‘Why don’t I make you a cup of tea Mum? See if there’s anything on the radio, a concert or something? There might be a play on.’ I say.
As if she doesn’t hear me she goes to the sideboard, opens the door and reaches inside to the stash she keeps behind the pile of old records we’re not allowed to touch. She lifts it out like she’s won a raffle, like it’s a surprise, like she didn’t know there was a half-full bottle of vodka there. She pours herself a mug, holds it up and smiles like she doesn’t ever need to be put to bed, or ever get sick, or rant and rave about it all being our fault.
I go out into the garden and look for Millie. I won’t go behind the shed into the nettles as I don’t want my legs all messed up with stings. I want them silky smooth and ready for the fake tan. ‘Millie, what are you doing?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Come over here then and sit for a bit.’ I’m on the bench in front of the shed. It moves when you sit on it. The grass is shorter here on account of it having to work its way up through crazy paving and gravel. ‘Come on.’ I want her to come but not for her sake. I’m not worried about her getting nettle rash and besides she’s got Bird. That’s what she calls the bird: Bird. When I asked her why, she said it seemed for the best, that naming leads to attachment and I said where the hell did she get that idea from, and she said she read it on the internet.
Millie sits next to me. Bird is on her shoulder moving from one red foot to the other like he’s stepping up and down in time to music we can’t hear, clawing at her t-shirt.
He turns his head and looks at me with a black eye. I think about Otis and his smoky, black skin that smells of walnut and vanilla. ‘You going out tonight?’ asks Millie.
‘Yes, seven o’clock, Elaine’s first, we’re meeting there then going into town.’
‘Can I come?’
‘Don’t be daft, you’re thirteen.’
‘Well you’re only sixteen and one week.’
‘Next year maybe, anyway I don’t think Bird would appreciate it, in Jelly’s, with all that noise and all those people.’
Bird is still now. A cabbage white floats past and a swarm of midges hover above the long grass. I think I should do something about the grass, like ask Jonty if I can borrow his mower, though he said it needed to be cut down first. A crow flies out of the lilac tree above us and Bird jumps up onto Millie’s head.
‘Is it stupid or what, that bird? It’ll get eaten by the crows if it’s not careful.’
‘He’s just nervous,’ says Millie and puts her hand up and grasps the bird and brings it down into her lap where she cups it in both hands. ‘His heart’s beating like crazy,’ she says, ‘feel it.’
She goes to pass the bird to me but I pull away, ‘don’t give it to me,’ I say, ‘I don’t like birds.’ But it’s not that I don’t like birds, it’s that I don’t want to feel its heart beating like that, not when its skin is all feathers and a puff of wind coming by could break its bones.
‘What’s not to like? He’s beautiful, feel him, he’s like silk and he smells of grass.’ She holds the bird towards me.
‘Don’t bring it near me,’ I say. ‘Keep it to yourself. Come on, I’ll make us tea before I go out.’
I make egg and chips because it’s easy, oven chips cook themselves. It’s just for us. Mum’s in the front room with the telly and her bottle. Millie feeds the bird a chip. He’s not normally allowed at the table. We clear away and then go upstairs to my room. Millie puts Bird in his cage and then comes and sits on the bed and watches me get ready. We share a bottle of coke and I smoke a cigarette out of the window as best I can, but it’s hard because it’s raining and the cig is getting damp.
Millie does my nails with the purple varnish I bought especially. She’s good at doing things like hair and nails although you wouldn’t think so to look at her. ‘You could be a hairdresser or a beautician,’ I say, ‘if you weren’t so brainy.’ She smiles. Millie is clever; the cleverest girl in her class, although how she’s going to be anything beats me. I used to think about being a lawyer. I fancied that, but now, well I’m not sure. Jonty Angel says he might be able to get me a job in the auction house where he works. Sometimes you have to be realistic and scale things down, the kind of things you’d been hoping for. I used to pray about that kind of stuff but then your prayers they get rained on like the grass.
I like it when Millie takes my hand and then each of my fingers, one by one, and holds them while she paints the nail. She’s just dipping into the thick, pearly varnish when we hear stumbling on the stairs and the bathroom door banging shut. Millie puts the brush back in the bottle and we wait. I listen hard. I’m good at listening, it comes with practice. I’ve got dolphin ears. Dolphins hear fourteen times better than humans. After a minute or two we start up again and one by one my nails take on a glossy purple sheen. I look at Millie, at her bitten-down nails and I think – tomorrow I’ll paint them purple.
The toilet flushes and the bathroom door opens. Her bedroom door closes. ‘She’s gone to sleep it off,’ I say. ‘She’ll be snoring like an old bag lady soon.’ Millie stops, brush mid-way between bottle and the little finger of my left hand. I can tell she doesn’t like what I’ve said. But I laugh and before long she laughs and then we both laugh and we roll about on the bed laughing, only not too loud and me with my hands in the air to stop my nails smudging.
‘Can I wait up for you?’ Millie says.
‘It’ll be late.’
‘I’ll get into your bed.’
‘Not with that bird you won’t.’
‘I’ll leave Bird in his cage. Promise.’
‘All right then.’
It’s gone eight when we wake in the grey light I hear the rain outside and a cheeping noise at my ear. What the hell. I told her no bird. ‘Millie,’ I turn. The bird hops away from my ear and onto Millie’s pillow. ‘I thought I said no bird.’
Millie opens her eyes. ‘I couldn’t leave him. Mum got up after you went out and came downstairs and said I’d got to give Bird back to Jonty or else she’d get rid of him. I was scared she’d hurt him.’
‘Well put him back in his cage now or get his box or something, just get it out of the bed.’ I turn over and push my head back in the pillow and replay last night’s kiss, and then I hear her.
‘Breakfast!’ She shouts up the stairs, ‘Come on, up you get.’
I turn back to Millie and raise my eyebrows in a kind of here-we-go-again way. ‘Better get up,’ I say. ‘It’s going to be one of those happy-family days.’
No one makes pancakes like she does and she’s cut up fruit and there’s syrup and sugar and lemon and a clean cloth on the table. When we finish eating, she says, ‘The rain’s stopped. Think it’s about time we saw to the garden. There’s a scythe somewhere in the shed. I’ll find it. You go next door and borrow Jonty’s mower.’
It’s true, the rain has stopped and the sun is out and it’s warm enough to be outside in a t-shirt, and I don’t care that I’ve had less than five hours sleep, what with getting in so late, because I’m in love and, as it turns out, it is one of those happy-family-days and who knows when the next one might come around.
The garden looks different by the time we finish, like it’s doubled its size. The sky is cloudless and we’ve got the old car rugs out on the lawn. Mum reads the paper. I doze on and off and think about Otis walking me home. I think about him kissing me in the lane; kissing Otis is like sucking chicken from a bone, and I think about how when I went round to his house his Mum made us a whole plate of chicken sandwiches for supper. If things carry on like today, then maybe I can invite him back, that’s what I’m thinking when I hear the click of a lighter and look up to see Jonty leaning on the fence.
‘All right girls? Looks a bit more like it,’ he says, lighting his rollie with the Zippo flame. Jonty’s got a pierced tongue and a tattoo of an eagle on the back of his neck and he’s wearing a t-shirt that says The World is Disappearing. It’s black and it’s got a line of blue
-green worlds across the front that get smaller and smaller until they disappear round the back. I used to think Jonty was a messenger. Well for one thing ‘angel,’ means messenger, Millie told me that, and for another, because of his t-shirts which said things like: I Just Wanna Be Myself, Love Kills, No More Pain. I used to think he was speaking to me until I realised he was the drummer in an old punk-rock band and it was his uniform. He doesn’t play in the band anymore on account of him nearly losing his foot in a motorbike accident.
I wonder if Jonty is really worried about the world disappearing: the land sinking, the seas rising, polar ice caps melting. I know all about it from school and Mrs Allen in geography but I can’t be worrying about it. I’ve got too many other things and besides it’s not exactly news to me; my world’s been disappearing from as far back as I can remember, mostly into the bottom of a vodka bottle. Today, just for once, I wish Jonty was wearing something to make us smile, like that t-shirt of his that says, If You Want Breakfast in Bed, Sleep in the Kitchen, or best of all, the red one with, Save the Drama for Your Llama, in big white letters across the front.
‘Fancy a Barbie? I’ve got a few burgers in the freezer, veggie as well as meat.’
Millie’s eyes light up. She likes being around Jonty, we both like being around Jonty because you can rely on him. Jonty is reliable which you have to be if you’ve got an aviary full of birds to look after. Millie is the only one he lets help him. Mum likes him too, she’s known him since she and Dad first moved in, further back than we can remember. Sometimes they play old records together, sometimes he calls her Blondie and you can tell she likes that.
‘Come on then before it decides to set away raining again. I’ll get it lit. If you want ketchup you’ll have to bring it with you.’
By the time we’ve eaten our burgers the sky is the colour of wet tarmac. We sit sipping coke and waiting for the rain. Nobody speaks. I’m praying it won’t rain, praying for the end of the summer when rain washed the baby wood pigeons out of their nests in the plane trees and into the gutter. I think of Otis and I pray: let everyday be like today, so I can bring him home; no more sideboards and vodka, no more coming in from school and her sparked out on the sofa. I let that fantasy loose in the air around me and I wonder if we’re all, in our own way, dreaming of the same kind of thing. I’m sure Millie is because she’s got that faraway look and a half-smile on her face and for once she isn’t petting Bird.
‘We should go away on holiday,’ says Mum, ‘get away from this sodding, sandbag summer, somewhere hot – Greece. I went there once with your Dad.’
I hold my breath.
‘Let’s drink to it,’ she says.
We all hold our breath. Jonty gives me a quick look then says, ‘Aye, good idea, why don’t I make us a cup of tea?’
Jonty brings a pot of tea and a packet of digestives on a tray with four mugs. We drink tea and listen to the birds shushing and chirruping in the aviary. The rain clouds pass and the sky turns blue again and I’m starting to think that everything seems OK and maybe I’ll get out tonight, so I take my phone out of my pocket. I’ll text Otis, who knows I might even go round his house for a bit. And I’m thinking how his Mum might make us chicken sandwiches again for supper, when I look up and see Millie’s gone.
Don’t ask me where it comes from or why but I can feel it, like a wild animal feels the coming storm, something moving on the air; it’s my dolphin ears and most likely my nose too. I know something isn’t right. I put my phone down. ‘Where’s Millie?’ ‘Gone to put Bird away,’ says Jonty, ‘she’s going to give us a hand feeding that lot,’ he nods in the direction of the aviary. Mum’s drinking tea and smoking, her head buried in Jonty’s newspaper. She doesn’t look up as I get to my feet.
I call for Millie in the house but there’s no reply. I walk through the garden, following my dolphin nose, down to the shed, then round the back to the nettle patch. Millie is there, squatting by the old sink with her hands in the water.
‘Millie, what’s up?’ I say but I don’t need an answer because Millie takes her hands out of the water and I can see what’s up, right there, under that clear blue sky, shining in the sink, I can see it, see him: Bird, floating lifeless, his feathers slicked onto his tiny body. ‘Millie, what, how…?’
‘I’m going to take him out now, find something to wrap him in, then bury him.’
‘But Millie, what happened?’
‘Some things are too hard to bear,’ says Millie laying his body on the grass. ‘Some things you just couldn’t bear.’ She looks up at me with a look that says -you know what I mean, and I don’t need to think about it because I do. I know exactly what she means.
I nod. ‘We’ll bury him,’ I say. ‘Then you can go and help Jonty with the aviary, and after that I’ll paint your nails purple.’
Millie already has a trowel and she’s digging a hole at the base of the crab apple. She takes an old crepe bandage from her pocket and wraps it around Bird. She lays him in the hole and covers him with wet leaves and soil. ‘Say a prayer,’ she says. And I do.
The Canary
Katherine Mansfield
Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) was born in Wellington, New Zealand. After moving to England at nineteen, Mansfield secured her reputation as a writer with the story collection Bliss, published in 1920. She reached the height of her powers with her 1922 collection The Garden Party. Her last five years were shadowed by tuberculosis; she died from the disease at the age of thirty-four.
…You see that big nail to the right of the front door? I can scarcely look at it even now and yet I could not bear to take it out. I should like to think it was there always even after my time. I sometimes hear the next people saying, ‘There must have been a cage hanging from there.’ And it comforts me. I feel he is not quite forgotten.
…You cannot imagine how wonderfully he sang. It was not like the singing of other canaries. And that isn’t just my fancy. Often, from the window I used to see people stop at the gate to listen, or they would lean over the fence by the mock-orange for quite a long time – carried away. I suppose it sounds absurd to you – it wouldn’t if you had heard him – but it really seemed to me he sang whole songs, with a beginning and an end to them.
For instance, when I’d finished the house in the afternoon, and changed my blouse and brought my sewing on to the verandah here, he used to hop, hop, hop from one perch to the other, tap against the bars as if to attract my attention, sip a little water, just as a professional singer might, and then break into a song so exquisite that I had to put my needle down to listen to him. I can’t describe it; I wish I could. But it was always the same, every afternoon, and I felt that I understood every note of it.
…I loved him. How I loved him! Perhaps it does not matter so very much what it is one loves in this world. But love something one must! Of course there was always my little house and the garden, but for some reason they were never enough. Flowers respond wonderfully, but they don’t sympathise. Then I loved the evening star. Does that sound ridiculous? I used to go into the backyard, after sunset, and wait for it until it shone above the dark gum tree. I used to whisper, ‘There you are, my darling.’ And just in that first moment it seemed to be shining for me alone. It seemed to understand this… something which is like longing, and yet it is not longing. Or regret – it is more like regret. And yet regret for what? I have much to be thankful for!
…But after he came into my life I forgot the evening star; I did not need it any more. But it was strange. When the Chinaman who came to the door with birds to sell held him up in his tiny cage, and instead of fluttering, fluttering, like the poor little goldfinches, he gave a faint, small chirp, I found myself saying, just as I had said to the star over the gum tree, ‘There you are, my darling.’ From that moment he was mine!
…It surprises even me now to remember how he and I shared each other’s lives. The moment I came down in the morning and took the cloth off his cage he greeted me with a drowsy little note. I
knew it meant ‘Missus! Missus!’ Then I hung him on the nail outside while I got my three young men their breakfasts, and I never brought him in, to do his cage, until we had the house to ourselves again. Then, when the washing-up was done, it was quite a little entertainment. I spread a newspaper over a corner of the table and when I put the cage on it he used to beat with his wings, despairingly, as if he didn’t know what was coming. ‘You’re a regular little actor,’ I used to scold him. I scraped the tray, dusted it with fresh sand, filled his seed and water tins, tucked a piece of chickweed and half a chili between the bars. And I am perfectly certain he understood and appreciated every item of this little performance. You see by nature he was exquisitely neat. There was never a speck on his perch. And you’d only to see him enjoy his bath to realise he had a real small passion for cleanliness. His bath was put in last. And the moment it was in he positively leapt into it. First he fluttered one wing, then the other, then he ducked his head and dabbled his breast feathers. Drops of water were scattered all over the kitchen, but still he would not get out. I used to say to him, ‘Now that’s quite enough. You’re only showing off.’ And at last out he hopped and standing on one leg he began to peck himself dry. Finally he gave a shake, a flick, a twitter and he lifted his throat – Oh, I can hardly bear to recall it. I was always cleaning the knives by then. And it almost seemed to me the knives sang too, as I rubbed them bright on the board.
…Company, you see, that was what he was. Perfect company. If you have lived alone you will realise how precious that is. Of course there were my three young men who came in to supper every evening, and sometimes they stayed in the dining-room afterwards reading the paper. But I could not expect them to be interested in the little things that made my day. Why should they be? I was nothing to them. In fact, I overheard them one evening talking about me on the stairs as ‘the Scarecrow’. No matter. It doesn’t matter. Not in the least. I quite understand. They are young. Why should I mind? But I remember feeling so especially thankful that I was not quite alone that evening. I told him, after they had gone. I said, ‘Do you know what they call Missus?’ And he put his head on one side and looked at me with his little bright eye until I could not help laughing. It seemed to amuse him.
The Story: Love, Loss and the Lives of Women: 100 Great Short Stories Page 47
