The Birdcage Read online

  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.

  “Did he get what he wanted? The gondolier?”

  “A good question.”

  “Are you going to answer it?”

  “Of course.” Peter Ash sipped at his peach frulata. “He did, and he didn’t.”

  To their right two American girls sat with their feet stretched out on the chairs of another table. One of them was telling her companion how to deal with French students. “You can fool them so easily,” she said. “All they want is to give you a drink, and be seen talking to you.” Peter Ash considered where to start. He said, “I had dinner at the Locanda. It seemed somehow hardly worthwhile to look for somewhere new when I was on my own. I tried the fritto misto, but it turned out to be mostly polyps. Then I came on here to listen to the symphony concert. It was a very pleasant change, I must say, to have something a little more serious than ‘Ciao, Bambina’. Not that anybody in the Piazza set fire to a ship.” (Norah Palmer had already, at breakfast, given him an account of the Arena di Verona’s realistic production of La Gioconda, in which a ship was burned on stage.) “I drank a couple of coffees and a little Kummel. It seemed ridiculously early to go to bed when the concert was over.”

  One of the American girls had spent three days in Florence, camping out. “Dave says it’s the best piece of real estate in the city,” she told her companion. “And they use it for a camping site. Imagine!” Peter Ash said, “I thought I would stroll for a while, but it’s so easy to get lost. So I confined myself to the Merceria and thereabouts. I noticed a number of gondolas tied up under a bridge, with the gondoliers sitting about nearby. They looked respectable enough. Aren’t they licensed or something, like taxi-drivers? I asked one with a moustache how much he would charge for an hour. He said three thousand lire”

  “About two pounds.”

  “Thirty-five shillings.”

  “It’s still a waste of money.”

  “Gondolas are known to be expensive. After all, for half the year, the men are out of work.”

  “There’s a tariff. You could have asked to see it.”

  “It was too dark.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “I said I would leave it to him. Perhaps that was unwise, but it seemed a good idea at the time. We crossed the Grand Canal. The man said something about San Giorgo. After a while, we were in a large, clear stretch of water.”

  “The Giudecca Canal.”

  “It seemed very wide for a canal. Some small lagoon, I thought. When we were in the middle of it, the man stopped rowing.”

  The two American girls had been joined by two American boys, dressed alike in T-shirts and chino pants, coiffed alike with crew-cuts that only inadequately thatched their bumpy heads. The boys looked to be fifteen years old, the girls at least twenty-two. Peter Ash judged that they were all probably the same age—nineteen or twenty. “He demanded all the money I had to take me back again,” he said.

  “Peter! How much did you have. I warned you never to take too much out with you.”

  “Twenty thousand, in two t
en-thousand notes. Since the gondolier spoke no English, and none of our Italian lessons at Morley College had allowed for this sort of situation, it was some time before I understood him.”

  Norah Palmer did not speak. She found that she was excited, she did not know why. It was something odd, something that affected her sexually, as when a man’s knee touches yours under the table, and, although you do not care for the man, you do not move away. She did not understand this feeling, and found that she could not dismiss it. She wished that Peter Ash would continue with his story, but he sipped his frulata, tantalizing her. She gave in. “Do go on, darling,” she said. “I’m fascinated.”

  “The question was what to do. As his meaning became clearer to me, I discovered that, although it was dark, and I was alone in the middle of a very large stretch of water, I was not at all afraid. He was larger than I. Older, of course, but larger. I was curious; that’s all. I wanted to know how I would react. I watched myself; I couldn’t wait to find out. And do you know, my dear, I found that I became extremely English about the whole thing. I’d never have thought that, would you?”

  “English?”

  “The primmest of the prim. I behaved like a Victorian spinster with an impertinent footman. I sat bolt upright on the cushions, and told him to take me straight back to St. Mark’s at once. I said I should give him the price we’d agreed, and not a lira more. I even said I’d take his number, but I don’t think he understood me—perhaps he didn’t have one; it certainly wasn’t painted on the gondola. I told him I was an excellent swimmer, but I had to go into French to say that. What is’swim’ in Italian? ‘Natare’? The word wouldn’t come. Anyway, I said I didn’t particularly want to swim ashore, but that I was quite prepared to do so, if I had to. It would be embarrassing to walk through the streets all wet, but he wouldn’t get even his three thousand if I did.”

  “It sounds very brave to me,” said Norah Palmer.

  “Well … yes … I think it was really, but all in this rather prissy way, I’m afraid. He asked me how much money I had, but of course I wouldn’t tell him. I think he only wanted it as a bargaining figure, because then he said he’d take me back for twenty thousand, and threw in something about his wife and children, and needing the money. I got very triumphant at that, because then I knew I’d won. He came down from twenty thousand to fifteen, and then ten, and then seven, but I just stayed where I was at three, getting primmer and primmer, until at last he threw a fit of sulks, and started rowing again. I said,” San Marco, “to remind him of where I wanted to go, but in the event he didn’t take me all the way to the vaporetto stop, but to a landing-stage a little farther up the Grand Canal.” A pause. The two American boys had ordered beer, and were reading the European edition of the New York Herald Tribune. “Now comes the anti-climax,” Peter Ash said. “He let me ashore, and I was so determined to be proper, and pay him his fare in spite of his bad behaviour, that I gave him one of my two ten-thousand notes, and said sternly that I wanted seven thousand change. Whereupon, he pushed smartly away from the landing-stage, and went on up the canal, laughing at me. I could hardly shout after him—or chase him without a boat of my own—and of course there weren’t any policemen around, or anybody else for that matter. So in the end, you see, he had me, and all that primness was wasted.”

  “Yes,” Norah Palmer said. “Yes, I suppose it was rather a let-down.” She did not know what she had expected, but, whatever it was, she had been disappointed. Flat. She hadn’t of course, wanted Peter Ash to have been beaten up. She had known from the beginning that nothing like that could have happened, since here he manifestly was, opposite her, unscarred. He had behaved with courage and intelligence. It would have been very foolish of him to have fought the gondolier. They would both have ended in the water, and Peter’s new lightweight suit would have been ruined. Besides, these people almost certainly carried knives. Just for the moment, behind her eyes, she saw the two of them struggling, close together, the gondola rocking … a knife … Peter falls, half in, half out … his throat stretched back over the edge … terrible dark blood making roses in the water … the mouths of fish … polyps…. She felt sick. “I don’t think I want to finish this coffee,” she said. “Should we move on? There’s so much to do today.”

  What she did not know was that there was one aspect of this affair that Peter Ash had not mentioned.

  2

  Disengagement

  At first Norah Palmer did not at all see that they must break the cage. “But we have such a sensible relationship,” she said. “It seems absurd to break it now, when we have achieved a real understanding.”

  It was difficult to explain. Peter Ash did not feel able to tell her the real reason for his decision. He found that he could not say, “Because you do not respect my talent.” When he said that to himself, it sounded petty. Anyway, her not respecting his talent, he now saw, was only a symptom of something deeper. If he had said, “Because you do not respect my talent,” to Norah Palmer she might easily have replied, “But, darling, of course I respect your talent. I always have.” Then what would he have done? He would have had to remind her of what she had said that afternoon at Quadri’s, and a fine fool he would have sounded doing it. He foresaw her incredulity that he should have taken her seriously, perhaps her denial that she had said such a thing at all. So then it would be over; his rebellion would be over, and they would go on as before. Something obstinate in Peter Ash’s mind would not allow that. He had made his decision; he would not allow argument to unmake it. There would be trouble; it would all be a great bore, but he would face that, so he would. Meanwhile, all he could say to Norah Palmer was that he wanted his freedom, and the more he repeated it, the sillier it sounded, and the sillier it sounded, the more resentful and the more determined Peter Ash became.

  It was a warm evening. The windows were open, and the sound of the traffic in Beaufort Street, bound for Battersea Bridge, came up to smother the ends of sentences, forcing him to repeat what sounded only too melodramatic, even said the once. Peter Ash and Norah Palmer had been back an hour. They had switched on the refrigerator and the immersion heater, made themselves a pot of tea, read the letters Mrs. Halliday had left in order on the mantel, slit the wrappers of the magazines, and then suddenly (apropos, as far as Norah Palmer could tell, of nothing at all) Peter Ash had come out with this extraordinary decision. Norah Palmer had difficulty in taking it in. First there was the shock of hearing it, then the numbness that follows a shock, then the refusal to believe, then the “Why?”, and when he could not or would not tell her, the attempt to find an explanation for herself, fishing about in the old, children’s game of “If you won’t tell me, then will you answer Yes or No while I guess?”

  She knew that she had given him no reason to be jealous, even if jealousy had any place in such a sensible relationship as theirs. And surely they knew each other well enough now for him to be sure that she would never be jealous? Norah Palmer was not a jealous person; she never had been; it was not part of her nature. She kept no sort of watch on Peter Ash. They usually did let each other know when each would be home late and that sort of domestic thing, because it made the business of planning meals so much easier; it was a simple point of consideration. But Peter Ash knew well enough that there were no strings on him. As a matter of fact, Norah Palmer was always telling him that he ought to get out much more than he did.

  Peter Ash didn’t want to talk about it. He wanted his freedom.

  Perhaps there was someone else? Someone he had met at work? If so——

  Peter Ash felt that there was nothing to be gained in going over all this. He did not see that either of them enjoyed doing so. He wanted his freedom; that was all.

  But it had to be talked out. They had always talked things out like reasonable human beings.

  Though her cheeks were flushed and her throat dry, Norah Palmer forced herself to be reasonable. She was a tolerant person; Peter Ash knew that. The way of life they had worked out between t
hem was far too valuable to be sacrificed to intolerance. If Peter Ash felt that he would like to … to spend occasional nights away from the flat, that was something Norah Palmer could understand. She did not say that she wouldn’t mind. Probably she would mind, but she would know that her minding was irrational, and she would try to control it. When they had first decided to set up house together, after having slept together at week-ends for almost a year, Peter Ash had been frank with her about his past life. She had gone into this relationship with her eyes open, and the consequence of that was that she knew how to shut them if necessary.

  Peter Ash, redder than she, the tips of his ears glowing, said that wasn’t it at all. He just wanted his freedom.