The China Bird

by Bryony Doran

  He’d never gone back to the house. When he first left he’d thought that he would return for the rest of his things bit by bit and now, all these years later, he wonders if they are still there. He should have asked his mother a long time ago what she’d done with his belongings. Maybe he should ask her now, but she’d been edgy, especially after her fall. He could go to the bar, get her a drink, make it a peace offering.

  The girl with the purple hair is standing at the bar. She has her back to him and is chatting with two workmen, who lean over their beer and cigarettes.

  He listens to their conversation.

  ‘Slummin’ it a bit aren’t you, love? Don’t usually see the likes of you in here.’

  ‘Oh, even the likes of me occasionally goes for the odd bit of rough.’

  The workmen laugh loudly. Edward is surprised to find her so forward. Sensing a presence, she turns. He is gratified to see that she has the grace to blush.

  She smiles at him and shakes her head, her sideways ponytail bobbing up and down. ‘You know, it’s really frustrating. I wish I could work out where I’ve seen your mother before.’

  ‘I’m sorry I can’t help you,’ Edward hears himself reply, ‘and I can tell you now, if my mother does know, I doubt very much she’ll tell you.’

  She has a very direct gaze and, as he stares back into her eyes, Edward sees that the irises are a pale grey, rimmed by a fine black line. Up close, her skin has a wonderful, translucent quality. A fine vein runs down the side of her cheek and he has an almost irresistible urge to put his hand up to it and trace the faint blue line with the tip of his finger. She smiles, and he notices that her teeth are like fine porcelain.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  In the far distance Angela can just make out the glint of lorries on the motorway. The cottage is different without Claudette; all her things are still in place, but now it feels like the home of a stranger.

  She runs her eye along the pictures. Earlier she had collected them from around the house and now they are leaning against the wall; thick oils of bleak landscapes, a coppice of leafless trees, wild horses caught in the colours of a deep red sunset. Best of all she likes the figures in charcoal; clumsy silhouettes against the light, as if existing between two worlds, women and children standing on a skyline, swarthy, the light behind them fading to mauve.

  Why was she so surprised that Claudette had bequeathed her these pictures and her books? Surely it had been Claudette who had fought her corner when her gran had been opposed to her going away to art college? Claudette had found the perfect compromise by suggesting that, after her A levels, she should attend the local tech college and do her foundation year there. Break her gran in slowly, so to speak. She remembered the time she had gone with her gran to show Claudette her school report. It was the only time she ever heard Claudette and her grandmother argue.

  ‘She’s not going and that’s an end to it.’

  ‘Elsie, my dear friend, the girl has a gift. You know she has. Let her go with good heart.’

  There had been a silence, and then Claudette’s voice again, hardly audible. ‘History will not repeat itself and she’s far more talented than her mother ever was.’

  Her gran had not replied. The vacuum cleaner was switched on instead.

  Angela looks over at the old woman who is standing at the doorway into the kitchen, deep in thought. Her poor gran, she had always been so anxious for her, especially when she’d finally realised that her granddaughter was not going to be dissuaded from her studies. That first year of A levels had been a good time, one of the few times that she ever felt she belonged. She’d found her first boyfriend; a Jewish boy in the year above, called Jeremy. His parents weren’t that pleased at him going out with a gentile but she wasn’t bothered by that. She had liked him, really liked him. They had explored each other’s bodies, tentatively made love. She hadn’t known what to make of it all. She’d felt there was still a world that hadn’t opened up to her yet. At the end of that year he’d gone away to university and their relationship had fizzled out. She was sad at first, but then soon got over it. She wanted to concentrate on her work. She hadn’t had another real boyfriend since, only Dan, a mature student in her year, but that was little more than a casual arrangement.

  ‘The place could do with a good clean.’ Her grandmother wipes a finger along the top of the dresser.

  Angela turns to look at the portrait of a man still hanging on the far wall, ‘Pity she didn’t leave me him, too. I’ve always rather liked him. Who did the solicitor say he was?’

  ‘Richard Appleyard, I think. A good Yorkshire name that, Appleyard. I once asked Claudette who he was, she just laughed, said it was her English brother. She didn’t elaborate.’

  ‘And why would she leave it to that old woman?’ Angela peers up at the portrait. ‘Rachel … Rachel Anderson, wasn’t it? Not Appleyard.’

  ‘Mrs. Anderson to you, young lady.’ She puts an arm around her granddaughter’s shoulder. ‘It’s a mystery to me, lass.’

  ‘You know, I’m sure I’ve seen her before.’

  ‘Well, I’ve certainly never met her.’ The old woman crosses the room, ‘She must have been some relation of Claudette’s. I’m not sure she ever came here, not to my knowledge anyway.’

  ‘And did she say,’ Angela nods at the portrait, ‘that he was her father?’

  ‘Apparently. But she was a bit frosty, wasn’t she? Didn’t volunteer much, her son was friendlier though.’

  ‘Yes, he was. In fact I found him quite fascinating.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, did you notice how precisely he was turned out? I don’t know why, but you never expect someone who is deformed like that to pay so much detail to their appearance. I mean, thinking about it, he had great style. From the way he’d got that sort of reddish hair of his slicked sideways so you could see nearly every comb mark, down to the hankie in his tweed jacket, and those fantastic old brogues he had on. And did you see how he kept compensating for his mother’s rudeness? But in a way that she never quite latched onto.’

  ‘Well, someone had to, didn’t they?’

  ‘I quite liked her.’ Angela leans on the windowsill, her back to the window, ‘She had a sort of defiance about her. Not like an old person.’

  ‘Rudeness more like, I hope she shows her gratitude when you take her the portrait.’

  ‘I might be able to find out more info for you.’

  ‘What makes you think I want to know her business?’

  Angela doesn’t answer. She is scanning the bookshelves for one particular book. It isn’t in its place. There is a gap where it should be, like a missing tooth. Claudette had never liked her looking at that book. She frantically scans all the shelves. It isn’t there.

  Her grandmother has wandered upstairs.

  ‘Gran?’ Angela shouts up the stairs. No answer. She finds her looking out of the window in Claudette’s bedroom. Her shoulders are shaking.

  ‘Please Gran, don’t cry.’

  Angela scans the room. The bed is unmade. On the bedside cabinet stands a carafe of water, a film of dust coating the surface.

  Her gran blows her nose, ‘Sorry, lass. I was thinking about her dying here all on her own. What a way to end a life. I knew I should have come that week.’

  ‘But Gran, you weren’t well.’

  ‘Still, no excuse. I should have come.’

  ‘Why did she never come to visit you? Why was it you that always had to visit her?’

  Her grandmother strokes Angela’s head, tucking a stray bit of hair behind her ear, ‘You’ll learn that friendships aren’t always equal. I went to her as a cleaner and we became friends. But for both of us it felt better leaving things the way they were.’

  Angela hugs the old woman close, breathes in the cloying scent of talc.

  It was only two weeks since they had learned of Claudette’s death. She’d returned home to find her gran sitting in her grandfather’s winged chair. That alone made it ob
vious something was very wrong. Since her granddad had died the previous summer, no one, except visitors who didn’t know any better, sat in that chair. Tears were streaming down her gran’s face, and in her hand she held a letter. She handed it to Angela.

  When her grandfather died, Angela felt as if someone had pulled away a blanket and exposed her to the outside world. With Claudette, it was as if she had lost the only person who had ever truly understood her.

  ‘I need to blow my nose,’ her grandmother says, gently pushing Angela away. ‘Unless,’ she tries to laugh, ‘you want it all over your nice new jacket.’ She sits down on the edge of the bed and retrieves a handkerchief from up her sleeve.

  Angela smiles and wipes the shoulder of her black jacket, ‘I think it’s survived. Gran, have you seen that signed book of Claudette’s? You know, the one with charcoal drawings of gypsy people?’

  ‘It’s there, look!’ Her gran points to a book face down on the bedside cabinet. It is open at the photo of the artist. She takes the book from Angela and stares down at the photo. ‘She always said she was happy with Mr Mason, but I don’t know. I think she might have been better going back to France.’ She strokes the photo of the artist. ‘She seemed like such a fish out of water. Especially up here, miles from anywhere.’

  ‘I’d love to live up here.’

  Her grandmother sighs, ‘Come on, we’d better get your things packed up.’

  Angela checks the other books in the bedside cabinet. Tucked away at the back is a leather bound photo album. Each photo has an inscription in French. Angela picks up the album and, tucking it under her arm with the gypsy book, she follows her grandmother downstairs.

  The art books take up six large boxes.

  ‘Wherever are you going to put all them?’ Her grandmother grumbles.

  ‘My bedroom, of course.’ Angela pulls off a length of bubble wrap and wraps it around another picture.

  ‘And what about the pictures? You’re not going to keep them all, surely? You could sell some. Help pay your way through college.’

  Her grandmother is sitting in a chair next to an empty fish tank. Angela wishes that she could make her understand how much Claudette’s legacy means to her.

  ‘What happened to the guppies?’ she asks.

  ‘Oh, they went a long time ago. Too much trouble.’

  Angela pulls off another length of bubble wrap and lays it out on the floor. She places the portrait of Richard Appleyard face upwards on the bubble wrap. She looks down at him. He is leaning back in a chair, arms folded across his chest. The features of his face have a delicacy bordering on the feminine. Even his fingers are long and slender. But the eyes are what Angela keeps returning to. The eyes stare directly at her; eyes that show a dry humour and a keen intelligence. Angela smiles back, then she remembers where she’s seen Rachel before.

  She had been the first model Angela had ever drawn, in her first week of college, her first life-drawing class. She remembers being fascinated by this old woman, naked except for a pearl necklace. She had always worn a necklace. Not always the same one, but always a necklace. Angela once heard a student complaining about it to their tutor, but the necklace had remained.

  Angela had admired the old woman’s breasts; unbelievably they still had a girl-like roundness to them. The pubic hair was completely white, bound in small curls like the permed hair on her head. Her hips also had a roundness to them; a sexuality that Angela once thought disappeared with old age. The only notable signs of age were on her limbs; the skin on her thighs mottled with thin vermilion thread-veins, her hands and her arms dotted with liver spots. Angela remembers how the necklace fell differently according to her pose, and how it illuminated the underside of her jaw.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Rachel stretches her arm over her shoulder and fumbles to undo the covered buttons at the back of her neck. She slips the silk blouse over her head and lays it flat on the kitchen table. She bunches a tea towel and runs it under the cold tap, dabbing at the yellow stain on the neckband. The mark is stubborn and only a small amount soaks into the tea towel.

  ‘Damn! I should have used sticky tape before I wet it. Why didn’t I think?’

  She shivers, lifts the thin lace strap of her white bra back onto her shoulder, runs cold water into the Belfast sink and plunges in her blouse. It bobs to the surface; the white fabric mirroring the white porcelain, a bright yellow scar spreading into the clear water.

  She rests her hands on the edge of the sink and observes herself in the mirror hanging on a nail hammered into the window frame. Putting both hands behind her back she unclips her bra, and lets it fall down her arms and onto the floor. She breathes in and holds her shoulders back, willing her breasts to rise with her rib cage. She cradles them gently, lifting them higher up her chest, allowing her string of pewter pearls to tuck into her newly formed cleavage. The pearls look dull and lifeless against her dry, crinkled skin.

  Lifting her hair from the back of her neck, she unfastens the diamante clasp of her necklace and runs the pearls through her fingers. The smallest ones at the ends are cool, but the king pearls in the centre glow with warmth, as if they should have their own heartbeat. She runs the warm pearls over her front teeth and feels their secret roughness and knows they are a treasure to be prized. They were hers by right, or they would have been, after her aunt had died. Her uncle knew she’d taken them. He’d caught her admiring herself in the biscuit tin lid, propped against the wall in the shed where the farm hands drank their tea and the yard dogs slept.

  ‘You don’t need those, lass.’

  Rachel had turned bright red.

  ‘A fine looking girl like you doesn’t need trinkets.’

  ‘I only borrowed them.’

  He stood behind her, said quietly, ‘Lift up your hair.’

  She scooped her black hair up into a ball at the back of her head.

  ‘How old are you now, lass?’ he whispered.

  ‘Nineteen next, uncle …’

  He kissed the back of her neck, his moustache tracing her skin like a spider’s legs. She watched her blurred vision in the biscuit tin lid, her hands still holding her hair in place.

  Her uncle brought his hands round to press tight into her belly and she let out a low, soft moan.

  ‘Undo your blouse,’ he whispered.

  She closed her eyes, left one hand to hold her hair and started to undo the pearl buttons. Under her blouse was a huge, white, lace brassiere.

  ‘Undo it.’

  For this, she needed both hands. Her uncle pulled her blouse off and down her arms, then cupped her breasts gently in his rough hands. He put his chin on her shoulder; his stubble scratching her bare skin,

  ‘There, that’s how pearls should be seen.’

  She arched back her head, stuck out her bottom and exulted in the power of her body. Her uncle rubbed himself against her, twisted her hand behind her back and pressed it against the front of his trousers. She felt something hard, violent. Suddenly she was afraid and tried to pull away,

  ‘Uncle! Please!’

  He turned her around and looked at her with a puzzled expression. ‘What’s the matter, lass?’

  ‘What was that?’ she said, pointing to his groin.

  He laughed softly, ‘Do you mean to tell me you’ve never been serviced?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she whispered, picking her blouse up from the straw.

  ‘You know, like the bull does to the cow, like the ram does to the sheep.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Well, I never. A little prick-teaser like you. I thought you would have had a string of men. Sex, Girl, I’m talking about sex. What you felt was my prick.’

  Rachel put her blouse on and started to button it up, ‘I never knew.’

  ‘Would you like to?’

  She blushed, angry with herself for the colour in her cheeks. She looked up, defiant, ‘I have a boyfriend.’

  ‘What? That George fellow? Well, he hasn’t servi
ced you. That’s obvious. I should say you’re well ripe for it.’

  She picked up her bra from a straw bale and shook it, ‘I’d better get back. I’m supposed to be baking bread.’

  She turned towards the door.

  ‘Rachel?’

  She looked back. He held out his hand, ‘The necklace.’

  Reluctantly she undid the clasp and dropped it into his large, open palm. He held them up to her face, ‘They suit you well. Would you like them?’

  ‘Would you really give them to me?’

  ‘Your aunt has no use for such a lovely necklace, but you …’ he shook his head, ‘they’d bring you pleasure, wouldn’t they?’

  She nodded.

  ‘You could give me pleasure,’ he said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’m out rabbiting tonight and, when I get back, I’ll be in here skinning them.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘Spare any change?’

  Angela turns to see a beggar squatting against the sheltering wall of the Town Hall.

  ‘Spare any change?’

  She shakes her head and crosses the road. The girl, about her own age, had looked scared; not lifeless like they usually were, but scared. Angela stops and retraces her steps. She undoes the front pouch of her rucksack and takes out an apple,

  ‘Here.’

  The girl looks up and then back down at the bowl on the pavement.

  ‘Here, take it.’

  The girl reaches out and takes the apple. Angela turns away. It is then that she notices Edward, bent heavily over his stick, making his way along Surrey Street. He stops at the pavement edge and darts his head in what seems an almost furtive fashion from side to side, checking for traffic. Angela partially closes her eyes. In his black overcoat Edward appears like a thorn tree in winter. His stick, one single stem, his legs another, and his head and back the nub where the branches have woven together to be moulded and shaped by a harsh wind.