Read Online A Summer Bird-Cage by Margaret Drabble - Free Book Online Page B

all for the wrong reasons. He talked about them so professionally, whereas these things were life and death to me. When he said, of a novel I particularly admired, ‘Of course, the whole thing would have been much more effective had he set it in a slightly lower social setting,’ I almost lost my temper, as I am apt to do.
    ‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘He was writing about those people because those were the people he was writing about, and that’s the end of it.’
    ‘Oh no it isn’t,’ he said. ‘His ideas would have come across much more clearly had he allowed himself a wider field for contrast.’
    ‘But it isn’t about ideas, it’s about people,’ I said, crossly.
    ‘Not about individual people. Only about people as they illustrate a point.’
    ‘And you think the point could have been better illustrated in another way?’
    ‘That’s it’
    ‘But if he’d changed the social setting he’d have changed everything. The problems as well as the ideas, wouldn’t he?’
    ‘Why would he?’
    This professional obtuseness baffled me, and I gave up and went back to my strawberries and cream.
    At the end of the meal they asked us if we would have coffee in the garden. It was a lovely garden, with lawns and trees and roses: we sat around dozily in the sun. After a while I began to think it was time I left, as I had to meet someone for tea, so I hinted that I ought to be going.
    Louise and I went to the Ladies while Stephen or John or both paid the bill: in the Ladies, as I combed my hair, I said to Louise, ‘Are you working at the moment?’
    ‘I’ve given up work’ said Louise. ‘It doesn’t get you anywhere. I have other things in hand.’
    ‘Such as what?’
    ‘Oh, this and that.’
    ‘What was your last job?’
    ‘Advertising.’
    ‘How deadly.’
    ‘There are worse things. What are you going to do when you come down?’
    ‘I haven’t thought.’ And I hadn’t, either. It didn’t seem to matter at the time.
    ‘It takes a lot of thinking,’ said Louise.
    After a pause, I said, ‘It was a lovely meal. I love food.’
    ‘So do I.’
    ‘I feel wonderful,’ I said, and meant it. I was extremely happy, all that term, and particularly, that day.
    ‘You look it,’ said Louise, without looking at me. I was embarrassed by her tone.
    ‘I wish I could eat like that every day,’ I said. ‘Every day of my life.’
    ‘Oh, one can’t have everything,’ said Louise. ‘It’s either lovely food or lovely company.’
    ‘Of course one can have everything,’ I said. ‘Have one’s cake and eat it. I intend to.’
    ‘I daresay you do,’ she said. ‘So did I.’ She paused, and then said, in a different tone, a tone of intention rather than expectation, ‘and so do I. So do I.’
    I didn’t see what she meant. Not for ages. Not until I learned myself how difficult it was to get anything, let alone the everything that is showered on one in garlands and blossoming armfuls until one faces the outside world.
    So we drove back to Oxford. I was in the back of the car with John, who asked me some rather intelligent questions about Finals. Like Louise, he wasn’t as dumb as he ought to have been with those looks. Why is Life so unevenly distributed? I was full of envy for those two, or would have been if I hadn’t then been so perpetually full of envy for myself.
     
    Times had certainly changed since then, I reflected, as the bus arrived at our village post-office. For her and for me. Now I was at a loose end and she was married. And moreover I didn’t know any rich men with cars to pass the time away by feeding me in restaurants and driving me round the countryside. I wondered at the skill with which Louise infallibly picked up wealth. I suppose I could have done it once if I had really tried. I used to know a very rich man whose father was something to do with Barclays Bank. But then he was even more boring than Stephen. One can’t have everything.
    It was on that bus-ride that I realized