The Birdcage (8 page)

Why had Norah Palmer telephoned, since she hadn’t, as it seemed, had anything particular to say? Lonely, he supposed. Well, he had moods of loneliness too—or he would have, if he allowed himself to have them—but all that would pass. Let her do as he did. Let her spend the days at work, conferring here, deciding there, visiting a musician at his home, a painter in his studio, juggling the merits of the newest cathedral and the oldest O.M. Then in the evenings, let her go with a friend to the theatre or a foreign film, or to a party or out to dinner; let her watch television (since that was her job, wasn’t it?—television?) or read a book. There was always plenty to do. Friends of Peter Ash’s whom he hardly knew were asking him to their parties nowadays. There were never fewer than three cards 
on his mantel. He had no doubt it was the same for Norah Palmer.

He was free. He could go out when he liked, stay out for as long as he liked. He could meet strangers again. Not married couples, not groups, but the solitary stranger at a party with whom one feels an instant sympathy, whom one would like to know better, if only to find out how deep the sympathy really goes. But Norah Palmer had never held with inviting strangers to dinner. She always said it was not fair to one’s other dinner guests to land them for an evening with someone encountered casually at a party. In any case Peter Ash had discovered that even the most sympathetic acquaintance did not prosper at a party when one knew that at any time Norah Palmer might be ready to go home. Now, after nine years, Peter Ash was able to exchange telephone numbers with strangers at parties, even if he himself had no intention of phoning, and was almost never in to be phoned. Why, he could even
leave
a party with a stranger if he wished. He could say, “Are you going my way? Can I give you a lift?” and they would not be three in the taxi.

One evening he found himself sitting in one corner of a large room, with his shoes off, listening to a steel band from Barbados. The occasion was a flat-warming, given by—he was not quite sure, but knew that there were three of them sharing. He had been made to take his shoes off because the carpet was new. Nobody was being allowed to wear shoes. Somewhere off the hall there was a bedroom deep in shoes. Peter Ash had arrived early, and would have to leave late because his shoes were in the bottom layer. If a volcano were suddenly to erupt in the Old Brompton Road and bury them all in lava, archaeologists of the thirty-fifth century would find Peter Ash’s shoes last. Brown suede shoes. All the windows were open, and the
throbbing of petrol tins could be heard, Peter Ash
supposed
, by most of South Kensington, but since most of South Kensington was already at the party, this was of no consequence. The three sharing had done things well. They had provided cup for their guests, a great bowl of it,
continually
replenished, and placed well out of the range of the Barbados Steel Band, from whose bodies, as they drummed, sweat was sprayed like the profuse spitting of a great Shakespearian actor. Cherries, peaches and slices of
pineapple
had been dropped arbitrarily into the cup with a piece of foil from a packet of mentholated cigarettes, and ice, and a great many strawberries, which had gone soggy and sunk to the bottom. The liquid itself seemed to be equal parts of hock and Cointreau. The cup was cold, and the glasses were large.

Peter Ash had been dancing, but now the floor was too crowded for dancing. He had been talking, but the
drumming
of the steel band was too loud for intelligent
conversation
to flourish. He had been moving from group to group, but now that more and more people were sitting down, it was not easy to move. It was so hot in the room. They had said, “Come casually,” so he had worn his cashmere pullover, and dared not take it off in case it were stolen. He would take a little more cup, and that would cool him. There was a girl beside him in the corner. She seemed to have been sitting there for some time. “Shall I get you a drink?” he said to the girl.

“I’m not sure I ought to, if I’m going to get back to the dormy.”

“Nonsense. It’s only cup. Nothing but ice really. Let me take your glass.” He took the girl’s glass, started to get to his feet, and made the interesting discovery that he couldn’t. He could get so far in a more or less weightless condition, and then gravity would take hold. He decided to stay
where he was in free fall. “What dormy?” he said. “What
can
you mean?—dormy?”

“Can’t you get up?”

“It’s rather dark and crowded to be walking through people. I expect there’ll be——”

“I’ll go if you like.”

“—somebody with a jug if we wait.”

“No really.” The girl took both glasses from him. She put one hand on the wall for leverage, began the motion upwards, and stopped. “I say, I can’t get up either,” she said. “It’s not that I’m tiddly or anything, because I’ve only had one. I’m sort of locked.”

“What dormy?”

“Look, there’s Sylvia with a jug!” The girl waved
violently
, and the dregs of her glass hit the wall behind her. Somebody in tight leopard-skin trousers came with a jug. Peter Ash said to the knees of the leopard-skin trousers, “She keeps talking about getting back to the dormy. What does she mean?” The largest of the Barbadeans hit the largest of the petrol tins, and chanted:

“It’s where she sleeps. She’s a policewoman. Having a lovely time, darling?”

“Fabulous actually.”

The leopard-skin trousers moved away, and the girl next to Peter Ash said, “Actually it isn’t really a dormitory, you know. I just call it that. It’s the Section House. I share a room with another girl.”

“My name’s Peter Ash.”

“I know. I’m a terrific fan of yours actually. You’re
always on at our local, and I go every week. Mine’s Bunty Bancroft. Well, that’s my stage name actually. My real name’s Bunty Banks. I changed it. Daddy was livid. It’s all a bit muddley for them at the Section House, because I still get letters for both.”

“Stage name? But I thought——”

“Well, I
am
a policewoman. At least I’m going to be. I’m only in the second year of my probationary period actually. It’s three years altogether. I was at the Central School
before
. Of Speech and Drama; it’s at Swiss Cottage. Only they threw me out because they said I wasn’t any good. Mummy and daddy hadn’t wanted me to go on the stage at all. They’d really wanted me to be a sort of secretary actually, but I jolly well wasn’t having any of that, because that’s what everybody does. I mean, if you can’t be
someone
special, you might as well die. So when the Central School threw me out, I thought I’d better do something pretty quickly before they had me in a twin-set learning shorthand, so I joined the Force. It’s just as special as the stage, and I think I’m going to be much better at it, though it
was
a bit of a sell, because I’ve had to learn shorthand anyway.”

“Tell me.”

So Bunty told him about life in Taunton with mummy and daddy, and how she’d felt she simply had to get away somehow. The dancers stopped dancing, and the pairs of shoes grew thinner on the bedroom floor, and Bunty told him how the English mistress at school had encouraged her to work on an audition piece (since it was obvious she wasn’t going to be bright enough for a university), and mummy and daddy hadn’t liked it at all, but wouldn’t stand in her way, and she’d gone up to London on a scorching day, and done a bit from The Balcony Scene in
Romeo and Juliet
and a bit from
A Hundred Years Old
and a
bit of her own choice, which had been from a play written by the English mistress actually, and never performed, except at school. And the Central School had accepted her, and she’d been so happy, and daddy had turned up absolutely trumps, and told her that, if that was what she really wanted to do, he’d pay the fees and let her have a small allowance, and mummy had lent her a hundred pounds from mummy’s private account in the Post Office, and had given her the most shaming bits of advice.

The Barbados Steel Band took their money, and shouldered their petrol cans, and drove home to
Westbourne
Grove in the back of a greengrocer’s van, and Bunty told Peter Ash about sharing a basement with a girl from Iceland and with Mags, who didn’t wash, but was absolutely
brilliant
. And how it had turned out that she had no vocal range to speak of, and how everyone, during the first term, had said she must practice and practice, and the Voice would come, and had continued to say it during the second term, and, at the end of the third term, they had called her in to the office and said it wouldn’t be fair to let her go on. And how the same thing had happened to one of the boys, and how they had both cried and assured each other that they wouldn’t give up the struggle, and how she’d taken him to tea at the Ritz, and now she was in the Force, and he was doing jolly well as a Floor Manager with the B.B.C.

The litter of fruit and foil sank to the bottom of the cup, and was not refloated, and Bunty told of her application to the Force, and how she hadn’t had to take the dictation exam because she already had English at “O” Level, and how they’d sent her to a place outside Coventry, where she couldn’t understand what any of the locals was saying, but had graduated successfully from that course anyway, and then she had done a month at Bishopsgate. And how
mummy was horrified at this turn of events, but daddy was rather pleased actually, except that they’d had a little chat during her first week’s leave, and he’d told her he hoped she wouldn’t become unwomanly. Bunty told Peter Ash about her judo lessons, and first aid, and swimming (except that she was already a Bronze Medallist), and even firing a revolver, not that she anticipated ever having to do so in real life, but it was all part of the course. And she told him how much she earned (
£
540 a year, with a London Allowance of
£
20, which was rather more than most secretaries got actually, and would go up to
£
875 in nine years), and about living at the Section House, and going out on duty just like anybody else, probationer or not. She told him about children missing from home, and trying to persuade the Irish not to go in for prostitution, and her secret ambition that one day she would be the decoy for someone really big, because there was a girl who’d camped out in a caravan in Dorset for months to catch some coiners.

And by the time she had finished telling Peter Ash all this, the party was over, and Bunty was far too tiddly to go back to the dormy. So she went home with Peter Ash instead.

*

Edward Laverick was seventy-five years old. Everyone was very kind, and he had his pension. Daphne had
insisted
that he must keep his pension, and spend it on
himself
. She said that old people ought to have independence. At first, Edward Laverick had often been able to buy something for the twins out of his pension, but now the twins were nineteen. Gerald had his scholarship, and
Rosemay
was working in the Public Library, so they needed nothing from Edward Laverick that he could afford to give them.

Daphne had looked after Edward Laverick for the whole of her adult life, so she knew what was best for him. When her mother died, Daphne was seventeen years old. That was in 1936. Edward Laverick, who knew well enough the dangers of such a relationship, had been determined that she should not “sacrifice herself” for him, and had even considered marrying again to avoid that, except that, at fifty years old, to marry again is not so easily done. Besides, Daphne showed no signs of an intention to make any such sacrifice. She had her friends, and did not lose them because her mother was dead. Into a general programme of
cleaning
house, washing, shopping and getting meals for two, one can fit a dance at the Town Hall or an evening at the cinema easily enough, and Daphne did so. Edward was not helpless. Though Daphne took her mother’s place in charge of domestic matters, Edward was ready enough to help, and did. She finished school, and went on to a teachers’ training college, continuing to live at home, and look after her father. When the war came, she did not, it is true, join any of the Women’s Auxiliary Services, for there was no point in making her father homeless for
that
, but she took up the job she had been trained for, and became a certificated teacher at the local Elementary School. She had been friendly for some time with a young man named Alan, who was in her year at Coll. Friendly?—well, she had let him go farther than anyone else had ever gone, though not, of course, as far as he had wanted to go. When he was called up, they became engaged to be married. Alan, and their engagement, survived Dunkirk. Then it had seemed likely that he would be posted to the Middle East, so they were wed. Six months later, Alan was killed in the desert. A little over three months later still, Daphne took time off from work to bear twins. It was providential that her father was still at home to help her care for them.

But London early in 1942 was no place for new-born children. As soon as they could, they had moved to Edward’s married sister, whose husband had a small farm on moorland just outside Chesterfield. Two more children were no great matter to her. She had borne and reared seven, and had the habit of it. Daphne found a teaching post again easily enough. Edward went to work in a factory.

That sounds a simple decision. It had not been simple—or, if easy to make, not easy to execute. At the Ministry, they had said he was mad. They had been worried about him, really worried, even with so much else to worry them; they had been worried at the Ministry. An Executive Officer of fifty-six, with so little time before he was due a pension, to renounce it, and go off to the provinces, to do God knows what! Let Laverick take time to think about it; let him take a week off if necessary; let him have a little talk with his doctor. But Edward did not think he was mad. He was getting his own back, he thought. Long ago the Civil Service had trapped him, or at least it had allowed him to trap himself. His need, his parents’ strong wish, that he should better himself; it might sound snobbish and small, but it had led to an education, scraped on their part and slaved on his; it had led to evening classes at the Poly in York Place, to a growth of the mind, a joyous certainty that all the time he was pushing farther and farther back the blinkers that class and poverty had fastened on him. It had led (perhaps because his own imagination was too small) to the sort of job that had seemed made for him, the sort of job in which, by hard work and the passing of periodical examinations, one was bound to move, could not help but move, steadily up the ladder of promotion. So he had become a clerical officer in the Civil Service. Oh, he’d had security later on in the difficult days of the early nineteen-thirties, and he’d moved up that ladder. There
was no cheat there. Time and the passing of the requisite examinations guaranteed promotion to Edward Laverick. He had moved from the Clerical Grade into the Executive Grade, and at the end he would have his pension. What he would never have was any real responsibility, since that, in the Civil Service, is only given to the Administrative Officers, who are most often recruited in a different way. It has to be so. Responsibility and judgment go together. There had been no opportunity in the Clerical and
Executive
Grades for Edward Laverick to exercise judgment, so it would not have been in the public interest to have given him responsibility.