A Summer Bird-Cage by Margaret Drabble

Author:Margaret Drabble
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The next day I met Daphne in the Tate. I was somewhat surprised to find myself there anyway, and even more surprised to find her. It was Sunday, of course: Sunday is one of those days on which I expect to do typical, characteristic things—characteristic of myself, that is—yet usually end up doing things I don’t want to do at all, going to places I know I’ll loathe, and so on. This was a particularly bad patch: I seemed to spend my time seeing people I didn’t care about, and talking about things that interested me only in a mild journalistic way. I never saw anyone who could arouse a flutter of apprehension and excitement, and who would turn out unexpectedly, and I couldn’t think of anyone that I really wanted to see more than anyone else. Except Tony, but I couldn’t look for him. And I wouldn’t have minded seeing Jackie Almond, but I knew he was looking for a girl, and it hardly seemed fair to go and occupy him (as I sometimes felt I could quite easily have done) when I only wanted a little excitement and a little company. Perhaps I was too scrupulous about him, but I think not.

So the friends I did continue to see were of that odd, persistent variety that one sees largely through habit, and because they always have an address and telephone number. I can see that in a few years they will turn into the genre of ‘friends of the family’, and recur, sending the children Christmas presents and remembering my birthday, while those one passionately loved and wanted are swept into oblivion. Also, I saw a few people I had once cared about, but who were now too involved in their work or their wives or husbands to care about me. It was one of these who took me to the Tate—a chirpy historian by the name of Lovell, who had invited me to lunch with various academic cronies of Francis’s, for old times’ sake. It was a nice thought, and a nice lunch, but it made me feel curiously passé, and I felt the impulse to tell everyone that I had got a degree too, as good as any of theirs, which is always a danger signal. I resisted it, but it was sad to feel that way at all. Lovell was so nice and so friendly and so full of himself, and kept asking healthy unguarded questions about Francis, and telling me about his thesis, so I should have felt happy. But I didn’t, I felt as though everyone else was leading a marvellous, progressive life except me, and that I had been subtly left behind. He didn’t seem to notice, and it wasn’t that I was exactly bored by the exhibition we had gone to look at; it was just that I simply didn’t care, although I wanted to. I was bullying my brain and eyes to wake up and take a little interest as

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.