The Birdcage (3 page)

I write “have sex”, clumsy as the phrase is, and not the more usual euphemism, “make love”, because they did continue to make love, in their own way, and valued that way. They had their own habitual tendernesses. A kind of ritual had developed in the way that Norah Palmer came
to call Peter Ash when dinner was ready, leading him by the hand to the table in the kitchen where they ate, and in the way that Peter Ash would ease Norah Palmer into wakefulness every morning when he brought her tea in bed, by kissing first her eyelids and then her nose. There were many loving ways they shared—ways with slippers, and ways with cake, and ways of listening to music. They used the word “darling” to each other without self-
consciousness
when at home. They shared jokes and had a store of private words and references kept for domestic use. They would reach over, and touch each other in bed. On cold nights, Peter Ash would often wake to find his arm round Norah Palmer, and Norah Palmer would
comfort
and soothe Peter Ash when, as sometimes happened, he dreamed of snakes. All these and many other intimacies formed by habit, might reasonably be thought to be part of “making love”. If you had impertinently asked Peter Ash and Norah Palmer whether they were still in love after all this time, they would have explained that they
loved
each other, and that this, and not being “in love”, was what mattered most in making a home.

Why then should this quarrel be more serious than any of their others. Desire had cooled, and jelled into affection. Illusion had become acceptance. Why should they not go on for ever? Oh, Peter Ash had made a decision, but
decisions
are made to be unmade. Why should he keep it this time?

There are two answers. One lies in the fact that, just as matter is indestructible, so is experience. Nothing that happens is forgotten. The human mind is like an indifferent secretary, who files by some obscure process of association. One letter from Messrs. Warrington’s about haulage is filed under “Warrington”, a second under “Haulage”, a third in one of a series of bulging and untidy envelopes, all
marked “Misc”. By the time a sixth arrives, a new system has divided “Haulage” into “Contractors” and “Transport, Road”. No letter can ever be found when it is needed, but no letter is lost. The letters are there, somewhere in the filing system, waiting for discovery. Long after all negotiations with Messrs. Warrington’s are over, a cache of Warringtons’ letters marked “Special Projects” will turn up at the back of a neglected cabinet. So between Peter Ash and Norah Palmer all the frets, the slights, the
disappointments
, the resentments, the moments of envy that the sensible person puts away at the back of his mind, talks over, and forgets, were nevertheless
there
, in the system, scattered over a number of dead files, but accumulating from year to year.

The second reason why Peter Ash held secretly to his decision is more dramatic. His point of view had been changed. He had been shocked sideways. What he now saw of their life together had not changed in itself, but his position had changed, so all was changed. In just the same way, the cloud that was backed like a camel might indeed have been backed like a weasel, a moment later and Polonius been neither fool nor flatterer, if he and Hamlet had been on the move when they observed it. What Peter Ash had seen before as a refuge, he now saw as a prison. Of course, if Norah Palmer had taken back her words, if she had told Peter Ash that she did respect his talent, that she had never doubted it, that she had deliberately told a lie out of pique to wound him, why then Peter Ash would have returned to his former position and seen things as he had done before, revoking his decision almost as soon as he had made it, just as, if Saul had experienced a second fit on the road to Tarsus, women might now be able to go
bare-headed
into church. But Norah Palmer, pleasant and loving as she often was, intelligent as she almost always was, had
faults, and one of them was that she could not bear to be wrong. She never took back her words. She preferred to behave as if they had not happened. For a moment, in irritation, she had told Peter Ash a truth. She had said that she did not respect him in anything he did. She had not meant to say it. It had slipped out. She would not repeat it, and he would forget.

But Peter Ash had not forgotten. One does not demand respect for oneself, not nowadays, when one knows so much about the self. That would be ridiculous. If one gets respect from some part of oneself, it is enough. One does not respect Mozart or Beethoven as men. One
accepts
them as men like oneself, and one respects them as artists. Boring bumptious Wagner, prissy Henry James, silly Yeats—as men they grew old and ugly and died, felt lust and farted and told lies, enjoyed hurting or being hurt or both; they were inconsiderate, conceited, prejudiced, uncertain, frightened. Peter Ash did not respect himself as a man at all.
I am myself indifferent honest, but jet I could accuse me of such crimes that it were better my mother had not born me…. What should such fellows as I do, crawling between heaven and earth?
No, it would be too difficult—impossible—to be the sort of man one could respect. If he could find respect as an artist, that would be enough for Peter Ash.

Even that was not something he could give to himself. Some artists could. They were more sure than Peter Ash; they were sustained by their sureness. In the course of his job, Peter Ash had met many writers, painters, composers, actors, who seemed to him to have no doubts about their own talents. Some of them cared that people (the public) should know what they were about; others didn’t even care for that. None of them had any doubt that what he was about was important, and that, even though he might not do his
thing
as well as he wished, at least nobody else
could do it better. But the years at Colchester, Worthing, Hornchurch, the announcing, the jokey references to “the old groaner himself” and “a great new
British
recording star” had worn away at the carapace of Peter Ash’s confidence. He was afraid, very much afraid, that there was only mush inside, and one day it might start leaking.

Worst of all was the need, in each successive edition, each “package” of
The Living Arts
, to pretend that he was “moved” by such and such a piece of music, a picture or a book. He had only his own experience to guide him.
Perhaps
it was necessary for an interpretative artist to pretend in order that other people might truly feel; perhaps he did deserve the respect he so much needed. Perhaps….
Perhaps
not. The public might respect him, but that was worthless, because they were deceived. They did not
know
. But Norah Palmer knew; she could not be deceived. He needed respect from Norah Palmer, and when she denied him this, when she said, “I don’t respect you in anything you do,” not even, as far as he could tell, realizing how important it was to him, letting the remark slip out as a matter of course, then Peter Ash had a change of view as sudden as any epileptic fit on the road to Tarsus, and he saw the construction they had built together over nine years as no more than the linked bars of a cage that kept him from any hope of light and warmth. And it was cold in the cage. He shared the cage with a monster who froze him, by shutting off the warmth of the respect he needed to keep alive. Then indeed, all the letters that had been deliberately buried in that inadequate filing system sorted themselves out and arranged themselves in Peter Ash’s In-Tray. The only way he could deal with them was by writing “Case Closed”. The accumulation could not be allowed to continue.

On the penultimate night of their holiday, Peter Ash had an adventure.

Norah Palmer was not with him. She had been driven to the open-air opera in Verona by two Americans, Bob and Lucille Hansen.

Norah Palmer was enchanted with Bob and Lucille Hansen. They were just the sort of people, easy to pick up, easy to put down again, whom one needed on holiday to take one out of oneself, and add a dimension to Peter Ash and Norah Palmer; if Norah Palmer had been going on a honeymoon, she’d have wanted Bob and Lucille along. Bob and Lucille had only been married five years, so they hadn’t been together as long as Peter Ash and Norah Palmer. They had met at the University of Minnesota, where Bob had been studying Law, and Lucille had taken her Bachelor of Arts in Home-Making and Home-
Breaking
, or whatever title the state universities of the U.S.A. give to what, in English Secondary Modern Schools, is called Domestic Science. Now Bob was a corporation lawyer, working in a big office on Wall Street, and Lucille had put her degree in Home-Making to practical use as his wife. They had two children (left in the care of Bob’s mother for the duration of their holiday), and intended to have two more, since this was the age of the four-child family. They were intelligent, and self-critical, and friendly. They had spent a week in London, and had taken in a good play on six of the nights of that week. (“My dear, where did you
find
them?” Norah Palmer asked, but in fact there usually are six plays worth seeing in London at any one time, and Bob and Lucille had found all six.) After London, Paris. After Paris, Venice. Then back to corporation law and the children. The holiday was costing them a little more than they could afford, but would probably pay off statuswise (said with a grin), and anyway they owed it to
themselves. So far it had been full of interesting people. If Bob and Lucille thought people looked interesting—or if they were sharing a table with people whose conversation
sounded
interesting—why they just made themselves known to those people, and the people surely seemed to appreciate it. No wonder Peter Ash and Norah Palmer were enchanted.

So the penultimate day had been spent with Bob and Lucille, and in the evening Bob had suggested, since the trains were impossible, that they should just hire a car at the Piazzale Roma, and drive on over to Verona to see the open-air opera; if they couldn’t get in, they’d drive right back. They’d be home by three in the morning, a time when Venice was by no means dead; Bob and Lucille knew this, because the life of Venice went on uninterruptedly outside the window of their hotel until six a.m., and started again at six-five. Norah Palmer thought that driving to the opera was a delightful idea. So did Peter Ash. He himself would have gone with them, except that Peter Ash did not care for opera. It was his training as an actor, he said, which made it impossible for him to take seriously those
preposterous
goings-on. The fault was in him; he knew this. He knew that it didn’t
matter
that opera singers acted so badly, that the production was heavy-handed, and the character motivations corny. But it mattered to him. He would rather listen to opera on their stereo at home (Bob and Lucille had a stereo too, and a record of train noises as well as the Trout Quintet); he could not bear to see it on stage, not even for laughs. He had tried several times at Sadler’s Wells and Covent Garden, but each time was worse. He would only spoil their enjoyment if he came with them.

And while Norah Palmer was in Verona, Peter Ash had his adventure. Next morning he sat with her at one of Florian’s tables in the Piazza, and wondered whether to
tell her about it. There was no need to be ashamed; he had come rather well out of it. Ever since it had happened, he had been shaping the story in his mind, and thought he had it right. A pity to waste it.

A waiter in a white coat approached them. “Coffee for me,” Norah Palmer said. “
Caffe con latte
” Peter Ash said, “I think I might have a peach
frulata
. It is our last day, after all. I thought I might make a bit of a splash.”

“If we were to buy a Mixmaster, we could have
frulatas
every day at home.”

“Well….” Peter Ash said. He did not want to carry that topic any further. They owned too much in common already, and would be thinking soon enough of how to make a division. “I had rather a curious adventure last night while you were in Verona,” he said.

“Yes?”

“I’ll tell you about it, if that would give you pleasure.”

“It may do so.”

Two Japanese in straw hats of the type worn by
gondoliers
, one with a red band and one with a blue, appeared from between the pillars at the western end of the Piazza. Both wore flowered shirts outside their shorts; since the shirts were long, and the shorts were short, one could not be certain that the Japanese were wearing anything under their shirts at all, but their dignity would have carried even that. They walked the length of the Piazza, slowly, side-
by-side
and in time, and their shadows walked demurely
behind
them and a little to one side; the pigeons made way for them. Both carried identical Japanese cameras in cases of brown leatherette. When they reached the Campanile, they stopped. There was a pause. Each inclined for a moment towards the other. Then the red-banded Japanese took up a stance before the Campanile, while the
blue-banded
Japanese crouched on his hams, and took a
low-angle
picture; in this position, the shirt of the blue-banded Japanese touched the ground. One picture … another for safety … then blue-band stood and red-band crouched. A further consultation; dust brushed from the hems of shirts; then they re-formed, and marched side-by-side into the gloom of the Basilica. “Extraordinary couple!” said Peter Ash.

“The adventure.”

“Ah, yes … Well, I was rolled last night.”

“Rolled?”

“I think that’s the expression. A gondolier demanded money with menaces.”

“Peter!”

“Yes, indeed. We do see life.”

A German in a grey flannel shirt who had been feeding the pigeons, managed to catch one between his hands. Laughing, he held it up to show his wife, and, when it seemed to wish to go, tightened his grip a little to show the bird who was master; the pigeon made a token flutter, and was still. But the pigeons of St. Mark’s are not to be caught; there is a law against it. A young Venetian, thin and brown in a tattered shirt, came running from one of the flagstaffs, and shouted as he came. His shout provoked others. A paper-seller, a maize-seller, several children and a woman in black joined the young Venetian in a circle round the German and his wife. There was a flurry of arms, a flashing of teeth, as the two languages, German and Italian, collided in anger and misunderstanding, while beyond the circle of the storm, tourists gathered like sheep in a ring. In this storm the German might easily have sunk, going down with his pigeon into the waves, as stiff and lonely as the skipper of the
Nancy Lee
, but he was rescued by a bashful Englishman, who knew nine words of German and seven of Italian, and undertook to mediate. The pigeon was
released. The storm subsided. Pigeon and German, grey, ruffled, and precariously dignified, stalked off in opposite directions. The young Venetian dribbled a bottle-top back to the flagstaff, and on into the Piazetta.