The Birdcage

by John Bowen

  Peter Ash sat. Norah Palmer walked. She found that talking things out was easier if she did not have to look at him. She supposed that it was possible that he had become obsessed with somebody Vénus toute entière a sa proie attachée and all that. She didn’t want to sound flip about it. If that had happened, he couldn’t really be enjoying it any more than she was enjoying…. Well! The point was that she begged him, implored him to keep a grip on himself. They both knew from their own experience of life (and there were plenty of examples in literature, from Touchstone to the Baron de Charlus) how disastrous the obsession of someone middle-aged for someone young could be. Peter Ash was thirty-nine. One knew that this was the time of life when men and women were most susceptible, when they most needed the reassurance of being wanted—physically wanted—of being thought sexually attractive. She knew how easy it was at that age to become obsessed with the idea of youth itself. One never feels older; the wrinkling and the sagging and the swelling, all the marks of ageing that are not yet so pronounced, but seem to point to what will obscenely happen, these feel like some terrible disguise that is being fitted over one’s still young—one’s still essentially young—self. So one reaches back to youth, and sometimes the only way of possessing it is physically to possess, to have some younger person. But it was self-deception; Peter Ash must know that. The more one gave in to such an obsession, the more one could be hurt by it. Oh, it might seem to work for a time. There are plenty of pretty young people who are looking for a father—his mouth twitched at one corner: “An elder brother,” she said. But it never lasted.

  Peter Ash said that he knew the dangers of that sort of thing as well as Norah Palmer did. If there had been any question of such an obsession, she would have noticed it before. He himself was too cold to be easily vulnerable, as she should know by now. He found the topic distasteful, and irrelevant. His mind was made up. He wanted his freedom.

  There was a knock at the front door of the flat. Mrs. Halliday, the house-keeper, who lived in the basement, said, “I knew you was back because I saw the taxi. But I thought I’d give you a little bit of time to get settled like. Having a nice cup of tea, are you? That’s right. I brought the birds.”

  She carried a large cage of the sort that may sometimes be seen, filled with stuffed birds, to announce the coming of Spring Fashions to the windows of chi-chi Department Stores. The cages in the windows of stores are usually of wicker. This was of brass, highly polished and lacquered, and had been bought at Liberty’s by Peter Ash. It contained two lovebirds. They were called Fred and Lucy. Mrs. Halliday, whose brother kept a pet-shop, had herself given them to Peter Ash and Norah Palmer, after the flat’s previous daily had left, and they had asked her to come in four mornings a week at five shillings an hour to clean.

  “I might have brought them this morning, when I was in,” she said. “Everything all right, is it? I opened the windows to let the air in. It gets very fusty in here, you know.”

  “Thank you very much, Mrs. Halliday.”

  “Only they wouldn’t have enjoyed it, not if I’d left them on their little lones all day. They like a bit of company. It’s only natural.” She took the cage into the kitchen, and hung it up near the window. “Chatter! They’d chatter away, you can’t imagine, to me and Chucky. Got the milk, then, did you? I put it in the fridge.”

  “Would you like a cup of tea, Mrs. Halliday?”

  “Not if it’s that Foo Long. Anyway, I’ve had mine. They’ve gone to Majorca downstairs. Went yesterday. It’s amazing where people do go nowadays, isn’t it? Of course there’s the money for it. It’s not like it was before the war.” She lingered by the door. “No, I won’t stay,” she said. One of the lovebirds in the kitchen gave a chirrup. Mrs. Halliday said indulgently, “Ah, that Fred! He knows you’re back,” and was gone.

  Norah Palmer said, “I could go away for a while, if you like. Say, for a week, while you think things over?”

  “Where would you go?”

  “To my club.”

  It was too silly. It was Edwardian. Only it was worse—it was Edwardian with the roles reversed. To her club! He was prepared to put up with any inconvenience, but not to be made to look a fool. Peter Ash said, “I think this has gone far enough. I’m going out.”

  Without him, the room seemed frighteningly empty.

  *

  To make a decision is only the beginning of a process in time, and it is not isolated. Probably there have been other decisions behind it; certainly there will be other decisions beyond it. Decision must become action, and, since one lives in the world, each action touches people and things beyond oneself.

  Peter Ash had made a decision. Norah Palmer had accepted it. What choice had she? They were sensible people. They were not married. They had no children. They were not one flesh; they were independent beings. She had neither a legal, nor a moral claim on him. They had lived together because they had liked each other, and had found living together convenient. When, even in one of them, like changed to dislike, and convenience became inconvenience, the only honest way was to cease to live together.

  So decisions followed from that decision. The flat in Beaufort Street—they had to decide about that. They had it on a 21-year lease, of which there were fifteen years to run. The lease was in Peter Ash’s name, and he had paid for it. Therefore he would remain in the flat, and take over payment of the full rent, and Norah Palmer would move. When she had found a place of her own, they would divide the goods they had so far owned in common.

  But here was a complication. Norah Palmer would find a place of her own, but it was not Norah Palmer who had decided their affair must end. Norah Palmer had accepted the decision, but to accept is not the same as to initiate action. A week passed, two weeks, three, and she was not gone. Peter Ash began to believe that Norah Palmer was not trying to find a place of her own.

  They continued to share a bed; it seemed the sensible thing to do, since both had long ago discovered that when they lay apart in the flat, they did not sleep. Now their little habitual intimacies became embarrassments. Peter Ash still brought Norah Palmer a cup of tea in bed every morning, but he kissed neither her eyelids nor her nose to waken her. To have done so would have been hypocritical, he considered, but not doing so felt unusual and wrong. Conversation between them became an exercise in neutrality, each public appearance an exercise in deception. It was well known among their friends that Peter Ash and Norah Palmer went everywhere together, so they continued to be asked everywhere together. When Norah Palmer should have found a place of her own, then their friends might be told that Peter Ash and Norah Palmer did not any longer go necessarily together—that one might (indeed, for at least a while, must) have egg with mayonnaise and bacon with kidneys. When that time came, Peter Ash and Norah Palmer might have to sit down together sensibly, and divide their friends, as they divided their furniture, by mutual agreement. Meanwhile they kept up a front, so as to avoid embarrassment.

  “I suppose you haven’t found anywhere to live yet?” said Peter Ash to Norah Palmer, after three weeks had gone uncomfortably by.

  “Not yet,” said Norah Palmer to Peter Ash. “I’ll let you know when I have.” Next day she phoned him at rehearsal to say that she would be home late; she was off to Notting Hill to look at a flat. “What was it like?” Peter Ash said with an appearance of neutrality at supper that night. “Oh, quite unsuitable,” said Norah Palmer. He wondered whether she had been to Notting Hill at all.

  Peter Ash never bought an evening paper. He said he was prepared to wait for his news until The Guardian printed it, and what The Guardian did not print was more likely to be gossip than news. If war broke out, he would hear it on the radio, or somebody would tell him. The Guardian, The New Statesman, The Spectator, Time and Tide, The Times Literary Supplement, The Listener, Encounter, The London Magazine, and three Sunday papers—nobody could accuse Peter Ash of not keeping up with things; he saw no reason to add an evening paper to that list. No reason until now. He bought both
the London evening papers. He bought The Times on Thursdays, when London flats and maisonettes appear among the advertisements of property for sale or rent. He behaved as if he were looking for a flat. He marked all the advertisements of flats he considered might suit Norah Palmer, and he left the papers lying about. “We seem to be accumulating an awful lot of newspapers,” Norah Palmer said. “Can’t you bundle some of them up, and leave them downstairs for the dustmen?”

  Peter Ash said, “I get them for you. How do you expect to find a flat if you don’t look?”

  “I am looking.”

  “I see no signs of it.”

  “Do you want to come with me?”

  An honest answer to that question would have been “Yes”. Peter Ash did not make it. He wondered whether it might not be kinder in the long run simply to ask Norah Palmer to go—to leave his flat within a fixed time. He had the right; she gave him no credit for not using it. If she were forced to find a flat, she’d find one quickly enough. He said, “I marked three in the Standard you might try.”

  “Nobody ever finds a flat through the Standard. You have to go and queue outside the office at about eight in the morning, or else all the flats have gone by the time you’ve phoned.”

  “James and Matthew found one.”

  Norah took the Evening Standard from him, and examined the three advertisements he had marked. She said, “You don’t imagine I can afford £850 for a five-year lease?”

  “Renewable.”

  “It doesn’t say so.”

  “You could ask.”

  “Oh, I could do anything. Anyway I don’t need two bedrooms. There’s no point in going to see places one knows one isn’t going to take. That wastes everybody’s time.”

  “What about the one in Royal Crescent?”

  She looked again at the advertisement for the one in Royal Crescent. “It’s an agent. You don’t suggest I should ring a house-agent at seven-thirty in the evening?”

  “What?” He took the paper from her. “How do you know it’s an agent? It doesn’t say.”

  “You’ll find the same telephone number at the end of at least seven other advertisements. Some kind of bait, I suppose. They want you to ring so that they can get you on their books. Personally I prefer agents who tell you what they are.” Norah Palmer began to stack the plates. “Really, dear.” (Dear!) “You might give me credit for a little intelligence.”

  But her pride was hurt. The next thing she knew, he would be giving her notice to quit. She had half a mind to leave anyway, stay at the club, search from there. It wasn’t easy to find a flat. They had searched for six months before finding their present flat, and Peter Ash had had to pay £3,000 for the lease. She had no money to pay for leases.

  She sat at her desk next day in a small glass stall on the third floor of the television company’s building, and recognized in herself both sloth and fear. She was thirty-five years old. That was not an age to go looking for flats. It was not an age to set up house all over again, not by herself. She shivered, and shut her eyes, but she would have to open them again. Something furnished? If she were to move into something furnished, it would be easy enough to move back again if Peter Ash should—but she must not think along that track. She must be honest; she must be sensible; she must face reality. When something had happened, it had happened; one couldn’t make it not have happened by wishing or pretending. A furnished flat was trivial and transitory. It would have nasty furniture, all the colours clashing, and a reconditioned gas-stove in the kitchen. She wanted her own things around her. She wanted a flat to which she could invite her friends without their pitying her. Pity destroyed friendship, and she would need friends if she were to live alone.

  She pressed the buzzer on her telephone, and spoke to her secretary. “Clarissa, get me an evening paper, would you please?” she said. “And you might ask around the office whether anybody knows of a flat. I’m thinking of moving.”

  *

  “But, my dear, you must move in with me” said Squad Appleby.

  “Oh, Squad!”

  “No, my dear. I am as serious as a drain. You must move in at once. I need the money. I want to buy a boat on the H.P.”

  “Squad——”

  “Not a word; not a word. I ask no questions, my dear, and spread no rumours. You’re breaking up with your gentleman, I take it? No, my dear, don’t answer. If you are, then all I can say is that it’s about time. He has a very dreary line of patter, I’m here to tell you, and worse than that I can’t say of him.”

  “I didn’t want to be … I hadn’t thought of being a lodger exactly, Squad.”

  “Don’t worry. It’s only minimally furnished. And you shall have a kitchen all to yourself, and your own little loo with a bath and basin, and your own telephone, and your own key to your own front door. It’s on my top floor, you see, and there’s only one room upstairs I ever use, so really it’s like having a floor to yourself. Rachel lived in sin up there with a cartographer, my dear, and now the silly bitch has decided to marry him, and moved out on Saturday. I shall never have a model as a tenant again. They get moods of religious hysteria. I suppose it’s all that standing about with one hip out of joint, just like yoga.”

  “May I come and see it?”

  “What are you doing for lunch? Come back with me. There’s some lettuce in what they call the hydrator, and baked beans in the cupboard. Perhaps we could buy some salami or something. Clarissa’s bound to know a salami shop, if we ask. And you needn’t hesitate to tell me if you hate the flat, because I don’t imagine it’s going to be difficult to let. The real danger, my dear, is actors. They’re always behind with the rent, and the only way you can get them to pay is to offer them employment, as if casting weren’t difficult enough already without having to find parts for one’s debtors.”

  “How much is it?”

  “Three pounds ten a week, payable quarterly in advance. It may hurt at the time, but it’s like teeth; you’re buying security. And it saves my having to hang around in a meaning way on Friday evenings. You’ll probably never see me, as a matter of fact. I’m never in. Oh—and you pay in cash, of course, because of the tax.”

  “You make it sound as if everything were already settled.”

  “Let’s face it. It is. You’d be mad not to take it, my love, as well you know. Mais voyons nous, and not another word about it until we do. Because that isn’t at all what I came to see you about.”

  “It’s poor Mr. Biston, I suppose. I hope you’re being gentle with him.”

  “Oh no, my dear. Not him. He’s anaesthetized. All those great fights we’ve been having are things of the past, as they say.

  “He’s given up?” Herbert Biston was the author of the television play Squad was next to direct. He was the author in a literal sense; long ago he had originated the play. But Squad was the company’s most “creative” director. Once Mr. Biston’s play had been accepted, once it had been given a provisional place in the schedule, Squad had been asked to work with Mr. Biston to get the play into shape before rehearsals began. After three weeks of this working with, there was very little of Mr. Biston’s play left. This was not important. Mr. Biston was a dustman—an “original”. It was company policy to find “originals”, and encourage them. The first piece of encouragement offered by the company to Mr. Biston was that it gave him the privilege of having his play rewritten by Squad. When that had been done, the company could safely announce a new play, The Tosher Boy, by Herbert Biston, a genuine original dustman, and, intrigued by this announcement, the television reviewers would ignore “Focus on Capillaries” or “Great Rear-Admirals of the Blue” or “European Sportsview” or whatever the competition from the B.B.C. was that evening, and they would watch the dustman’s play instead. After they had watched it, they would write little pieces pointing out how cleverly Mr. Biston had captured the dustmen’s argot, and how this was “the real stuff of television drama”, and how clever the company had been to find such a genuine original as Mr. B
iston, and how they must put him on a long-term contract at once. Mr. Biston’s next play would not be as successful as the first. Those reviewers who watched it (because the B.B.C., by this time, would be fighting back with the “Black and White Minstrel Show” or a rather passé series of Westerns, bought at great expense with public money from the U.S.A.) would suggest that Mr. Biston was in danger of repeating himself. So Mr. Biston’s third play would be a family comedy about life on a housing estate, and it would fail utterly. Squad would have lost interest by then, another director would have inherited Mr. Biston, and Mr. Biston himself, conscious that he was now a fully paid-up member of the Screen Writers’ Guild, would have become grand and have insisted on doing his own rewriting. Probably the company would reject Mr. Biston’s fourth and fifth plays. By that time, Mr. Biston would have given up his job as a dustman, so as to “live by his pen”. The company’s last “original”, Norah Palmer remembered, had been a 24-year-old salesman in the Gadget Department of a Department Store in Oxford Street. He had committed suicide three weeks after his twenty-fifth birthday.

  All this was still ahead of Mr. Biston, however. For the time being things were going well with him. Squad said that Mr. Biston had even begun to believe that some of the new dialogue was his own. “No, my dear,” Squad said. “Nothing to do with Mr. Biston. Something much more interesting. I’ve brought you this.”

  This was a garnering of so far uncollected trivia by George Bernard Shaw; it had been published in a book of ninety-two pages by an American University Press. There was an annotated laundry list. There was a postcard to Messrs. Jaeger about ankle-length underwear, and another to the Herbal Food Stores asking for marigate paste. There was a formal letter, signed by Shaw but probably written by a secretary, about the rating assessment at Ayot St. Lawrence. There was a witty letter to the G.P.O., protesting at having been charged for a trunk call to Bagshot, which, Shaw claimed, he had never made. But the heart of this scholarly little book, the academic triumph of it, the genuine contribution to the corpus of Shaw’s work, had been the discovery and re-publication of an isolated piece of dramatic criticism written by Shaw in 1904 for The Saturday Review, six years after he had “opened the door” for “the incomparable Max” (the quotation marks are from Professor Benstead’s introduction). Max Beerbohm, a sudden prisoner to influenza, had persuaded Shaw to review for him a new play of social protest, The Forgotten Men by Edward Laverick, performed by the Independent Theatre for one Tuesday matinée in the set of a drawing-room comedy at the Avenue Theatre.