The China Bird
Page 28
He pokes at the mat with his stick, digging down into old dust. If only Angela hadn’t gone off like that. He flinches, remembering the expression on her face when he’d told her again that he loved her. He places the willow pattern cups and saucers carefully into one of his mother’s old shopping bags. He looks for the egg timer from Bridlington. She must have forgotten to wrap it. He opens the cupboard to the right of the draining board and – there it is. He pulls it forward and then notices something dark behind it. He reaches further in and lifts it out. It is the china bird that his mother once used to prop up the centre of her steak and kidney pies. He runs his fingers down its extended neck and the slimmed-down body, and wonders what sort of bird it is. It seems too slender to be a blackbird. It could be a cormorant; sleek-necked as it dives into the sea. He sighs, if only he could transport himself back to the studio and the time when he and Angela had laughed about his own ‘china bird’. Perhaps they could stay there; both of them locked in time. If only she were a bird, he could put her in a gilded cage and keep her there forever.
He wanders from room to room, consumed by an aching restlessness. On the landing he pauses. The spare room, once his, is lit by the late morning sun. On the narrow bed his mother’s clothes are laid out, exactly as she left them, in preparation for their luncheon date: a light brown jersey dress with sleeves that finish at the elbow; slightly old fashioned, Edward thinks, but, like his mother, rather elegant. On top of the dress a twist of tiger-eye beads catch the light from the window. Newly opened and placed next to the dress as if to check the match, the soft texture of fine denier, chocolate-brown stockings. On the floor, placed ready to step into, is a pair of black-patent court shoes.
He turns and makes his way along to his mother’s bedroom. Seeing his mother’s outfit on the bed like that has given him a pang of regret. He thinks of her in the earth, encased in her coffin in her candlewick dressing gown and her bedroom slippers. When he’d read the instructions she’d left for her funeral, he’d flown into a rage. She was to be dressed in her lilac suit and her pewter pearls, and to be cremated, her ashes to be scattered on the old pond down on the farm. As if to state finally that he and his father had been nothing in her life. As he had watched her coffin being lowered on top of his father’s he had felt a moment of triumph, but all he feels now is the emptiness of his revenge. He wishes he was down on the farm scattering her ashes, standing on the edge of the waterlogged ditch they had called a pond.
He is overcome with an overwhelming sense of loss. It washes over him in waves, feelings that he had never felt for her whilst she was alive. He buries his head in his mother’s pillow, folding it around him, shutting off the outside world. He can smell the scent of Angela. He lifts his head and out of the corner of his eye he sees something glisten. He glances over at the dressing table. Laid in a twist, as if discarded carelessly, is the string of pewter pearls. Angela hadn’t taken them. He snatches them up and crushes them between his fingers. How he hates them. All his life they have been there. The pure translucence of what should be cream, turned to grey. He squeezes them tighter and feels them crunch against each other. From the bottom of the stairs he hears the cat yowl. He goes out onto the landing.
‘Shut up, shut up!’ He hurls the pearls down the stairs. They smash against the wall and the whole necklace comes apart, shattering like silver rain on the hall carpet. The cat bolts into the kitchen and he hears the cat flap snap shut.
As he makes his way to the front door he pokes the pearls aside with his stick. He is glad that he has broken them apart. It feels is as if a grey cloud has lifted. He closes the front door and puts the key in his pocket. The sun is still on the front of the house and the cat is sunning itself on the top step. He pokes it gently with his stick and makes his way to the bus stop. From the bus he can see the river and the willow trees. He feels in his pocket and takes out his uncle’s letter. He slits open the envelope with his finger. ‘Oh, God!’ It suddenly occurs to him that he hasn’t told Uncle Ruben about his mother’s death.
He scans the letter. As always, his uncle signs it in the hope that, this year, Edward will make it across the pond. Edward shakes his head, always the same ending. Why did he never give up? Maybe he should go to America. Get away from here. He could even take his patterns, see if Ruben could run him up some new jackets. He thinks of the pink cardboard pattern pieces lying flat beneath his mattress, but no – he has left them at Mrs. Ingram’s. No matter, he shrugs. He can go and visit her. Maybe, Mrs Ingram would be interested in his mother’s fat cat.
He gets off the bus a stop early. He had seen the sign this morning: Exhibition of Students Work.
Edward will see whether the other students’ work is as good as hers. For the first time he enters through the gates.
The walls are flat mushroom and beige. The light reflected around the hall is exquisite, midday sun on a clear winter’s day. Pictures have been hung around the walls at different heights.
He sits down on the leather seat in the centre of the hall and gazes around him, awed by the silence.
On the far wall, in pride of place, he notices a drawing that looks familiar. A woman is gazing up at it. He stands and moves closer. It can’t be. He walks away, turns around and looks again. It can’t be him – and yet – he tilts his head, and there is his face staring back at him. He smiles; there is such care drawn into it. He studies his own spine, a contorted black line across the paper. He wants to touch it, put his finger to the curve of his back and run his hand down the full length. She has given him a grace of form he would have once found unimaginable; like a proud bird, one wing lifted, ready, as if preparing for flight.
From the author
I would like to thank Yvonne Barlow of Bookline and Thinker to whom I owe a huge debt of gratitude for bringing to fruition her Hookline Novel Competition.
I would also like to thank the book groups who participated in the competition for all their hard work and dedication. I feel honoured and humbled to have been chosen.
Keith Jafrate of Word Hoard, Huddersfield.
Livi Michael, Lesley Glaister, Lynne Alexander, Mike Harris, and Steve Earnshaw.
Julia South, Siobhan Osborne, Karen Davies, Ruth Valentine, Joan Deitch and Michael Elliott.
Chris Johnson of the Osteopathic Practise, Sheffield.
My son, Tim.
Credits
The Observer’s Book of Birds’ Eggs
Frederick Warne & Co. Ltd, 1937
Egon Schiele by Wolfgang Georg Fisher.
Published by Benedikt Taschen Verlag, 1995.
English translation: Michael Hulse, Cologne
Quinquireme of Nineveh poem by John Mansfield
Bryony Doran was born in a Youth Hostel on Dartmoor. She grew up in Cornwall and studied fashion at Manchester Metropolitan University. In 2004 Bryony graduated from Sheffield Hallam University with an MA in writing. She has one son and lives with her partner who is also a writer.
For Bill Allerton with much love and thanks
Published by Hookline Books, 2009
Reprinted 2010
Bookline and Thinker Ltd.
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All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or stored in an information retrieval system (other than for the purposes of review) without the express permission of the publisher in writing.
The right of Bryony Doran to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
© Copyright 2008 Bryony Doran
A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used ficticiously.
ISBN: 978-0-956
517739
Cover design by Donald McColl
Printed and bound by Lightning Source UK