The Birdcage

by John Bowen

  “Try the phone book,” Norah said.

  There were five Lavericks listed in the London Telephone Directory. Aubrey rang them all. They answered him kindly, but they knew nothing of Edward Laverick and The Forgotten Men.

  “Try the Registrar of Companies.”

  “What?”

  “The people who put the play on, whoever they were. The——”

  “Independent Theatre. They’ve gone out of business long ago. Must have. I couldn’t find any reference to them in the——”

  “Even defunct companies are listed. The Registrar people will tell you who the directors were, and where the company was registered.” Superior bitch, Aubrey thought, not knowing that Norah’s information came from the company’s Legal Officer. “If you could find the directors, they might be able to tell you more about Laverick. They might even have a copy of the play. Oh—and put an advertisement in The Stage. It won’t cost much, and you might pick up one of the actors.”

  At the Registrar of Companies’ office, Aubrey discovered that the directors of the Independent Theatre had been Perry Abbot-Hanstead (99 shares) and his wife, Mercy (one share). The offices of the company had been registered at an address in Cornwall Gardens.

  *

  Every week in winter, Edward Laverick did the Pools, now that he had his pension, and could afford the half-crown. They have Pools in summer also, but one has never heard of any of the teams who play. Football matches in the summer take place in Czechoslovakia or Australia or other such faraway places: the B.B.C. does not report the results in the six o’clock news on Saturdays. You might win £125,000 on a summer Pool, and never know it. So Edward Laverick only did the Pools in winter, and had once won twenty-five shillings, and this, being a methodical man, he had put aside to cover his stake for the next ten weeks.

  Daphne could not approve, and often told him so. It was only trying to get something for nothing, Daphne said. Edward Laverick felt that two and six a week over the winter months of several years added up to a great deal more than nothing, but he forbore to argue. He hadn’t the right to argue, when he contributed nothing to the household expenses. During the last years of his life, when many men grow querulous and crotchety, Edward Laverick had imposed upon himself a discipline that did not allow crotchets. But he went on doing the Pools, because that was, after all, his own money. He had never started smoking again, so he could afford the two and sixpence a week.

  None of the family ever asked him what he intended to do with the money if he won. They seemed to take it for granted that he never would win, as if he did not do the Pools to win, as if it were only an “occupation” for him, something that old men ought to have, a way of passing the time on Tuesdays, when he would fill in the coupon, and Saturday evenings, when he would check it. Rosemary when she had been younger, would sometimes ask, “How many did you get, Grandy?” but this was because it was a game between them, a test of her arithmetic, so that when he said, “Five draws and three away wins,” she might take time to work it out before replying, “Twenty-one. Is that enough, Grandy?”, knowing as well as he that it was not enough, and that nothing would come of it this week. So that even Rosemary never asked him what he would do with his £125,000, or helped him to spend it in imagination.

  And Edward Laverick? The twenty-five shillings (seven draws in a week in which there had been fourteen drawn matches altogether) had not gladdened him, for it had made him wonder whether all this talk of £125,000 were not so much pie in the sky, suggesting that real winnings would always turn out to be some much more likely and suitable amount. Twenty-five shillings—but one mustn’t grumble; it proved at least that the Pools people existed, and did reward, in their own way and time, those who took the trouble to pay them a weekly due. It was like tax in a way, or prayers offered to God. You filled in a form and paid money to someone you never saw, and the proof that He existed and noticed your diligence and regularity in making your weekly offering was that, after several years, you had a cheque for twenty-five shillings, as if to say, “Well done my good and faithful servant. My eye is on you, as well as on the sparrow.” You knew that the Pools people, like God, like the Government, existed, because like God and the Government you read about them in the papers. Arbitrary, capricious, and yet (you never doubted it) just, they were far above you. Some day they might reach out and touch you. They might elevate you beyond the others if they wished, because justice was not the same as fairness, and that was their right. The Queen might visit your house, or you might win £125,000.

  And yet—what need had he for £125,000? What would he do with it? Their household was not rich, but they were not in want, and he himself had his pension to spend as he chose. They ate plain food at their table in Herne Hill, but there was enough of it. You don’t even like Roquefort if you are used to Cheddar. Fillet steak is a waste of money when there are so many tasty things that can be done with mince. The clothes at Marks and Spencer’s are good enough for anyone, and were certainly good enough for them. How would he spend it? The television? They had a radio, but no television, so there was a start. But a television set would not cost £125,000. A new house? They were used to the house they had. Money for the children? Gerald already had an L.C.C. grant to help him at London University, and did not need money for an education. He lived at home, made a little pocket money from jobs undertaken in the vacation, and put most of it into the Post Office against the day he could buy a stereophonic record player and begin to start a collection of classical records. As for Pamela, she lived at home also, and, although a Librarian’s salary is notoriously tiny, appeared to manage on it.

  They were not in want. There was the National Health Service if they were to fall ill. They lived cheaply, but it was the decent life of decent people. They were not extravagant. The children were not delinquents; nor were their friends. Want!—only Edward Laverick wanted. He wanted to give—something; he did not care what it should be, if only he could give it. He had been dependent now for fourteen years. It was not humiliating. It was not as if he did nothing for his keep—the garden, the fires on winter mornings, these were his tasks. He was not a burden on his daughter, but he was not an equal either. He was not a burden, but he did not really matter. It would not have occurred to Daphne, who took many decisions in the ordinary course of her job as a headmistress, to ask her father’s opinion before taking a decision in the home.

  Edward Laverick was not foolish, and knew that authority passes in the natural way of things from parents to children. He had, as he saw it, a duty in the household—not to be crotchety, not to be demanding, not to be ill. He performed this duty as well as he could, but it was a negative thing. It was not giving. He wanted to give, not out of gratitude—that was just a word people used; it did not describe, but concealed something which would need a far more complicated description. He wanted to give for the sake of giving, simply to be again, after fourteen years, in the position of a giver.

  So he filled in his Pools coupon every week in winter, and he did not spend the £125,000 in imagination like a window-shopper. That was not the direction of his daydreams; he could not have gone further than a television set, some new clothes for Daphne, and a holiday abroad for the children if you had pressed him. It was just that the desire to give something had become an ache in him. He concealed the ache as he would have concealed an ache in his head or his stomach, so as not to be a nuisance, but winter by winter it grew more demanding. He did not need £125,000. Some much smaller sum would do as well. He would be happy, he would be satisfied, he would be a man again with as little as £500—the sum usually paid by Norah Palmer’s company to the author of a ninety-minute play for television.

  4

  Dead Ends

  Season the halves of chicken, rub them with lemon juice and insert a very small piece of garlic and a little sprig of thyme or basil under the skin of each piece. Dust with flour. In an ordinary heavy frying-pan heat a coffee-cup (after-dinner size) of olive oil. Peter Ash had no small c
offee-cups. Norah Palmer had always maintained that, if you were going to serve coffee after dinner, you might as well give people enough to taste. Half a teacupful of oil would have to do. Make it fairly hot, and put in the pieces of chicken, skin side down. When they are golden on one side, turn them over and, when both sides are seized—“seized”: that meant “golden” too, he supposed—turn them over again, turn the heat low and cover the pan, removing the lid only from time to time to turn the chicken. After 20 minutes, transfer the chicken and nearly all the oil to a baking dish and put in a very low oven, covered, while the sauce is made.

  Peter Ash was cooking the dinner. Bunty, poor little lamb, unsophisticated in this as in so much else, had no notion of cooking beyond the scones and Irish stew she had learned at school. “Except that I do know how to cook bobbity actually,” she’d said. “We used to have that at Swiss Cottage sometimes.”

  “Bobbity?”

  “It’s sort of mince and custard and curry powder. It’s marvellous actually, when you get used to it. I got it from a book of West African Cooking that Mags brought back from the Public Library. You make a lot, and then you can have it hot or cold.”

  He wished she wouldn’t keep saying “sort of”: it represented a sloppiness of thought that Peter Ash had been training himself for nine years to avoid. Bobbity! There was so much to teach Bunty. He had bought her the Penguin editions of Elizabeth David’s French Country Cooking and Mediterranean Cooking. Though she had no occasion to use them at the Section House, where food was provided, simply to read them would do her good.

  There were twenty minutes before he needed to transfer the chicken to the oven. He must remember to light the gas, or the oven would be cold when he needed it. Meanwhile he would prepare the ingredients for the sauce. He would skin and chop the tomatoes, pound the anchovies with garlic, stone the olives. (Could one buy stoned black olives? He had never found a delicatessen which sold them. Next time he and Norah went to Paris, he would look for an olive-stoner, if such a thing existed. But he would not be going to Paris again with Norah Palmer.) He hoped Bunty would not be late. Meals could not be kept waiting; that spoiled them, and he could not bear, after so much effort and artistry, to have the meal spoiled. When he and Norah had given a dinner party, their guests were never late—or if they were, were never asked again. Norah had done more of the cooking then (she was more reliable, she said), but he had enjoyed it also, and they had often tried new dishes out on each other in rehearsal before deciding to include them in the repertory.

  For this have ready (he was making them ready now) 4 large ripe tomatoes, skinned and chopped; 2 anchovy fillets roughly pounded with 2 cloves of garlic; “Roughly pounded”; he wished sometimes that Miss D. would be more precise, but that was the way of recipes. like “fold”: he remembered with some discomfort his attempt to “fold” the whites of four eggs into a mousse. (I hate these mousses to pousses; that was a joke; he must remember to work it in.) He had told Bunty to come to the flat at seven-thirty, and they would eat at eight. She should arrive very soon. Ten minutes more for the chicken.

  Usually on their evenings together, they would see a play or hear a concert; Peter Ash always had more free tickets for such occasions than he could use, just as he had more free books than he could read. Often they would eat out, or he would have left a casserole in the oven, and it would have cooked by their return for supper and bed. There was no doubt that these regular evenings with Bunty, two or three times a week, were doing him good. He had the best of both worlds; he lived alone, and didn’t. He had pleasure without responsibility, and the frequent presence of another being in the flat prevented his sliding into sloppy and eccentric habits. He needed company and admiration, often but not all the time, and Bunty provided both at times of his choosing. It was twenty to eight. Ten minutes one way or another was no great matter, but she ought to be punctual. He transferred the pieces of chicken to a baking dish, covered them with foil, and put them into the oven. The pan was ready for the sauce.

  First pour in the wine, detaching any brown pieces and juices which may have adhered to the pan. Let it bubble and reduce. Add the anchovy and garlic mixture, stir well in, then add the tomatoes and the herbs. Simmer until the sauce is thick, add the olives, let them get hot, and taste the sauce for seasoning.

  She should have arrived by now. She was not usually late. He had said, “We’ll have an evening at home. I’ll cook. We’ll be cosy for once, instead of rushing around to theatres.” Bunty had replied that she’d like that awfully (he wished she wouldn’t use the word so often), so she had no business to be late. Well, there would be no time for a glass of sherry. They would have to sit down at once, and eat.

  Test the chicken by running a skewer through the thick part of the leg, and, if the juices came out white, it is cooked. If still red, leave a little longer in the oven. But the juices were not red, and if Bunty did not arrive soon, there might be no juices at all. The sauce was ready. The table was laid. (They were eating in the kitchen because it was to be a domestic evening—eating well, but in the kitchen.) He had opened a bottle from the International Exhibition Co-operative Wine Society (No. 246: The Society’s Claret) some ninety minutes ago. He poured a little into his glass, and sipped. She was half an hour late. Everything was covered, and the gas was turned as low as it would go. Surely she must know by now that he couldn’t bear people to be late?

  By half-past eight, he had drunk most of the contents of the bottle, and the sauce had a thick skin on it. He had not dared to look at the chicken. At a quarter to nine, he sat down to dine alone.

  He supposed that she must be ill, though it was strange that she had not let him know. Perhaps they had called her out to some emergency?—a riot in the Women’s Prison at Holloway, or a Soviet diplomat dining with the Lord Mayor. Perhaps they had switched her tour of duty without warning? But she would have found some way of telling him. She knew his telephone number. Leaving his dinner to grow cold on the plate, he went to make sure that the telephone receiver had not become dislodged from the body of the hand-set. It had not. Could it be out of order? Was there some fault on the line? He picked up the receiver, and heard the dialling tone, dialled and heard the ringing tone. A voice said, “London Council for Greater Youth. Good evening,” and he replaced the receiver. There was nothing wrong with the telephone; she just hadn’t phoned.

  By half-past nine, he knew perfectly well that she would not come. Nobody is two hours late for dinner. Her food was on a plate in the oven, keeping warm. It would be unpleasant now, disgusting tomorrow; he would have to throw it out. The waste! His mother had never wasted food; they were always eating up left-overs, when he was young. A question formed in his mind. Was he being “stood up”? Had she…. Was she…. Was it just that she couldn’t be bothered to come because she’d taken up with somebody else?

  Stood up! But he was only thirty-nine. Stood up! He was a public figure, of a sort. Stood up! He had been angry; now he was afraid. He never wanted to be, could not bear ever to be the sort of man who was stood up. That had not happened to him since … since a very long time ago, when he had been nobody. But then he had not, for nine years, been in a position to be stood up, because Norah Palmer had been between him and that position. He had made no dates (of that sort), so nobody had stood him up. Bella gave a party … and nobody came. But he was an important man, Peter Ash; he was the host of The Living Arts, a public personality he was. How could such a man be “stood up”? The idea was nonsensical.

  He would dismiss the matter from his mind. He had never intended to take this little affair seriously, and he had warned Bunty that she herself was not to do so. She was very young; he must remember that. Young people are often rude and inconsiderate; it is their nature; they learn better later. He was too old a bird to put up with that sort of thing, however, so he would have to drop her, and that would be that.

  Of course, he might take a taxi, and go straight round and ask Bunty what she meant by not arriving. But he did
not see how matters could be explained to the Sergeant at the Section House.

  He sat to read a book, but could not settle. There was nothing worth watching on the television. It was ten o’clock—too late to ask anybody round for a drink, even if London were not too large a city for one to make such casual invitations. He returned to the telephone, dialled the number of the Section House, and asked for Bunty. Yes, she was in, and could be fetched.

  He said, “I’ve been expecting you to dinner.” There was a long silence, and then Bunty said, “Oh … was it tonight?”

  “It was.”

  There was a longer silence still. Then Bunty said, “Do you want me to come round now?”

  “Now? Isn’t it rather late?”

  “Yes.”

  What did she mean?—“come round now”? It was past ten, and dinner was already ruined. Yet, if she wanted to “come round”, if she thus asked him whether she should, she could hardly have intended to stand him up. Perhaps she wanted to talk? She could not talk at the telephone in the Section House, with policemen standing about listening. “Come round if you like,” he said. “I’ll expect you.”