The Book of Air Page 4

  The clarinet starts up in the hall, a wild howling like jazz and not like jazz.

  Aleksy nods towards the door. ‘Django. He don’t talk so much. Music is his consolation.’

  ‘A friend from your circus days?’

  ‘All gone. The circus is gone.’

  Simon, who has been hovering by Abigail’s skirt, slips out through the door in pursuit of the noise.

  ‘We picked Django up on the road,’ Deirdre says. ‘I stopped for a pee and there he was, sitting on a branch practically over my head, tooting away. Scared me half to death.’

  ‘But a gentle boy,’ Aleksy says.

  Abigail is pouring water from the pan into the tea pot. ‘Maud found tea in the village,’ she says, ‘and some vegetables still good – potatoes and onions mainly. None of the locals are left. There are more things we could bring. We should wait though, in case anyone comes back.’

  ‘Who’d come back now?’ I ask her. ‘Where would they come from?’

  ‘You came back.’ It’s striking the way she says this – more an affirmation than a challenge. ‘And Deirdre and Aleksy have come. We don’t know who’s on the road. All those cottages were home to someone.’ The colour rises in her face. It’s awkward for her to assert herself in argument.

  She’s right, up to a point. How can we know who else is out there? We settle into silence. There’s everything to talk about, and nothing. Our stories are all different. Our stories are all the same – we watched the others die and here we are.

  In the early days of the virus, remember Caro, people couldn’t stop talking about it. Then suddenly we couldn’t bear any more talk. We’d overloaded on novelty. Words were too thin to bear the weight. People stared blankly at each other. Only their eyes spoke. Will you hurt me? Have you got something I need?

  ‘Look, Jason. Deirdre brought these oat cakes.’ Abigail shows me the plate of them, fresh from their wrapping and still in their plastic tray. ‘She used to have a shop.’

  ‘Local farm produce,’ Deirdre says. ‘French and Italian cheeses. Pickles, preserves, antipasti. Oils and dressings. Organic wines. I built it up from a pick-your-own operation and a farm shop selling vegetables.’ Tears come to her eyes and she wipes them impatiently with the back of her hand.

  ‘All she can load on the cart,’ Aleksy says, ‘she brings with her.’

  ‘Not that much, Aleksy. The odd jar of this or that.’ She smiles pathetically at Abigail as though a lie and a smile would save her neck if Abigail meant to rob her. ‘I left in a hurry.’

  Abigail blinks, not understanding, not thinking of herself as powerful.

  The clarinet stops. There’s a murmur of voices on the staircase.

  ‘Deirdre had a stable full of horses, Jason,’ Abigail says. ‘Isn’t that right, Deirdre? And taught children how to ride.’

  Deirdre nods tearfully and starts talking about the names of the horses that were stolen on the road, what colours they were – bay or piebald – how many hands. None of which means anything to me. But I know now what Abigail is telling me, why she’s interested – she thinks Deirdre’s an asset. She’s practical, Abigail. She’s got this kitchen sorted. There’s a stack of logs by the stove, jugs and buckets for water, bowls of vegetables. She’s been going through the knives – they’re laid out on the draining board, including a lot I don’t recognise. Practical, and familiar with this scrappy, sweated existence where nothing’s piped or wired or transmitted, where nothing comes to your house that you don’t lug in through the door. I can see it’s not new to her. But what does she know of people? Deirdre would look good on a horse, I can see that, and maybe she’d know what to do if a horse got sick – I know I wouldn’t – but she’s too twitchy for my liking. Her hand shakes when she lowers the cigarette to her mouth. She sucks too hungrily on it. What will she be like when her supply runs out? What will she feed on then? The rims of her fingernails are already ragged and bleeding.

  Through the window, I watch the chickens scratching in the stable yard.

  Aleksy clears his throat. ‘You shouldn’t wait for the villagers,’ he says. ‘What is property? The Mercedes on your drive. Very nice car, very smooth, but worth less than one of Deirdre’s goats. Time now to reassess, reallocate. Our duty is no longer to the law but to nature.’

  Deirdre shrugs, smiling awkwardly at Abigail, as though embarrassed by a precocious child. She sucks on what’s left of her cigarette and stubs it out before exhaling.

  The monkey, who has climbed down from Aleksy’s shoulder, stands on a chair to study the microwave, watching his reflection in the glass.

  Aleksy gestures with his head. ‘The cows down in the field are yours?’

  ‘We’ve been milking them,’ Abigail tells him, ‘as many as we can. They were desperate. We’ve got more milk than we know what to do with.’

  ‘Of course. So now they’re yours. And now you need hooks.’ He registers our blank looks. ‘For mowing, making hay.’

  Abigail says, ‘Scythes.’

  ‘Scythes, yes. Too late this year. This year you scavenge. But next summer…’ He makes a sweeping gesture, one fist at shoulder height, the other at his waist. ‘When the sun shines and while the rain holds off. Another job for you – to search the barns, the sheds. A job for Jason when his strength returns.’ He shows me his teeth. ‘When the miracle is complete.’

  Simon comes in pulling the musician by the hand.

  ‘Hello, hello, everyone.’

  So this is Django. He looks at me and I see something – a flicker of recognition – but his eyes move on to Abigail and Maud. He lifts his clarinet. ‘Love your staircase. Great acoustics.’

  I’ve changed my mind about Deirdre. Twitching and nail biting are sane responses to the world. Screaming would also make sense, or sitting in stunned silence. Not sane is admiring the acoustics.

  Deirdre says, ‘Django, this is Jason. A survivor, apparently. Had it five days and getting better.’

  Django studies me and I find I’m afraid. He’s recognised Simon. He knows who we are. But nothing changes in his expression, and he turns back to Abigail with the same steadiness. He’s young – early twenties, younger maybe. He wears a bowler hat, jacket striped like a deckchair, skinny trousers rolled above the ankle, big boots. The country’s piled with unworn clothes and Django’s looted an Oxfam shop. He’s a buffoon. So what is it in his eyes that gets to me? Openness. Benign curiosity. People don’t look at people like that, not any more.

  I shuffle out into the yard to take a piss. Abigail’s inclined to follow but I tell her I’ll be all right. I rest against the wall with my legs shaking. Then I make a slow ascent to the turret and stumble into bed.

  Abigail’s unpacked your copy of Jane Eyre, Caro, and left it on the bedside table. The old book falls open near the end, near the part we argued about – Jane rescued from exposure and starvation on the moor, taken in by the saintly St John Rivers and groomed for a missionary life in India. What choice has she got, with Rochester outed as a would-be bigamist? She’ll cope with everything St John demands of her, the punishing work, the brutal climate. Everything except marriage. Everything, in other words, except sex with the sanctimonious Rivers – a duty he’ll perform as rigorously as any other – no doubt about that. And even this, eventually, she’ll agree to if he keeps pushing. Yes, all right then, yes, if that’s what you really want. Whatever. And then, at the moment of crisis, this…

  I heard a voice somewhere cry ‘Jane! Jane! Jane!’ Nothing more. ‘Oh God! What is it?’ I gasped. I might have said ‘Where is it?’ for it did not seem in the room – nor in the house. It did not come out of the air – nor from the under the earth – nor from overhead. I had heard it – where or whence for ever impossible to know! And it was the voice of a human being – a known, loved, well-remembered voice – that of Edward Fairfax Rochester; and it spoke in pain and woe wildly, eerily, urgently.

  I was so angry when I read that first time. Now I’ll call out to you, Caroline. And I’ll
say sorry, sorry for my anger, sorry for everything. And you’ll hear me from impossibly far away, from the other side of the virus, from beyond the blessing, from the bottom of a communal grave near Blackfriars Bridge. Wait for me. Oh, I will come.

  Ridiculous fantasy. Girls’ stuff. And all I’ve got left of you.

  Agnes

  I meant to burn this book, tear it to light our cottage fire, such danger it has led me to. I meant at least to put it by and write nothing more in it. But my life has taken a new turn, and I feel its pages pulling my story out of me.

  After the Reader had caught me spying on Roland, I lay in a fever of fear and agitation. At sunrise, mother looked in at my bedroom door. She said, ‘They’ll be wanting you at the Hall. The fires won’t be lit.’ I hadn’t slept but that would have been nothing if my spirit had been stronger. ‘Tell them I’m sick, mother,’ I said. But she looked fearful and shook her head. She doesn’t go to the Hall unless she must. ‘Then tell Bessie next door,’ I said. ‘And tell them to let the geese out.’ When she’d gone down, I heard words coming in through the window and dreamt soon after that they were speaking about my wrongdoing.

  Later I woke to hear someone climbing the stairs and it was Annie. Her hands smelt sour from her milking. She put her hand on my forehead and said I was hot. ‘Does your head hurt? Is there aching in your joints?’ I thought I might cry, she spoke so kindly, and looked with such sweet concern. I wanted to tell her everything I had done, but there was a deep pain behind my eyes and my throat was sore, so I found it easy to lie back and say nothing.

  ‘I’d take care of you if you’d let me.’ I heard her breathing then and felt her milky hand on my face. When she spoke again there was more breath than sound. ‘If you told me your troubles, I could maybe tell you mine.’

  And I thought, what does she know of troubles? I slept then, and when I woke she was gone.

  I hoped Roland might come, but he stayed away. He’s a man now, of course, and not so free to come knocking on doors.

  It was the Mistress herself who came for me at last. It was early morning and still quite dark. I had stayed home for three days and had slept off my fever. She brought lamb stew and told me that I should eat. She spooned the broth from the stew into my mouth and asked why Janet had not fed me. I might have said Janet has been more of a child than a mother to me since my father died. But I did not want the Mistress to pity me or to think I wanted pity.

  She said if I was not too sick I must wash and dress and go with her at once to the Hall. She fed me, I thought, because she would not have me faint under the whip. But why wash for a flogging?

  The sun was rising as we left and mother was in the yard. She whimpered at the sight of me, the Mistress gripping my arm, and she turned away to scratch the sow. I would have cried to her but she was as much in need of comfort.

  When I was a child I would crawl into her bed to tell a dream but she would hum and stop my mouth. She said that dreams escaped at night from the place of madness and must be locked away again. And those who could not lock away their dreams were to be locked away themselves. And she would look at me with such fear in her eyes that I schooled myself to say nothing of dreams when she was there to listen. I saw that fear in the twist of her shoulders as she turned to the pig.

  The air was moist, with a fresh sprinkle of rain. I knew I should be anxious for the grass, which would soon enough be ripe for cutting and in need of sunshine to dry it. But the grass meant nothing to me. Bessie next door was early at her spadework. She nodded at the Mistress and said she thought the sky would clear by noon. She caught my eye with a smile meant just for me as if to say this day would pass just like the rain, which I knew in my head but could not feel in my heart. I caught the laughter of the women fetching water below the bridge and wished it was only water I had to carry.

  The Mistress led me in silence through the gateway and up the drive to the Hall. She is old, the Mistress, hunched and narrow, and sour as a cider apple. Already I’m taller than she is. I could have knocked her to the ground. But I walked meekly behind and knew I would stand as meekly for a beating.

  The damp breeze grew stronger, and all across the lawn the grass dipped and straightened. Already the feathery heads reach higher than my knee, with pale pink flowers showing among the green. As I walked up the drive, half a step behind the Mistress, the near growth leaned out heavy with seed to wet my skirt.

  She took me under the arch into the stable yard where the geese came to welcome me. The young children who waited to be called to the schoolroom were playing their circle game. ‘Sweat to pit, sweat to pit, free daze, you’re it.’ I would have joined them if I could. If I could be a child again. The children were silent, seeing the Mistress come. The geese followed me, to settle by the kitchen door with their necks twisting together and their soft warm bodies rising and falling like one living thing.

  I thought she would make me wait while the village was called and I would be shamed in front of all my neighbours. The cellar door was open as we passed into the kitchen. Perhaps, I thought, if I offered to clean the cellar, gather up all the dust and cobwebs, that would be enough. If I scrubbed the stove. But the Mistress took me to the foot of the stairs. She said I was to go at once to the upper passage, up the half stairs to the turret, and knock on the Reader’s door.

  There are no windows on the half stairs and only two doors. One leads to the red room, which has been locked and empty for as long as I can think, the other to the Reader’s room. In all my years working at the hall, I had never seen inside it. Only the Mistress sweeps his floor and changes his bedding. I leave food outside the door when I am told to and pick up the dishes, and sometimes the food just as I left it except for what the mice have eaten. And I take his piss bottle to the yard and empty it into the barrel for the leather making. Always I am quick up and down the half stairs, careful not to turn my back on either door, afraid that the Reader will come out of one, or something worse than I can name out of the other.

  But this time the door was open. I could see a candle and the Reader’s face. I paused on the landing not daring to breathe, dizzy with the scent of apple wood and grass seed. I felt he was watching me and my skin was all spiders at the thought.

  When I came in he asked me where I had been and I said, ‘Sick, sir, at home.’

  He held a pipe to his mouth. It glowed in his fist and he breathed out the smoke. Some of the men smoke leaves this way, but I’ve never known smoke to smell so sweet. His voice rumbled when he spoke. ‘Should I light more candles?’

  I said he might let the sun in and save his candles.

  He laughed and said he had worked late and sat later, struggling with his thoughts, and had not noticed the dawn. He was out of his chair and across the room to pull the curtains open. He turned with the sunlight coming in and winked.

  So this is the Reader, I thought. All my life he has been somewhere to the side of me like a smudge on the eye. I have caught sight of him in the shadows of the upper passage, turning away to murmur with the Mistress. He has ridden at night, this way or that, sometimes through the village. I have dropped my eyes at his approach. I have thought of him as old. But his face is open and alive.

  He winked a second time, and I saw that it was not meant but only a twitch in his face. Otherwise his gaze was steady. ‘So you’ve been sick. Sick from thinking?’

  I waited, not sure what I should say.

  ‘From thinking what you’ve done? Or from thinking what might be done to you?’

  I said ‘no sir’, or ‘yes sir’, or both of those one after the other.

  ‘What will be done to you, do you suppose?’

  ‘I shall be punished.’

  He thought about that and winked and sucked on his pipe. ‘You live with your mother Janet?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Can I see your cottage from here?’ He moved his head to show that I should join him.

  I passed his armchair and his desk and his bed, feeling as if
a rope tethered me to the door and tightened at my chest. His room was higher even than the rooms on the upper passage, and I could see right across the lawn and over the river to the cottage chimneys. When I pointed to our cottage he stood behind me to see where I was looking. I felt his breath on my neck, and thought of his weight pressed against me in the bracken.

  ‘And you work here at the Hall?’

  ‘I do sir.’

  ‘And study sometimes with Sarah. She talks of you.’

  I felt the tears come in my eyes.

  He moved so he could see my face. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Is she angry with me? I know she must be angry. Will she let me study? I’ll take a flogging if I can only read the Book of Air.’

  ‘Why would she be angry?’

  ‘Because…’ I said and for a moment said nothing else.

  He waited for me.

  ‘Because I hid below Roland’s window. Because I followed the horse cart.’ I found I was slow to name what I had done.

  He watched me, and his good eye would have been enough to make me say anything if he had watched a moment longer. But he smiled. ‘You hid below Roland’s window. Who would flog you for that?’

  I didn’t know how to answer him.

  ‘Do you love Roland? Do you feel called by him? Is that why you watch by moonlight while he sleeps?’

  ‘No sir.’ Though the room was cold, I felt my face burning.

  ‘What do you think of Roland?’

  ‘That he should study harder.’

  The Reader made a noise like the noise mother makes when she wakes herself with her snoring. A cloud of smoke rose from his mouth and I saw he was laughing. ‘And what does he do when he should be studying?’