The Birdcage

by John Bowen

  Norah Palmer knew that Aubrey was bored, and often she thought that, if she were not so busy, she would try to find him something interesting to do. There was even a company directive to executives which instructed them to “bring on” their staff. Norah’s staff consisted of Aubrey, Clarissa and the readers. One couldn’t “bring on” readers, and Clarissa was engaged to be married, so she’d better make a start with Aubrey. Perhaps The Forgotten Men might give her the occasion. Since Mr. P. was interested, she herself would have to supervise the project, but there was no reason why Aubrey shouldn’t do the leg-work. Aubrey’s stall was next to her own; the distinction between their offices was marked by hers being nine feet wide and his only five, and by the fact that the sliding panel in the wall of frosted glass between them could be opened from her side, but not from his. Norah opened it, and Aubrey looked round guiltily from the Daily Express; he wished she’d knock. “Can you come in, please?” she said.

  Aubrey left his stall, and came into hers. Norah said, “Aubrey dear, I’m trying to trace a play. It was done in 1904 at a Tuesday matinée.”

  “British Drama League.”

  It is important when dealing with subordinates never to show impatience, particularly if one is a woman and the subordinate is a man, even more particularly if one read English at Cambridge and the subordinate left school at seventeen to work in his uncle’s Travel Agency. If Aubrey were quick-witted enough to have realized that she herself must already have thought of the British Drama League, and sympathetic enough to the feelings of others to know that she would feel irritated by his not assuming at once that she had done so, then he would not be a subordinate. So she would repress impatience. Sensible people, skilled in the science of human relations, never resented being told what they already knew; they used it to build confidence. “Yes, of course, Aubrey,” Norah Palmer said. “What a good idea! They’d know, wouldn’t they?”

  “Bound to. They’ll probably have a script in the library.”

  “Do you think they will?”

  “No harm in asking, anyway. I suppose we’re members?”

  “Yes we are.” The company contributed annually to the funds of the British Drama League. “Look, I’ll give you all the stuff about it. The Forgotten Men, it’s called. By Edward Laverick.”

  “Who’s——”

  “We don’t know. We asked Richard Findlater, but he’d never heard of the man, so we don’t think Edward Laverick can have written anything else. The Forgotten Men is a play Squad found—at least he didn’t find the play exactly; he just found a review of it. By Shaw. I wouldn’t ask you, only Mr. P’s. begun to take an interest.”

  “Oh!”

  “Are you all caught up in work, or can you cope?” But Norah did not wait for a reply to this question. Nothing Aubrey was doing could be important. “Better go round than phone, wouldn’t you think?” she said. “Unless you want to phone for an appointment; I’m not sure how they do things. If they have a copy of the script, we’d like to borrow it. I suppose one can. It’s not like the British Museum. I mean, we’d send somebody there to copy it all out by hand if we had to, but it would be a terrible bore.”

  Aubrey wondered whom, in that case, they would send to “copy it all out by hand”. Probably Aubrey. Norah said, “Clarissa’s got a copy of Shaw’s review. You can get the name and the date and all that sort of thing from that. Will you let me know as soon as you have something?” Then Aubrey was back in his stall.

  Well, he was not busy; nobody could say that. He had his own work to do, of course. He had been intending to write to Peter L. Bartlett (1959) Inc., when he’d finished with the paper. He supposed that could wait. Peter L. Bartlett (1959) Inc. was not likely to be discouraged by a delay in reply, when seventeen rejections so far had not discouraged him. Mr. Bartlett was a prolific writer of no talent. He was one of the department’s regulars, what Clarissa called “one of the nut cases”—though Norah said that his eccentricities of presentation came only from never having gone any further than the “Making a good Appearance With Your MS” lesson in his correspondence course in Writing For Profit. His letter paper was headed, “Peter L. Bartlett (1959) Inc. Member of the Screenwriters’ Guild. Arts Theatre Club. New Watergate Theatre Club. Royal Court Society. P.E.N. Club. Authors’ Society.” This took up the top third of the paper. The bottom third was occupied with an immense printed signature, with “PETER L. BARTLETT” below, for those who could not read cursive. Below that was, “Peter L. Bartlett, Registered Member of the Agents’ Association. Sole Authorised Agents for Peter L. Bartlett.” The body of Mr. Bartlett’s letters was crammed into the middle third of the paper, so that they were written in a style a great deal more concentrated than that of his dialogue, which ran to remarks like, “Oh God! What have I done to deserve this?” and “You fool! Couldn’t you see?” and “Felicity, my dear, a great many years before you were even a twinkle in your mother’s eye, I thought I was in love.” The company had never bought any of Mr. Bartlett’s plays, and Aubrey did not think they ever would. Going to see the B.D.L., he had to admit, would be at least a more interesting way to spend the afternoon than drafting his usual Bartlett letter. Aubrey wanted to do new things. He wanted responsibility, and all that sort of thing; of course he did. It was just that being out of the habit of it, he was a little reluctant to start. Anyway, trust Norah to shove the drudgery of this Laverick business on to him. The moment it began to be interesting, she’d take it away again.

  *

  Peter Ash had to get used to a new pattern of eating; that was the difference he first noticed about life on his own. At thirty-nine, one has to watch one’s diet. Peter Ash did not intend to go to a gymnasium, where members of the public might recognize him, and snigger; it was difficult enough to do quite ordinary things like travelling on buses, without that. Besides, he had heard that one got very little good from gymnasia; the instructors there, it was said, did little but look at themselves in full-length mirrors. Peter Ash would have found it depressing to lift weights in the company of a large number of middle-aged gentlemen in the almost-altogether. No, he preferred to play a little squash when he could find the time, and to watch (as he had so often in the past) his diet. At thirty-nine, one accepts a fullness in the figure, but he did not intend to get fat. During the first few days of his new life, he had found in himself a tendency to eat too much. It was a great trap. Reading a book at the kitchen table, one did not notice that one had taken a second slice of bread. Humiliating to remember that, when Norah Palmer had telephoned, he had been frying bacon. Fried foods were easy to prepare, but they were death to a diet. Peter Ash never ate more than a bowl of soup or a salad for his evening meal now, and took his main meal in the middle of the day. He had cut out bread entirely—and potatoes—and pasta—and rice—oh, and anything like cake or biscuits, and sugar in his coffee. But he had kept in alcohol, because after all one couldn’t let a diet interfere with one’s social life, and he wasn’t so much trying to reduce as to stay more or less as he was. Peter Ash disliked really fat men, and pitied bald men. Without being in any way neurotic about it, far less narcissistic (Peter Ash had known plenty of narcissistic actors, who had been neurotic about their hair and their weight, and all that sort of thing), one had to pay some attention to one’s looks when one appeared in full colour and much larger than life in over seven thousand provincial and suburban cinemas, to say nothing of the late-night showing at the Academy.

  Why had Norah Palmer telephoned, since she hadn’t, as it seemed, had anything particular to say? Lonely, he supposed. Well, he had moods of loneliness too—or he would have, if he allowed himself to have them—but all that would pass. Let her do as he did. Let her spend the days at work, conferring here, deciding there, visiting a musician at his home, a painter in his studio, juggling the merits of the newest cathedral and the oldest O.M. Then in the evenings, let her go with a friend to the theatre or a foreign film, or to a party or out to dinner; let her watch television (since that was her
job, wasn’t it?—television?) or read a book. There was always plenty to do. Friends of Peter Ash’s whom he hardly knew were asking him to their parties nowadays. There were never fewer than three cards on his mantel. He had no doubt it was the same for Norah Palmer.

  He was free. He could go out when he liked, stay out for as long as he liked. He could meet strangers again. Not married couples, not groups, but the solitary stranger at a party with whom one feels an instant sympathy, whom one would like to know better, if only to find out how deep the sympathy really goes. But Norah Palmer had never held with inviting strangers to dinner. She always said it was not fair to one’s other dinner guests to land them for an evening with someone encountered casually at a party. In any case Peter Ash had discovered that even the most sympathetic acquaintance did not prosper at a party when one knew that at any time Norah Palmer might be ready to go home. Now, after nine years, Peter Ash was able to exchange telephone numbers with strangers at parties, even if he himself had no intention of phoning, and was almost never in to be phoned. Why, he could even leave a party with a stranger if he wished. He could say, “Are you going my way? Can I give you a lift?” and they would not be three in the taxi.

  One evening he found himself sitting in one corner of a large room, with his shoes off, listening to a steel band from Barbados. The occasion was a flat-warming, given by—he was not quite sure, but knew that there were three of them sharing. He had been made to take his shoes off because the carpet was new. Nobody was being allowed to wear shoes. Somewhere off the hall there was a bedroom deep in shoes. Peter Ash had arrived early, and would have to leave late because his shoes were in the bottom layer. If a volcano were suddenly to erupt in the Old Brompton Road and bury them all in lava, archaeologists of the thirty-fifth century would find Peter Ash’s shoes last. Brown suede shoes. All the windows were open, and the throbbing of petrol tins could be heard, Peter Ash supposed, by most of South Kensington, but since most of South Kensington was already at the party, this was of no consequence. The three sharing had done things well. They had provided cup for their guests, a great bowl of it, continually replenished, and placed well out of the range of the Barbados Steel Band, from whose bodies, as they drummed, sweat was sprayed like the profuse spitting of a great Shakespearian actor. Cherries, peaches and slices of pineapple had been dropped arbitrarily into the cup with a piece of foil from a packet of mentholated cigarettes, and ice, and a great many strawberries, which had gone soggy and sunk to the bottom. The liquid itself seemed to be equal parts of hock and Cointreau. The cup was cold, and the glasses were large.

  Peter Ash had been dancing, but now the floor was too crowded for dancing. He had been talking, but the drumming of the steel band was too loud for intelligent conversation to flourish. He had been moving from group to group, but now that more and more people were sitting down, it was not easy to move. It was so hot in the room. They had said, “Come casually,” so he had worn his cashmere pullover, and dared not take it off in case it were stolen. He would take a little more cup, and that would cool him. There was a girl beside him in the corner. She seemed to have been sitting there for some time. “Shall I get you a drink?” he said to the girl.

  “I’m not sure I ought to, if I’m going to get back to the dormy.”

  “Nonsense. It’s only cup. Nothing but ice really. Let me take your glass.” He took the girl’s glass, started to get to his feet, and made the interesting discovery that he couldn’t. He could get so far in a more or less weightless condition, and then gravity would take hold. He decided to stay where he was in free fall. “What dormy?” he said. “What can you mean?—dormy?”

  “Can’t you get up?”

  “It’s rather dark and crowded to be walking through people. I expect there’ll be——”

  “I’ll go if you like.”

  “—somebody with a jug if we wait.”

  “No really.” The girl took both glasses from him. She put one hand on the wall for leverage, began the motion upwards, and stopped. “I say, I can’t get up either,” she said. “It’s not that I’m tiddly or anything, because I’ve only had one. I’m sort of locked.”

  “What dormy?”

  “Look, there’s Sylvia with a jug!” The girl waved violently, and the dregs of her glass hit the wall behind her. Somebody in tight leopard-skin trousers came with a jug. Peter Ash said to the knees of the leopard-skin trousers, “She keeps talking about getting back to the dormy. What does she mean?” The largest of the Barbadeans hit the largest of the petrol tins, and chanted:

  “Hot banana!

  Give the hot banana.

  You give the hot banana to my sis-ter.

  Fifteen pence an hour, buster.”

  “It’s where she sleeps. She’s a policewoman. Having a lovely time, darling?”

  “Fabulous actually.”

  The leopard-skin trousers moved away, and the girl next to Peter Ash said, “Actually it isn’t really a dormitory, you know. I just call it that. It’s the Section House. I share a room with another girl.”

  “My name’s Peter Ash.”

  “I know. I’m a terrific fan of yours actually. You’re always on at our local, and I go every week. Mine’s Bunty Bancroft. Well, that’s my stage name actually. My real name’s Bunty Banks. I changed it. Daddy was livid. It’s all a bit muddley for them at the Section House, because I still get letters for both.”

  “Stage name? But I thought——”

  “Well, I am a policewoman. At least I’m going to be. I’m only in the second year of my probationary period actually. It’s three years altogether. I was at the Central School before. Of Speech and Drama; it’s at Swiss Cottage. Only they threw me out because they said I wasn’t any good. Mummy and daddy hadn’t wanted me to go on the stage at all. They’d really wanted me to be a sort of secretary actually, but I jolly well wasn’t having any of that, because that’s what everybody does. I mean, if you can’t be someone special, you might as well die. So when the Central School threw me out, I thought I’d better do something pretty quickly before they had me in a twin-set learning shorthand, so I joined the Force. It’s just as special as the stage, and I think I’m going to be much better at it, though it was a bit of a sell, because I’ve had to learn shorthand anyway.”

  “Tell me.”

  So Bunty told him about life in Taunton with mummy and daddy, and how she’d felt she simply had to get away somehow. The dancers stopped dancing, and the pairs of shoes grew thinner on the bedroom floor, and Bunty told him how the English mistress at school had encouraged her to work on an audition piece (since it was obvious she wasn’t going to be bright enough for a university), and mummy and daddy hadn’t liked it at all, but wouldn’t stand in her way, and she’d gone up to London on a scorching day, and done a bit from The Balcony Scene in Romeo and Juliet and a bit from A Hundred Years Old and a bit of her own choice, which had been from a play written by the English mistress actually, and never performed, except at school. And the Central School had accepted her, and she’d been so happy, and daddy had turned up absolutely trumps, and told her that, if that was what she really wanted to do, he’d pay the fees and let her have a small allowance, and mummy had lent her a hundred pounds from mummy’s private account in the Post Office, and had given her the most shaming bits of advice.

  The Barbados Steel Band took their money, and shouldered their petrol cans, and drove home to Westbourne Grove in the back of a greengrocer’s van, and Bunty told Peter Ash about sharing a basement with a girl from Iceland and with Mags, who didn’t wash, but was absolutely brilliant. And how it had turned out that she had no vocal range to speak of, and how everyone, during the first term, had said she must practice and practice, and the Voice would come, and had continued to say it during the second term, and, at the end of the third term, they had called her in to the office and said it wouldn’t be fair to let her go on. And how the same thing had happened to one of the boys, and how they had both cried and assured each other that they woul
dn’t give up the struggle, and how she’d taken him to tea at the Ritz, and now she was in the Force, and he was doing jolly well as a Floor Manager with the B.B.C.

  The litter of fruit and foil sank to the bottom of the cup, and was not refloated, and Bunty told of her application to the Force, and how she hadn’t had to take the dictation exam because she already had English at “O” Level, and how they’d sent her to a place outside Coventry, where she couldn’t understand what any of the locals was saying, but had graduated successfully from that course anyway, and then she had done a month at Bishopsgate. And how mummy was horrified at this turn of events, but daddy was rather pleased actually, except that they’d had a little chat during her first week’s leave, and he’d told her he hoped she wouldn’t become unwomanly. Bunty told Peter Ash about her judo lessons, and first aid, and swimming (except that she was already a Bronze Medallist), and even firing a revolver, not that she anticipated ever having to do so in real life, but it was all part of the course. And she told him how much she earned (£540 a year, with a London Allowance of £20, which was rather more than most secretaries got actually, and would go up to £875 in nine years), and about living at the Section House, and going out on duty just like anybody else, probationer or not. She told him about children missing from home, and trying to persuade the Irish not to go in for prostitution, and her secret ambition that one day she would be the decoy for someone really big, because there was a girl who’d camped out in a caravan in Dorset for months to catch some coiners.