Air and Angels Read Online Free PDF

unhinged the door and let it swing open.
    For several moments, the birds fluttered about in agitation. But then, first one, then others, flew out and straightaway up towards the roof, and then down again, to alight on the branches of the tree that grew up from the floor, where the earth had been left exposed in an area surrounded by a stone ledge.
    He began to go methodicallyround, replenishing seed and water dishes, cleaning and tidying, and once or twice paused, as a bird came close to his hand, or darted into the cage and out again, and froze stock-still as a zebra finch settled briefly on his shoulder.
    And, coming in to tell him that dinner was ready, because of course he had not heard the bell, Georgiana saw him from outside, and watched in silence, knowingthat he was entirely content, that there was apparently no room for anything else in his life, and wished that it were not so, thought for the thousandth time that it could not, surely, be right.
    Thomas glanced round, sensing her there, and gestured for her not to open the door.
    ‘Dinner is ready,’ she mouthed at him. But he only nodded, and went on with the bird cages.
    Georgiana turned impatientlyaway, thought, he has never needed me, not as, since the day that I was born, I have needed him.
    As a child, barely able to walk, she had followed after him, in and out of rooms, up and down stairs. He had been endlessly tolerant of her. When he had gone away to school at the beginning of every term, she had wept, days and nights of abandoned, desperate tears, had felt as if the solid groundhad given way beneath her.
    The plain truth is, she said now, that he needs no one. No one at all. Well – he should be made to need …
    She returned to tell Alice not to wait, but to serve dinner, thinking, let him eat it cold.
    ‘He needs no one.’
    But he arrived at the same moment as the soup.
    He wiped his mouth fastidiously, before laying his napkin down. ‘Really,’ he said, ‘there seems no doubtabout it, Georgiana, and nothing to discuss.’
    ‘You are so dismissive. Why must you be?’
    ‘No.’ He spoke quite kindly. ‘Not that I hope. Of course, I know how conscientious you are and that you want to do what is right. You are concerned.’
    ‘Then why cannot you be concerned?’ She rang the bell rather too hard. ‘Oh, I know what you are going to say – that it is no business of yours. But I wantto make it your business – at least for the moment.’
    ‘Yes.’
    He was silent, and at once she felt ashamed of her own abruptness. For why should any of it be of interest to him?
    ‘I’m sorry for raising it.’
    ‘No,’ he said evenly. ‘You were right. You’ve a duty to weigh all the considerations carefully, of course.’
    ‘Well – it is important, Thomas, not just some idle women’s business to fill upmy time. I want you to know that.’
    ‘I do know it.’
    ‘I value your opinion – and your good opinion of me.’ Oh, she thought, as she spoke, yes, that is the one thing I have valued, have longed for, all my life.
    ‘You know perfectly well that you have that.’ He was laughing.
    ‘Don’t tease.’
    Alice came in, with a Queen of Puddings.
    ‘It is simply that there seems to me nothing to be gone over. Itis perfectly clear that your Home will have to be in the country. How could it be any other?’
    But the moment he spoke so decisively, she saw with extreme force and clarity the strength of all the arguments against it.
    ‘They would need to be near the doctors – and perhaps within reach of their families, who would want to visit.’
    ‘Would they?’
    ‘Some would. Or at least, they ought not to be madeto feel they were being deliberately cut off from them.’
    ‘Isn’t it more than likely the families would think otherwise? Would want them as far out of sight – mind even – as possible.’
    ‘Besides,’ Georgiana ploughed on, ‘in the country, they would only have one another for company and – and influence – which