The Birdcage (3 page)

Now, as Lizzie set the table, she felt as if she were making them an offering, a simple little puja: smoked salmon with chunks of lemon, rings of tomato in a vinaigrette with herbs, thin slices of cucumber in mayonnaise, and new brown bread. She chose the dishes with care: round, white bone-china for the salmon; oval, blue earthenware for the tomatoes; a yellow bowl for the cucumber. Oddly, the palette of colour and texture worked. Lizzie felt that Pidge and Angel would have approved. Unable to afford the best, each of them had made a point of buying and using things that caught her attention and appealed to her own particular taste.

Pleased with her puja, Lizzie poured herself a glass of chilled Sancerre and sat down.

‘I know I shouldn't be eating this because it's for you,' she said aloud so as to placate the shades of Pidge and Angel. ‘It's not a real puja but it's the best I can do.'

The little meal was delicious. Afterwards, she cut herself some cheese and made coffee, strong and black. Sitting quietly, she stared out across the room, through the branches of the plane tree outside the window, to the rooftops and the sky beyond, listening to other things beside the city's sounds.

Later, she climbed the steep stairs to the attic room. Once her own special eyrie, now it was full of those things that had been put aside for later use – ‘It might come in,' Pidge had been fond of saying – as well as the items which, out of sentimental attachment, they'd simply been unable to throw away. It was years since Lizzie had used this room and it was here she hoped to find the birdcage. Which one of them would have decided that the joke was too stale to want to keep it hanging above the piano? Perhaps, after Angel died, Pidge had found it too painful a reminder.

Lizzie moved slowly between cardboard boxes, bulging bin-liners and small pieces of furniture. Old books, with broken spines and ragged leaves, were stacked on the small bookcase she'd used as a child, whilst a chair with a broken leg held a faded tapestry stool in its lap. There was no sign of the birdcage. It was too big to be stored in the boxes which were marked clearly with felt-tip pen; too bulky for the bin-liners, weighty with their burden of old curtains and blankets, which she moved carefully aside in case they'd been piled on top of it. She peered into a tea-chest, which was packed with sheet music and theatre programmes, and stared for a moment at the cardboard box bearing the legend ‘LIZZIE'S TOYS'. To distract herself from the mixed emotions that this evoked, she turned aside and glanced along the shelf at the books. Amongst these battered copies were several Reprint Society editions. Elizabeth Bowen's
The Heat of the Day
, two Rumer Goddens, Maugham's
Theatre
and an Iris Murdoch.

Lizzie leafed through the Bowen and then picked up
Theatre
. She remembered that Angel had given it to Pidge as a birthday present and, still feeling their shades close at hand, she decided to take the book down to read later. She looked about her, frowning: the birdcage was nowhere to be seen and she was acutely disappointed. It was foolish and irrational but she'd cherished the hope that she would discover it here amongst these artefacts of the past, but suspected now that it must have been thrown away. Angel's rooms, which Lizzie now used, had no cupboard large enough to conceal it and Pidge's quarters, cleared out and redecorated, were let to a young woman taking a post-graduate course at the university.

Lizzie went into the sitting-room and lay full-length on the sofa. She felt deeply hurt that the birdcage had been disposed of without her consent.

‘After all,' she said aloud, crossly, as if to admonish the accompanying shades, ‘I was part of it too.'

She can imagine it quite clearly. The two little wooden birds have been so delicately painted that it seems that the feathers, blue and green and yellow, must stir; that at any moment the wings might be stretched for flight. Angel, professional as always in the setting of a scene, places a tiny bowl of seed on the floor of the cage and hangs a round mirror beside the trapeze. Pidge refuses to let her put a second bowl of water beside the seed.

‘It'll get stale and smell,' she says firmly, ‘or get knocked over when people peer in.'

Angel grumbles, her artistic sensibilities affronted, but Pidge won't budge. There is only just room on the swing for the yellow chick, probably an Easter toy from a cardboard egg. She leans rakishly, her bright orange feet wound about with wire so as to attach her to the wooden bar, her fluffy wings poised as if she fears that she might tumble from her precarious perch.

How Lizzie loves them: to begin with, tall though she is, she has to stand on the piano stool so as to see them properly. Angel is the bird whose head is thrown back, beak parted in joyous song: Pidge has her head on one side, as if listening. Lizzie is thrilled to be a part of this little tableau: the chick, safe within the confines of the cage, not quite ready for flight.

Lizzie stirred. Now that she was back in Bristol, her earlier instinct – to block the past, to hum and dance away from those dreams and memories – was beginning to change very gradually into an acceptance; even into curiosity. The mad conception that, somehow, Pidge and Angel were here in the Birdcage with her was beginning to be a comfort rather than a threat.

‘Crazy!' she announced to anyone who might be listening.

‘Potty. Nuts. Doolally.'

She hitched herself a little higher on the sofa, found that she was still clutching
Theatre
, and, holding it by its spine, shook the book gently so as to dislodge the dust. The pages clapped lightly together and a card slipped from between its sheets and fell to the floor. Lizzie picked it up and looked at it. Even in black and white the Yarn Market was instantly recognizable. The castle's towers and battlements rose from behind the trees on Castle Hill and across the street from the Yarn Market stood the Luttrell Arms with its high medieval porch.

Shocked and disbelieving, Lizzie stared at the postcard. Its appearance at this moment, hedged about with mystery and coincidence as if it were some sign or portent, knocked her off balance and it was some time before she could bring herself to turn it over, so hopeful was she that it should contain some kind of message for her. The ink was faded but Angel's writing was clear enough.

There was no date, only the word ‘Tuesday' scrawled across the top of the card and the postmark was blurred. Lizzie reread the message anxiously, as though by further study the words might give up some secret; the answer to her question: why the holiday in Dunster? The first lines were innocent enough; it was only the words ‘not a sign of F' that held the clue to the mystery.

Lizzie lay down again, holding the card, closing her eyes, remembering. Gently, as in that Looking-Glass world of backstage, with its silently collapsing walls and revolving staircases, her memory began to open, layer upon layer, before her inward eye. It was a long while before she stirred, rousing slowly to the sounds of evening outside the window, aware of the coolness of the shadowy room. She shivered a little, reaching a long arm for Angel's yellow silk shawl, her eyes still dreamy and unfocused.

It was strange that a part of her life once so vital could be so completely written over, hidden beneath the palimpsest of subsequent experiences. F was for Felix: oh, how could she have forgotten someone she loved so much? The smell of him was in her nostrils, the feel of him beneath her fingertips, which clutched the postcard. For years he was a part of their lives here in the Birdcage; joking with Pidge, bringing presents for the small Lizzie, going down to the theatre with Angel. He'd arrive at the Birdcage on Sunday evenings; Pidge would be thinking about supper whilst listening to the Palm Court Hotel orchestra on the radio. Nothing could have persuaded Lizzie to go to bed until after she'd seen him and very often she was allowed to stay up late as a special treat.

‘Hello, my birds,' he'd say, holding out a bottle to Pidge, fielding Lizzie with his other arm, looking across at Angel with that tiny heart-stopping wink. ‘How's life in the cage?'

Perhaps, after all, it was Felix and not Angel's agent who had named it so? For years – or so it seemed – that one Sunday in the month was the high spot of her small existence. Lizzie frowned, drawing the shawl about her, still holding the postcard. There could be no doubt that F stood for Felix – but what had Felix Hamilton, her mother's lover, to do with Dunster? She sat up, feeling about with her toes for her shoes. Placing the card on the table beside the brochure, she went into the kitchen to pour herself a drink and, sitting down with it at the table, she stared at the postcard as if by sheer willpower she could wrench an answer from its picture of Dunster and the faded inky message.

Closing her eyes, Lizzie groped towards the words that defined Felix: the smell of his tweed coat; the feel of his long brown fingers holding her hand; the queer sensation of an emotional stability. Crazy! For years she hadn't given him a thought whilst now, for some reason, the memories had come crowding back, green and fresh, and filling her with an unsettled longing; a need to see him again. It wasn't so odd that, back in Bristol, she should feel the presence of Pidge and Angel – even her sudden passion to find the birdcage was not unreasonable – but this desire to seek Felix out, talk to him and tie up loose ends, was extraordinary. But why Dunster?

Lizzie opened her eyes; the question continued to puzzle her. The postcard lay face upwards and, as she looked at it, suddenly the tiny cameo, that sliver of the past, slid back into her mind: Angel staring at the woman in the grocer's shop whilst she and the little boy gazed at one another. She recalled the atmosphere of tension, communicated by the sudden tightening of Angel's hand on hers and the expression of resentment on the woman's face. Her memory made another connection: Felix explaining why he couldn't be her daddy, telling her about his son with the odd name who lived in the country.

Gasping with a kind of triumphant relief Lizzie leaned back in her chair, the pieces of the puzzle clicking neatly into place. It seemed clear, now, that Angel had gone to Dunster hoping to see Felix and almost certainly against Pidge's advice: . .
You'll be relieved to know!
–
not a sign of F. I haven't given up hope, though!
It was the kind of mad plan that would have appealed to Angel. Perhaps Felix had been on holiday from the office for a while with no excuse to visit Bristol: perhaps his passion had been cooling off a little. Had Angel hoped that, by appearing on his home ground, she might force his hand? Lizzie longed to know what had happened between Felix and Angel; why had he stopped coming to the Birdcage? Frustration seized her. Why, when it was too late, did she feel this passion to unearth the past? She picked up the postcard with its faded message. Were they still there, in Dunster somewhere, Felix and his son – and that woman with the bitter, resentful face?

It suddenly occurred to her that Felix, like Angel and Pidge, might be dead. In remembering the young Felix she'd forgotten that he would have grown old too. Only then did she realize how much she'd been counting on finding him again; of talking to him once more. An unexpected and inexplicable sense of despair galvanized her into action. She reached for her mobile and, peering at the page in the brochure, dialled a number.

‘Hello,' she said, swallowing in a suddenly dry throat. ‘I expect it's hopeless but I suppose you don't have any rooms empty at the moment? I'd like to come down to Dunster for a few days next week . . . Oh, really? Four nights? . . . No, no, not too soon at all. Monday night to Thursday night. Fine . . .'

She gave the details required by the receptionist, replaced the receiver and sat quite still; the room was full of early evening sunshine, dappled with the pattern of plane leaves, peaceful and full of memories. She half expected to see Angel come yawning from her afternoon sleep, waving to Lizzie with her crayons at the table, calling to Pidge clattering about in the kitchen.

‘I need you, sweetie. Could you just hear me in that bit in Act Three? It's the scene with Orlando . . .' And Pidge, quickly drying her hands, taking the script, read the part in a quiet, colourless voice, whilst Angel lay full-length on the sofa with her eyes closed, responding to the cues.

‘I'm sure you realize,' Lizzie said aloud to them, ‘that this is a wild-goose chase. Utterly crazy . . .' but her voice trembled with anticipation and she was filled with a new sense of purpose. She must decide what clothes she'd need, find the map, telephone Jim to let him know where she'd be; if she managed an early start on Monday morning she could be in Dunster in plenty of time for lunch.

In Dunster: at these words a thrill passed through her frame. With her head full of plans and hopes Lizzie rose from the table and, pausing only to pick up the postcard, hurried away to her bedroom.

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

The village is quiet this afternoon and Marina Hamilton hurries through her shopping, Piers skipping and jumping at her side. She says, ‘Walk properly, Piers,' but he takes no notice, knowing that today she is happy and he does not have to be so careful. He looks with pleasure at the castle on its wooded hill, its battlements and towers framed by the dense trees, whose leaves are the colour of the new pennies he has in the pocket of his corduroy shorts.

Remembering, he thrusts his hand deep down into the pocket and feels the smooth, roundness of the pennies, warm from his body, and the little sharp-edged threepenny piece that his father has given him earlier.