ‘Drat the man,’ she said. ‘He keeps popping in to make sure we’re all right and he
will
come through the hedge instead of round the front. He’s a nosey old brute. What does he want now? Yes, Dennis?’ she demanded rather brusquely, opening the kitchen door.

He was wearing his hat and overcoat and great big gum boots. She found it very difficult always not to stare at his feet.

He had come on a scanty pretext. The temperature was apparently dropping rapidly, heavy snow was forecast, the cars of Mrs Marsh’s guests were out in the Close not wrapped up, and in some way the Chief Inspector seemed to feel himself responsible for all these eventualities.

‘Well, there’s nothing we can do about it,’ said Mrs Marsh. ‘We can hardly bring them in the house.’

‘Blankets and waterproofs,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘Cover them up.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Mrs Marsh. ‘I must go now. We haven’t had lunch yet.’ She wished she hadn’t said that as it caused him to look rather shocked. ‘You’ll be in for a drink later?’ she asked in her most ladylike voice. ‘I did ask Vera.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed glumly. ‘The wife did mention it. If the snow’s not too bad,’ he warned her.

‘Since he retired, that man is so bored I believe his mind is going,’ said Mrs Marsh, slamming the door. ‘And what’s more,’ she added darkly, ‘I don’t see how he can possibly afford that house on a police pension.’

Barbara grew calmer. ‘I thought the Walkers lived next door.’

‘No, dear,’ Mrs Marsh told her. ‘She died and he sold up ages ago. I was sorry to see them leave.’

Sam glared through the window as the Chief Inspector stumped past. He disapproved of policemen and deplored the innate and shocking pessimism of a society which kept a police force. His own dealings with what he variously referred to as ‘de fuzz’, ‘de filf’ and ‘de law’ had not been pleasant. The police station where he had been taken on suspicion of being about to steal bicycles had been nasty with its smell of fear and vomit. A large framed photograph of a group of nineteenth-century policemen all wearing the morose, thoughtful expressions of a bunch of peelers who had signally failed to apprehend Jack the Ripper had brought to his face a rare grin which the officers present had chosen to interpret as saucy. The place had been like an unhealthy hive, with policemen buzzing in and out with their sad pollen of wrongdoers. (Traffic wardens, on the other hand, were more like wasps.) It had never actually crossed his mind that there was such a thing as an honest policeman.

Further out on the downs lived other retired policemen in flash bungalows, next-door to retired criminals, from whom they were indistinguishable in dress, tastes and overall attitude to the world. It was possible that Dennis was at least an honest policeman, since his house was modest by these standards and stood in Innstead, not out in the badlands of successful graft and – the rewards of sin – swimming pools. This, in itself, made him a lonely man. No one liked or trusted him. He had spent his life handling the dirty end of the stick and no one was grateful for it. He was as welcome in the homes of the righteous as a sewer rat, but seemed to feel no resentment – merely rather lost and deprived now that his retirement had rendered him purposeless. He did miss John. He had sent a wreath with an unsigned card – ‘From a pal’. Mrs Marsh hadn’t invited him to the funeral, but he had kept calling at the house until she had to ask if Vera would like to come to tea one day. They shared, to that extent, the same social code. Nevertheless, Mrs Marsh had never got over her feelings of unease and chilly dislike at finding a policeman, even a retired one, looming at her back door. She agreed with the neighbours that our policemen were wonderful, a splendid body of men, and had a very hard job to do, and so on, but no one in the Close had ever paused to consider where this wonderful body of men went to in the intervals of doing its hard job, and certainly no one had imagined it would emerge in the Close.