The Birdcage (12 page)

Bunty said, “I don’t want to fall in love with you actually, but it’s awfully difficult not to take people seriously if you
are
serious. I’ve never felt like this before … sort of funny inside. And then I get headaches when you introduce me to people.”

Peter Ash, who had done it often enough before in the Second Acts of plays, blew her nose for her gently, and wiped her eyes. Bunty said, “Anyway it’s nothing to do with you. It’s not
your
fault.”

And that was true, thought Peter Ash. The words “stood up” had long since been forgotten. “Tender” and “noble” were now his words, even if there was something a little farcical in the application of tenderness and nobility to a weeping policewoman. He took both Bunty’s hands, and led her into the living-room. He helped her to remove her uniform jacket, and arranged her against him in a chair. Almost immediately she went to sleep.

Peter Ash lay awake. It couldn’t be allowed to continue; he knew that. Already she was making emotional demands on him, and, although he could “play up” for a while, and would enjoy doing so, the demands could not truly be met, and even “playing up” would grow to be a bore. He was too cold, much too cold; he had warned her of that, so it was not his fault if she were hurt. It was flattering that Bunty should fall in love with him, but he must renounce the pleasure of being flattered in that way, because it was a pleasure which soon cloyed. He would begin to tail the affair off; that could easily be done, since they met at his suggestion. He would not be brutal. She was bound to be
hurt—one had to face that; it could not be avoided—but he would not be brutal.

He remembered that Bunty had once told him that she believed one could learn something from any experience. Drama school patter perhaps—“How can you expect to play Juliet if you’re still a virgin?” Well, let her learn from this. Let her learn not to expose herself, not to make demands on people, not to fall in love.
Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm
…. He turned his neck uncomfortably sideways to look down at her. A last tear, still caught in one eyelash, glistened in the light from the standard lamp. In fifteen years time, she would have a double chin.

*

September sunlight in Cornwall Gardens. The area
between
the Gloucester Road and Earl’s Court Road is ambiguous territory, much of it let out in single chambers to students, much of it converted to private hotels which raise their rates in summer. In Collingham Gardens, there is an Indian Restaurant in what otherwise appears to be a private house; in Earl’s Court Gardens, a French film company once made location shots for a film about
prostitutes
; there are delicatessens in the Old Brompton Road, in the Earl’s Court Road and in a mews just off Gloucester Road; Chinese food can be eaten in Marloes Road and Italian food in St. Alban’s Grove. Yet the area as a whole continues to return a Conservative member to the House of Commons by one of the largest majorities in Great Britain, old ladies in flat-heeled shoes are still to be seen shopping even in self-service stores, and, where dogs have fouled the pavement, it is even money that they are Pekingese or at least dachshunds.

Houses of “character” make up the district, most of them five stories high, with balconies on the first floor, big
rooms badly converted to smaller rooms of irregular shape, and long windows cut in two by walls. The houses have basements and attics. Once servants lived in the attics and worked in the basements. Now the basements are dark flats, and the attics are cramped flats. The
breakfast
and reception rooms on the first floors have become flats, and the bedrooms on the second and third floors have become flats, and the dining-and smoking-rooms on the ground floors have become flats. Give or take a flat, allow here and there the comparative grandeur of a maisonette, there are about seven flats to a house. Leases run out, and are renewed for shorter periods at higher rents. The old ladies in flat-heeled shoes do not always know how they can manage, but they do manage, or, if they cannot, die.

In the communal hall of a house in Cornwall Gardens, a wooden board listed the tenants of the house.

So much for the tenants above ground. Those below did not aspire to inclusion on the wooden board, but a grubby piece of card was taped to one corner of it, and read,

Flat number six was at the top of the house, and there was no lift. Aubrey hoped that the indicator was inclined
more to the in than the out, but if it were stuck, it could not in any case be expected to indicate. He began to climb the stairs.

How many Abbot-Hansteads might he expect to find in flat six? Fifty-seven years had passed. He was lucky that there should be any at all, and any there were might easily be second-or third-generation Abbot-Hansteads, who would remember very little of the Independent Theatre. It was pointless, this; pointless. Laverick was dead, and any first-generation Abbot-Hansteads who might survive would be gaga, and the company would never find a script of
The Forgotten Men
, and it didn’t matter anyway. Why wouldn’t people see things in proportion? One Tuesday night; that was what all this fuss was about—one Tuesday night! The people who watched the telly didn’t care if they saw a play written by Edward Laverick in 1904, or an old Fred Astaire movie, or the latest piece by the latest original dustman. For ninety minutes, the light and life on the screen would assume a certain pattern, different to those of the thirty minutes before it and the thirty minutes that would follow, but it was not certain that most of the viewers would notice that the programme had changed. Aubrey
despised
television, if you wanted to know, and when people talked to him of the art of television and of social purpose, what he wanted to ask them was whether they had seen any of the Recall Studies, and what they made of that, eh? But somehow he never did.

Just because Norah Palmer had taken a whim to find this play, Aubrey thought, just because Mr. P. had
expressed
an interest, Aubrey was being shuttled about from the B.D.L. to Bethnal Green to Cornwall Gardens, and who knows where he would be required to go next? Taking trouble was one thing. Obviously one had to take a certain amount of trouble about the programmes because,
although the viewers didn’t seem to mind very much what they were given as long as it was
Bootsie and Snudge
, “opinion leaders” might make a fuss, and this would have an effect when contracts were to be renewed. But carrying things to the length they’d gone over this Laverick thing helped nobody and only inconvenienced Aubrey. Not that Mr. P. would care about that.

A dark brown door. No bell. Perhaps there had been a bell in the hall downstairs, and he should have rung it to give warning. He used his knuckles to knock. Time passed. There was nobody in. He knocked again. Nothing. Good; he could go (though they would only tell him to come back again). On an impulse, he tried the doorknob. The door opened. He entered, and saw a mouse run ahead of him down the hall. “Christ!” he said.

An old woman was watching him, her hands full of bread. She said, “Not in himself, no. But they are all God’s creatures.”

“Mrs. Abbot-Hanstead?”

“Fudge. They are in bed. Mercy is poorly.”

“Fudge?”

“Jane Fudge. I was feeding the birds on the balcony. Are you the American?”

“No.”

“They have been expecting an American. One wrote from the University of Colorado, but that was two years ago. You’d better go in. It’s the door at the end of the hall.” She laughed. “Just follow the mouse. He’ll see you right,” she said.

When Aubrey opened the door at the end of the hall, the Abbot-Hansteads were sitting up in bed facing him. Both were bald, and both wore pyjamas, but Perry could be told from Mercy by the white stubble on his chin and jowls. The room reeked of stale food, and of animals of various
sorts. A ferret sat on the bed between them, and a large glass tank in a corner of the room held guppies. Aubrey said, “Miss Fudge told me to come in.”

“Jane Fudge. She’s feeding the birds. She won’t answer the door when she’s feeding the birds. You can knock as you wish; you’ll get no reply. Are you the man who wrote from Colorado? If so, you’re late.”

“No, I’m——”

“Show him the letter, Perry.” The letter was kept
beneath
a corner of the mattress. Someone in the Graduate School of the University of Colorado had fixed on “
Developments
in the English Theatre, 1905/6” for his doctoral thesis; 1904/5 and 1906/7 had already gone, he said. He had found reference to the Abbot-Hansteads and their address among the papers of Lucius Newton,
Professor
of Speech Therapy and Drama at Wesleyan College, Hot Springs. (“Papers!” Mercy said, “Lucius never kept any papers in his life. He was the stupidest man I ever knew, and what’s more he didn’t know how to write.” “He had a Voice,” said Perry. “You can’t deny the Voice,” and Mercy replied, “A Voice, yes. But no intelligence. And certainly not papers.”) He had applied, wrote the graduate student, to the Ford Foundation for a grant, and if the Ford Foundation gave it, he hoped to have the privilege of calling on Mr. and Mrs. Abbot-Hanstead. If not, he would have to pick another subject. He wondered whether the Abbot-Hansteads had any personal memories of Bernard Shaw. Mercy said, “If you’re the American, I’ll put my teeth in. If not, not, because I’m poorly.”

Aubrey explained who he was, and that his television company had become interested in the Independent Theatre. Perry said, “It’s no good coming here for money. We wound it up. It was all paid at the time. Nine and threepence in the pound, but there was very little owing.
Not in the way of debts. Almost nothing owing in the way of debts.”

Mercy said, “When we became interested in the brute creation, we put the theatre behind us.”

“He has tracked us down through Fudge. We should not have brought Fudge.”

“Jane is my very dear friend.”

“Other men would not have tolerated it. I was advanced in my views, and you took advantage of that.”

Aubrey said, “I haven’t come for money. That isn’t it at all. I’ve come to ask you for help.”

“We should never refuse
help
. Are you hungry?”

“No, indeed,” Perry said. “Even in the matter of the goat, we did not refuse help.”

Mercy reached down to the side of the bed, found a brass hand-bell, and shook it. Miss Fudge appeared, her hands still full of bread. Perry said, “Jane Fudge, take this young man to the kitchen, and feed him. He is to have bangers if there are any. If not, then jam.”

“He’s not hungry. He’s sleek. Any fool could see that,” Miss Fudge said. “If he tells you he’s hungry, he’s lying. You’re sleek, aren’t you?”

“I came to ask whether you remember putting on a play by a man named Edward Laverick. The name of the play was
The Forgotten Men
. Your company performed it once at a matinée at the Avenue Theatre. We are trying to trace the play.”

Perry said, “I told you before it’s no good coming to me for backing. I have given it up. And if you’re hoping to persuade Jane Fudge to go back, I can tell you now you’re mistaken. She was very fine—very fine. You were very fine in your time, Jane Fudge; you were a fine artist in your time. But you can’t be persuaded to go back.”

Jane Fudge said, “I’ll go back if I’m asked. Let him ask.”

Mercy said, “He does not require you to go back. Nobody has asked you to go back, nor will they. The past is past. That is not properly realized in this house. You still go around, Jane Fudge, thinking you can buy a penny loaf. It won’t do, any of it.” The ferret backed into a fold of the bed clothes, and hissed at Aubrey.

Aubrey said, “Perhaps you don’t remember——”

“I remember very well. He came to the house. John Lambert brought him. He was something to do with the Civil Service, but not a civil servant—not in
our
sense at all—something more menial than that, he was, and I should not have been surprised if he made the tea or licked stamps. Perhaps he did a little simple addition. He was a student of John Lambert’s; I remember very clearly. He came once to rehearsal, and dropped his aitches. John picked some of them up for him, but the rest remained where they were. He had something to say; we all agreed on that, I think; he had a personal vision. We hoped the Webbs would come, but Perry forgot to post the letter. Then we had other responsibilities. In any case, that kind of thing is quite out of the question now. We cannot disperse our energies; you must see that. The money ran out, and we devoted
ourselves
instead to God’s creatures, who are cheaper.”

“I’d go back if asked.”