The parrot cage, p.34
The Parrot Cage, page 34
Why did Flixe always find it so easy to make friends, Gerry wondered, remembering her first attempts to get on terms with the analysts. Why was Andrew the only person Gerry knew whom Flixe had never even tried to annexe? That, of course, should have been as much of a warning as their mother’s constant championship of him.
‘Gerry, what’s the flap?’ came Mike’s voice, warm and concerned.
‘What? No, there’s no flap. Why?’
‘You looked absolutely stony; are you all right?’
‘Yes; got the sun in my eyes, that’s all. Flixe, Suvarov wants you in his office with Antoine. I’ll call him if you’ll go on up.’
‘Come back when you’ve summoned Tony, won’t you, Gerry?’ said Mike, smiling at her.
‘All right.’
She went over to Eynsham’s cubby-hole and told him he was wanted and then walked slowly back to the analysts’room, where Mike was sitting on his own desk, swinging his immaculately polished regulation black shoes.
‘Well, do you think my little sister will be any use?’ she asked, achieving a laugh with some difficulty.
‘She’ll add to the gaiety of nations, anyway. We could do with a little feminine charm in this office, couldn’t we, Philippe?’
‘But of course,’ he answered, exaggerating his accent, shrugging his shoulders and pouting in a pantomime of Gallic voluptuousness. Gerry felt a little dizzy. Mike stopped swinging his legs and propelled himself off the desk to stand in front of her. He leaned forward and whispered:
‘But she could never take the place of our Mrs Kyrle.’
Gerry felt her face blushing a vivid tomato colour, touched Mike’s navy-blue shoulder and said:
‘I didn’t mean to trail my coat like that, old boy.’
He put one of his hands over hers to hold it on his shoulder for a moment.
‘It’s only because she’s your sister that we let her in, you know,’ Mike said in his normal voice.
‘What is it about this bloody, endless war that arouses all one’s most basic and shaming instincts?’ she burst out.
‘I don’t know,’ he said earnestly, ‘but if it doesn’t stop soon some of my very base instincts are going to get dangerously near the surface.’ Then he laughed, and Gerry smiled back at him instinctively. ‘Off with you back to your office, Gerry, before we waste all day and get sent to the salt mines.’
Still smiling, she left him, and it was not until she was halfway up the stairs to her office that she began to think about Flixe again, and to wonder whether she might have avoided flirting with Andrew out of loyalty rather than because of any particular antipathy towards him. Gerry wished that she had not let her jealousy lead to such ungenerous thoughts. She cared so much for Flixe that it worried her that she could have been so foul. Seeing Flixe on such pally terms with Mike must have been more upsetting than Gerry had realised.
Hearing her sister’s steps at the top of the stairs, Gerry stopped and waited for her. Flixe came down until she stood opposite Gerry. The light was poor on the staircase and for a moment neither could be quite sure what the other was thinking. Then Flixe suddenly leaned forward to fling her arms around Gerry.
‘We can work together, can’t we, Gerry?’ Flixe said into Gerry’s shoulder. ‘Whatever we both feel about him? And whatever he made us feel about each other?’
Gerry felt as though some inner chamber of her mind had been opened, allowing its cold emptiness to be overtaken by warmth. She leaned against Flixe’s strong arms as the chamber was slowly filled.
‘Yes, Flixe,’ she said at last. ‘Let’s try.’
A door opened on the floor above them and they pulled away from each other, embarrassed by the emotions they had unleashed. Tony Eynsham walked down the stairs towards them, and Gerry smiled at him.
‘I’d better go back to the office now. Shall we have lunch, Flixe?’
‘Terrific, Gerry,’ she said with assumed heartiness. Then she smiled and went on more calmly. ‘Yes, we need to talk.’
In fact, although they were never silent during the hour and a half they spent in a restaurant near the office, neither of them spoke about any of the dangerous emotions she had had about the other. It was as though in that brief moment on the staircase all the past bitterness had been taken away. Their interlocking skins of jealousy might never be forgotten, but they had been peeled away, to reveal two young women, very alike in some ways, utterly different in others, who loved each other. Silently they had acknowledged the hurts they had delivered in the past and the ones they had suffered. It was over.
Gerry walked back to Dover Street that evening feeling tired and somehow scoured, but more peaceful than she could remember. There was no sign of Andrew when she reached the flat and so she lay down on their bed and within five minutes, fully dressed, fell asleep.
When he got in, having dined with some officers of his own regiment on leave in London, he stood looking down at her, wondering what could have happened to lay her out like that. He was ashamed of the scene he had made when she had turned up at the flat the night before with a broken toe and some ridiculously unbelievable story of crises in her office. But ever since he had seen her in St James’s Park soon after he got back to London, walking arm in arm with a young naval officer, he had been desperately suspicious of her accounts of what she had been doing. Despite the plausible story she had told him then about the young man’s brother’s death, Andrew had found it hard to believe her. But he tried.
Wishing that he could find a way to love her that she could accept, wishing passionately that she could love him, he changed into pyjamas and lay down beside her, covering himself with a rug.
He woke, hours later, to find Gerry sliding under the bedclothes, having substituted a nightdress for her coat and skirt.
‘Darling,’ he murmured, reaching over to kiss her. ‘Are you all right?’ She turned towards him and, rather to his surprise, kissed him back. It was so long since she had responded physically to him that he reached for her, wanting to make love to her.
Gerry, tired and still feeling churned-up emotionally from her encounter with Flixe, tried to conceal her reluctance, and after a time she conquered it. Later, when he lay quiet beside her, she felt a simple affection for him that was both new and rather comforting.
When she came back into the bedroom after her bath at half-past seven, she took down the blackout and peered out through the grimy windows. Although their basement was as cold as ever, Gerry could see that outside the day was bright and clear, almost breathtaking in its sunny loveliness. As she folded the blackout curtains, she called out spontaneously:
‘Andy, it’s the most glorious day.’
He was so surprised to hear her speak so naturally – and happily – that he got out of bed, reached for his crutches and manoeuvred his way across the floor to stand behind her. He propped one of the crutches against the wall and put his free arm around her waist, dropping his head on to hers, murmuring:
‘Any day when you’re happy is glorious to me, my darling.’ He knew at once from the stiffening of her muscles beneath the soft crêpe-de-Chine that he had said the wrong thing again, but he held on and tried again: ‘I know that was wrong, Gerry, but I don’t know why. Can’t you tell me?’
His humility and the sensitivity of his question touched her and she tried to match them, forcing herself to lean back against him more softly.
‘I think …’ she began. Then, knowing that if she had gone on to say what she had planned she could have hurt him, she stopped, reminded herself of some of Mike’s advice and put her hands on top of Andrew’s. ‘It’s difficult when you put things like that because it sounds as though I am responsible for your pleasure or lack of pleasure,’ she said as gently as she could.
‘But dearest, you are,’ he said, nuzzling her neck and pulling her back even closer to him.
‘Don’t you see, though? It makes me feel trapped …’
She could feel his head lifting away and was sorry that she felt glad at the release.
‘No. I don’t see. Why should it?’ Andrew asked, his voice sounding the familiar note of injured stiffness.
‘Please don’t be angry,’ she said, keeping hold of his hands and edging nearer to what she actually wanted to say. ‘It makes me feel that I can’t have any feelings of my own, that my pleasure in good weather becomes your property, that I have to share …’
‘But that’s what marriage is about: sharing.’ Beginning to get impatient again and wanting to hide it, she removed her hands and pulled away.
‘Sometimes I think you wilfully misunderstand what I’m trying to explain,’ she said, keeping her voice as cool as she could. She turned to look at him.
‘Gerry, I don’t. I’m just trying to understand why you don’t want to share your pleasure in something like a beautiful day with me.’ The injured tone and whipped-dog expression on his face put the last touches to her anger.
‘Oh, stop it. Must we go through this ghastliness every time we talk to each other?’ Gerry burst out, her determination to try to make him happy, or at least to stop hurting him, faltering.
‘No, of course not. I just want to be allowed to love you. Come to bed again, dearest. Let me.’
Her teeth clenched and she took several deep breaths before saying:
‘I don’t think that would be a good thing just now, Andrew. And we both have to get to work. Please let me get dressed.’
He stood aside, looking so pathetic in his rumpled pyjamas that she could have hit him. But it was he who spoke:
‘Gerry, I try all the time to understand your feelings and help you, but you never seem to think of mine.’
‘There’s no need to sound injured. I know what your feelings are and I do my best to accommodate them. But I don’t share all of them and I can’t make myself pretend.’ She started to pull on her suspender belt and find her stockings. Then she said quietly: ‘And I’ve never asked you to understand my feelings. I don’t want you to understand them; I want you to leave them to me – and let me be free.’ On the last word her voice rose despite herself into a kind of wail. She went off into the bathroom with the rest of her clothes and he heard the bolt snap shut.
When she came out again he was half dressed and buttoning up his shirt. Although he felt at a considerable disadvantage with his bare legs and flapping shirt tails, he said with as much dignity as he could muster.
‘I don’t know how much more free you can be: you have your job, your own friends. I don’t make you tell me where you are or what you’re doing all day. You have your own bank account. I don’t demand to see your household accounts or cross-examine you about your expenditure. What more could you reasonably ask for?’
She stood in the doorway looking at him. Suddenly she caught the scent of bay rum, just like the mixture her father had always used on his hair, and it put the finishing touch to her defensiveness. Andrew watched her face hardening and felt that his heart would break if she did not smile. She looked just like the sweet, fragilely pretty girl he had fallen in love with and married. He could almost smell the stephanotis she had worn in her soft, fair hair on their wedding day.
‘It sounds melodramatic, and selfish, but it’s the only way I can explain: when you do this kind of thing I feel like occupied territory. Ask the French – obviously not the starving or the beaten or the deported, but the relatively safe and prosperous, or the ones over here – why they fight and risk so much and die so that their country can be free. Then you might understand.’ She left him then and walked miserably to the office. Yet again she had failed him. She tried so hard to be kind, agreeing with something Mike had once said to her – that kindness between human beings was really the only important achievement in life – but time after time she failed.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
In the next few weeks each of the three surviving Alderbrook sisters fought her own battle: Gerry to find a way to love her husband without sacrificing the identity she had found for herself during the years she had lived without him; Ming to come to terms with the nightmares and memories of France that she could not shake off, and to invent a life for herself that she wanted to live; Flixe to come to terms with the fact that she had killed a man, to forget her past as Suvarov’s glamorous whore and Jean-Pierre’s treacherous lover, and to learn how to be one of the boys in the analysts’room.
The last was the easiest part of her fight, and she had already had a tiny bit of practice during the Naseby House course in self-defence. By the time Christmas was past she had found a kind of freedom in her new role. Discovering that she was quite as intelligent as any of the men, read French as well as Mike Endlesham even if not as well as Tony Eynsham, and could manage the work she was given without too much difficulty was a revelation, and one that gave her a certain satisfaction. She tried to think as little as possible of Gerry’s characteristic position as Suvarov’s confidante, working with him in his own room and acting as a kind of immigration control officer to ensure that he was not bothered with unwanted people or information from downstairs.
Flixe did not mind that she hardly saw him, for she still had not quite managed to forgive him for involving Ming in his work or to forgive herself for caring so much for him. Sometimes she thought that he was avoiding her because he found her tiresome; but occasionally she was certain that he understood her state of mind and was trying to give her room to deal with it without distracting or intruding on her.
In the end it was Flixe who precipitated the intrusion. She and Gerry had both been writing to Ming at least once a week. They always shared the letters they got back from her, both finding the woman revealed in the letters quite different from the little sister they thought they knew. One evening in January, Flixe came back from work to find a letter from Ming on her doormat. Reading it with all the admiration to which she was becoming accustomed, Flixe was suddenly determined to make Suvarov let her go to see Ming. However much he wanted to keep them apart, they were sisters and they had the right to talk to each other.
The following morning she got up half an hour earlier than usual and reached the office before Gerry. Having made sure that she would get him to herself, Flixe went into Suvarov’s office unannounced. She was brought up short by the sight of him sitting at his desk, his fists balled on either side of the blotter, his lips twisted into a bitter-looking grimace and tears visible on his thin pale cheeks. Flixe stood in the doorway utterly at a loss. Ever since he had first recruited her from the Fanys at the beginning of the real war, she had never known him let his emotions escape from under their very tight restraint.
‘Peter, is it anything I can help with?’ Flixe asked softly, feeling all the tenderness he had ever aroused in her rushing back.
He looked up as though he had only just become aware of her presence and quickly released his fists, laying his hands elegantly on the blotter.
‘No, thank you, Flixe,’ he said, making no attempt to wipe away the tearstains. Perhaps, she thought, he does not realise they show.
‘Tea, perhaps?’ she suggested. ‘I could hunt up Madge and get her to make an early brew this morning.’
‘Good idea. Do that, will you, Flixe.’
She went out, to reappear in about ten minutes’time, bearing two steaming cups. Handing him one of them, she put hers down on the outer corner of his desk and went to bring her sister’s chair up beside it. ‘Peter, I don’t want to pry, but wouldn’t it be better to talk?’
He smiled at that, the irresistibly charming smile of their old innocent friendship in the days before Jean-Pierre, before Ming, before the man in the alley.
‘It’s all right, Flixe. There’s been no tragedy in my life; just my past catching up with me.’
‘Your Communist, I mean Russian past?’
‘That’s right. You’ve heard about Leningrad I suppose?’
‘Yes, I read about it in the paper this morning. Isn’t it wonderful? At last they’ve beaten back the Jerries.’ She realised that her note of triumphant delight did not square with what she had seen in his face, and so she went on more quietly: ‘But, Peter, why should that make you so sad?’
‘Not the lifting of the siege, Flixe. God forbid! But did you know that two million of them have died of starvation since it started? I can’t help thinking about it. It was the city where I was born, grew up, lived, loved, fought and nearly died. It’s my home. Some of those dead are probably my family, certainly people I knew.’
‘I’m so sorry, Peter. I never thought.’ Impulsively she leaned across the desk and took his hand. He squeezed hers for a second and smiled at her. Then he let her hand go and drank some of the hot, sweet tea she had brought him.
‘Well, as you said, it’s all over now, thank God. We’d better get back to work. What are you doing up here, by the way?’
Flixe blushed. After their moment of renewed sympathy, the words she had been planning to use would have been quite out of place. She, too, drank as a way of gaining time to recast her request.
‘Come on, my dear, out with it,’ he said, laughing. ‘What do you want? I’ve never seen you look so shifty.’ Flixe laughed at that.
‘Peter, when can I go and see Ming? I don’t want to nag you, but it is important to me—’ She was about to go on with more persuasions, but he interrupted.
‘Don’t worry. I was going to suggest it anyway. Diana would love to have you and Gerry for the weekend, and I thought that perhaps you could bring Ming back with you on Sunday.’
‘This one coming?’
‘Why not? Unless you’ve got engagements. God knows if Andrew will spare Gerry, but if he is really tiresome, you’ll just have to leave her behind.’
‘No, of course I haven’t any engagements,’ she said, forgetting the sympathy between them and their recent cheerfulness and wondering how he could have expected her to pick up so soon the life that she had had to drop when she became what he had called ‘the siren of Kensington’for him. He looked across the desk at her, noticing her pallor and the marks under her eyes and the way her mouth seemed dragged out of shape by depression or petulance. His own mouth tightened.
