upon the fearful fall . . . until my lessons came back to me! And I kicked up with my heels, that I had learned from the birds to keep tight together to form a rudder for this little boat, my body, this little boat that could cast anchor in the clouds.
‘So I kicked up with my heels and then, as if I were a swimmer, brought the longest and most flexible of my wing-tip feathers together over my head; then, with long, increasingly confident strokes, I parted them and brought them back together – yes! that was the way to do it! Yes! I clapped my wing-tips together again, again, again, and the wind loved that and clasped me to his bosom once more so I found I could progress in tandem with him just as I pleased, and so cut a corridor through the invisible liquidity of the air.
‘Is there another bottle left, Lizzie?’
Lizzie scraped off fresh foil and filled up all their glasses. Fevvers drank thirstily and poured herself another with a not altogether steady hand.
‘Don’t excite yourself, gel,’ said Lizzie gently. Fevvers’ chin jerked up at that, almost pettishly.
‘Oh, Lizzie, the gentleman must know the truth!’
And she fixed Walser with a piercing, judging regard, as if to ascertain just how far she could go with him. Her face, in its Brobdingnagian symmetry, might have been hacked from wood and brightly painted up by those artists who build carnival ladies for fairgrounds or figureheads for sailing ships. It flickered through his mind: is she really a man?
A creaking and wheezing outside the door heralded a bang upon it – the old nightwatchman in his leather cape.
‘Wot, still ’ere, Miss Fevvers? ’Scuse me . . . saw the light under the crack, see . . .’
‘We’re entertaining the press,’ said Fevvers. ‘Won’t be long, now, me old duck. Have a drop of bubbly.’
She overflowed her glass and shoved it across to him; he downed it at a gulp and smacked his lips.
‘Just the job. You know where to find me if there’s any trouble, miss – ’
Fevvers darted Walser an ironic glance under her lashes and smiled at the departing nightwatchman as if to say: ‘Don’t you think I’d be a match for him?’
Lizzie continued:
‘Imagine with what joy, pride and wonder I watched my darling, naked as a star, vanish round the corner of the house! And, to tell the truth, I was most heartily relieved, too, for, in our hearts, we both knew it was a do or die attempt.’
‘But hadn’t I dared and done, sir!’ Fevvers broke in. ‘For this first flight of mine, I did no more than circle the house at a level that just topped the cherry tree in Nelson’s garden, which was some thirty feet high. And, in spite of the great perturbation of my senses and the excess of mental concentration the practice of my new-found skill required, I did not neglect to pick my Lizzie a handful of the fruit that had just reached perfect ripeness upon the topmost branches, fruit that customarily we were forced to leave as a little tribute for the thrushes. No person in the deserted street to see me or think I was some hallucination or waking dream or phantom of the gin-shop fumes. I successfully made the circumnavigation of the house and then, aglow with triumph, I soared upwards to the roof again to rejoin my friend.
‘But, now, unused as they were to so much exercise, my wings began . . . oh, God! to give out ! For going up involves an altogether different set of cogs and pulleys than coming down , sir, although I did not know that, then. Our studies in comparative physiology were yet to come.
‘So I leaps up, much as a dolphin leaps – which I now know is not the way to do it – and have already misjudged how high I should leap, in the first place, my weary wings already folding up beneath me. My heart misses. I think my first flight will be my last and I shall pay with my life the price of my hubris.
‘Scattering the cherries I had gathered in a soft, black hail over the garden, I grabbed at the
‘So I kicked up with my heels and then, as if I were a swimmer, brought the longest and most flexible of my wing-tip feathers together over my head; then, with long, increasingly confident strokes, I parted them and brought them back together – yes! that was the way to do it! Yes! I clapped my wing-tips together again, again, again, and the wind loved that and clasped me to his bosom once more so I found I could progress in tandem with him just as I pleased, and so cut a corridor through the invisible liquidity of the air.
‘Is there another bottle left, Lizzie?’
Lizzie scraped off fresh foil and filled up all their glasses. Fevvers drank thirstily and poured herself another with a not altogether steady hand.
‘Don’t excite yourself, gel,’ said Lizzie gently. Fevvers’ chin jerked up at that, almost pettishly.
‘Oh, Lizzie, the gentleman must know the truth!’
And she fixed Walser with a piercing, judging regard, as if to ascertain just how far she could go with him. Her face, in its Brobdingnagian symmetry, might have been hacked from wood and brightly painted up by those artists who build carnival ladies for fairgrounds or figureheads for sailing ships. It flickered through his mind: is she really a man?
A creaking and wheezing outside the door heralded a bang upon it – the old nightwatchman in his leather cape.
‘Wot, still ’ere, Miss Fevvers? ’Scuse me . . . saw the light under the crack, see . . .’
‘We’re entertaining the press,’ said Fevvers. ‘Won’t be long, now, me old duck. Have a drop of bubbly.’
She overflowed her glass and shoved it across to him; he downed it at a gulp and smacked his lips.
‘Just the job. You know where to find me if there’s any trouble, miss – ’
Fevvers darted Walser an ironic glance under her lashes and smiled at the departing nightwatchman as if to say: ‘Don’t you think I’d be a match for him?’
Lizzie continued:
‘Imagine with what joy, pride and wonder I watched my darling, naked as a star, vanish round the corner of the house! And, to tell the truth, I was most heartily relieved, too, for, in our hearts, we both knew it was a do or die attempt.’
‘But hadn’t I dared and done, sir!’ Fevvers broke in. ‘For this first flight of mine, I did no more than circle the house at a level that just topped the cherry tree in Nelson’s garden, which was some thirty feet high. And, in spite of the great perturbation of my senses and the excess of mental concentration the practice of my new-found skill required, I did not neglect to pick my Lizzie a handful of the fruit that had just reached perfect ripeness upon the topmost branches, fruit that customarily we were forced to leave as a little tribute for the thrushes. No person in the deserted street to see me or think I was some hallucination or waking dream or phantom of the gin-shop fumes. I successfully made the circumnavigation of the house and then, aglow with triumph, I soared upwards to the roof again to rejoin my friend.
‘But, now, unused as they were to so much exercise, my wings began . . . oh, God! to give out ! For going up involves an altogether different set of cogs and pulleys than coming down , sir, although I did not know that, then. Our studies in comparative physiology were yet to come.
‘So I leaps up, much as a dolphin leaps – which I now know is not the way to do it – and have already misjudged how high I should leap, in the first place, my weary wings already folding up beneath me. My heart misses. I think my first flight will be my last and I shall pay with my life the price of my hubris.
‘Scattering the cherries I had gathered in a soft, black hail over the garden, I grabbed at the
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