The Birdcage (21 page)

“I’d rather not, if you don’t mind. I’d rather not give you the trouble.”

“But surely you’d
want
us to do it—if we liked it?” She decided to give him more definite encouragement than was usual at this stage. “You know,” she said winningly, “if Bernard Shaw liked it when he saw it, I think you might reasonably assume there’d be something in it to interest us.”

Edward Laverick did not understand how anyone could be so foolish as not to realize that, in that article in the magazine, the writer had not been praising
The Forgotten Men
for its own sake, but using it to beat other plays. But he only said again, “I wouldn’t put you to the trouble.”

Irritated amusement. “It’s no trouble at all. Really it isn’t. It’s what I’m paid for.” They had been talking for twenty minutes, and were no further forward. Clarissa had looked in once, so somebody must be waiting to see her. What next to try? Aubrey had reported that the old man had tried to ask about money, and had been very properly snubbed. It was dangerous to talk of money at this early stage, and arouse hopes that might be disappointed. Norah Palmer wished that the old man had an agent, since agents talked the language of money, and were hardened against disappointment, turning it back outwards as a weapon instead of allowing it to pierce them. This old man, as Norah Palmer clearly saw, was a white-collar C2. His clothes confirmed it. What Aubrey had seen of his home confirmed it. What they knew of his past at the Ministry and the early days at night school, confirmed it. Money made a difference to such people, and to their families. A sudden windfall—£500 to buy a television set,
a fridge, a new washing machine, furniture; by the expenditure of less than £500, C2’s might become CI’s almost overnight. She said, “You know, for a
ninety-minute
play, I think we’d expect to pay …” tasting figures in her mind, moving up from a two hundred and fifty guinea minimum, holding this imaginary money up to the light, weighing, feeling … “in your case … if we really felt we could use the play … perhaps £400?”

“Yes?” It was more than he had expected, more than Gerald had guessed, but if it had been twice as much it would have been only a fist beating on a door already locked.

Norah Palmer said gently, “If you’re really worried about the quality of the writing, you don’t need to be. We do a great deal of rewriting ourselves, and it makes no difference to the fee. I mean, we don’t expect
you
to know how television works. Why should you? That’s our job. If we liked the play, we’d take it over, and work on it until we got it right. We wouldn’t put it out at all if we weren’t satisfied with it, so don’t be embarrassed on that score.”

Edward Laverick stood up, and said. “I’m sorry, miss. You’ve been very kind. I’ve taken up a great deal of your time, I dare say. They’ll be expecting me back at home. My daughter said she’d wait in.” He could see that Norah Palmer was upset, and searched for an explanation that would make her feel better, for she was beginning to wear the expression of a person who has failed through no fault of his own, and feels the unfairness of it. He said, “The way I look at it, it’s private, you see.” She still did not understand. “Even when they did it before, they did it badly,” he said, and Clarissa took him to the lift.

Left alone in her box of light wood and glass, Norah Palmer concluded that he must be even dottier than most
old men, who were dotty enough, as God he knew. The bore of it was that, with so much else to worry her, she would have to find some acceptable way of explaining his dottiness to Mr. P.

*

That Saturday, as on every Saturday, Daphne made up her list of the tins and packets she must buy to carry the household through the week, leaving only perishables for weekday shopping. When the list was made, she said to Edward Laverick, “Drat it, Father! There’s not enough in my bag. Can you lend me a pound to carry me through?” To herself this request sounded a little insincere, which was strange because she was a woman who had the habit of truth, and she had been careful to make sure that there was indeed not enough money in her bag that Saturday.

Edward Laverick looked round for his jacket, but as he picked it up to put his hand in the pocket, Rosemary said, “That’s O.K., Mummy. Here you are. But I want it back, mind,” and gave her mother a pound note.

Edward Laverick looked at Daphne, and she looked back at him, her mouth a little open, vexation and surprise in her eyes. Slowly he began to smile, and the smile passed from father to daughter. Rosemary said, “I don’t know what you two are grinning about. Have I got a smut on my nose?” Daphne began to laugh, and so did Edward. The more Rosemary could not see what was so funny, the more they laughed. Eventually, she just went out and left them, laughing together at the kitchen table.

I
n the end it was Squad Appleby who made matters up between them. “This has gone on
long
enough,” he said. “From all that I hear, your ex-gentleman is just about to go
spectacularly
to the bad, and as for
you
, my love——”

“Oh, Squad, don't! I feel far too frail for moral admonition.”

“—
you
are certainly going to end up in a maisonette in St. John's Wood with your emotionally rapacious mama if I don't do something about it quickly.”

“Is Peter really going to the bad?”

“Well, you know what a gossipy young spark I am. I hear everything sooner or later, because people
will
talk. And from the word that's going round, your ex is
not
discreet in his amours; far from it. There are very strange tales on the grapevine, my love, I'm here to tell you. Unless,” Squad said carefully, “you just don't care any more. Because
I
don't, my love, as well you know. He's nothing to me, your ex-gentleman. He's the sort of man who would cut a lettuce.”

Norah Palmer said, “I suppose I do care a bit. Not in the usual way. I mean, if somebody came along and said he'd been run over by a bus, I don't believe I'd mind much. Like the way you don't mind so much about something's being broken, but hate it to get dirty.”

“And your mama? You know, my love, that you're
welcome to stay here as long as you like. I've never had a lodger so
prompt
with the rent. Only….”

“Yes, it would solve that, I suppose. If it comes to a choice between mother and Peter, I'd rather Peter. And I don't really like living alone.”

“Then would you like me to meddle a little?”

“What makes you think he'll respond?”

“Oh, my dear,” Squad said, “I have an
instinct
about these things. I'd have made a marvellous marriage broker in the seventeenth century. Can't you just see me in something by Wycherley? Supple, a mender of hearts. I'd do it with a stammer and just a hint of syph and get a rave notice in
The Sunday Times
for my restraint.”

“You won't make him think I … I'm in love with him or anything like that?” Norah Palmer said.

“I shan't mention the word.”

“I'm past all that.”

“My love, we all are. One goes
through
that kind of thing, but one couldn't put up with it all one's life.”

*

Mrs. Halliday, when she knew, went out to her brother's pet-shop, and brought back two more lovebirds for the cage in the kitchen. “Quite like old times,” Norah Palmer said.

Peter Ash said, “I've missed you.”

“We'll have to move the sofa to hide that stain on the carpet.”

Norah Palmer moved about the flat like a dog brought home from an extended stay in Kennels, sniffing, wandering, noting what was changed, and welcoming what was still the same. Peter Ash, feeling himself superfluous to this performance, went into the kitchen to make tea.

As they were waiting for it to steep (ten minutes for a good Darjeeling; it was always difficult for Peter Ash to
wait the last three), he said, “I think you'll be interested in the next edition.”

“Yes?”

“I've managed to get Massie Barnard. He'll only be in London thirty-six hours, so we've caught him on the wing. We're going to do him on the stage of the Haymarket, and use hand cameras.” Massie Barnard was an American playwright, who wrote compassionate and violent plays about sexual frustration in Iowa City. Peter Ash said, “I had rather a good idea. I thought I'd try to explore the emotional identity between his work and Forster's. I don't think anybody's done that before. The emotional identity.”

Norah Palmer remembered that, when she and Peter Ash had attended the London production of Mr. Barnard's last play together, she had made some
bon mot
to the effect that Mr. Barnard's characters, being people of limited sensibility, had taken E.M. Forster's “Only connect!” as a literal injunction which could best be obeyed in bed. “Has the tea steeped?” she said.

“I thought if I could manage it in the time, I'd like to get him to make the discovery for himself, and I'd just lead up to it. I thought——”

Norah Palmer interrupted. “Really, my dear, I've hardly had time to sit down,” she said. “Naturally I'm interested in the technicalities of your work, but it's very boring for me if you go on about it all the time. Just let's enjoy our tea for now, shall we?” So Peter Ash shut up, and Norah Palmer sipped her tea in silence.

But all their friends were delighted when they heard that Peter Ash and Norah Palmer were together again. It was, after all, by far the most sensible arrangement.

*

Mr. Massie Barnard was just a little high. “I find”, he had told them, “that the more I work, the more I drink,
and I have done a lot of work today.” They had all laughed at that, and Props had been sent round the corner for ham sandwiches, which Mr. Barnard had refused.

“Nobody will get it,” the producer had said, “but it'll be fun to do,” so Mr. Massie Barnard, whose raw material was violence and pain, sat in an elegant chair on the elegant set of what would once have been called a problem play and is now called “a typical Haymarket success”. Top lighting beat down on Mr. Barnard, and the camera had been sent in close to hold him like a lover, savouring every line on his lined face, every enlarged pore, every wisp of hair at his nostrils and ears. The achievement of which the production team of
The Living Arts
was most proud was its visual interest—“Cinema is images,” the director would often say, “That's what it all comes down to in the end. We're all bloody photographers really.” Now, those of you who have ever visited Photographic Exhibitions, or bought the books recording such Exhibitions, will know that the first prizes are always won by Japanese with photographs of
Tress Reflected In Snow
, and the second prizes by
Old Peasant
. It is possible with top lighting to make almost anyone look like Old Peasant, and Mr. Barnard had put on thirty years as he sweated euphorically under the lights and made sleepy answers to incisive Peter Ash.

“Mr. Forster?” he said. “Well now, his work is very much admired by people I admire. I think Arthur Miller admires his work a great deal.” A pause. “But for myself….” Cigarette smoke expelled, so that it drifted up slowly, putting a thin gauze between Mr. Barnard's eyes and the camera before disappearing altogether through the top of the frame. “Hold it a moment!” said the director. “I want you closer, Jim. I want to get that sort of hooded quality in the eyes.” Mr. Barnard sighed, and paused, and waited for
the next take. “For myself, I just don't
dig
Mr. Forster,” he said, italicizing the word delicately, “I have genuinely tried to dig him, but I guess his writing is too old world for me.”

“You mean you think it's artificial?”

“That's what I said, so I suppose I must mean it.” The director wished that celebrities wouldn't do this to Peter Ash. They didn't realize that things often had to be said twice or the public didn't understand. Luckily Peter Ash himself didn't always catch on when people were taking the old Michael.

“What would you say is the message of your plays, Mr. Barnard? Fundamentally, I mean.”

“I would say to that, that if
I
could tell
you
what the message was, I wouldn't need to write the plays.”

“Of course that's true. But what I mean is … if you were really to
boil down
….'

“Man, oh man,” Mr. Barnard said sleepily. “You've got a great future with the
Reader's Digest
.”

A tolerant smile, showing that one could take a joke, even against oneself. It was a mistake to give these people anything to drink: it was
unprofessional
to drink while working. Perhaps Mr. Barnard didn't consider this to be work. Celebrities! Peter Ash preferred it when
The Living Arts
was not concerned with people at all, but with things. There'd been none of this nonsense when they'd done the exhibition of sculpture at Holland Park. “I think that what you're really saying in your plays, if I'm any judge,” he said, “is that we must all love each other or die. Isn't that it?—Really?”

“We've got to die anyway.”

Triumphantly. “But we've got to love
too
?” Mr. Barnard took time off to expel a little more smoke, and so gave Peter Ash the chance to make the link he wanted, by
saying quickly, “And what would you say Forster's message is in
Howard's End
?”

Mr. Barnard said, “Oh, I know
that
. Everybody knows
that
. Every graduate student in every School of Letters knows
that
. Not that I was ever a graduate student at college, partly because my mother ran out of money, ‘Only Connect,' isn't that it? I was never sure exactly what it meant, but none of my college teachers ever asked me what it meant, only if I remembered what it was.”

“Now really, Mr. Barnard,” Peter Ash said primly, “I don't think you're being serious. ‘Only connect'—why, it's one of the…. It's something everybody can understand…. It expresses what all of us … what all of us….” said Peter Ash, and the words, “Only Connect” ballooned in his head, and filled it, and pressed it out from the inside, expanding rhythmically faster and faster, over and over, “Only Connect.
Only Connect
, O
NLY
C
ONNECT
.” “Christ!” the Floor Manager whispered, “Peter's ill. He's going to pass out,” and the director said, “Keep them running. It may be interesting.” Peter Ash tried as hard as he could to smile his twinkling, whimsical smile. “All of us …” he said. “We all believe …” and “On
LY
Conn
ECT
” went in and out, faster and faster like machinery gone mad in his head. “It's a universal truth,” he said. “Good God,” he said. “We can't live without it. We can't live alone,” and a little spittle ran down one corner of his mouth, and smoke drifted up from Mr. Barnard's cigarette, and the film wound out foot by foot in the cameras, and the director decided that, spectacular as this might be, he couldn't possibly use it.

“Cut!” he said. “We'll go on in a moment when Peter's feeling better.”

Because you have to go on eventually. You can't just stop.