Bird Inside

by Wendy Perriam

  She glanced around for Christopher, saw him near the altar, standing in the side-chapel, with his neck and head craned up. Couldn’t he have waited for her before going to see his window? He always got edgy if she lingered over something he considered second-rate, and would express his disapproval by striding on ahead. She hurried to catch up with him, praying that she’d like his famous saint.

  She tipped her head back, rubbed her eyes. There wasn’t any saint – no ascetic haunted Jerome in subtle muted colours; no lion, not even minimal, no man or beast at all. She was looking at a waste of plain uncoloured glass, slightly rippled in its texture, but basically so humdrum you wouldn’t even notice it – the sort of glass they had in their Shrepton loo.

  She held her breath, listened to the silence, which had stifled everything – nature, traffic, even their own heartbeats. No bird was singing, no car had dared to pass, and there was no sound or stir from Christopher, who was standing shocked beside her, like a statue in cold stone. Then, suddenly, she heard the din of smashed and shattering windows, the barbaric crack of musket shots, and battering of cruel iron bars lobbed through radiant glass; the mocking ring of horses’ hooves as the Roundheads clattered off. Virile saints had been trampled into fragments, angels pulverised; bright birds no longer flying, but broken-backed and mute; lush Madonna lilies hacked down like common weeds.

  ‘So they won,’ the artist murmured, his voice so low she could barely make the words out.

  He turned on his heel, walked swiftly to the door.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jane could feel the pikes still, now stabbing through her body, Cromwell’s vicious metal bar battering her and battering, his fury flooding into her. She fought back with all her strength, furious herself at the waste, the desecration; sweating, grinding under him, as she tried to heave him off. Somehow, she’d succeeded and she was lying now on top, gripping with her thighs, clawing with her nails; her breath too fast and heavy, a different harsher rhythm from the one which seemed dictated by her body and the battle. She was fighting everyone at once, not just the brutal Roundheads, but all her stupid family: her mother – both her mothers – the one who’d left her and the one who’d scooped her up; the father who had shammed the name, and the first and fleeting father who had grappled in a bed like this, shot his seed, then scarpered. She was raging at them all, raging at the mess they’d made through their carelessness, deceit; smashing things to pieces, destroying history and heredity, shooting lethal musket-balls through identity and safety.

  They were angry, too – angry that she’d discovered all their secrets, bitter that she’d run away, shocked and scandalised that she was sleeping with a married man, an older man, a violent man – no, not sleeping, struggling – wrestling with him even now, as she slammed against his chest, thwacked and thrust on top of him, used every muscle, every shred of strength. His body seemed much larger than it had done just this morning, larger and more ruthless, yet she herself was part of that brute body, joined to it and bonded; her hair entangled round his neck, their arms and legs entwined, their two mouths clamped together, their sweat, saliva, mingling. They had lost their separateness, their boundaries, lost their sense of time, lost their human language; were making only noises – grunts and racking gasps of breath, sudden sobbing cries.

  She shut her eyes, ducked her head, as she bent into the wind, let the storm gust and rampage through her, assault her with its own sounds – maddened howls and whinings, a steady soughing roar, which she could feel squalling through her body, like the night of the great hurricane. She could smell those smells again – the reek of crushed and bleeding leaves, the tang of splitting wood and sea-blitzed shingle; could feel the same abandonment as she had done in November, the same loss of all control; could do nothing but submit, fall as trees were falling, crack and smash to pieces.

  She bit him as she came, bit him on the shoulder, hardly knew what she was doing until he yelped in pain, pushed her off, then slumped back on the bed, turned round the other way from her, his back against her spine. She pulled her hair free, tried to calm her breathing. How still it was, uncanny – total shaky silence after such an uproar. The wind had dropped, the storm died down, her separate self and tamer self now creeping slowly back, appalled at what she’d done. She had let him rip her skin off, her chrysalis, her shell; all those safe and careful layers she’d spent eighteen years assembling, destroyed in half an hour. The Jane she knew wasn’t madly sexual, didn’t show her anger, or express her feelings savagely, didn’t lose control.

  She glanced down at her body, which felt strange and incomplete, as if it had been wrenched apart, then put back the wrong way; parts of it still missing, or maybe swapped with Christopher’s; other parts duplicated, like those cockeyed Cubist pictures in the art books. She touched her breasts, which were still smarting from his mouth; her whole body marked and branded with him – a love-bite purpling on her neck, faint red bracelets round each arm, where he’d gripped her by the wrists. She tried to swallow, but her throat felt husky-dry, her own mouth sore and out of shape, from her wild ferocious kisses. He’d shown her who she truly was; revealed the greed and violence spitting underneath; proved what she’d denied – the excitement in that violence, how close it was to ecstasy.

  ‘C … Christopher?’ she stammered, suddenly needing him to talk to her, reassure her, make things safe and small again. He didn’t seem to hear, was lying like a fallen trunk, his body touching hers, yet no longer feeling part of it, seeming like a stranger’s, a stranger who had frightened her. She had been scared all afternoon, from the moment that he’d marched out of the church and stormed round to the vicarage to discover what had happened to his window; found the vicar out, only a dumb child playing in the garden, whom he’d left confused and crying. He had charged on to the pub, burst into the public bar, started interrogating the barman, as if he was personally responsible. There’d been a sudden chilling hush, with everybody staring, eyes hostile at his hectoring tone, no one saying anything to the Intruder and the Enemy, then beer-mugs raised to mouths again, in a conspiracy of silence. He’d stampeded out, sprinted down the narrow street to the dozy village store, found it closed for lunch. He had dithered for a moment, then wheeled back to the vicarage, she following like his shadow, a silent cringing shadow, trying to compress herself to nothing. The large stone house was empty still – empty like the church, where he chafed for fifteen minutes more, examining his window from the inside and the outside, finally subsiding in a pew, exhausted and defeated.

  She had known she ought to comfort him, but couldn’t find the words. His reaction seemed excessive, as if he were grieving for a murdered child. But perhaps his windows were his children. He had no others, after all, no flesh and blood descendants to perpetuate his line. The glass would do it for him, keep his name and memory alive. She had already seen the mother-love he lavished on it, the time and patience he poured out, when he was not a patient man. He was less generous with real people, offhand and even curt; saved his true affection for his Resurrection Angels, his Saint Jeromes, his red birds. But now a favourite child had been destroyed.

  They had driven back in silence to the Swan. She’d felt embarrassed by the sun, which continued shining tactlessly, lighting up the landscape and the sky, when his face and mood were so clearly overcast. As soon as they got in, he rang his wife. She felt totally negated, like some odd bod he’d forgotten. He didn’t find a private phone, or explain what he was doing, but just sat down on the bed, and started telling Anne the story, then asked if she could dig out his address book and find the number of the architect he had worked with on the window, a Mr Howard Gray. Next, he rang the architect – or tried to. The man who answered claimed he’d never heard of Mr Gray, had lived there only eighteen months, and had bought the place from a doctor, not an architect.

  She herself had crept into the bathroom, as if to hide from Anne. She always tried to blank her out, pretend Christopher was single; often lived in fear that Mrs
Harville-Shaw might stroll into the studio and start asking awkward questions. Christopher had told his wife that he’d hired a young assistant, but had surely not revealed the extent of her new duties, nor admitted he was with her this weekend. When, at last, she’d ventured out, the artist was still sitting on the bed, an ashtray balanced on his knee, though his cigarette was spewing ash on the bedclothes and the carpet. The sky had clouded over, the room gloomy now, and cold.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he’d said suddenly. ‘This is not much fun for you, Rose. And we never had our lunch. Shall we ring down now for some sandwiches and fruit?’

  She shook her head, couldn’t eat, felt too upset by Anne still – the wife at home, who knew where his address book was, could dig out numbers from the past, who’d shared that past, shared his bed each night.

  He had kissed her very tenderly, assumed she was distressed about the window, shared his own outrage and dejection. She’d kissed him back with Anne’s lips, astonished at herself – the way her teeth and tongue were joining in, the anger in her mouth, the open thrusting force of it, as if it had grown up overnight and could rival any wife’s. She was a bitter wife, a fierce wife, attacking him with kisses, stripping off his sweater, removing both the cigarette and ashtray. He had fought her back immediately, tearing off her own clothes, straddling her and muzzling her, leaving bite-marks on her breasts.

  It had been light still when they’d started, the murky grudging light of a winter’s afternoon. Now a sombre dusk was falling, all the objects in the room blurring and dissolving. She could feel herself unravelling as well, hated the grey silence, the unfriendly feel of the artist’s bony back. In the films she’d seen, the books she’d read, sex was more companionable. People chatted afterwards, lay face to face, or lolled against the pillows, still fondling one another, or sharing confidences. She longed for him to talk, to tell her it had been all right, that she hadn’t broken rules, or gone too far; that he was fond of her, committed, still admired her breasts and body. She rolled over in the bed, let those breasts push gently at his spine; suddenly imagined him a baby, a tiny puny infant, born eight weeks prematurely, and battling for his life. Was that why he was small still, and still a stubborn fighter? She’d been touched when he admitted that he’d wanted to complete himself, instead of lying passive in the womb. It seemed crazy, yet courageous, to challenge the whole scheme of things, defy the force of nature, when you were a pathetic scrap who could barely suck or squall.

  At last, he turned towards her, humped over half-reluctantly, brows drawn down, face frowning. ‘You see, they never liked my window, Rose.’

  She tensed, removed her hand. So his mind was in the church still. All that time in bed, he had been thinking of his window, not of her. Her convulsive scorching body, her scourging grown-up mouth, had been just a muted background to Saint Jerome.

  ‘So I suppose if something happened to it – if it was damaged in the storm, or attacked by vandals, they were relieved to have an excuse to do away with it, or were even getting their own back. I still can’t understand, though, why they didn’t get in touch with me. It would have been courteous, to say the least, to have informed me in a letter. Perhaps they assumed that I was dead, or so decrepit I was past taking any interest.’ He eased stiffly out of bed, shambled to the wardrobe, as if in imitation of that old decrepit man; his voice querulous, disgruntled, as he continued complaining about the Chancellor of the Diocese, and how it was impossible to put anything in a church – or take it out, for that matter – without his formal diktat. ‘But he might well have remembered all the wrangling in the past, Rose, or have re-read all the records, and if the committee were still hostile to any sort of modem art, they probably advised him to avoid any more controversy, and replace the bloody window with plain glass, which can’t offend anyone. Except me,’ he added, slouching to the bathroom with his clothes.

  She heard the bolt ram home, felt excluded and shut out, not just by the bolted door, but from the whole contentious world of church committees, which she had never really understood, despite the many times he’d cursed their tedious rigmarole. She fumbled for the light-switch, snapped on the bedside lamp. Everything was sharper now, solid, redefined. She felt too tired to move. The sex had drained her, left her wrecked and spent. The roses, too, looked jaded; two or three keeled over, as if their stems were too inert to bear their weight. She reached out for a bloom, one still full and healthy, held it to her nose. It smelt of nothing, not like summer roses, whose scent was so intense it was the whole essence of the flower, literally as well as metaphorically. These were forced – a violent word – violence everywhere: the violence of the Roundheads, the violence of the storm, the relish for destruction lurking beneath the civilised exterior of every Tom, Dick, Harry, Jane. Christopher had told her that red roses were created by a sacrifice of blood – Aphrodite’s blood – and that the flower was sacred to all the gods of love; its very name an anagram of Eros; love and suffering linked.

  She lay back on the bed and shut her eyes. She’d return to yesterday, those first romantic moments they had spent in bed together, before she spoilt things with her fears; those marvellous lines he’d quoted from The Romance of the Rose.

  ‘For she so worthy is of love

  That well she may be called the Rose …’

  It had seemed another christening, another sanction and endorsement of her name – a name not yet stained with blood.

  The bathroom door clicked open, and Christopher emerged, now spruced and dressed, and with a completely different face on – a strong incisive face, ready to do battle with Roundheads, vicars, even age and death. He sat down by her feet, reached across and took the rose, touched it to her Venus mound in a flirtatious teasing gesture. ‘Have you ever heard the phrase sub rosa?’

  She shook her head, resentful of more questions and more no’s. Couldn’t they simply chat, for once, lounge and laugh like lovers, without him playing pedant all the time?

  ‘It means secret, confidential – comes from the Latin ‘‘under the rose’’. You see, as well as all its other connotations, the rose is an emblem of silence, so they used to carve it on the ceilings of council chambers, or engrave it on confessionals, to remind all those involved that what was said beneath it was strictly private.’ He lay back beside her for a moment, held the rose above them, as he stretched out on the bed. ‘What I’m trying to say is that everything which happens this weekend is sub rosa and our secret, not to be repeated to Isobel or …’

  She flounced up out of bed, furious that he felt he had to warn her, couldn’t trust her own discretion. She wouldn’t dream of telling Isobel – or anyone. He had destroyed all the romance, made things sordid and disreputable between them.

  ‘It’s the private view, remember, Rose, the day after tomorrow, and the whole crew will be there – Isobel, my wife, the vicar, Stanton Martin – so please be very careful what you say.’

  She didn’t answer, just focused on the words ‘my wife’. It was Anne he was concerned about, quite clearly; Anne he was deceiving – both of them deceiving her, herself as well as him. How could she ever face that wife, a scant two days from now, look her in the eye, pretend she knew the artist as mere cool aloof employer, instead of panting lover? All the same, she was relieved that he’d invited her – at last. He had left it long enough, for heaven’s sake, only asked her very casually once she’d told him she’d arranged to see Hadley and his play. It was another bribe, perhaps – first this weekend at the Swan, then the fancy do on Monday – both bait to tug her his way, entice her from Southampton.

  ‘I only hope the bloody organisers know what the hell they’re doing. You can kill stained glass if you have the room too bright. The last stained-glass exhibition they held at the RIBA looked pretty much a mess. The lights were too intrusive, and they failed to get the press lined up, or …’

  Jane reached across and grabbed her brush, tore it through her snarled and sweaty hair. How could she compete with private views or press
men, or ever hold his interest for more than half an hour? She should have gone to Southampton, not Lincolnshire, resisted all his lures; spent the night safely with Hadley’s female friend, in the chaste single bed laid on for her in a fellow student’s flat. Hadley was unmarried, relaxed and easy-going, not obsessed with work; someone her own age whom she could relate to far more freely. She would have avoided all the lies and complications – the cheating on a wife, which made her feel uneasy and a traitor to her sex; the pretence to Isobel; the crisis of the window, which was still unresolved and shadowing the evening. The clock struck from the courtyard – five o’clock. Hadley and his friends would be letting down their hair – drinking, dancing, larking still, at Alexandra’s flat. He’d arranged a second party in her honour, and she wasn’t there to share the fun. Spanish plonk and red-hot curry he had promised her – or warned her. She shrugged, swapped brush for comb, still fighting with the tangles.

  The artist seemed uneasy, as if he’d picked up on her mood, groping for his cigarettes, placing one between his lips, but leaving it unlit, then removing it, abandoning it, while still fiddling with his lighter. ‘Well, Rose,’ he said, at last. ‘What d’ you want to do now? I know it’s early, but I suggest we take the car and go and find a meal, or maybe have a drink first. I’ve had nothing all damned day except half a cup of tea this morning. Is that all right with you?’ he asked, almost as an afterthought.

  ‘Fine,’ she said, checking through the wardrobe to pick out something suitable for a casual student party. ‘I’d like a pint of Spanish plonk, please, and a plate of red-hot curry.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jane faltered up the imposing marble staircase, trying to lose herself behind Isobel’s billowing blue silk skirt – a rather girlish though expensive skirt, strangely contradicted by the butch and scruffy sweater she was wearing over it. Jane smoothed her own red dress – red to match the artist’s bird – wished they weren’t so late. She could hear a bray of conversation erupting from the hall, even strains of music. Christopher would be wondering where they were, though he must surely be familiar with the chaotic Mackenzie household, where no one ever left on time, or allowed an extra hour or so for fuming in thick traffic on the busy road to London, or finding non-existent parking-spaces in clogged and squeezed W1.