The Birdcage

by John Bowen

  Of course they had always gone by the time that Mrs. Halliday came in to do the cleaning, but, living in the basement as she did, Mrs. Halliday knew very well that something was going on. She was a broad-minded woman, and what Mr. Ash did was his own business, provided that nothing was stolen from any of the other flats and there were no complaints from the neighbours, which, this being Chelsea, was unlikely. Just the same, Mrs. Halliday preferred the old arrangement. She considered making a journey to consult Norah Palmer, but was not sure how matters should be put. If Mrs. Halliday were to go poking her nose into other people’s business, she preferred first to be reasonably certain that some good was likely to come of it.

  *

  Peter Ash was troubled by a rash. In November one does not expect to suffer such vexation, the heat and midges of summer being past. He supposed that he must be allergic to something, and wished he knew what. Or perhaps it was the blood; rashes, he had read somewhere, were to do with the blood. He drank lemon juice in the mornings, and took Vitamin C tablets in case the vitamin content of the lemons should have been destroyed by Forced farming or a chemical spray. The rash remained. Rashes are sometimes psycho-somatic; he was under tension, no doubt about it; if he waited, it would disappear. He waited, and it grew worse. Peter Ash decided he had probably caught something, and must see a doctor.

  His doctor was an elderly man with a genteel practice, who seldom saw Peter Ash, because Peter Ash was seldom ill. But he knew who Peter Ash was, and his wife, as he said, was “quite a fan”. He asked, “Where is the rash exactly?”

  “All over. Legs … arms … stomach.” Peter Ash stripped to the waist. Dried calamine lotion obscured the rash. “I thought it might be prickly heat or something,” he said. “I remember getting that during the war. And athlete’s foot. We all did.”

  “You were in the tropics, Mr. Ash?”

  “As good as. I was stationed just outside Calcutta. It was very humid most of the time.”

  “Yes…. But you haven’t had anything like this since?”

  “Occasional summer rashes. That’s all.”

  “Perhaps we might just wash some of that lotion off your arm? …Yes….You’ve been scratching, I see.”

  “I’m sorry. I try not to.”

  “You do … take a bath fairly often, I take it?”

  Ridiculous question. “Every day,” said Peter Ash.

  “Yes … I’m afraid I haven’t much experience of skin infections. Or tropical diseases either, if it should be something like that.” The genteel ladies and gentlemen of the doctor’s practice did not contract ringworm or scabies, and it had been a long time since the doctor had dealt with any ailments which were not usual to his patients. “Perhaps you’d better see a specialist about it,” he said. “No harm in a second opinion, eh? Might as well make certain, especially when it’s all on the National Health. I’ll give you a chit to the skin people at St. Ornulf’s. Do you think you can find time to go and see them? They’re quite central.”

  Peter Ash made time, and presented himself next morning at Saint Ornulf’s Hospital for Diseases of the Skin. He was registered and moved formally, as out-patients do, from one bench to another, slowly nearer and nearer to the final door of power, behind which sits the medicine man who will effect the cure. Peter Ash held himself tightly inside his clothes, so as to avoid contact with his fellow patients. At last he was nearest to the room. A nurse called his name, and he entered to be received by a lady of severe appearance, clad in a white coat and surrounded by medical students.

  She read the doctor’s letter, while Peter Ash removed his jacket, shirt and tie. She examined his arm, splayed his fingers, grunted, and said to the medical students, “Well?”

  “Looks like scabies,” one of the students said dubiously.

  “Quite clearly it is scabies. No interesting features about it whatever, and no reason for him to have been sent to us. Get dressed, please.”

  Peter Ash had never heard of scabies. “What do I do about it?” he said.

  “There’s a Public Cleansing Centre for cases of this sort. It’s open every day except Sunday. Next please, nurse,” said the severe lady. She was irritated at having been troubled by a complaint so trivial, and felt that a person of Peter Ash’s station in society (which could be guessed from his appearance and accent) had no business to have contracted scabies, which is an infection carried by dirt and close bodily contact—as most usually happens in bed.

  Peter Ash should have asked where the Public Cleansing Centre was, but he was embarrassed by the specialist’s curtness and by the presence of the medical students. He looked it up in the Telephone Directory, and took a taxi to an address in Victoria. There he regarded with disbelief a fleet of water-trucks, drawn up before a County Council garage. There was a door to the garage, but it did not open. Peter Ash walked timidly between the water-trucks, looking to right and left, and came eventually upon a large man in rubber boots.

  “Is this the Public Cleansing Department?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I was told to come here.”

  “What for?”

  “To be cleansed, I suppose,” said Peter Ash, hating him.

  There was a pause while the man in rubber boots considered what he had been told. “Streets we do,” he said finally. “Not people. We don’t do people here. We do streets. We go out with the trucks like, and do the streets.” Peter Ash stood in silence, and the man considered further. “There’s not the equipment, you see,” he said. “Not for people. We just do the streets. People now——” he thrust out his lower lip, and looked at the sky. “There is places,” he said. “Not here, of course, because we just do the streets, but if you was wanting, as it might be, a bath like——”

  “Isn’t there a sort of … medical Cleansing Department?” Peter Ash said.

  “Oh that? You mean like for the lice and that? Nits and that? It’s at Holborn,” said the man in rubber boots.

  Peter Ash took another taxi to Holborn, and, after being re-directed from the Large Bath (Men) and the Steam Bath and the Iodine Rub found the department where people were cleansed. He wondered whether he would have to queue. Were many people cleansed? Would they all stand in line to be hosed down with disinfectant by a smaller edition of the man in rubber boots? But in fact the Cleansing Centre was small, and consisted of an ante-room with a gas-ring, and two bathrooms. The attendant, a little elfin man advanced in years, seemed glad to welcome Peter Ash as his first customer of the day.

  Peter Ash said, “I seem to have something called scabies.”

  “Don’t you worry about that, sir,” said the elfin man. “Don’t you let that perturb you nor embarrass you in any way. I get all sorts here, you know. They all come to it. It’s a fact of nature. Bishops I’ve had here. I had a bishop here … now….” He led Peter Ash to one of the bathrooms, and began to fill the bath with hot water. “… Just the other day I had a bishop here. A suffragan bishop. Fine looking feller he was, on the full side as you might say, of life, but he carried it well. I’ll get you a scrubbing brush, and what I want you to do, sir, if you don’t mind, is to scrub yourself all over the body with that there brush, and with the soap provided. And here’s your towel for the drying.”

  “My back as well?”

  “They never attacks the back, sir. You don’t want to worry so much about the back. Anything on the back is pimples; bound to be. But the other areas of the body should be very well scrubbed with the brush and soap provided. Take your time, sir, and do a good job. We don’t want to spoil the ship, as you might say.”

  In time, scrubbed and dried but naked, Peter Ash returned to the ante-room, where the elfin man was armed with a two-inch paintbrush and a pot of thick white liquid. He surveyed Peter Ash’s body with the eyes of a sculptor, and seemed to be appraising his proportions against the bishop’s. “Yeees …” he said, “I had a bookie in here the other day. Very corpulent gentleman he was. Fat, as you might say. Eighteen stone—I sent out for
the scales, and we weighed him where he stood. Glands it was, he said, because he never ate no more than you nor me. I had to mix extra for him. Not that I grudged it, but there was extra mixed.” He dipped the brush into the liquid.” Now if you’ll just stand here, sir, where I can get at you. Foot on the stool, if you please. “He put a thick line of white on Peter Ash’s right foot. The liquid had a very noticeable scent, which Peter Ash hoped would pass.” Spread the toes, sir, if you will. Very important to get in … between … the toes. Yes. I had an Inspector of Police in here. Only the other day, I had him in. An Inspector, he was; a full Inspector of the police. You wouldn’t believe it, would you, but I get them all in, one way and another. I had an Olympic swimmer once. “Wistfully.” Now he had a lovely body, that man, from the swimming. It was a real pleasure to work on him.”

  The elfin man was thorough in his painting, and particularly so over Peter Ash’s private parts, which had to be done carefully, he explained, because they were not a plane surface, and it was easy to miss bits if you just went slapping it on. “You may experience a sort of reaction, sir,” he said, lifting and dabbing. “Not everybody has it, of course; it takes all sorts, and not all sorts has it. The bishop had it. Natural enough it is, and don’t you think nothing of it, no more than he did. I’ve been doing this all my life, more or less, and it would take a lot more than that to surprise me. It would take …” he continued, working at the crevices, his tongue protruding through his lips, “a ve-ry … great … deal … to surprise me. Because I’m what you might call hardened to it. Why, I had a Colonial Governor here once. A grand old gentleman, he was, and up to everything, as you might say. Twice in three months I had him in here. ‘It’s a pleasure to see you again,’ I says to him, and it was a pleasure, sir, because there’s not what you might call a high rate of return, taking one thing with another. Yes, it does sting a bit if you’ve got what I call a sensitive skin. I thought it might sting a bit. I could see right away you was the sensitive sort.” He slapped the liquid on Peter Ash’s buttocks as if he were painting a wall, stood back to look with pride on what he had done, and then returned to the front, working up from diaphragm to chest with an artistic twiddle on the nipples.

  In all this time no bishop, no Colonial Governor, no Inspector of Police, not even a bookie had arrived to be cleansed. Nor did one arrive while Peter Ash stood waiting for the oily liquid to dry on him, and the elfin attendant made tea on the gas-ring. The liquid dried, happily colourless instead of white, though the antiseptic smell of it grew if anything stronger, and cups of tea were drunk, and the attendant produced Petit Beurre biscuits from a tin marked “H.M.S. AMETHYST”. “Now, what would you do in the world?” he said. “Names I won’t ask for. I won’t ask for names. I prefer not to know. If you was to try to tell me your name, ‘Stop!’ I should cry, ‘Stop!’ as the words emerged from your very mouth, but I like to have my little guess at what you do. It makes an interest. You know, I’d put you down as more the artistic type.”

  “I work in television.”

  “I knew it. Artistic, I said to myself, the moment I saw you stripped. I can always tell. I’ve got a nose for that sort of thing.” And indeed he had. It was twitching as he spoke.

  Peter Ash left the Cleansing Centre with instructions to return next day for a second coat. Taxis first to Saint Ornulf’s, then to Victoria, then from Victoria to Holborn had eaten up most of his ready money. He lacked enough for another taxi to take him back to Beaufort Street, but was reluctant to travel by bus or Underground, since he smelled so strongly of the white liquid. There was nothing to cause him shame, but he did smell strong. People would not know what the scent was, but they would notice the scent, and he did not care to be noticed by people in public transport. Call it a whim, or too delicate a sensibility, but he did not like to be noticed. He decided to walk to Hyde Park Corner; he could afford a taxi from there. But at the junction of Drury Lane and Shaftesbury Avenue he was disturbed by a prolonged beeping from a car in the road behind him, and turned to find Squad Appleby at the wheel of a Karmann Ghia with L plates.

  “Hullo, Squad,” he said. “I didn’t know you were a motorist.”

  “I’m not. I haven’t passed the test. I got in rather a tizzy with the examiner, and when I say we didn’t part as friends, that’s the understatement of the year, my love. Anyway he failed me, so do get in and let me drop you somewhere. Then it’ll look more legal, because I’m supposed to have an experienced driver with me.”

  “I haven’t a licence.”

  “But who’s to know?”

  Peter Ash took the scent of the white liquid with him into the car. He lowered the window on his side, but the scent filled the car before spilling out to disinfect the passing traffic. Squad said, “I never see you now, my dear, since you’ve had your little fracas with Norah. She’s very well, you’ll be glad to know.” Peter Ash said, “Good. I was wondering how she was getting on,” and the conversation lapsed. Then Squad said, “If I’m embarrassing you, then you must stop me at once, because tactlessness is all my names, but you do pong of what my dissolute old nostrils tell me is Ascabiol. I mean, I wouldn’t recognize it if I hadn’t used it myself, so you don’t need to——”

  “Yourself?”

  “It does happen. I think I’ve had just about everything in my time. It’s a natural consequence of playing the field.”

  It began to come over Peter Ash how he must have caught the rash. “Did you have to go to this place in Holborn, then, and be cleansed?” he said.

  “Holborn! You can’t be serious! You do it at home.”

  “There was a specialist at Saint Ornulf’s who sent me to the Public Cleansing Department at Holborn.”

  “My poor love, he must be a sadist. You buy a bottle at the chemist, and do it yourself, as they say. Mind you, even buying it’s a bit shaming, because they must know what it’s for. I always try to pretend I’m a social worker, helping out with delinquent children. I wear a hat and brown shoes, but I don’t think it deceives them. Anyway, you have a bath just before going to bed, and paint the stuff on, and then wash it off again in the morning. Otherwise, my dear, you’d spend the whole day smelling like Christmas in the Dissecting Room.” They moved rapidly forward into the wrong lane of traffic, and were born off in the stream for the Albert Gate. “Last time this happened, I drove round the Park three times before I could get it in the right lane,” Squad said.

  Peter Ash saw clearly why the elfin attendant’s customers were only such unworldly persons as bishops and Colonial Governors. With the Empire falling in, and the Church growing more knowing all the time (for the bishops must learn something in the House of Lords), there would soon be nobody at the Cleansing Centre at all, he supposed.

  Squad said, “But there is one thing I must warn you, my little love, so you mustn’t be distraught when it happens. If you have a sensitive skin, that stuff will bring you out in a rather boring rash.”

  Peter Ash dreamed a dream. He was swinging at the end of a long liana, which hung from the top of the escalator at Piccadilly Underground Station. The escalator had been tilted, so that it made an almost vertical descent, and he could not see the bottom—indeed, he did not think there was one. From time to time he tried to climb up the liana, which was wound around his waist, but he could not climb as fast as Someone lowered it, and his trying to climb only made that Someone increase the speed of lowering. As he swung, he bruised himself against the sides of the shaft.

  Then he was Tweetie Pie, the little yellow canary in the cartoon films, and Someone was dismantling his cage, section by section. At last there were only four wires between himself and the dark. The first wire was taken away, and then the second. Outside in the dark, the Night People were waiting, as they were also waiting at the bottom of the bottomless escalator.

  The idea of the Night People obsessed him. Foolish notion. But they had come into his mind, and would not leave it; they waited until his mind was not otherwise occupied, and then revealed thems
elves.

  Peter Ash had been leading what is called a double life. His friends did not walk in the jungle where he hunted, or, if chance should bring them there, they did not know it was a jungle, or recognize the fauna. Peter Ash himself chose the darker hours and the less crowded glades. Once at Marble Arch he had found his hand touching the wrist of the young Assistant to the Lighting Cameraman and, as the young man’s expression of delighted recognition grew, Peter Ash had closed his face, and turned, and gone away. He could not now pass that man without a pretended preoccupation and a quickening of step. Logic had led him to hunt in the jungle, but logic, at the first encounter, had sniffed and said, “Oh dear me no!” and had departed very rapidly for civilization. Logic would say, “This is all too much trouble, and leads to tension, and what’s more you don’t enjoy it.” Even lust would say, “There must be easier ways of sating me.” It was not logic or lust which kept Peter Ash returning to the jungle. He was thirty-nine years old, and he could not bear to fail. So whenever he missed a spring—which was, in the nature of things, pretty often—he would return to try again, and his successes did not erase the memories of failure.

  He had heard of the Night People through a joky, passing reference, made and forgotten, by an actor at a party. “Oh, don’t you know about the Night People?” the actor had said. “They’re worth seeing. You’ll find them in Soho, between half past midnight on Saturday and about three on Sunday morning. It’s a terrifying experience. The weirdest people come out of their holes, and just drift about the streets. People you never see in the daytime.” And then the conversation had been broken, and only Peter Ash had remembered it. The Night People. Night, he thought, transformed them. By day they might be as ordinary as you or I or Peter Ash, with respectable friends and a respected station in life. And at night they would change, these ordinary people. They would put off the friends and the station in life and all that tied them, put all that off like a mask and become, anonymous and free, the Night People.