Airs Above the Ground Read online

  ‘Carmel. Look, stop these wonderful plans and just listen, will you? I’m not likely to be going to Vienna, now or later, for the simple reason that Lewis is not in Austria. He’s in Sweden.’

  ‘In Sweden? When did he leave Austria?’

  ‘He didn’t. He’s been in Sweden all along. In Stockholm, if you want to know. He went on Sunday, and I heard from him on Monday.’

  I didn’t add that the only message in four days had been a very brief cable. Lewis was as capable as I was of holding tightly to a quarrel.

  ‘But you must be wrong. I’ll swear it was Lewis. And Molly Gregg was with me, and Angela Thripp, and they both said, “Oh, that’s Lewis March!” And it was.’

  I said: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Well, yesterday.’ She made it sound as if I was merely being stupid, as I had been over Timothy. ‘We were shopping, and there was an hour to Angy’s train and we wanted somewhere to sit, so we went to the news cinema, and there was something – a disaster or something, I simply can’t remember what – but it was Austria somewhere definitely, and Lewis was in it, as plain as plain, and Molly said to me, “Oh, that’s Lewis March!” and Angela said, “Yes, look, I’m sure it is!” And then the camera went closer and it was, I’m quite certain it was. So of course I thought straight away of you, and I thought you might be going there too, any day, so when Tim got too maddening and sulky about it, I rang you up.’

  I must have been looking more stupid even than she had been implying. ‘You’re telling me you saw Lewis, my husband Lewis, in a news reel of something happening in Austria? You can’t have done, you must be mistaken.’

  ‘I’m never mistaken,’ said Carmel simply.

  ‘Well, but he can’t be—’ I stopped. My blank protestations had got even through Carmel’s absorption in her own affairs: in her eyes I could see the little flicker of malicious curiosity flaring up again. In imagination I could hear Angela and Molly and Carmel and the rest of them twittering over it . . . ‘And he’s gone off and she didn’t know, my dears. Do you suppose they had a row? Another woman, perhaps? Because she obviously hadn’t the faintest idea where he was . . .’

  I glanced at my watch. ‘Well, I’ll have to be going, honestly. I wish I could help you, I do really, but if Lewis has been in Austria somewhere it would just be a flying trip down from Stockholm. You wouldn’t believe the way they push him about sometimes. I never know quite where he’ll turn up next . . .’ I pushed back my chair. ‘Thanks awfully for the tea, it was lovely seeing you. I must say I’m intrigued about this news reel . . . Are you absolutely certain that it was Austria? Whereabouts, do you remember? And can’t you remember what was happening? You said – a disaster . . .’

  ‘I tell you, I can’t remember much about it.’ She was rather pettishly fishing in her bag for her purse. ‘I wasn’t really noticing, I was talking to Molly, and it was only when Lewis came on . . . Well, that’s that, I suppose. If you’re not going, you’re not going, and Timmy can’t go either. But if you change your mind, or if you hear from him, you’ll let me know, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course. If you’re right, there may be something waiting for me at home.’ I hesitated, then said, I hoped casually: ‘Which cinema was it, did you say?’

  ‘Leicester Square. And it was him, it really was. We all recognised him straight away. You know the way he has.’

  ‘I know all the ways he has,’ I said, more dryly than I had meant to. ‘At least, I thought, I did. And you really can’t remember what was happening?’

  She was busy applying lipstick. ‘Not really. Something about a circus, and a dead man. A fire, that was it, a fire.’ She put her head to one side, examining the curve of her rouged lips in the tiny mirror. ‘But it wasn’t Lewis who was dead.’

  I didn’t answer. If I had, I’d have said something I’d have been sorry for.

  The news theatre was dark and flickering, and smelt of cigarettes and wet coats. I made my way blindly to a seat. At this time of day the place was half empty, and I was glad of this, as it meant that I could slip into a back row where I could sit alone.

  A coloured cartoon was in progress, with animals quacking and swaggering across the screen. Then came some sort of travelogue; Denmark, I think it was, ‘Hans Andersen’s country’, but I sat through it without seeing it. It seemed a long time before the news came round, and longer still before we had done with the big stuff, the latest from Africa, the Middle East, the Grand Prix, the Test . . .

  All at once there it was. ‘Circus Fire in Austrian Village . . . Sunday night . . . Province of Styria . . . An elephant loose in the village street . . .’ And the pictures. Not of the fire itself, but of the black and smoking aftermath in the grey of early morning, with police, and grey-faced men in thick overcoats huddled round whatever had been pulled from the wreck. There was the circus encampment in its field, the caravans, mostly streamlined and modern, the big top in the background, and behind it a glimpse of a pine-covered hill, and the glint of a white-washed church tower with an onion spire. In the foreground was a screen – a sort of temporary hoarding – with advertising matter pasted on it; a photograph I couldn’t see, some man’s name and something about ‘Eine absolute Star-Attraktion’, and then a list of prices. Then something must have shoved against the screen, for it fell flat on the trampled grass.

  Yes, it was Lewis. He had been standing in the shelter of the screen, and for a moment, obviously, had no idea that the cameras were now on him. He was standing quite still, on the edge of the crowd that was watching the police, staring, like all of them, at the burnt-out wreck, and at something which lay still hidden from the cameras. Then he moved his head in the way he had – oh yes, I knew that way – and amazingly, I saw the expression on his face. He was angry. Quite plainly and simply angry. I was all too recently familiar with that anger . . . but there, where every other man wore the same expression either of solemn respect or of shocked horror, the anger was somehow incongruous and disturbing. And this quite apart from the fact that this was certainly Austria and not Sweden, and that on Monday morning I had had a cable from him from Stockholm . . .

  There was a girl beside him. As she moved, I saw her beyond him. A blonde, young and rather more than pretty in that small-featured, wide-eyed way that can be so devastating, even in the early morning and dressed in a shiny black raincoat with a high collar. Her hair hung in long, fair curls over the glossy black collar, and she looked fragile and small and lovely. She was pressed close to Lewis’s side, as if for protection, and his arm was round her.

  She looked up and saw the cameras on them both, and I saw her reach up and touch him, saying something, a quick whispered word that matched the intimate gesture.

  Ninety-nine people out of a hundred, in that situation, would glance instinctively at the camera, before either facing it self-consciously, or turning out of its range. My husband didn’t even look round. He turned quickly away and vanished into the crowd, the girl with him.

  In the same moment the circus field vanished from the screen, and we were inside a sagging canvas tent, where an elephant rocked solemnly at her moorings, apparently muttering to herself.

  ‘. . . the two dead men. The police continue their investigations.’ the commentator was saying, in that indifferent voice, as the picture changed again to a bathing beach on the South Coast of England . . .

  The Mirror had it – a dozen lines at the bottom corner of page six, under the headline: CIRCUS BLAZE RIDDLE.

  Police have been called in to investigate a fire which caused a night of terror in a small Austrian village near Graz. Elephants ran amok when a caravan belonging to a travelling circus took fire, knocking down and injuring a six-year-old girl, and causing havoc in the village. Two men who had been sleeping in the van were burned to death.

  The Guardian gave it eight lines just above the Bridge game on page thirteen.

  Two men were churned to death on Sunday night when a wagon belonging to a travellin
g circus caught fire. The circus was performing in the village of Oberhausen, in the Styrian province of Austria, near Graz.

  Next morning, Friday, I did hear from Lewis. It was a note in his own handwriting, dated on Monday, and postmarked Stockholm, and it read: ‘Have almost finished the job here, and hope to be home in a few days’ time. I’ll cable when you can expect me. Love, Lewis.’

  That same morning I rang up Carmel Lacy.

  ‘If you still want a courier for your baby boy,’ I told her, ‘you’ve got one. You were quite right about Lewis . . . I’ve had a letter, and he’s in Austria, and he wants me to join him there. I’ll go any time, and the sooner the better . . .’

  2

  Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy; as a squash is before ’tis a peascod, or a codling when ’tis almost an apple: ’tis with him e’en standing water, between boy and man. He is very well-favoured, and he speaks very shrewishly: one would think his mother’s milk were scarce out of him.

  Shakespeare: Twelfth Night

  Timothy Lacy had changed, in that startling way children have that one ought to expect but never does.

  He had grown into a tall boy, resembling as far as I could see neither parent, but with a strong look of his grandfather, and a quick-moving, almost nervous manner which would weather with time into the same wiry, energetic toughness. He had grey-green eyes, a fair skin tending to freckles, and a lot of brown hair cut fashionably long in a style which his mother had deplored loudly, but which I secretly rather liked. The expression he had worn ever since his mother had officially handed him over in the main lounge at London Airport – much as she had handed over her spoilt spaniel in my father’s surgery – had been, if one put it kindly, reserved. If one put it truthfully, he had looked like a small boy in a fit of the sulks.

  He was fumbling now with his seat belt, and it was obvious from his unaccustomed movements that he had never flown before; but I dared not offer to help. After Carmel’s tearful – and very public – handing over of her baby, it would have seemed like tucking his feeder round his neck.

  I said instead: ‘It was clever of you to get these seats in front of the wing. If only there’s no cloud we’ll have a marvellous view.’

  He gave me a glance where I could see nothing but dislike. The thick, silky hair made a wonderful ambush to glower through, and increased the resemblance to a spoilt but wary dog. He did mutter something, but at that moment the Austrian Airlines Caravelle began to edge her silky, screaming way forward over the concrete, and he turned eagerly to the window.

  We took off exactly on time. The Caravelle paused, gathered herself, then surged forward and rushed up into the air in that exciting lift that never fails to give me the genuine old-fashioned thrill up the marrow of the spine. London fell away, the coast came up, receded, the hazy silver-blue of the channel spread out like wrinkled silk, then the parcelled fields of Belgium reeled out below us, fainter and fainter with distance as the Caravelle climbed to her cruising height and levelled off for the two hours’ stride to Vienna. Clouds flecked the view below, thickened, lapped over it like fish-scales, drew a blanket across it . . . We hung seemingly motionless in the sunlight in front of our whispering engines, with the marvellous pageant of clouds spread, at no more than the speed of drifting surf, below.

  ‘Angels’ eye view,’ I said. ‘We get a lot of privileges now that only the gods got before. Including destroying whole cities at a blow, if it comes to that.’

  He said nothing. I sighed to myself, gave up my attempts to take my own mind off the situation ahead of me, and opened a magazine. Lunch came, and went, temptingly foreign, with Apfelsaft or red wine or champagne, the boy beside me so pointedly refraining from comment on what was obviously a burstingly exciting experience for him that I felt a flicker of irritation pierce my own preoccupations. The Caravelle tilted slightly to starboard; Nürnberg must be somewhere now below that cloud, and we were turning south-east for Passau and the Austrian border. The trays were cleared, people stood, stretched, moved about, and the trolley of scent and cigarettes was wheeled up the aisle in nice time to block the passengers’ access to the lavatories.

  The pretty stewardess in her navy uniform bent over me. ‘Would you care for cigarettes, madam? Perfume? Liquor?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  Her eyes went doubtfully to Timothy, who had turned back from his window. ‘Cigarettes, sir?’

  ‘Of course.’ He said it promptly, and rather too loudly, and I caught the edge of a glance at me. ‘What kind have you?’

  She told him, and he made his choice and fumbled for the money. As she handed him the statutory packet of two hundred, I saw his eyes widen, but he successfully hid dismay, if that was what he was feeling, and paid. The trolley moved on. With some panache, but without another glance at me, Timothy tucked the cigarettes down into his airline holdall, and got out a paperback mystery. Silence hovered again, conscious, ready to strike.

  I said: ‘You know, I couldn’t really care less if you want to smoke all day and all night till you die of six sorts of cancer all at once. Go right ahead. And as a matter of fact, the sooner the better. You have the worst manners of any young man I ever met.’

  The paperback dropped to his knees, and he looked at me full for the first time, eyes and mouth startled open. I said: ‘I know quite well that you’re perfectly capable of travelling alone, and that you’d prefer it. Well, so would I. I’ve got troubles enough of my own, without bothering about yours, but if I hadn’t said I’d go with you, you’d never have got away. I know you’re sitting there fulminating because you’ve had a kind of nursemaid tagged on to you, but for goodness’ sake aren’t you adult enough to know that there are two sides to everything? You know you’d get on fine on your own, but your mother doesn’t, and there’s no sense in making gestures to reassure oneself, if they’re only distressing other people. Surely all that really matters now is that you have got your own way, so why not make the best of it? We’re stuck with each other till I get you – or you get me – safely into Vienna, and you meet your father. Then we’re both free to go about our own affairs.’

  Timothy swallowed. The action seemed to use the muscles of his whole body. When he spoke, his voice cracked infuriatingly back for a moment into falsetto.

  ‘I – I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t want to make you talk if you’d rather read or watch the view,’ I said, ‘but as a matter of fact I always get nervous on take-off, and if one chatters a bit about things it takes one’s mind off it.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Timothy again. He was scarlet now, but his voice had got back to the norm required of a young man who could comfort a nervous woman on take-off. ‘I hadn’t realised you were feeling like that. I was so – that is, it’s all been so . . . I couldn’t think how I was going to . . .’ He stopped floundering, bit his lip, then said with devastating simplicity: ‘The cigarettes were for Daddy.’

  As an amende honorable it was superb. It also had the effect of taking the wind right out of my sails. And he knew it. I could see the glint in the grey-green eyes.

  I said: ‘Timothy Lacy, you have all the makings of a dangerous young man. I’m not in the least surprised your mother’s afraid to let you out alone. Now tell me what to call you. I know your mother calls you Timmy, but it sounds a bit babyish to me. Do you prefer Timothy, or Tim?’

  ‘I’ll settle for Tim.’

  ‘Well, mine’s Vanessa.’

  ‘That’s an awfully pretty name. Are you called after Vanessa Redgrave?’

  I laughed. ‘Have a heart, I’m twenty-four. I don’t know where they got the name from, probably just something my mother found in a book. As a matter of fact, it’s a butterfly, or rather a family of butterflies, rather pretty ones, peacocks and painted ladies, and so on. Fair and fickle, that’s me, born to flit from flower to flower.’

  ‘Well,’ said Timothy, ‘that’s a bond between us, anyway. They used to call me Mothy for short at m
y prep. school. I say, you can see a bit now through the clouds. There’s a river . . . Do you suppose it’s the Danube?’

  ‘Could be. We more or less follow it the last part of the way.’

  ‘If you’re going to be frightened when we land,’ he said kindly, ‘I’ll hold your hand if you like.’

  ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ asked Timothy.

  The clouds we drifted across now, a mile above our own shadow, were Austrian. They looked just the same. Timothy, slightly crumpled looking, and melting minute by minute into relaxation, had got to the stage of showing me photographs. This one was of a girl on a grey pony. It was an oldish print, fading a bit, and in the girl, plump and fair and sitting solidly in the saddle, I was a bit startled to recognise Carmel.

  ‘Er, yes.’ Nothing that her son had told me up to now – and he had poured out a good deal about the Lacy ménage which I was sure Carmel would prefer me not to have heard – nothing had led me to expect the enthusiasm with which Timothy now held out his mother’s photograph. I asked rather lamely: ‘How old was she then?’

  ‘Pretty old when that was taken. About fifteen. You can tell by the tail.’

  ‘You can tell by the what?’

  ‘The tail. Actually that pony’s of the Welsh “Starlight” strain, and they’re pretty long-lived; they don’t start to look old till they’re dying on their feet.’ Then he recollected himself. ‘Gosh, listen to me telling you! As if you didn’t know all that, being practically a vet.’

  ‘Not so much of the “practically”, please! I qualified just before I was married.’

  ‘Did you? I hadn’t realised.’

  ‘If it comes to that,’ I said, ‘I was “practically” a vet. as you call it, before I even started at the Dick Vet. – that’s the Veterinary College in Edinburgh where I went. You can’t be brought up all your life in a veterinary surgeon’s house and not learn a heck of a lot about the job.’