Birdcage

by Victor Canning

  The housekeeper had left them drinks and glasses on the table under the beach umbrella. Sarah sat down and said, “What will you have, Richard?”

  The Richard had crept in first on the drive up from the coast. He said, “A beer, I think. Thanks. . . Sarah.” For himself he found he was reluctant to use her name very often. Why, he wondered—because one should not get too close to a bruxa . . . in fact, keep one’s name hidden?

  He sat down and sipped his beer and, since he had been mildly brooding over it all the morning, decided that he should come out into the open with her. As he began to fiddle about preparing himself a pipe, he said, “I want to talk to you . . . frankly, about the way things are between us.”

  She laughed nervously. “Isn’t that funny. I was going to be frank with you, too. I don’t like . . . I mean I’ve found I can’t bear anything but the truth between us.”

  He grinned. “Well—who’s going to talk first. Do we toss for it?”

  “Is yours very serious?”

  “Not particularly. But it’s got to be said.”

  “Well, mine is. I want to get it off my conscience.”

  “Well, then you start.”

  “Thank you.” She picked up two drinking straws and absently began to plait them into a ring. “It’s about coming up here. I deceived you. But it was such a little lie that I thought it would be unimportant. But, it’s funny, you mean so much to me because of what you’ve done that I couldn’t bear a tiny, even—as I thought—a happy-making lie. I did speak to my aunt on the telephone from the Holderns’ villa. And she was very happy for us to come and stay as long as we like. But it so happened that she was going off to America that very day— leaving for Lisbon to get a plane to London to fly on from there. In fact, she said, now that I’d left the convent she didn’t regard this villa as hers any longer. It used to belong to me—did I tell you that?”

  “No.”

  “I made a gift of it to her when I entered.”

  Farley lit his pipe and blew out the match. “You could have just told me the truth. What difference would it have made?”

  “I thought you mightn’t come. I mean the two of us being alone here together.”

  He laughed. “You’re eight years behind the times . . . perhaps more. And anyway—I’m not the casual jumping-into-bed type. Did you think that?”

  “It’s the last thing I thought. In fact the opposite. I thought you might think . . . well, think that I would, if we were alone together, be a nuisance to you. I mean I do owe you so much and, of course, I long to repay you. And I shall repay you. I must!”

  Farley smiled. “I think your logic is going a bit astray. O.K. I did something for you and you’re grateful. So you didn’t want to lose sight of me until you could repay me. So you, one way and another, felt that our being here alone would queer the whole pitch? That we should begin to build up a relationship leading to bed and all that?”

  As she looked across at him he saw the glint of starting tears in the corners of her blue eyes. Nothing that she had said made any sense. It was self-contradictory . . . a feminine tangle of thought and reasoning. As though she read his thoughts, she said with a sniff, “I don’t know what I thought. I got it all mixed up. I was so happy with you, and grateful, that I didn’t want to risk anything going wrong. I wanted still to be with you.”

  He was silent for a moment or two. He had a real mixed-up number here . . . then, remembering all she had been through over the years and recently, he reached out and took her hand, gave it a squeeze momentarily, and said, “Just forget it all. You told a little white lie which was of no importance and quite unnecessary.”

  She slowly sat up very straight in her chair and said in a hoarse, almost harsh voice which marked the sudden emotion in her, “I wanted you to come here. To this villa which used to be mine. I wanted it because I wanted to repay you. And it could only be done here. I couldn’t risk your not coming. And, please, don’t ask me to say any more than that at this moment.” She stood up and, pulling her wrap closely about her, went on, “And please don’t tell me what you wanted to say because I can guess what it is. You gave me back my life. You can’t deny me the right now to do something for you. I’ve got to do it and I’m going to do it.” She came round to his side, the tears escaping from her eyes and bent and just touched his forehead with her lips. “Please . . . it’s only a small thing to ask. I want to repay you. But it means going to Lisbon first.” She smiled suddenly, ran a finger under her eyes to clear her tears and turned away, saying, “Now I’ll go and make some lunch for us. It’s Saturday and Mario and his wife are away in Monchique shopping.”

  Alone, Farley reached to help himself to another beer and then changed his mind and poured himself a stiff gin and vermouth. He drank and then sighed. What did it matter, anyway? He was not going anywhere in particular and he was living with free board and lodgings in beautiful surroundings. Anyway, maybe she was right. She did owe him a great deal. Her life. What was the price of a life? He shut his eyes and raising his head let the sun beat against his lids. Perhaps it was time to take a good long look at himself and discard those elements and characteristics which made him too easy-going and good-natured. For years people had taken advantage of his good nature, and he had not minded. It might be interesting and rewarding to make himself over. So, if she felt she owed him something and wanted to make repayment, why should he object? Though, how in God’s name she could do anything for him was beyond him. And what the hell was Lisbon all about? Did she have a secret bank account there—never renounced when she had entered the convent?

  But that evening, as they sat in the glassed-in small terrace that opened from the southern side of the large living room she came—and this now gave him no surprise, even amused him by her directness and the firm passion that possessed her to clear her debt to him—without any embarrassment back to the subject.

  The sun was low in the western sky, its red glow firing the tips of a clump of eucalyptus trees on the slopes below the villa. A stray butterfly had found its way into the sun-room and was resting on a hanging bowl of lobelias. She was wearing a light silk blue dress which she had bought on their shopping expedition, a demure dress, long-skirted and with a row of mother-of-pearl buttons running up its front to a little rolled-over high collar. She had a modesty about her body after eight years of convent life. Knowing this, he seldom went to the swimming pool while she was bathing. Seeing her sip absently at her glass of orange juice, he sensed that she was poised to make some positive approach to him, frowning a little, waiting for the right moment or word to break into the beginning of, if not intimacy, then frankness. Before he could make up his mind whether to help her or not, she suddenly in a rush of words said, “I want to talk to you about me—and, more importantly, about you. Do you mind that?”

  Not looking at her, watching the butterfly slowly opening and shutting its wings as it rested on a flower bloom, he said, “No——” and then looking at her, grinning, he went on, “You’re going to do it anyway, aren’t you? I’m beginning to know that look on your face.”

  She smiled at him and then quickly lowered her eyes and brushed her hand across the lap of her skirt. “Let me start with me. It’s easier. Maybe I won’t put things in order, but I want you to know the main things, things which I knew about or which I was told about.”

  He leaned back and listened, seeing the sky over the far land and the sea pass from smoky red to pale gold and green as the earth swallowed the sun. He had to admit after a while that she told her story very well, seldom missing the chronological line and avoiding any too confusing digressions. Perhaps life in a convent with its simple duties and devotions cleared the mind for unencumbered thinking by the rejection of trivialities.

  Her mother had married a wealthy army officer who still lived in Gloucestershire. Two years after she was born her mother and father separated, but on amicable terms so that he often came and stayed with them wherever they might be. At first they had seldom set
tled for long in any one place . . . Paris, Florence, Rome, Cairo, Madrid, but their base for all these moves was the Villa Lobita. Mostly she had been left behind with nurse or governess and later had been sent to school in Florence and then to a convent school in Lisbon. Somehow her mind had from an early age always held the idea that she would like to enter a convent.

  “I’m sure now that my mother encouraged it because her own life was so worldly. I know that she had lovers, always wealthy, and that she loved the world and all its pleasures— but there must have been a dissatisfaction deep in her heart at her way of life—a way of life which would have been the last she would have chosen for me. From the time I was fourteen onwards she influenced and directed me towards the choice of becoming a religious. It seemed to me that I had lived with the thought of that kind of life so long that there was never any questioning it.”

  However, her mother had never lived to see her become a nun. When she was sixteen her mother had fallen suddenly ill at the Villa Lobita and she had been brought down from school in Lisbon to see her.

  “To her deathbed, really, I knew when I arrived. Though that was something she would never have admitted to anyone —even to herself. She could shut any unpleasant or unwelcome thought from her mind. Of course, all her life she was very dramatic and excitable, but also discreet and secretive. When I came she didn’t talk about herself at all hardly. She was just concerned with me . . . chiefly about eventually entering a convent. I had the impression, even as a girl of sixteen, that she might be feeling that she had over-influenced me and that she was trying to give me a chance—if I felt at all doubtful —to change my mind. But when I made it clear that it was the one thing I wanted she seemed overjoyed. I shouldn’t perhaps say this, but knowing what her own life had been like, I got the feeling that, dying, she drew enormous comfort from knowing that her own daughter was going to dedicate herself to God and that that act . . . well, somehow, would restore to her a grace which had long been missing. Oh, it’s very difficult to say things like that of her . . . but it was something like that in her mind. And, because I knew it, I wanted only to please her. And anyway it was also what I wanted for myself. Oh, dear, am I being awfully long-winded and rambling . .? I do so want to get it right.”

  For a moment as her head turned slightly away from him he caught the soft gleam of tears in her eyes. Looking away to the terrace slopes he caught the staccato sound of a burst of song from a warbler in a thicket of oleanders. Quietly he said, “I’m with you. There’s no need to rush.” He looked back at her and found her facing him, dabbing at the corners of her eyes with her handkerchief, and quite irrelevantly the thought came to him that the one thing she had not bought herself on their shopping trip was a handbag.

  “Well, I told her that I was absolutely certain about what I intended to do. I can remember her now. She was sitting in a chair by the pool well wrapped up even though it was June. She said to me—I remember it so well—‘Absolute certainty at sixteen, like an absolute certainty on the track’—she adored racing all her life—‘often lets you down. So I’ve got something to say to you which must not be repeated to anyone else unless you do at some time, even after you’ve become a nun, decide you want to change your life. You know that your Order insists that you renounce all your worldly goods when you enter?’ Well, I did, of course, naturally. When she very soon died I inherited this villa and quite a lot of money . . .”

  She went on explaining, without any emotion now, how she had made over the villa to her aunt, and the rest of her inheritance to her father, not because there were any deep ties between them, but because she thought it right and proper not to wound him by giving it to anyone else. Seeing that she was straying from her line now, he said, “And what was it that your mother said to you? That’s if you want me to know, of course.”

  “Oh, yes, Richard—of course I want you to know. That’s what it’s all about. All this, I mean. You see, I know you haven’t got much money. And I know if you had there are lots of things you could do and be successful at doing. You know why I want to do this. We don’t have to go into that any more, do we?”

  Farley smiled. Her logic and orderly progression of thought were breaking up now, but her confusion and warmth touched him for he knew how deeply she felt about what she wanted to do. As for himself—despite the touch of self-interest he had felt by the swimming pool—he was content to listen to her without commitment. Anyway she had given everything away—so what could she have now to give him? Because he knew she would be pleased at the use of her name, he said, “Sarah, we don’t have to go into me. Not yet, anyway. What did your mother say to you?”

  “Something I’ve really never understood. And when she’d said it I almost got the feeling that she wished she hadn’t. Her face was quite changed. She was beautiful, you know. Even in illness. But her face suddenly changed and she looked very, very old and bitter and she said almost in anger something like, ‘Nobody can foresee the life ahead of them. God and the Devil fight over you day by day and you live in their hands. I just want you to know that, if you ever leave the life of a nun, don’t think you’ll come out into the world having to ask charity from anyone. You will have taken vows, but I haven’t. And what I’ve done can never be on your conscience. You’ve only got your aunt and your father. Your father won’t life a finger and your aunt’s ten years older than me and could well be dead.’ And then she told me.”

  She was silent for a while. It was darkening outside now and a few stars were beginning to show. Now and again the headlights of a car climbing a slope fingered the sky like a searchlight.

  Gently he said, “Told you what?”

  “That I was to go to Lisbon and ask Melina to give me what was mine, and that if I used it wisely it would look after me in luxury for the rest of my life.”

  “Sounds a bit Delphic. Who is Melina?”

  “She was my mother’s personal maid. She married Carlo, the chauffeur we had after Giorgio left. Then they both retired and opened a small hotel at Estoril. So you see——” she stood up, smiling, suddenly gay, “——all we have to do is go there and get whatever it is. It’s either got to be money or something worth a lot of money and I want you to have it. You’re not going to say no, are you?”

  Farley stood up. Just now and again he got the feeling that, from the moment he had heard her scream in the night, he had slid into another dimension, another world where he was wandering full of nostalgia for the commonplace, worn old habitat and day-to-day small events which had kept him comfortable. A pregnant and then a non-pregnant nun. Running away from convents. Manoeuvring him to a luxury villa. The dying talk of a mother who had lived a high and rare old life. This girl, with a woman’s body, repeating an arcane deathbed utterance. This girl, this Sarah Branton, leeching on to him, no doubt like the Princess Sabra had to Saint George when he had rescued her from the dragon, and now wanting to give, if not herself, her all to him when all he wanted was to take a nice thank you and ride on. At that moment, unworthy or not, the thought crossed his mind fleetingly that maybe— for all her manner—she was unhinged, living in a waking dream that had begun when she had been hauled aboard and dropped sprawling naked among the slithering tunny catch on the bottom boards of the launch. The next time he passed it he would look at her mother’s portrait. Somewhere there had to be a touch of Irish madness in her eyes which he had overlooked.

  He said, “I’m going to get myself a drink. What about you?”

  Not looking at him, she said, “No thank you. You don’t want to come to Lisbon, do you?”

  Surprising himself, he said, “You’re quite wrong. I do. But I think you ought to prepare yourself for a disappointment. I mean no disrespect to your mother. But on the point of death . . . well, facts and fancies get mixed.”

  She turned to him, her face stubborn. “Not with my mother. And anyway, I can sense how you feel. You want to get away from me. You did what you did—and now you don’t want to go on being embarrassed by me about i
t. But I won’t embarrass you. I promise you. I just want to do this one thing for you. I know that whatever Melina has will make that possible. Then, when that’s done, I shall be happy and you will be free of me . . .

  Spurred by the emotion which filled him at the sight of her pleading yet stubborn face, he turned back and, not knowing he was going to do it, he put a hand gently under her chin, bent down and kissed her lightly and said tenderly, “You be happy. That’s what I want. I’m free already. So—now I’ll get a drink and some time we’ll go to Lisbon.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  He laughed aloud at the eagerness in her. But as he walked away she called after him, her voice rising with pleasure, “Tomorrow—say tomorrow!”

  Still moving, he answered, “All right, Miss Sarah Branton. All right—tomorrow.”

  * * * *

  Sunday afternoon, and the park was full of unhurried people taking the sun. The stiff beds of tulips were beginning to show their colour. On the lake a swan raised itself high, breasting the sun and, without taking off, thrashed the water with its wings in Spring ecstasy. A West Indian with a red cap and white tennis shoes broke bread and fed it to the ducks. A Black girl with an arm round the West Indian’s waist suddenly pulled him round, away from the ducks and kissed him. Spring, thought Kerslake, was well and truly in the air. If he were in Barnstaple now he would have taken his rod and walked the tidal river bank to fish the free water and that evening driven Margaret out to a pub for a drink and parked for a while in the sand dunes afterwards. No Margaret now. The letters between them had died as he had meant them to die. In this work a man was better off without the distraction of that kind of involvement. That time would come when he had made his mark. In the meanwhile . . . well, if you wanted it, you paid for it and forgot it quickly. This was what he had wanted, this room, this work; and the gods, right out of the blue, had given him his chance when, a detective-sergeant in Barnstaple a few years ago, Quint had come down on a case and they had met and he had impressed Quint—as he had meant to if he could—and so found himself here.