A Summer Bird-Cage Read Online Free Page A

that trivial business of getting married was over. A honeymoon and Rome, what an
embarras de richesses
. I would have changed places in a flash, if only I could have chosen a different man. I could have made good use of those nice little stapled booklets of tickets.
    I must say, in justice, that there was something so almost gay in the way Louise talked about those gorgeous people, and her trousseau, and the hotels, that I was quite prepared to believe that everything was perfectly normal and happy, and even that she might be in love: certainly that life would be beautiful and exciting and highly-coloured for her, which for other people may well be just as good as love. I did not think that the drabness and despair which threatened to ooze over my life in every unoccupied second would ever swamp Louise: she was way off, wealthy, up in the sky and singing. Louise, Louise, I mutely cried as we went up to bed for the last two hours of the night, Louise teach me how to win, teach me to be undefeated, teach me to trample without wincing. Teach me the art of discarding. Teach me success.
     
    Her wedding morning was bright and promising. She got up earlier than usual, looking wax-coloured and stiff. She came down to breakfast, one of those lapsed middle-class events which she normally used to miss. This had been one of my mother’s grievances, and I thought never again will she have that to complain about. We could never see what difference it made if we came down to breakfast or not, as we were quite prepared to fast if we got up late. But mother didn’t see it that way. Our domestic help at that time consisted of one lonely Swedish girl, not a bit clean and brisk as they look on travel posters, but dim, melancholic, and I suspect suicidal: she used to weep into the washing-up. She said she wept for homesickness, but I thought it was something much more cosmic and tried to talk to her about it, but she disliked me for being indirectly her employer and would simply scowl when I approached her. She couldn’t deal with breakfast for all of us, poor girl, and was always half-asleep and yawning as she swayed in with the eggs and coffee. Once Papa called her a slut—not to her face, of course, but he said it—and Mama immediately launched into tirades of abstract liberal fervour while I burst into tears, totally unexpectedly, and I never knew whether it was because I hated to hear my father be so brutal or my mother so rhetorical, or whether (as I hope it was) I cried because I felt so sorry for her, depressed amongst the alien dishes. I kept telling myself that she could leave if she wanted, but it did not comfort me, for where is a gloomy young foreigner to go? I had been
au pair
myself and knew what it could feel like. She wore long black jerseys with loose sleeves rolled back, and had prominent (not protruding, prominent) white eyes, rather like a large bird—a goose or a seagull—staring and blind. She was not ideal company at the breakfast table: she seemed to echo Louise’s own un-made-up pallor. The toast was hard, there was an egg short so I had to go without, and Daphne’s hair had clearly been in overeffective rollers. I felt too dreary to express until I discovered amongst Louise’s plentiful post a card from Martin.
    It said, platitudinously enough: ‘Dearest Sarah, I hope you had a good crossing and enjoy the wedding. I miss you here. Please write soon. Much love, Martin.’
    Not much in the way of passion, perhaps, but these uninspired words lifted me out of my gloom and restored my faith in life: I felt a great pang for Martin and
vin ordinaire
which managed to put Louise and hard toast in their place again. It detached me, that unimpressive little postcard, and my detachment lasted until I had actually zipped myself into my bridesmaid’s dress half an hour before we were due to leave for church.
    I began to get involved again when I went to see if I could help Louise dress. This was one of the tasks which