Birdcage Page 4

  “She doesn’t damn well look it.” Farley spoke almost sharply. He had the feeling that Herman was hiding something from him, and because of this and their long friendship he said frankly, “Come on. Cough it up. You don’t have to keep anything from me. She looks bonny enough. What is the score with her? You’re hinting at something. Let’s have it.”

  Herman tossed a pebble at a green lizard on the path and gave Farley a sideways look. “The trouble with you, Richard, is that you always believe what people say. Take them at their word. You’ve been let down often enough by it—but you still don’t learn. All right, so I’ll give it to you straight. I think your Sarah Branton—or more properly Sister Luiza—is probably a classical example of a common form of female hysteria.” Farley gave a dry laugh. “Well, that’s a fine statement. What does it mean?”

  “It means that where you help lame dogs over stiles without a second thought, a doctor can’t help considering the lameness. Is it real or is it faked?”

  Farley laughed. “I’m having a great morning. First Maria tells me she’s a bruxa and I should get rid of her. And now you say she’s just worked up some kind of fantasy for herself—even to the point of chucking herself into the sea!”

  “Listen, you idiot. I think Maria in a way is right. She’s bewitched herself. I think she wanted to get out of that convent. But her pride wouldn’t just let her admit to them that she couldn’t take it any longer. There had to be some reason she couldn’t ignore. I think—on some small incident—she built up a whole fantasy for herself. Nuns get crushes on doctors and priests. Somewhere along the line something happened that made her think she’d had intercourse with a doctor and had become pregnant. She believed it so absolutely that her periods stopped. The Lord knows what the details are but the fantasy became real.”

  “Even to the point of walking into the sea?”

  “You’d be surprised. There’s nothing more demanding than a fantasy. She only broke free from it when the moment of drowning came. That’s when reality returned—and luckily you were there.” He stood up. “You like to bet on it?”

  Stiffly Farley said, “I don’t bet on that kind of thing. All I know is that she’s in trouble, real or imagined. Trouble’s trouble, and I don’t think being clinical about it helps any.”

  “I’m not surprised. But we happen to have different views and a different approach to people. She’s had eight years of fantasy—being a nun. She creates another to escape from it, the ultimate escape that we’re all free to take. That’s bad. But worse is why someone so clearly unsuited for the life ever embraced it. It’s bad enough to have a fight each day against time and chance without other people brainwashing you or twisting your arm to make you do what you don’t really want to do.” He knuckled the side of Farley’s face affectionately. “We friends still?”

  “Of course we are, you damned idiot.”

  “All right. If you want me—give me a ring. Bruxa, eh? That’s typical Maria. She feels things without fully understanding them. That’s more than a lot of people do.”

  “Maybe, but I just don’t know. I don’t like to think of people screwing themselves up in the way you suggest.”

  “Nor I, but they do. However, I don’t think your lovely sorceress will take long to come back to normal. Not with a nice, soft-hearted guy like you to bring her back to earth.” Farley smiled. “Sometimes, the way you talk—you make me feel that I’m no more than a universal plaster, a cure for all ills, going around slapping myself on people’s troubles and making them feel fine again.”

  “Not far from the truth. You’re a soft touch. Always a bottle of the milk of human kindness in your pocket. You attract the wrong kind of people. The kind who realise at once that they can get anything you have to give. How many drifters along this coast owe you money?”

  “Quite a few.”

  “And they’ll owe it forever.” Herman chuckled. “You’re the one who should withdraw from the world—tuck yourself away in a monastery. Brother Ricardo, safe from spongers and lame dogs.”

  “Get away, you ass.”

  “All right. Call me if you want me.”

  When Herman was gone he sat for a while thinking over the things which had been said. He was not fool enough to deny to himself many of the things Herman had said about him. But what do you do, he thought, about the way you are? Were, are and always would be, he supposed. Anyway, there was little point in thinking about it. He picked up the drinks tray and went into the house.

  Sarah stayed in her room until Maria had left, and then she came down to him. He was stretched out on the settee, reading the previous day’s Daily Telegraph which Maria always brought up with her from the village.

  He stood up, smiling, and said, “Well, how are things?” She said, “I used the upstairs telephone and called the convent.”

  “How did it go?”

  “I spoke to the Mother Superior, but not for very long. I just said I was all right and not coming back. That I was in good hands . . . that I was sorry for all the trouble and so on.”

  “Did she ask about the child business?”

  “No. She just gave me her blessing and said she would pray for me, and that was that. Oh, except that she said she would let my father know I was safe, and that I should write to him.”

  “Will you?”

  “No.”

  “I think you should.”

  She smiled. “I knew you would think that. Well, perhaps later I will. But I’m telling the truth when I say that I mean nothing to him. He and my mother were more or less separated when I was quite young. Just now and again for appearance sake he would come and spend a few days with us.”

  “Well, that’s that.” For a moment or two he was silent, remembering Herman’s lecture about her and his own too-abundant good nature. Then, moved by a touch of resentment about his own softness, he went on, “So what are your plans now?”

  “Well, I thought perhaps you’d let me make lunch for you. I’d like to be in a kitchen again. I always used to enjoy it. And then . . . well, I would like some clothes of my own to wear. I could put a scarf around my hair this afternoon and we could go and do some shopping. . . say at Albufeira or even Faro. Only I would have to borrow some money from you—only for a while. Until I can arrange things with my aunt.”

  He nodded. “Fine. Let’s start with the lunch. The kitchen’s all yours. If you can’t find anything you want—just shout.”

  “I’ll manage.”

  He watched her go and then sat down with his paper and stared at it blankly. His own “So what are your plans now?” had not been meant for the immediate future, but so what now about the whole business, herself, her future and the child had been in his mind, and he felt that she must have known this and deliberately evaded it. Well, perhaps not. After all, for Christ’s sake, she had not got herself really on her feet in the present yet. Plenty of time for the future. He should know that for there had been a time with him when only the present counted, when the past and the future were not to be thought about. Bruxa— what an absolute lot of nonsense. She was just a badly shaken woman, probably still obsessed with those awful moments when she had thought she was going to drown. It took a hell of a long time to five that kind of thing down. He should know. Bad memories lived on, lurked always in the mind, waiting to ambush you when you least expected it.

  * * * *

  Arnold Geddy drove without haste along the Cheltenham to Cirencester road. It was early evening, a lovely April evening when, he told himself, the beauty of everything hit you suddenly and made your eyes blink on the verge of tears. An early rhododendron was a great flaming beacon of colour. The sudden flood of song of a blackbird was so exquisite that it was almost painful, while a roadside kestrel hovering over the tall grasses, wing tips trembling, seemed fixed not for the moment of kill but for all eternity. Daffodils, grazing sheep, a cloud shadow across a pond starred with milkwort, and away to his right where the land fell sharply away from the Cotswold scarp the distan
t pearl-grey ghosts of the rising Welsh hills . . . all fixed in the mind, impressed there one would think forever. But in a few hours one would forget it all. Forgetting the important things was the easiest of things, remembering the unimportant gave no trouble. Not at least to him. Remembering details of a deed drawn up years ago gave him no trouble. Ghastly things he had seen and taken part in during the War came back without trouble, but try as he might he could not remember the face or the frock or the true timbre of the voice of the woman he had walked a night beach with at Positano and made love to in a hotel room on a brief summer leave from his regiment. Maybe that was why he was a good lawyer. He remembered all about the deeds and contracts and conveyances. He smiled, knowing himself so well and this mood induced by the bite of Spring. The few war years had been his great escape. He mourned with levity the true Arnold Geddy who had foundered somewhere years ago. I weep for you, the Walrus said, I deeply sympathize. He suddenly laughed out loud with happiness, an emotional outburst reserved mostly for moments like this when he was driving and alone. He was glad the woman was alive. . . the solemn-faced, good-looking girl with the golden hair; glad that she had escaped. Good luck to her. And glad, too, that he had not been able to see Colonel Branton yesterday to give him false news of her drowning.

  John Branton lived on the outskirts of a small village to the west of Cirencester. The house was old and of Cotswold stone. The gardens were large and badly kept and the driveway was full of potholes still filled by yesterday’s rain. The house had once been a rectory and the ghosts of the former churchmen who had inhabited it, Geddy thought as he drove up, must be highly disapproving of the life style of its present owner, who would probably die leaving a heavy mortgage on it.

  The present Mrs John Branton—the union, it was rumoured, unsanctified by Church or regularized by the State—opened the door for him. She was red-haired, her face still boldly good-looking but loose-skinned, her body—he made no effort to suppress the wayward thought (after all he was a bachelor and owed no ties to any woman, except minimal ones to a lady he managed to visit once or twice a month in London)—a splendid creation for bolstering any man’s concupiscence. But Geddy thought, for himself, the butter was spread too thick.

  “Arnold! How lovely to see you.” She pushed her face forward to be kissed and faint on her breath he smelt her evening gin. “Not come to pester dear Johnny with legal or money matters, I hope? God, no—he’s in a mood. Four days on the Wye and not a fish.”

  “Nothing like that, my dear Dolly.”

  “Good. Go right through. He’s expecting you.” She gave him a friendly push with a heavily ringed hand to start him across the hall towards the study.

  Branton was sitting at his untidy desk hunched over a multiplying fishing reel patiently unravelling a bad tangle of the line. He stood up as Geddy came in and tossed the reel on to a couch untidy with fishing gear.

  “Bloody bird’s nest. Take me hours to get it out. Well, enough of my troubles. That’s only a small one. How are you? Looking damned smug and prosperous as usual. No good offering you a drink if you’re driving, is it?”

  “No, thank you, John.”

  “Well—shan’t let it inhibit me.” He waved Geddy to a chair and then went to his sideboard to pour himself whisky. He was a tall man, strong, with a good figure still. His face was long, handsome and ravaged, his blue eyes deep sunk under bushy, greying brows, his near-white hair thinning to show the pinkness of his scalp.

  There were times, Geddy thought, when he knew that he positively disliked this man; and there were other times when, because he hated human waste, he felt a deep, warm sympathy, near to affection, rise in him for the Branton that had been and, somewhere along the road, had lost his way. He was as selfish as a pig at a trough—but it had not always been so; and the change had been far from his own doing.

  Over his shoulder, he said, “Well, what brings you out here? God——” he nodded through the window, “look at that garden! You pay a man a fortune a week, and he spends half his time smoking in the greenhouse. My father had four gardeners and a groom and there wasn’t a weed in a bed or a badly turned-out horse.” He turned and smiled, and the ghost of young manhood shadowed him briefly. “Sic transit gloria what-have-you. So let’s have your little bit of dreariness. Or are you going to break your record and tell me something good?”

  “I’m afraid not. It’s about Sarah.”

  “Sarah?” Branton cocked a bushy eyebrow, puzzled.

  “Your daughter Sarah. Or Sister Luiza.”

  “Oh . . .” Branton sat at his desk, sipped his whisky and said, “What’s she done or undone? Or is it really serious and I have to prepare myself for crocodile tears? Sorrowing father, send a wreath and all that?”

  His reaction did not surprise Geddy. He shrugged his shoulders. “No . . . a little more complicated. She got herself pregnant somehow and she’s run away from the convent.” Branton slowly shook his head. “She’s her mother’s daughter, isn’t she? All right, spell it out for me.”

  Precisely Geddy told him of the two telephone calls he had had from Father Dominic. “She eventually telephoned the Mother Superior and said she was safe and being looked after, but gave no details of where she was. Naturally you had to know.”

  Branton shook his head, unmoved. “Not naturally. By law, I suppose, but not naturally. For a consideration, long since squandered, I gave her mother my name—wedding bells and orange blossom, and a nice big settlement. Damn little of that left now. I’ll hand it to her for guts—running away. Pregnant, too. Well. . . that’s in the blood lines. Her mother would go to bed with anyone if the dividend was right. Even Giorgio. He bought it, you know. Few years ago. Got tanked up too much and drove his employer’s Mercedes over the edge of some corniche.” He grinned. “Probably because he hated the Mercedes. Giorgio was a Rolls-Royce man. Anyway, she’s not my problem. Do I sound callous to you?”

  “No, you sound as I expected you would. As your lawyer I had a duty to tell you, obviously.”

  “Obviously, and thank you, Arnold. Have you let Bellmaster know? She’s his girl. He might feel inclined for sentimental reasons to pick up the pieces. Though I doubt it. He’s as short on sentiment as I am.”

  “I got in touch. But he’s abroad. I left a message for him with his confidential secretary.”

  Branton drained his glass, thumb-and-fingered his big nose, and slowly shook his head. “The biggest mistake I ever made was falling for her mother, and doing the big thing. All that Sir Galahad or whatever it is stuff—while all the time they were just bloody well using me. Captain John Branton. There was a lot of talk from Bellmaster about pulling strings. He was in the War House then. Bright, coloured baits being dangled before me. Brigadier, Major-General. He could have worked it, too. But once I was gaffed and landed, I was just left flapping on the bank.”

  “You got the settlement. Legally that was all that was promised.” But there was more to it than that, Geddy knew. Bellmaster could have made any promise good. Still could. But a settlement and Lady Jean Oriston were bait enough for a young gunner captain. 0 let us be married! too long we have tarried; But what shall we do for a ring? Bellmaster found one and Branton still wore it in his nose.

  “Legally, that sums it up!” Branton got up and went to refill his glass. “Well, thank you for letting me know. But there’s nothing I can do or want to do. Sarah’s free, white, and over twenty-one. And as I said, she’s her mother’s daughter— though she could never hope to be as two-faced a witch as Lady Jean. Sarah must look after herself.” He laughed to himself. “My God, it’s her mother’s style, isn’t it? Managing to get herself pregnant in a convent! Just up dear Lady Jean’s street.” He swung round suddenly, frowning, and his voice harshened. “But don’t get me wrong, Arnold. I loved that bloody woman, even when I knew all about her and she screwed up my life.” He smiled suddenly, his mood changing, a shrug of his shoulders seeming to Geddy to throw off his years so that he saw again the hard-framed, good-loo
king gunner captain, popular, polo-playing, night clubs, girls, good with his men, efficient and promotion waiting for him until Bellmaster had come along with Lady Jean dancing at his side . . . a slender pink and white and gold fairy dancing tip-toe on a broad rosin-back while Bellmaster cracked the whip in the centre of the ring. But even Bellmaster could not hold her against her will. Bellmaster knew that she could destroy him—had once obliquely confessed it to him and had set him to work without success to find the protection he needed from her.

  He drove home under a bright Sirius, a late frost black-icing the road. What would Branton think, he wondered, if he knew that Bellmaster and Lady Jean had also screwed up his life, respectable Arnold Geddy, Cheltenham solicitor, county councillor, and enjoying all the little honours and duties that came with his position. A moonlight beach in Positano and the next morning a voice over the telephone cutting that idyll short while the woman lay sleeping on the bed with the early sunlight turning the sea outside to moving turquoise and amethyst. The State, in choosing men to serve it, takes no notice of their opinions. If they be willing faithfully to serve it, that satisfies. Yes, but Oliver Cromwell had been talking about a very different kind of State. He had been given no opportunity to choose or to express an opinion. Just a simple order. It had not been until he had leaned over the sleeping woman to kiss her goodbye that he had discovered she was dead.

  * * * *

  Sarah Branton lay in her bed her mind too active still for her to have any hope of sleep. The day had been too full of long-forgotten pleasures, of small joys and almost forgotten freedoms for her to even wish for sleep; a heap of coloured pebbles and seashells gathered quickly and now to be turned over and looked at closely so that no detail’escaped her. The clothes and other things she had bought lay now, neatly set out on the velvet couch by the window. Farley—she was far from yet naming him Richard; the time and mood for that would come —had stopped at his bank and drawn money for her. To her pleasure but against her wish that he should go off and have a drink in a cafe he had insisted on staying with her and she had not noticed a moment of boredom or impatience in him for the next two hours. “All the shop people know me. You won’t be overcharged if I’m with you. Besides I shall enjoy it.” That he was well-known and well-liked was clear; and that her presence with him roused curiosity but not one word out of place told her, too, the respect people had for him. On the way back they had made a long detour and stopped at an inland restaurant for an early dinner. The proprietress and her husband had greeted him with cries of pleasure and boisterous embraces and while they smiled and greeted her their eyes had swept over her making appraisal but giving her no hint of whether they approved of her or not. “I’m a lone wolf. Now they’re wondering who the gorgeous girl is.” He had said it easily, joking, but for a moment or two the faint start of tears had pricked the back of her eyes. Gorgeous girl. After eight years she had long lost the habit of self-awareness about her looks. Just one of a row of nuns in chapel, arms crossed, heads bent in modesty and worship.