A Summer Bird-Cage (7 page)

‘Who?’ I said, incredulously.

‘Your sister and two men.’

‘How the hell did they get in?’

‘I don’t know.’ Simone was being offhand about the situation.

‘Oh damn,’ I said. ‘I’d just got so nicely settled down.’

‘Don’t go then,’ said Simone.

By this time everyone was looking up from their books and staring at us, which didn’t trouble her, though it troubled me, so I got up to go. I wanted to take all my books with me, as it had taken me hours to assemble them, so I had to write slips out for each one of them, under the eye of the librarian, who must have known that I had approximately three times my quota of books in my room. I was afraid Louise, never very assiduous in her pursuit of me, would have gone by the time I got there. It was a good quarter-mile of corridor to my room, and on the way I began to grow conscious of my early-morning-in-college, un-made-up, bedroom-slipper, academic look. I was even more conscious of it when I arrived, pushed open the door, and saw Louise and her two men. It was a sunny day and my room looked delightful, full of dust, flowers, books and unmade bed. Louise was sitting on the window-seat, in white trousers and a white shirt, and the two men were standing around in the fireplace region. They all started as I came in: they had obviously been talking about something. I recognized Stephen, but I had never met John before, though I knew who he was.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Just visiting,’ said Louise. She didn’t move a muscle. The sun was shining through the window into the room: she looked dazzling, as though the light were shining through her too.

‘Just visiting. We thought we’d call on you.’

‘Thanks a lot,’ I said, and put my pile of books down on the top of my desk.

‘I trust that we haven’t interrupted your studies?’ said Stephen.

‘Not half,’ I said. ‘I was just settling down for a quiet day in the library.’

‘On a day like this?’

‘It’s always like this at exam time,’ I said.

‘You haven’t met John, have you, Sarah?’ said Louise, still from her distant point of sunny vantage. ‘This is John Connell. John, this is my little sister Sarah.’

‘How do you do,’ I said.

‘How do you do,’ he said.

You couldn’t deny that he was stunning. He seemed to fill the room, and Stephen looked more nebulous than ever by his side.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘shall we all have a cup of coffee?’

‘I thought we’d go out,’ said Louise.

‘Come to that,’ I said, ‘how did you get in?’

‘Through the back door.’

‘Well, I hope nobody saw you. My name will be mud.’ Men weren’t allowed in college during the mornings.

‘Oh, nobody saw us,’ said Louise, ‘I know my way around here.’

They all looked so odd in my room, so much older than anyone I ever remembered having been in it before, so much older and so much smarter.

‘Where are we going out to?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. In Stephen’s car. To the country.’

‘Where on earth have you all come from?’

‘Oh, from London. It seemed a nice day to go out.’

‘Do you really want me to come?’

‘Yes, of course we do. That’s why we came to pick you up.’

‘Oh.’ I said. ‘Well, if we’re going out I’ll have to change my skirt.’

‘All right,’ said Louise, ‘carry on.’

And they really seemed to be expecting me to carry on, and as I hadn’t the nerve to throw them out in the corridor, apart from the risk of their being discovered there, I did so. I didn’t at all mind taking off my tatty old skirt in front of John, for some reason, possibly because he was an actor and with actors such things hardly register, but I very much minded in front of Stephen. Even though I was wearing a totally opaque black petticoat. They all looked the other way as I got a reasonable skirt out of the wardrobe and put it on: there was something in Stephen’s personality that made any attempt at informality a mockery, even though he himself was ostensibly a Bohemian type, at least in dress and opinion. I simply didn’t know what kind of behaviour he expected from me.

As I brushed my hair and dabbed on a little lipstick, Louise got up and wandered over to my desk, and started reading my essay, the one I had been making notes for in the library. She read the title out aloud: ‘In the
Leviathan
, Hobbes demonstrates nothing adequately except the limitations of his own study-bound conception of human nature.’

‘Well, well, well,’ she said. ‘That’s quite a thing to write about, isn’t it? Where’s the quotation from?’

‘I made it up,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t find anything I wanted to write on, so I made it up.’

‘Oh,’ she said, dryly, ‘it gets you a long way, that kind of thing, writing essays on human nature, you know. You really find an awful lot out, studying other people’s study-bound conceptions of human nature in your own study, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I think you do,’ I said, crossly. I thought it was rather low of her to start taking it out of me for being academic, when she had been through it all herself. And especially mean at exam time. ‘I think I’m going to write rather a good and original essay, if you really want to know.’

‘I’m sure you are,’ she said. ‘I’m sure it’s all very valuable.’

And I am sure I detected a note of wistfulness and nostalgia in her voice at that moment, a nostalgia that she covered up the moment after with, ‘Really, Sarah, do you always leave your underclothes strewn about the room?’

‘I wasn’t expecting visitors,’ I said, pushing a pair of pants under the bed with one foot. Not that I really minded about them. ‘I haven’t time for all that nonsense.’

‘Come on,’ said John, ‘let’s go.’

‘All right. But if anyone sees us, don’t try claiming any acquaintance with me.’

We got out unobserved, fortunately, and found Stephen’s car parked outside. I must confess that it was more the thought of the car that had lured me away from my books than the prospect of Louise’s company. I adore cars. And it really was a most gloriously sunny day: far too good for Hobbes and the college library.

I was hardly surprised at all to see Louise, although it was the first time she had ever visited me in Oxford since she herself went down two summers before. I knew exactly why she had come to see me. There is something about Oxford in the summer that is so entirely undergraduate and nostalgic and enclosed that a visitor feels compelled to establish some contact with the university world: it sucks people in. Uncles look up nephews they had never meant to visit, and passing girls look up long-forgotten men just for the sake of a ride in a punt or tea in a college garden. Having once arrived in Ox, Louise had inevitably come to see me, partly in order to display Stephen and John to me, and partly in order to display me to Stephen and John. For although I knew Louise wasn’t an admirer of mine, I wasn’t too humble to realize that to these three people from London I had the pure virtue of being the real thing, the real student with a real pile of books and a real gown and a real essay to write. It was my place, Oxford, and I was on my own ground, for the only time in the history of my acquaintance with those three.

It was nearly lunch-time and we drove out to eat somewhere out of Oxford. I wanted to go out of the town, as I so rarely had the chance. I thought we would probably go to a pub, but we ended up in rather an expensive hotel just off the road to Banbury. If there is anything that fills me with as much enthusiasm as cars, it is hotels, so I was transported with quiet and concealed joy. We drank a lot of Pimm’s at the bar, and then went and ate a lot of delicious food: Louise always eats an enormous amount and never puts on an ounce. So do I and neither do I. I noticed one curious thing while we were eating: Stephen never seemed to know what to order, and when his food arrived he messed about with it quite horribly, covering it with salt and pepper and French mustard and olive oil, and never more than half-finished anything. He didn’t drink, either: I remember thinking how dreary it must be, to be stone cold sober when everyone else is pleasantly mellow. The talk was quite pleasant: Louise and John talked about the theatre, Stephen and I talked about books and novelists, and so on. Stephen seemed to admire all the people I admired, except for Kingsley Amis. It annoyed me, as I was sure he liked them all for the wrong reasons. He talked about them so professionally, whereas these things were life and death to me. When he said, of a novel I particularly admired, ‘Of course, the whole thing would have been much more effective had he set it in a slightly lower social setting,’ I almost lost my temper, as I am apt to do.

‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘He was writing about those people because those were the people he was writing about, and that’s the end of it.’

‘Oh no it isn’t,’ he said. ‘His ideas would have come across much more clearly had he allowed himself a wider field for contrast.’

‘But it isn’t about ideas, it’s about people,’ I said, crossly.

‘Not about individual people. Only about people as they illustrate a point.’

‘And you think the point could have been better illustrated in another way?’

‘That’s it’

‘But if he’d changed the social setting he’d have changed everything. The problems as well as the ideas, wouldn’t he?’

‘Why would he?’

This professional obtuseness baffled me, and I gave up and went back to my strawberries and cream.

At the end of the meal they asked us if we would have coffee in the garden. It was a lovely garden, with lawns and trees and roses: we sat around dozily in the sun. After a while I began to think it was time I left, as I had to meet someone for tea, so I hinted that I ought to be going.

Louise and I went to the Ladies while Stephen or John or both paid the bill: in the Ladies, as I combed my hair, I said to Louise, ‘Are you working at the moment?’

‘I’ve given up work’ said Louise. ‘It doesn’t get you anywhere. I have other things in hand.’

‘Such as what?’

‘Oh, this and that.’

‘What was your last job?’

‘Advertising.’

‘How deadly.’

‘There are worse things. What are you going to do when you come down?’

‘I haven’t thought.’ And I hadn’t, either. It didn’t seem to matter at the time.

‘It takes a lot of thinking,’ said Louise.

After a pause, I said, ‘It was a lovely meal. I love food.’

‘So do I.’

‘I feel wonderful,’ I said, and meant it. I was extremely happy, all that term, and particularly, that day.

‘You look it,’ said Louise, without looking at me. I was embarrassed by her tone.

‘I wish I could eat like that every day,’ I said. ‘Every day of my life.’

‘Oh, one can’t have everything,’ said Louise. ‘It’s either lovely food or lovely company.’

‘Of course one can have everything,’ I said. ‘Have one’s cake and eat it. I intend to.’

‘I daresay you do,’ she said. ‘So did I.’ She paused, and then said, in a different tone, a tone of intention rather than expectation, ‘and so do I. So do I.’

I didn’t see what she meant. Not for ages. Not until I learned myself how difficult it was to get anything, let alone the everything that is showered on one in garlands and blossoming armfuls until one faces the outside world.

So we drove back to Oxford. I was in the back of the car with John, who asked me some rather intelligent questions about Finals. Like Louise, he wasn’t as dumb as he ought to have been with those looks. Why is Life so unevenly distributed? I was full of envy for those two, or would have been if I hadn’t then been so perpetually full of envy for myself.

Times had certainly changed since then, I reflected, as the bus arrived at our village post-office. For her and for me. Now I was at a loose end and she was married. And moreover I didn’t know any rich men with cars to pass the time away by feeding me in restaurants and driving me round the countryside. I wondered at the skill with which Louise infallibly picked up wealth. I suppose I could have done it once if I had really tried. I used to know a very rich man whose father was something to do with Barclays Bank. But then he was even more boring than Stephen. One can’t have everything.

It was on that bus-ride that I realized that I really would have to get a job. Even Louise had gone into advertising. Although since that meeting in May I don’t think she had worked at all.

The next day I had a letter from Gill. She said that if I was thinking of going to live in London, why didn’t we look for a flat together.

The next day I broached the subject to my mother. Our discussion went along these well-oiled grooves.

ME
: Mummy, I’ve been thinking, I think I might go to London at the end of the week.

MAMA
: [Pause] Oh yes?

ME
: Yes, a friend of mine wants someone to share a flat and I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to . . . 

MAMA
: Well, that sounds a very good idea. Where exactly is this flat?

ME
: Well, we haven’t exactly got one, but I thought I might go and look—it’s easier if you’re on the spot.

MAMA
: Oh yes, I’m sure it is. I hear it’s very difficult to find flats in London these days. me [my heart sinking as I think of adverts, agencies,
Evening Standard
s,
etcetera
]: Oh no, it’s not at all difficult, people get themselves fixed up in no time.

MAMA
: Oh well, I suppose you know better than me. What will you live on while you’re there?

ME
: I’ll get a job. I’ll have to sometime, you know. I’ll write to the appointments board.

MAMA
: Just any sort of job?

ME
: Whatever there is.

MAMA
: Don’t you want a proper
career
, Sarah? I mean to say, with a degree like yours . . . 

ME
: No, not really, I don’t know what I want to do.

MAMA
: I’m not sure I like the idea of your going off all the way to London without a proper job and with nowhere to live . . . still, it’s your own life, I suppose. That’s what I say. No one can accuse me of trying to keep you at home, either of you . . . Who is this friend of yours?