The Birdcage

by Marcia Willett

  ‘Well, that’s fair enough when you’re on holiday. I expect she’s enjoying a break from the twins.’

  He hesitated, about to observe that Guy seemed very proud of his children, realizing that this might be a painful topic of conversation for Tilda. He liked Guy, found his keen wit very amusing, but he sensed a well-controlled personality firmly banked down beneath the quiet, polite exterior. It would be difficult to get close to him. Gemma, with her open, friendly, flirtatious ways, was so startlingly different that Piers wondered how they’d ever found any common ground on which to begin a relationship. He understood that, rather like Tilda and David, they’d grown up together so this must mean that they knew each other pretty well, but he’d been aware of some undercurrent that made him feel uneasy.

  ‘Busy day?’ enquired Tilda, standing up to pour herself a glass of milk.

  Piers forgot about Guy and Gemma, swallowed the last of his coffee and glanced at his watch. ‘Pretty standard. I shall be in the office this morning but I’ve got a survey to do on a house in Lynton after lunch. It shouldn’t take long, and then I’m going on to an equestrian property over near Exford. Quite an interesting problem with a right-of-way, I gather.’

  Jake began to chunter, waving his fists, and Tilda sat down again, murmuring to him, spinning one of the little toys that were strung across his chair. Watching her, Piers had a recollection of Sue, sitting at this same table, feeding David. A wrenching misery twisted his heart and, sensing some change in the atmosphere, Tilda looked across at him questioningly. They did not speak but a wave of awareness passed between them, as though each acknowledged the other’s sadness and was comforted. Tilda gave the toy another twirl and picked up her glass.

  ‘Did you notice anything odd about Felix last night?’

  As a change of direction it was effective. Piers hesitated in the act of piling his breakfast things together and frowned.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, he was kind of distrait, wasn’t he? Like he was listening to something we couldn’t hear. It was so real that I found myself wondering if I could hear Jake crying. He had an abstracted look about him.’

  Piers put his porridge bowl on the draining board, his cup and saucer beside it.

  ‘I thought he was a little . . . distracted.’ He gave a kind of mental shrug: raising his eyebrows, turning down the corners of his mouth. It was a familiar expression that Tilda knew was not dismissive.

  ‘I felt it was more than that,’ she insisted. ‘There was something almost . . . well, fey about him.’

  He turned to look at her. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  She ignored the irritation in his voice; just as she recognized the facial shrug for what it concealed, she knew that his irritation covered a similar sense of anxiety. ‘I just feel worried about him, that’s all. It was rather like you hear about people who have this premonition that some disaster’s going to happen. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ He sounded cross. ‘Are you telling me that you think something might have happened to him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She stared up at him, the dark blue eyes wide with anxiety. ‘I don’t know what I mean. It was just a feeling that he knew that something was going to happen.’

  Piers’ irritability increased. ‘You realize that I’m going to have to phone him now? Although I don’t know what on earth I shall say to him at this time of the morning. We never speak much before half-past nine and I don’t want him to think we’re fussing about him. He’d hate that.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Tilda bit her lip. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing. Honestly, it’s probably just me being peculiar.’

  ‘Very likely it is; but he has just had major surgery and you’ve put a doubt in my mind.’ Piers hesitated, remembering the drive back to Dunster and his father’s last words to him. Panic edged in, quickening his pulse. ‘He was a bit . . . quiet.’

  ‘I’ll phone him,’ said Tilda quickly. ‘I’ll say that I’ve got to come into Dunster and can I take him out for coffee. How about that?’

  ‘And given that we were there on Saturday morning,’ Piers still sounded irritable, ‘what would you be going for?’

  ‘I’ll think of something. You can give me details about that book and I’ll go and see Adrian. Anyway, Felix won’t ask. He’s not like that.’

  She grinned at him and his irritation dissolved: he couldn’t resist Tilda’s smile.

  ‘Well, telephone me at the office as soon as you’ve spoken to him.’ He bent to kiss the top of her head, waggled his fingers at Jake and went out.

  ‘He gets rattled,’ Tilda told Jake, ‘but he doesn’t like anyone to know.’

  She sat with both elbows resting on the table, the glass held between her hands, and fought down her desolation. Sitting in this familiar kitchen, looking upon a scene that she had known all her life, sometimes made things worse. The Welsh dresser held china that had belonged to four different generations of women: an oval willow-pattern Wedgwood dish, more than a hundred years old, sat elegantly beside a stylish piece by Clarice Cliff whilst an art deco dinner plate, octagonal in red and orange, nudged a primly pretty Royal Doulton cereal bowl. On a lower shelf Peter Rabbit jostled the mice of Brambly Hedge and Tilda’s blue and white Spode mugs hung in a row above the large breakfast cup that Piers used for his coffee. At one end of the large square table newspapers and magazines, letters and bills were divided roughly into two piles. The notice-board on the door of the big, walk-in larder had notes and photographs pinned to it, various garments hung on the airer over the Aga, and Joker’s bean bag still lay beside it, beneath the window.

  The kitchen looked west towards Dunkery and east into the garth. From her chair at the table, Tilda could see the windows of Piers’ study and the well into which David had always threatened to throw her when she got stroppy. They’d ridden their bicycles over the cobbles, shouting and squabbling, and later, much later, she’d sat here talking to Sue while David fiddled with the engine of his latest car in the open-fronted barn. It seemed impossible that he wouldn’t stroll in now, as he’d done then, throwing himself down on a chair, tilting it on to its back legs – ‘Don’t do that!’ Sue would cry – telling them jokes, teasing his father. He would listen intently to small anecdotes, helping the teller to embellish the story – ‘What, really ugly? Seriously ugly? Bulldog-eating-a-wasp ugly?’ – whilst eating a biscuit, cutting a piece of cake, never quite motionless. He’d given the impression of always being tensed for action and Tilda missed his vitality, his insouciance, though she still felt the backwash of that love of life with which he’d imbued their relationship.

  It got her up on to her feet, now, blinking the tears from her eyes as she cleared the table. Talking to Jake whilst she stacked the dishwasher, which Sue had installed, going through to the scullery to set the washing machine in action, Tilda wondered how she might earn a living.

  ‘I don’t want to leave Michaelgarth,’ she’d explained to Piers at the weekend, ‘and I certainly don’t want to let anyone else look after Jake yet, but I need to know where I’m going.’

  Piers thought about and rejected several suggestions. ‘You know that it was my grandparents who turned Michaelgarth into one property,’ he’d said at last. ‘The hall naturally divides the house into the two wings and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t convert it back again.’

  ‘But I like it the way it is,’ she’d said. ‘Unless you’d rather . . . ?’

  ‘No, no,’ he’d said quickly. ‘I’m very happy. But there might come a time when you need more privacy.’

  She’d shaken her head quickly. ‘It’s not that. It’s just I need something to concentrate on. I want something to work for.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ he’d said at once – and she’d known that he was thinking about Sue leaving him; the emptiness echoing in the old house without her life-force to fill it to the brim with energy. Like her son, Sue was always busy, never still: always with a new idea,
never without an opinion. They could be exhausting people but, with them around, life was never dull and Tilda was learning that it took time to adapt to a different pace.

  Tilda could see that Piers had not only adjusted to being alone but had created his own rhythm. Despite his natural grief for the loss of his son, there was nothing sad about Piers – yet Tilda knew that there was something unresolved between him and Felix; something that preyed on his peace of mind and destroyed his tranquillity. David had dismissed it as a simple lack of communication.

  ‘It’s a generation thing,’ he’d said. ‘They’re all so buttonedup. It’s not done to show emotion or discuss things. Fathers and sons and that stuff.’

  ‘But Felix isn’t like that,’ she’d said. ‘Not really. Nor is your father.’

  ‘Not with you,’ he’d said. ‘But you’re not their son, are you?’

  ‘But you are,’ she’d said.

  ‘Oh, I just won’t let them get away with it, that’s all,’ he’d answered with the confidence of youth. ‘Life’s too short.’

  It had been one of his favourite sayings: with that phrase he’d refused to let resentment or anger or disappointment cloud his optimism or corrode his goodwill. How prophetically he’d spoken!

  Swallowing hard, Tilda glanced at the clock and went to the telephone. Felix answered almost immediately and she gave a quick gasp of relief. She explained her mission, arranged to meet him at half-past ten, hung up and immediately telephoned Piers to tell him that all was well. Collecting Jake she went upstairs to get them both ready for their date with Felix.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Earlier, down at the cottage, the sun was already shining into the small paved area as Guy carried his coffee outside and sat at the green-painted, cast-iron table, his eyes turned seawards, Bertie curled at his feet. Thick soft mist drifted gently above the silvery water, fingering the fringes of the little fields, dissolving and shredding as the sun drew it upwards. The luscious dew-soaked meadows spread fan-wise round the bay edged all about by woody hills and tiny villages to the east: Bossington, Allerford and Selworthy, still folded in the shadow of Bossington Hill. He heard the stutter of a blackbird’s warning call in the coombe behind him, followed by the quarrelling of harsh-voiced jays, and breathed a great sigh of quiet delight.

  This week, dropping suddenly as an unexpected gift from nowhere after an arrangement to collect a boat from Falmouth had fallen through, was a real bonus. It was Gemma who had suggested Exmoor, telephoning around her friends until she found that the Hamiltons had a last-minute cancellation, and he was looking forward to a few days at sea on this coast. He’d sold the boat, a Hurley 26, to Matt some months earlier and an offer to sail in her had been made along with the deal: Guy suspected that Matt would be a pleasant, quiet companion, not one of those endless chatterers who drove him mad. He’d never been able to explain his deep-down need for solitude: for periods of silence away even from those he loved best. He’d managed it at school with difficulty and only then with the connivance of his own twin brother, Giles. Later he’d started his small business – a yacht brokerage – and when the opportunity had arisen to collect a boat from down in the Med, he’d seized it without a second thought. Perhaps, once he was married, he should have explored other aspects of the business but Gemma seemed content with their rather unorthodox life and rarely complained. As a member of a naval family she was accustomed to the idea of separation; nevertheless he’d expected a change of attitude with the arrival of the twins.

  Stretching his legs in the sunshine, smoothing Bertie’s head which rested against his knee, Guy felt a warmth of gratitude towards his pretty, good-tempered wife: presently he would take up a mug of coffee for her. He looked again towards the sea, frowning a little, watching for any evidence of a breeze as the sun climbed higher, burning the glistening drops of moisture from the green leaves of the fuchsia bushes, and warming the damp rocky outcrops. After a while he stood up and went back into the cottage to make some more coffee.

  Upstairs, beneath the thin cotton sheet, Gemma turned and dozed, half-consciously listening for the early-morning sounds of the twins. Reaching sleepily across the empty spaces of the bed she realized that Guy had already risen, remembered where she was and sighed pleasurably to herself. Soon he would bring her coffee but meanwhile she could relax and plan her day. There were several old friends she could look up, places to visit; she began to plot carefully so that the truth might be told – but not necessarily all of it. She’d learned the art of throwing a little dust in everyone’s eyes so that nobody could be absolutely certain where she might have been at any one time.

  ‘I was having lunch with Sophie, darling – or was it tea? D’you know, I simply can’t remember which but, anyway, she sent you her love . . .’

  Oh, she knew it was dangerous – Gemma shivered instinctively, pulling the sheet a little closer – but then that was the whole point of this delightful game. Just as Guy needed those periods of solitude, sitting on a boat somewhere at sea alone, so she needed the forbidden excitement of the chase: those electrifying moments of awareness, the eye-meets and apparently casual introductions. These made her feel twice as alive and, afterwards, she was filled with a glorious sense of well-being. Of course, Guy had never suspected a thing – again that tiny shiver of fear prickled her warm skin – but there was no reason why he should. It made no difference at all to their marriage apart from lending it an extra dimension which, she told herself, was a plus factor. These tiny excursions kept her happy and lent a glow to her relationship with Guy.

  She loved him, of course she loved him, there was no question of that: those others were simply a rather delicious taste of icing on a very good cake and it was nonsense to suggest otherwise; and, anyway, she’d never been able to understand what all the fuss was about when it came to seizing a few moments of fun. It would be different, of course, if she were to start a long-term, serious affair, but that was never in question although there was always the chance that one of these brief meetings might lead on to something more serious. Her mother had begun to talk about it once, beginning to relate something that had happened to her when she was young, but Gemma had stopped her.

  ‘Too much information, Ma,’ she’d said, embarrassed – and, truth to tell, very slightly frightened. Had she suspected something? Gemma shrugged. Even if she had, Ma would never speak about it to anyone else.

  The door opened and Guy came in carrying a mug of coffee. She pretended to stretch sleepily and felt his light touch on her shoulder: hidden beneath the sheet Gemma’s mouth curled into a smile.

  ‘Coffee,’ he said. ‘It’s a fantastic morning though we could do with a bit more wind. There’s hardly a breath at the moment.’

  Still hidden from sight, Gemma’s eyes opened warily.

  ‘Does that mean you won’t be able to sail?’ Her voice was lazily concerned, merely faintly anxious that he should miss a day at sea, nothing more.

  ‘Oh, we’ll go.’ He sounded confident. ‘We’ve got an engine, of course, but no-one wants to use an engine if they can sail. We’ll probably pick up a bit of breeze once we’re out in the Channel.’

  ‘I expect so.’ She sat up, the sheet sliding away from her, reaching for the mug. ‘Anyway, you’ll be able to keep in touch. I shan’t worry about you if you just let me know you’re OK and when you’re getting in so that I can meet you. Or will Matt drop you off?’

  ‘Probably. I don’t know yet. We might go into the Ship for a pint and some supper. You could come down and join us. Just remember to keep your mobile switched on, that’s all.’

  ‘I do generally.’ He didn’t see her swift, private grin. ‘I think it’s more likely that I’m out of signal or something when you can’t get hold of me. Pass me my cigarettes, darling, would you? Thanks.’

  She inhaled luxuriously, smiling at him, eyes narrowed against the smoke, her unclothed body posed comfortably but slightly suggestively against the pillows. Guy turned away wishing, as he sometimes
did, that she was less obvious: more modest. Just occasionally he would have preferred her to be interestingly unavailable – not quite so predictably up for it – yet even as he thought it he cursed at himself for being an ungrateful fool.

  ‘Matt should be here soon if we’re to catch the tide,’ he said casually. ‘I’d better get my stuff together and have some breakfast. Will you be down or do you want to have a lazy morning in bed?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll be down,’ she told him. ‘Perhaps I’ll come and see you off.’

  She knew before he spoke what his answer would be.

  ‘No, don’t bother,’ he said. ‘It’s simply not worth it. By the way, don’t forget that Bertie will need a walk. I’ve given him a little run down the road but it’ll do him good to stretch his legs.’

  He smiled at her before he went downstairs, reminding himself how lucky he was – that it was very touching that she liked to know where he was and that he was OK.

  Gemma watched him go, smoking her cigarette reflectively. She knew that he hated any kind of public demonstrations of affectionate farewells but she’d made the offer: now she could think about the rest of the day ahead. As she pushed back the sheet she chuckled to herself: thank goodness for the mobile telephone. Matt arrived as she was pulling a T-shirt over her head and she quickly fastened her shorts and went downstairs.

  They were laughing together, easy and relaxed, Guy towering over the shorter, stockier and much older man who turned as Gemma came into the room.

  Guy saw that Matt was clearly rather pleased if surprised by her kiss and felt the usual mix of irritation and resignation. He’d hated that easy familiarity with which she greeted virtual strangers – kissing them as though they were old friends, touching them lightly – and it had taken several years and a great measure of self-control to learn to accept it as part of her character. Although he knew that it meant no more – probably less – than the caress with which she now greeted Bertie, he could not quite control that twinge of fastidiousness that reacted against such gratuitous displays of affection. Matt was watching her with admiration and Guy frowned slightly as he picked up his sail-bag.