The Parrot Cage, page 2
‘I always did think you were brighter than you pretended, Flixe,’ she said, taking a sip of the cool coffee. ‘Brighter than me, actually.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. I didn’t realise that was part of it until we were well and truly married.’ Suddenly she felt hungry after all and started to butter a piece of cold, rubbery toast.
‘Poor Andrew.’
‘Oh, don’t you start. Mother’s always trying to put his point of view and telling me what I ought to do for him and the bloody regiment. I thought you at least would understand that I need to keep some part of myself free of him.’
‘I understand all right, ducky,’ said Flixe. ‘I’m just surprised it’s taken so long in coming. After all, it’s over four years since you let him take you over.’
Gerry was silent, trying to remember the excited pleasure she had felt as the good-looking, charming, well-bred Captain Kyrle had started to pursue her. Smarting then from her father’s refusal to let her go to university, she had wondered whether she would be stuck at home for ever in a life she had come to loathe. Andrew had appeared as a heaven-sent means of escape, a kind of young Lochinvar, who would carry her off on his white charger to a life in which she would be busy, fulfilled and happy. She laughed bitterly at herself for her stupidity in believing that she could ever be happy living someone else’s life.
‘It’s not that bad, Gerry,’ said Flixe gently. ‘There’s a lot about Andrew that’s thoroughly admirable – and you must love him a bit. Sugar please.’
Gerry automatically pushed the Dresden bowl towards her sister.
‘Yes, of course I love him. I really do. It’s just all much more difficult than I had expected. When he sent me home from Palestine to … to have the baby I really missed him. Honestly I did. But he was determined that I should have “proper English” doctors, and it did seem sensible, I mean now that Mother is settled here for good. It was all planned. As soon as the baby was safely weaned, I’d take him back to Palestine. Even when the war started I meant to go back.’
‘So what changed your mind?’ asked Flixe, stirring sugar into her coffee.
Gerry chewed a mouthful of toast, swallowed and then fished a sheet of paper out of the pocket of her green tweed skirt.
‘Sometimes when I get his letters, I feel as though I don’t know him at all. Read this one – the PS.’
Flixe wiped her fingers on her napkin and took the letter, to read:
Darling, why on earth do you want to join the WRNS? It’s a ridiculous idea. And you need to take care of yourself after all that horrid business. As soon as the Mediterranean is a bit more settled, you’ll want to come out here again. Why complicate things for us by joining up?
‘I didn’t know you were thinking of joining up,’ said Flixe, who
had been a Fany since the war started.
‘Oh yes. I’ve been thinking for ages that I must do something and then when France fell and everybody went over in their boats to get the men off at Dunkirk, the war seemed to be to do with us after all, and I felt so useless and thought that the WRNS would be the best. But they won’t take married women unless they have their husbands’permission. So … I’m stuck.’
Flixe looked under her dark lashes at her sister and wondered what she ought to say, whether it would be better for Gerry if she simply accepted the explanation or tried to force her to face what Flixe was sure was the truth. In the end she decided that it was so unlike Gerry to hide from anything that she did push her.
‘As was said in a rather different context, Gerry, patriotism is not enough. Why did you really decide not to go back?’
Gerry pushed away her plate with its load of toast crumbs and smeared marmalade as though it sickened her.
‘Oh, Flixie, because with the baby dead and no hope of any others, my future as Andrew’s wife suddenly seemed so bleak. My whole life would be ruled by the needs of the regiment and Andrew’s job. What would I have of my own in all the years until he retires? It’s not even as though I’d see all that much of him. You see, it’s not that I don’t want to live with him, honestly; I do care about him. It’s just that I can’t bear the deadening job that being his wife entails. If I thought I could be myself I shouldn’t mind; but all I’m allowed to be is Mrs Andrew Kyrle.’
Flixe, who had her own views about her brother-in-law, thought again that Gerry was deceiving herself, but could not press any further. To Flixe, Andrew had always seemed infuriatingly possessive and unaware of all the things about Gerry that made her valuable. In Flixe’s more charitable moments, she had wondered whether his determination that Gerry should have no friends or interests that he had not bestowed on her might not be based on fear that if she were a free agent then she might no longer love him. At other times, particularly when he had tried to break the tie that linked the two sisters, interrupting their increasingly rare meetings or forcing them to include him in conversations that had nothing to do with him, she thought him pompous, selfish and arrogant.
For the first two years of their married life Andrew had been posted in London, and Flixe had seen a certain amount of them, wincing often at what she saw as Andrew’s attempts to belittle Gerry in public. At the time Flixe had said nothing to Gerry, who had always seemed to be unaware of what he was doing, but had watched her growing unhappier and less and less like herself. Once they had gone to Palestine, Gerry had written home regularly, and her letters to Flixe had been so full of her old self – caustic, funny, brimming with energy and intelligence – that Flixe had been reassured. Now it seemed that all her first prejudices had been justified.
‘Well, it’s all a bit academic at the moment anyway, since no civilians are going anywhere, except possibly America, for some time,’ she said. ‘There must be some kind of work you could do. Why not come and stay in the flat for a bit and see what you can find? I know there’s only one bedroom, but I’m away a lot, driving these generals around, and even if we’re both there together, one of us could have the sofa.’
‘Flixe, you’re a dear. But I don’t think I can. If I could say to Mother, “Look, I’ve got this job and I’ll have to go and live in London,” that would be all right; but just to announce, “I can’t bear living here with you” is a bit ungracious after all she’s done for me. I think I’d better see what I can do by letter. And if you hear of anything, will you let me know so that I can apply?’
‘Of course I will,’ said Flixe warmly. She drained her coffee cup and got up. ‘Now we’d better do the washing-up. Come on.’
Chapter Two
Three weeks later Gerry was standing in the stable behind the house, heaving a shabby saddle on to the back of her long-suffering mare Buttercup and muttering to herself so angrily that the elderly hack shifted nervously away from her hands. Gerry automatically gentled her.
‘I suppose I shouldn’t take it out on you just because you’re the only one who won’t answer back,’ she said remorsefully.
She leaned forward until her head was resting against Buttercup’s neck. The gently-pulsing warmth under her skin, and the familiar exciting smell of straw and dung and horse sent Gerry straight back to the early, uncomplicated years of childhood, and for a moment she was soothed. Buttercup snorted and tossed her head, setting the bit clinking against the bridle. Gerry pulled herself together and patted the mare’s neck. Then she led Buttercup out of the stable, mounted and rode off up the hill.
She had escaped from the house because she could feel her temper rising uncontrollably and knew that if she did not do something she would lose it and say something unforgivable to her mother or Annie. Ming’s white face and trembling lips had shown Gerry just how threatening her voice was sounding and so she had made herself apologise. Then she had left all three of them and gone to her bedroom to change into her riding things.
Once she had ridden up onto the crest of the hill, Gerry stopped the mare so that she could look down at the old yellow-grey stone tiles of the house. It was ironic, she thought in cold depression, that the marriage which had promised eternal escape should be the one thing that had locked the prison gates of her home again. If she had not succumbed to the temptation of Andrew’s proposal she would be free to be in on the war like everyone else; like Flixe, who seemed after all to have arranged her life so much better than Gerry had.
Buttercup stood patiently in the hot, hay-scented air, flicking the flies off her skin with little twitches and swishes of her tail, but at last she began to fret and sidle. Gerry woke to her responsibilities. She picked up the reins again and urged the mare into a gentle canter.
Gerry had not thought of a destination, only of getting away from the house for an hour or two, but when she caught a glimpse of the Adamsons’tall chimneys through the elms on her right, she realised how much she wanted Evelyn Adamson’s undemanding sympathy and turned Buttercup down the lane that led towards the river. She rode slowly past fields of barley, studded now with scarlet poppies, thinking of Evelyn and hoping that they would be able to recapture the friendship they had established just before Gerry had married.
The fact that her mother disapproved of the Adamsons lent a tiny spice to Gerry’s anticipation as she pushed open one of the iron gates that protected the drive up to the house. It had taken Gerry some time to understand all of her mother’s antipathy, but part of the trouble was undoubtedly straightforward jealousy. To the wife of a serving officer with no money of her own, Evelyn Adamson seemed to live in grossly unfair luxury. Her house was large and beautiful, where Sudbrook House was cramped and an example of all the worst faults of Victorian builders, and Evelyn had the money to make whatever improvements and repairs she wanted instead of balancing the cost against all the other crushing expenses of life. But there was more to Mrs Alderbrook’s dislike than simple envy. Unlike her own military ancestors, Evelyn’s family had for generations been ‘in trade’and even worse had intermarried with some mercantile Russians. Evelyn herself was wholly English as far as anyone knew, but she had first cousins who were full-blooded Russians. Even though there was no suggestion that any of them were Reds, to Mrs Alderbrook they represented something unsound if not downright dangerous.
Once Gerry had disentangled the various different strands of her mother’s disapproval, she had learned to despise the mixture of snobbery and insularity that had created it. For her part, the hint of exotic foreignness in Evelyn’s family was intriguing, and Gerry had to admit that there was a certain regrettable pleasure in flouting her mother’s expressed disapproval of Evelyn Adamson.
Gerry rode up the drive, noticing that it was weedier than usual, which surprised her; but the glorious house itself looked just the same, basking in sun and generously open to all comers. Someone was before her that afternoon. A large black motor was parked in front of the stone lions that guarded the door, their backs warmed by the orange and green lichens that also patterned the long, low roof. Seeing the car, Gerry checked for a moment, but then shrugged. It was probably only someone of Bob’s. Taking full advantage of the freedom Evelyn had given her in the year before her marriage, Gerry rode on round the back of the big house to the stables and made old Buttercup comfortable with a net of hay and a good bucket of water, before walking into the house through the garden-room door.
She was just scraping a small but obstinate lump of mud off one of her boots when she heard Evelyn’s warm voice.
‘Gerry, my dear girl, how lovely! We’ve been so worried about you. How are you now? Really all right again?’
Forgetting the mud, Gerry walked straight on to the gorgeous, if faded, silvery-green Persian rug and took her hostess’s outstretched hands.
‘I’m much better, thank you,’ she said, sighing in relief to be back.
‘Thank goodness. Now come into the morning-room. I’ve just made some coffee – I hope it’s drinkable – and –’
‘But what’s happened to Ivy?’
‘Gone off to the war, of course. We couldn’t make her stay, even if we’d wanted to.’ She pushed open a white, deep-panelled door and called out: ‘Bob, here’s Gerry. Introduce her while I go for another cup.’
‘Gerry,’ came the deep, drawling voice of Evelyn’s American husband, ‘come on in.’ His wide smile was just the same, and so was his firm handclasp, but he looked older to Gerry. She reminded herself that the last year could not have been easy for anyone, even for people as sensible and well-protected as the Adamsons. ‘It’s good to have you back again. Any news of Andrew?’
‘Nothing much, Bob,’ she answered, unable to tell this sensible, tolerant, practical man about her husband’s refusal to let her join the WRNS. ‘They’re not allowed to say anything real so the letters that do come don’t make much difference. If he’d been wounded or – anything – there’d be a telegram, so I know he’s all right.’
Robert Adamson’s shaggy eyebrows tightened across the bridge of his nose as he took in the listlessness of Gerry’s voice. She had been such a live wire in the old days and always so full of ideas and plans that he was troubled to see her look beaten now. But it was not in his nature to ask questions about how she felt and so he tucked her hand in the crook of his elbow and drew her into the room.
She just had time to see that nothing had changed in its chaotically beautiful furnishings when she noticed a thin, dark man standing by the empty white fireplace. Presumably the owner of the motor, he took his pipe out of his mouth and waited to be introduced.
‘Gerry, this is Evelyn’s cousin, Peter Suvarov. Peter, this is Miss Gerry Alderbrook. Oh, no,’ he caught himself up, ‘it’s Mrs Andrew Kyrle.’
‘How do you do,’ said the stranger, smiling slightly and offering her his hand. She took it, interested to meet one of the cousins at last and delighted with his deep voice, which had a faint, intriguing accent; but she wished that Bob had not corrected himself. It would have been so nice to be Gerry Alderbrook again in this particular house.
Evelyn came in at that moment with another cup and saucer. Limoges china, Gerry noticed and smiled to herself as she acknowledged that what her mother would have kept as ‘best’ china, to be offered only to visitors she wanted to impress, was used every day – and allowed to be cracked and chipped – by the Adamsons. There was nothing in their house that was not beautiful, and there was nothing kept for show. It produced a feeling of the utmost pleasure and relaxation in Gerry and she let herself lean back against a huge, dark-green velvet cushion in the corner of the sofa. Bob brought her a cup and murmured:
‘If it’s really filthy we can always have sherry instead.’
Evelyn almost grinned and said, with no trace of self-consciousness or criticism:
‘Oh, come on now, Bob, you must admit that I’m learning to do without the maids.’
‘You haven’t much to learn, Eve,’ came that tantalising voice from the fireplace. ‘Time was when you did the work of maids and gardeners and nurses … and heaven knows what besides.’
‘One forgets so easily,’ she said. ‘And it’s been a long time.’
‘Twenty years,’ he agreed and turned to Gerry. ‘And so, Mrs Andrew Kyrle, tell me who you are.’
‘Just that, it seems,’ she said and even she could hear the bitterness in her voice. But she was too tired to apologise and in that house no one ever expected you to apologise for anything except deliberate malice.
‘I can hear a story in that voice,’ he said, strolling forward with his hands in his trouser pockets and his pipe between his teeth. Then he sat down at the opposite end of the sofa. ‘Tell it to me.’
Surprised by his immediate and rather unlikely friendliness, Gerry looked up at him in silence; but he seemed to be genuinely interested. Wondering whether he always plunged into personal conversations with every chance-met acquaintance, or whether Evelyn and Bob could have been talking about her so that Evelyn’s cousin already knew something about her, Gerry protested:
‘I don’t want to bore you.’
‘If you do, we’ll stop you, won’t we, Bob?’
‘Sure.’
Taking a gulp of the coffee, which was not surprisingly both excellent and strong, Gerry felt herself expanding a little and began.
‘Well, I’ve been a bit ill and as soon as our old Doctor Granard told me I could stop being an invalid I went off to join the navy – to see the sea and all that. And they wouldn’t have me. If I’d still been Gerry Alderbrook that would have been OK, but it seems that I belong to Andrew Kyrle now and without his permission I can’t even do my bit for England.’
The deliberately flippant tone did not hide her indignation from any of her listeners.
‘And won’t he give it?’ asked Suvarov. Gerry noticed that Evelyn was frowning at him, but since she had been longing to talk to someone who might sympathise ever since Flixe had left Gloucestershire, she started to tell them the whole story.
‘No. Most of the other regular officers in Palestine have their wives with them and he thinks it’s my duty to go out and sit around while he fights his war.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Do you know how army wives have to live? I’ve watched it all my life. They’re in a kind of glass box: watched by all the others to make sure they dress, behave and speak exactly like the rest and not allowed for one instant to complain about the limitations of army life or talk about anything except about three subjects, or … Sorry, don’t let me get started on all that,’ said Gerry, but her crossness got the better of her discretion and she produced a real indictment: ‘They think the bloody regiment is the whole world – or at least the only part of it that matters – and that everyone and everything else is morally, materially, and spiritually inferior.’
‘Whew!’ he said and smiled. Bob took advantage of Suvarov’s momentary speechlessness.
‘Well, I can certainly understand why you don’t want to live like that, but why do you want to join up?’ he asked. ‘Lots of people would be glad of the opportunity to stay in countryside like this and enjoy themselves.’
