The Birds of the Air by Alice Thomas Ellis Page A

sometimes escaped from the few decaying farms eschewed it and ran squealing down the road that led to the coast. It was astonishing, unbelievable, that a short though nervous and hurried walk across the intersections and through the five sets of traffic lights would bring the pedestrian in a minute to the saccharine silence of Honeyman’s Close, to the unique, inimitable cleanliness and warmth of the small, prosperous suburban home, to the well-appointed, walled, enfoliaged, grass-laid peace of modest but sufficient wealth – neater, more stable and more contained than great riches, and far more comfortable, but not like the wild sweetness of Melys y Bwyd, ‘Sweet is Life’ . . .
    The sudden loud rebuke of a motor horn gave Mary warning. Whenever Sebastian was in the car something happened to Barbara’s driving that caused other motorists to sound their horns, swear or take evasive action according to temperament.
    With a splash of gravel Barbara drew up.
    They looked oddly at home, thought Mary – not at all out of place, as her own few friends always did. This cloistral suburb had more in common with the university than she had realised. Intellect was lacking here certainly, but exclusivity and the calm conviction of rightness were not. Honeyman’s Close too had its own aims, values and customs set apart from the rest of the world. Therefore it ill became Sebastian Lamb to gaze about him with such weariness. Only Sam was incongruous, and Mary found it no easier than anyone else to imagine a situation in which he might not be.
    The worst was over now. Her relations had leapt into the silence with noisy cries of greeting, like people on first reaching the sea, but now were merely moving about in it, talking in normal tones.
    Two opposite doors stood open in the Close, Evelyn framed in one and Mrs Marsh running from the other.
    ‘You’ve arrived,’ announced Evelyn welcomingly.
    Sebastian was forced to respond in agreement since Barbara, Kate and Mrs Marsh were all mixed up together and Sam seldom responded to anything. Sebastian raised and lowered his hand, his tweed hat still on his head. Hatraising had gone out, but Evelyn hadn’t been told so and thought him very rude for an educated man.
    ‘I’ll see you all later,’ she said in the voice she used on the telephone, and closed her door.
    Barbara stood with her mother and daughter in the middle of the little bedroom hoping she wasn’t going to cry again. It was so warm and soft and gently lit, and her mother was so pleased to see her. Barbara was just beginning to recover from her lifelong and entirely mistaken conviction that Mary was their mother’s favourite, only to be presented by Sebastian with a new, even more dangerous, rival. It wasn’t fair.
    Mrs Marsh fussed, full of joy, about the double bed upon which, obscuring the pale-green counter-pane, lay an assortment of things which she was going to give to her younger child. ‘Aunt Gwennie’s fur,’ she said, ‘and some beautiful underwear she never wore. And the cashmere sweater she bought in the summer sales – I know because I went with her to get it – and her dear little watch, and her jade brooch . . .’
    She stopped, aware of a lack of enthusiasm. Kate had seized the watch and was crying, ‘Oh Mummy, look. Oh Granny, what a dear little watch. I always wanted a little watch . . .’
    Mrs Marsh looked slowly at Barbara with the begin nings of apprehension. Another sad daughter would be too much to bear. Mary had been quite indifferent to all the pretty things. ‘It looks as though there’d been a cat burglary,’ she’d said, ‘rather than a death. All those little thievables.’ Mrs Marsh had wondered then what Mary had done with Robin’s belongings – but there hadn’t been many . . . She had begun to understand, with real fear, that Mary was
waiting
– such terrible, greedy waiting as she had never contemplated. The woman who had been her pretty, merry little daughter was waiting