A Summer Bird-Cage (22 page)

When we got outside, after bidding Bert goodnight, it was colder than ever. John put his arm round Louise, and I remembered how warm and comforting it was when Francis used to put his arm round me on a cold night. I felt acutely lonely: everyone had lovers and babies and husbands but me. But the loneliness didn’t make me feel miserable: I almost enjoyed it, as the dreary edge was taken off the sensation by the darkness and glamour of the night, and the strangeness of being with my sister and her man. Nothing so strange is ever really unbearable.

We were walking towards Covent Garden, through those old streets that feel like the most ancient part of London. A lot of the West End is just like any other large city, but more ugly: but the courts and inns and markets have a history and a flavour of their own. Walking along a road like Long Acre, I can imagine Dr Johnson up at night with nowhere to sleep, or drinking with Beauclerk, or visiting actresses or Garrick in the Green Room after the show. I can picture centuries of people coming out of Drury Lane with their husbands and lovers, to talk about the play and to go thankfully, idly, for a drink. Theatrical life has such continuity, as does the life of selling vegetables, because, despite cinemas and frozen foods, the main product is ephemeral and always in demand. So Covent Garden and Drury Lane go on, next door to each other, and though the details change, the way of life is the same. I realized, as we walked there, that what Louise was doing was a reversal of roles: she was taking the man’s part, calling at the theatre instead of being called for. She was in the tradition, but she had reversed it, instead of opting out completely, as most girls are now obliged to do. I felt a glow of admiration: she was, after all, striking a blow for civilization in her behaviour, not, as it first had seemed, for anarchy. Why that should be admirable I didn’t go into, but I was sure it was: it was braver than to abandon the game completely. To force marriage into a mould of one’s own, while still preserving the name of marriage—it seemed an enterprise worth consideration. Indeed, there was almost something classic in her position, something more deeply rooted in the shapes of life than the eternal triangle of a woman’s magazine. Her position was certainly a lot more classic than mine, and therefore more beautiful and more gracious: mine, I couldn’t help feeling, was a truly unprecedented mess, which no girl 180
before this century could ever have landed herself in. No doubt I over-emphasize my isolation, but there can be no doubt that Louise herself realized that she was part of an unbroken line, rather than a freak. And she drew real pleasure from that concept, as she drew pleasure from the idea of Grosvenor Square, and model dresses, and entertaining.

Louise and John were discussing where to eat. John, apparently, had a leaning towards egg and chips, which Louise hadn’t.

‘The thing is,’ Louise was saying, ‘that you only like the
idea
of it, and when you get there you always say the food is greasy or the tables are dirty. You might just as well go somewhere clean.’

‘Well, where?’

‘There must be lots of places.’

‘Of course, we’re quite near the Waldorf,’ he said, mocking.

‘What about Rossi’s?’

‘You are odd, that’s just as dirty as all the egg and chip caffs.’

‘Yes, but it doesn’t look it.’

‘That’s true.’

‘Foreign dirt is all right, somehow.’

‘Well, so long as we know where we’re going. It’s freezing.’

As we quickened our step I found myself wondering what sort of place Rossi’s was—I couldn’t picture Louise and John going to such an utterly ordinary place as it turned out to be. When we got there, it was nothing but one of those tiny coffee bars with Espresso machines and plants in pots, and a menu with Spaghetti Bolognaise, 3s 6d; Veal Escalope, 5s 6d; Ghoulash, 4s 6d. It was very crowded, but we found an uncomfortable little corner and settled in—the seats were rooted to the ground. As if anyone wanted to steal chairs. The other two seemed to know half the clientele, who were all obviously actors and hangers-on—I was amazed by the easy familiarity with which everyone treated Louise. She was evidently a well-established fact. The terms of her relationship with John were now completely unambiguous, and I wondered how I could ever have doubted the state of affairs between them. They held hands under the table and kicked each other in the leg from time to time: they made jokes with undertones, and from one or two remarks I gathered that this had been going on for some time. Wilfred had hinted that it started before Louise married, I remembered. They were undoubtedly a very striking couple, and fitted together very well—both tall, and dark and sexy, both strange and affected in their clothes, though choosing different affectations. They looked by Louise’s own definition, very predatory. For some reason they seemed to enjoy my company, and I guessed, from watching them, that they needed an audience to build up the striking, wicked image of themselves. In fact, I was playing at being a herbivore for a while, and gazing with admiration into the dangerous caves of the fiercer breed. I didn’t mind. It soothed my conscience. Perhaps I am a herbivore at heart, and only predatory by conviction.

In fact, I was so content to sit quiet and play at being an impressionable chaperone that I was taken aback when Louise and John actually started to talk about me and to ask me questions. They asked me about my job, and I felt mildly flattered, and replied as though to a kind aunt who had taken me out to tea and asked me obligatory, conversational things about school and lessons.

‘But do you find it satisfying?’ asked John. ‘Really satisfying?’

‘Of course I don’t,’ I said, deciding to abandon the ‘It’s-very-interesting’ line I had hitherto pursued. ‘Of course it’s not satisfying. It’s so pointless that I can’t even think what I do do all day. It’s one of those time-fillers. It bears about the same relation to anything I want to do as painting backcloths must bear to painting canvases—’

‘Then why the hell don’t you get out of it?’

‘And into what? Suggest something else. And I will. Suggest me something nearer my heart’s desire that will also pay the rent and I’ll be off tomorrow.’

‘I never understood,’ said Louise, vaguely, ‘why you didn’t stay on at Oxford.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Oh, research and so forth . . . ’

‘Did you ever take a look at all the people who
did
stay on and do research and so forth? Because they’re my reason. I like the place and I like the work but I don’t like the people. I wouldn’t like to be one of those. It’s the same with teaching.’

‘There must be something you want to do.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, there usually is.’

‘Oh, there are hundreds of things I want to
do
’ I said, casting my mind over them—things like going to Rome, or seeing Francis and loving him as I used to, and having the right clothes for everything, and writing books—‘but you couldn’t call any of them careers. You couldn’t earn a penny from any of them.’

‘You haven’t had time to settle down yet,’ said John.

‘I never will settle down,’ I said. ‘There simply isn’t a niche for me.’

‘What are all your friends doing?’ said Louise.

‘Oh, don’t ask. They’re all making as atrocious a mess of it as me. Wandering around America or the Continent wishing they had something better to do, or married and bored, or teaching in secondary moderns—God, you can take the lot for me.’

‘I’ve always rather fancied you as a don,’ said Louise.

‘I used to fancy myself as one. But I’ll tell you what’s wrong with that. It’s sex. You can’t be a sexy don. It’s all right for men, being learned and attractive, but for a woman it’s a mistake. It detracts from the essential seriousness of the business. It’s all very well sitting in a large library and exuding sex and upsetting everyone every time your gown slips off your bare shoulders, but you can’t do that for a living. You’d soon find yourself having to play it down instead of up if you wanted to get to the top, and when you’ve only got one life that seems a pity.’

‘I agree,’ said John. ‘You should try acting. That’s what it’s about.’

‘I would if I could. It must be fun, letting rip in public like that.’

Louise was strangely silent at this point, no doubt thinking back. I wondered if she regretted her own decisions. After a while she said, ‘Wilfred Smee said he talked to you at our party.’

‘Yes, he did.’

‘Do you like Wilfred?’

‘Yes, I do. It would be all right being a don if one could be like that. I mean to say, with him the question is altogether different.’

‘Don’t you think he could be very boring?’ said John. ‘When he gets older and more out of touch with things?’

‘Out of touch with what?’

‘Oh, the world . . . ’

‘The
world
,’ I said, scornfully, having had about enough of that concept both from myself and from Louise. ‘Oh yes, the world, of course, I forgot about that . . . ’

‘What he means,’ said Louise, ‘is interesting people like himself. He wonders what poor old Wilfred will be like when he’s cut off from that great representative of the inner ring, John What’s-His-Name.’

‘I’ve always thought,’ I said, ‘that very few people grow old as admirably as academics. At least books never let them down.’

‘Tell me,’ said John, ‘what would you really like to achieve most in your life?’

‘I’ll tell you,’ I said. ‘Beyond anything I’d like to write a funny book. I’d like to write a book like Kingsley Amis, I’d like to write a book like
Lucky Jim
. I’d give the world to be able to write a book like that.’

‘Do you really mean it?’

‘Of course I mean it.’

He laughed. ‘God,’ he said, ‘you really are a little egghead, aren’t you. You really are.’

‘Well, I don’t like the word you choose,’ I said, ‘but as to the idea, I must admit that however hard I run away from it, you’re probably absolutely right. But if you think that that implies that my right place is sitting in some library, you couldn’t be more wrong . . . ’ And even as I spoke a great wave of nostalgia came over me, nostalgia for days at a library desk with a pile of books and an essay subject and a week to find the answer, and the prospect of someone to tell me I was right or wrong, and the thought of exams to pass and knowledge to discover, which now seemed not to exist, or not in any discoverable form. Oh hell, I said to myself, and shut my mind on the idea. Only a real idiot would use the thought of a library as an image of the womb.

They talked about Wilfred a bit, and I tried hard to work out what that strange trio all thought of each other, but after a while I noticed that both John and Louise were getting unnervingly amorous. I was relieved when they said, ‘Come on, let’s go,’ and jumped up willingly. But they weren’t going to let me off so easily: they insisted that I walked down to the Strand with them and accepted a lift home in their taxi.

‘It’s miles out of your way,’ I said, ‘absolutely miles, it’ll cost you a fortune to take me back first.’

‘As a matter of fact,’ said John, ‘I live on the way there, you can drop me off if that would satisfy your conscience.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Louise to John.

‘I’m not being,’ he said. ‘I simply don’t believe you. He’s sure to have changed his mind and then we would be in a mess.’

‘I promise you,’ said Louise.

For reply, he kissed her, right there in the street.

‘For God’s sake,’ I said, ‘do you mind waiting till you’ve delivered me on my doorstep?’

‘All right,’ said Louise. She was laughing to herself, and skipping on the pavement, avoiding the cracks. I envied her bitterly at that moment. It seemed that she had everything and love as well. Everything shall be added unto you, as Jesus Christ once said. Seek ye first the kingdom of this world and everything shall be added unto you. What a bribe. And I said to myself, Louise always wins. Whatever she does, she wins. And I lose. I’ve too much wit and too little beauty, so I lose.

When we reached the Strand we picked up a taxi, and once we were in it out of the cold Louise threaded her arms round John’s waist under his dustman’s jacket and started saying silly things like ‘Keep me warm, little bear, keep me warm.’ They couldn’t think of anything but the night ahead in Stephen’s empty flat, and they were taking me home to tease themselves, to push away the hour of arrival. I’d never seen Louise childish before, and it reminded me of how childish Francis and I always were at our most happy moments: I think the most enchanting thing he ever said to me was that my nipples were like jelly-babies. Nobody else could ever have said as beautiful and stupid a thing as that. I began to feel all strung up with loneliness as I watched them billing and cooing, so to speak. I, of course was sitting on one of the foldable seats so that they could recline on the back seat together. I can’t tell you how I longed to be lying on that back seat with somebody. With almost anybody. By the time we rolled up at my front door, I was, to be crude for a welcome change, twitching. I got out, and they said good night, their mutual satisfaction overflowing into benevolence, and I thought how easy it is to be kind when everything is going right and one isn’t dying of many varieties of frustration. The thought of my empty bed appalled me. I waved good-bye to them, and unlocked the front door, and thought how sad it was that I had only found it amusing to be a bachelor girl for a week at the most. I hadn’t much independence, I thought. And those stupid home truths about a woman being nothing without a man kept running through my head as I groped my way up the unlit stairs.

I tried to be as quiet as possible in order not to wake Gill, as I didn’t want to talk to her, but I needn’t have worried. On the kitchen table there was a letter from her, underneath the dripping bowl. It said:

Dear Sarah,

I seem to have thrown the sponge in at last. I’m going home for a while. I didn’t feel too well this morning, so I rang them up and they asked me to go home. Perhaps I’ll get over everything quicker if I go home. I know I’ve been pretty impossible recently, but things have been a strain. I hope it won’t cause a rift. I’ve left the week’s rent in the jar on the mantelpiece—I hope you’ll find someone else to share with. I am sorry about everything. If Tony calls, tell him where I am.