A Summer Bird-Cage (23 page)

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 nowhere. 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. Your 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.’

‘Oh no,’ I said, shutting the door after her as we reached the top. ‘It isn’t funny except for the bit about the bath. That was funny. Here, sit down and get warm. Shall I make you a cup of Maxwell House?’

‘Have you any cocoa?’

‘We might have.’ I went into the kitchen and looked. We hadn’t. I put some coffee in a cup instead. My cup and Jackie’s were still sitting side by side on the hearth: I wondered if she would notice them, but of course she didn’t. It had never crossed her mind that I had any real reason for not wanting her to come. This wasn’t surprising. I don’t think she ever speculated much about my life. Or if she did, I doubt if she guessed right. Just as I so often guessed wrong about her. I had to ask her everything in questions.

She looked quite normal, very pale and un-made up, and one couldn’t have told from her appearance that anything was wrong, except for a violent uncontrolled shivering that she indulged in from time to time. Part of it was, I suppose, the cold, but part of it must have been neurotic. She looked oddly as though she were taking part in a college cocoa party, sitting there undressed and drinking a mug of coffee. Now for a tête-à-tête, I said to myself, and I asked her, ‘Well, what are you going to do next?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know where to go.’

‘Do you really mean that you’re not going back to Stephen?’

‘Certainly I mean it. I’m never going near him again. Nor am I ever going home again. I’m truly finished off this time.’

By home she meant our parents’ home.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘you must have got plenty of money. You can go where you like.’

I find it hard to believe that anyone who has a lot of money can really be in a fix, though I am obviously wrong. ‘Why,’ I said, ‘you could go abroad tomorrow, you could go anywhere you wanted. I quite envy you,’ I said, trying to cheer her up.

‘Do you realize that every penny I have belongs to that man?’

‘To Stephen?’

‘Yes. To Stephen.’

‘What’s the matter with Stephen? Why have you gone off him so suddenly?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, I was never on him. You can’t pretend you like him either so don’t bother trying. Nobody likes him.’

‘Well, well, well. Then what did you marry him for?’ I asked, thinking with delight that at very long last we had got down to brass tacks, and congratulating myself on asking the question I had been itching to ask for months.

‘Oh Lordy,’ said Louise, ‘you must be the only person in the world who doesn’t know the answer to that question. I married him for his money, of course.’

‘Did you really?’ I was full of shock and admiration.

‘Of course I did. What other attraction do you think he could have for anyone?’

‘But Loulou, what a terribly wicked thing to do.’

‘Is it really wicked? I suppose it is. It’s beginning to me to seem rather the normal thing to do. Though I must say I surprised myself, once, long ago, when I first made my mind up. Yes, I really took myself by surprise. But that was so long ago.’

‘Good Lord,’ I said, ‘how ignorant I must be. I think you’re the only person I know who married for money. I know they’re always doing it in books but I thought it was just a novelist’s convention. Do you think all those other things like wicked stepmothers are true too? All the fairy-story things?’

‘I think it’s more than likely,’ said Louise, having another energetic shiver.

‘Have a blanket,’ I said.

‘No thank you. I’m not cold.’

‘Do go on then, this is fascinating, tell me when you decided to take this awful step. When did you decide to marry him? Did he keep asking you?’

‘He asked me every day. I don’t know when I decided. I think it was somewhere round about the time when I came to see you in Oxford last term. Do you remember when John and Stephen and I came? It was something about the way Stephen kept paying all the bills. Perhaps you didn’t notice. Wherever I go with Stephen, there are always a thousand bills, and he pays for everything, and I know it doesn’t matter. With John it sometimes mattered, but with Stephen it never did. It was like suddenly realizing that the Americans might wipe out Russia, and then one would have no more worries about war. That would be immoral, and tragic, but it would be safe. Have you ever thought that? That they might one night just wipe the whole lot out, and we would live in our lifetimes. And it was the same with money. I suddenly realized that if I married Stephen I need never think about need or want again. About wanting things I couldn’t buy.’