The Heart Beats in Secret

by Katie Munnik

  Hans stood in the kitchen with Bas and Rika. He looked as if he hadn’t slept since he’d left Birthwood, his eyes scanning the room the way a thief might. Bas put the whisky bottle on the table and we sat down, ready to listen if that’s what he wanted. Only I kept my coat on and hoped that baby would keep sleeping. Rika said nothing.

  Hans told us he’d left without really knowing what he’d do. He knew he should visit her family, but the news felt impossible to carry. And he didn’t know if she’d told them about him; she’d never called them when he was around. By the time he got to Montreal, he was certain he should turn around and head back to the camp. Maybe if he had the baby with him, it would be easier to meet her family. But what did he know about looking after a newborn? She was better where she was.

  He saw the moon rising over the cross-topped mountain, mocking him. A hotel was impossible – the white sheets, the soft pillow. He felt a fever coming on and set off down the street to outpace it. Streets and corners, cutting through alleyways, underpasses, city parks. A stone man looked down from a colonial plinth. Traffic lights, car horns, shouts and lights, sirens coming closer so he turned away again and headed for darker places. In time, he found himself surrounded by trees, the hill dark around him. Then a clearing and he lay down, the dirt against his back. He closed his eyes to close the world.

  In the morning, an old man’s face looked at him. Old and rough, bristled like an animal. The man stood against a tree, with bags at his feet and an old man’s hat on his head. Hans said hello, but the man shook his head and walked away.

  It took him an hour to find the bus station and when he got there, he was tired and hungry. He bought a sandwich and tried to eat it. Girls stood around – there were always girls – and he looked away from their dark hair, their open eyes. He used the public toilets and washed his face. He didn’t look in the mirror.

  Bas poured more whisky and I sat quite still.

  ‘She’d always said she was from a place called Sainte Anne. North, I thought, but I didn’t know. Anyway, I couldn’t find it on the map. Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, Sainte-Anne-des-Monts, Sainte-Anne-du-Lac, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Sainte-Anne-des-Beaupré. And more, too, but no Sainte Anne. I wondered if I had the saint wrong. Sainte Angèle, Sainte Agathe, possibly. I couldn’t think. I didn’t know.’

  ‘But you must have known something. You could have asked …’

  ‘I had nothing, okay? Nothing. Only bad news to confess and no one to tell. What was I going to do? Show up in some random town with fucking dreadful news and find some priest to confess to? What would that even do?’

  ‘But you looked. You must have. You’ve been gone a long time.’ Bas’s voice was level, convinced.

  ‘No. I told you, I couldn’t. I wanted to, but there was nothing I could do.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘You know what I’m like.’

  ‘Yes. That’s why I’m asking. And because you’ve come back to your daughter.’

  Hans didn’t say anything for a while, just sat and looked down at his glass.

  ‘I wonder if she’s better where she is. How … how is she?’

  ‘Beautiful,’ Rika said. ‘Thriving. And sleeping, I think?’

  She turned towards me.

  ‘Yes. Quite settled.’

  ‘Can I see her?’ Hans asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If you like.’ I unbuttoned my coat and eased her into the open. The baby opened her eyes in the light, and I worried she’d cry, but she didn’t. She looked peaceful and sweet, her little hands curled up by her face, her eyes slate-grey and lovely.

  ‘You want to hold her?’ I asked. He took a deep breath and I lowered her into his arms, showing him how to cradle her head. He brought his head close and whispered into her ear. He smiled. Rika turned to me and spoke softly.

  ‘Felicity, why don’t you take her up to bed now? You two must be tired out. We’ll be up for a while yet, I imagine. We’ve got more whisky to drink. But don’t worry, I’ll fill Hans in on how we’ve all been managing.’

  * * *

  The stairs creaked beneath my feet, but the baby didn’t wake. In the bedroom, I set her down softly in the basket beside the bed and she didn’t stir. I lay down and watched her, listening to her breathing, to the hush of voices downstairs, and soon, surprisingly, slept.

  Hans was gone by morning. The rest were half breakfasted by the time I came downstairs with the baby. James and Eleta sat at the table, talking about passports.

  ‘I’m not sure we could add her to ours. Not without a birth certificate and we haven’t seen about that.’

  ‘We could, though,’ Eleta said. ‘It would just take time.’

  ‘It would have to be a proper adoption. Because if we do get stopped, that would be one more crime on our list. Would you be ready for that?’

  My belly clenched. The baby fretted in my arms. Rika offered to take her, but I shook my head and I wondered how long this conversation was going to take and how soon I’d have to let her go. She’d have formula, so that was all right. She was even good with a bottle. And I’d find work. I’d buy new clothes. I’d travel. I sat down, adding these things up, and Rika put down her coffee mug and reached for my hand.

  They’d been up late, and Hans and Bas had still been at the table when Rika went to bed. Bas said Hans had told him he’d spent the month living rough in Montreal. He hadn’t been able to face his apartment. He couldn’t bear being inside. ‘It’s the walls,’ he’d said. ‘I couldn’t stop watching them. Felt like I was in a box. And Marie was still in the bathtub – she’ll be there forever, you know. Lying there with her eyes closed. I couldn’t face that. I was half crazy all month, and I thought that if I stayed out under the sky, I could keep her somehow. That some living part of her hadn’t quite blown away in the wind yet, and she might find me if I stayed up on the mountain. Might settle in the folds of my clothes like snow. Travel with me. Stupid, but that’s what I held on to and I slept on the ground. But then it got too cold for that and I ended up in doorways and there were girls and I couldn’t, couldn’t not … everything was neon and concrete and wrong and I … I couldn’t hold on to her any more.’

  In the end, he’d sold what he could to buy the beat-up car he’d driven up to the camp. He said he couldn’t face the cabin, but he’d sleep in the car. Bas had given him an extra blanket and a hot-water bottle. They’d talk in the morning, he’d said. They’d figure it all out then. But instead, he left.

  ‘I don’t know where he’ll go next,’ Bas said. ‘He didn’t say anything. And I didn’t push because I was sure there’d be time.’

  ‘He might come back?’ Eleta asked.

  ‘I don’t think so. He only came back to see that the baby was safe. And real, maybe. He’s not thinking straight. It’s best she’s with us.’

  ‘I want her,’ I said. ‘I’m staying here.’

  ‘Oh, Felicity, you don’t have to,’ Rika said. ‘We all loved Marie.’

  ‘Yes, I know that. But I have milk and I can stay. And it’s not complicated like it would be for Eleta and James. Then if Hans comes back for her, he won’t find her if she’s not here. I want to stay, too.’

  Eleta smiled and said she thought that was beautiful.

  ‘Because you need each other, don’t you?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think we do.’

  Rika gave me Hans’s mother’s address and his sister’s, too, in the Netherlands. She said it was sensible to have them to hand, in case I ever needed them for medical history or family accounts. In time, postcards started arriving from Hans, always from different places, and they said little. No news of Marie’s family or the place she came from. Sainte Anne remained just another saint on the map, and there were far too many to count.

  I put the cards away in an envelope with the addresses. Keeping a record seemed a good idea. I might give it to her, I thought, when she was old enough. Then she could decide what to do with the story. It would be hers to choos
e.

  And, of course, I named her.

  It took me a little while to find the right name. I leafed through the books on the shelf. I didn’t know what I was looking for. And just like that, I found it. Columba Livia – the rock dove. It sounds beautiful when you say it aloud and, though it’s just the common pigeon, it gave me back the clatter of wings over Princes Street and the way the light broke through just in time. All those wings and gold, too. That’s what birth should be like. It isn’t, though. It’s hard work and scary. It hurts, and it makes you fragile and you have to do it. You have to move through it. Messy and powerful and real and that’s good. And it happens to everyone. That’s what brings us all here.

  Pigeons are common, too, and at home everywhere. In every city, they find a place to roost and be settled. Then they wheel up over the rooftops together like a great flag flying, like one bright, lifting decision. As if to say Look, life is like this. Magic.

  So that’s what I gave Marie’s daughter. That choice. That moment. Flight.

  CLOSE

  PIDGE

  I OPENED THE SLOE GIN AND CANCELLED MY TICKET home. You can’t leave a house with a goose in it. You certainly can’t sell it. I told Mateo I wasn’t finished and then procrastinated on signing the condo paperwork. The gin was delicious.

  As the days grew warmer and longer, I found I could read in the orchard late into the evening, if I had a sweater around my shoulders. I worked through all Felicity’s letters but felt no further ahead. The goose built a second nest under the apple trees and kept the grass trimmed.

  In Gran’s living room, I looked at maps, tracing the coastline with my finger – Gullane, Dirleton, then inland to Drem, East Fortune and Athelstaneford. In her letter, Gran had suggested that I explore. North Berwick along the coast, the islands and Tantallon. It would be a long day for the goose alone at the bungalow, and I didn’t fancy the greeting I’d get when I returned. So I’d need to take her in the car and just how was I going to make that work? I covered the backseat with towels and layered them with large handfuls of grass so that she’d have something to graze on. Then I opened all the doors wide, stepped back and hoped. And in she hopped, surprise surprise, and she settled right down in the backseat.

  The drive was worrying, but she kept quiet with her wings folded. I was lucky. Well, some people drive with dogs, don’t they? I was just pulling into the car park at Tantallon Castle, out past North Berwick, when I realized the goose had fallen asleep. When I turned the engine off, I could hear her gentle snores.

  I opened the windows wide and shut the door as softly as I could. The car park was almost empty. Luckily. She wouldn’t be disturbed.

  I bought a ticket in the small visitors’ centre and crossed a wooden footbridge towards a ruined gatehouse. The grass was closely trimmed and neat, carefully kept, and there was Izaak, standing with an easel and facing the sea. The gravel on the path crunched under my feet and he turned, then smiled.

  ‘You again, I see. And on your own this time? That goose has flown?’

  ‘No … she’s …’

  ‘Ah, then. Still under siege. And so, you have come looking for doo’cots. Me too. Come and see.’ He fluttered his hands, beckoning, and I stepped close. In the background of his sketch, the Bass Rock sat like an iceberg in the water of the Forth. In the morning light, it looked stark and stately, and the doo’cot stood on the grass like a landlocked reflection. Its roof was stepped and, in the sky above, a faint moon was clear and almost full, a thumbprint on the blue.

  Izaak held a charcoal pencil elegantly in his fingers. ‘How is it?’

  ‘Perfect. The balance is just right.’

  ‘Yes, I thought it was. I hoped so. Thank you.’ He pulled another pencil from his pocket and added a few smudging lines to the surface of the moon. ‘It is difficult to show just what the eye sees, I find. Especially when the face is so familiar. We should all be able to draw her in our sleep for all that we see her, but we can’t. She can be difficult.’

  A couple walked past us, their dog on a lead, pulling them across the grass towards the doo’cot. It was greyer than the ruddiness of the castle, and blind with no windows.

  ‘Perhaps you look for ideas of a goose house?’ he asks, grinning. The wind unsettled the pages on his sketchbook and his eyes looked bright and wet.

  ‘No, she’s fine on the chair in the living room. Well, almost fine. She’s laying eggs all over the place. And I’m not sure what she’s going to do when I leave.’

  ‘Tricky. You cannot leave her inside the house and you cannot take her with you. You have a wild-goose problem.’

  ‘I just need to find a bird rescue centre or something.’

  ‘When do you go?’

  ‘I don’t know. I need to sort that out, too. And decide about the house. And …’

  Izaak put away his charcoal pencil in his pocket and pulled out a large white handkerchief. ‘I ask too many questions – I apologize,’ he said, wiping his eyes. ‘You were right to worry about me – an old man who cannot mind his own business. I do not have your grandmother’s grace, I’m afraid. But I’ve remembered her story about godly geese. I found an old notebook of mine from the war and I’d jotted her story there, next to a sketch of a skein of geese out over your bay. She said the Celts saw geese as a symbol of the Holy Spirit. Fitting, I thought, because what is God if not free and maybe unpredictable, too? Wild and calling somewhere high above our heads, making us look up.’

  ‘That is a good image,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I thought so too. Compelling.’ He fussed with his jacket buttons. ‘I wonder if it’s true. Hard to know what anyone really thought when you stretch back so far, isn’t it?’

  Yes, I thought. In many ways, but he was following his own train of thought and didn’t wait for an answer.

  ‘But they might have needed it – whoever came up with the story. A necessary fiction. Things were difficult during the war. They might have needed that kind of divine wildness.’ He shook out his handkerchief, then folded it carefully and inserted it back in his pocket. ‘You know, I think your grandmother would like that idea. And she would like your goose, too, I imagine.’

  ‘But what do you think she would do about it?’ I asked, seeing the eggs on the kitchen floor. The nest in the armchair. The mess of gooseness all over the carpets. Izaak shrugged, smiling.

  ‘Likely make omelettes. Pragmatic, don’t you think?’

  I left Izaak on the lawn with his sketching and headed towards the castle ruins, the clouds shifting overhead. As the sun hit my face, I turned towards it and I noticed the doo’cot’s roof also faced south, angled to catch the sunshine and shelter from the northern winds. Clever, that. A well-thought-through design. Stepping inside, I found the space above me higher than I expected. And still. So quiet the blood thrummed in my ears, and the space, too, was divided rhythmically. I could see why Izaak liked these places. There was space here for a thousand roosting birds, and for each one, a perch, a nest, a space to be inside this honeycombed bell, this house full of letterboxes.

  Of course, letters are written to be delivered. Delivered and read. Like all the letters in Gran’s boxes. Read and saved to be read again. There may have been others; there probably were. Misplaced, discarded. Slipped into books or piles of newspapers and forgotten. Burnt even. But the letters in Gran’s house were the letters she’d saved and left for me. Maybe she even thought they were necessary. Hard to tell without asking. A box of letters can hold such a lot. Or such a little.

  The letters I left at Birthwood were still unread. I’d chosen that. Felicity had said that I didn’t need to open them until I wanted to. That when I did, I could read about my father’s family history. She’d never made me feel anxious about what I might find. It was just a box of additional information, should I want it at some stage. But I’ve always thought I knew enough. Enough came through. Not the details like dates, place names and the names of wild flowers, but stories enough. Pulse through an eggshell. Wind in a
sail. The love that sustains.

  * * *

  Back at the car, the goose was awake and preening her feathers. I unlocked the door and she looked at me, blinking.

  ‘Hey, you. Snooze well?’

  A quiet, rusty squonk.

  ‘You want out? A bit of fresh air? The grass here looks nice for grazing.’ I opened the door wide, but she stayed put, so I reached in and ruffled her feathers. That’s what she liked – not a stroke like a cat, but a bit of a muss, my fingers digging into the warmth between her feathers. She stretched up towards me, leaning in, then when I stopped, she shook out her head, amicably, and honked. ‘Well then, goose, time to be heading off, I guess. Home? Yeah, home.’

  Driving back towards Aberlady, I noticed all the old stone walls. Must have been thoughts of castle ruins in my mind or the way the stones fitted together. Or maybe just the beauty of the overhanging chestnut trees with their broad-fingered leaves and the last of their candles fading as summer crept in. In places, the wall was difficult to see at all amidst all the green, and I wondered how long it would stand. I thought of the useless fences in the woods at home, the way the forest claimed the land. How long before this coastline would grow wild again, if given the chance? Before the stone walls disappeared into the trees, the trimmed castle grounds grew tangled with dune grass and the concrete blocks by the coast started to crumble? Or for the road itself to crack and grow green with long grasses, the creek to flood and the sea shift inland, drowning the fields and the walls, changing everything.

  A strange thought. Or maybe a lonely, or just a tired one. I parked the car and when I opened the door, the goose pushed past me, rushing to get out.

  ‘Hey, easy there. Lots of space out here.’

  She flapped her wings and, in a slim moment, was up on her stump again, standing sentinel and looking out over the bay.

  ‘See? You’re back, aren’t you, goose?’ She’d need a name, I thought. I couldn’t just keep calling her ‘goose’. It didn’t seem friendly. I’d think of something.