The Birdcage

by John Bowen

  “The bird?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You don’t want to separate them birds. They’ll pine.”

  “I know what I’m doing,” Mrs. Halliday said. She was not a particularly sentimental woman, but she had the average wish of the average person to do good and give pleasure if it could be done without inconvenience to herself. And she was a conservative. She did not know what Peter Ash would be getting up to without Norah Palmer, and preferred matters as they had been for so long. Mrs. Halliday knew—she had seen it happen at the pictures, read of it often enough in the papers—that children will bring separated people together again, but Peter Ash and Norah Palmer had no children. Even dogs have been known to do it, but they had no dogs. All that Peter Ash and Norah Palmer had in the way of loved ones were Fred and Lucy. They were not much; they were not as articulate as children or dogs. Mrs. Halliday, if you had asked her, would not have been able to tell you how she expected Fred and Lucy to go about making a reconciliation between Peter Ash and Norah Palmer. But she didn’t see that there was any harm in giving them the opportunity, at least, of doing what they could.

  *

  Children and dogs may be encaged by love; birds are encaged by bars. A child might have said, “I miss my daddy.” A dog might have laid its great stupid head on Norah Palmer’s lap, and rolled its great stupid brown eyes, and whined and carried on until she did something to placate it; a dog might have taken Peter Ash by the trouser leg, and drawn him through the streets to Ovington Square, standing by with its great stupid tail waving like a banner of triumph as Peter Ash tried to explain to Norah Palmer why he had come, and one thing led, as it did in the stories, to another. But Fred and Lucy sat in their separate cages, and pined.

  Lovebirds in health are jaunty. They are like parrots which have shrunk. They have bright round eyes in a circle of white, and little hooked red beaks, and they talk—not in English to visitors as parrots do—but privately to each other in lover-like amity. Separated, Fred and Lucy lost their jauntiness. Norah Palmer noticed that the purple plumage of Fred’s head (if it was Fred) had become dull, and (since she had the feeding of him) that he did not eat the food she gave him. Peter Ash noticed nothing at all out of the way in Lucy (if it was Lucy), because it was Mrs. Halliday who looked after the birds, not he. To Peter Ash, Lucy was only one of the decorations of his kitchen. Mrs. Halliday, of course, did notice that Lucy was not eating, and that she drooped, and Mrs. Halliday hoped that this was having its effect on Peter Ash.

  What on earth does one do when a lovebird won’t eat, Norah Palmer wondered. A larger cage? A new mate? The cage from Woolworth’s was not particularly elegant, but there was room for him to move about in it. Instead, he seemed to prefer to keep to one end, and sulk.

  She opened the door of the cage, and extended a finger, clucking at Fred as she had heard Mrs. Halliday cluck. Perhaps he only wanted to be noticed. It was a Saturday morning, and she had plenty of time to fraternize with Fred, if that would cheer him up. But Fred, uncheered, stayed where he was, and would not approach her finger.

  Well, she would take no notice, and she would do the washing-up. Living alone, she washed-up once a day. The door of the cage was left open, and Fred might come out, and hop around the kitchen if it would do him any good. He could get the feel of his new home. Did lovebirds have a sense of place in that way? Pigeons did. If Fred were a pigeon, he’d have been out of that cage, and through the window, and tapping at the door of the Beaufort Street flat by now. Except that the window was shut. She opened the window.

  Silly things one did. Fred was not a pigeon, and would not go home by himself. And as for Norah Palmer, she would not go round, cage in hand, and return Fred to Peter Ash. That would smack too much of an excuse, and she had determined to keep the break clean, and save herself pain. If Fred liked to go on home … but he was not a pigeon. Not a pigeon. A little excitement stirred in her stomach. She did not know why; there was no reason for it. She repressed the excitement, concentrating her attention on a pan in which eggs had been scrambled with tomato. Behind her there was a stir of sound from the cage.

  She would not look round. Fred’s feet were tiny; she could not possibly hear them pattering on the table-top, and if she thought she did, that was her imagination. She rubbed at the pan with a Spontex cloth until it was clean, and set it on the draining-board. The excitement in her stomach shifted ground, and ran lightly up and down her backbone. About a bird! It was neurotic. One got into neurotic habits, living alone; she would have to watch that. She turned round to prove to the excitement that it was quite wrong about Fred, but there was Fred on the table, flexing his wings like one who has lost the habit of flying and is a little nervous about starting again. “Go on, you fool,” she said. “They’re not clipped.”

  Fred remained where he was. They stared at each other, the bird and Norah Palmer. Perhaps he did not like to be watched. She understood that. If he thought he might be going to make a mess of flying, he would not want her to watch him. She turned back to the sink, and emptied the soapy water from the bowl. There was (she was sure of it) a whirr of wings, and a flutter at the window, as if he had made a clumsy landing. So she could look now. And there he was, sure enough, at the open window with his back to her.

  He was free. He could go if he wished. No cage enclosed him. He could go anywhere.

  Fred walked through the window and out on to the roof. He would not risk flying again immediately, it seemed, not in the open air. He picked his way over the roof like a bare-footed bather over pebbles. How typical! All this time he had refused his good birdseed, and now he was making straight for an old soggy crust of bread, thrown out for the pigeons. Purple head, and green wings shading into purple again at the tips—how beautiful he was; and he was leaving her. He had reached the crust, and pecked and pulled at it, looking, with his big head, his puffy parrot-jowls and his hooked red nose, like a jobber in a City chop-house. Capitalist! Norah Palmer said to herself fondly—and there, sure enough, on the roof above him, brown-suited and resentful, was a starling.

  The starling was angry. It was joined almost immediately by another, and the two of them set up an indignant chattering. They’ll come out on strike in a minute, Norah Palmer thought, and bring all the starlings of the square out in sympathy. There was a third. And a fourth. A pigeon plopped on to the roof beside Fred, took a peck at the crust with him, and flew off again. No guilt by association there; the pigeon knew he was in dicey company. For by now there was quite a little group of starlings watching. Norah Palmer was not sure how many, because they would not stay still to be counted. Since each starling of the group moved at different times and never for long, the effect was almost of a brown tide with little flurries and swirls of speckled foam getting all the time closer and closer to Fred.

  Then one of the starlings flew at him. Well, really! Fred seemed bewildered. He left the piece of bread, hopped a little way back, and then stopped. The starling was as big as he was. Bigger. If it had pecked him, Norah Palmer couldn’t see the place. Perhaps it had only been a warning. Poor Fred!—they were warning him off. He would do better to stick to birdseed, and leave the crusts of charity to those for whom they were intended. Abruptly all the starlings flew at him together.

  Fred fell over. The starlings pecked at his head and his eyes. “Oh!” Norah Palmer cried. “You beasts! Go away!” and clapped her hands to frighten them. But the starlings took no notice. There was blood on Fred’s head. Norah Palmer wanted to weep, and she wanted to shout, and she wanted to hurt the starlings, but she was helpless there behind the window, out of reach and helpless. They were pecking at Fred, beating at him with their wings, and he had never known anything like this before, and could neither fly away nor fight back. In a moment they would have killed him, or he would fall off the roof into the street below. If she were to throw something … the soap…. She reached to get it, but even as she did so, the starlings scattered, and just for a moment she saw Fred clearly, lying
there on the slate roof struggling to get up, his bright feathers dusty and draggled with blood. Then there was a shadow over Fred, and sharp talons and grey wings that came out of the shadow, and hovered only for an instant, and after that there was nothing on the roof, neither Fred nor the starlings, but only perhaps the hint, the merest whisper, of a purple feather hanging in the air.

  London is a city of predators. There are kestrels at Ken Wood; they have been known to nest on the tall buildings of the City. Plumage of green and purple, a flurry of starlings—such trivial signals may interest those who wait, high in the air, watching all day those of us who, going about our daily affairs, forget that they are there. When the gods are interested, little things may die. The kestrel took Fred and carried him away, high and away, far out of reach of soap or shouting, so high into the sun that Norah Palmer’s eyes were dazzled, and she could not even follow his flight.

  *

  She had determined to keep the break clean, and save herself pain. One evening, ten days after she had left the flat in Beaufort Street, Norah Palmer made a telephone call to Peter Ash.

  She listened to the ringing tone. It rang once, twice, three times, four. He’s out, she thought, disappointed and relieved at once. She was mad to have tried; she would not ring again. Then the receiver at the other end was picked up, and Peter Ash said, “Kensington Four One——”

  “Peter? It’s Norah.”

  A pause.

  “Oh!”

  “I was wondering if you were in.”

  “Yes…. Yes, I am.”

  “You’re not doing anything?”

  “Nothing special. Cooking.”

  A pause.

  “How are things with you?” Brightly.

  “Oh … you know.”

  “I hope I didn’t forget anything when I left.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Well…. That’s all right, then.”

  “Thank you for ringing.”

  A pause.

  “I’ll say good-bye, then.”

  “Good-bye, Norah.”

  Norah Palmer replaced the receiver. Silly bitch; that’s what you get, she thought. She would not ring again.

  Peter Ash, a little disturbed, returned to the kitchen where he had been frying bacon for supper. For the first time he noticed that Lucy was huddled to one end of her gilded cage, out of sorts and lustreless. Pining, he supposed. He would have to ask Mrs. Halliday to find her a mate. Better still, if he could do so without hurting Mrs. Halliday’s feelings, he would give her away. “Silly little bird! It’s not worth it,” he said affectionately to Lucy, and opened the refrigerator for eggs.

  3

  Separate Establishments

  Richard Findlater said that the Avenue Theatre had been torn down and rebuilt in 1905. Then it had been damaged, and again rebuilt, and had taken a new name, The Playhouse. It was no longer a theatre, but a studio for the B.B.C. So much for the Avenue Theatre.

  If they were to find a script of The Forgotten Men, some time (and therefore money) would have to be spent in looking for it. Norah Palmer told Clarissa to type copies of Shaw’s review, and she sent three of these copies to the Head of Drama, with an inter-office memo in which she suggested that the play might fit agreeably into The Fore-Runners. If they could find it, she said, that would be an interesting story for the Publicity Department to exploit. Obviously it was taking a chance to spend money on a play which nobody had yet read, but she reminded the Head of Drama that Granada had done Houghton in their Manchester School series with success, and Houghton was of the same period. There was an excellent chance, she felt, that the play would hold an audience, and as a package, the play and the search for it might do something for the company’s prestige.

  The Head of Drama detached the bottom copy of Shaw’s review, wrote “Could be interesting” on Norah’s memo, and passed it to the Programme Controller. The Programme Controller detached the second copy, wrote “I agree” on Norah’s memo, and sent the memo and the top copy of the review to Mr. P., the Chairman of the company. That was because it was well known within the company that everything had to go to Mr. P. in the end. He had ordered the company’s head designer to copy Harry Truman’s “The buck stops here,” on to a deckled card, and kept it on his desk. The company was Mr. P’s. kingdom, and nothing could be done in it unless he said, Le roy le veult. On working days, he arrived at the office at eight-thirty in the morning, and he left at seven-thirty in the evening, after which, it was said, he and Mrs. P. watched the television until broadcasting ended, and went to bed. Norah Palmer’s memo and the review by Shaw took six minutes of Mr. P’s. attention. He wrote, “Yes” in thick blue pencil on the memo, and sent it back down the chain of command.

  When it reached the Head of Drama, it stopped. The Head of Drama gave Norah Palmer a buzz. “Just got the green light on your Forgotten Men,” he said.

  A week had passed. Fred was dead and eaten, and Norah Palmer had begun to think that she might, without too much loss of face, telephone Peter Ash some evening. She had forgotten The Forgotten Men. “The play Shaw liked,” said the Head of Drama.

  “Oh … I’d better do something about it, then.”

  “Sooner the better. It’s just the sort of thing His Nibs will keep asking about.”

  Where did one start? Her Assistant? Norah Palmer had an Assistant as well as a Secretary. The Secretary looked after Norah Palmer, and the Assistant looked after plays.

  You may think that it was Norah Palmer who looked after plays, and so (ultimately) it was, but there were so many plays, and company policy was that every play had to have a reading. However unpromising it might appear, even if it were only thirteen pages of long-hand, written in pencil on lined paper, the play must be read, a report made on it, and the report-card filed. Fifty unsolicited plays a week, together with the real plays commissioned on synopses through agents, and the proof or advance copies of novels which might (somebody had thought) be adapted into plays—one couldn’t expect Norah Palmer to lose herself in dealing with such a mélange. So her Assistant sorted the plays and novels, and sent them out to readers, and read the readers’ reports, and, if a reader’s report were to suggest that some day and after much work a television play might be found in what he had been given to read, then the Assistant would read it as well, and make a report of his own to Norah Palmer, and also a number of digests of the plot. Of course, the company’s reader would already have digested the plot once, but his digest (company procedure stated) should be not less than five paragraphs, otherwise it was felt that the reader did not earn his two and a half guineas. Norah’s Assistant digested the reader’s digest into four paragraphs for Norah Palmer, and into three paragraphs for the Head of Drama, and into two paragraphs for the Programme Controller, who would send the final digest of one paragraph on to Mr. P., so that he might write on it, “Yes” or “No”.

  Norah Palmer’s Assistant was a young man named Aubrey. The description of his functions as an Assistant might suggest that Aubrey spent his working life in a froth of reading, filing and digesting, but in fact the readers very seldom liked anything well enough to recommend it, so that for hours at a stretch Aubrey had nothing to do but sit at his desk wishing that Norah Palmer would break a leg. It was she who had the interesting job, he who did the drudgery. Norah Palmer conferred with writers and directors, helping to turn what might begin as no more than an idea on a sheet of paper into a working script. Norah Palmer took rising young novelists out to lunch while Aubrey had a salad round the corner. Aubrey was no more than a sieve. Sometimes an interesting novel or a genuine original like Mr. Biston might find its way to him. If so, it passed through him and on to Norah Palmer, for her to develop, since that was the nature of a sieve; only the rubbish remained with Aubrey, to be classified, recorded and returned.

  Though he might cut a dash at a theatrical party as a man of power, though he might remark lightly, “Oh, have you? Do you? Why don’t you send it along, and we’ll have a l
ook at it?”, Aubrey knew well enough that he was in a dead-end job. “Mr. P. won’t let me get any further,” he would remark late in the evening to his closest friends, “I know that well enough,” as if Mr. P., permissive enough to others, had developed an obsessive interest in keeping Aubrey where he was, as if every morning Mr. P. would ask his secretary, “How far did Aubrey get yesterday?” and then spend the next ten minutes pushing him back.

  So that it was bitter for Aubrey, who greatly enjoyed the feeling that he moved among theatricals, that his acquaintance with actors and actresses had a high rate of turnover. Actors are predisposed to friendliness with anyone who might be a “contact”; they have to be. Aubrey could not engage them; he had no parts in his gift; but he worked in the Script Department of a television company, and every young actor and actress is writing, or thinking of writing, a play. Actors out of work write plays; actors in long runs write plays; actors in hospital write plays; understudies, sitting alone in empty dressing-rooms, scribble away at plays, packed with the strongest scenes for young men and women of talent, glittering with dialogue far wittier than the distorted crackling they hear over the tannoy as they write. Most of these plays, sketchily adapted for television, would be sent eventually to Aubrey; there was a direct statistical correlation between the number of parties Aubrey went to in a month and the number of manuscripts that arrived in the office. And Aubrey would send the plays out to be read, and file away the readers’ reports, and return the plays with the most engaging and graceful little notes in the world. For the rest of the time, he sat around. Even the intensity of his wish that Norah Palmer would break a leg was weakened by his conviction that Mr. P. would not allow Aubrey to take over her job.