The Birdcage (32 page)

Roused by her efforts into wakefulness, Lizzie dragged the pillows into a soft, supporting pile behind her head and stared out of the window towards the great hill, all green and gold in the early morning sunshine. Loss enveloped her, panic plucking at her diaphragm, and she lay still, looking about her as if by examining and learning the room she might beat down her fears. She'd always found it difficult to remember places accurately although she responded immediately to atmosphere: she knew at once whether she felt comfortable and happy or, instead, uneasy and wanting to be away. Describing a town, a room, was agony for her.

‘Tell us all!' Angel commands, as soon as she returns from a visit with a school-friend or, in later years, after a tour abroad, and poor Lizzie screws up her eyes, willing her recalcitrant memory to perform, halting and stumbling through a dull and pedestrian account, whilst Angel rolls her eyes in despair and Pidge grins sympathetically. It is exactly the same with people: she is quickly drawn towards them, or totally indifferent, and very rarely has cause to review that first opinion. So it is with Sam: an instant fascination; an absolute requirement for his company.

‘I love you, little Lizzie,' he tells her. ‘You've got under my skin. D'you know that?'

She feels herself beaming at him; trying to be cool and sophisticated, failing miserably.

‘He's terrifically dishy,' her friends warn her, solo and chorus, ‘and he's quite a lot older than you. He's got a bit of a reputation . . .'

Lizzie listens obediently, nodding sensibly, her eyes wide and dreamy with love; she knows these things – and is touched that her friends should care enough about her to wish to protect her – but his age and physical attractions, his predilections for younger actresses, are all part of Sam. He is determined, wily, forceful: even his black hair curls and crisps with vitality: his bright brown eyes either focusing with uncomfortable intensity or flicking to and fro, restless, observant, watchful.

‘I love you too,' she answers, not shyly or hesitantly but longingly, needfully. And, later, when the rumours begin – which he never bothers to deny – she takes no notice of them.

‘There will always be rumours with a man like Sam.' Angel is comfortingly pragmatic. ‘Ignore them if you can and don't play the detective; don't interrogate unless you really can't put up with it. It's part of his job as far as he's concerned and it's got nothing to do with how he feels about you.'

Perhaps it is because she knows that Angel has experienced a similar situation in her own love affair with Felix, and because, like Angel, jealousy and the need to possess have been left out of her character, that she is able to deal with those occasional lapses; and Sam makes it easier simply because he never lies. He treats his infidelities, most no more than drawn-out flirtations, as a kind of necessary occupational hazard: if an actress turns in a better performance because she thinks he is in love with her, well, so be it. He expects Lizzie to be intelligent about it and, because he is never furtive, never shuts her out, but is always careful to make Lizzie feel that she and their marriage are completely separate from these tiresome outbreaks, she is able to accept them. He is discreet and, whenever possible, he makes certain that, in public, Lizzie is always at his side. There are difficult moments, when the current actress believes that he is serious about her, but he is always careful to leave an escape route for the injured party so that she might withdraw with a certain amount of dignity. If, however, any of them refuse to go gracefully, he has no hesitation in being brutal: he never deceives them about his true feelings and he refuses to be blackmailed.

Once or twice the injured party comes to see Lizzie, imploring her to give Sam up, convinced that it is only she, Sam's wife, who stands between their love.

‘Sorry, darling, sorry,' he mutters absently, already planning his next production, next seduction, ‘the woman has the intelligence of an amoeba. Good grief! She must be raving . . .'

‘You're hopeless.' But she stretches out her arms to him.

‘Why do I put up with it . . . ?'

The thin, high wailing of a baby roused her and she drew the sheet up to her chin, almost as if it were a kind of protection. The insistent, weak yet demanding cry penetrated her defence and sadness and grief welled inside her: had she been so ready to forgive Sam's lapses because she'd been unable to give him a child? This guilt, growing alongside her own desperate longing for a baby, had made her more vulnerable, fearful of losing him.

A door opened and she heard a light footfall along the corridor. Abruptly the crying ceased, there was movement, the sound of a low murmuring, and then silence. Lizzie got out of bed, humming a little – Blossom Dearie's ‘Peel Me a Grape' – peering from the window, concentrating on the room. She bent to inhale the scent of the roses arranged in a pretty silver vase set on the oak chest of drawers, which was placed across one corner of the room. A photograph caught her attention: straddling a bicycle, the small boy frowned in the bright sunlight, staring at the camera almost censoriously.

David, thought Lizzie – and was aware of a tightening of her stomach muscles as panic seized her. Impossible though it might seem, she was here, at Michaelgarth, with Tilda just down the passage and Piers asleep across the garth.

‘I can't quite believe it,' she'd said to Felix, after Piers had dropped her back in Dunster after lunch on Wednesday afternoon. She'd gone to the flat early in the evening to find him outside on his big platform, watering some of his pots and tubs. He was in shirt-sleeves, his arms brown; she found that she was looking at his hands. ‘It was such a shock – well, you can imagine, can't you? – and I just accepted, “Thank you very much, I'd love to”,' she mimicked herself, ‘and that was that. And now I'm having a good old panic, Felix, and I'm counting on you to reassure me.' Leaning against the kitchen door-jamb, watching him working amongst the tiny blooms in his miniature garden, she'd grinned suddenly, wickedly. ‘Not,' she added with mock-severity, ‘that I'm talking
soothing
here, you understand.'

He'd stared at her, his movements arrested, an odd look of mingled surprise and guilt on his face, and then he'd begun to chuckle, the years falling away, so that his face looked almost young again, his eyes gleaming with amusement at old memories.

‘Darling Lizzie,' he'd said, with such warmth and love, that she'd instinctively held out her arms to him and they'd met in the middle of the kitchen and hugged each other.

‘Am I crazy?' She'd held him away at arm's length, peering fearfully into his face. ‘Accepting just like that? After all, I hardly know Piers . . . or Tilda.'

‘But you
do
know him, don't you?' he'd asked gently. ‘In some inexplicable way you know him because you know me. You've known him since you were a child.'

‘Yes,' she'd agreed at last. ‘It seems that way. When I saw him in the bar I felt a kind of recognition – and not just because you're both physically alike. And I think he felt the same way.'

‘I think so too.' Felix had let her go, turning back to the miniature garden outside the kitchen door, putting his secateurs and a small fork into a painted wooden tool-box. ‘I admit that I am amazed that he's invited you so soon, although, to be fair, Piers has never been a procrastinator. He clearly wants to get to know you much better, and, personally, I can't think of a better way of going about it. I'm all for it but then I'm probably as crazy as you are,' a little pause ‘. . .  and we mustn't forget that I have a hidden agenda.'

‘And what is that?' She'd watched him, frowning in anxiety as she'd sensed his mood swing towards self-doubt. ‘What agenda?'

He'd straightened up, dusting his hands together and then digging them deep into the pockets of his old khaki-drill trousers. Head bent for a moment in thought, he'd stood in the early evening sunshine, brooding, whilst she'd stared at him, almost afraid of what she might hear.

‘I'd like to feel that Piers has forgiven me,' he'd said at last. ‘Or, at the very least, I wish he could understand and accept my behaviour in the past. It's been between us all these years, that shadow of resentment on his part and guilt on mine, and we've never quite been able to confront it. Now, you've suddenly come among us and we can't ignore it any longer. Once that first huge step was taken it seemed to me that the worst was over and we had a good chance, Piers and I, of restoring our relationship before it was too late. Now you tell me that he's invited you to Michaelgarth – and that place is very special to Piers, remember – so I can't help feeling that he's taken the next three or four steps in one great leap. Good grief!
Naturally
, I'm delighted. By accepting
you
, surely he must have forgiven
me.
You embody all the things that threatened him and yet he's invited you into his home and family,
and
in time for his birthday, so that you'll meet some of his closest friends. Oh, I'm sure that he retains certain reservations but I feel . . . oh, as if I've received some kind of absolution. Of
course
I want you to go to Michaelgarth, but my reasons are not necessarily disinterested ones.'

‘But there couldn't be any hidden motive on his part?' She'd sounded troubled and he'd hastened to reassure her.

‘Of course not. That's not at all what I was implying.' He'd smiled at her. ‘It means so much to me, that's all. To see you and Piers as friends would heal so many old wounds and to imagine you at Michaelgarth with him and Tilda is almost too much to take in all at once. It's beyond everything I ever hoped.'

‘Well, then,' she'd grinned back at him, though still nervous, ‘let's hope I can put up a good performance. Wish me luck for a truly bizarre first night.'

‘You'll be just fine,' he'd said encouragingly. ‘It's perfect timing, what with Piers' birthday and Saul down for a few days, and I shall be at Michaelgarth on Saturday. Tilda being there will take all the strain out of it. There's nothing to fear.'

Now, as she prowled about the room, examining the water-colour of an ancient stone bridge spanning a white tumble of water, peering into the built-in cupboards that took up one whole wall, she gave a disbelieving snort.

She hadn't realized that Piers' birthday was not simply to be a small family affair: apparently she was to be plunged into a full-scale party which, whilst it certainly distracted from her presence at Michaelgarth, filled her with alarm.

‘Lots of people will be coming,' Tilda had told her cheerfully soon after she'd arrived late on Friday afternoon. ‘Piers has masses of friends and he pays back hospitality by giving big parties every now and then. His birthday was too good an opportunity to miss. And just
wait
until they see
you
.' She'd sighed contentedly, looking at Lizzie with undisguised satisfaction, as if she were a collector and Lizzie a much-prized, highly valuable commodity. ‘Oh, how I long to see Alison's face.'

‘Who is Alison?' she'd asked anxiously but Tilda, saying lightly, ‘Oh, just a rather boring friend', had refused to be drawn any further. Jake had begun to cry, distracting Tilda, and Lizzie had escaped into the garth, wandering about uneasily as she imagined the ordeal ahead, until she'd heard a car approaching. Presently Piers had appeared, walking into the garth with a firm quick step, smiling with pleasure to see her there.

She'd raised her hand casually in return, hastily arranging a relaxed, natural expression – ‘Try to remember that you
are
an actress' – as if she were quite used to staying with people she'd known a brief two days and he'd looked at her intently as if trying to gauge her mood.

‘Has Tilda been looking after you?' he'd asked – but almost immediately, sensing her tension and guessing that he was sounding rather like an over-efficient host, he'd grimaced self-mockingly. ‘It's a bit nerve-racking, isn't it?' he'd asked sympathetically. ‘Is it time for a drink? Do we feel we rather need one?'

‘Yes,' she'd replied feelingly – and, oddly calmed by his presence, she'd followed him into the house.

This morning, reflecting on the effect he had on her, puzzled by her feelings for him, Lizzie finished her tour of the room, murmured ‘Help!' once or twice rather quietly to no-one in particular, and went away to have a shower.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

By the time Tilda arrived in the kitchen Piers had finished his breakfast and disappeared and Saul was standing at the window, staring out towards Dunkery, a mug of coffee in his hand. He turned as she came in, put the mug on the table and with complete naturalness went to take Jake from her, holding him confidently, smiling down at him. Watching him, Tilda's first reaction of pleasure was swamped by an uprush of misery. Just so had she imagined David holding his child, the strong, cradling arms in heart-touching contrast with the weak helplessness; the bobbing, rolling head supported against the broad shoulder. In that brief moment she both resented Saul and, simultaneously, longed to rest against his strength.

‘Piers must have been up early. I see he's already had his breakfast.' She poured herself a glass of milk, taking refuge in banalities – ‘Ten minutes on the bleeding obvious,' as David, intolerant of any kind of pretence, would have remarked – ‘He usually comes down a bit later at the weekends.'

‘Too excited to sleep?' offered Saul, making faces at Jake. ‘Birthday boy and all that? Can't wait for his pressies?'

‘Oh, shut up,' said Tilda crossly; Saul too, always saw through any kind of subterfuge and once again she experienced mixed emotions: relief at not having to pretend with him and irritation that he refused to co-operate with her evasive tactics.