The Bower Bird

by Ann Kelley

  ‘He’s got more problems than tomatoes up his nose now,’ said Mum, rather callously in my opinion.

  When we get home, black-fly and greenfly are everywhere in the garden, all over practically every leaf, and I have frenzy of killing. I don’t understand. Why did I feel compassion for one drowning black-fly in my soup and now I am a mad killer with no remorse? I went from being a Buddhist to a maniac mass murderer in less than two hours.

  Death: I know, or think I know that death will only be nothingness, but I don’t want oblivion yet. I want to smell honeysuckle in the dark, I want to hear my cat greet me with her special purring mew. I want to smell old books. I want everything, clouds, sunshine, I want to see a whale – I’ve never seen a whale. I even want to hear the terrifying sound of the sea in a storm. I want a boy to kiss me one day. I want to run along a beach again. I want to go to America and Australia. There are so many books I want to read. I want to live.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WE’VE BEEN WATCHING our video of Casablanca again. It never fails to make me cry. Mum too.

  Goodbyes: I hate them. At airports, railway stations, docks – even other people’s goodbyes. Even their hellos make me want to cry: emotion as catching as a virus. When a child runs and jumps into the open arms of a grandfather; strangers’ tears; other people’s happiness, other people’s grief – it gets to me. All those people at the barrier when you go through customs, you can see the anticipation written in their eyes, searching for the face of their loved one, the familiar shape of family. I am moved by their strong feelings. It’s as if it’s me they have lost and found again, or I’m a hero come home from a war. I am affected especially by men’s affection, men hugging their wives or mothers, their children or each other. That moment when a man hugs another man, perhaps knowing they won’t see each other for a long time, maybe imagining it’s for the last time. Men being affectionate, men crying. That is so… so… it’s wonderful and terrible.

  I remember Daddy after Grandpop and Grandma died. He had been so brave for days, Mum said, phoning friends to tell them the terrible news. He came to see me in hospital and suddenly started weeping – silent tears at first. But then he held my hand tight (he wasn’t allowed to hug me as I was wired up to machines and had tubes coming out of every orifice) and he gave way to his sadness and really sobbed for a moment before pulling himself together, controlling his shaking shoulders and blowing his nose loudly. And they weren’t even his parents. They were Mum’s. It was awful to see him cry. His face didn’t dissolve like Mum’s does – her nose goes red and big and spreads all over her cheeks, and her eyes are puffy for at least twenty-four hours. He looked untouched by his emotion, normal, but with brimming eyes, like a film star who has had glycerine drops to make his eyes glisten. He told me that that’s what they do in films. He knows all the tricks of cinematography. That’s the art of filming.

  I think he should have been a film star instead of a filmmaker. He has that soulful, clapped out look, like Gerard Depardieu or Johnny Halliday or Bruce Willis. I love French films, not only because he does. He once met Jeanne Moreau – his greatest moment, he says.

  His favourite movie is Léon, directed by Luc Besson. We watched it together in a private cinema in Paris. It was brilliant – lean-back seats as comfortable as armchairs, and there was champagne, well, not for me, obviously, but for Daddy, and he gave me a sip. Even the smell of the place was expensive, as if someone had dropped an entire bottle of lavender oil into the foyer. And the girl – Natalie Portman – when the film was made she was only a little bit older than I am now. Twelve. She’s beautiful. And I love her hair, though I think it’s rather an expensive looking cut for a girl her age, but maybe all French girls have access to good hairdressers. It’s an ace film. Complicated, but with an English soundtrack. Daddy knows all sorts of film people, being in the business.

  It’s a shame he’s lost TLE: The Lovely Eloise. She’s very pretty. I wonder why she left. I expect she got bored with being asked if he was her father. Or maybe her career as a model/actress got in the way of a lasting relationship with a man who isn’t really going to help her on her way to fame. But that’s being sarcastic or…? Oh, I’ve forgotten the word. Cynical.

  I was once accused of being sophisticated by my teacher. I can’t remember what I said to her to make her say that. I thought sophisticated was a good thing to be, but no, she said, no, it wasn’t. It was very very bad. She made me look it up in the dictionary. I did.

  Sophisticated: adulterated; falsified; wordly-wise; devoid or deprived of natural simplicity; complex; very refined or subtle; with qualities produced by special knowledge or skill; (of a person) accustomed to an elegant, cultured way of life; with the most up to date devices.

  Maybe Daddy and Mum will get back together. No, I mustn’t even think that. She is quite sure she doesn’t want to have anything to do with him again. Quite sure. And she’s going out with – she has had a date with Alistair. He’s nice. Nice is a stupid word, it doesn’t convey the feelings I have about him. He’s kind. He’s quite amusing. He’s fairly good looking – if you like horses. He is reassuringly dependable. Not heroic though. Not my idea of a leading man. Maybe when you are as old as Mum, you aren’t choosy.

  When I was little I invented chip butties – two slices of bread and butter with chips sandwiched between them. I was an unadventurous eater at the time so chip butties were a great step forward for a gourmet-challenged child. I was at last showing an interest. Mum says she had given up trying to make me eat healthy food. It was a losing battle. It was when Mum left me to choose my own lunch-box contents for school that I began to be more adventurous. Dried peaches or apricots, carrots, sunflower seeds, almonds, celery. I was always looking for something no one else had in their lunch box. Oxo Cubes – I had a thing about them for a while. The strong harshness of the flavour. I OD’d I’m afraid. Three of them in one day. Can’t stand the smell of them now.

  I even liked Spanish wood – that horrible yellow twig that tastes disgusting. I would suck the stick until only the dried fibres remained. I probably needed whatever is in the stuff for a while. I wonder if there is some essential mineral in it? I can’t imagine why I would choose to eat it for its flavour.

  The drug I had to take regularly when I was a baby helped regulate my heartbeat. Made from the dried powdered leaves of purple foxglove, it’s a steroid which exerts a specific action on the cardiac muscles of animals. A Scottish doctor called William Withering had a patient with a bad heart condition. Withering couldn’t help him but the man went to a local gypsy who gave him a medicine made up of all sorts of things including digitalis, and he felt much better. The doctor developed the drug and it was first used medically in 1785. (Alistair told me that. He’s Scottish too.)

  On my desert island I will eat shellfish – collect mussels and cockles and other bivalves. I am good at that. I could eat bread and butter leaves – if there are blackthorn trees. Grandma showed me them in Essex. I could eat fish – if I could catch them. Maybe I should choose a snorkel and mask as my luxury. I could make a harpoon with a knife from the ship’s kitchen tied to a bamboo pole, and a fishing net from coconut husk. Coconuts are amazing trees. You can make the walls, roof and floor of a shelter from the woven dry leaves and a plaited hat from the living leaves. The nut is marvellous food and so is the milk. The husk of the nut is good material for all sorts of things. You can use it as fuel on a fire. And the coconut shell is useful as a cup or bowl. At the base of the stem of the large leaf there’s a sort of natural sacking-like fabric that I could make clothes and blankets from. I could eat birds’ eggs.

  I just had the misfortune to say ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Don’t say Pardon, say “What”’ is Mum’s retort.

  It was the other way around with Grandma. If I said ‘What?’ she tut-tutted and said ‘Say pardon, dear, “What” is common.’

  I just can’t win.

  It’s Saturday: pocket money day. I love mooching around town. It�
��s so easy, only two minutes down the hill. Straight to the library for an hour. There are little children sitting on low seats looking at picture books and trying to read.

  ‘How ya doing, Guss?’

  ‘Brett! G’day!’ I hope my Strine impresses him.

  ‘Whatcha reading?’

  ‘It’s a book I’ve read before, but I loved it and want to read it again.’

  It’s Blue Lagoon, by H de Vere Stacpoole – that must be a made up name. He/she must have had a name like Arthur Brown and wanted to sound more interesting or posh. I hope to pick up more hints from the book on how to survive on a desert island.

  I have found a book of modern poetry too, an anthology called Poem for the Day.

  ‘I’ve found The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s beaut,’ says Brett.

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘That’s difficult to say. I’ve only just started it. It’s a sort of funny sci-fi. Crazy and cool.’

  ‘Of course! I remember. I’ve got the towel.’

  ‘Towel?’

  He looks at me as if I’m bonkers. This conversation is going wrong.

  ‘Have you been birding lately?’ I say desperately, in order to keep him talking.

  ‘Na, too much homework. Half term will be good though – all those exhausted winter arrivals stopping over at Hayle estuary and the Island. Coming for a look?

  ‘Yes, sure, I expect so.’ I must remember to tell Mum. She might drive me.

  ‘When are you starting at school?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  Two boys come up to Brett on our way out and he goes off with them. He turns round and winks at me. It makes me feel funny deep inside my tummy. Is this love? I ask myself.

  I walk away in a dream, and decide to spend some of my money on Pick and Mix sweeties from Woolworths. I like the round flat toffees best and the coloured sugar eggs with chocolate inside. I don’t eat the red jellied sweets that look like lips – the E-numbers make me hyper and make my heart race.

  There are still a few holiday people around. People with small children who haven’t started school yet and old people. There is a group of white-haired Welsh women in Woolworths. They might be clones – all small and round and with tight curls. They are buying everything in sight. Mugs, bath towels, cushions, as if they haven’t got shops in Wales. Or as if they are refugees who have been cut off from civilization. Or as if they have been given permission to buy as much as possible in the shortest possible time.

  I wander along the harbour, looking over the railing at the high water below. A squall hits the sea and ghosts run under the surface. The gulls are screaming. It’s suddenly chilly and I’m glad I wore my denim jacket. The tourist shops are still open, the shell shop and the ice-cream parlour. I look up at a flag flying half-mast above one of the fisherman’s lodges and see a black-framed white card stuck inside a glass case. It is a funeral notice. Arthur Stevens, of St Ives, aged 94, service to be held on Monday next at the Parish Church. Stevens! He might have been related to me and now he’s dead! And I never knew him. It’s too late now. Or is it?

  CHAPTER NINE

  I’M WEARING MY old school navy blue skirt and navy hoodie, and my cricket cap, which is navy blue. It’s the closest to funeral clothes that I’ve got.

  ‘And where are you off to?’

  ‘Library.’

  ‘Didn’t you go there Saturday?’

  ‘I’m going again.’

  ‘In school uniform?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘God, why are you so eccentric? Don’t be late for lunch.’

  ‘Okay, Bye.’

  ‘Gussie! Take my books back will you?’

  ‘Oh no. They’ll be too heavy.’

  ‘There’s only two and they aren’t heavy.’

  ‘All right.’ I have to wait while she searches for her books. She puts them in a carrier bag and gives them to me. Darn it, now I’ll have to take them into church with me.

  I try to slither past the men in black in the church porch but one touches my arm and asks my name.

  ‘Augusta Stevens,’ I blurt, and stay close to a youngish couple with their little girl as if I am part of their family. I have hidden the bag of books in the little garden next to the church, under a seat. I don’t think a Tesco bag looks respectful at a funeral.

  I slide in to the same pew as the people I followed in and they look at me as if trying to work out who I am, so I smile and they smile back and I pick up the funeral card on the shelf in front. The church is filling up. I’ve never been in here before. The roof is a concave half-barrel shape, with painted wooden figures of angels or saints at the base of each beam. The fluted columns and arches are made of carved granite and there’s a bible stand shaped like an eagle. The windows are of coloured glass but I can’t make out the pictures from this distance. There’s a pine coffin on a stand at the front, with brass handles and a wreath on it. Most people are wearing black or dark clothes. I don’t look out of place really, though I thought everyone would be wearing hats and I seem to be the only one.

  The vicar apologises for the lack of an organist. We stand to sing several hymns: ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’. We used to sing that at school. Then the unaccompanied voices start the words of ‘The Lord’s My Shepherd’. Some of the men have deep brown voices and they sing in harmony with the lighter voices of the tenors. It’s a wonderful sound. I only whisper the words because I start to cry and now I can’t stop. It’s as if I am saying goodbye to Grandpop and Grandma, not some stranger I might possibly be related to but have never set eyes on. I am crying as if I will never stop, and I haven’t brought a tissue with me. My nose streams and my glasses steam up. I’m glad I have my cricket cap to hide under. I wipe my nose and eyes on my sleeve and sniff hard. I can feel the woman in the pew next to me staring, but I keep my head down. She passes me a tissue. I nod.

  The vicar drones on, I don’t really listen as I am so full of emotion and am desperately trying to control my sobs.

  The last hymn is the one with the words ‘for those in peril on the sea’. Oh God, that’s all I need. Outside I feel exhausted, but relieved somehow of some awful burden. Like a heavy sack of pain. I wonder if the ritual of a service helps people left behind? I missed out on my grandparents’ funerals as I was in hospital.

  ‘Are you all right my love?’ It’s the paper tissue lady.

  ‘Fine, thanks. It was the singing. It got to me. Singing does that sometimes.’

  ‘Are you related?’

  ‘I’m a Stevens,’ I say proudly, before sobbing again as I walk away.

  On Barnoon Hill I stop several times to catch my breath. Mum’s digging a hole in the garden. She hardly looks at me, luckily, as I’m sure my nose is as red as hers when she cries.

  ‘Take my books back?’

  Oh, shit, I forgot the books. ‘Yeah,’ I murmur and go in and collapse on the sofa, where Charlie immediately comes to console me. Thank God for cats.

  It occurs to me that I have become a curser, a bad mouth, a swearer, a blasphemer. In my head mostly, but I didn’t used to be. It must be because I am growing up. Or maybe because I am lying and cheating I am becoming decadent. No longer innocent. If Grandma and Grandpop were still alive they would be horrified. Oh dear. Am I a lost soul? Am I utterly sophisticated and condemned to a life of deceit?

  CHAPTER TEN

  IN THE BLUE LAGOON there’s all sorts of handy hints on survival on a tropical island.

  Breadfruit trees are common and the fruit, which looks rather like a lumpy green lemon, can be barbecued or baked and eaten when the skin bursts. The important thing is to have the means of making fire. In those days they had something called a tinder-box. I think it contained flint and steel for producing a spark to set light to dry twigs or grass.

  Grandma used to keep a box of Swan Vestas in the bathroom where their loo was. She swore by them. After you have had a poo you light one or two matches and they make bad smells disappear. Mum does the same thi
ng. It’s a trick she’s inherited. It really works. It’s the sulphur I think. It sort of eats odours. Perhaps if I always have a box in my pocket, the chances are they’d survive a shipwreck with me. I’d only have to light one fire and keep it burning forever, and I wouldn’t need any more matches. I like the design on the box: white swan on green lake floating to red sky.

  I go back for the bag of books in the garden but it rained in the night and they are sodden and curled at the corners. I shove them into a waste bin and leave, trying not to catch the eye of the tramp in the shelter. He sells the Big Issue in Fore Street sometimes, but now he’s given in to the demon drink, I think. His eyes are pink and piggie. I wonder if he looked at the books and rejected them. Perhaps he’s not interested in Small Garden Design and Building a Wildlife Pond. He could have used them to wipe his bottom though, like Grandma said they used to do. She would cut up sheets of newspaper into squares and thread them onto string to hang in the lavatory. They had an Elsan lavatory that Grandpop emptied once a week. He called it ‘Burying the dead’. Maybe book paper is too thick and shiny to be suitable for bum wiping.

  I never know whether to give money to beggars. Not that there are any here. But in London there are loads. I feel so sorry for them, especially the young ones. Dad always gives them money, but Mum doesn’t believe in it.

  I remember a girl in Southend Green, next to Hampstead Heath. She was sitting on a blanket in the doorway of a closed shop. Mum goes into the café next door and buys her a cheese and tomato sandwich and a cup of soup and tells her to go to the nearest shelter for the night. She must be only about fifteen. What must she have gone through to leave home and live on the street? Is she on drugs? Is she a prostitute? Has someone in her family been really cruel to her, abused her? I never find out of course. I’m too scared to ask and she’s gone next time I go past. I ask Mum why she didn’t just bring her home with us.