A Summer Bird-Cage Read Free Page B

grudgingness. In fact, I never realized this of my own accord at all: it was explained to me by a friend, and it took me a very long time to grasp the idea and to live with it. I always have birth-pangs over new ideas, prolonged sickness, headaches and misery before the final painful delivery: but after that the idea is with me for ever, kicking and alive. I could never thank Peter enough for delivering this idea about Louise: his theory was, I think, essentially the right one, and it lifted a load of dependence and clinging inferiority from my shoulders. It was at Oxford that I began to forget her: I didn’t think about her for whole days together: I didn’t think people were being kind when they complimented me on my appearance. I was always a one for seeing things in extremes, and because I wasn’t as beautiful as Louise I assumed I was as plain as Daphne: whereas in fact if there is a barrier down the middle of mankind dividing the sheep from the goats I am certainly on Louise’s side of it as far as physical beauty goes.
    It was a horrible day. A day of bad temper, and in me of age-old, cradle-born superfluity. A day of old feuds. The thought of Louise getting married the next day seemed to annoy everybody, including Louise. We all went to bed fairly early, wishing Louise a solemn good night: at dinner my mother had suddenly and unexpectedly turned sentimental, reminiscing about her own honeymoon in a solitary unsupported monologue. I felt sorry for her as my father wouldn’t cooperate at all: poor brave twittering Mama, pretending everything had always been so lovely, ignoring the facts because they were the only ones she knew. My father is a bit of a brute and that phrase really fits him; at such times he rudely and abruptly dissociates himself from everything Mama says, so she has no retreat except repellent Louise and soft, dishonest, indulgent me. So I asked the right questions and listened to the old stories, which would have been charming if true, and went to bed feeling sick with myself and sick with the whole idea of marriage and sickest of all with Louise, who didn’t even seem to realize the courage and desperation of Mama that underlaid the nonsense and fuss and chirruping.
    I fell asleep quickly and was awakened at four in the morning by noises from downstairs. I lay there for a few minutes in a headaching bad temper wondering what on earth it was, until it occurred to me that it might well be Louise suffering from traditional bridal sleeplessness. I tried to get to sleep again, but couldn’t, and after tossing and turning and switching the light on and off several times I decided to get up and investigate. I put on my dressing-gown—and crept to the top of the stairs: the hall light wasn’t on, but the light in the music-room was, and I could see Louise walking firmly and regularly from one end of it, along the hall to the front door, and back again, backwards and forwards, like an animal in a small cage trying to take exercise. She had bare feet and was wearing a white nightgown that looked like part of a trousseau; it had a black ribbon threaded round the lace at the neck. There was something padding and rhythmic in her step that suggested she had been there for a long time, walking up and down. She was smoking and dropping cigarette ash on the floor as she went. I watched her make her short pilgrimage two or three times more before I said, ‘Lou,’ and she looked up as she reached the bottom of the stairs and saw me: ‘Who’s that?’ she said, with a little giggle, and I said ‘Sarah,’ and she said, ‘Oh, that’s all right!’ with a sigh of relief. Then, with the same subterranean giggle in her voice, she went on, ‘Come on down then, come and join the party.’
    She sounded very approachable, so I went down and we went into the music-room where the light was. She sat down on the settee, very heavily, and said, ‘Look, Sally, I’m drinking in the dawn.’ And she was too: she had