Bird Inside

by Wendy Perriam

  The journey had been gruelling, and not simply on account of Isobel’s erratic style of driving. She herself had been sitting next to Hadley in the back – thrown against him, even, when his mother braked too sharply and took corners on two wheels – a Hadley she’d imagined was safely down in Southampton, finishing his term. He certainly hadn’t been invited to the RIBA private view, though that hadn’t stopped him coming, despite the fact he was only home because he claimed he wasn’t well; had more or less collapsed the last night of his play from a mixture of exhaustion and too much cheap red wine. He had pumped her for a good half-hour about her own weekend – the Shrepton friend who’d moved down south and now had cancer of the breast – that fictitious invalid she’d been nursing for three days. The lies had escalated, especially as the vicar had been sitting in the front, a kindly and compassionate man, who kept offering his assistance: could he visit the poor girl, or put her on his prayer-list; did she know about the cancer-diet; was she too ill to come to church?

  The Reverend A. F. Hargreaves was nothing like the Anthony she had heard about from Christopher – not difficult, pedantic, but affable and wise; a short and rather chubby man, with benevolent blue eyes and very little hair. Jane glanced at his bald pate, bobbing just ahead of her, beside Isobel’s wild curls; Hadley a head taller, and looking more dishevelled; the three of them now entering the majestic crowded hall. Isobel looked round for her, beckoned her to follow. She stopped, daunted, on the topmost stair, overawed by the massive marble columns, the bronze busts set on pedestals, the huge glass doors to the hall – everything so showy, ostentatious. Yet if she didn’t cling to Isobel, she would be lost in all that crush, overwhelmed by cultivated people who knew the clever thing to say, weren’t wearing borrowed shoes.

  Suddenly, she herself was part of the whole mêlée, had somehow ventured through the doors, and been swallowed up in noise and smells and colours – women’s perfumes fighting the faint whiff of hot prawn pastries; their gaudy dresses rivalling the brilliance of the glass-panels. The room-lights were subdued, so that the glass itself could blaze with more intensity, exploding in the quiet-toned hall with a dramatic jewel-like radiance. She shook her head as a waiter offered canapés, needed a few moments to take in the whole scene – the sheer impact of the panels, their electrifying colours and sunburst energy; the string quartet in evening dress, playing on a dais; the obsequious stewards pouring pink champagne; the swarm and shrill of guests – everyone from sober-suited businessmen to an arty-looking female whose flowing hennaed hair almost reached her thigh-length purple boots.

  ‘Where’s Christopher?’ asked Isobel, scanning all the faces, then craning her plump neck to try to see past panels and exhibits. ‘I doubt we’ll ever find him in this scrum. Ah! There he is,’ she cried, gesturing triumphantly, ‘surrounded by his entourage.’ She tried to rally Anthony, divert Hadley from the food-trays, and steer a shrinking Jane, while still clutching her champagne glass and an oozing lobster vol-au-vent as she swooped towards the far side of the room.

  Jane dodged a man in a ponytail and pinstripes, and a diminutive old lady with a poodle tucked beneath her arm, as if it were her handbag; the dog’s crisp white coat echoed by its owner’s frizzy perm. She could feel her stomach lurching, a film of perspiration clammying her hands; wished she could borrow steely nerves as easily as shoes. She felt naked, undefended, as she prepared to meet the wife, rehearsed her next few lies; her scarlet dress too flimsy to keep the terror out. She could already see the artist, who seemed to tower above the crowd, despite his modest height, the only one with solid lines; the only one not blurring in the heat and raucous jostle. He looked dapper and distinguished in a dark grey suit and flamboyant crimson shirt. How strange that their colours matched. Her own shoes and bag were grey, the silky scarf she’d knotted at her neck. Would people notice, comment, see it as a bond between them, a private signal denoting their relationship? He caught her eye, and she tried to freeze her face, prevent it giving anything away, acknowledging his greeting with just a casual nod. Yet she was disturbingly aware that his eyes were saying one thing, his formal smile another.

  She was grateful for Isobel’s exuberance, the way the older woman fell on necks and names, hugged and kissed the ones she knew, pumped the others by the hand, repeated introductions, began jaunty little anecdotes, then broke off in the middle to clasp another friend, and made so much happy stir that Jane could simply stand there, sharing in the ebullience, yet not required to shine herself, or even speak, beyond a few ‘hallos’. She tried to fit the faces to the names – Felice she remembered from Adrian’s dinner party; Adrian himself was tête-à-tête with a thin young man called Aubrey; Stanton Martin was the VIP who looked more like a dropout, and Daniel Boyd, his colleague, another architect. Lorna in the mini-dress was from the Sunday Times, and Frederick (‘Call me Freddie’) a top tycoon from Pilkingtons, who were sponsoring the exhibition, along with a large insurance company, a contractor, and the Crafts Council. But where was Anne, the wife?

  Isobel suddenly lunged forward, shook a new small hand – a hand with exotic rings on every finger, a hand which could be lethal, loaded down with so much dangerous metal, so many spiky stones. ‘Veronica!’ she bubbled. ‘How very nice to see you! How’s things? How are the girls? Do meet Rose. She’s working as Christopher’s assistant. Rose – Veronica Harville-Shaw.’

  Veronica! The ex-wife. Another woman with his name. Jane took a step towards her, felt her fingers close on hot damp flesh; recoiled instinctively. She disliked the fastidious features masked with make-up, the expensive preening clothes, the cloying scent swamping her own cheap and weak cologne. The voice was Radio 3, self-confident and cultured, asking duty questions about where she lived, where she’d trained, what was her opinion of the show.

  ‘I haven’t really seen it yet,’ she flurried. Her own voice sounded ordinary, inferior, something from a pop commercial station, rather than the BBC, and with that trace of northern accent she was always trying to conceal.

  ‘Yes, where is Christopher’s panel?’ Isobel enquired. ‘It seems rather naughty, doesn’t it, to be guzzling their champagne when we’ve hardly looked at anything.’

  Veronica stretched out a slim arm, her four rings glinting, threatening. ‘In pride of place, over by the window. We were all paying homage to it, half an hour ago, but then Gerald dragged us over here, to see his model for the Clarendon Centre.’

  Jane had been so nervous of the company, she had hardly spared a glance for the architectural models arranged on perspex stands – a shopping mall in Bristol, a country club in Japan, a Saudi Arabian airport, a synagogue in Arles – all made to scale, in miniature, like little wooden dolls’ houses, and all resplendent with stained glass. She wished she had two separate pairs of eyes, one to view the exhibition, one to watch the wives. There was still no sign of Anne, but maybe she was guardian of her husband’s scarlet bird, still standing by his panel, protecting it from any hostile comments.

  ‘Come on, Rose. Let’s see it,’ Isobel enthused.

  Jane was relieved to leave the artist, had been achingly aware of him throughout the endless introductions, though he’d barely said a word to her, had saved his voice and energies for the more important guests. They had also lost the others in their party – the vicar to the Sunday Times reporter, and Hadley to a waitress, or her wares. Isobel herself kept stopping on her ambling zigzag way towards the window, magnetised by striking glass or photographs, exclaiming at tall panels, zingy colours, or meeting some new crony who must be fêted and embraced. Jane found it hard to concentrate, didn’t want to look at other, rival exhibits until she’d seen the artist’s; wished to save her freshness for his bird, keep her mind open and uncluttered.

  ‘Good gracious me! That’s strong.’ Isobel pretended to reel backwards when at last they’d reached the fifteen feet of glass – one of the tallest entries in the hall. Jane stood silent, her hand across her stomach. She could feel the bird’s convulsive movements shoc
king through her own insides; hear the frantic beating of its wings, as it hurled its fragile body against the cruel and steely nothing of the window – a window which slammed back. The engorged and gory crimson of its plumage suggested fresh-spilt blood; the high blank walls surrounding it stirred memories of nightmare.

  ‘Bird Inside’, she spelt out slowly, cringing at the title, which itself seemed cruel and taunting. Birds belonged outside, soaring into space and freedom, untrammelled, unconfined. Was Christopher confined himself – in his marriage or his home, perhaps – and so venting his own feelings? Or enjoying some sadistic urge, as he trapped a helpless bird in glass, held it captive in his power? It hardly seemed to matter. The panel was so charged, she had no choice but submit to it, let it work on her emotions, disturb her mind and body. She suddenly realised you could love a man less for what he was than for what he could create; love him for skills, even while they harrowed you.

  ‘Powerful,’ murmured someone, a tall man with a Vandyke beard, who had pushed in front of them. ‘Powerful, but contrived. Can’t he be more subtle?’

  ‘You should read what it says here,’ the man’s female friend sniggered, pointing to her catalogue and then reciting from it sardonically. ‘‘‘The red bird is a symbol, a winged soul representing transcendence and the ascent to higher realms, but trapped in this material world, caught between two opposing realities. The colour red signifies the masculine – the active energetic colour of fire and sun and war, martyrdom and blood.’’ Christ! It’s so pretentious. A bird’s a bird, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Birds aren’t red, though, are they?’

  ‘I’ve seen red ones in the zoo – well, pinkish, anyway.’

  ‘They were probably flamingos – or maybe you’d had too much pink champagne.’

  Titters now from both of them. Jane unclenched her fists. No point lashing into them in public. If they were such blind and stupid philistines, then better to ignore them. She turned away, started studying the screen behind her, which showed the artist’s drawings, and also studies of his work in progress, and other big commissions, including several photographs of Adrian’s leisure-centre, all preceded by a brief biography. ‘Born in 1930,’ she read, eyes halting on the figures, unable to move on. She had never quite believed that the artist could be sixty, yet he was actually sixty-one. It was there in bold black capitals, for all the world to see. She stabbed the ‘3’ with her finger, as if trying to rub it out. It was too much of a shock. The thirties seemed so long ago, a faint and faded era in jerky black and white, with no TVs or computers, no microwaves or washing-machines, no Kentucky Fried. He’d been alive in the time of Churchill, Hitler, Stalin – even the swooned-over Clark Gable – a relic and museum-piece himself. She glanced back at his bird. It seemed so vigorous, so spunky, the work of someone full of verve and sap. He wasn’t old at all, in the sense of withered, stagnant, but moody and tempestuous, a sexagenarian adolescent, still making waves, still champing at the bit.

  She forced herself to jump two decades and start reading through the long list of his commissions, astonished by the things he had done, the works he’d never mentioned – a palace in Oman, twelve heraldic panels in a famous Cambridge college, a casino in Knightsbridge and a mosque in Abu Dhabi – his windows glowing right across the globe, from cathedrals in Ohio to banks in Tokyo. He had won awards and scholarships; had examples of his work included in museums in Sweden, France and Germany, even in the V & A – Harville-Shaw, the Artist, sanitised and laurel-crowned, the unqualified success. But what about the private man, the other, uncrowned Christopher, who had been rigorously excluded from this exemplary CV – his two wrecked marriages, his failure to have children, the violence locked inside him, the hostility he roused?

  She looked around, hoping she might see him, check on the two versions, maybe fuse them both together. There was no sign of him at all, only a troupe of twittering yuppies, and a still fizzy Isobel, now babbling to a woman who was just a stretch of white silk back, a fall of straight brown hair.

  ‘Ah, Rose,’ pounced Isobel, as they caught each other’s eye. ‘Let me introduce you to Anne Harville-Shaw. Anne says she’s never met you.’

  The white silk back turned round, revealed a smiling face, a small and well-shaped mouth, tiny lines around the eyes, the coral lipstick smudged. The hair reached to her shoulders, so straight it looked like child’s hair, though the breasts were full and womanly.

  Jane stared. She was looking at her mother – the mother who had borne her – the final and definitive one who had ousted all the variations, taken over from the countess and the slut, the sculptress and the pop star, the druggie teenage dropout. She had gradually fixed the picture in her mind, adding a few details every night, building up her mother stroke by stroke, line by line, like the artist with his portraits. She wanted certain striking likenesses between them, so there could be no shred or scrap of doubt that they were biological mother and her child, so she had endowed her fantasy-mother with her own straight hair in the exact same shade of brown, and also the same eyes, dark-lashed eyes in a rather timid blue. But she also wanted differences – what she saw as faults in herself would be abolished in her mother: her too-wide mouth scaled down, her meagre breasts made generous. Anne’s breasts were really bosoms, an old-fashioned comfy word, but she was not plump and slack like Isobel; smaller altogether, less arty and untidy. She had decided fairly recently that she didn’t want an artist for a mother. Artists were too selfish and too moody. Yet she yearned for someone less tight and crimped than Amy – someone in between, who’d be free and easy-going, but still responsible; attractive yet still motherly, and about the age of forty, so she would have had her daughter young, not wasted all her twenties being bitter and infertile. Anne looked fortyish, much younger than the artist, but still old enough to have gained her first grey hairs – only two or three of them, but snaking rather sadly through the glossy autumn-brown.

  Jane realised she was staring – rudely, unforgivably – and that she and Anne were now standing on their own; Isobel deep in conversation with the vicar, who must have come to find them. She tried to respond to Anne’s well-meaning overtures, not play the cretin who had also lost her voice. Yet she was still astonished by this wife, who was nothing like the model she’d imagined – not the brash hard-headed businesswoman, or the cold and perfect beauty, not the sexy siren.

  Anne suddenly bent down and slipped her shoe off, balancing on one leg, the other foot just stocking-clad and with a small hole in the toe. ‘I broke my heel on that dratted marble staircase. I’ve been stuck in the loo trying my best to mend it, but it still feels rather wobbly.’

  Jane answered with a sympathetic mumble. Anne looked lamed and flawed – vulnerable, endearing. The shoes were boring brown, too heavy for the white silk dress. How odd that it was white. The mother in her mind wore white – deliberately, defiantly – to counter all the shame and scandal, the murk and darkness of her birth. She had learnt enough from Christopher to know that colours mattered – white for innocence, redemption; also white for brides and marriage. Her eyes moved slowly up to Anne’s left hand, the gold ring on her wedding finger, a wide one, carved with flowers. She longed to tug it off, hurt that slender finger as she did so. This was still her rival, the hated woman who shared the artist’s life, the hated feckless mother who had given her away. Her gaze continued travelling up – to the breasts which Christopher must kiss, the pale throat he would fondle, the jewelled cross round her neck, perhaps a present from her husband, a sentimental keepsake to mark some anniversary – a tasteful and expensive gift, with the cross-shape edged in tiny pearls, and the finest of gold chains.

  Anne seemed a little flustered by this long and fierce inspection, touched the cross, as if protecting it from damage, or her neck from further scrutiny. ‘It’s … pretty, isn’t it?’

  ‘Mm,’ grudged Jane. ‘Did you have it as a present?’

  Anne shook her head. ‘No, I found it in an antique shop, just two months
ago, and bought it for myself. It’s Georgian, the man said, though the chain’s a good bit later. I’ve become really quite attached to it, never take it off now, except in bed.’ She laughed. ‘I was really looking for a plant-stand, but then I saw this in the back room and felt it was appropriate because I was going to be confirmed that very week.’

  ‘Confirmed?’

  ‘Yes, rather late in life, at the ripe old age of forty-two.’ She laughed again, an easy friendly laugh. ‘I think thirteen is more usual, but my parents were agnostics.’

  Jane was lost for words. A newly Christian Anne seemed absolutely wrong, didn’t fit the image of the worldly marketing manager, who jetted to New York. And how did Christopher relate to a wife who’d just found God, when he himself attacked that God, deplored what he called the violence and hypocrisy of the Christian faith?

  ‘Ah, there you are, Anne. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

  He was suddenly beside them, his red shirt like a warning, threatening danger. She responded to the danger, her body leaping into overdrive, pulse and heart both pounding double time. There seemed neither space nor air enough for the three of them to stand together, to keep on breathing normally, control their throttled voices. Was he as tense as she was; could Anne not pick up vibes between them? Now she’d met the wife, it seemed even worse to have cheated on her, when she was nothing like the heartless bitch she’d pictured. Her own arm was brushing Christopher’s one side, his love-bite flaunting on her neck, though hidden by the scarf, yet Anne’s warm trusting smile was embracing both of them – artist and assistant, not husband with his bed-mate. They were standing near the string quartet, who had reached a dazzling climax; the music trilling out with a sprightly teasing grace; capering, cavorting, chiding any jaundiced guest who dared resist its mood. The artist’s voice sounded sombre and subdued beside that ecstatic chortling cello, those boisterous violins.