The Birdcage (14 page)

‘I can't be bothered to wait,' says his mother.

Her cheeks are red and hot-looking, her mouth pinched, and he looks up at her anxiously as they hurry back to the car.

‘Are you ill?' he asks, remembering his grandfather. ‘Are you all right, Mummy?'

‘Quite all right,' she answers briefly but, as they drive back to Michaelgarth, he knows that there is something wrong, as if her thoughts are rushing ahead of the car, and he feels frightened.

All the time that she is putting away the shopping, making his tea, it seems that she is waiting for something; as if, deep inside, her feelings are twisting tighter and tighter, like a spring. When his father comes home he passes through the hall and into the study to pour himself a drink and, from his position up on the landing, Piers watches his mother follow him. He slips quietly down the stairs and into the hall, creeping along the passage until he can see them both through the half-open door.

‘. . .  What a fool I've been,' his mother is saying, ‘haven't I? I should have guessed long ago. Oh, don't pretend any more, Felix. I saw that woman today in Dunster. That actress. She's your mistress, isn't she? She had a child with her. I suppose she isn't yours, by any chance?'

Piers knows at once that she is talking about the people they saw earlier in Parhams: the fair, pretty woman with the little girl. But what does it mean? He thinks confusedly of his kindly old schoolmistress but, even as he moves a little closer, he sees his father put down his glass with an angry exclamation and come striding towards the door and guesses that he has been seen.

He turns at once, running across the hall and out through the scullery, into the garth where Monty is sleeping on the cool cobbles, and all the while the words beat in his brain in time with his running feet.
She had a child with her . . . she isn't yours, by any chance?

By the time Felix arrives at the scullery door, both boy and dog have vanished.

PART TWO

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The birdcage hung in the first-floor window where anyone looking up from the High Street might see it. The morning sun glinted on the gilt bars, and on the little birds, but the chick's once-fluffy egg-yolk yellow feathers were dulled to pale lemon and her orange feet were faded now, although they clung just as tenaciously to the wooden bar of the trapeze.

Piers, rising from his chair, ducked as usual to prevent his head from touching it and his father smiled at him; there was humility and compassion in his smile. He suspected that Piers saw the birdcage as some symbol of his father's past but, if he'd ever wondered about its provenance, he'd never mentioned it.

Piers, bending to kiss his father lightly on his brow, experienced the old frustration of his boyhood: an instinctive deep affection for his father that battled constantly with his sense of loyalty to his mother. Her face, with its bitter mouth and wary eyes, seemed to get in the way of the kiss and Piers straightened up, fighting back an increasing need to kneel beside his father and question him.

‘Why,' he longed to ask, ‘did you need them when you had
us
? Why did you make her suffer?' Instead he turned away and went out, shutting the door gently behind him.

Felix took a deep breath, allowing his hands to unclench. With each visit he expected the storm to break and prepared himself accordingly. Ever since Piers' wife left him and, less than a year later, his soldier son, David, was killed in a road traffic accident, Felix had been waiting for his own son's self-control to crack beneath the strain of his grief. He intuitively felt that these two events were breaking down that barrier of amicable reserve from behind which Piers had conducted his adult relationship with his father.

He leaned forward in his chair, watching for Piers to appear in the street below. A tall fair girl, her baby in a carrying-chair, was passing along the pavement opposite. Her thick yellow hair was wound into a knot and her face was head-turningly arresting in its true, bone-deep beauty. She looked about her, elegant and graceful even in faded jeans and an old white shirt, and suddenly she smiled at someone Felix could not see. He waited. Piers emerged suddenly from a door beneath the window, glanced up at his father with his usual salute, and crossed the road to meet her. She took his arm with a warm affection and they stood for a moment in conversation before turning away up the High Street. She raised her hand in brief greeting to Felix, still watching from his window, and he waved back, his heart filled with gratitude, although she'd already turned back to Piers.

Sitting in the wing-backed chair, revelling in the warmth of the morning sunshine, Felix wondered why it should be impossible to break down Piers' reserve. Why had he not long since simply battered down that wall, built out of old loyalties and resentment and fear, which stood between them? Yet the thought of attempting it appalled him: what harm might it do?

Was his love for Piers strong enough to sustain them both through the breaking-down process? How often it had been the same with Marina: she, shut up in her silence, pinched with reproach; he, trying to penetrate the barrier with words? Felix was gripped with helplessness, thinking of past failure.

Marina's pride in her son becomes the mainspring of her life: she is determined that he shall be best, first, a genius. Slowly, as he grows, all her passion is finally directed to this end; Piers shall not fail her as Felix has failed her. As for Piers – torn between his love for both of them, made increasingly aware of his mother's unhappiness – he tries to sow harmony, to repair the damage as best he can. Marina's claim on their son is the stronger; she sees more of him, deals with his small day-to-day needs – and she is upheld by her self-righteous sense of injustice. Felix continues to be cast into the role of sinner and the knowledge of his weakness undermines his confidence in his dealings with his son. It is only after Piers' marriage that some touch of grace – a softening that allows Felix to draw closer to her – gradually releases Marina from the iron grip of resentment. Their last years together are overshadowed by the cancer which, to him, seems like some final physical manifestation of that banked-down, lifelong jealousy that has so destroyed her peace: yet during her illness he is able to minister to her, touched by her bravery, able to demonstrate his love which, at last, moved by his affection and grateful for his care, she is able to accept.

Once Marina dies, and he moves back to his flat in Dunster, Sunday afternoon tea and supper at Michaelgarth become a weekly ritual. He suspects that this is his son's way of trying to repay him for abdicating so cheerfully and he goes along readily with it, knowing that it eases Piers' sense of guilt. Piers finds it difficult to believe that his father no longer wishes to stay at Michaelgarth and suspects that Felix simply feels selfish at occupying so much space whilst Piers and his family manage in their much smaller cottage just outside Porlock, where his parents began their married life.

Standing together by the fire in the study at Michaelgarth, where Felix spends most of his time now that he is alone, he tries to explain his reasons for deciding to move back to Dunster.

‘After all, Michaelgarth's not even mine,' he says – and seeing Piers' expression change to wariness, even hurt, he hurries on, ‘Michaelgarth belongs to you now, which is how it should be. You know that the estate belonged to your mother's family, not mine, which is why she left it to you and not to me. She grew up here, just as you did, and I think that it's right that David should grow up here in his turn. Anyway,' he tries for a lighter touch, ‘it's too big for one old boy on his own.'

‘Nonsense, you're barely sixty,' Piers dismisses his father's age with a shake of his head, ‘not that we wouldn't love it, of course.' He sounds a touch stiff in his effort to suppress an upsurge of excitement, wanting to be certain that Felix has really made up his mind. ‘But do you really think you'd be happy in that flat? After this?'

Looking at Piers' unbelieving expression, Felix almost chuckles aloud. Impossible for Piers to imagine that anyone could prefer the small flat to this rambling, inconvenient old house – but then Piers, like Marina and the whole Frayn clan before him, adores Michaelgarth.

‘Of course,' he adds, ‘the house is big enough for all of us . . .'

He looks around the room and Felix knows that he is thinking of how they'd lived at Michaelgarth with his grandfather. He racks his brain to think of ways to explain the difference: to say that David Frayn had owned the house, Marina was his daughter, and in those days it was fairly normal for the old to be cared for by the young. Piers' wife, Sue, runs her own business in Taunton, as well as looking after young David and Piers, and she makes certain that their lives are organized along efficient lines on a tight schedule. Felix feels exhausted simply thinking about her.

He picks up the heavy, square decanter and the splintered light gleams and flashes as he pours whisky into two tumblers. How often he and David have performed this ritual: how much he missed him in those early, empty years.

‘I'd get under Sue's feet in no time,' he says cheerfully. ‘Anyway,' he attempts a little joke, ‘I'm rather looking forward to being back in my bachelor pad after all this time.'

He bites his lip, regretting the quip; knowing how Marina would have reacted to such a statement.

Piers looks uncomfortable. ‘Well, there's always the cottage,' he says, ‘if you should feel a bit cramped in the flat. I shan't let it for a bit. It needs a bit of work done on it.'

‘But the flat is
mine
, you see,' Felix wants to say to him. ‘It's where I started as a young fellow back from the war and it's where I want to finish.'

The sunny flat, above the High Street, welcomes him home as though nothing has changed through the intervening years. When he brings the birdcage back from Bristol, he hangs it in the window as a reminder of the warmth and humour of those happy times with Angel and Lizzie and Pidge.

‘Angel wanted you to have it', Pidge writes. ‘She was very positive about it and I feel I must respect how she felt. Come and see me, Felix . . .'

And so he goes for the last time to the narrow house near the university. Pidge's gaze is uncompromising as ever, though the once-sleek, dark cap of hair is now grey. They talk of many things and, at last, she gives him the birdcage.

‘Take care of it,' she says. ‘Angel had this presentiment that you should have it and I promised her, though it's taken me long enough to get round to it. I miss her so much and though Lizzie dashes down whenever she can, she spends most of her time in London or touring abroad.'

‘I'd love to have it,' he answers, touched and rather shaken to be back in that place where there are so many memories. ‘I can't tell you what it means to know that she forgave me in the end. I still think it belongs here with you, though. Or with Lizzie.'

‘You know Angel!' She smiles at him, her eyes shadowy with remembrances. ‘She had these strange presentiments and I shouldn't like to go against her wishes.' They embrace, each holding the other tightly. ‘Remember the way we were,' she calls suddenly from the doorway as he goes down the little path, carrying the birdcage.

Now, staring up at the birdcage, at the little chick with her fluffy wings outstretched, Felix could visualize the small Lizzie showing him her work in her little attic room: the painting and the plasticine family.

You can be my daddy, if you like
.

Felix grimaced, recalling his helpless distress at this show of pathetic longing and his clumsy attempt to salvage her pride and restore her confidence in his love for her: nothing less than absolute truthfulness had answered.

The sun had edged beyond the window and his chair was in shadow. Deliberately pushing the memory aside, climbing to his feet, Felix went into his small kitchen to put away the shopping that Piers had collected for him and to prepare his solitary lunch.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Backing the car out of its parking space, weaving carefully through the queue of Saturday morning traffic, Tilda was more than usually aware of Piers sitting silently beside her. He was an a excellent passenger: his foot never reached for an imaginary brake nor did he flinch as she tucked the car tight into the hedge to avoid a motorist who needed more than his share of narrow lane. She swore beneath her breath once or twice – as dilatory tourists braked suddenly to consult a map or, panic-stricken, refused to back their shiny new cars into generously wide passing places – but Piers simply looked amused. He remained relaxed in his seat, his thoughts elsewhere. Only his hands showed a different message: they rested lightly on his thighs, curled loosely into fists, except that each thumb was tucked within each fist and held tightly between the knuckles of his fingers. Tilda now knew that this was a sign of inward stress. Trying to gauge his mood, wondering what might have passed between him and Felix, she'd driven out of Dunster, through Alcombe, and was turning left at Headon Cross before she could think of something to say that was neither banal nor intrusive.

‘I went round to Cobbles bookshop while you were with Felix,' she said at last. ‘Adrian thinks he's tracked down the book you told him about but he wants to double-check with you. I completely forgot to tell you.'

Piers glanced about him, as if suddenly aware that he was travelling through the countryside with Tilda and not locked in some private world of his own.

‘That's good,' he answered rather vaguely.

‘I said you'd probably pop in.' Tilda shook her head. ‘I'm hopeless. Utterly brain dead. He'll be wondering where you are.'