The Birdcage

Lizzie went into her bedroom and sat down on the edge of her bed. She stared out of the open window, watching the moon’s glow casting its pale radiance across the high bare slopes of Dunkery Hill: the midnight-blue sky was so thickly sown with stars that it seemed that curtain upon golden curtain opened upon an unfathomable infinity of light whilst far below, down in the valley, steep coombes sliced dark wedges of shadow along the edges of the pale, silvered fields. The sheer immensity of the scene, the deep silence, added to the confusion and sadness that had come upon her earlier as she’d sat on the bench in the garth.

Tilda’s warm affection and her sympathy had made it quite impossible to stay with her in the kitchen. Here, at Michaelgarth, her ability to hum and dance herself away from reality was beginning to break down and these mood swings between jollity and despair were becoming difficult to handle. Lizzie stirred: this had happened before, this attempt to disguise frustration with optimism, to hide a gradually growing fear behind a wild cheerfulness.

In those early years of marriage with Sam she never imagines that she’ll be unable to have children – why should she? – but soon she begins to feel envious of her pregnant girlfriends, to dread the way the hopeful look on Sam’s face dies into disappointment when she admits that her period has started after all. It is important to restore his good humour and so she dances and sings him back to high spirits and confidence, waiting until she is alone again before she gives way to her own private despair.

How she longs for a child – Sam’s child. She plays the scene in her head so many times; imagining his pride and tenderness, the way he’d hold his baby, believing that it would root him more securely and satisfy that deep restlessness that drives him on to experiment, to reach for higher goals. As for his women, those pretty actresses with whom his name is linked – does she hope that a child might replace them too? At some point her own confidence, her trust in him and their marriage, is undermined by this failure. Her own longing to cuddle her baby, the hungry need to feel that warm weighty little body in her arms, is continually denied in her anxiety to make it up to Sam in some way.

‘It’s not your fault,’ he says, after the results of some tests showed that she is infertile. ‘At least not in that way,’ and there is a new, terrible, absent-minded kindness about his affection, which fills her with terror.

When he goes to America to direct his first film abroad his absence is almost a relief. She is able to make her generous encouragement – ‘Of course you must go. It’s a fantastic opportunity. I shall be fine and I’ll come out as soon as the play finishes’ – a kind of present, a reward for his acceptance of her barrenness. When the usual flirtation edges him for the first time into an affair she finds that she is regarding it in the same light: as a kind of consolation prize, which, for those same reasons of disappointment bravely borne, he deserves. She accepts his explanations with the same forbearance and understanding that she uses to deal with his flirtations and is almost grateful for his approval. He begins to work more and more abroad, whilst her own work keeps her between London and Manchester, so that their time together assumes the quality of a holiday: great fun, not quite real, keeping problems on the back burner.

Affairs now become the pattern and she needs to remind herself of Angel’s words: There will always be rumours with a man like Sam. Ignore them if you can and don’t play detective; don’t interrogate unless you really can’t put up with it. It’s part of his job as far as he’s concerned and it’s got nothing to do with how he feels about you. Good advice, no doubt, but sometimes very difficult to follow. Hard work saves her from her own private despair, from brooding too much on her childlessness, and in time she is able to accept Sam’s women as being the same kind of occupational hazard as spending long weeks alone or first-night nerves.

A noise from the kitchen below disturbed her thoughts: the clang of the kettle on the hotplate and the faint murmur of Tilda’s voice talking to Teresa. Lizzie frowned, as though she were trying to hear the words, and quite suddenly, as if coming to some decision, reached for her capacious holdall. She riffled through it, coming upon the postcards that she’d bought earlier in the week to send to her friends, and sat for some moments holding them in her hand, staring down at the picture of the Yarn Market.

Lizzie put the postcards beside her on the bed and drew her mobile telephone from the bag; switching it on she began to check for messages. She listened to each of the three messages carefully and then replayed them. Presently she took a pen from the bag and began to write on the back of one of the cards, pausing from time to time to consider her words. When she’d finished writing she took another card from her holdall. She studied it, turning it to read the message, slipped it into an envelope and put both cards into her leather shoulder-bag. She went out on to the long landing, pausing for a moment at the window that looked down into the garth before going downstairs.

Piers saw her come into the garth, observed that inward-turned expression of preoccupation before it was automatically switched to a kind of detached, amused awareness of the scene as if she had stepped suddenly upon the stage. He was seized by a sense of foreboding so strong that, leaving Alison holding her coffee, he crossed the cobbles to Lizzie and took her by the arm.

‘What is it?’ he asked – and she turned that same bright blank smiling gaze upon him as if he were a stranger. He wanted to shake her, to say, ‘Come on, this is me. You don’t have to pretend,’ and then, just as suddenly, he lost his confidence, remembering that they had known each other for less than five days.

He’d realized that he’d simply left Alison standing alone and now he steered Lizzie back to her, and took a mug of coffee from the tray on the table beside them. Before he released her arm he felt her tense, as though preparing for action, readying herself for a performance.

‘I have perfect sight,’ she answered coldly. ‘I don’t need spectacles and if I did I certainly wouldn’t feel the need to have all the discomfort of contact lenses. I have excellent long vision.’

She asked the question so naturally, so intently, as if she were really interested, that Alison actually drew breath to answer it before she saw the true meaning behind Lizzie’s words. For one brief second Piers and Lizzie looked at each other with such mutual accord, with such total amused understanding and recognition, that in that moment there might have been no-one else in the garth with them. It was Lizzie who moved first, turning to put her mug back onto the tray and saying, ‘The party seems to be breaking up and I’d like to say goodnight to some of these nice people,’ before drifting away.

‘I must say,’ said Alison angrily, staring after her, ‘that I wonder if she’s quite all there. You read about the artistic temperament and so forth and all I can say is, if that’s it then you can keep it.’

As if on cue, his father raised his head and looked at him, reminding him of that earlier conversation. He led the Third Crusade, if I remember aright . . . The way out was clear if he had the courage to grasp it: yet it was difficult to take one’s own freedom at the expense of another person. Impossible to explain to Alison that, having met Lizzie, he knew that their own friendship would not develop into anything more; he had no wish to hurt her but how else was it to be done except by plain speaking? He looked down at Alison’s anxious, frowning face and glanced again across the garth at Lizzie, who laid her cheek on Lion’s head and laughed at something Felix was saying to her. He fetched a deep breath and braced himself.

There was a finality in his voice and in his expression, and anguish twisted her gut. Some faint instinct warned her that the gentler powers of acceptance and good grace would stand her in better stead at this moment than the arid comfort of bitter words but, consumed by humiliation and defeat, she denied the instinct for those same reasons that, earlier on this same spot, had driven her to destroy the rose he had given her.

‘I would never have believed that you were the sort of man who would make a fool of himself over a woman like that.’ Her voice trembled with furious misery; her face was plain with disgust. ‘It’s so undignified for a man of your age to behave like a twenty-year-old . . .’

‘Felix is off to bed,’ she told him, ‘and I think Lion’s ready to be introduced to his new quarters.’ She gave Alison a friendly glance. ‘I think the party’s over,’ she said gently.

Alison stared at her. There was something symbolic in Tilda’s action, as if she were showing that the battle was won and that she, Alison, was on the outside. Before she could respond, Felix joined the group.

‘A wonderful evening,’ he remarked generally. ‘I had no idea it was so late.’ He turned his head so as to smile directly at Alison. ‘I do hope you’ve enjoyed it,’ he said with affable authority, rather as if he had been the host. ‘Goodnight.’

People were coming in twos and threes to say goodnight to Piers, to thank him, until finally the garth was empty and he went inside to find Tilda putting Joker’s bean bag down on the scullery floor, Teresa and Saul clearing up in the kitchen whilst Lizzie drifted to and fro, generally getting in the way.

‘Go to bed,’ Tilda said to her, coming in to collect some old newspaper. ‘We shall all be off soon. The dishwasher is loaded and we can finish anything else in the morning. You too, Ma. Piers ought to have a quiet ten minutes with Lion on his own, to let him adjust.’

Teresa continued with her task of scraping odds and ends into the bin, whilst Saul collected empty wine bottles together, but Lizzie did as she was told, said goodnight to Teresa and Saul, gave Tilda a hug and crossed to the doorway where Piers stood with the puppy in his arms. They looked at each other carefully, almost warily, and, shifting Lion’s weight, he held her tightly with one arm as she reached to kiss him on the cheek.