The Birds of the Air Read Free Page A

cardigan on,’ she said. She took the tea things out – a bright, cross little woman, brave as an officer. ‘Supper soon,’ she promised.
    That night Barbara gave a party – a real one this time, for Sebastian’s colleagues.
    ‘Come in,’ she cried encouragingly, as the first guest arrived. ‘How lovely to see you!’
    Sam scowled. His mother saw that woman nearly every day. It couldn’t always be lovely.
    ‘Professor . . .’ she said, ‘let me take your coat. Katherine, do you know . . .? Sam, find Sir Albert a drink. Now Elizabeth, what will you have? Mrs Potts, you were able to come! How lovely . . .’
    Yak yak yak, thought Sam sourly. He slopped some white wine into a glass and handed it to a professor, who didn’t want it and looked round aggrievedly for the whisky.
    The rooms were filling up with academics quite quickly now: straight dull dons, though not many; old creamy dons, mannered as mandarins; a poor don twitching with paranoia; a rich don, unctuous as mayonnaise; sad neurotic dons; and one or two who were possibly clinically insane. There were ladies dressed in their best who looked as though they’d been moulded out of short squat boxes; dons’ wives, earnest and helpful, or etiolated in their husbands’ shade and thrusting out eagerly, desperately, for a little light; some wives of heads of houses, incandescent with confidence and as bossy as Dr Johnson; and one or two dons’ husbands. They reminded Sam of his late peers at Mrs Bright’s nursery school, to which all the university toddlers were despatched to be set off on the right foot. It would have been futile to deny that jealousy, ill-will and ambition were powerfully present; but just as Mrs Bright’s firm and kindly eye kept the kiddies in check, so ancient usage and the edicts of extreme refinement kept the university from outright shows of pride and hostility. In this ordered atmosphere dangerous emotions were allowed measured expression and all was secure.
    ‘Sam,’ said his mother. ‘Darling, why don’t you take the girls upstairs and play them your records?’
    Sam regarded the girls. Although older, they resembled Kate, ugly and obedient and eager to do as their parents wished. He turned away.
    ‘Sam,’ insisted his mother tentatively. She was nervous. Sam had refused to change out of his torn jeans, leather jacket and tennis shoes. The ensuing altercation had left her trembling and tearful. It emerged that he had swapped his Harris tweed jacket for the dreadful thing he was now wearing, and when she had expostulated about the expense he told her with quiet satisfaction that the leather jacket had been twice the price of the tweed one. ‘S’a bargin,’ he said, and Barbara had been forced to notice, yet again, that her world and her values were threatened by madness. ‘You look like a yob,’ she had told him hopelessly, and Sam had been offended. Later she wondered, puzzledly, why he hadn’t been pleased.
    Two lady philosophers had also turned up in tennis shoes, but this was no consolation to Barbara. They had proved themselves and were entitled to dress as they wished.
    Barbara urged herself not to worry and put out a hand to a solitary female in petrol blue.
    ‘Sam is such an original boy,’ she confided to this person, who didn’t care either way. ‘A little trouble finding his feet,’ she continued, and stopped as the guest, eyes glazing, turned to talk to someone more interesting.
    Barbara turned too. After all, she knew everyone here. They were her friends.
    ‘Margaret, how lovely to see you! We weren’t sure you were back.’ Determinedly she addressed herself to the distinguished anthropologist. ‘You must find it so cold. Have an olive.’
    In spite of herself she stretched her neck sideways to see what Sam was doing now. She could just see the top of his head above the chesterfield. He’d be biting his nails, or picking his nose. He wasn’t a sociable boy. She smiled with relief as Kate passed,