The China Bird

by Bryony Doran

  His mother tried everything that she could to persuade him. It was the first real confrontation they’d ever had. He heard her telling his father that his defiance must be the start of adolescence. She wouldn’t let the matter rest. The day before they were meant to go she packed his suitcase and put it by the back door. When he came in from school he carried it straight upstairs and promptly unpacked it.

  At the dinner table that night she said to his father, ‘George, have a word with him will you?’ But much to Edward’s relief his father sided with him.

  ‘Just leave the lad. If he doesn’t want to go, he doesn’t want to go. I’m due some time off work. I might take him to York. We could pay a visit to my aunt. Would you like that, son?’ He placed his arm around Edward’s shoulders, ‘We could even go and look at one of those digs that you keep nattering on about. There’s usually one going on around the city walls somewhere.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Angela is standing, half-dressed, looking through the work she’s done the week before. She has on a pair of faded jeans and a white lacy bra that has turned to grey.

  ‘Sorry I’m late, although I see you’re not ready either.’ Edward closes the door.

  She looks up and smiles, ‘I was just thinking how pleased I am with these.’

  Edward stands beside her. 34B, the label sticks up from the fastening on the back of her bra. ‘What does that mean, 34B?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The label on the back of your bra, it says 34B.’

  Angela groans, ‘Oh please, don’t look at my bra. It’s disgusting.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A, because, I can never be bothered to wash them by hand and B, because I can never afford to buy a new one. This one must be five years old.’ She plucks at the strap and worms of elastic wriggle away from the lace.

  ‘Why don’t you buy a black one?’

  ‘Good idea, but you know what, I always get seduced by the white ones.’

  Edward sits down and begins to take off his shoes. He half wishes that Angela will forget the rest of her clothes and stay half dressed. He has been perturbed by the emotions he’d experienced at their last sitting. All week he has tried desperately to blank them from his mind.

  He notices that in the centre of the floor under the skylight there is a piece of A1 size paper. It is grey-blue in colour, the colour of paper towels,

  ‘Why the sheet of paper?’

  ‘I’m going to draw around your feet and then superglue you to the spot, so you can’t move.’ She smiles.

  ‘If I’m going to be a statue, I’d rather be placed somewhere a bit more salubrious than in this old building.’

  ‘Where, then?’ She asks.

  He loops his tie over his head. ‘A railway station, I think.’

  ‘Just think of all the people that would see you. They’d place their rucksacks at your feet, stare up at you and wonder who you were. Who would you be?’

  ‘Edward Anderson, born of this city 19 …’ he tails off. ‘I don’t know about the rest. What do you think?’

  Angela shrugs her shoulders. Edward notices that when she does this, two small, triangular-shaped pits appear either side of her neck.

  ‘Can I ask you a question?’

  He looks up from unbuttoning his shirt, ‘What?’

  ‘Would you want to stand there as you are, or well,’ she pauses, ‘able-bodied?’

  ‘You know,’ he looks up. ‘At one time I would have said elegant and poised, but now I think I’d like to stay the way I am, so that I could study the raw curiosity on people’s faces.’

  ‘Do you think people would look at you with pity?’

  He looks over at her. ‘Is that how you view me? With pity?’

  She is standing beside an untidy pile of clothes on the floor. He glances down at his own tidy pile placed neatly on a chair. His question has startled her. She moves towards him. He can see the clear grey of her eyes, the black rim encircling the iris.

  ‘Pity?’ She says the word as if she is trying it out for size, ‘I don’t think it ever occurred to me. Would you like me to pity you?’

  He chuckles, amazed at how little she is fazed by him. ‘Occasionally, maybe.’

  ‘What, you want even more breaks?’

  He laughs, ‘Some chance. Seriously though, how do you think people in general view me?’

  ‘Dunno, never really thought about it.’ She smiles. ‘They probably think you’re a bit weird though.’ She wrinkles her nose, ‘They wouldn’t be entirely wrong there.’

  He smiles, ‘That’s really reassuring, thank you. I shall think of you next time someone’s gawking at me.’

  She doesn’t take the bait, ‘Do you have your own I’m-feeling-sorry-for-myself corner at work, maybe?’ She raises her eyebrows.

  He sees she is trying not to laugh. ‘I’ll know not to come to you if I’m looking for sympathy.’ He pauses, ‘At work, I’m just Edward in Archives. Every place has to have its obligatory oddity.’

  He stands up, using the chair to balance himself.

  ‘I’m sure you fill the role admirably,’ she laughs.

  ‘I really don’t know why I put up with it,’ he says, more to himself than her, ‘Now tell me how you want me to stand before I change my mind and go home.’

  ‘Will you need your stick?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She passes him his stick. ‘OK, I want you to stand one leg in front of the other on this paper … let’s try both hands resting on the stick.’ She fetches a splinter of charcoal.

  ‘Don’t go dirtying my feet with that,’ he says, looking down. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to use a pencil?’

  ‘I’ll be careful, don’t worry.’ She draws around his walking stick and then, placing her hand over the top of his foot, draws round his toes. He glances down and cringes at the sight of his toenails; thickened and yellowing. He looks away, down at the rope of her spine, the sweet curve of it, sighs deeply.

  She looks up, ‘Something the matter?’

  ‘No, no. It’s just wonderful to feel your touch.’ He sees that she is uncertain as to how to take his remark, ‘The touch of another human being.’

  She gives him a half smile, ‘I’ll leave my hand here then, shall I?’

  ‘I suppose you think I’m a strange old man?’

  She stands and clips a sheet of paper to her easel, ‘I think you’re very strange, Edward, very strange.’

  He looks down at his hands, one placed over the other, resting on his stick, the roundness of his knuckles catching the light, the veins on the back of his hands.

  ‘I want to spend quite a bit of time on this stance.’

  ‘Don’t forget, joking aside, I need regular breaks. I can’t stand for long’.

  She turns her easel sideways and pushes her chair against the wall. He isn’t sure she’s heard him. ‘At least every ten minutes.’

  ‘Okay,’ she says, staring intently at the blank paper on her easel.

  ‘Oh good, you’re standing as well,’ he says.

  ‘Yeah, I can move easier if I stand. It makes for more fluid arm movements. Drawing you in a standing pose means there are more unbroken lines.’

  ‘I didn’t realise I would get to learn so much about art just by modelling for you.’

  She doesn’t reply, he sees she has gone into work mode. It is almost trance like. Today he can observe her as she works, he can even see what she is drawing. She draws the line from his neck to the crown of his back and then takes a sideways skew and down again to the base of his spine and, from there, out again, for the line of his buttocks.

  He loves to watch her, her face so serious, so concentrated, the light gleaming behind her, the sun catching the fine downy hair at the nape of her neck, the pale brown patch of her pubic hair and how, as she lifts her arm, her breasts rise and fall against her rib cage. He wants to put out his hand and touch her skin, to trace with his fingers along each rib. His whole body tingles, as if a small current of ele
ctricity is passing through every nerve. He must think of something else. He closes his eyes, leans into his stick and listens to the sounds around him; the faint hum of traffic on the road at the front, the scratching of charcoal on paper, a lathe being worked somewhere else in the building.

  The smoothness of his stick is pressing into his right palm. He tries to picture it in his mind. He can recall every detail. The stick had been his father’s. Other than that, it is a very ordinary stick made of polished wood. Willow, or is it hazel? The handle is curved like a shepherd’s crook. The colour reminds him of the trays of toffee his mother used to make.

  On the end of the stick is a green ferrule. He suspects that it was one of his father’s adaptations, or something that he had poked his stick into by accident one day and found that it fitted. Was it lying grubby on a pavement? Or did he find it on the polished floor of the community centre or was it the end of a chair leg maybe; a now rocky chair? His father would have secretly delighted in this act of mischief. Edward didn’t like the green ferrule much; it gave a dull thud on wooden floors and an almost noiseless bong on tarmac pavements. He would have much preferred the stark tap, tap, tap, of the wooden end, like the blind man in Treasure Island, but the green ferrule reminded him so much of his father that, most of the time, he left it in place, only occasionally wrenching it off and slipping it in his pocket; his own act of mischief.

  He grasps the handle, feels the place where both his and his father’s hands have worn a pressure groove.

  He lets out a loud groan, a pain that started earlier between his shoulder blades is now radiating in waves across his back.

  ‘I need to sit down.’ He looks up. She is totally absorbed in her work. He looks across at the clock. He has held this pose for nearly twenty minutes. ‘Did you hear me?’ She gives him a flicker of a smile, a slight acknowledgement.

  ‘It’s my size.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘34B.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I thought you would have known that, with all your tailoring experience.’

  ‘Didn’t you hear me? I need to sit down.’

  ‘34’ is the measurement all the way round under my breast and the ‘A’ denotes the cup size.’ She is gabbling now, trying to keep him distracted so that she can finish. ‘A woman could measure 34 if she had a really broad back and small tits or if she had really big tits and a narrow back. So you can be A, B, C, D or even F cup. I don’t know if they go any bigger.’

  He is intrigued, despite the pain stitching down his back. ‘So ‘A’ is a small breast?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You haven’t got small breasts though.’ He has spoken before he realises what he’s said. He looks across. She hasn’t heard. She has gone back to her work.

  ‘I’m going to move.’

  ‘Edward, please, just two more minutes.’

  He closes his eyes, ‘God … you’re merciless.’

  ‘I won’t be a second. I’ve just got to finish this outline.’

  He watches the second hand on the clock for another minute, gritting his teeth against the pain.

  ‘That’s it. I can’t go on any longer.’

  She pulls a face.

  ‘You’ll have to help me sit down.’

  He groans in agony. She takes his elbow in the palm of her hand and guides him gently to the knitting chair.

  ‘Are you all right? You look really pale.’ He notes the sudden concern in her face.

  ‘What do you expect? I’m in agony.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise.’

  ‘When I say I need to sit down, do you think I’m just being awkward?’

  ‘Shall I get you a coffee?’

  ‘Could you look in my jacket pocket? There should be a foil card of Paracetamol.’

  He watches as she pulls out a neatly folded hankie with the initials EA embroidered in pale blue, a Yale key and some loose change. ‘They’re not in this pocket.’

  ‘Look in the other one, will you?’

  She pulls out a rabbit’s foot. ‘Never had you down as superstitious, Edward.’

  For once he is glad of the pain. He doesn’t care that she has found his lucky charm. The little white foot that he found on the seat of the railway carriage the last ever time he went to the farm as a child. His mother hadn’t seen it. He didn’t tell her, she might have made him give it in at lost property. He doesn’t think anyone has ever seen it before.

  She is examining it, ‘It’s weird.’

  ‘Put it back please.’

  She looks at him curiously and delves back into the pocket; some receipts, neatly folded, a bus ticket and a penknife. ‘Not in here either.’

  ‘Oh God, I must have forgotten them.’

  ‘I’ll pop round to the paper shop and get some?’

  ‘Take some of that change in my pocket.’

  He watches her pulling on her jeans, the flesh of her bottom riding up as she pulls them to her waist. She slips her arms first into the sleeves of her jumper and then pushes her head through the neck.

  ‘Why aren’t you putting on your underwear?’

  ‘Haven’t finished yet, have we?’

  ‘That’s what you think.’

  ‘You’ll be all right if you’re sitting down, won’t you?’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  She picks up her bag and pauses at the door, ‘Is there anything else you want?’

  ‘Get some chocolate?’

  She counts the change in her hand and grins, ‘Do you think I deserve any?’

  ‘No, but I want to fatten you up for the oven.’

  Her face dissolves into a childlike softness. ‘That was one of my favourite stories, Hansel and Gretel. I loved the thought of a house made of gingerbread, with window frames of barley sugar and a chocolate door.’

  ‘What about the old witch?’

  ‘Yes, but somehow because she’s got such a lovely house, you never quite believe she’s that bad. I had a lovely book of fairy stories: Hansel and Gretel, Tom Thumb, Puss in Boots, the Wild Swans… . ‘

  Edward raises his eyebrows at her, ‘Tablets?’

  ‘Sorry, sorry.’

  She pokes her head back around the door, ‘You should have said you were in so much pain you know.’

  ‘I did.’

  She pulls a face. ‘Sorry … is it any better now?’

  ‘Go.’

  He closes his eyes and waits. He can hear again the murmur of traffic out on the main road and the gentle creaking of the heating pipes. He can feel the sun on the top of his head. He stares down at his outstretched feet and thinks it’s time he went to the chiropodist. The silly man, why didn’t he ever suggest another appointment? That way would have seemed much less effort than having to wait until he looked like a donkey in need of hoofing. Of course, if he wasn’t so cantankerous, he smiles to himself, he could get Mrs. Ingram’s mobile chiropodist to do it, but he couldn’t cope with her hovering around, underlining the fact they were sharing. God forbid, the same chiropodist! Why does he find it so hard to accept her kindnesses?

  He watches the concentration on her face as Angela pops the pills out of the foil into the small circle of his palm.

  ‘I need some water.’

  ‘No probs,’ Angela fishes in her rucksack and hands him a plastic bottle of water.

  ‘Don’t you mind me sharing your water?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  He smiles, ‘No matter.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  There is a note in Angela’s pigeonhole: My office. This morning. Alex.

  She screws it up, throws it over her shoulder and goes to the canteen for a coffee. He wants to see her work. She doesn’t want to show him. Not yet, it’s not ready, she’s not ready. If she were to show him now it might break what has been created between herself and Edward; like a secret child. For God’s sake, Angela, she smiles to herself. How could she and Edward ever create a child? She chuckles at the idea of her and Edward having some k
ind of torrid affair; an old man, with yellowing toenails.

  ‘Ange?’ Alex shouts across from the door of the canteen. She remains seated. He lets go of the door and walks over. ‘I’ve been watching you through the window, smiling away to yourself. What’s so funny?’

  She shrugs, doesn’t reply.

  ‘Didn’t you get my note?’

  Angela nods her head. He sits down opposite her.

  She folds her arms, leans back in the chair, ‘What did you want?’

  ‘It must be three weeks since I asked you to let me see your work in progress, and the other thing is.,’ he pauses, ‘I need to know when you’re going to model for me again.’

  She doesn’t want to sit for him again. There seems to be a tension building between them that makes her feel uneasy. ‘How many more sessions will it take? I’ve already done three. Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘It’s going to take me another two or three sessions at least.’

  ‘Do I have to? I could do with concentrating on my own work.’

  He flicks his fringe away from his eyes, ‘Don’t be stupid. I don’t want to start with another model, not now. You of all people should know that.’

  ‘I’ll think about it, okay?’

  ‘What’s happened with your work?’

  ‘I’m well on with it.’

  He narrows his eyes, leans back in his chair and takes out a cigarette.

  ‘Honest, I am,’ her voice rises in pitch.

  ‘So. Where is it?’ He lights his cigarette.

  ‘You can’t smoke in here.’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ he pinches the end with his finger. ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where’s your work in progress?’

  ‘Can I ask you a favour?’

  ‘Go on then,’ he leans forward staring at her intently.

  She crosses her legs, turns her body sideways. ‘I don’t know if you can understand this, but I need to complete the work before I show it to you. It’s going so well I don’t want anything to spoil it.’

  ‘Are you taking the piss?’

  ‘No, honest I’m not. I’ve been working on it for weeks.’