The Birds of the Air Read Online Free PDF

as the infant goose seeking succour of a fox-terrier or a cardboard box.
    She raised her head and smiled – which made her look a little mad.
    ‘Her sister is very ill,’ Sebastian told his guests discreetly. ‘Barbara is under great strain.’
    Reassured, they resumed their enjoyment of the party.
    Hunter sought out Sebastian’s American publisher, of whom he was in charge. He didn’t really think that Otis Mauss would have been particularly offended or disturbed by the recent events, but his unusual sense of responsibility drove him to make certain. Mr Mauss, as he had expected, was standing happily alone, gazing about and holding his glass with both hands. He was an undemanding and amiable man who, Hunter felt, thought of the English with whom he had to deal as a bunch of clever monkeys who were not to be judged by normal American standards. Hunter himself thought of Oti Mauss as rather more foreign and strange than a dynastic Chinaman.
    ‘Have you talked to some nice people?’ he asked.
    ‘Yessure,’ said Mr Mauss.
    Hunter wondered which they had been and looked around for an untried likely victim. Most of the people present had good manners, so he reached out and seized an elbow at random.
    Barbara was sickened to see the Thrush talking to Sebastian’s editor. It was plain to her that the immoral woman meant to infiltrate every aspect of Seb’s life. Barbara felt as though she were drowning, falling through a bottomless space of lovelessness with no hand to catch or prevent her.
    Hunter was pleased to be able to introduce his charge to the Thrush. Although in the wider world she wouldn’t have passed muster in the qualifying round for Miss Llandudno, by university standards she was considered exceptionally beautiful. His conscience clear, he chatted happily to the Canon.
    The wind had dropped. The lamp lit a corner of the window pane, illuminating a swarm of snowflakes, and the smokeless fuel in the fireplace burned brightly. Mary, her book open and unread on her lap, listened to her mother and Evelyn talking in the kitchen. They always sat there in the evenings after W.I. meetings, perched on high blue stools, drinking coffee out of mugs and eating biscuits from a blue tin.
    ‘You must first make a little list,’ said Evelyn. ‘Two little lists. One for Christmas Day itself and one for the other days.’
    Mary could sense her mother’s irritation.
    ‘I’ve
done
that,’ said Mrs Marsh. ‘I could
paper
the kitchen with little lists. I’m trying to think where to put everybody.’
    ‘Well,
you’re
staying with me,’ said Evelyn. ‘I thought you’d decided . . .’
    ‘I mean for lunch on Christmas Day,’ said Mrs Marsh. ‘Mary’s in the dining room. The kitchen’s too small, and as I’ve got rid of the dining table I shall have to put up two small tables in the sitting room, and if the worst comes to the worst the children can eat on the stairs. There’s you and me, and Barbara and Mary, and Kate and Sam and Sebastian and Mary’s Hunter. There are three straight chairs, these two stools, the pouffe, and two people will have to sit in armchairs with cushions, but it makes the tables so crowded.’
    ‘Then put the children in the hall,’ suggested Evelyn helpfully.
    ‘I’m going to do that if I have to,’ said Mrs Marsh, sounding, as she spoke, as if she were grinding her teeth.
    ‘You were silly to sell all your dining-room things,’ said Evelyn, and Mary held her breath. But her mother answered mildly enough and absently, as though she were already thinking of something else.
    ‘Mary could hardly have slept on the table or in the sideboard,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll put Barbara and Kate in one room, and Sebastian and Sam in the other. The children are really too old to sleep together.’
    Someone ran the tap and turned on the electric kettle and the voices became inaudible. Mary twisted herself round to look at the small vertiginous area of falling snow and heard no more.
    It