A Summer Bird-Cage by Margaret Drabble

I’d never have expected a lazy lump like you to come all this way.’
    ‘Why shouldn’t I come? I was asked.’
    ‘Yes, I know you were.’
    ‘Oh, I came for various reasons. Somebody was going up to Birmingham in a car, and I’ve got to see someone else in Stratford tomorrow. And then I wanted to see Louise at her final exit. And I wanted to see you. You’re old friends of mine, aren’t you?’
    ‘Well, in a manner of speaking. But don’t tell me that friendship overcomes inertia.’
    ‘Not by itself, naturally.’
    ‘I suppose I came all the way from Paris myself, now I come to think of it. Pretty stupid thing to do, just for Louise. When Paris was so nice.’
    ‘Was it?’
    ‘Oh, heaven. I can’t think why I left. I met an absolutely wonderful man called Martin who worked in a bookshop, and he spoke such wonderful French that everyone thought he was, he could talk as quickly as they do and without thinking. We had a wonderful time. He knew all the odd people, you know, American painters and vagrants and so forth. Why do I always like vagrants more than inhabitants? More than sensible, solid, respectable people like Stephen?’
    ‘Sensible, solid and respectable, did you say? That archetypal madman?’
    ‘He’s not mad. Do you know him?’
    ‘I’ve met him. We have friends in common. A ghastly chap called Wilfred Smee. And believe me he’s neurotic all right.’
    ‘Who wouldn’t be with a name like that?’
    ‘I meant Stephen.’
    ‘Oh. Oh. No, I don’t agree, I think it’s you that’s neurotic, not him.’
    ‘Me?’
    ‘Yes, you. He’s in with the world, you’re not.’
    ‘What do you mean by that? If anyone’s in with the world, I am. I love it. I’ve got both my hands round it, believe me, Sarah. I can taste what I’m drinking and see what I’m seeing. I’m fantastically well-integrated.’
    ‘Not what I call integration.’
    ‘Perhaps you mean social integration?’
    ‘Perhaps I do.’
    ‘For Christ’s sake, you girls. You’re just like Gill. Always worrying about who fits where. And if things don’t fit, you’re lost.’
    ‘That’s just what I’ve been saying,’ I said, ‘but you don’t listen. I like things that don’t fit. I like people like Martin and you and Simone. I like people without any social bearings.’
    ‘Oh well, if you mean people like Simone . . . ’
    Simone. She’s not a fair counter, not even on the subject of vagrancy. Nationless, sexless, hopelessly eclectic, hopelessly unrooted: her very name puts things out of perspective.
    ‘Simone,’ he repeated. ‘When did you last see Simone?’
    ‘On the Gare du Nord. At about five in the morning.’
    ‘What on earth were you both doing there?’
    ‘Oh, it was very odd and charming. I’d been up all night with Martin and a boy called Yves and an American girl called Linda, one of those nights when everyone is in love with everyone else, so nobody can go to bed because that would mean deciding who to go or not go with—I liked Linda best, honestly, I was terrified of losing her to either of those men—and so we stayed up, walking around and hobnobbing with Algerians, and we ended up in the Gare du Nord trying to get a cup of coffee. They were washing those big stone ladies on top, it was just light enough to see. The coffee was foul and tepid because the machine had only just warmed up for the morning. We were just beginning to get really gritty, dirty and disagreeable when in walked Simone. I was so amazed.’
    ‘Where had she come from?’
    ‘She’d been sitting on a soldier’s knee all the way from Marseilles, she said. She was wearing a nineteenth-century admiral’s topcoat with silver buttons that she’d got out of one of her grandmother’s attics in Rome.’
    ‘He must have been a very brave soldier. To offer her his knee.’
    ‘Oh, people don’t notice on trains. They really don’t. They don’t employ any discrimination about who they pinch or offer their bed to or who they