The Heart Beats in Secret

by Katie Munnik

  I jotted down a few notes and then opened my email. Mateo wanted to confirm Gran’s address so that he could send me a package about the condo. Things might be moving quickly there. He’d tried to call, but the number didn’t connect. It would be good to talk. I wrote him a short note, mentioning Edinburgh and the drive, and the tulips in Aberlady, but I didn’t mention the goose.

  I sent word to Gran’s lawyer, in case he had anything else to pass my way, and I emailed the telephone company. And to Felicity, what could I write? A telephone call would be better. Give her the chance to swear at me a bit for saying nothing and then climb back down. But I needed to get in touch and until I got the phone working, an email would fill the gap.

  Hi Felicity,

  Just checking in. I hope that you’re doing okay. I’m away for the week, all of a sudden. Thinking of you.

  Lots of love to everyone at the camp,

  P.

  Incomplete and dishonest. Again.

  As I left the library, the wind blew my hair from behind my ears as it rushed along the library wall, whispering into the small leaves on the privet hedge. A flutter of small brown birds scattered out onto the ground where they turned to pecking and bobbing for crumbs.

  A mother came through the doors after me, her hands full of books and a toddler trailing behind. He tried to crouch down to watch the birds, but she grabbed his hand and pulled him away. The sparrows took flight as the mother hurried off down the path with her son. I watched as the wind ruffled his hair and caught the ends of her scarf so that it blew out behind her like a flag.

  All through the winter, Mateo had complained about the noise from the people upstairs. There was always the sound of tricycles in the hallway. Or shouts from the bathroom or the bedrooms, the loud bang of dropped books.

  ‘We should just go out,’ he’d say in the evening. ‘Find a quiet place for a glass of wine.’

  ‘I’m sure they’ll settle soon. It’s only half past seven.’

  ‘Every blessed evening. We should move.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You say yes, so we should do something about it. I’ll arrange another viewing. For this week.’

  ‘Felicity is coming to town on Thursday.’

  ‘Friday, then.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All right – yes. Then yes.’

  12

  IN THE HOUSE, IT WAS IN THE KITCHEN. SHE. THAT goose. No egg this time, just the goose standing there, calm as could be. Ridiculous. A goose in a kitchen is ridiculous. She stood there on leathery feet, looking huge beside the counters, shitting on my gran’s floor, scaring me half to death, all on my own. I bellowed and clapped my hands and she looked right at me with dark, beany eyes as if to ask what the fuss might be. Then she opened her beak and hissed. The pale pink of her fleshy tongue flashed out at me and I could see small, strange teeth along her black bill; more dinosaur than bird. She hissed louder. I picked up the broom and swung it out, hoping to sweep her towards the open door. She beat her wings and jumped up into the air, hissing and raising a wind in the small room. I stumbled backwards into the hall. She kept coming at me, so I jabbed out with the broom and I hissed a bit, too, fiercely, or as fierce as I could manage, and she hesitated. I got my hand on the doorknob, but was scared to slam it in case I caught her neck. I hissed louder and let out a strangled shout. She backed off, just enough, and I got the door closed and that was that. No – she’d opened up the back door before, hadn’t she? So I needed to lock this one. Of course, there wasn’t a key – I’d have to wedge it shut with something. I pulled the desk chair from the living room and rammed it under the door handle, hoping that would do the trick.

  Then I went into the bedroom and did the same thing.

  I could still hear noises from the kitchen, but the hissing had stopped. She honked triumphantly. Well, let her think she’d won. It wouldn’t last long. I’d figure something out. I would. In the morning. I’d have to.

  The light was beginning to fade. I settled on the bed, with a blanket over my knees and read through Mateo’s guidebook. Maybe I’d take a trip to down the coast. There was a seabird centre in North Berwick. I wasn’t sure if Canada geese counted as seabirds, but maybe the people at the centre could help anyway. It was either that or bundle the bird into the car somehow and deposit it with Muriel at the hotel. Actually, the hotel was a rather tempting idea that evening. I could head over there, have a meal, and ask for a bed afterwards. Except that would make me look ridiculous, too, wouldn’t it? I couldn’t really explain why I wasn’t going back to the bungalow. They’d think I was scared of the dark. Or ghosts. So I stayed put and wished I’d eaten more for lunch.

  Out in the bay, waves crashed on the sandbar. A storm was coming. Wind in the trees and rain starting on the roof tiles. It would blow right into the kitchen through that open back door. It might flood. Well, then the goose might float away. I wasn’t going through there again. The trees along the road groaned with the strengthening wind and every window rattled. The blanket was scratchy but warm and I wished Mateo were here. I looked at every page he’d bookmarked, read every detail.

  Later, I fell into the pattern of sleep and listening. The rise and lull of wind continued through every dream, and I followed it deep into the night, settling, unsettling and settling again with the waves until a sound came from the kitchen. A screech like something skinned.

  Wide awake suddenly, I couldn’t move.

  Another shriek and the loud sound of wind now, but the shriek was animal. She was caught, trapped somewhere and bleeding. Torn and bleeding. She was hurt and panicked, and my ears were raw with her cry.

  I felt for the light switch and closed my eyes against the glare. Another cry but this time softer. I stood up, wrapped a blanket around me, and moved the chair away from the door.

  Light channelled into the darkness and, down the hallway, I could see that the chair I’d wedged by the kitchen door had fallen. I pushed it away, listened and opened the door slowly. The wind hit me first, my face wet with its cold touch. Then I saw the goose moving in the shadows. Her head twisted back and forth, her eyes blinked blindly as she croaked out harsh sobs.

  ‘Hush, hush, beastie. Gentle now, hush,’ and she came towards me, bleating. I crouched and let the blanket fall from my shoulders, unsure what I was doing, but there she was, coming towards me, bending her neck and pushing into me as if she wanted to hide. I reached down and pulled the blanket up to cover her wings and she let me. ‘Hush,’ I said again. ‘Hush and hush.’

  I held her. I whispered. I waited. She was a scared young thing in my arms and I held her until she was calm. She folded in on herself and settled on the floor, the half-tangled blanket still around her. I stood, still hushing gently and turned on the light by the cooker. She stayed still, almost trusting. I closed the door to the yard but left the hallway door open and she was still. Settled.

  I went back to bed and kept listening.

  In the morning, I found the house quiet, the floor cool under my feet, the trees outside the window still. The goose was in the living room, nesting in an armchair, her beak under her wing, her eyelids closed and lightly feathered. I hadn’t known that Canada geese had white eyelids. Two small white circles like the moon. How strange, this intimate knowledge. This glimpse.

  The kitchen was carnage. Water on the floor and feathers and the mess of more shit everywhere. She’d pulled the clock down from the wall and now it dangled, exhausted, from the plug. The blue glass cake-stand was in shards on the floor. Another egg, this time smashed. The white was an oozed slick on the tiles and the yolk the size of my fist. Felicity had taught me to salt a smashed egg. A handful of salt will absorb the wet mess, making it easier to scoop up. And a slice of bread for the broken glass to keep the splinters away from your skin. Neither trick would work with puddles or grime, but I found a stack of old newspaper beside the fireplace. Then, after the debris was dealt with, I would mop the floor.

  * * *

  I was just put
ting the kettle on for coffee when the letterbox rattled and something heavy fell to the floor. The address was written in Mateo’s handwriting – jarringly out of time. It had only been the day before that I’d emailed him the address and here was an envelope already. A thick magazine slid out, with a note clipped to the cover. He’d been in touch with Felicity for the address. He was sorry. He hadn’t realized that I hadn’t told her and that she didn’t know about my trip. Conversations between Felicity and Mateo were generally awkward. Neither of them quite understood how I felt about the other. Or why, perhaps. Perhaps the heart beats in secret.

  The magazine was propaganda about the condo Mateo fancied. Live above the ordinary with a photo of a tower in the city sky. All those glass walls. When we first looked around our current apartment, he’d been so pleased with the glass shower surround and the clean white subway tiles on the walls. That was before he’d heard the kids upstairs. But I’d been grumpy and tired later when I described the bathroom to Felicity and she’d got the wrong end of the stick. She thought I was unhappy, so she came to visit. Trying to cheer me up, she brought along brushes and red paint and covered all that glass with trailing vines, leafy patterns and the shapes of birds in flight. Mateo did not understand.

  ‘Happiness is bird-shaped, isn’t it?’ she said, grinning, brushing her hair back with her wrist, her fingers still holding a paint-dipped brush. ‘Did I get that quite right? A feathered thing? My mother would know. She has all the poems at her fingertips. A crack mind, my mum.’ She sat back on her heels and admired her work.

  It took Mateo two weeks to get rid of the colour, scratching at the glass with a razor blade, clearing his throat and saying little.

  I flipped through the magazine pages, past the sauna, the concierge and the penthouse terrace. The pages had a plastic smell, a slickness fitting for a glass house.

  The goose walked into the kitchen. I kept turning pages. I wondered if she noticed that I’d cleaned. Then I wondered if she was hungry because she would be, wouldn’t she? After all that had happened. I stood up, slowly to keep her calm, opened the back door, then returned to my magazine. The garden was hers if she wanted it.

  The wind through the door smelled of churned sea and earth. She looked at me. Expectantly, I thought.

  ‘You okay? You hungry or anything? You can go outside, if you like. The door’s open.’

  She honked quietly, her eyes still fixed on my face.

  ‘You thirsty? There’ll be a puddle in the garden. You want to go out?’

  This was silly. Geese don’t understand words. But you can’t look into a face like that and not respond. It seemed rude. So I talked. She blinked. I talked some more. She pecked at the magazine and I put it down on the table.

  Through the window, I could see the tips of branches and pale-green leaves pointed to the sky. The goose angled her head up, listening. Maybe she could hear the other geese calling. Sometimes I could hear them when the windows were open, but her ears might be more attuned. It was strange to think her family might be close by and here she was, alone with me. I wished I could let them know she was all right.

  When I headed to the bathroom, the goose followed me. She watched as I filled the sink with water and, as I splashed my face, she jumped up to the edge of the bath, so I turned on the bath tap and put in the plug. She clacked amicably as the water ran. When I turned it off, she hopped down into the water, shaking out her feathers, stretching out her neck, bending and drinking and looking pleased with herself.

  The water in the sink went cold, so I drained it and started again. Hot water, a clean flannel and Gran’s soap. The goose splashed in the bath. I splashed, too. We got on fine.

  After that, she followed me everywhere. I walked to the end of the garden and the goose walked along behind me. I crossed the road to look at the bay and she came too. When I walked out over the bridge to the saltings, she flew low over the water to join me on the other side. She kept close as I crossed through the dune country, and when we reached the concrete blocks, she flew up to perch and take in the view. I scrambled up after her. It was higher than it looked and I noticed words carved into the block’s surface. Not graffiti – concrete’s too hard for that. This must have been written before the concrete was dry.

  WEDENSDAY 21st AUGUST 1940

  A simple mistake set now in stone, back when my grandmother was young. En for endure. Stone without end.

  Standing, we could see the wide world of the Forth, the water both silver and blue, broken by the wind. The goose opened her wings and beat them against the air, calling out with her broken voice. I thought she’d fly. That she was going to leave me. I waited and watched, and something like loneliness barked in my heart, a faraway cry. She paused, then met my eye.

  ‘Oh, honk yourself,’ I said. ‘Go if you need to. You are a wild thing. I’m all right here.’

  But she didn’t go. She winged the air again, calling louder than before, and I saw how beautiful she was. Her feathers spread wide, each wing a perfect pattern of shaded shingles. Looking at her, angels made sense. Wings were naturally heavenly. I stretched out my arms to feel the push of the wind and she cackled. I was sure she was laughing, her shiny eye full of light, and I laughed, too.

  May grew fat and the last tulips dropped their broad petals to the grass. I made lists, sorted through all the boxes and moved umpteen things from place to place. I threw away old utility bills and kept my mother’s letters. I found nothing new. Only the usual bits and pieces, expected detritus and all the ingredients of a long life lived.

  Meanwhile, the goose made herself at home in the living-room chair. She pulled suckers from the apple trees in the orchard, and layered them around the cushioned back, lining them with her own feathers to make a soft and rounded place to be. Things around the house disappeared, reappearing later in the growing nest. Bits of newspaper. Pencils and pens. A luggage tag. One of my socks. One morning, I watched her tear a large piece of the condominium magazine. She crumpled the glossy paper, creasing it with care. I let her. I wasn’t particularly interested in reading about concierge service anyway. I read the library book instead and learned about goose habits. Seems young ones get confused and wander. Build solo nests in strange places. Get into mischief. I took notes and observed her caching habits as hairpins went missing from Gran’s dressing table and coins from the pockets of trousers I left on the chair. The problem of bird grime spread. I had to lay towels over the furniture, and newspapers under the desk where she liked to hide after lunch. I learned to keep a paper towel in my back pocket and swooped down without thinking to wipe the floorboards and the tiles in the hall. The Persian carpets proved harder to clean, dusty traces remaining despite all my work with the vacuum cleaner. They had to be dragged outside and draped over chairs in the garden. I worked them over with a dry brush to remove the residue, then rolled them up and put them away under the bed.

  She dropped feathers and I saved them in a jam jar.

  Sometimes she laid more eggs and sometimes she didn’t.

  Whenever I left the house, the goose came too. She kept her eye on me. She didn’t like it when I climbed into Gran’s car to go down the road to Gullane. When I returned with groceries and more books, she was back on the stump, barking at me, but when I opened the bungalow door, she flew down from her perch and walked regally up the path, nodding graciously to me and stepping inside.

  When the phone was connected again, I called Felicity but Bas said she wasn’t there. He might have meant she didn’t want to talk. I didn’t know if he would tell me.

  I told him about the goose and he laughed. ‘It’s good to live with animals,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that why we kept you around?’

  ‘Hey you, be kind. Don’t want to make me cry, do you? I’m far from home and all alone right now. Well, almost.’

  ‘You’re a tough nut. You’re fine, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess. Still haven’t decided what to do with the house, but I’ll need to head home soon. Has
Felicity mentioned anything?’

  ‘No. No, she hasn’t. Have you asked her? She might like to be asked.’

  ‘Tell her to call me, will you? I don’t mind what time of day it is.’

  He said he would and we hung up. I tried Mateo, too, but there was no answer.

  One warm evening, the goose followed me down to the fish and chip shop and then we sat together on a bench overlooking the bay, sharing squashed chips. Seemed she liked them better like that, and I ended up eating just the fish. It was almost June. I would be heading home to Ottawa soon. A year since last summer already.

  Last summer, it had been Spain. Mateo had had a conference to attend and I tagged along.

  ‘To see my haunts?’ Mateo asked. ‘My childhood seasides?’

  ‘Yes. If you like. You never talk about them.’

  ‘Perhaps there is not much to say.’

  I told him I also wanted to see Picasso’s Margot. At the shop, we sold a book with her face on the cover, her lips as red as the roses in her hair and her eyes painted thick with colour, her haunting, confronting look. He’d given her a background painted with pointed light, gold and green like the Klimt, but miles different, too. Klimt’s model stood untouched in a surreal setting, but Margot leaned solidly on a dark tabletop. Both would never blink.

  One month before we flew, I knew I was pregnant. It was just like Felicity described it. An ache and a lift. A weird certainty. I’d never believed these symptoms – thought they were mumbo-jumbo and too early to be real. But it turned out she was right. Eight days in, I knew.

  I didn’t say anything, didn’t do anything. Told myself my period was often erratic. I was coming down with something. The weather. The mussels I’d eaten. The flu. At the end of the month, I bought a test at the drugstore. But I didn’t want to test at home, not even alone. I went to a coffee shop and stood in line for a coffee – just a small espresso. Sipped it slowly, watching the buses drive past.