The Birdcage (40 page)

‘I had no idea.' Teresa was swift to understand. ‘Oh, poor woman, and she's been so much fun all evening. And it can't have been easy for you either, darling. Here, let me help you with that kettle. It's much too heavy for you.'

Tilda replaced the heavy kettle and stood aside, watching her mother pour the boiling water onto the instant coffee in the cups and mugs.

‘That's round one,' she said, observing the two trays. ‘You and I might have to manage with plastic picnic mugs. Let's take these out for starters.'

She followed Teresa through the scullery and out into the garth. Piers was talking to a group of friends, eating a helping of one of Jenny's delicious puddings, whilst Felix sat peacefully, the puppy curled on his knees. The Hoopers and Alison stood a little apart, wearing wary and discontented expressions, but there was no sign of Lizzie.

Alison, flanked by the Hoopers, watched Piers with helpless frustration. Quite early on in the evening she'd begun to realize that the presence of her brother and sister-in-law might not be the advantage she'd first imagined; but now she was frankly resenting them. When she'd finally accepted the fact that Piers was not going to ask her to co-host the party with him she'd nevertheless expected to be given some kind of special role. As the days passed and no such suggestion had been forthcoming she'd been both hurt and angry, and her insistence that the Hoopers should be invited as a return in kind for their hospitality had been, as much as anything, a testing of her own power. However hard she pretended or wished it were otherwise, they were not part of Piers' inner circle and she'd felt a sense of triumph when he'd agreed – although with obvious reluctance – to invite them. She'd silenced an inner murmuring that she'd been over-pushy by reminding herself that it was the least he could do; Margaret, after all, was her sister-in-law, and she and Geoffrey had been very ready to welcome Piers to both family and social events during the last six months. The fact that he'd accepted only one of these invitations was neither here nor there and she was determined that he should be seen to repay their kindness.

Now, feeling irritated by their close attendance, she saw that, without them, she might have had much more opportunity to remain near Piers. She could have insinuated herself into his company, shown herself publicly to be important to him simply by refusing to be detached from his side. As it was, it had been natural for Piers to behave as if she were part of the Hoopers' little family group rather than his special friend, and their watchful ubiquity, which she had at first encouraged, had made it possible for her to be shunted off into their care without it looking odd or rude. In fact it might easily appear to Piers' friends that she had been invited out of a misplaced kindness, with the Hoopers tacked on so as to keep her company.

Alison seethed with impotent fury. Her skirt, finally chosen as the most flattering of her summer garments, was slightly too small, and its polyester content ensured that during the early part of the evening it was unpleasantly sweaty whilst now, in the cool evening breeze, it was clinging clammily at each contact point. She moved restlessly, trying to ease it away from her skin, and Margaret glanced at her with a kind of pitying affection.

‘Time to go?' she asked. ‘It's getting rather late.'

Alison squirmed with mortification. It seemed impossible that she'd once imagined that Margaret's partisanship might be an advantage in her struggle with Tilda for first place in Piers' affections. She saw now how foolish she'd been to imagine them as a foursome – she and Piers, Geoffrey and Margaret – at the centre of the party. She'd assumed that his invitation to bring her present for him so that it could be opened privately, just the two of them together, meant that she would be at his side when the guests arrived; instead the wretched actress and Piers' senile old father had moved into action and stolen the show, Felix introducing whatever-she-was-called Blake to newcomers as though she were someone truly famous whilst she, Alison, stood by, completely ignored.

To be fair it had been a relief then to see Margaret and Geoffrey; to stand looking on, agreeing with them that it was all rather silly – although it had been necessary for Margaret to be firm with Geoffrey when he'd suddenly recognized Miss Blake from some advertisement and wanted to be introduced to her. She'd made no attempt to monopolize Piers, chatting to his friends as if she'd known them all her life, but it was clear that she'd been told about the puppy.

Alison stared angrily at the offending object, curled up on Felix's knees. Its unexpected arrival had been a huge shock, a direct challenge as far as she was concerned, as though Tilda had flung down the gauntlet as publicly as was possible. Even worse was Piers' reaction: not one shocked glance in her direction, no embarrassment or awkwardness. Those earlier conversations about whether he should have another dog, her own expressed wishes on the subject, might not have existed and when she'd finally spoken to him, with Margaret firmly by her side, he'd given her a polite put-down. She'd had no opportunity to appeal to his chivalry or his sense of guilt – which she might have done if Margaret hadn't been there, so solid and self-righteous – and then Geoffrey had shepherded them off as if they were a couple of sheep and she'd had no chance to speak to him since. Worse, Margaret had heard that put-down and was now behaving with a nauseous kind of knowing pity.

Alison watched Piers, at ease, chatting with a friend, and felt the now-familiar, desperate need, the longing for him, which made it impossible to back down and slip quietly away.

‘You go on home,' she said to Margaret. ‘Honestly, I shall be fine.'

‘If you're certain. I'll phone you tomorrow.' Margaret turned to look for her husband.

Alison didn't bother to answer: there was no sign of Miss Blake but Tilda and Teresa had just emerged from the house carrying trays of cups and mugs. If she were careful and lucky she might manage to corner Piers while they were busy with the coffee. Watching for her chance she slipped between the little groups of guests, dodging tables, across the garth to Piers.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Lizzie went into her bedroom and sat down on the edge of her bed. She stared out of the open window, watching the moon's glow casting its pale radiance across the high bare slopes of Dunkery Hill: the midnight-blue sky was so thickly sown with stars that it seemed that curtain upon golden curtain opened upon an unfathomable infinity of light whilst far below, down in the valley, steep coombes sliced dark wedges of shadow along the edges of the pale, silvered fields. The sheer immensity of the scene, the deep silence, added to the confusion and sadness that had come upon her earlier as she'd sat on the bench in the garth.

Tilda's warm affection and her sympathy had made it quite impossible to stay with her in the kitchen. Here, at Michaelgarth, her ability to hum and dance herself away from reality was beginning to break down and these mood swings between jollity and despair were becoming difficult to handle. Lizzie stirred: this had happened before, this attempt to disguise frustration with optimism, to hide a gradually growing fear behind a wild cheerfulness.

In those early years of marriage with Sam she never imagines that she'll be unable to have children – why should she? – but soon she begins to feel envious of her pregnant girlfriends, to dread the way the hopeful look on Sam's face dies into disappointment when she admits that her period has started after all. It is important to restore his good humour and so she dances and sings him back to high spirits and confidence, waiting until she is alone again before she gives way to her own private despair.

How she longs for a child – Sam's child. She plays the scene in her head so many times; imagining his pride and tenderness, the way he'd hold his baby, believing that it would root him more securely and satisfy that deep restlessness that drives him on to experiment, to reach for higher goals. As for his women, those pretty actresses with whom his name is linked – does she hope that a child might replace them too? At some point her own confidence, her trust in him and their marriage, is undermined by this failure. Her own longing to cuddle her baby, the hungry need to feel that warm weighty little body in her arms, is continually denied in her anxiety to make it up to Sam in some way.

‘It's not your fault,' he says, after the results of some tests showed that she is infertile. ‘At least not in that way,' and there is a new, terrible, absent-minded kindness about his affection, which fills her with terror.

When he goes to America to direct his first film abroad his absence is almost a relief. She is able to make her generous encouragement – ‘Of
course
you must go. It's a fantastic opportunity. I shall be fine and I'll come out as soon as the play finishes' – a kind of present, a reward for his acceptance of her barrenness. When the usual flirtation edges him for the first time into an affair she finds that she is regarding it in the same light: as a kind of consolation prize, which, for those same reasons of disappointment bravely borne, he deserves. She accepts his explanations with the same forbearance and understanding that she uses to deal with his flirtations and is almost grateful for his approval. He begins to work more and more abroad, whilst her own work keeps her between London and Manchester, so that their time together assumes the quality of a holiday: great fun, not quite real, keeping problems on the back burner.

Affairs now become the pattern and she needs to remind herself of Angel's words:
There will always be rumours with a man like Sam. Ignore them if you can and don't play 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.
Good advice, no doubt, but sometimes very difficult to follow. Hard work saves her from her own private despair, from brooding too much on her childlessness, and in time she is able to accept Sam's women as being the same kind of occupational hazard as spending long weeks alone or first-night nerves.

A noise from the kitchen below disturbed her thoughts: the clang of the kettle on the hotplate and the faint murmur of Tilda's voice talking to Teresa. Lizzie frowned, as though she were trying to hear the words, and quite suddenly, as if coming to some decision, reached for her capacious holdall. She riffled through it, coming upon the postcards that she'd bought earlier in the week to send to her friends, and sat for some moments holding them in her hand, staring down at the picture of the Yarn Market.

Lizzie put the postcards beside her on the bed and drew her mobile telephone from the bag; switching it on she began to check for messages. She listened to each of the three messages carefully and then replayed them. Presently she took a pen from the bag and began to write on the back of one of the cards, pausing from time to time to consider her words. When she'd finished writing she took another card from her holdall. She studied it, turning it to read the message, slipped it into an envelope and put both cards into her leather shoulder-bag. She went out on to the long landing, pausing for a moment at the window that looked down into the garth before going downstairs.

Piers saw her come into the garth, observed that inward-turned expression of preoccupation before it was automatically switched to a kind of detached, amused awareness of the scene as if she had stepped suddenly upon the stage. He was seized by a sense of foreboding so strong that, leaving Alison holding her coffee, he crossed the cobbles to Lizzie and took her by the arm.

‘What is it?' he asked – and she turned that same bright blank smiling gaze upon him as if he were a stranger. He wanted to shake her, to say, ‘Come on, this is me. You don't have to pretend,' and then, just as suddenly, he lost his confidence, remembering that they had known each other for less than five days.

‘Come and have some coffee,' he said lightly. ‘Although I warn you that you might have to have a plastic mug. Tilda said that you'd gone upstairs for a moment.'

He'd realized that he'd simply left Alison standing alone and now he steered Lizzie back to her, and took a mug of coffee from the tray on the table beside them. Before he released her arm he felt her tense, as though preparing for action, readying herself for a performance.

‘It was my wretched contact lenses,' she invented rapidly. ‘Quite agonizing sometimes, you know.'

She took the coffee and beamed upon Alison, who stared back at her with unconcealed dislike, furious with Piers for simply walking away in the middle of their conversation.

‘I have perfect sight,' she answered coldly. ‘I don't need spectacles and if I did I certainly wouldn't feel the need to have all the discomfort of contact lenses. I have excellent long vision.'

‘But can you see what's happening right under your nose?' asked Lizzie.

She asked the question so naturally, so intently, as if she were really interested, that Alison actually drew breath to answer it before she saw the true meaning behind Lizzie's words. For one brief second Piers and Lizzie looked at each other with such mutual accord, with such total amused understanding and recognition, that in that moment there might have been no-one else in the garth with them. It was Lizzie who moved first, turning to put her mug back onto the tray and saying, ‘The party seems to be breaking up and I'd like to say goodnight to some of these nice people,' before drifting away.

‘I must say,' said Alison angrily, staring after her, ‘that I wonder if she's quite all there. You read about the artistic temperament and so forth and all I can say is, if that's it then you can keep it.'