of that wild, sightless, fleshless rover, or else could not exist, sir.
‘Nelson’s house was some five storeys high and there was a neat little garden at the back of it that went down to the river. There was a trapdoor leading to a loft in the ceiling of our attic, and another trapdoor in the ceiling of the loft that gave directly on the roof itself. So, one night in June, or, rather, early morning, about four or five, a night without a moon – for, like sorceresses, we required the dark and privacy for our doings – out on the tiles crawls Lizzie and her apprentice.’
‘Midsummer,’ said Lizzie. ‘Either Midsummer’s Night, or else very early on Midsummer Morning. Don’t you remember, darling?’
‘Midsummer, yes. The year’s green hinge. Yes, Liz, I remember.’
Pause of a single heartbeat.
‘The business of the house was over. The last cab had rolled away with the last customer too poor to stay the night and all behind the drawn curtains were at long last sleeping. Even those thieves, cut-throats and night-prowlers who stalked the mean streets about us had gone home to their beds, either pleased with their prey or not, depending on their luck.
‘It seemed a hush of expectation filled the city, that all was waiting in an exquisite tension of silence for some unparalleled event.’
‘She, although it was a chilly night, had not a stitch on her for we feared that any item of clothing might impede the lively movement of the body. Out on to the tiles we crawled and the little wind that lives in high places came and prowled around the chimneys; it was soft, cool weather and my pretty one came out in gooseflesh, didn’t you, such shivering. The roof had only a gentle slope on it so we crawled down to the gutter, from which side of the house we could see Old Father Thames, shining like black oilcloth wherever the bobbing mooring lights of the watermen touched him.’
‘Now it came to it, I was seized with a great fear, not only a fear that we might discover the hard way that my wings were as those of the hen, or as the vestigial appendages of the ostrich, that these wings were in themselves a kind of physical deceit, intended for show and not for use, like beauty in some women, sir. No; I was not afraid only because the morning light already poking up the skirt of the sky might find me, when its fingers tickled the house, lying only a bag of broken bone in Ma Nelson’s garden. Mingled with the simple fear of physical harm, there was a strange terror in my bosom that made me cling, at the last gasp of time, to Lizzie’s skirts and beg her to abandon our project – for I suffered the greatest conceivable terror of the irreparable difference with which success in the attempt would mark me.
‘I feared a wound not of the body but the soul, sir, an irreconcilable division between myself and the rest of humankind.
‘I feared the proof of my own singularity.’
‘Yet, if it could speak, would not any wise child cry out from the womb: “Keep me in the darkness here! keep me warm! keep me in contingency!” But nature will not be denied. So this young creature cried out to me, that she would not be what she must become, and, though her pleading moved me until tears blinded my own eyes, I knew that what will be, must be and so – I pushed.’
‘The transparent arms of the wind received the virgin.
‘As I hurtled past the windows of the attic in which I passed those precious white nights of girlhood, so the wind came up beneath my outspread wings and, with a jolt, I found myself hanging in mid-air and the garden lay beneath me like the board of a marvellous game and stayed where it was. The earth did not rise up to meet me. I was secure in the arms of my invisible lover!
‘But the wind did not relish my wondering inactivity for long. Slowly, slowly, while I depended from him, numb with amazement, he, as if affronted by my passivity, started to let me slip through his fingers and I commenced once more
‘Nelson’s house was some five storeys high and there was a neat little garden at the back of it that went down to the river. There was a trapdoor leading to a loft in the ceiling of our attic, and another trapdoor in the ceiling of the loft that gave directly on the roof itself. So, one night in June, or, rather, early morning, about four or five, a night without a moon – for, like sorceresses, we required the dark and privacy for our doings – out on the tiles crawls Lizzie and her apprentice.’
‘Midsummer,’ said Lizzie. ‘Either Midsummer’s Night, or else very early on Midsummer Morning. Don’t you remember, darling?’
‘Midsummer, yes. The year’s green hinge. Yes, Liz, I remember.’
Pause of a single heartbeat.
‘The business of the house was over. The last cab had rolled away with the last customer too poor to stay the night and all behind the drawn curtains were at long last sleeping. Even those thieves, cut-throats and night-prowlers who stalked the mean streets about us had gone home to their beds, either pleased with their prey or not, depending on their luck.
‘It seemed a hush of expectation filled the city, that all was waiting in an exquisite tension of silence for some unparalleled event.’
‘She, although it was a chilly night, had not a stitch on her for we feared that any item of clothing might impede the lively movement of the body. Out on to the tiles we crawled and the little wind that lives in high places came and prowled around the chimneys; it was soft, cool weather and my pretty one came out in gooseflesh, didn’t you, such shivering. The roof had only a gentle slope on it so we crawled down to the gutter, from which side of the house we could see Old Father Thames, shining like black oilcloth wherever the bobbing mooring lights of the watermen touched him.’
‘Now it came to it, I was seized with a great fear, not only a fear that we might discover the hard way that my wings were as those of the hen, or as the vestigial appendages of the ostrich, that these wings were in themselves a kind of physical deceit, intended for show and not for use, like beauty in some women, sir. No; I was not afraid only because the morning light already poking up the skirt of the sky might find me, when its fingers tickled the house, lying only a bag of broken bone in Ma Nelson’s garden. Mingled with the simple fear of physical harm, there was a strange terror in my bosom that made me cling, at the last gasp of time, to Lizzie’s skirts and beg her to abandon our project – for I suffered the greatest conceivable terror of the irreparable difference with which success in the attempt would mark me.
‘I feared a wound not of the body but the soul, sir, an irreconcilable division between myself and the rest of humankind.
‘I feared the proof of my own singularity.’
‘Yet, if it could speak, would not any wise child cry out from the womb: “Keep me in the darkness here! keep me warm! keep me in contingency!” But nature will not be denied. So this young creature cried out to me, that she would not be what she must become, and, though her pleading moved me until tears blinded my own eyes, I knew that what will be, must be and so – I pushed.’
‘The transparent arms of the wind received the virgin.
‘As I hurtled past the windows of the attic in which I passed those precious white nights of girlhood, so the wind came up beneath my outspread wings and, with a jolt, I found myself hanging in mid-air and the garden lay beneath me like the board of a marvellous game and stayed where it was. The earth did not rise up to meet me. I was secure in the arms of my invisible lover!
‘But the wind did not relish my wondering inactivity for long. Slowly, slowly, while I depended from him, numb with amazement, he, as if affronted by my passivity, started to let me slip through his fingers and I commenced once more
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