Air and Angels Read Free Page A

he was filled with a great, indulgent tenderness towards his younger self, and for the passion of his own longings.
    From across the court that same sweet chiming of the bell. He took his gown from the hook behind the door, turned the lamp down and left the room.
    Eustace Partridge set his books down on the table in a neat pile. Disarranged them. Sat down. Stood up again. Knew that he had to go out again, as he had been out every night for the past week, to walk anywhere, restlessly, aimlessly. To think, andtry not to think.
    But, going to the door, he heard the chapel bell for Evensong, and realised that now he must wait, or else meet others on his way and be obliged to speak, and so he simply stood in the middle of the room, eyes closed, clenching his hands, willing the minutes away.
    In the grate, the whitening embers shuffled and slipped down upon themselves with scarcely a glow at the core.But he made no move to put on fresh coals and so restore a blaze. Only stood in the darkness, as the bell rang relentlessly on.

2
    IT IS one of the handsomest houses in the old residential district of Calcutta, with a drive and gravelled paths that are swept and raked three times a day, lawns, flowerbeds and fountains, and a flight of steps up to the porch, lined with geraniums in pots.
    On her bed under the mosquito net, in the middle of the afternoon, Kitty drifts pleasantly in and out of sleep and a half-dream, half-recollectionof the great snow-peaks of the Himalayas, glimpsed across the blue-shadowed valley, and it seems as if, in her dreams, she can smell, even taste, the coldness, and that the mountains are near, near, only a leap away. If she could simply take off, lift her skirts and fly. She has often stood like this, since she was a small girl, and dreamed of flying, longed and longed to fly, itchedwith the frustration of feeling her own leaden clumsiness, of being bound in the confines of flesh and bone.
    And, putting her hand up to her face, she can feel the air that blows across with snow on its breath, it is blissfully cold on her cheek.
    But, coming to, half opening her eyes, sees that it is, after all, only the curtains, blowing a little in the slight breeze that comes in from thegarden – for Kitty does not close her shutters, and she keeps the window open.
    It is the Cold Weather season now, to everyone’s relief, they are back from the Hills. But it is still hot enough, in the middle of the afternoon, and besides, rules never change, she is obliged to come to her room and lie down on her bed and sleep.
    Try to sleep. And it is pleasant enough to lie in her trance, here,and yet elsewhere.
    Everyone else sleeps, Kitty thinks.
    And yes, a corridor away, Lady Moorehead, fully dressed in coffee-coloured muslin with cream lace, sleeps nevertheless on her day-bed, sleeps peacefully, deeply, stilly and quite without dreaming, under the gently revolving fan. But her shutters are tightly closed, and the room is shadowy.
    In a more modestly proportioned room at the sideof the house, as befits her station (though the Mooreheads are kindness itself, they treat her with great respect, offering friendliness, if not exactly friendship, she had never been made to feel at all inferior, although naturally it is quite understood between them that she is), not asleep, nor even lying down, but sitting quietly, pen poised over a letter she is writing, Miss Amelia Hartshornthinks of the Hills too, and with greater nostalgia and affection because she knows she is unlikely ever to see them again.
    From somewhere just behind the house, a sudden wail, and then the brief noise of screeching, quarrelling voices rises and falls; and at once it is quiet again, and the heavy, sleepy stillness of mid-afternoon has scarcely been disturbed. Miss Hartshorn has almost learnedto ignore such ripples upon the bland surface of everyday life, though always aware that the raised voices and screams and wails that may mean nothing more significant than a spat