A Summer Bird-Cage

by Margaret Drabble

  ‘Well, there usually is.’

  ‘Oh, there are hundreds of things I want to do’ I said, casting my mind over them—things like going to Rome, or seeing Francis and loving him as I used to, and having the right clothes for everything, and writing books—‘but you couldn’t call any of them careers. You couldn’t earn a penny from any of them.’

  ‘You haven’t had time to settle down yet,’ said John.

  ‘I never will settle down,’ I said. ‘There simply isn’t a niche for me.’

  ‘What are all your friends doing?’ said Louise.

  ‘Oh, don’t ask. They’re all making as atrocious a mess of it as me. Wandering around America or the Continent wishing they had something better to do, or married and bored, or teaching in secondary moderns—God, you can take the lot for me.’

  ‘I’ve always rather fancied you as a don,’ said Louise.

  ‘I used to fancy myself as one. But I’ll tell you what’s wrong with that. It’s sex. You can’t be a sexy don. It’s all right for men, being learned and attractive, but for a woman it’s a mistake. It detracts from the essential seriousness of the business. It’s all very well sitting in a large library and exuding sex and upsetting everyone every time your gown slips off your bare shoulders, but you can’t do that for a living. You’d soon find yourself having to play it down instead of up if you wanted to get to the top, and when you’ve only got one life that seems a pity.’

  ‘I agree,’ said John. ‘You should try acting. That’s what it’s about.’

  ‘I would if I could. It must be fun, letting rip in public like that.’

  Louise was strangely silent at this point, no doubt thinking back. I wondered if she regretted her own decisions. After a while she said, ‘Wilfred Smee said he talked to you at our party.’

  ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘Do you like Wilfred?’

  ‘Yes, I do. It would be all right being a don if one could be like that. I mean to say, with him the question is altogether different.’

  ‘Don’t you think he could be very boring?’ said John. ‘When he gets older and more out of touch with things?’

  ‘Out of touch with what?’

  ‘Oh, the world . . . ’

  ‘The world,’ I said, scornfully, having had about enough of that concept both from myself and from Louise. ‘Oh yes, the world, of course, I forgot about that . . . ’

  ‘What he means,’ said Louise, ‘is interesting people like himself. He wonders what poor old Wilfred will be like when he’s cut off from that great representative of the inner ring, John What’s-His-Name.’

  ‘I’ve always thought,’ I said, ‘that very few people grow old as admirably as academics. At least books never let them down.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said John, ‘what would you really like to achieve most in your life?’

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ I said. ‘Beyond anything I’d like to write a funny book. I’d like to write a book like Kingsley Amis, I’d like to write a book like Lucky Jim. I’d give the world to be able to write a book like that.’

  ‘Do you really mean it?’

  ‘Of course I mean it.’

  He laughed. ‘God,’ he said, ‘you really are a little egghead, aren’t you. You really are.’

  ‘Well, I don’t like the word you choose,’ I said, ‘but as to the idea, I must admit that however hard I run away from it, you’re probably absolutely right. But if you think that that implies that my right place is sitting in some library, you couldn’t be more wrong . . . ’ And even as I spoke a great wave of nostalgia came over me, nostalgia for days at a library desk with a pile of books and an essay subject and a week to find the answer, and the prospect of someone to tell me I was right or wrong, and the thought of exams to pass and knowledge to discover, which now seemed not to exist, or not in any discoverable form. Oh hell, I said to myself, and shut my mind on the idea. Only a real idiot would use the thought of a library as an image of the womb.

  They talked about Wilfred a bit, and I tried hard to work out what that strange trio all thought of each other, but after a while I noticed that both John and Louise were getting unnervingly amorous. I was relieved when they said, ‘Come on, let’s go,’ and jumped up willingly. But they weren’t going to let me off so easily: they insisted that I walked down to the Strand with them and accepted a lift home in their taxi.

  ‘It’s miles out of your way,’ I said, ‘absolutely miles, it’ll cost you a fortune to take me back first.’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ said John, ‘I live on the way there, you can drop me off if that would satisfy your conscience.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Louise to John.

  ‘I’m not being,’ he said. ‘I simply don’t believe you. He’s sure to have changed his mind and then we would be in a mess.’

  ‘I promise you,’ said Louise.

  For reply, he kissed her, right there in the street.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ I said, ‘do you mind waiting till you’ve delivered me on my doorstep?’

  ‘All right,’ said Louise. She was laughing to herself, and skipping on the pavement, avoiding the cracks. I envied her bitterly at that moment. It seemed that she had everything and love as well. Everything shall be added unto you, as Jesus Christ once said. Seek ye first the kingdom of this world and everything shall be added unto you. What a bribe. And I said to myself, Louise always wins. Whatever she does, she wins. And I lose. I’ve too much wit and too little beauty, so I lose.

  When we reached the Strand we picked up a taxi, and once we were in it out of the cold Louise threaded her arms round John’s waist under his dustman’s jacket and started saying silly things like ‘Keep me warm, little bear, keep me warm.’ They couldn’t think of anything but the night ahead in Stephen’s empty flat, and they were taking me home to tease themselves, to push away the hour of arrival. I’d never seen Louise childish before, and it reminded me of how childish Francis and I always were at our most happy moments: I think the most enchanting thing he ever said to me was that my nipples were like jelly-babies. Nobody else could ever have said as beautiful and stupid a thing as that. I began to feel all strung up with loneliness as I watched them billing and cooing, so to speak. I, of course was sitting on one of the foldable seats so that they could recline on the back seat together. I can’t tell you how I longed to be lying on that back seat with somebody. With almost anybody. By the time we rolled up at my front door, I was, to be crude for a welcome change, twitching. I got out, and they said good night, their mutual satisfaction overflowing into benevolence, and I thought how easy it is to be kind when everything is going right and one isn’t dying of many varieties of frustration. The thought of my empty bed appalled me. I waved good-bye to them, and unlocked the front door, and thought how sad it was that I had only found it amusing to be a bachelor girl for a week at the most. I hadn’t much independence, I thought. And those stupid home truths about a woman being nothing without a man kept running through my head as I groped my way up the unlit stairs.

  I tried to be as quiet as possible in order not to wake Gill, as I didn’t want to talk to her, but I needn’t have worried. On the kitchen table there was a letter from her, underneath the dripping bowl. It said:

  Dear Sarah,

  I seem to have thrown the sponge in at last. I’m going home for a while. I didn’t feel too well this morning, so I rang them up and they asked me to go home. Perhaps I’ll get over everything quicker if I go home. I know I’ve been pretty impossible recently, but things have been a strain. I hope it won’t cause a rift. I’ve left the week’s rent in the jar on the mantelpiece—I hope you’ll find someone else to share with. I am sorry about everything. If Tony calls, tell him where I am.

  Yours, Gill

  As I put the letter down I felt as if I could burst into tears. It was so sad, that a girl like Gill should be beaten simply because she had taken a gamble on love. Because that did seem to be the reason. She had jumped in with her eyes shut, and she had got n
owhere. I began to wonder if I myself would ever dare to get married. There were so many dangers. Not that Francis would ever do what Tony had done, or ever be what Stephen was, but then who did that leave me as my model? My parents? Cosy Michael and Stephanie? Oh, I didn’t want it, any of it. I felt frightened and ill. Frightened, ill, and yet desirous. I wondered if Gill and Tony would have been all right if they had had as much money as Louise and Stephen. Then none of the squalor, put-the-kettle-on problem would ever have arisen. But other things would. Other things would. I was in despair, and lonely too. Perhaps the only way to do it was to marry and then to have affairs. Like Louise, my sister. But I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to do that, I wanted to be a one-man girl, and faithful. It was impossible.

  I didn’t burst into tears: I started to wander around restlessly, feeling the objects in the room, looking at myself in the mirror, eating a lump of cheese. I felt that I must do something, talk to someone. Some man. I tried to think of somebody, and in the end I remembered Jackie Almond. I knew I had his telephone number, and I found it in my address book. I rang him up, without stopping to think how late it was: he was in, and I asked him to come round. He didn’t seem surprised at my request: he simply said he would come. I suppose that from his one encounter with me he must have formed an impression of me which would make such eccentric behaviour far more in character than it actually was. I daresay he was the sort of person that sad, high-powered chance acquaintances were always ringing up in the middle of the night for help and comfort. Anyway, in half an hour he came. We settled down on the hearthrug, holding hands and drinking Maxwell House: I don’t know in what direction we were heading, because just as I was settling down into a warm, companionable and harmless embrace the ’phone rang.

  ‘Damn, damn, damn,’ I said. ‘Who the hell can that be at this time of night?’

  ‘Don’t answer it,’ he said. This I took to be an indication of affection, so I didn’t answer it. But it went on and on ringing, until on the twenty-sixth ring I felt I had to reply. I thought it might be an accident.

  I lifted up the receiver and said my number crossly.

  ‘Sarah, is that you?’ It was Louise.

  ‘Louise,’ I said, furiously, and speaking straight to her for the first time in my life. ‘Louise, what in God’s name do you mean by ringing people up at this unspeakable hour of night. I’ve never heard of anything so absurd.’

  ‘Look, Sarah, I’m terribly sorry to have woken you,’ she said, agitated, on the other end of the line. ‘I couldn’t think what to do. The most awful unspeakable thing has happened. It’s too incredible for words, I simply can’t believe it . . . ’ She sounded tremulous, and her voice faded away.

  ‘You mean you’re going to have a baby?’ I said, snappily, as this was the sort of event that usually calls forth such incredulous clamour. And it was time in the story for that to happen to someone, at least in such a female love-love-love story as this.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said, brightly catching my tone of voice—she’s not slow, my sister—‘nothing as corny as that, but just as stupid. You know I went back to the flat with John—well, we were just sitting in the bath together when in walks Stephen. Can you imagine? I sort of knew he would, somehow. It was too awful for words.’

  I wanted badly to laugh, but I knew it would be tactless. I could see how utterly awful it would be—exposure is bad enough under any circumstances, but when accompanied by an atmosphere of wet sponges and toothbrushes it must be really humiliating. There is after all something classic about a bed, something dignified and timeless. But a bath . . .

  ‘What on earth did he say?’ I said.

  ‘Oh God, it was ghastly . . . he went absolutely ill with rage, I’ve never seen anything like it, none of that turn the other cheek lark he’s been so keen on all his life. I thought they were going to hit each other, but then with all that nakedness . . . anyway John walked out and left me to it, and I got dry and put my dressing-gown on and then Stephen came back and he gave me such a thing—he’s mad, Sarah, I’m telling you, he’s really mad. And then he locked me out of the house.’

  ‘How long ago was all this?’

  ‘About ten minutes.’

  ‘Where are you then?’

  ‘I’m in the ’phone box on the corner. I borrowed four-pence from the taxi-man to see if you were in . . . can I come round, Sarah, please?’

  ‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘You couldn’t have picked a worse night. Can’t you go to someone else?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell anyone else, I really couldn’t . . . ’

  ‘Oh come off it, Louise, we’re not exactly intimate friends, are we?’

  ‘You’re my sister,’ she said, bleakly.

  ‘Oh for Christ’s sake. Why don’t you ring up John? You can’t come here.’

  ‘I couldn’t ring him. I couldn’t.’

  ‘Why on earth not?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Well, if you must know, I tried to ring him just a minute ago, but either he isn’t in or he didn’t answer. Please let me come, Sarah, I’m catching my death of cold. I’ll love you for ever more if you’ll let me come.’

  ‘It’s cold here too,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, but you’re not standing in your dressing-gown,’ she said.

  ‘True,’ I admitted. Then what she had said registered and I said, ‘Why, are you?’

  ‘That’s right. I’ve got nothing on except my dressinggown. And I haven’t got a penny—I’ll have to borrow the taxi money from you when I arrive, if the taxi-man hasn’t raped me on the way.’

  ‘I said you couldn’t come,’ I said. I enjoyed, in a simple way, the feeling of power.

  ‘You’ve got to let me come,’ said Louise. ‘There’s no one else I dare ask.’

  ‘Go back and ask Stephen. I’m sure he’d let you in.’

  ‘I’m never going near that man again,’ she said, classically. ‘He gives me the creeps. I can’t stand the sight of him. I’ll never touch another penny of his money. I’ll never speak to him again. I hate him, I hate him, I hate him.’

  ‘Oh, OK,’ I said, as thoughts of the police and Louise in her dressing-gown all over the Daily Express began to flit through my mind. ‘Oh, OK, I suppose you can come, as long as you realize that you won’t be very welcome. That I’m doing you a favour. How long will you be?’

  ‘Just as long as the taxi takes. Bless you, Sal. Will you come down with the taxi money if I ring the bell when I get there?’

  ‘You really are the bloody limit. All right.’

  ‘I know I am. I’ll be seeing you.’

  I rang off. I was annoyed; curious, admittedly, but annoyed. I was annoyed on account of Jackie, who was part of my life: I was furious with her for her assumption that she could just come round and impose her life on me whenever she wanted. And the truth was that up till then she always had been able to: she had been expert at using me and impressing me without my noticing it. And this time I had noticed: I noticed and I genuinely, truly resisted. As I went and sat down by Jackie something very very old snapped in me. It snapped as though it had been a piece of old and rotten string, long useless, long without any power to tie, and yet still wrapped round and confining an ancient parcel of fears and prejudices. It snapped, and the parcel spilled apart all over the floor. ‘Who on earth was that?’ said Jackie.

  ‘That was my sister Louise,’ I said. ‘She’s coming round here in her dressing-gown as her husband has thrown her out on the streets.’

  ‘I told you not to answer the phone.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I don’t suppose it matters very much. I’d better go.’

  ‘I don’t want you to go.’

  ‘I don’t want to go either.’

  ‘But you’d better.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It isn’t that you are less important than my sister. In fact, you’re being here now has made all the difference to everything. Y
our being here when she rang, I mean.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I mean it, Jackie. The end of something is at hand.’

  ‘You’re a little obscure.’

  ‘I can’t explain it. But the fact that I would rather sit here with you than let her come here means a lot.’

  ‘But you let her come just the same.’

  ‘I didn’t want to.’

  ‘Then why did you?’

  ‘Because she—because blood is thicker than water, I suppose.’

  ‘I too have blood in my veins.’

  ‘I know. That is the principle I have always worked on. That everyone has blood in their veins. Everyone except Louise, that is. But now I begin to realize that she has too. And the point is that although I let her come I didn’t want her to come.’

  ‘I take your point,’ he said.

  And then he got up and put on his coat. I didn’t feel bad about having let him come, so magnificently sure of myself did I feel. Of myself versus Louise. And I didn’t feel bad about letting him go. All I hoped was that he realized how important it was that he had been there. I think he did.

  We said good-bye and made another rendezvous, an outdoor one this time. Then we kissed and he went and I began to wait for Louise.

  When the doorbell went I picked up my purse with the taxi money and went downstairs. There was my amazing sister, standing on the doorstep in a short grey dressinggown, looking not nearly as disastrous as I had expected, because her dressing-gown resembled a sort of maternity coat rather than a piece of sprigged Victoriana. I gave her the money for her fare, which she gave to the taxi-man, who made some joke at which she vaguely laughed. He drove off, waving and shouting, ‘Don’t catch a chill,’ and Louise came in shivering and clutching her dressinggown frantically around her. Her legs looked white and naked underneath: usually she wears dark stockings. ‘What story did you tell him?’ I asked, as I followed her up the stairs. ‘Oh, I told him most of the truth,’ she said, over her shoulder. ‘He liked it, he thought it was funny. I suppose you think it’s funny, f suppose it is funny.’