Read Online The Birdcage by Marcia Willett - Free Book Online

mother’s unusual silence, sensing Pidge’s nervousness, puzzled by those undercurrents she could not understand.
    â€˜It’s simply perfect,’ Angel repeated slowly. ‘But the rent seems very . . . modest for all this space . . .’
    It was almost as if she were testing Pidge – or even teasing her slightly – and Lizzie instinctively tensed as if for some kind of physical action.
    â€˜It’s more important that I have the right people in my home, you see.’ Pidge broke in quickly. ‘It’s not just the money . . .’
    Her distress communicated itself to Angel who, apparently regretting her former feigned reluctance, slipped an arm about Pidge’s slim shoulders in a spontaneous gesture of comfort. ‘My dear, don’t think I’m complaining! I couldn’t be more thrilled. I’m just knocked sideways at our luck.’
    â€˜That’s good, then. So it’s “yes”?’
    Angel looked from Pidge’s anxious face into Lizzie’s pleading one. ‘Oh, I think so,’ she said, chuckling again. ‘I’d say it’s definitely “yes”.’
    Whilst Angel and Pidge disappeared into the sitting-room to deal with the business side of the arrangement, Lizzie climbed back up to her eyrie, looking about her with joyful amazement, wondering how soon they could move in so that she might arrange her few belongings to her own satisfaction. After a few weeks it seemed as if they had lived here with Pidge for ever.
    Now, slipping from the chair, carrying the book, she goes across to the two women, who stop talking to look at her.
    â€˜See what I’ve done,’ she says, and Angel takes the book, holding it at an angle so that Pidge can see it too.
    â€˜That’s pretty good, Lizzie,’ says Pidge, blinking a little at the brightness of the sunflowers. ‘Very imaginative use of colour.’
    Lizzie too peers at the picture. ‘That’s Mummy and me,’ she explains, ‘when I was a baby. And that’s my daddy coming in at the gate. See? I wish Daddy could come home.’
    She imagines him at the front door with Angel standing at the top of the stairs looking down at him holding her, Lizzie’s, hand. She knows exactly how it would be: he would drop his case on the floor and hold out his arms to them and they would run down the stairs together. His coat would be rough to touch but he would swing her up in his arms and say: ‘I can’t believe that this is little Lizzie. How she’s grown . . .’
    â€˜Oh, sweetie.’ Angel puts an arm about her. ‘I wish it too. But so many people were killed in the war.’
    Lizzie knows this, her very best friend at her new school is also fatherless, and she leans against Angel’s leg, pulling her heavy red-gold plait over her shoulder to rub it against her cheek for comfort.
    â€˜He was very brave,’ says Pidge, attempting to console. ‘He was a King’s Messenger.’
    In the odd little silence that follows Angel glances warningly at Pidge but Lizzie is never surprised by those unexpected remarks that indicate that Pidge knew her father almost as intimately as Angel did. Instead, she frowns, remembering Through the Looking-Glass and the picture of the King’s Messenger in the chapter headed ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’. In her mind’s eye she sees an odd-looking rabbit with huge ears, one foot pointed, delving in a bag for a letter for the White King. The creased photograph of her father that Angel has shown her is rather blurred but it is at least that of a man in uniform. Nevertheless, she is confused.
    (‘Wouldn’t it be heaven,’ Angel says in the early days to Pidge, ‘if we could have a proper photograph of Mike framed for her? We could stand it on the piano.’
    â€˜Completely crazy,’ answers Pidge forcefully. ‘We might as well