The Cormorant

by Stephen Gregory

  The weather softened as December arrived. There was talk of Christmas on the radio, and decorations in the pub. I returned from one outing with the bird, with a shapely little fir tree surreptitiously dug from the plantation. In the evening, at nine o’clock, Ann came home. I had had a good session at the writing, Harry was bathed and fed and ready for bed. There was a lovely fire and a number of logs warming on the hearth, waiting their turn to fuel the flames. Everything was in order. Ann awarded me a congratulatory kiss for my efforts. The cat leapt up from its buzzing sleep and scrabbled its claws on the side of an armchair, so I sent it through to the kitchen. And while the child sat starry-eyed on the sofa, agog at the brilliance of light and colour, we decorated the tree. There were mugs of soup, I lit a cigar, the tree became a fairy-tale tree and the room glowed. When it was done, the boy slipped from the couch and went unsteadily to the tree. While we watched, breathless and silent, Harry stood and reached out a hand to touch the fresh green needles. He put his face to them, sniffing like a dog. Then he turned, with a smile of ecstasy on his face, a glistening bubble at his mouth and his eyes lit with excitement. It was his Christmas tree, he knew it. Ann felt for my fingers and squeezed them hard. A scratching at the door reminded us that only the cat was missing the festivity, evicted from its customary territory in front of the fire. The smile on Harry’s face froze for a split-second, worked itself into a lop-sided grin. With a hoarse cry, he staggered towards the door.

  He strained on tiptoe to reach the handle, could not quite stretch his fingers high enough, howled over his shoulder for one of us to help.

  ‘Calm down, Harry,’ Ann said, as she got up from the sofa. ‘It’s hardly an emergency. Mummy’s coming …’

  The scratching continued. Cursing the cat’s claws and the inevitably marked paintwork, she went to the door. Harry reached up again, failed to touch the knob. I could not tell whether he was weeping or laughing, there was only a series of blurred shouts. Ann swept him up and dumped him back on the sofa. She opened the door, squealed and stepped backwards.

  The cat came into the room, tottering like a drunk. It lurched into the side of an armchair, rolled on its side with claws flailing at the fabric. With another desperate effort, as Ann recoiled and I stood up in dismay, the cat collapsed on the hearth rug. Its face was a mask of blood. With every rasping breath, bubbles of mucous blood blew from the mess where the mouth had been. There were no eyes, only a cowl of scarlet, glistening wet in the firelight. Blood simmered deep in the throat. Only the blubbering movement in the middle of the mask betrayed the existence of the cat’s nostrils, there was only blood in a gout where the cat’s face had been. The animal fell on the rug. A long sigh came from the throat, it relaxed suddenly until a series of spurts of urine flowed, strong at first then falling to a trickle over the belly. The cat lay still. But a whisper broke from its chest, its body shuddered. The cat lay still.

  The room was silent.

  Until a log split open with a snap among the flames of the fire. And Harry’s chuckles rang out. His face was brilliant with exhilaration, ablaze with pleasure. He beat his little hands together.

  Ann sprang forward and picked him up. She hurried upstairs with him, her cheeks wet with tears. Harry swivelled his head wildly as he disappeared from the room.

  I swore at length, before I picked up the cat on the coal shovel and moved through into the kitchen. The back door was ajar, the cat had just come in from the yard. The kitchen light lit up the yard and the garden. I left the shovel by the door and went outside. The hatch on the side of Archie’s cage was flapping loose. The cage was empty. The cormorant’s leash trailed down the garden towards the stream. I took up the rope but I did not pull. Running it through my hands, I followed it away from the lights of the cottage, until a resistance was felt in a jerking movement, like the fighting of a fish on an angler’s line. This time, I began to tug, tugging at first, then sending the rest of the rope in a whiplash curve, disappearing in the gloom.

  Archie came out of the shadows.

  The cormorant was all black. It stood up straight and faced me. In the darkness, Archie was all black, its wings held out in a mockery of benediction. The bird came at me in two leaps, brandishing the heavy beak, punishing the night shadows with the power of its wing beats. There was blood on its bill. The broad feet shone red. Among the ruffled feathers of its breast were smears of sappy gore where it had begun to clean its face. I kicked out with my slippered foot and the bird flapped backwards, long enough for me to take up some slack around my wrist and reel it in, retreating to the lights of the kitchen. Archie resisted, skidded forward on slippery feet. As I fumbled with the hatch, the cormorant struck hard at my hand. Swearing, lashing out, I caught the bird’s throat, lifted it up sharply and held it away from me at arm’s length. The feathers flew about my head, the winter night stormed around me in the narrow confines of the backyard, I opened the hatch wide and flung the cormorant inside like a bundle of rags. My hand was bleeding. I secured the cage with more than my accustomed thoroughness and went back into the cottage.

  Slipping the dead cat into the dustbin, I covered it with cold ashes from the previous day’s fire. There was nobody in the living-room. I could hear Ann’s low, musical voice in the bedroom above my head, the answering chuckles of the boy. Before she could come downstairs, I went to work on the stains of blood and urine which the cat, in its death throes, had left on the hearth-rug. Still wet, they shifted easily with vigorous rubbing. The scents of soup, sizzling wood and the needles of pine were gone, obliterated by the ammoniac whiff of disinfectant. The room seemed shabby: the fire was fading, there were brown-ringed bowls and spoons left lying on the carpet, my cigar had gone out, stale and neglected. There was no warm woman or child, no cat. I put some coal on the fire and chucked the butt of my cigar into the grate. When Ann came down, she was a different woman. She was stone, she was ice. She shed no tears for the cat, her cat which she had taken in years before, before she had met me. Ann was drained from her performance with Harry, disguising her nausea for the sake of the child. Unable to speak, she sat in silence and stared at the fire.

  ‘It was Archie, it got out of the cage,’ I said.

  She turned her face to me blankly, as though I had addressed her in a foreign language.

  ‘Your hand . .

  I had forgotten my hand as I cleaned up the room. Blood ran down my fingers into the edges of my nails, but it was drying, a blackening crust.

  ‘It got me when I was trying to stick it back in the cage. I’d better wash it …’

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it,’ and she stood up, drawing me with her into the kitchen. I let her put my hand under the tap and clean it with soap. There were two ragged cuts half an inch long which she dabbed with a stinging disinfectant. She ignored my wincing, she was looking through the window into the area of light, watching the cage for a sign of movement. I said nothing, just followed the direction of her eyes into the shadows of the backyard. She patted the hand dry. Turning back to the living-room, she said, ‘What about Harry?’

  ‘The bird’s locked up now. It can’t get out.’

  ‘The cat,’ she said. ‘Look at your hand. What about the boy?’

  I paused before replying.

  ‘We’re stuck with Archie for as long as we want to live in this cottage. The thing could be with us for five or six years …’

  ‘That’s six years of watching Harry keeps right away from it. Even in the cage, it’s not safe. He could open it already, you know how inquisitive he is, he has to touch everything. It’s natural. If we’ve got to keep the filthy creature, get it somewhere secure, away from the garden.’ But we both knew that, under the conditions of Uncle Ian’s will, the cormorant must remain as part of the household, on the premises. The executor would certainly see to that. I could only assure Ann that I would reinforce the wire mesh of Archie’s cage or erect a second barrier to deter the child from approaching the cormorant.

  The tears came
. She sobbed like a child for the death of her pet. When the tears dried up, she swore at the memory of Uncle Ian, a frustrated malicious pervert, she rained curses on the cormorant. Struggling to rise from the sofa, to storm through the kitchen and into the backyard, she reached for the poker as a weapon of revenge. I prised it from her fingers and replaced it by the fireside. She breathed deeply, some colour returned to her lips. I held her close.

  ‘Tomorrow I’ll fix the cage. Don’t worry now …’

  We went upstairs. Harry was sound asleep, his cheeks rosy pink, his little blond head framed in the whiteness of the pillow. Outside, the night was still mild, a gentle December after the bitterness of the November frosts. All was quiet: no wind, no rain, no traffic, only the village which hugged itself to sleep under the slopes of Snowdon. We went to bed. Ann called out for the cat in the last seismic efforts of lovemaking. I watched the grimaces of her face in the halflight, saw the tears run into her mouth and onto the lines of her throat. She gripped me hard, I loved her with all my strength. She released a long sigh, a whisper broke from her chest. She shuddered and was still. Together we lay in the hot confusion of our sheets. With my hand I wiped a bubble of saliva from her lips, leaving a trace of blood from my injured fingers. Ann moved away, touching me unconsciously, like a young animal …

  ‘Wake up, wake up! Look, it’s Harry …’

  I sat up with a start at Ann’s frantic whispers, and rubbed my eyes. A moon had risen, filling the bedroom with a strong blue light. We were wide awake and watching the little figure, pyjama-clad at the foot of our bed. The child was oblivious to us. Harry had come from his cot in the next room, walked to the window, to stare into the garden behind the cottage. He did not turn towards us, even with the commotion of our waking. With his hands on the sill, he leaned forward to peer down into the backyard. Moonlight bathed his face. His eyes narrowed a little at the gleam. Harry concentrated on his object in the yard.

  We crept up behind the child. Still Harry was unaware of us. We looked over him, at the blue-black garden, the purple shadows. The cage was lit by the light of steel.

  Archie too was awake. The cormorant stood in the full silver beams of the moon, head and beak erect, wings outstretched. Utterly motionless. Utterly black. Not a tip of a feather trembled. It was an iron statue, a scarecrow. It was a torn and broken umbrella, a charred skeleton.

  Father and mother and child stared at the bird. Harry suddenly hissed loudly, forcing the air like steam. He reached out his right hand and touched the window-pane. With the passage of a heavy cloud, the garden was in darkness. When the sky became clear again, when the cage was washed with moonlight, Archie was gone.

  There was no statue, no skeleton. No cormorant.

  Harry turned from the window. He walked between us as though we were invisible to him, into his own room, and clambered onto the cot. We followed and saw the child tug the blanket over him. In a second, he was sound asleep.

  He slept soundly until morning.

  Ann and I did not.

  Ill

  Ann was a formidably determined young woman. When she declared that she was leaving with Harry, going to the safety of her mother’s for at least a fortnight so that the boy would forget the cormorant, there was nothing I could do or say that would change her mind. I argued that Archie would be completely secure behind strong wooden bars, that I could clean and feed the bird without releasing it, that I would never take it out for exercise except when the child was asleep upstairs. None of this was enough. Harry’s moonlit communion with the cormorant had shaken her. For a few minutes, possibly longer if the child had been at the window before we had awoken, Archie had been more important to Harry than we were. He had watched and signalled to the cormorant, oblivious to our presence in the room. Ann said she would go back to the Midlands for two weeks and return to Wales for Christmas. In that time, I would be able to make suitable arrangements in the bird’s routine, make the cottage a safer place for our son.

  I drove Ann and Harry down to Caernarfon, where they were booked on the coach to Derby. In spite of my efforts with water and sponge, I could not disguise the smell of the bird in the little van. I swept out the dry droppings and discarded feathers, wiped the windows which were smeared by the bird’s breath and tongue. But the van smelt of Archie. It had pecked holes in the plastic upholstery, pulled out beakfuls of foam rubber, leaving the seats pock-marked, pitted with yellow craters. Under the matting there was sand. A few strands of seaweed clung to the seat belts, there were fish scales like sequins which had come from the cormorant’s feet. Ann rode in silence, with her face near to the open window. She held on to Harry, in the absence of a child’s seat; I felt the tacit criticism, that I had adapted the van to accommodate the bird but never thought to fit a seat for the safe keeping of our son. Harry also sat silent, round-eyed, his nostrils twitching at the strong scents. Throughout the twenty-minute journey, he made no sound. He was alert to the presence of the cormorant.

  In the main square of Caernarfon, we awaited the arrival of the express coach. It was a mild, damp afternoon. The lights came on in shop windows and banks, there were slippery leaves on the pavements from the young sycamores. Over and around the walls of the castle, the gulls circled, screaming. There was a mantle of droppings, like early snow, on the statues of Lloyd George and Sir Hugh Owen; the stone figures shook their fists furiously at the birds. Harry squirmed in Ann’s arms. She was glad that he was aroused from his trance, once again just a fidgeting toddler. He pointed and shouted at the people in the bus queue. Some of them smiled, others looked away, embarrassed. When the coach drew up, I kissed Ann on the mouth, wanting her to stay so much that I would have killed that wretched bird if she had asked me to. I was engulfed by my love for her; just for a moment it obliterated everything else. Harry wriggled away when I tried to kiss him, putting up a chubby fist and slapping me on the lips. They boarded the coach. As it pulled out of the square, Ann’s face was close to mine through the perspex. The child was staring over my head. For a second, again there was the mesmerised glitter of dreams on his face. Harry gaped into the distance, his mouth fell open, his right hand came up and was planted on the window. The bus moved out. I shivered at the final impression of the child. Harry was pointing, gesturing wildly over my head, vainly trying to make his mother see, as the bus disappeared around the corner. When I turned, there was nothing which should have fascinated the child so much: no fire engine, no brass band, no soldiers in uniform. Only a few pedestrians on a glistening pavement, no-one familiar. Except … no, a gray figure, the figure of an elderly man vanishing into the warmth of a shop. I found myself shivering again. I followed the man, stopping at the shop window. And with a shrug, I saw a complete stranger, a greying figure, rather blurred in the smoke of a dying cigar.

  I drove back to the cottage in the mountains. I had already decided that, in the absence of Ann and Harry, I could spend the fortnight trying to soothe the spirit of the bird rather than simply confining it more strictly. First of all, it would be freed from its cage, to wander on the length of its leash within the yard and garden. Archie had never shown the slightest inclination to fly: indeed, I doubted whether it was capable of doing so. Probably there had been more lasting damage as a result of its oiling in the Sussex Ouse than anyone had realised. Although it spent a great deal of energy in the boisterous flapping of its wings as a means of threatening a potential hazard, the bird never looked like leaving the ground. Therefore, even on the end of a length of washing-line, the cormorant could not go beyond the limits of the garden. It was unable to flap onto the fences which separated the yard from the neighbours’ gardens. But Archie would be free to explore as far as the stream and swim in the pool at any time. There was no cat or child at risk. Perhaps the bird would surprise one of the rats which visited from the nearby farmyard.

  Furthermore, I had determined that Archie would accompany me without the leash on our outings to the coast or to the quarry. I was sure that the bird would stay clo
se. It remained dependent on me for its feeding, relying on the plates of cat food even after an afternoon’s fishing for dabs.

  So, that evening, in the darkness, I removed one of the panels of wire mesh from the cormorant’s cage. It would be able to come and go at will, to return to its bedding of straw when the cold began to grip in the late afternoons. Archie emerged, blinking at the light from the kitchen window. I put down the tin plate and went back into the cottage. The cormorant was at large in the garden, just as it had been when the cat had gone into the gloom and met the stabs of a weighty beak. Later, before I went up to bed, I checked that Archie was secure. It was breathing evenly under a heap of straw. And in the light of early morning, the gulls came. I pulled close the curtains and slept, with the tumultuous cries surging at my window like the surf on a shingle beach. I would not be a party to the cormorant’s magnetism. When I awoke again, the gulls were silent, as though they had been dismissed.