The Burying Beetle

by Ann Kelley

  ‘Is this where you live?’ She nods her head towards our ramshackle shack.

  ‘Yes, sort of, we’re renting it.’

  ‘Lucky you! It’s got the best view for miles. You must be able to see the dolphins.’

  ‘Dolphins? We haven’t been here long, we haven’t seen any yet.’

  A hang-glider appears over the top of the cliff behind the peregrine’s nest. The man is like a huge blue bird, part of the fabric of the hang-glider, spread out, face forwards, with a crash helmet on. Punky puts the bins up to her eyes at once and focuses on him. I think he’s seen us. He has. He glides over us, right above us, and I feel like I’m being spied on. She keeps on looking straight back at him. He moves past us fast and makes a slow turn at the point and heads back towards the highest bit of the cliff, up near the farm where in April I heard the cows crying for their calves.

  ‘Do you get many hang-gliders here?’

  I tell her they often fly low over the house and garden and Mum hates them – says they are Violating Her Privacy.

  The hang-glider has disappeared over the brow of the hill now.

  ‘I better be off,’ she says. ‘Nice to meet you.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ I call after her, and then feel stupid and like I’m still a kid. Child, I mean. (Grandma said kids were baby goats.)

  ‘Ginnie,’ she smiles at me. ‘Police Constable Virginia Witherspoon, actually. I’m in charge of wild-life welfare. You can call me Ginnie if you like. What’s your name?’

  I tell her Gussie.

  ‘Perhaps, Gussie, you might let me know if you see anyone trying to disturb the peregrine’s nest. Just call the St Ives police station and ask for me.’

  I watch her as she strides away. Wow, a policewoman in charge of wild animals. That must be really interesting. What a cool job to have! And she could be American Indian with that name – Virginia With a Spoon. She did have a rather strange accent, sort of sing-songy. I wonder how that name came about? Perhaps an ancestor was the first person to make a spoon out of silver. They are very good at making things out of silver. And turquoise.

  I realise then that she’s asked me to help her, just like that. Keep my eyes open. Just call and ask for her. I feel suddenly taller, which is cool, as I’m very small for my age. Mind you, Mum and Daddy aren’t terribly tall, so I haven’t much of a chance of being a model.

  I remember when I first noticed that Daddy wasn’t as tall as other fathers. It was on a path by a river, I don’t remember where, just that it was a sunny day with puffy white clouds, I must have been about six, and there were boats and swans. A man he knew stopped to speak, and this man was so much taller than Daddy, and I had always thought Daddy was the biggest, tallest, most powerful person in the world, and suddenly I saw that he was rather short really. Daddy had to strain his neck to look up at the face of the man, like a baby bird does when its mother is feeding it. And I had this awful feeling, which I can’t describe really, but it was horrible, as if I had been tricked, somehow, and had just realised it. I know all sorts of short men have been famous and powerful – Napoleon for one, and Tom Cruise, and Humphrey Bogart, and Nelson, I think. He’s still my Darling Daddy, anyway. Of course he is. It goes without saying. What a very strange expression that is! It goes without saying. Huh! What goes? Where does it go?

  ‘Mum, I saw the peregrine and I know where it nests.’ Mum pretends to be impressed but I don’t think she’s too interested in the local bird-life, really. She’s reading some stupid magazine about clothes.

  ‘Someone showed me the nesting place – a policewoman. She’s a wild-life warden too. Mum, she asked me to phone her and tell her if anyone disturbs the nest. It’s protected.’

  Mum is dressed in her dressing gown. She says she had to put her clothes on when the hang-glider flew overhead. She was Not Pleased.

  ‘Mum! You know you shouldn’t sunbathe in the middle of the day, anyway. The sun’s rays are carcinogenic.’

  ‘Life is Carcinogenic,’ says Mum.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Note: At the feeder this morning – a family of greenfinches. They eat very slowly and carefully, standing on the perch, usually two at a time, and chewing away at the sunflower seeds, occasionally looking over their shoulders. One male blackbird drinking from the galvanised bath that’s full of water. It was my idea to put a branch across it so the birds can perch on it and lean over to drink. Blue tits, great tits – they are twice the size of blue tits and have beautiful distinctive markings. Dunnocks (which are lovely, like tabby cats) and a robin, feed on the ground. They are ‘ground-feeders’ – that figures. The blackbird likes apples and plums and pear cores.

  I had to go out and bring in Charlie – she was pretending to be a bush under the feeder, not a very green bush, I have to say, before any of the birds came for breakfast. I suppose she thought a little bird was going to drop into her mouth, just like that.

  It’s been a very exciting day altogether, nature-wise. We were sitting outside having a lunch of egg sandwiches when the peregrine came and perched in the tree in front of us. We had to sit very still so as not to frighten it off. I didn’t have my bins, unfortunately, but I could see it anyway. It sat there while Mum’s cold wine got warm. But she was very good about it and nearly as excited as I was. It flew away behind the house. Perhaps it was hunting for food for its chick.

  HAVEN’T SEEN GINNIE the policewoman at all.

  ‘Mum, do you think I should phone Ginnie and tell her about our sighting of the falcon?’

  ‘Who’s Ginnie?’

  ‘The wild-life warden, Ginnie the policewoman.’

  ‘Do you think she’ll need to know that?’

  ‘Well, at least she’ll know it’s still alive.’

  ‘Go on then.’

  I phone the local police station and they say she’s not there but they’ll tell her I called.

  I have a new pair of binoculars. I paid for them with the money that Daddy gave me for my birthday. I wrote a thank you letter of course. I hope he won’t be cross that I didn’t buy a dress. He does like me to look pretty-pretty. He doesn’t seem to realise that I’m not a girlie sort of a girl.

  Mum says he’ll want to take me out with him to dinner and stuff and Show me Off when I’m older.

  Why doesn’t he want to do that now?

  He’s gone off somewhere on holiday with The Lovely Eloise. Tuscany, I think. Mum says he’s got a String-fellow Complex, whatever that is. I hope it doesn’t hurt.

  I’m off out with my new bins. They are so light, I can’t believe it. They are 7 x 25, whatever that means. The man in the shop did explain but I’ve forgotten. He was very helpful and kind and says they are the best value Japanese binoculars around and have excellent lenses. They are much smaller than Mr Writer’s bins and made of black rubbery stuff, but I mustn’t drop them or the lens will shift. I can adjust the focus very easily, not like on the old ones. I still have to remove my specs first though, which is a drag. But I’ve put them on a string too, so I can remove them quickly if I spot a bird flying by.

  I think everything should be on strings. I think I might invent a whole life built on strings. Strings for glasses, and bins – OK, that’s been done. And cameras. What about strings for drinks, for notebooks and pens, for diaries, strings for keys, for asthma inhalers, for medicines, for money, for credit cards, for books. You could have a sort of special book-shaped folder on strings, so you change the book that goes into the holder. Strings for lipstick. ‘I Can’t Survive Without my Lippy.’ Yes, I’ll invent one for Mum. Maybe I’ll be an inventor.

  I’ve got one of the bird identification books with me, natch, and my notebook.

  It’s a beautiful day, so calm and blue, with those little fluffy clouds you always get over the sea, but there’s hardly a person to be seen on our beach. We get a few groups of walkers on the coast path, always carrying those spikes you use on a mountain, or on snow slopes, which I think is a bit over the top, but they are usually old people,
so I suppose it’s better than walking along with a Zimmer frame. Or crutches.

  We also get a few surfers, but apparently, according to Eugene, there’s better surf in the winter on this beach. I saw a horse cantering along the beach once. That must be lovely, to feel the wind in your hair as you are racing along next to the sea – except the rider was wearing a helmet.

  I always wanted a horse when I was little but we never had enough money, we didn’t live near a stables, etc. Anyway, I had an imaginary herd of wild horses, which was probably almost as good as the real thing. I invented it when I went to stay with Grandma and Grandpop once for a whole week on my own. My personal horse was a black stallion called Thunderhead. Grandpop read a newspaper with horse racing on the back page, and I used to go through it to see if there were any interesting names I could add to the list. I had a whole notebook full of horse names. It’s funny, I can’t remember any of them now; I only remember Thunderhead. He had about a hundred mares in his herd, at least. I do remember Silver Star was his favourite mare. I had a little bike with those things – staplers I called them – so I wouldn’t fall over, and I got Gran to fix a skipping rope to the handlebars, like reins, so I could pretend it was Thunderhead.

  I made jumps in their garden out of boxes and brooms and mops and things and went round jumping over them as if I was on a horse and I was the horse at the same time. Aren’t little kids funny?

  Actually, I got into terrible trouble over my imaginary horse. I was going to Sunday School at the time, (I realise now it might have been because Mum and Daddy wanted to go to bed on Sunday afternoons for a siesta or maybe a fiesta, and wanted me out of the way). Anyway, one day the teacher asked us little ones if we had any pets. At the time we had Flaubert, but she was older than me and I certainly didn’t think of her as if she was a pet – more like a grumpy aunt. So, before I knew it, I announced that I had a pony called Thunderhead. Well, the teacher believed me and so did the other kids, and I found I had to make up stories each Sunday to keep up the pretence.

  It was getting beyond a joke. In the end I was winning rosettes in gymkhanas, for goodness sake, and I suddenly realised that God was watching me and listening to my lies and I would definitely not get to Heaven if I carried on. So I killed off my imaginary horse – at least as far as Sunday School was concerned. I put on a very sad face one Sunday and said he had died of a bad cough. It was amazing how they swallowed it. I must have been a really good liar. It’s frightening, really. Perhaps I should be an actress.

  Soon after, we went on a Sunday School trip to the London Zoo and some of the mothers came too. I had completely forgotten about the Death of Thunderhead, when the teacher said to Mum – ‘So sad about Augusta’s pony!’ And of course the whole dreadful truth came out. Mum laughed sort of, but I could see she was upset really and very cross with me. When we got home she gave me a really good telling off for ‘Lying in Sunday School,’ and I cried bitterly. I felt so guilty. But honestly, I just hadn’t thought when I first said it; it just came out, and then it was too late. One small lie and you’re damned! Eat one small foot and you’re a cannibal. Sent to Purgatory or Hell or whatever.

  I’m not sure I believe in any of that stuff any more. What an awful sort of a God would send a baby to the everlasting fire just because no one bothered or had the time to christen it before it died! I think Heaven and Hell are here and now, in this one and only life, and if you are good and kind to people and animals it makes you feel good and angelic, and if you are bad and cruel, and hurt people and animals, no one loves you and it makes you hate yourself, and that’s a sort of living Hell. I think the idea of God is very nice for little children and the idea of going to Hell if you are naughty keeps them in order, which isn’t a bad thing, while they are learning how to behave.

  But it’s a bit like Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy – all in the imagination. That doesn’t explain why lots of grown-ups believe in God or Buddha or Allah, though.

  It’s too complicated. There don’t seem to be any books on religion at the house, so I don’t suppose I’ll ever find out, unless I get to learn something at school. But we’ll only get to learn stuff that’s in the curriculum, I think. I’ve read that somewhere – Mum’s Independent probably. That’s an interesting newspaper. Intelligent, compared to Grandpop’s paper. Smaller print and no tits so it must be good.

  (Mum tried to get the local newsagent to move the tabloids to the top shelves with the sex magazines, but he wouldn’t. She said they Demeaned Women. And small children would see the naked girls on the front covers and think that women were Pieces of Meat or Men’s Toys. I don’t really see the connection between meat and toys. Also, I was terribly embarrassed at Mum making a fuss.)

  Also, they have poems in the Independent, which I think is really cool. Death, war, politics (boring), sport, and poems. I think I might start writing poetry. Well, I did some at my first school, but that was just juvenile stuff. My next lot will be sophisticated and sensitive and mature. The results of vast experience – having divorced parents, grandparents who die. Having a life-threatening disease – that sort of thing.

  How does anyone find time to do everything they want to do in their life? Life’s too short. I suppose the thing to do is to do it now – get started with whatever – just do it.

  Poetry is a way of talking about things that frighten you. I read that in one of Mr Writer’s books. I wonder if his books are on the shelves – the ones he writes – Mr Writer?

  CHAPTER NINE

  WHEN WE FIRST came to Peregrine Cottage there was a gardener who came Saturdays to trim the hedges and strim the paths. Mr Lorn, his name was (great name for a gardener), a man with a lovely smile and a straw hat, and he wore a grey tracksuit with holes in the knees. He was bent over a bit but very agile, clambering up the steps and mending the rustic arches – there are several in the garden and they are made of old bits of branches that keep rotting and falling off. He’s supposed to be looking after the garden while the owner’s away. I’ve only seen him twice. I don’t know what’s happened to him. Maybe he’s died.

  Since then the garden has become rather overgrown – in fact it’s more of a wilderness than a garden, I would say. You can still just about see the paths and steps but stuff has taken over. Brambles grow faster than you would believe – there’s a bramble branch with thorns shooting out over a path, where there was none yesterday. It’s a real thug. Taking over. There are other weedy plants – they must be weeds because they grow so well – with sticky bits on their prickly leaves, and they grow through real cultivated plants and end up looking just like them, as if they are deliberately camouflaging themselves so they can survive.

  Note: I’ve looked them up – Cleavers, they are called. Which is an excellent name because that is what they do – Cleave to me darling da da da da da da… How does it go?

  ‘Mum, what happened to the gardener?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea, Sweetie. Why?’

  ‘Because nature is taking the garden back.’

  ‘Hm, I suppose it Is, rather.’ Mum is lying on her tummy on a mattress in the sun.

  ‘Is it all right for it to do that?’

  ‘Don’t nag me, I’m Relaxing.’

  ‘But won’t the owner be rather cross if he comes back and finds he can’t find the house because of the brambles?’

  ‘Gussie, you do exaggerate. It’s summer. The Growing Season.’

  I’ve noticed my finger and toenails grow faster in the summer, come to think of it. But I hate my fingernails. They’re flat and square, like spade heads. It’s something to do with my heart condition – spading or something. My fingers too, at the ends. I suppose I’m not a very beautiful specimen of homo sapiens at all, actually. Skinny and small with rather blue skin, limp mousy hair, and glasses. Still, there’s not much I can do about that at the moment, so I’ll concentrate on my mind.

  Education is the answer. I’ve missed out on a lot of school but I reckon once a person can read,
they can learn anything they want to know. It’s just a matter of knowing where to go for the information.

  I do like novels, because they tell you about how other people live, what they think and experience, and I think that’s very important. It puts your own life into perspective and gives you ideas and makes you think of all the things you could do. Unless it’s a crime novel, and they are simply entertaining, I suppose, an escape from boring everyday life.

  Daddy likes crime novels.

  But I think if I read enough of all sorts of books now, when my brain is growing, I’ll be able to learn easily. Children’s brains are like sponges, apparently. I think adults aren’t terribly good at learning new things – like Mum with the metric system and computers and mobile phones and the video. As soon as we find a house to live in I shall ask Daddy to buy me a computer. A laptop would be cool, and a mobile. Then I can talk to Summer whenever I like.

  Dream on, Gussie.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Note: Pop ate from my hand, practically, this morning. I gave him the leftover cat food. They are so fussy, these cats; only eat certain brands of cat food and turn their noses up at others. So, when they don’t eat it I can give it to Pop. He is a living dustbin.

  THE ORIGINAL POP – my Grandpop – had the most amazing tattoos all over his arms. Mermaids and galleons and roses and eagles and ribbons and dolphins, all in red and blue and green ink, but faded, and his hands and arms had big veins on like snakes, but not scary. And his clothes were scratchy. He sat in his rocking chair; I used to climb onto his lap and we’d rock together. He wore white shirts with no collars and with the sleeves rolled up. He had these cool, silver, elastic armbands that he wore over his shirt-sleeves, above the elbow. He smelt of tobacco and sometimes I’d find a hand-rolled cigarette tucked behind his ear ‘for later.’ He taught me how to roll them. You take a thin sheet of Rizla paper, lay a few strands of tobacco on it, bunched up. Then you roll the paper around the tobacco and make a trumpet shape – it was supposed to be a cigarette shape, but I could only get a trumpet shape. Then you licked the edge and stuck it together.